Closing Time

As this class has ended for the semester, I'm going to shutter this ... none of the info will go away, but posting and commenting will be turned off until we start up again.

Meantime, keep an eye on the UGA Photojournalism blog ... it's sparse through the summer, but will gear up again come mid-August.

Photsynth software, seemingly limitless

This is really cool. I want.

Al Tompkins Interviews WaPo's Travis Fox

The Washington Post's Travis Fox is one of the leaders in online video storytelling, and Poynter's Al Tompkins has a nice interview with him about his latest project and the state of video on the web. Not his predictions on the future.

Quiz Time

The quiz will be in a short-answer format, probably 10-15 questions drawn from the following areas:

• Matched action
• Jump cuts
• Pans and zooms
• Steady shot, why it’s important
• Tripods
• Mics - shotgun, lavs and sticks
• Rollback
• Holding your shot
• Audio - getting it, setting it, why it’s important
• Long, medium and close-up shots
• Cover shots, B-roll
• Framing
• Interviewing techniques
• Benefits/downsides to amateur video
• Active interviews
• 10 second minimum
• Connecting/transitional shots
• Care of tapes
• Time code
• Autolock
• Autofocus - modes and when to use each
• Exposure and backlight
• Tags and folksonomy
• RSS
• FTP

Day One Slides

I've converted the Keynote presentation from the first day into a series of HTML pages, in case you want to sync your notes up with them. I'll post a list of terms you should have learned over the last few days early this afternoon. If you don't know what they mean, post a comment and I'll answer any put up before 8 p.m. tonight.

ASSIGNMENT: Reading for Day 3

Please read Chapter 7 for Thursday's class. And you'll need to read Chapter 10 and 11 eventually, so if the momentum's going ...

Also, here are the links to the videos we watched on the first day, in case you want to review them again.

The Globe and Mail, Surviving Katrina and A Shrimper's Storm
The Toronto Star, An Artist First
Northwest Herald, Bearing the Cross

ASSIGNMENT: Reading for Day 2

For tomorrow, please download the Journalism 2.0 text and read the introduction and chapters 1, 2, 3, 4 and 9. (It won't take that long, less than an hour.)

OH MY GOD - Facebook not SAFE!

Hey guys,
I just came across this from BBC news. It's regarding Facebook, they are talking about different "applications" there have a program that can steal your information and perhaps even your identity, so please be carefull you all. Check out the video.

Priyom.

Love and journalism

I realize that not everyone in the multimedia class is considering photojournalism as a career, but there are a couple of us, so I thought I'd just bring up the topic of relationships. In the documentary class, one of the final words of wisdom from Johnny was that relationships are hard to maintain as photojournalists. He said that any of us who intended on taking on the mantle should be prepared to miss those special occasions -- birthdays, anniversaries, date nights (but never, ever miss the birth of a child) -- should we choose to have a longterm significant other.

I'm not saying that it's impossible. I'm sure it is. But it's often quoted that journalism is a lonesome business:

• "Working as a photojournalist can be lonely and difficult." ~ Aidan Sullivan, vice president for for editorial photographer relations of Getty Images
• "The job can be lonely, and patience and perseverance are required to get the right shot, at the right time." ~Skillset.org

I'm not really trying to be a doom-and-gloom type, but I just always here about the solitary photographer, the lonesome and dogged photojournalist hauling around half a dozen cameras with a slightly bewildered and anti-social glaze in his or her eyes.

Just to show you it's not all dark and unhappy, I did find a short piece -- multimedia, in fact -- about maintaining relationships in hard places. I mean, a lot of it is general tips and hints, but it all pertains to the topic at hand. So take it all in, enjoy it all, and love makes the world go 'round. ... well, that and a couple of overbearing cosmic forces. Or God. Whichever. Anyway, here's the link.
Yes, I did all that just to lead up to a RickRoll'ing. Ha!
See y'all around.

Slow-motion, yeah!

