I posted a story earlier this month about this exciting new site called Canada CODE, the digital media project for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics "Cultural Olympiad," and well, it launched today. The site hopes to generate a digital archive of our culture, using user-generated photos, writings and quizzes from Canadians and anyone visiting the country. They can tell stories about Canada, share their experiences and collaborate.
The site is super-buggy, I couldn't even register. But some of the concepts are unique and I haven't seen them before. There are 4 main categories to view and you can do this without registering. Explorer, Challenge, Pulse and Remix. In the Explorer category, you can click on a large round wheel–differently colour coded– and view user-submitted photos from around Canada. You can view it by intention, emotion or energy and generations, which I can't figure out how it all works, but looks good. You can then choose to write a story about the photo or remix your photos with another users photo and create a collage, I guess. The Challenge category appears to be a submission-based concept and is a call to action. Someone asks you a questions or to do something that you can answer by snapping a photo and uploading it or writing a story about your experience.
The Pulse section asks you to choose one of two answers about things you like and dislike and then gives you a percentage of Canadians with similar results. For example, it asks you to choose between Ketchup and Gravy, and then allows you to see how many others chose the same answer as you. (The idea being that our idiosyncrasies contribute to our Canadian-ness.) Remix is not functional yet, but that is the interactive, remixing channel where you can create unique digital projects. I can't wait to see how it all works, when it actually does. A great incentive for anyone to share a story on Canada CODE? They might be featured during the Olympics.
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It's an all Flash site. With no permalinks. It's essentially irrelevant as far as sharing content goes. Oh, wait, there's more - "Thanks for contributing to the Canada Code. Your submission will be reviewed by a Canada Code moderator shortly. We'll send you an email when your submission has been approved by a moderator and is live on the site." Full pre moderation? That will work well with 1000s of submissions. Nice try, Bell.
Oh you got that far? Awesome. Although, moderating the site is not THAT bad. I mean, it makes it a bit less pedestrian, a bit more exclusive. And hiring people to do that "will create jobs." That should be read with a bit of sarcasm in my voice. Overall, it's great that this idea exists at all? Isn't it?
