The news people are interested in is called "hyperlocal news." It's personalized, with information about happenings just in your neighborhood and surrounding areas.

"Neighborhood Street" by stock.xchng user akhafer

Hyperlocal news sites have been multiplying over the past few years, since many print newspapers have been cutting back and shutting down. People are craving local news, and they need someplace to find it. According to The New York Times, many of these hyperlocal startup sites don't employ journalists; instead, they collect relevant content they find on blogs and other sources. Examples of these sites include EveryBlock, Outside.in and Fwix.

While these aggregators have low operating costs, they can also lack comprehensive and quality content because they rely on bloggers, who lack credibility. A couple years ago AOL CEO Tim Armstrong saw a need for more reliable news and he created Patch, which hires a few local journalists to cover town meetings and events, in addition to pulling content from other sources. Originally covering news just in New Jersey, Patch has now expanded to nine states across the country.

Patch Homepage

Other sites are now following in Patch's footsteps. All over the country larger investors have been launching more professional hyperlocal news sites, fully staffed with experienced reporters.

An example here in NYC is DNAinfo, created and funded by Joe Ricketts, founder of Ameritrade and member of the family that owns the Chicago Cubs. DNAinfo engages its audience through a combination of written stories, multimedia (photo galleries and videos), and social media. Many of the reporters, like @JulieShapiro, use Twitter to provide real-time news updates to locals.

DNAinfo Homepage

Although hyperlocal news sites are giving their audiences what they want and gaining dedicated followers, they still aren't immune to the news industry's struggle for profitability. Hyperlocal news presents a paradox for advertisers, who want the narrow audiences but also want to reach a lot of people. The key is finding local advertisers who are only looking to reach a small but highly targeted group.

Patch Editor in Chief Brian Farnham is working hard to attract these advertisers, and he's concentrating his focus beyond banner ads to directories and self-service ads, according to MediaShift. Farnham's overall goal is sustaining local journalism, but he can't do that without advertising. "There's no free press unless it's a profitable press," said Farnham.

What's your take on hyperlocal news? Will it be profitable enough to survive?

But what exactly is it? Usually I wouldn't quote Wikipedia, but since Wikipedia is one the most successful examples of crowdsourcing, it seems appropriate in this case. Crowdsourcing is "the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to a large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call." Jeff Howe first coined the term in a June 2006 article in Wired called "The Rise of Crowdsourcing."

"Crowd" by Flickr user James Cridland

Crowdsourcing has a lot of benefits for businesses struggling to find a solution to a problem. It provides access to many different opinions and backgrounds, and it empowers customers or users. For example, all the food companies that have consumers vote on a new flavor of a product, thus crowdsourcing the decision, are making their fans feel special by including them in the decision-making process.

Since its inception, crowdsourcing has been used in various endeavors, from encyclopedias (Wikipedia) to software development (think iPhone apps). And now with the growing trend of real-time web interaction, there are even more creative uses of crowdsourcing. Here are some recent original examples:

• Dating: Dating Brian is a site created by 23-year-old Brian in his quest to find love in New York City. He's going on 30 dates in 30 days, and he's crowdsourcing every decision, from which girls he chooses to where they go to what he should wear. Mashable reports that Dating Brian is actually an experiment for Brian's internship with BBH, but either way, this experiment could change the whole online dating realm. Watch Brian's intro video below:
• Filmmaking: "Life in a Day" is a feature film that will document one day through the eyes of people all over the world. On July 24th everyone had the opportunity to provide their unique prospective by filming anything from mundane traffic jams and family dinners to once-in-a-lifetime weddings and births. Director Kevin McDonald and Executive Producer Ridley Scott will create the film entirely from submitted footage.
• Parking: Google's new Andorid App called Open Spot encourages users to hit the app's "Mark a Spot" button whenever they leave a parking space or pass by an open space. Users looking for parking spaces will see different colored dots on a map representing open spots. The color changes depending on how long ago the spot was marked. One issue with this app is incentive for marking spots, as TechCrunch points out that the only reward right now is Karma.
• Fashion Design: Fashion Stake, which launches on September 1st, lets you decide which items go from sample to retail. Users can browse different collections and invest in the designers they like, which gives them credits toward buying from that designer in the future. The site also lets users comment on the collections, from recommending new pieces to criticizing the direction of the designer, according to ReadWriteWeb.