At NAB this past month, one of the sessions I attended featured the new Phantom HD camera, a rather nifty (and of course ridiculously expensive!) little device capable of recording hi-def video footage at up to 1,000 frames per second. For a demonstration, they shot footage of a quarter spinning on a flat surface, as well as one of those children's toys that does back flips after you wind it up. While that might not sound all that amazing, it was simply incredible to see how much detail this camera is capable of recording, stuff that the human eye could never pick up on. And the really cool part is that the footage could be stopped at anytime to provide a perfect, hi-res, 10 megapixel frame (yup, a lot of storage space is needed...). Take that interlaced video! Anyway, I tried shopping around the web to see if I could find some sample video of the camera in action. This first site, called Vision Research, features a number of different videos, all shot exclusively with the Phantom (check out the water balloon one...absolutely ridiculous!). This other site, Lucid Movement, also has plenty of high-speed videos dealing with everything from explosions, to stuff with water and smoke, and of course, various things breaking. Hooray for slow-motion! Enjoy...

As promised, UWire

Here's the link to the site I was talking about in class. It's very similar to linkedin in that it provides a kind of social networking of sorts for professional journalists. The main difference between UWire and Linkedin is that UWire allows you to post stories, photos, etc.

Lab Hours

Lab hours through the end of the semester:

• Wednesday, April 23 - 3:30 to 6:30 p.m.
• Thursday, April 24 - 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., 3:30 to 6:30 p.m.
• Friday, April 25 - 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Monday, April 28 - 3:30 to 6:30 p.m.
• Tuesday, April 29 - 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Wednesday, April 30 - 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Thursday, May 1 - 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Friday, May 2 - 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. (Lab will be open to 3610 students only after 1 p.m.)

Deadline for final multimedia pieces on Change are due by 1 p.m. on Friday, May 2. Be sure to leave plenty of time to export - you all know that can take a while. The clock on computer 0 will be used as the time standard and no project will be accepted after 1 p.m.

Well, this can't be good ...

Anybody ever heard of Orphan Works? I don't pretend to know much about copyright law, but, from what I've been reading, this stuff is a little worrisome. Apparently, there's a new bill going into Congress that should be hitting the floor in mid-May, and it looks like it could mean a lot more bills to pay and red tape to go through when you take a photo, make a video, or paint a picture. At least, if you're looking to actually own your own creative work.

This might just be artists acting a little sensational, but I got this article in one of my feeds this morning. The implications outlined on the Illustrator's Partnership of America site are a little scary. I checked out Picscout because they could stand to profit pretty heavily from this, and their prices are, I guess, reasonable but their numbers are a little low (I mean, $35 a month at most, okay, but only up to 2000 photos?). I'm not sure how an Orphan Works legislation passing in Congress would affect those of us who are in the sphere of journalism, but I figured I'd make mention.

I'm sort of out on the whole issue at the moment. As far I understand it, as long as you make sure the work is in a place where it's obvious who actually owns it (I imagine that Facebook, Flickr, and other such Web sites, where social contact is a big part of the allure, would be safe enough), you can always prove that you were available for contact so there's no way somebody could really call your stuff an orphan work.

Anyway, just figured I'd drop the line ...

Seth is the man

I thought this was a really good audio slideshow that I came across while getting ideas for my last mulitmedia assignment...It was done by the one and only Seth Siditsky. Are most people doing audio slideshows or video?

The hazards of our job

So I've always wanted to be a wartime journalist. Don't know why, never asked. It worries the hell out of my family and friends, and some have threatened to break my legs if I ever try to embed with a unit anywhere other than Antarctica. But the desire persists.

So here's a link to Reporters without Borders.

I was trying to find something specific on the site to write about, but the whole thing is interesting.

Use of Soundslides

Hey, I googled "multimedia journalism" today, and our blog comes up on the 4th page!

Anyway, I came across a set of soundslides by the Midland Daily News in Midland, MI. They have a lot of really great photos in these projects.

This project has an interesting use of black and white and color. What do you think about the usage?

Also, I found it interesting that the multimedia pages are very different in layout and design from the rest of the newspaper page. The layout for the multimedia is cleaner, but it doesn't really seem to connect to the homepage. What do you think of the different layouts?

It's Never too Late

As I was browsing The Star-Ledger's site, I came across this touching multimedia piece. It only runs about 2 and a half minutes, but it definitely shows that an audio soundslides project can be just as rewarding as a video project.

