EPA’s symposium participants were challenged to use gnizr and other mashup tools to collect vital environmental information in an accelerated collaboration

A challenge was issued to participants at the EPA Environmental Information Symposium 2007 to use mashup tools to collect and share the best information, ideas, and resources related to the protection of the Puget Sound. The “Puget Sound Information Challenge” is a real-life case study that rallied participants at the symposium to collect vast amounts of data and other Web resources in a short amount of time. Image Matters’ gnizr was featured as a key mashup tool to help Challenge participants collect, organize and analyze disparate information in real time. Image Matters recently released the source code of gnizr to the open source community under the Mozilla Public License. This software provides enterprises and individuals with an out-of-the-box Web 2.0 mashup framework for bookmarking, tagging, and sharing Web resources.

The Puget Sound Information Challenge was initiated by the EPA’s Assistant Administrator for Environmental Information, Molly O’Neill, and the Chair of the Puget Sound Partnership Leadership Council (former EPA Administrator) Bill Ruckelshaus. The Challenge, to collect information specific to the environmental issues facing the region, has obvious application to other domains. “gnizr allows a vast group of multi-discipline users to quickly create an emergent base of knowledge about any topic of interest, utilizing any and all Web resources that are needed to comprehensively complete the information picture for the topic,” said Harry Niedzwiadek, Image Matters CEO.

As an open source project, gnizr allows developers worldwide to participate in creating the industry’s most advanced Web mashup and social bookmarking framework with spatial capabilities.