EnviroNet - Social Tagging the Environment
EnviroNet is a location-based service for local communities, which combines ‘social tagging’ (as demonstrated in the Web phenomena of del.icio.us and Flickr) of Physical places, Web content and locative media with location-aware mobile devices, to allow people to find, or to add, places and media related to their community within their current location.
It is initially proposed to serve various communities within an area. Users can ‘tag’ relevant locations, by inputting their geographical coordinates into our application (or their location-aware device can detect their location and input it automatically), then selecting which community to assign the tag to, and inputting individual tags as ‘keywords’ to categorise the entry.
For example, members of the Spanish/Latin community in Elephant and Castle can ‘tag’ any places relevant to their community, to share with others and also for their own reference. An individual using EnviroNet, when passing a relevant location, will log-on, then select their community, i.e. Spanish, then input what they consider to be relevant keywords to describe the location, for example ‘restaurant’ & ‘cheap’. Other users can then use EnviroNet on their Mobile to search for community related ‘places’ linked to their current location. So if they input ‘Spanish’, ‘restaurant’ and ‘cheap’ keywords, they would be presented with a list of all places tagged with those keywords in their current location.
Similarly, users can create media related to their community and their location, such as a story about a place or a picture of that location and upload it to EnviroNet with appropriate keyword ‘tags’, so any user searching for ‘media’ in that location will be presented with a list of all media that relates to their keywords.
When tagging places or uploading media, users must select the community it relates to. Users can search keywords without inputting a community, to benefit from entries on all communities within their location (for example, if they just enter ‘restaurant’, they will get restaurants of all communities in that area). In this way there will be multiple layers of communities mapped over an area.
EnviroNet differs from other location-based services, as it serves the community, rather than specific commercial interests. The people within a community decide what’s relevant, and they choose their own keywords to describe it, creating their own taxonomy, rather than having one imposed on them. The system will be self-regulating, in the manner already successfully demonstrated in many Web-forums and Wiki’s. Creative content also gives an opportunity for people to contribute creatively to the media of their area, and making it location based to specifically share with other local people.