First of all, I wanted to thank everyone for their support and kindness through this process of development. Everyone involved with OurBlock has a full time job and some of us have families so doing this has been an act of passion and not for money or fame. It’s been quite a whirlwind lately and the break we took between December-February was a mistake because now we have some very interesting proposals coming to us from citizens, companies and cities to get started as soon as possible. A bay area city yesterday asked if we could deploy and operate OurBlock across their high crime areas (75 cameras) by June 1st and that’s just not possible at this time.
There are four of us on the team and I’d like to share with you a screenshot of our network but also a few fantastic features that we have in-store for you. Here is what OurBlock’s main page might look like. I’m pushing for a partnership that will allow us to display a crime map of your area based on your IP address and then recommend cameras in your area but I doubt it will be ready for launch.
We’re rapidly developing this but it’s still an unpaid part time project. I can share a little bit about our infrastructure without saying too much.
1. Facebook Connect for ZERO anonymity. Reduces trolling.
2. Wordpress Mu for highly scalable pages and easy moderation.
3. BuddyPress for an instant social network hosted on our servers.
4. Integration with either Justin.TV OR Ustream.TV for scalable video streaming w/ an archive system.
5. Easy to use clip creation with instant upload to YouTube or Flickr (reduces hosting costs and helps virality).
6. At launch, partnerships with over 100 charities and all camera earnings give money back to charities. Camera operators decide where the money goes.
7. Crime Data that can be analyzed to see how cameras reduce crime over time and the community can access this data anytime for free.
8. Groups and sub-networks so fans of a particular camera can share clips, screenshots and events that happen on each camera. (Similar to Facebook Groups).
9. A philanthropic arm of OurBlock will help us connect citizens to charities and local events for the homeless, families & those in need.
We’re excited to be working on all of these features now. Facebook Connect will be authenticated once and you’ll be able to chat, create clips, collaborate with others, post in the message board and comment on our blog using one account with your name & face.
Adam Jackson’s fight against Internet anonymity is very important to us. You can read more about his passion for this on his blog. Facebook Connect gives us control to promote or ban users based on their Facebook ID and require a photo or a minimum amount of friends for that person to join the site. AdamsBlock.com had issues with trolling, racism and general negativity and we want to avoid that. The original camera would sometimes have 1,100 people chatting so if it means we cut that in half and fill the chat room with real people, it will benefit the community as a whole. This isn’t strictly about entertainment, it’s about saving lives and raising money for charity.
If you want to be a part of this project, have questions for us or any other comments, feel free to email us here. The next few months are going to be very exciting and we thank you for your support.