As helpful as crowdsourcing can be, it's not right for every project, and there are some risks. Back to the new flavor example, the company might get thousands of joke responses but only a dozen really good ideas. Someone needs to sort through all the jokes to find the legitimate responses. Also, there can be legal or copyright risks, especially when creative work is involved. Since the company usually has no prior relationship with the people submitting ideas, these people can't always be trusted.

What's your experience with crowdsourcing? Share your thoughts in the comments!

But now it's even better. This revamp is the biggest in Google Image history, since its launch in 2001.

Google Director of Search Products Ben Ling at Google's search press event

Here are some of the big changes to the way images are displayed:

• The search results page is all images now, without the clutter of text and links.
• The thumbnails are bigger.
• There is continuous scrolling so you can see more images faster.
• Scrolling over a thumbnail now shows you the a link, the URL, and the image size.
• Clicking on a thumbnail brings you to a full-size version of the image with the image's original website in the background.

Another addition to Google Images is the new Image Search Ads. The image search results page has always had ads at the top, but now these ads will contain thumbnail images along with text. The ads will still be differentiated from organic search results with a different color background and a label of "Sponsored Link."

The screenshot below shows an example of these new, highly relevant ads on an image search for cars.

New Google Image Search ads with images

Right now these thumbnail ads are only available for the Google Image search page, but they will probably come to other Google search pages in the future.

We think Google's Image Search Ads are a great way for advertisers to connect people to their brand through the power of images, just like our own In-Image ads. What do you think of the new Google Images?

"No Substitute" by Flickr user accent on eclectic

As a result of Amazon's announcement, Mashable decided to focus their weekly Web Faceoff series on E-books vs. Print Books. The question for readers this week is "Which do you prefer? e-books or print books." As of Tuesday afternoon, printed books are ahead with 40.7% of the 1,785 votes, with e-books at 24.5% and the diplomatic "both have their advantages" at 34.8%.

Of course these results aren't conclusive yet, but digital books are definitely gaining on the old-fashioned printed books. The real question now is which e-reader will come out on top?

"Amazon Kindle PDF" by Flickr user goXunuReviews

From Amazon's Kindle to Barnes & Noble's Nook to Sony's Reader, there are plenty of quality options out there, and new ones pop up all the time. Sharp just announced they're joining the market with an e-reader that might run on Verizon's network.

And then Apple complicated things last spring by introducing the iPad, which has all the e-reader capabilities plus other apps. There is speculation that the iPad will beat out all the other e-readers, though e-readers do have their own benefits, like lower cost, smaller size, and longer battery life.

"iPad stand" by Flickr user Veronica Belmont

So what does the future hold for e-readers? ireaderreview.com has a few ideas in its list of the "10 most important eReader developments in the rest of 2010." Among them are rumors of an iPad mini, a Kindle App store, and the Nook opening up to Android Apps. What are your predictions for the rest of the year?

While newspapers are struggling to monetize their print editions, they are realizing that a little digital creativity could be beneficial. For example, The Tribune Company, which has been stuck in bankruptcy proceedings for over a year, is now toying with the idea of trading in home delivery for PDF to save money.

"newspaper boxes" by stock.xchng user broicher

Considering newspapers are written in digital form, delivering them digitally makes a lot of sense. A PDF format is a good compromise for readers who enjoy the setup of the hardcopy newspaper as opposed to the online layout. Presumably, the PDF's would still have ads in them, and a paid subscription would be necessary to access the documents.

The Tribune Company is still working out all the details, but many media outlets have already mastered the art of online publishing. MediaPost just released a list of The 100 Most Important Online Publishers. Not surprisingly, The New York Times is number one, as the "poster child for print publishers challenged by the economic shift from analog to digital publishing.

Coming in for a close second is Google. The article editors praise Google's customized logos, which can convey information about a holiday, anniversary, etc. to millions of people worldwide. You can look back at all the Google Doodles, as these logos are called, from the past 13 years.

Sesame Street-themed Google logo to celebrate Sesame Street's 30th anniversary

The other 98 publishers on the list range from e-commerce sites (Gilt Groupe, #28) to cable TV networks (The Weather Channel, #41) to social networking sites (Twitter, #53). What all these sites have in common is their ability to provide quality content that keep their users coming back for more.

