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Communities
No matter how far reaching a policy initiative or issue is, most people only care about one thing: How will it affect me? These sites help the user figure out just that.

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Last Word - New York Times Video Obituaries

It is not uncommon for the media to interview prominent or interesting people for their own obituaries prior to their death. The New York Times has taken it a step further by giving these people the opportunity to leave their own obituary in the form of a video.

StarTribune.com - Home Sweet Home 2037

Reporters at the Minneapolis Star Tribune worked closely with architects, research scientists, climate-change specialists, designers, futurists and engineers to create a house of the future that realistically projects the impact climate-change will have on our future. Scroll over the dots on the interactive image to see what neighborhoods will be like as Minnesota warms.

Lower East Side Tenement Museum -
Folksongs for the Five Points

In an effort to show contemporary immigrant experiences in New York City, this Web site explores the cultural diversity and change of New York's Lower East side through sounds recorded in the area. The user can click on different areas to get information and turn the sound on/off, thus creating a unique "folk song" through the various sounds of the city.

The Charlotte Observer - Foreclosure Interactive Map

With nearly 5,000 foreclosures in Mecklenburg County, N.C., from 2003 to early 2005, The Charlotte Observer created this interactive map that taps into the county's real estate database to display the location of each foreclosure on a county street map. Clicking on a location brings up real estate information from the county's Web site, including who owned the property and when it was foreclosed.

Minnesota Public Radio - The Education Achievement Gap Idea Generator

MPR set up the Idea Generator so that visitors could submit proposals for how Minnesota can close its racial education achievement gap. The site provides research to help users form their ideas and make more insightful comments on proposals. Ideas are divided into categories, such as families, teachers and schools.

Minnesota Public Radio - The Future of Small Towns Idea Generator

MPR used its Idea Generator to solicit proposals about how to revitalize the region's small towns. Users can rate and comment on ideas or post their own in categories such as people, economic opportunity, telecommunications and transportation. The site also offers background information and expert analysis for each category to give users information they can use when adding ideas and comments.

Jacksonville.com - First Coast Photos

From the Super Bowl to neighborhood cleanup days, Jacksonville.com's community photo archive lets users search and browse more than 80,000 images of events big and small snapped by local residents and Florida Times-Union photographers. Links attached to each photo let users buy a print of the image or e-mail it to a friend.

NewsZap.com - Community Blogs

This online site for Independent Newspapers Inc.'s group of community weeklies and dailies in Arizona, Florida and the DelMarVa Peninsula is building local blogs that post news articles and conversation on the same page. More specialized blogs on civics and sports are coming soon.

As part of BET's series "Under One Roof" that explores different aspects of black family life, from factors that threaten its stability to new traditions that are strengthening it, the station's Web site creative an interactive map that profiles major U.S. cities and includes comments from people who have lived in them. BET.com has taken the page down, but you can still get a sample of what it looked like by going to the archived version.