Cricket, a leading provider of wireless services, is looking for Chicagoans who want to make a difference in their communities. Details about the grant program are available at www.chicagocommunityvoices.com.

All Chicagoland-area residents who are in an area where Cricket service is available – young and old – are encouraged to apply with details on the positive change they wish to bring to their communities through the “Cricket Community Voices” program. An esteemed panel of renowned Chicagoans will judge the entries and select 10 winners four times a year to make their ideas come to life. The grants range up to $2,000 based on the need to activate the dream.

You must describe a community service project that you would use Cricket service to carry out. Your plan needs some clear objectives, and should tell which Chicagoland community it will serve. Be sure to be clear about what community problem you are tackling and show how the project will serve as a solution, the requested funding, and projected results. Winning grants will be announced in early 2011.

Veteran community leaders and activists will be the judges for grant funding. The panel is comprised of:

• John Pfeiffer – CEO and executive director of Inspiration Corporation
• Suzy Yehl Marta – CEO and founder of Rainbows for All Children
• Miss Lori – Founder of Miss Lori’s CAMPUS, children’s television host, recording artist, spokesperson and celebrated social media influencer.
• Marty Castro – president of Castro Synergies and chair of the Illinois Human Rights Commission
• René Parson – Area General Manager, Cricket and co-chair of Cricket’s Diversity Council

More details are available at www.chicagocommunityvoices.com, and a formal press release is below.

Last Wednesday, Oct. 13, more than 200 people crowded into the Humboldt Park Field House to be part of the Humboldt Park Smart Communities launch of its new community portal. The event, which had more than 12 tables staffed by Humboldt Parks Smart Communities organizations and selected technology vendors, showcased both some of the extraordinary work taking place in Humboldt Park and the promise of the increased collaboration between community residents, agencies and local elected officials.

To continue reading and to watch the video, click here.

WindyCitizen’s Brad Flora is one of this years recipients and his work will revolve around real time ads. ChicagoTalks.org often promotes its stories on WindyCitizen. The real time ads are meant to provide a way for online start-ups to become sustainable. The real time ads are Flora’s original idea.

Brad Flora, WindyCitizen

Teru Kuwayama, another recipient of the Knight awards, will create “One-Eight” which “will chronicle a battalion by combining reporting from embedded journalists with user-generated content from the Marines and their families who will be online steering, challenging and augmenting the coverage with their feedback.”  This project will also study the impact of allowing soldiers to use social media on the military.

More about the awards:

WindyCitizen’s Real Time Ads
Award: $250,000
Winner: Brad Flora, WindyCitizen.com
Web URL: http://windycitizen.com
Twitter: @bradflora
Location: Chicago, Ill.
Summary: As a way to help online startups become sustainable, this project will develop an improved software interface to help sites create and sell what are known as “real-time ads.” These ads are designed to be engaging as they constantly change – showing the latest message or post from the advertiser’s Twitter account, Facebook page or blog. Challenge winner Flora helped pioneer the idea on his Chicago news site, WindyCitizen.com.
Bio: Brad Flora is a journalist and entrepreneur in Chicago. He is the founder and president of WindyCitizen.com, which gives Chicagoans a place to share, rate and discuss their favorite local stories, events and deals. His work has appeared in Slate magazine and Chicago-area newspapers. He was a 2008 Carnegie-Knight News 21 Fellow, and is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

One-Eight
Award: $202,000
Winner: Teru Kuwayama
Web URL: www.novembereleven.org; www.lightstalkers.org/teru
Twitter: @terukuwayama
Location: Chicago, Ill.
Summary: Broadening the perspectives that surround U.S . military operations in Afghanistan, this project will chronicle a battalion by combining reporting from embedded journalists with user-generated content from the Marines themselves. The troops and their families will be key audiences for the online journal steering, challenging and augmenting the coverage with their feedback. The approach will directly serve the stakeholders, and inform the wider public by bringing in on-the-ground views on military issues and the execution of U.S. foreign policy. The troops were recently authorized to use social media while deployed, and this project will also study the impact of that decision on the military.
Bio: Teru Kuwayama is a photographer who has spent most of the past decade reporting on conflict and humanitarian crisis. He has reported in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir and Iraq – traveling both independently and as an embedded reporter with military forces. His photographs have appeared in publications including: Time, Newsweek, Outside and National Geographic. Kuwayama is the co-founder of Lightstalkers.org, a Web-based network of media, military, aid and development personnel serving more than 40,000 members. He is currently a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University. Kuwayama received a bachelor’s degree from the State University of New York at Albany.

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That has been the big stumbling block to paying for news and information online. Registration, paywalls, lots of clicking just to read a story just drives readers off. We are experimenting with a new tool called Kachingle, and we are asking you to check it out. We have our Kachingle badge (in the sidebar on the left.)

