1. 2. 3. World Streets quick search update: Making the universe just a bit smaller and more manageable

It's a huge world out there and when you are looking for something that relates to the interests that bring us together here, Google is a wonderful tool. However even with careful use of key words, it often can be a source of confusion, given the very large number of things that it inevitably dredges up. With this in mind, we have set up three levels of more defined search that you may find of interest.

But first a quick intro: What is this?

The following is perhaps more understandable if we take a moment to put it into its broader context. Let's try:

World Streets tries hard to serve four important, rather different functions as a motor, all for, as we incessantly say, sustainable transport, sustainable cities, and sustainable lives. They include:

1. Journal: Daily source of information, stimulation and perspective

2. Resource: A world wide resource on sustainable transport and all that relates to it.

3. Collaborator. Ready and able to put people and expertise together to support projects and programs setting out to be the best.

4. Lobby: A driving force for the sustainable transport renaissance that our cities and planet so critically need and deserve.

The following is an example of how we try to serve that Resource responsibility.

The Three Search Engines:

1. Search World Streets content:
This first and most tightly defined search engine - looking specifically and uniquely at the content of World Streets since its first edition on 2 March 2009. You will find it just to your left (scroll down a bit), and if you pop in your search term it will call up the result in the main frame right here. Very handy.

2. World Streets: Key Sources, Links and Blogs:
This is second and considerably more inclusive search engine starts with your key words and then scans the full content of the growing list of carefully selected specialized programs, sources and blogs with whom World Streets has created working links. There are presently (as of 30 Nov. 2009) something like 176 such linked sources, and you can then with a single click scan their entire content from the second search box to your left.

3. New Mobility Knowledge Environment (Knoogle): This is more ambitious yet and is the result of a joint research project with a group at the University of Michigan, in which we created a new combined search engine that presently scans (at last count) 937 carefully selected sources. (A bit more on Knoogle will be found below. For the full story go to http://www.knoogle.newmobility.org/

If you are planning a trip or starting out on a new topic for research or a media piece, this can be a handy way to get started.

More on Knoogle New Mobility
The origins of the Knoogle project (KNOwledge + goOGLE) was a concern that while there are a growing number of capable programs and organizations working on the same important problems of transport, environment and climate that concern us here, we were seeing quite a bit of "silo-ing" of information and effort. Perhaps to be expected given the natural tendency of human beings and groups to be attached to and protective of what they see as their "turf", however in the present dire circumstances a very real threat to both better understanding of the challenges and of our ability to get together to create strong and informed consensuses for change.

Knoogle New Mobility 1.2 is the second iteration of a power search engine under development by the New Mobility Agenda in cooperation with the SMART program of the University of Michigan, and specifically tailored to help policy makers, local government, researchers, NGOs, activists, consultants, concerned citizens and the media keep up efficiently with the work and activities of the leading international groups, programs and sources leading the field of sustainable transport and sustainable cities worldwide.

We invite you to test Knoogle to view the results of a quick unified scan based on your selected key words, combing through more than one thousand carefully selected institutions, programs and sources that we view as leading the way in their work and competence in our heavily challenged sector world-wide. (And if you want to reach beyond your initial Knoogle datadump, you are only a keystroke away from a full database search.)

Knoogle developed as part of a project is getting underway in which we are looking into ways to create tighter linkages and better coordination between the fast expanding number of programs and agencies that are concerned with issues of sustainable transportation, climate, environment, etc. For full background on this project in process click to http://www.knowledge.newmobility.org And if you wish to get involved or contribute in any way please get in touch.

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