Seattle is a hotbed of local news innovation and a big part of it is the technology infrastructure the city's leaders have put in place. Recently, City Hall announced another move forward in technological transparency as the Seattle Police Department began putting many of its incident reports online  where any citizen can access, understand and report on what is happening on the streets around them.

We're proud to announce an amazing new update to our popular SeattleCrime iPhone app  that will make this useful new dataset available to you where you roam in the city. The latest version of the SeattleCrime app now features a new SPD tab that will show you the latest SPD reports for your area. You can read the full text of the report on your phone and add comments to be part of a community conversation about the realities of crime in Seattle.

The SPD reports are now paired with our multiple feeds of data, real-time reports from Seattle Fire and the new community-driven YouReport system to create...

We're very proud to note that CapitolHillSeattle.com, the biggest site in the Neighborlogs network of neighborhood news sites, has been recognized as the Best Site-Specialized Geography site by the Society of Professional Journalists. 

It's a huge win for the site that is published by Justin Carder, our VP of Business Development, and a testament to the high quality content, timely reporting, and high level of community engagement that has been fostered on CHS. Justin moved his site to Neighborlogs two years ago and has built a very successful, multi-contributor, ad-supported community site with tens of thousands of unique readers per month.

Second place in that category went to our friends at PhinneyWood.com, another very successful site in Seattle, proving that the Seattle area has become a showcase for how to create a whole new level of original reporting and content at a hyperlocal level.

Joe Ricketts is a billionaire. He's the founder of TD Ameritrade and owner of the Chicago Cubs. The shrewd investor has also thrown his hat into the hyperlocal news ring. More on his site DNAinfo.com from the New York Observer:

Like seemingly everyone else these days, Mr. Ricketts wants to figure out the future of news, and he has chosen the streets of New York to conduct an experiment of sorts. The name of his venture may sound more like a bio-genetics company than a earnest news site dedicated to zealously cover community board meetings and the like, but Mr. Ricketts chose the name (which stands for Digital Network Associates) to reflect the organization's multimedia ambitions.

DNAinfo.com is now up and running, cranking out daily videos, brief articles and slide shows, focusing on the tick-tock-zoning disputes, fires, crimes, restaurant openings, transportation disputes, roosters-of 22 neighborhoods throughout Manhattan. The sleekly designed Web site went beta in November 2009 and is still finding its...

Our SeattleCrime iPhone application is already the most popular independent news app in Seattle. With more than 4,000 downloads, there's already a pretty good chance that the next time you hear sirens, you can look around your bus to find somebody whipping out their iPhone to find out what's happening. Our latest update to the app builds on Jonah Spangenthal-Lee's awesome local crime reporting and improves the services many of you are already using to understand what is happening on the streets around your homes and businesses. But that's not enough. SeattleCrime has alread moved expectations for what a news app should be beyond a simple regurgitation of RSS feeds. Now we want to move it even farther forward.

Mobile news apps need to be more than simple reading and consuming devices. To harness the full potential of the technology, the apps need to also excel in the collection of information. If they don't, there's no reason to be an app. In our latest update to SeattleCrime, we're putting this potential to the...

Just a quick note to say happy birthday to a little experiment that we're glad to see make it through the year. When the gang from the Seattle PostGlobe came to us last summer from the still smoking wreckage of a volunteer-created open source site, we did what we could to help. Our systems are designed to be simple to use and affordable -- they enable us to provide great technology to content producers and information gatherers great... and small. The Globe's ragtag band of editors, reporters and photographers have stayed "in business" because of their energy and their commitment -- but also because they have a technology supporting them that helps extend their effort without burying PostGlobe in technology costs and tools designed for developers, not journalists. Happy birthday, PostGlobe. Happy to be part of another year.

The secret is to work with, not against community news sites. Here's a video from the Seattle Times discussing their partnership with 27 Seattle news and information sites. We're proud that four of those sites are powered by Neighborlogs.

"a national model for moving forward..."

The Seattle Times: Community news site partnership from Danny Gawlowski on Vimeo.

Neighborlogs is highly dedicated to community news at the neighborhood level but that's not all we do. We also provide services that power some of the best independent news and information sites here in Seattle. One of our favorites is Seattle's only online news and culture magazine, TheSunBreak . We're proud to announce that we're helping TSB roll out its brand new TheSunBreak iPhone App . Grab it today if you're looking for a good Seattle read and one touch access to TSB's services like the weekly planner, On the List.