"Intel Vietname" at The San Jose Mercury News

"Intel Vietnam" is apparently the second-most recent video at the San Jose Mercury News' mercurynews.com, and it's worth a watch for a couple of reasons. First, the video opens with an informative detail shot, which reminded me of what Professor Johnson mentioned in class on Tuesday about being mindful of the opening shot when editing video footage; the video, which is about an Intel chipset factory in Vietnam, opens with a shot of an Intel name tag with a Vietnamese name on it. Secondly, the video integrates more stills (or possibly screen captures) than video, and it works well. The video also uses an interesting framing technique while presenting a typical video interview, wherein the video presents the interviewee in a small box to the left side of the screen and fills the rest of the screen with a black background with white text beside the interview box explaining who the person is. I thought that was a pretty simple way to avoid the usual boring straight-up video interview-with-text-box-at-bottom deal.

The video itself doesn't appear to be linkable, but you can find it by clicking on "browse more" on the video window, below the main story and photo.

little bitty podcast

it is called 60-second-science. ch ch ch check it out

Vicious Circle of Belly Fat

Abdominal fat cells produce a hormone that can make you hungrier, leading to more belly fat and so on. Steve Mirsky reports.

He returns...

Hey everyone. Just wanted to let you know I finally made it back from Vegas early this morning. The NAB conference was absolutely amazing, and I was fortunate enough to have been working as a room monitor for several different seminars that dealt with a number of topics relevant to the focus of our 5990 course. I attended a few sessions on video podcasting that featured a great number of tips and ideas for producing video geared for the web. I also got to sit in on a few courses on blogging, as well as some director of photography workshops. All in all it was a great trip and I can't wait to fill you in on everything.

For this week's post I figured I would share with you some of the great resources I came across while at the show. Here's a link to a website produced by Rich Harrington, one of speakers at the conference who devoted a number of his sessions to video production for the web. The site, called vidpodcaster.com, features a blog that is updated several times a week, and also provides a link to subscribe to the free podcast "Producing Video Podcasts" (which can also be done through iTunes as well). I have checked out a few episodes so far and, in addition to being fairly well produced, found them to be pretty informative. I also thumbed through the official book (which goes by the same name) at the NAB book store and am considering picking that up as well just to have on-hand for reference. I would definitely recommended looking into it.

I hope the weekend workshop went well for everyone and can't wait to see how everything turned out. Have a great weekend, and I'll see you all in class next Tuesday...

13 year old kid thinks asteroid will hit earth

He calculated so... but he was wrong! Thank GOD! NASA has said so. His calculations came to 1/450 of a chance but NASA says it's 1/45000

Check out the full story here.

Successfully uploaded 3 videos to blip.tv

So after some trouble, I finally got all three of my group's videos uploaded to blip.tv. Word to the wise: you must compress the videos if you want to put them online. My videos were about 250mb in their original format, but after I compressed them, they were in the much more manageable 20-60mb range. Anyways, I would advise everyone to upload their videos so you can show your friends and family why you didn't sleep last weekend.

The Weekend Workshop

This weekend was amazing. Actually, this weekend was more than amazing; it reignited my passion for photojournalism and journalism in general. I also found a new love: video. I am beyond inspired. The things I learned and the progress I saw just from the three days we were out shooting makes me proud to be the next generation of journalists.

I will continue to improve my story-telling skills as I make my way from the classroom to the field. I will take every bit of advice and criticism that I have absorbed from this weekend and take it to heart. It is true that we have to care about people; they are the force that drive our stories.

Thanks to all of the editors that came out and shared their knowledge with me. Your words have truly touched me. Mark, thank you. Thank you for everything. I only hope that I might be invited to one of these workshops in the future.

Group ?, Assignment 3?

I haven't discussed this with my group members either, but I'm interested in doing the Relay for Life Black Light Benefit Concert on Saturday night at Tasty World.

Group A, Assignment 1

So my group hasn't confirmed this, but I'm interested in doing the "Conner Hall Centennial Celebration" or even the Saxophone Recital with Claude Delangle

weekend workshops besides us

How many people know about the Indypendent? Check out this article about
Journalism Workshops.

