Neighborhood Portals
Aired March 25 and 26, 2000
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This is Internet On The Air. I’m Joan Silvi. Neighborhood
information on your Internet doorstep. Details in a moment.
Funding Credit: Internet On The Air is a production of the University of Michigan
School of Information and Michigan radio, made possible by a grant from the W.K. Kellogg
Foundation.
Do you ever wish you could open your Web browser and have all the information you want
appear automatically? That's what Internet portals want be - your gateway to the World
Wide Web. Portals, such as 'My Yahoo,' allow you to tailor content to your own interests.
You can catch the local news, follow your stocks, or check the box scores of your favorite
sports team, all at one personalized Web site.
But, the content on portal sites usually comes from national sources and targets a mass
audience. As a result, very local information, about the neighborhood high school or the
little grocery store on the corner, can be hard to come by. For many rural areas, 'local'
means the nearest big city, even if it's a hundred miles away.
Jack Griffin, an entrepreneur from Palo Alto, California, plans to create a different kind
of Internet portal. He calls it Avenue L. Griffin says Avenue L will offer truly local
information, beginning with your neighbors. The site will use the data available in the
white pages to list the names, addresses, and phone numbers of nearby residents and
businesses. In addition, neighborhood members can provide personal information to share
with each other.
Griffin hopes Avenue L will help build social networks within communities. Local business
owners can offer special incentives to Avenue L users who live around the corner or down
the street. Avenue L also plans to connect neighbors with each other via online chat and
e-mail.
To learn more about local information portals like Avenue L, and to hear an interview with
Jack Griffin, visit our Web site at www.iota.org. For Internet On The Air, I’m Joan
Silvi.
Top of Page
Related Links
Avenue L doesn't exist yet, but check out these Web sites to see what
others are doing to connect people locally:
- Sample sites from ISP
Channel Neighborhood, "an interactive website tailored to the needs of your
community".
- Who's That?, a research project
based at the University of Michigan School
of Information, seeks to reconnect neighbors through a hybrid of paper and electronic
technology.
The Who's That? team has compiled a list of Web links as examples of how other communities
are using technology to connect people. A few selections:
- Global Geonet is a geographic
search engine, enabling users to search by country, province, city, etc.
- Hometown Technologies
helps neighborhood associations, civic associations, condo associations and Church
communities in the Atlanta, Georgia area build an Internet presence.
- eNeighbors is dedicated to linking
physical neighborhoods together to form virtual communities.
- Neighborhood Internet Communities
focuses "Internet technology at local geographical areas...for the enhancement of
inter and intra community interaction at personal, business, educational, and civic
levels."
Top of Page
The Interview
IOTA interviewed Jack Griffin in March, 2000.
Privacy concerns:
Are you expecting resistance from potential
users because of privacy concerns?
How will you respond to their concerns about
being in Avenue L automatically?
Can my neighbor learn about me from Avenue L,
before I've ever logged on to the system?
About Avenue L:
How did you develop the ideas that led to Avenue
L?
What's new and different here from what's been
tried before?
What are some of the opportunities Avenue L will
provide?
What are the range of tasks people will be able
to perform?
Implementing Avenue L:
How will you first implement Avenue L?
Where will you test the first iteration?
Please direct questions or comments to iota.webmaster@umich.edu.
Last Updated March 24, 2000
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