That said, here’s all you need to know about SwiftRiver (even if you don’t really care what the word veracity means)…

SwiftRiver (http://swift.ushahidi.com) is a free and open source software platform that uses algorithms and crowdsourcing to validate and filter news.

Features

• Aggregate content from many sources (Email, Blogs and News, Twitter, SMS)
• Rate content sources (Email address, URLs, Twitter User, phone number)
• Sort content by authority (more trustworthy or less trustworthy)
• Post reports from Swift to Ushahidi with 1-click
• Plugin Architecture
• Swift Web Services already integrated (SwiftRiver does all the things SWS does)

Other Notes

• Open Source
• Easy to theme
• Allows instance admins to determine the sources they trust
• Speeds up the process of sorting through large streams of data
• Helps Ushahidi users manage news
• Needs to be downloaded and run from a web server (like Ushahidi)

Swift Web Services (http://sws.ushahidi.com) is a suite of web apis that do different things. Each application does something different, and each are independent. SwiftRiver uses them all.

Applications

• SiLCC pulls keywords from any Text (including SMS and Twitter) and automatically sorts related text
• SULSa automatically detects location of incoming content/reports
• SiCDS automatically filters out duplicate content (re-tweets, blogs, text messages)
• Reverberations detects how influential/popular content is online
• RiverID allows Swift users to carry their Swift reputation with them across the web

Additional Notes

• Cloud applications (no download, no install)
• Web APIs
• Open-source
• Free for anyone to use
• Premium options available
• RESTful (for other applications)
• Fully integrates with Ushahidi
• Hosted (no download, no install)
• Available for WordPress and Drupal

Click on the image above to see a full resolution version of the screen mockups.

What we’re hoping you will do is take a few minutes to study what we’re doing, and then provide a critique on what you think we can do better.

Though the mockups look “done”, they are not. We’re still at an early stage in trying to figure out what features should be included, as well as what the user interface should really look and act like. We have a lot of iterating to do on the design process, so please don’t hesitate to jump in with any ideas or changes.

Feel free to leave you comments below, or you can reach us through the contact form.

Some Background Information

Our goal is to drop people into the actionable items as quickly as possible. We think that most people will want to see the events happening near them (or their default location) first, but there is also the option to jump right into reporting an incident on the same start screen.

Viewing Incidents
Incidents can be seen in two ways, on a map and as a list sorted by proximity. The default filter is by category. You can drill down into any specific incident to get to the full report, where we’re trying to bring out the important parts of any given incident.

Reporting an Incident
We’ve tried to streamline as much of the reporting into a one-page view as possible. You go immediately to the editor to start creating it. If you have already taken a picture, you can still add it to the report at this stage, or you can take an image right at that moment to add to the report.

The location is defaulted to where you are currently when you create the report, however, you can change that by selecting the “edit location” option underneath the text box. That will take you to a screen that lets you drop a pin on the location where the incident happened.

Other Stuff
You can set a default location within “settings” so that you always start on a specific location to view new incidents, and you can set your favorite map view. That is the only information that is stored, upon closing the application, we would like to wipe all data from memory.