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news site that integrates community bloggers, facebook, twitter, flickr, foursquare, allows crowdsourcing of stories- readers can add missing info, feeds specified based on readers location

examples of socially enhanced communities- get to know your neighbors, design your community, report whats going on in the community interesting take on local- not just local businesses, but communities as a whole being enhanced by technology

Klout, a San Francisco-based company that attempts to quantify a social media user's reach, has used a chunk of its estimated $30 million in new funding to purchase the community-centric company Blockboard for an undisclosed sum. Blockboard makes an iPhone application designed to connect neighbors through a mobile community bulletin board. The app is currently only available to users in San Francisco neighborhoods.

Last year Burt's Bees created an interactive billboard featuring thousands of tear-off product coupons to promote a new line of hydration cream. Originally placed in Minneapolis, the billboard has since been donated to the urban gardening students at Durham School of the Arts in North Carolina. Repurposed as a rain catching system, the billboard captures more than 6,300 gallons of rain water each year for use in the school's community garden.

According to Carter, food lovers just need to download the app and start exploring. By navigating the app, they can find foodie friends and post articles or videos, as on their Facebook feeds, follow the chefs they like, as they would do on Twitter and publish photos of their preferred meals, as they would do on Instagram. When users publish a pic of a meal, the system suggests a selection of wines to pair with it. Professional chefs and restaurateurs will need to go through a few additional steps to join True Foodies. They can either be invited by a chef who is already part of the community, or by supplying validation of their professional identity and qualifications. (Credits: TrueFoodies) (Credits: True Foodies) "We do a validation through social media and through our community, which includes already 3,000 restaurants in about 15 countries and 50 professional chefs," said Carter.

But you might be surprised by the second-leading source of the expected surge in traffic. It won't come from people, but from machine-to-machine communications, or "M2M." Think of sensors in cars and in appliances, surveillance cameras, smart electric meters, and devices still to come, monitoring the world and reporting to each other and to centralized computers what they're detecting. The chart below, reprinted from the Cisco report, shows just how extreme the jump in machine-to-machine communications could be. It is expected to grow, on average, 86 percent a year, and by 2016 it is expected to reach 508 petabytes a month, or half a billion gigabytes.

Attempting to conquer the same social/hyperlocal space as Patch and more niche apps like Yardsale, Nextdoor, which launched to the public last October, lets people create Facebook group-like communities for their neighborhoods, free of charge. From the Village Voice to Foursquare to Everyblock, everyone has tried, but the problem of how to effectively create location-based social networking is a conundrum for many reasons. In order to mitigate the largest barrier to entry, trust, Nextdoor has you verify your neighborhood address either via snail mail or via credit card - purposefully introducing friction.

It may seem like an odd market to tackle, but even among young kids, tablet use is growing. A Nielsen study from earlier this year found that 70 percent of children aged 12 and under who live in a household with a tablet use said tablet. At the same time, just 15 percent were said to have used them for communicating with friends and family. That low number could provide a significant opportunity, should the right product arrive that manages to make communication functions more appealing to the tween and under 12 set.

encourage their readers to go from being a passive audience to an active community. The new Good.is is a place for people interested in creating change to spread awareness for different causes with a like-minded community - think change.org meets Facebook.

Def Jam Rapstar lets users record their own rhymes in a "freestyle" mode over tracks provided by Konami and Def Jam. The freestyle mode uses the Playstation Eye or Microsoft Kinect to record video of the performer which can then be edited to include effects for upload to Def Jam's online community. Def Jam hopes the game + community will become a breeding ground for new talent.

Who, just realized that when we merge with the AI cloud we'll be able to translate all other species communication leading to a interspecies hivemind. Yes, I have been drinking.

Print magazines building online communities

From Japan, a collaborative authoring community. "Cellphone novels" have been around for a while there, but this service uses Twitter and keeps the entire work open-sourced so the novel is remixable and people can pick up from anywhere in the novel to change the direction of the story and make it their own. It's pretty cool.

daily 7.14 two systems- one is a network for wi-fi enabled phones (only can communicate within a few hundred meters) or by dropping small transmitters to the land from planes

gloves with LED lights to help firefighters communicate in ways other than verbally 

Hmm, will towns, cities and small countries be the first to create "smart communities?"

When it comes to cycling, there is nothing as important than the safety of the rider. Designer, Soohun Jung is trying to reinvent how riders communicate with others on the road with her concept design, iBackpack. The convenient bag is a communication tool that integrates a tablet and smartphone via Bluetooth using a special app.

Skype - if it were built today.

The Walgreens mobile app lets customers scan their mobile devices at the register to earn points and redeem awards without the need to carry a physical card. The app allows us to integrate Balance Rewards with other great mobile features, including in-store aisle maps so you can find the school supply or Band-Aid you need, and photo print services so you can send your pictures direct from a mobile device to our store for copies. LoyalBlocks, customers sign up through the app with their favorite stores that participate with the program. When they visit the store, the app communicates with the merchant's tablet, which automatically checks the customer in and sends them token rewards and deals.

"The amateur iPhoneographer demographic is huge -  there are far more iPhone 4S, iPhone 4 and iPhone 5 users in the world than had already joined Foap. But the founders also wanted to keep it iPhone only. So the founding pair decided to create a greater incentive for Foap's army of iPhoneographers to get their friends to join the community too: by offering commission. Every photo license on Foap costs $10. For every one sold, the photographer gets $5, while Foap keeps $5. But now, if you invite a friend, you get 10 percent of each of their photos that are sold. Your newly invited friend the photographer still gets their $5, though - your 10 percent "commission" comes out of Foap's take."