The early days of "multimedia"

Although this website certainly exists somewhere in the gray area of journalism, I can't help but appreciate some of it's finer features, such as this, recovering archived footage of historic events and other cultural brushings.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/tsgtv/

Assignment 1, Assignment 2

So, I don't have that group sheet, so I apologize for not being as organized as I could be...

for Friday, Assignment 1: fashion show @ 7pm

for Saturday morning, Assignment 2: Athens resident with early onset Alzheimer's (if you're in this group with me, lucky you)

Group A, Assignment 2 (Saturday morning)

We're going to do this shiz:

The University of Georgia Chapter of The Georgia Sculpture
Society is holding its 2008 Invitational Iron Pour on April 12, 2008.
The event is free to the public and will be take place at the Thomas
Street Art Complex, Athens, GA (Corner of Thomas Street at Mitchell
Street) and the First Cupola burn will be at 10:30 A.M.

The Iron Pour will once again see teams of artists and students in
protective helmets and leather working with 2,500-degree-Farenheit
molten iron and dancing flames, where more than 100 iron cast
sculptures for class and independent study or research will be
constructed. Many Colleges and Universities travel vast distances to
watch and participate in this not so often experience.

Weekend Workshop

Have posted the PDF of the weekend plan on the JOUR5990 web site (direct link here). Will also be creating a label for the Weekend Workshop - please tag all items related to this weekend with it, help keep it all together.

Bookmark this page to see all the posts gathered together.

Interesting new site setup

Coming at y'all from the Online Journalism Blog, here's a link to an interesting Dutch news site. I know, I know, it's all in Dutch, but it's the design that I wanted to mention. See that graph along the top? That's the record of the number of stories that have came to the site during the past 24 hours. Run your mouse over one and you'll get the corresponding set of stories along the right side of the site. Pretty cool stuff. If you're interesting in reading some of the articles, by the way, Hyperwords does translate Dutch, if not perfectly.

Anyway, what do y'all think?

ARG!

Fear not, the title isn't just an expression of frustration. Actually, it's a interesting way to relieve frustration and angst, and all you need to do is have some free time and an internet connection. ARG stands for Alternate Reality Game, a subject about which I've been intending to write for a couple months. I've waited until now, though, because I wanted to get something fresh to show y'all.

There's not really a better way to describe an Alternate Reality Game. If you take a dash of role playing, a pinch of mystery, a whole bunch of interactivity, a wholesome amount of acting, and pretty much every kind of multimedia you can get your hands on, mix 'em up and spread the concoction across the internet, you'll have yourself an ARG. Most games revolve around a core mystery -- someone's dead, someone's missing, something strange is happening, or something just plain doesn't make sense -- and the audience is left to discover the truth.

How? Multimedia -- once you find yourself tumbling like Alice down the proverbial Rabbithole (ARG terminology for an entry point into the game), you get to play detective. You look for clues in the text of Web sites, in posted videos, in phone messages (phone numbers, fax numbers and email addresses found on the sites are real; you actually get responses), and -- tricky bit here -- in the source code of the Web sites. These guys use every tidbit of tech they can to lead you to the truth, which, as of late, tends to be a new movie or game.

ARGs started back in the late 90s (as if that was a long time) when the San Francisco Chronicle supposedly ran a crude version of an ARG called Dreadnot in 1996. I say supposedly because, though it's mentioned in multiple sources as the first ARG, I haven't been able to find too much on the actual game. But it doesn't much matter as The Beast blew the doors off the genre in 2001 as a marketing ploy for the movie A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. Since then, ARGs have been used pretty heavily in marketing, including campaigns for the Halo series (I love bees) and, more recently, Cloverfield. These are both over, of course, but they've managed to wrangle a whole bunch of people who are willing to suspend their disbelief and play along.

The reason I decided to post this now: I think I've found a game currently running. I have no idea what the game is, but it seems pretty high budget, so I'd say it's probably a marketing gimmick. Which is cool; there's no shame in enjoying a decent mystery. So check out this Youtube site, watch some of the videos, question everything, suspect everyone, leave nothing unchecked, read anything you find, search out anything odd. I've already found a blog involving a retired missing persons detective.

