Location-based journalism gets easier with Bubbleby

I raved about Bubbleby as a great way to create journalism around a point on the map here http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/1529 in the MMJ masterclass on Location-based Content for local Journalism.

Now Bubbleby has introduced a key improvement. Here's how they announced it today:
New Feature
Finally, naming and renaming of bubbles is possible!
Your feedback was clear. Customizable names are important for the identity of bubbles. We kept the addressing scheme, but now you get to choose the names of your bubbles.

• Don't have a bubble yet? Start one now with the name of your choice
• Renaming is also easy! Go to bubbleby, login and press "edit" in any of your bubbles.  

Our addressing scheme is loosely based on how addresses are assigned in Japan. Checkout this video about Japanese addresses and thinking different on ted.com "Derek Sivers - Weird or Just Different?".

New bubbleby Uses
In the last couple of weeks we saw two exiting examples of how users are beginning to take over bubbleby and are coming up with new ways of using it.

• Andy Bull had the idea to use bubbleby as a tool for journalists to create stories and communities around locations and came up with a great example.
• And tweets started appearing about using bubbleby in conjunction with google translate to find and translate twitter messages surrounding the terrible events in Japan and Libya.

To support users who want to explore areas where they don't know the language, we now directly integrated translation into the site.
Simply press the "en"-button below any tweet and get its english translation.

We hope that this new feature will not only find use at times of catastrophies and uprisings, but that it will also be a great tool to explore the unfolding of more fortunate events!

Did you come up with any new uses of bubbleby? Then please get in touch, so we can add new tools and features to support you.