two great examples of 'only on the internet' collaboration
This week, I've experienced a wonderful example from the two sides of the internet-as-collaborative-tool bell curve this week.
First up: PublicMarkup.org.
A great use of the internet; a publically 'comment-able' version of the US Treasury proposal to create the infamous $trillion debt purchase...
Dodd's Legislative Proposal From Treasury Department for Authority to Buy Mortgage-Related Assets (via BoingBoing).
This would be even better if it used the paragraph-level commenting of a tool such as CommentPress. Regardless, its great to see open, insightful commenting on public policy.
About as far left of the bell curve from that is FreeCycle. I think this is the fourth time I've used the mailing list to offer, for free (free is a condition of group membership), some stuff I've cleared out of my basement (this time it was a van-load of wood, picked up within an hour of posting, other times I've got rid of old doors and a kids bike, which was picked up by someone running a kids club).
I think FreeCycle is superb example of local community collaboration, mediated by the web.