If you want to make it onto next year's list, you might want to consult Yahoo's new style guide, "The Ultimate Sourcebook for Writing, Editing and Creating Content in the Digital World."  The guide not only includes grammar and punctuation rules, but also advice on topics like search engine optimization and creating content for mobile devices. You can buy the guide online and in print on July 6th.

Everyone has a different take on how to enhance and sustain publishing, both online and in print. This clever video asserts that all kinds of publishing will be around for awhile. Don't get disheartened by the beginning; watch the whole thing. Just trust me.

Every other story on my Google Reader this morning was about location-based apps, so it seemed like a relevant subject for today's edition of "What's Happening Around the Web." Here's the most recent location-based/geo-location/geosocial news:

• Foursquare just announced a new partnership with C-SPAN, including a customized C-SPAN page on FourSquare and official C-SPAN tips. When a user checks in to a public place in Washington D.C., a C-SPAN box pops up with a video relevant to that location. To promote the partnership, the news C-SPAN Digital Bus will be driving across the country providing C-SPAN tips, and of course, checking in everywhere it goes.

C-SPAN tip popping up on a FourSquare check-in at the U.S. Capitol

• The new iPhone 4 now offers background location, which means instead of consciously checking in at every location you visit, the iPhone does it automatically. This service is provided by Loopt. With background location, you can just walk around and your phone will notify you if a friend is nearby or if there's a great sale at the store across the street. You can customize which notifications you want to receive.

• SCVNGR, a location-based game that gives users challenges to complete when they check in, just started online profile pages for their users. These pages let users highlight the challenges they have completed, including uploading photos of the challenges and writing tips to other players. This new addition to SCVNGR reinforces its rivalry with FourSquare and Gowalla.

The new user profile page on SCVNGR

The gaming aspect of location-based apps is part of the reason for their growing popularity. With apps like FourSquare, Gowalla and SCVNGR, users enjoy the social aspect of keeping track of their friends, as well as the gaming aspect of winning badges and achieving mayorships. While the premise of winning things is enticing at first, these apps do need to work on holding their users' attention.

Here at ISM we caught the gaming fever when FourSquare first came out, and we were obsessed with it, checking in at every possible location. But eventually, the constant preoccupation burned us out, and many of us lost interest.

If geo-based apps are to keep the interest of early adopters and win the hearts of casual users they need to up the ante. Meaningful collaborations with companies like Starbucks and Bravo is a start. Foursquare, the notable leader in this space, has been addressing issues brought up by users like fake checkins and now offers better discounts and promos for heavy users.

Location-based games are a huge opportunity for local advertisers, who can offer deals and prizes to users who check in to their establishments. Here's an interesting post from Grow: Practical Marketing Solutions that gives a more in-depth look at the (lack of) benefits of FourSquare.

What do you think of all the hype over location-based apps? Do you get anything out of it? We want to hear about your experiences!

In-Image advertising, for example, is so effective because with the most relevant ads placed on images, users are more likely to click on the ads. And the more users that click on the ads, the more money the publisher of the website makes, and the more conversions the advertiser gets. So everyone is satisfied...

...unless the ads disappear. Last week, Apple released Safari 5, which includes a new feature called Safari Reader. This tool eliminates all distractions on a webpage, allowing the user to see only the article he or she is trying to read. The "distractions" are ads. The example below shows a website before and after Reader is applied.

Safari Reader hides ads on web pages to make articles more readable.

Safari detects when you're on a page with an article, and a Reader icon appears in the address bar, which you can click on to activate Reader. All the ads on the page disappear, and you can scroll through the whole article, even if it's on multiple pages. You also have the option of emailing or printing the article and zooming in or out.

So what does Safari Reader mean for online advertising? Bad news first:

When Internet users stop seeing ads on websites, advertisers stop paying to place ads on websites. And publishers can't provide quality content if they don't make enough money.

For example, newspapers are already struggling to stay in business, and they depend increasingly on online advertising revenue as subscription sales continue to decline. With no advertising on their websites, they can't pay their reporters.

"Newspaper" from stock.xchng user digitill

So is this the end of the advertiser-publisher relationship that has been helping to sustain online media? Maybe. But most likely, not at all. Here's the good news:

Only about 3.5% of people use Safari as their primary Internet browser. Safari Reader is likely just another new tool that a few people will use, while the majority of Internet users keep seeing and clicking on ads like usual.