In addition to great content, we hope you'll enjoy the Neighborlogs-shaped experience geared toward making the app more than the glorified feed readers so many sites churn out. One great leap forward for app-kind seems simple but you never see it in many efforts -- we've integrated comments in the SunBreak news-stream. Please check it out and let us know what you think. Once again, we're working with our pals at PurpleRobots to make this goodness happen -- so thanks a bunch to them.

Wow....

We're proud to show off an example of the power of our InstiAds self-serve ad system in action. Seattle Transit Blog advertising is utilizing InstiAds to provide advertisers big and small the opportunity to share their messages with the STB community.

Visit Seattle Transit Blog

InstiAds is an extremely efficient advertising solution for sites like Seattle Transit Blog. It provides an easy-to-use ad buying experience that allows site owners to focus their energies on running their sites. And, even when owners work more closely with prospective advertisers, InstiAds provides a solution that puts control of the campaigns and the budgets in the advertisers' hands.

The service also enables STB to be part of our local Seattle Indie Advertising Network .

Interested in advertising on Seattle Transit Blog? You can check out STB's self-serve wizard here.

As part of the celebration of its one-year anniversary as an online-only news source, SeattlePI.com profiled seven leaders who have joined it in the online media revolution underway in the city. We're proud to have made the list and to have the opportunity to spread our message and showcase our services.

"The cost of content is so high, you have to find ways to pinch technology and all the tools as tightly as possible. Plenty of players will be gone because they don't know how to do that. The next generation is going to be very interesting for us."

These are exciting times for our company:

• Our Seattle-area independent advertising network has grown significantly and added some impressive partners
• Our SeattleCrime iPhone app is one-of-a-kind and getting great reviews. We're up to 2,000 downloads. Get yours today. Plus, some amazing new features are coming very soon -- and a few new hyperlocal apps are in the works.
• We're hiring!

When we set out to create Neighborlogs, our goal was to build an all-in-one package of tools and services that independent content entrepreneurs and community members could put to use creating awesome community news sites. Along the way, we've also developed instiAds into a great tool to manage any site's display and self-serve advertising and to power advertising networks. We've put that power to work right here in Seattle.

Our Seattle Indie Advertising Network now includes ten neighborhood sites as well as some of Seattle's best independent citywide news sites. It's the only network of its kind in the city combining leading cross-city news and information sites with the best hyperlocal efforts in the neighborhoods our partners serve. We're also proud that SIAN is unique in that it allows independent media businesses to combine efforts while maintaining sovereignty. It truly is a new era, new media network. Because we place independence first, the Seattle advertising network is a fluid, evolving group...

Instivate, Inc. is looking for an online advertising sales representative to join our Seattle startup as Employee #4! Our network of Seattle news and neighborhood blogs is a cutting edge leader in the hyperlocal wave. Here are some of the outstanding local sites we power: 

• http://capitolhillseattle.com 
• http://centraldistrictnews.com 
• http://seattlecrime.com 
• http://thesunbreak.com 

We are seeking a hard charging sales representative to sell advertising across these sites.

We provide a base salary, generous commission structure and benefits options. Please help us spread the word about this great opportunity. Please contact justin@instivate.com with resumes/questions/etc.

If you know how to reach the right people to quickly close win/win advertising deals, read on. 

You are an excellent self-manager, dedicated to analytical, systematic sales approaches but also extremely comfortable helping local businesses put their messages in front of our growing Seattle audience....

Like Seattle-based local media analysis and news site Local Remote, we don't like it when the terms local and hyperlocal get tossed around and misapplied. LR takes a stab at defining what makes hyperlocal special:

"Hyperlocal” covers neighborhoods, while “local” covers towns and cities. We get some press releases here about how stations or newspapers are starting new “hyperlocal” websites that cover their city or a given topic in their city (say, “moms”). A mom blog is a niche site. A neighborhood blog is hyperlocal. A city blog is local. 

We won't venture into the mom blog waters, but we're not sure this definition set satisfies. Like the rest of the hyperlocal experts* on the Internet, we have to toss in our $0.02 on the debate. Here's how Neighborlogs looks at it.

Hyperlocal to us is about a set of assets -- not necessarily official borders or measures like population size. Here is that asset package that a hyperlocal site must cover and, equally important,...

It's been a week since we launched the SeattleCrime iPhone app -- our first step in bringing high quality mobile experiences to the community news space. We are proud to say we're zooming through our first 1,000 downloads and, more importantly, the SeattleCrime iPhone app is the highest rated top Seattle news app in the Apple Store. Here are the six apps Apple currently features -- some big names here including Seattle Times and KIRO.

Out of all of them, only Crime is currently rocking a 4-star user rating.

And in our time climbing through the rest of the 31 apps that come up for the search "Seattle news," SeattleCrime had the highest rating we could find.

