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Darren Waters

Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ reporters mashed

  • Darren Waters
  • 31 Jan 08, 10:32 GMT

What do you do when you are on a quiet night shift at the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ?
Locations of Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Correspondents around the world

If you're Stuart Pinfold, you using Google maps, which plots Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ reporters and correspondent locations around the world and connects them to stories on the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ News website.

Want to know who's covering stories in Sao Paolo, Brazil? The map shows you that it's Gary Duffy, and you can click to see stories he has done from his patch and stories about the location in general.

Stuart works in the Traffic department at the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ - taking calls from reporters, correspondents and freelancers around the world and then routing them to studios for live broadcasts or to record their radio reports.

He told me he "knows HTML" and was "bored on night shift and thought I'd experiment with Google maps".

It's a great tool - perhaps more of us should have quiet night shifts...

He has sent the map to one of the big bosses at Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ News - so who knows, perhaps his map will become a tool on the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ News website, just like the

For more great news and maps mash-ups, take a look at this

Comments

It's fairly easy to drop the Google Map API in to source code - see:

Well done to Gary though - that is quite a constructive use of his time on the night shift! ;)

This is the sort of thing we need more of!

I like trying to do this sort of thing, it just usually takes me much longer, I really think that the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ should push things like this more (reminds me of reading about the Hack Day).

I really think that this highlights the need to make absolutely everything open and accessible, IF everyone (take for example, me) could access this sort of information, this idea would have been dreamt up, developed and everything, a long time ago!

Hey, it was my 'constructive use' of a night shift, not Gary's!

It's always developing, and the next version of the map will have photos of correspondents where available, plus the latest three headlines from the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ News Website... keep checking!

Hey, it was my 'constructive use' of a night shift, not Gary's!

It's always developing, and the next version of the map will have photos of correspondents where available, plus the latest three headlines from the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ News Website... keep checking!

Hey, it was my 'constructive use' of a night shift, not Gary's!

It's always developing, and the next version of the map will have photos of correspondents where available, plus the latest three headlines from the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ News Website... keep checking!

  • 6.
  • At 06:37 PM on 31 Jan 2008,
  • John Smith wrote:

An excellent idea. It would be interesting to see if you could colour-code regions in various ways so that you can get a feel for why reporters are concentrated in certain areas. Lots of independent newsworthy activity? One very big story needing significant coverage? High potential for something very big happening? Pub offering free drinks to Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ reporters? This would add interpretation to the data which, as it stands, is interesting but doesn't translate into anything meaningful.

  • 7.
  • At 02:08 PM on 04 Feb 2008,
  • Lewis Clark wrote:

What I would really like to see is the stories themselves geo-referenced so that I could quickly find news related to smaller geographic area, like a village, town or city. Also, given a news story, I would like to see where it is on a map.

I may be able to help with such a project if anyone is interested.

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