My Ideas - 2nd Set

1. A resource for online seniors that includes technology news that's specifically catered to them. I read this report on the pewinternet.org site, and it made a lot of sense to me. I think this idea would rely a lot on editors to hand-pick entries from technology websites and blogs, because I'm not sure how to automatically determine what news would serve our audience well there. Also I think this site should include spyware blockers and things like that for people to download, as well.
2. I think that might be a little too specialized to capture an audience, so maybe a wider-ranging site containing news for seniors, people who are retired or nearly so, etc. Given all the issues currently surrounding social security and the like, this might have more of a broad appeal. However older audiences are the last remaining stand-bys for TV news and print news it seems like so I'm not sure how easy it would be to lure them to the Internet for news.
3. A user-maintained map of Wi-Fi areas. As wireless Internet becomes more prevalent I think this would have a market for people who are looking for hot spots but don't know quite where to look. In my experience there are a lot more places with Wi-Fi than you'd expect, so I think a resource like this would help out a lot of people, especially people who are going away and are unfamiliar with the area. This might not be news-y enough for our purposes though--but I would like to maybe incorporate a blog from a person who's completely ditched internet connectivity at home and only uses Wi-Fi. That would be an interesting experiment I think.
4. A map-based resource for skiers and snowboarders. I might be biased here because I'm a skier, but I've seen some websites incorporate locations of ski areas with the areas' conditions reports on Google Maps. Unfortunately most skiers know that ski areas like to fudge the details on their reports, so I'd like to go one step further and also incorporate reports from skiers and snowboarders. There are some websites, like www.snowjournal.com and the Teton Gravity Research website, that have thriving communites of hardcore skiers who are much more honest about conditions. Although again, this idea might not be newsy enough for our purposes, but integration of weather news and industry news would be easy and an obvious extension of the idea, and these things matter a lot to the winter sports community.
5. Here's a report about the Internet and donations after Hurricane Katrina. Coming from this, a resource (maybe a blog) about where people can donate to certain causes and what are reputable and what aren't. Sometimes I see news stories about people getting scammed over the Internet, especially after an event like the hurricanes or the tsunami a few years back, so some kind of way for people to post reputable charities and supposed "charities" to avoid would help people put their money to good use.