Thanks for the support and we're glad you like it. If you don't have it yet, download the SeattleCrime app here.

At Instivate, our work developing Neighborlogs community news sites has helped us create low cost, powerful sites for larger independent news and information efforts. One of these sites is SeattleCrime. It's a fantastic city news site run by a pro journalist and powered by Instivate technology. We're extremely proud to announce an exciting new component of the site -- the SeattleCrime iPhone App.

Get the app

Developed in conjunction with mobile partner Purple Robots, the app showcases many of the tenets of our news and info delivery philosophy -- and, of course, the city's crime news flow keeps things interesting with great stories. Here is what the app does:

• Continuously maps the latest emergency calls across the city
• Mixes in original reporting from SeattleCrime and Neighborlogs Seattle community news blogs
• Is location aware so you can fire it up and find out what those sirens near you are about.

The SeattleCrime app is the kind of thing we love to build. Useful to anybody who's ever seen a cop car...

We recently looked at Seattle's hyperlocal ad trends and identified some of the ways that independent community sites are leading the way in creating sustainable business models for advertising supported local news. We've seen scant evidence that big media has learned from any of this -- to date, the typical Seattle big media hyperlocal advertising effort is practically nonexistent while the worst are driven by third-party managed boiler rooms that leave long-term sustainability and present-term SMB relationships shredded in their path.

Fortunately, on the content side of the equation, there are signs that big media can have a positive role to play in hyperlocal news. We have been exceptionally hard on Seattle's big media efforts in hyperlocal news and information gathering. But Seattle's big media has done some things that are exceptionally hard on the hyperlocal environment.

Now there are signs that, when it comes to the quality and, yes, even quantity of hyperlocal news, big media operations are learning....

Neighborlogs-powered sites now make up four of the 16 neighborhood news sites that are part of the Seattle Times local news partnership. Congratulations, Curt and Ben!

Added to the partnership today:

• EastLakeAve: http://eastlakeave.com
• AuororaSeattle: http://auroraseattle.com

Here is the rest of the Seattle neighborhood roster. Our other Neighborlogs family members are CapitolHillSeattle.com and CentralDistrictNews.com.

How do we know we're building the right thing with Neighborlogs? When we see a dedicated neighborhood news gatherer get his first big advertiser on a Neighborlogs site, we know we're on to something. Congratulations Curt and EastLakeAve -- you're doing a great job.

We know it when two more sites using our services have been added to the Seattle Times local news partnership -- that makes four of us now out of 16 neighborhoods. Yay!

We also know it when a veteran of the digital hyperlocal scene weighs 15 criteria for picking a content management system for an ad-driven hyperlocal news website and chooses us. That's a good sign!

Here are the first three factors for SunValleyOnline's Dave Chase:

No developer required: In my opinion, it is no longer necessary for 98 percent of sites to have a Web developer on staff. Fortunately, there are many off-the-shelf solutions that don't require an in-house technologist. There may be occasional needs where a developer can be contracted to do specific work but at the...

Over the next few days, people who care deeply about the future of news and media will come together in Seattle for the Journalism That Matters Pacific Northwest Conference. We'll be there to collaborate and contribute -- and to show off the latest from our http://neighborlogs.com and http://instiads.com services.

Over on the JTM Google Group, the conversation on one important topic near and dear to our heart has already begun. One group participant asked the following:

I'd be really interested in hearing from people who have established viable local ad programs that local businesses can use to their benefit, and to pay the rent for local news sites. 

• What works and what doesn't, in your areas / sites?
• What are the must haves to attract local and regional advertisers?
• Salesmen or online DIY ads?

Here is what we've seen in our headquarters city of Seattle, WA.

• Ad types

Almost all activity that advertisers pay for on Seattle community news/hyperlocal news sites is standard...

We enjoyed this interview with Tracy Record, one of the great characters helping to put the Pacific Northwest hyperlocal scene at the center of the hyperlocal community news map along with us here in Seattle. But we felt bad when we saw this reply to a question a lot of people ask about dedicated hyperlocal efforts:

AP: You are constantly attending meetings, markets and other events; you keep long hours and have a family at the same time. How do you keep the energy up?

TR: I have been a night owl all my life and have managed to do OK on five or so hours sleep. These days, three-hour nights are more common than five-hour nights, though, and I tend to nod off in the living-room chair while trying to finish that one last story that it always comes down to around 2, 3 am.

We don't recommend three hours of sleep for anybody -- especially not a news and information gathering entrepreneur. Just for the record, I average about seven hours of sleep per night and Instivate prez Scott Durham of Central District News<...