Every other day someone else is proclaiming the end of the Internet as we know it. So far, the web is still here. And I predict it will be around for awhile.

Google recently announced that they are exchanging the clean, white look of their homepage for user-generated, personalized images. When the feature comes out in the next few days, users will be able to upload their own images to replace the classic white background. Here is an example provided by Google:

Example of the new Google homepage with a personalized background

This change is a smart move for Google. Users will be uploading meaningful photos of loved ones, pets, vacation memories, etc., and seeing the Google search bar embedded in these photos every day will deepen their connection to the Google brand.

Another cool development in the image-industry is PicClick, a visual search engine. PicClick has come a long way since it started a year and a half ago, founder Ryan Sit recently told ReadWriteWeb: "With PicClick you can see hundreds of products on one page, you can maximize fullscreen for even more...It just allows you to find things 100x faster." Below is an example of a search in the shoe category of the Amazon.com tab. Other tabs include eBay, Etsy, and even the dating site Plentyoffish.com.

Search for shoes on the Amazon.com tab of PicClick

The AllRecipes.com tab of PicClick is by far my favorite. Consider this: Are you more likely to click on a recipe for "chocolate cake" or a photo like the one below of a thick slice of double layer fudge cake oozing rich chocolate frosting?

Dark Chocolate Cake from AllRecipes.com user hamsini

Have you seen other examples of images taking over the web? Let us know!

The three-day conference aims to find the best digital startups and launch them in front of some of the industry’s most influential leaders.

TechCrunch Disrupt morning panels focus on recent developments in media and technology that are, you guessed it, disrupting the norm. Afternoons are actions packed with demos by a select group of startup companies competing in the “Startup Battlefield,” for the chance to win a $50,000 cash prize.

In addition to remarks from TechCrunch editors, speakers include representatives from companies like Yahoo, the New York Times, Google, Facebook, and more.

Yesterday’s main event was Hack Day, where 60 teams raced to build tech projects in just a few hours and then presented them to conference attendees. Among the wide variety of creative hacks demos were:

• Future Mario, which lets users to play the Super Mario Bros. game by voice, eye blinking, or eye tracking

"Hack Fest" by Flickr user magerleagues

• Welcome Mat, a doormat that logs users into Foursquare when it’s stepped on

• Dogshare, a Facebook application that connects users through a dog walking service

• Shallow Dating, a dating site that matches people based on their physical attractiveness rather than their interests

Attending TechCrunch conferences is a great way to meet industry executives, young entrepreneurs, investors, writers from popular press outlets, and fellow techies to make connections and gain market insight. Image Space Media’s CEO Jesse Chenard actually met ISM co-founders Kevin Tung and Raymond Chan at last year’s TechCrunch50 in San Francisco, so it's easy to see why we’re big fans of their events.

Image Space Media f/k/a Picad Media Founders Kevin and Ray at TC50 2009

In typical techie fashion, we’ll be following the events of the conference live online. You can check out all the action, too:

Live video stream from Disrupt 2010 or follow the conference via Twitter with the hashtag #tcdisrupt to stay up to date.

Ad revenues fell $22.7 billion (3.4%) last year acting as the first economic decline in online advertising since the 2001-2002 recession.

While Q1 's $5.9 billion revenue reflects an expected decrease from 2009's fourth quarter it also reveals continued improvement into this year which was less predictable. Search brought in almost half of 2009 ad revenue. Search, display advertising and banners also saw jumps in ad sales.

"Successful business woman" by Flickr user tum_camen

Now the question on everyone’s mind -- is this development the beginning of true change or just a false start?

David Silverman, partner at PwC, happens to believe we've left our tough times in the dust.  In the report he states, “The record $6.3 billion spent on Internet advertising in the fourth quarter of 2009, while certainly aided by seasonal demand, is a strong indication that the worst of the economic impact on the internet advertising is over and that the seeds of growth have been planted.”

In my inexpert opinion, I doubt the economy as whole will mirror the recent improvements in the online advertising world.  Nonetheless, I have a good feeling that this new trend in internet advertising will continue, at least through 2010. If the increase in online spending is any indication, companies are looking for innovative ways to meaningfully engage with their customers and see that reflected in their profits. The overall improvement in first quarter statistics provide a bright and optimistic outlook for the rest of the year.