Britain's Conservative Party plans to offer a £1 million taxpayer-funded prize for a website that can "harness the wisdom" of voters. The price will be given to the team that develops a platform that enables large groups of people to come together online to solve common problems and develop new policies." According to the Guardian , some of the ideas for this site include services that help to identify wasteful government spending or rate the quality of schools and hospitals. It is worth noting, though, that the Conservatives will only give this price away if they win the 2010 elections. Sponsor Clearly, this move is meant to generate some excitement for the Tories in the upcoming elections, especially given that they haven't been in power since Tony Blair took office in 1997. A Great Idea or a Waste of Taxpayer Money? Looking beyond the politics of this proposal, this idea clearly has something going for it. According to Jeremy Hunt, the U.K.'s shadow culture secretary, "there are currently no technological platforms that enable in-depth online collaboration on the scale required by government." One could argue, however, as the Liberal Democrat's spokeswoman Jenny Willott does , that there are already lots of ways for people to collaborate and communicate online and that this is simply a waste of taxpayer money. Willott argues that sites like Facebook already allow voters to communicate with each other and the government. In the U.S., crowdsourced projects like this have generally been funded by non-profits. ProPublica, for example, recently launched a project that allows citizens to track how the stimulus money is being spent. Image Credit: Flickr user ohadweb Discuss

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Britain's Conservative Party Offers £1 Million Prize for New Crowdsourcing Platform

Augmented reality browser Layar recently launched it's v3 publishing site chock full of developer tools. The launch signifies more than 1000 active developers being given the chance to showcase their 3rd party applications. By exposing this immersive platform to outsiders, the company is solidifying its title as a pioneer in the "future of augmented reality". In a recent blog post Layar outlined 5 cases to demonstrate the power of the platform. In addition to some of the company's earlier 3rd party releases, below are some of our favorite layars. Sponsor 1. Civic Projects and Politics: A Netherlands-based Provast created a layar where users can see the final plans for the currently unfinished construction of the Markthal Rotterdam. Meanwhile developer Andree Toonk worked with NetKnowledge.ca on a slightly more political project. His layar gives information on all of the projects that receive funding from the Canadian government as part of Canada's Economic Action Plan. 2. History and Landmarks: Those visiting Liverpool and London can walk down music's memory lane with a visual tour of Beatles-related points of interest. Layar developer Augmentedreality.co.uk created a layar where users can follow the exploits of the Fab Four. Meanwhile a number of developers have looked to historical landmarks as inspirations for their work. Similar to Junaio's editable AR app , BuildAR lets you create your own points of interest and customize your layars to suit your needs. 3. Social: Dutch Squio.nl engineer Johannes la Poutré has a number of social applications for Layar. Similar to TwittARound , Tweeps Around queries Twitter for posts and marks the exact location that the post is given on an augmented reality layar. In his Foursquare application Poutré gives users access to the latest Foursquare venues and tips. 4. Advertising and Inventory : In addition to obvious product finding and advertising-based layars, Masternaut created a layar that allows users to track vehicles and assets across cities. Meanwhile developer Bastian Voight created a real time ship tracker for Vesseltracker with a layar that displays the position of moored ships in the world's largest ports. 5. Specialized Reference : Developer Pablo Garcia created the Elipse Golf layar where users can find the exact location of a golf hole and tee up for success. Smallroomstudios.net developer Patrick O'Reilly focused on transportation with both a Dublin bus location layar and a layar for Dublin's public bicycle program. Other layars also exist to locate hospitals, apartments for rent and wireless hotspots. Discuss

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Layar Adds Foursquare, Beatlemania and Civic Projects to its AR Offerings

From a group calling themselves Electronic Civil Disobedience comes the Transborder Immigrant Tool , a simple mobile application intended to aid and abet border-crossers from Mexico to the United States by mapping the safest routes to take. This GPS app is built to work on the cheapest cell phones available. It brings to mind every petty-but-illegal transgression the casual user could commit and stretches the boundaries of the permissibility of tech's uses for plausibly illegal means. The next time you use P2P or bit torrent clients to download media or use an iPhone app to detect police radars, think about this mobile application and how it reflects on American law and the Internet. Sponsor UPDATE: According to the Transborder Immigration Tool website, the application uses Spatial Data Systems and GPS "for simulation, surveillance, resource allocation, management of cooperative networks and pre-movement pattern modeling (such as the Virtual Hiker Algorithm) an algorithm that maps out a potential or suggested trail for real a hiker/or hikers to follow." In addition to allowing would-be illegal immigrants quick and simple access to map information, the application's creators hope it will "add an intelligent agent algorithm that would parse out the best routes and trails on that day and hour for immigrants to cross this vertiginous landscape as safely as possible." On startup, the app finds GPS satellites. Once the user begins moving, the app acts as a compass that shows the direction the user is heading and also shows the direction a user must travel to reach a "safety site." The app seems to originate from a hacktivist group out of UCSD - hardly a historical hotbed of technological innovation, but close enough to the US-Mexican border to have a significant impact on the politics of technology in that area. The group also advocates DDoS-like digital sit-ins to bog down the resources of websites it deems offensive. In an interview with Vice Magazine, the app's creator, Ricardo Dominguez, said, "We looked at the Motorola i455 cell phone, which is under $30, available even cheaper on eBay, and includes a free GPS applet. We were able to crack it and create a simple compass-like navigation system. We were also able to add other information, like where to find water left by the Border Angels, where to find Quaker help centers that will wrap your feet, how far you are from the highway - things to make the application really benefit individuals who are crossing the border." Hundreds of would-be immigrants are killed each year while trying to enter the United States. Check out this Border Patrol YouTube video on the newly installed double-layered fencing between the U.S. and Mexico, a fence that stretches between 700 and 800 miles along the Rio Grande. The application is currently in an alpha state of development. Dominguez hopes that, through working with Mexican communities, churches, and other organizations, the app will be ready to use soon. So, what do our readers think? Is this Dominguez a political dissident or a legitimate academic researcher - or both? And is a mobile app enabling illegal Mexican immigration to the U.S. a live-saving tool for those who seek better opportunities, or is it simply another law-breaking tool developed by tech hackers for life hackers, a workaround to cheat the system? Discuss

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Illegal Immigration: There's an App for That