What is Crows?
Crows is a Real Time Event Coverage and Communication System that
allows people, groups, or organizations to easily create a Web
presence for coverage of live events. With the ability for users to
contribute to the site on the Internet or by using their mobile
devices, website visitors are given up-to-the-minute information that
is curated live from the event itself.

Features:
- A Crow website can easily be created and configured on your server
in minutes.

- Real-time data pertaining to an event can be shown from any
combination of built-in modules.

- Reporting features allow site visitors to make real-time field
reports directly to your site with optional addresses, photos, videos,
and links via the Web or mobile phone.

- Twitter integration allows display of sets of tags, keywords, and
usernames, providing a main account for visitors to follow and easily
introduce new tags for the event.

- Flickr integration allows the display and enlargement of photos
from a user?s account, favorites, or public photos with a common tag.

- Youtube integration shows a user?s videos or playlist and allows
the display of public videos based on tags.

- Podcasting provides a means to import a standard podcast feed into
the site for easy on-site playback of audio and video files.

- Google maps integration capabilities are provided, allowing
automatic geocoding to render any location-based data onto a
configurable map.

- All modules interact in real time through a "report" link next to
all data, allowing for crowd-sourced reporting by combining all chosen
media types into a centralized map and reporting module.

- Mobile Site detection and rendering for all mobile devices is
provided, including field reporting.

- Re-captcha integration is provided for spam prevention.

- Privacy settings allow for public reporting, or limit to private
reporting through a password protected page. Malicious user reports
can be removed from the site by the owner.

- The site is easily styled and made unique with your custom logos,
text, images, colors, or CSS
style rules.

Availability:
Crows 1.0 is available now, as an open sourced project on GitHub, it
may be downloaded for
free from our Website at  http://crowsne.st. There you will also find a
tutorial video for setting up your first Crow.

About the Pittsburgh Independent Media Center:

The Pittsburgh Independent Media Center is a voluntary collective
dedicated to serving the local community with a system for
disseminating print and online news. We strive to cover the issues and
events ignored by mainstream media, and also those issues that
mainstream media covers with the inherent bias of a news organization
run as a business. We believe that the job of disseminating
information does not belong to a privileged class of reporters and
editors, but to everyone. It is our duty as citizens to act as
journalists so that the public knows the truth in every instance, not
just when the truth is to our political and economic rulers'
advantage. We seek to be an inclusive organization which will grow as
a community, and not as a hierarchy.

Contact:

Ed Filowat
412-773-0963
ed at crowsne.st

Phill Cresswell
412-608-8423
phill at crowsne.st