Reposted from our devblog
here* * *
How do you aggregate a revolution? How do you give voice to protesters that are being silenced? How do you find out the real story from the people experiencing it, instead of the quick news bits that show up on TV (if at all)? How do you know where to look? If you take a picture or video of something and upload it to flickr, facebook, or youtube, how do you get exposure? Who sees it beyond your friends and the occasional random browser?
You get it
Earthmarked. Like this:
Cairo Al Tahrir SquareLet me explain... We have beenbuilding Mirascape as a platform to aggregate social content linked to locations, in what we are calling Earthmarks (see previous posts). Part of the idea here is that everything about who you are, where you are, and what you are doing (as well as what is nearby) forms a solid base or cornerstone for doing mobile augmented reality
right, and in a way that is contextual and relevant. Along the way we have emphasized the social and local elements while slowing down some of our innovation on the augmented reality technologies we are working with.
We opened up an alpha version of Mirascape.com in December, and we have an Android client with some basic functionality out there, but we haven't really been pushing for too much exposure or press, other than the infrequent blog post or twitter update. However, in the last week and a half or so things have blown up in the Middle East, and we felt like we had an opportunity to try an experiment...we created a handful of Earthmarks in Cairo and got our dev team to focus on grabbing more feeds, implementing new features, and fixing things we were breaking along the way.
And then...
...silence. Egypt went dark. Our earthmarks in Cairo (Egyptian Museum, Tahrir Square, The Cairo International Airport, etc.) were pretty empty, nothing was happening, and the only aggregation showing up were some old photos, or some youtube videos taken in another country but linked to Cairo in Youtube.
Then to our surprise, Al Jazeera was reporting on damage to the Egyptian Museum, and someone grabbed screenshots of the broadcast, and uploaded them to their Flickr account. Suddenly, a bunch of Earthmarks in the vicinity of the Museum were all showing these pictures. Holy cow! We had something interesting and a use of Mirascape that we hadn't considered. So we have been watching the news and working like crazy to flesh this out.
Then over the last day or two, a bunch of new stuff started showing up. Pictures of protests, signs, tanks...from the
people, not the news, live and dynamically. Uploads to social media in the hopes that someone would see them, see what is going on, and get a grassroots view of the situation...and we (as far as I can tell) are the only ones
aggregating and collecting all of this in one place...the nearest Earthmark. I'd venture to say we have stuff that the news channels haven't even seen yet, unless they are spending time digging through every social media network profile remotely near Cairo or any other city in the mid-east encountering revolution and protest right now.
And you know what? The Earthmark we have at the White House West Wing is now showing a ton of photos of people protesting in support of the people of Egypt, outside and near the White House. How awesome is that?
At the same time, we as a company, have been trying to raise the next round of angel funding, and focusing on this vertical market or that, or revenue model A or B, and so on. Never mind what we can do for businesses, consumers, brands, engagement marketing, local search, local advertising, virtual goods, or whatever. The system we built, mirascape.com, has become a voice for people crying out for freedom in a way that has never been done before. At the end of the day, that is the important thing. I have told people for a long time that while the DNA of the company is built around connecting people, places, and things with augmented reality, the heart of the company is about
enabling and
facilitating what other people are doing, and improving their lives.
Welcome to Mirascape.
Support the people of Egypt, and please pass on these links to the Earthmarks in Cairo. If you know anyone there and can reach them, tell them that the world is listening and watching, and to do anything they can to get their photos, videos, tweets, foursquare checkins, or whatever uploaded (and geo-tagged). We are aggregating it all and centralizing it in Mirascape Earthmarks. This stuff is pretty dynamic, and new content pushes old down (unless you are
at the location and rate it up or down with the android app...).
Cairo International AirportCairo Egypt MuseumCairo Al Tahrir SquareUS White House West WingMirascape.com isn't perfect and it isn't complete yet, but it is working and we have a lot of exciting things coming soon over the next several months. Check it out, register an account, and see what is going on around the world. We may be small, but we are moving fast!
Robert Rice
CEO, Founder
Embedded Earthmark for Al Tahrir Square, Cairo.
The geo-tagged content below changes fairly frequently, and is unfiltered. Everything is driven by what people are doing and uploading to a variety of social networks.
<iframe src="
www.mirascape.com/earthmarks/1…" width="100%" height="480" frameBorder="0"></iframe>
Feel free to stick this in your blogs (or the embed code from any other earthmark...its easy, just hit the share button on any earthmark, and the code should be there)
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I totally need to make one of these for deviantART HQ...wish there was an API we could hit to grab DA photos...
UPDATE: We got some great local press from NBC17 in Raleigh (lead story):
Check it out!