A Real Time,Dynamic and Extensible Information Map for Lusaka City: Michelo Munachitombwe

Abstract

Modern technologies have made it possible for amateur news applications and related journalistic applications (blogs, social networks, collaborative publishing) to capture news faster and in larger amounts than any other news systems. These technologies (e.g. smart phones) can take pictures, record audios and videos and have access to the internet. However location of specific and desired news items from this large amount of news is very difficult. Poor organization of this information results in a limiting rather than an improvement of the news application. The project attempts to alleviate this problem by organizing the news around a map with the help of a mapping service. Therefore the application created is an integration of an amateur news application with a web mapping service. The geographical dimension added to the application by the mapping system will improve the capture of proximal and timely news and will improve searching. Also in order to aid news discovery, the application has a recommender system where users can get recommendations about news items which might be of interest to them.