A current project I’m truly excited about has to be Humid Beings.  Humid Beings is a “hyper-local, citizen media, NOLA love fest experiment.” Its everything media should be; inclusive and interactive. Humid Beings will provide all the local news, opinions, and resources you can handle about New Orleans. Humid Beings has been planned for 7 years and began building 2 years ago; now it’s almost time for the Beta Launch, this month. To be a part of the Beta site, sign up at http://nola.humidbeings.com/

Humid Beings will allow users to publish a blog, photos, status messages, and add commentary throughout the site. Users will be able to pull content on 3rd party platforms into Humid Being such as blogs, Twitter, and Flickr.

The city of New Orleans and its surrounding area is known by all and understood by few. We hope to help elevate that and kill some preconceived notions.

HB will feature news with summaries about local stories being covered by New Orleans and across Louisiana. In addition, Humid Beings will offer a section called “Places” for businesses and professional organizations to have space to share their products and services to New Orleans. This area includes photos, Google maps, contact information, categories, and neighborhoods. In the future, Places will include blogs and events to help increase exposure to the different businesses of New Orleans. Currently, there are over 570 places published. Another great feature is the video archive, which are all original produced videos by Humid Beings.

Screenshot of Humid Beings Homepage

At the launch of Humid Beings over 1000 profiles will go active, including many of the Beta subscribers. In Beta, members have had access to events calendars, local news, public feeds, and watch lists. Events will sync with other sources as well as pull from local businesses and organizations. The archive of local news will be searchable by people, organizations, and topics. The watch list will allow users to create a stream of activity and the ability to track certain HB profiles or places. Humid Beings will also include a marketplace, podcasting, map creation, photo essays, and an upcoming iPhone application.