21 Inspiring Mashups for Social Change

Last month, we wrote about the NetSquared Mashup Challenge, asking people to vote on their favorite mashup ideas from a pool of 122 submitted projects that outlined plans to "mash up" online data for social change. The 21 finalists are in, and will be showcased at the upcoming NetSquared Conference, where the teams behind the projects will take home a share of $100,000 in prizes. (Registration for the conference, which will take place May 27 and 28 in San Jose, California, is open, but space is limited.) NetSquared, a project of TechSoup, helps nonprofits remix the Web for social change.

Even if you can't attend the conference, be sure to check out the featured projects, which are both innovative in their approach to technology and inspiring in their social missions. Below is an overview of each of the projects; to read in-depth descriptions, click on the links below.

1. A Mashup of 29+ Social Action Platforms
   Would free up peer-to-peer social change campaigns from the social action platforms on which they were created, resulting in the unrestricted flow of active campaigns from the people who created them to the people who are most likely to get involved.
2. Anti-Genocide Action Tracker
   Genocide Scores for Every Legislator and State
   This site, modeled on Genocide Intervention Networks' Darfur congressional scorecard, would aggregate anti-genocide data, track anti-genocide legislation, provide calls to action to anti-genocide activists based on location, and generate embeddable badges to allow people to display the current genocide score of their state and district.
3. Ask Your Lawmaker
   Connecting Local Communities to their Lawmakers
   Capitol News Connection's Ask Your Lawmaker site is mashing up traditional reporting with social networking to empower users to ask questions of elected representatives, vote on other user’s questions, listen to audio of a lawmaker’s response, discuss and share the results. This project would extend the AYL service to cover state and municipal governments, and incorporate new widgets to allow users to share, discuss and promote the questions they asked of lawmakers, as well as the content they created based on those answers, on social networks
4. Assetmap.org/Uganda
   Would use mapping, tagging, social networking, and customized database tools to help American citizens who are currently or wish to be engaged with development in post-conflict northern Uganda better collaborate.
5. City of New Orleans
   A Mashup for Citizen Monitoring of the Recovery
   The demolition process for many homes in post-Katrina New Orleans is currently being undertaken without proper notification or permit procedures. This mashup project would provide a citizen-driven tool for the notification of demolitions and an interactive map of the recovery.
6. Government Data on Corporations
   Corporations often escape scrutiny of the most egregious offenses because their actions are not easily trackable by average citizens. This frequently updated, intuitive database of parent/subsidiary relationships would help shed light on the often dizzying maze of shell companies used to displace liability and avoid corporate accountability.
7. Freecycle Cellular Osmosis
   The Freecycle Network current enables millions of members to effortlessly exchange items for free in 85 countries; this project would allow people to conduct many of these transactions via cell phone — a boon especially for regions (such as Africa) where cell phone use outpaces Internet use.
8. Greener One
   This comprehensive database of consumer products would rank each product according to an easy-to-understand environmental score called the Green Index, using data from the U.S. Government, manufacturers, trade and environmental organizations, and Greener One's online community of activists and conscious consumers. This score would in turn help consumers make better choices when shopping online and off, and help encourage manufacturers to adopt more responsible practices.
9. KnowMore.org Firefox Extension
   Get Alerts of Corporate Abuses when You Visit Company/Brand/Product Web sites
   KnowMore has created an online clearinghouse of hundreds of “responsibility profiles” of large corporations to help raise awareness of corporate abuses and to serve as a catalyst for corporate reform and social change. This KnowMore Firefox extension would alert users to corporate crimes whenever they visit company and brand Web sites, helping consumers shop ethically online.
10. Map This!
    Would make the public functionality of HealthyCity.org, a mapping tool developed to serve Los Angeles, available throughout the United States, free of charge, to nonprofit and community organizations. The tool would allow users to upload their own data sets; overlay data points on top of geographic and other data; map and analyze data around a particular address or area; view demographic and other data for selected geographies in tables and charts; view community resources and services by region; and more.
11. MAPLight.org
    Mapping Money and Politics
    Mapping Money and Politics is a mashup that shows U.S. campaign contributions on a map, providing unprecedented transparency and an informative and appealing way to compare candidates and track special-interest giving on both a local, regional, and national level.
12. MetaVid
    Community Video Archive Project
    A community legislative video archive project (not officially launched) that works to make legislative video more accessible so people can keep tabs on their representatives. MetaVid will provide broader access to legislative video, which users can search by transcript, speaker, and (soon) other keywords, including bill names.
13. MoveSmart.org
    MoveSmart.org would foster racial and economic residential integration by providing housing seekers with on-demand mobility counseling. Mashups of single-point amenities (banks, schools, libraries, public trans, and so on), affordable housing opportunities, and "neighborhood opportunities" (the programs and activities of community-based organizations), will encourage housing seekers to take full advantage of the opportunities neighborhoods offer and put them on a path to true integration.
14. My Green Map
    Sharing your Sustainable Worldview
    Would merge Green Map's local knowledge and freshly updated iconography with a Google Map mashup to create an open interactive Green Mapmaking website that will inclusively help people worldwide quickly share their own selection of sustainability sites, pathways, and resources online. The resulting interactive Green Maps will be viewable from Green Map and other Web sites. With open commentary, green ratings, multimedia elements, 'impacts index', mobile access, on-site markers and more, everyone will be able to get involved.
15. OneWorld Connect
    Would allow users to create a My OneWorld page with a dynamic world map where they could easily select the countries and issues that interest them. Whenever a new article is published about a country or issue they've selected, users will receive an alert via email, RSS, or SMS. Users will also be able to share their stories about global issues and find out how they can get involved.
16. Track Congress with Social Data
    OpenCongress.org is a free and open-source public resource that combines official government data with news and blog coverage about Congress. The site recently launched a set of new features for tracking and sharing the best info about bills, issues, and Members; this project would go a step further and allow users to customize the stream of information they receive about their tracked items to give them better access to a wider variety of content, more streams of curated data about their interests, and more social wisdom from around the Web.
17. Rosetta Project
    Minority Languages in Google Earth
    Would create a comprehensive Google Earth language layer that would allow speakers of minority languages to manipulate the geographic representation of where their language is spoken, providing a unique, user-generated vision of language spread across the world.
18. Squarepeg
    Change Is Social
    Harnesses the power of peer pressure and the social Web to help people find volunteer and activism opportunities via their social networks.
19. Ushahidi
    Mapping Reports of Post-Election Violence in Kenya
    Would add additional functionality, including news overlays and multimedia, to the Ushahidi site, which was set up to allow citizens to document incidents of violence, looting, and more in post-election Kenya.
20. Volunteer Now!
    By Mobile Phone
    Would enable on-the-spot volunteerism by connecting users, via their mobile phones, to volunteer opportunities in their immediate vicinities – or to organizations that could use their expertise over the phone.
21. Your Mapper
    Know Your Neighborhood
    Would create an easy way for citizens to make public information that has long been locked up in internal government databases (crime, restaurant health reviews, traffic accidents, building permits, sex offender registries, property values, and pollution sources, or anything that can be linked to a physical address or location), and present it to the world in a way that is visually appealing, easy to understand, and local.

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What Mashup Challenge finalist projects have you excited? Let us know in this Web Building forum discussion.