You join Kachingle as a reader and as a site owner, if you have your own site. Kachingle asks you to put up $5.00 per month using Paypal. That part takes about five minutes to set up. Once you’ve pledged money in Kachingle, you can click on the Kachingle badge on ChicagoTalks.org (and any other Kachingle badges on sites you read or view.)

Kachingle keeps track of your visits and each month, it takes your $5.00 and distributes it to all the sites you visited – but the best part to me is Kachingle allocates the money proportionally, based on what places you visited the most. If you Kachingle and only visit ChicagoTalks.org, we’d get the whole $5.00. If you visit five sites, each would get $1.00.

Simple, easy, fair to all the sites you visit, and it provides a low-cost way to help keep sites with content you enjoy going. Why not try it today? You can cancel your monthly payout whenever you want to.

If you are a ChicagoTalks writer or reader, how about Kachingling us? We thank you and hope the idea of Kachingle, not pay walls or set monthly fees, becomes a model for the way online publishing works.

INFOGRAPHIC: With New Mobile Rates, There Are Now 10 Million Ways to Pay for a Cell Phone.

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Auburn Gresham‘s “food desert” got a bit less empty, as international grocery retail store ALDI opened a new 18,000 square foot store on the South Side of Chicago at 7627 S. Ashland Ave. Read the newsletter to see how this is bringing jobs as well as food into the neighborhood.

Mayor Richard M. Daley accompanied Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski and a host of other civic and community leaders at the recent announcement of the Smart Communities Digital Excellence Initiative. This initiative is a collaboration of the City of Chicago, MacArthur Foundation, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC/Chicago) and “Smart Communities” Chicago neighborhoods: Auburn Gresham, Chicago Lawn, Englewood, Humboldt Park and Pilsen.

Get all the details in the newsletter. Keep up the great work, GADC organizers. You can contact GADC’s Ernest Sanders at 773.483.3696 or via email at [email protected] or [email protected]. The GADC offices are at 1159 West 79th Street, Chicago, IL 60620.

The reviews and ratings help you figure out which one will give you the kind of information you need to get around. How about giving one of these apps as a holiday gift? If someone uses it to get around and save time or energy, it’s a little green for the holidays, right?

Chicagoland bikers can choose from Ride the City (4 stars), Bike Your Drive (2 stars) with its attempt track your bike mileage in terms of C02 offsets, or EveryTrail (2 stars.)

The site has a larger agenda, and that is to encourage government agencies to open up public data to the public in order to make public transit more convenient. The more convenient public transit is, the more we will all use it, thus conserving energy and curbing CO2. The site is supported by a Rockefeller Foundation grant, which is deliciously ironic because it was John D. Rockefeller who transformed oil into “black gold.”

According to the site, “lack of open data is the biggest barrier to software innovation. One of City-Go-Round’s goals is to make all public transit data public. To do this, we show the benefit of providing open data (innovative apps built on top of that data) and also provide a list of agencies who haven’t yet opened their data.”

They match two public transportation databases to identify which agencies do and don’t provide open data. And if you work for a transit agency, they tell you how to make sure the data from your organization is open.

See a sample for zipcode 60605.

• “The Internet Must Not Become a Segregated Community”
• “Network Neutrality, Universal Broadband, and Racial Justice”

Are you planning on attending the meeting? Send us your impression of the meeting, or look for Chicagotalks’s Barbara Iverson at the meeting, to tell us what you think.

Image via Wikipedia

The Federal Communications Commission is holding a public hearing in Chicago on Monday, Dec. 21 on the future of the Internet, specifically on the development of the National Broadband Plan. The FCC has a site about the National Broadband Plan; it’s on Twitter, too. In a press release the FCC said:

“The Federal Communications Commission will hold a field hearing at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business focusing on how broadband technology can help small businesses spur growth and reach new markets. The public is encouraged to attend and participate. The agenda will be announced shortly.”

Post your photos of the event on Chicagotalks and call in a live report to 312.436.1820.

The hearing will focus on the Internet’s benefits and advantages, with an emphasis on how the Internet can help small businesses, like the many startups that are vital to jobs and economic recovery in Chicago. In the past, the public registered to speak in person, but the FCC is adapting to the way we communicate today. You can Tweet your questions during the session to panelists from Twitter @fcc. Use hashtag #BBwkshp to have your question asked during the workshop. You can  questions and ideas for discussion during the workshop. And you can just Share Your Ideas on how to develop the National Broadband Plan with the FCC.

This is part of a series of meetings where the public can give feedback on the FCC’s proposed National Broadband Plan. FreePress.net, a media watchdog group, advises us to get our ideas about how we need a fast, affordable and open Internet for everyone in Chicago to the FCC before it is too late.

Here are the details:

What: FCC Field Hearing on Broadband and Business
When: Monday, Dec. 21, 1:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Where: Gleacher Center, University of Chicago
450 North Cityfront Plaza Drive
Chicago, IL 60611
Online:http://www.fcc.gov/live/

Post your photos of the event on Chicagotalks and call in a live report to 312.436.1820.

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