Truly local community news sites are special things. Started by a mix of content entrepreneurs, hobbyists and community organizers, they are fragile. We're always sad when one of our Neighborlogs sites goes quiet -- alas, Ravenna Nation -- but we're equally happy when a new site joins the flock.

Please welcome one of the newest Neighborlogs sites -- the Beverly Hills Independent.

Visit site

Some community news sites are dedicated to helping to define under-defined, underrepresented areas. Beverly Hills wouldn't be one of those. But like one of our leading Neighborlogs sites, CapitolHillSeattle.com, there is still a story to tell about the daily lives of the people who live in these well-known places. In the process, these high profile locations can be redefined from a community perspective.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. BHI is just getting started. Wish them luck and welcome them to the Neighborlogs family of community news sites. You can also follow their progress on Twitter @bhindependent.

Outside.in knows a little bit about building a business in local content. The company just closed a $7 million round of funding to help grow its hyperlocal news, information and advertising services. When PaidContent.org asked CEO Mark Josephson where on the hyperlocal blackjack table he would place his bet, he played the Neighborlogs card:

If you weren’t part of Outside.in, in which local players would you invest your money?

I really like some of the more scalable platform plays in local that are trying to solve big problems, and if they work, they should scale to multiple markets or sectors. I watch content-platform companies like Neighborlogs and Patch that are making progress figuring out the individual content creator model; scalable advertiser acquisition engines like Clickable, Yodle, CitySquares and AdReady that are making it easier for advertisers to have success and social-media companies like Foursquare that are so darn addicting and are creating tons of interesting real-time local data....

Here's the latest from the Neighborlogs network of sites. Want to start your own neighborhood news site? Register for our beta.

• Curt over at Eastlake Ave. has been diligently following the new Seattle school's assignment plan, and this week, he updated readers on the ongoing process. 
• As yet another coffee shop opens in Capitol Hill, David Albright had a chance to sit down with the manager for a CapitolHillSeattle.com exclusive video interview.
• New Neighborlog SunValleyOnline gets readers ready for the snow and ski season with a weather update for the area.
• Belltownpeople take advantage of the diverse group of individuals roaming Pike Place, and pick out a very helpful fruit vendor.

Michelle Ferrier is working to build the Women’s Online News Franchise and she's on the hunt for a community news platform to power it that is affordable and scales to the challenge. She has narrowed her options down to four -- and we're happy to note that Neighborlogs made the cut.

Here's how Ferrier described Neighborlogs in her write-up:

Neighborlogs.com, based in Seattle, offers a blog platform specifically for those doing hyperlocal community news or placeblogs.

She also produced a grid comparing Neighborlogs to the three other options she is considering.

While we might take a little offense at the 'struggling' bootstrap part -- we're lean and mean! -- we think Ferrier has identified some of our greatest strengths. Our self-serve ad system designed for businesses of all sizes is ideal for small, one and two person news operations. And, she's right, we're continually developing new tools and improvements for our system. As for the cons, hey, a controlled Beta isn't so bad -- all you need to...

A Seattle neighborhood news site is out with its second annual look at the top Web media properties in Seattle. Like any good ranking system, there are plenty of holes to point out in the methodology combining Quantcast, Alexa and other rankings in a 'secret sauce' recipe but Belltown Dispatch's list is fun to dig into nonetheless. Instivate, the Seattle start-up behind Neighborlogs, is proud to point out that we power eight of the top 75 sites in the rankings. Not bad when you consider we're up against media behemoths like Hearst, Fox and, the #1 online Seattle media property, the Seattle Times.

Here's a table showing the rankings with markings highlighting sites powered by our technology as well as the sites involved in a local news partnership with the Seattle Times which we feel should be a model for big media + little media collaboration. We've also marked the kinds of sites Neighborlogs loves most -- online-only indie neighborhood news sites -- in red. And, oh, by the way, we also power the Belltown Dispatch!...

The partnership between the Seattle Times and a group of Seattle community news blogs has drawn national attention and praise and helped put the Pacific Northwest on the map as one of the leading areas for media industry innovation.

But most large company hyperlocal efforts have not been hits. We've noted the poorly planned attempts of big media attempting to scale down to hyperlocal community news before. I recently had the opportunity to talk with a high ranking employee at a big media operation who is involved in rolling out a cookie-cutter effort to create neighborhood sites across a metro region. This is what I learned.

I can't name the employee, the city or the organization because I don't want him or her to get in trouble -- and most of what I learned would definitely cause some furrowed brows in upper management. But I can tell you that all of this is exactly as I heard it as I talked with the employee recently as we discussed their next 'big' effort in the space.

Meet Employee H. For Hyperlocal. Employee...