Gaffney3.com

With relatives in southern California, I’m a bit distracted following the paths of the wildfires and determing which have been handles and which run rampant.

CenterNetworks post “Firestorm 2.0″ investigates how the most popular social media services are being used to report and inform. What Allen found is that together, the sites form a fairly complete view of the crisis in real-time, but they are without anything to pull them together. The thought of a “crisiscenters” to properly aggregate this data is a start one.

For me the google maps mashups prove to be the most useful from a top level down perspective.

• The LA Times has a Google Maps mashup showing where the fires are burning
• Another mashup of San Diego allowing GPS and coordinate submissions

Any sites that trump those listed at CenterNetworks? Or is anyone already aggregating the data?

Mixx, a social news site founded by Chris McGill, will move to public beta tomorrow. The site, which combines the social news elements of Digg with personalization options based on your preferences.

Online news site Newsvine, which launched in March 2006, was acquired by MSNBC.com, a fifty-fifty joint venture between Microsoft and NBC. The deal was all cash, and the acquisition price has not being disclosed.

Catching up on TechCrunch today, they have an interesting anonymous tip that Yahoo would be shifting away from premium services in the music group.

Vince Broady, head of Yahoo’s entertainment and video group, has since blogged that this isn’t in fact a lead up to the termination of paid content, but simply a staffing change for a more integrated entertainment team.

That means we’ll be creating more synergies between our music, games, movies, TV, and omg! properties, making them more personal and engaging for entertainment hounds. [more from Vince Brady]

What they actually hope to be creating (besides synergy) are new media platforms, applications and services, as well as the means to leverage social media and user-generated content. Sounds like the transition from content creator to content delivery to me.