Oh, yeah, and anytime you get a blank page, hit Crtl-A, or Cmd-A -- it selects everything on the page, so you can see any hidden text ... took me two weeks to figure that out ... happy hunting.
This is the sort of hidden text that Ctrl-A gets you.

Right-click on steriods

There's a really cool little extension for Firefox called Hyperwords. After installing Hyperwords (for free, by the way), one simply selects a word in ye olde fashionne of click-and-drag and the drop-down menu appears. From the top, the menu gives you the ability to ...

• Search for the selected word in everything from Youtube and Google to Netflix and Metacafe
• Reference the word through dictionary.com, wikipedia or even IMDB.com
• Translate the selected text into a dozen languages on screen (fairly accurately, too)
• Do the usual copy, paste, search, the usual gamut
• Search Ebay, Amazon, iTunes or Craigslist for related products
• Go directly to a submitting page to blog about the selected text (Blogger, Livejournal, Twitter, Wordpress) or search one of the big blog searchers for it (Technorati, et al)

Basically, it's friggin' awesome. And, as a free extension that takes less than a minute to load up, completely worth ... well, a lot more than you pay.

Down with the Fly ... uhm, never mind ...

DownFly is yet another quasi-social-networking-thingamajig. Instead of having to worry about the the whole "cut, paste and link" process of sending someone a link via email, it allows one to easily send a link directly to a friend. People don't actually have to on DownFly to receive your links, but the risk of not is that they'll just get an email with the link. Which means there's the great possibility of spamming a good friend with emailed links to useless and obnoxious Youtube videos. If you are on DownFly, though, you get a nice little page with all the links your friends wanted you to see.

control your background

This is from March 27, but I can't not show you. President Hugo Chavez/Mickey Mouse smiles during an interview or something in Brazil. I don't know what those actually are, looks like speakers or decorations or something

via boingboing.net

Videojournalism: Hard-Core Site for Hard-Core Mulitmedians (persons who do multimedia...hey maybe it'll catch on)

Found an interesting, if not kinda werid, site about videojournalism. There is a video on the home site called "8 Days - Award Winning VideoJournalist Film" about how to turn a newspaper journalist into a video journalist. Also, there are differnent implications of video that this site suggets, from advertising to "conflict reportage training"...
see what you think...

Camera movement, cont'd...

In sort of a follow-up post to the "9 basic camera moves," I thought I'd put up a few links to some sites featuring instructions on how to assemble your own steadicam at home (unless of course you happen to have an extra $12,000 lying around and decide to go with the pro model instead). The first one, found here, is considered the poor man's steadicam and can be yours for all of $15 in spare parts from the local hardware store (some assembly required...). Its basic, it's metal, but it works...

Another option that turned up during my search is the Stabilizer FLEX, which can be sent to you pre-built for $150, or they'll send the instructions on how to build your own for $80. The video demo shows off the difference between using the steadicam and shooting handheld, and should easily convince you why shooting handheld is never really a good idea (though there are always exceptions to these so-called rules, as we learned duirng our discussion of the jump cut).

Lastly, here's a page featuring pics of a number of other home-made camera stabilization units. Instructions for assembly are provided for many of them, and I know that Biddle has made a few of his own steadicams very similar to some of these, so these are definitely do-able weekend projects.

As a final note, for those of you who will be here in the fall, Biddle is putting together a 2-day steadicam certification workshop that should be scheduled for sometime in September. Though the $375 enrollment fee might be kind of steep for some, this is a great opportunity to get some professional hands-on training. Though I'll probably be out in LA by that point, I'll do what I can to attend...check it out if you're at all interested.

9 Basic Camera Moves

Now that we've started experimenting with video, I thought it'd be appropriate to direct your attention to a basic training site on the 9 classic camera moves.

Now for the jump cut...a must not for any great video (although as we learned in class, it really does depend!)

Google shenanigans

I am so very excited about living on Mars, and being a Virgle pioneer. You should all take the test to see if you are qualified. Project Virgle will be just like Gmail--a beta (or test phase) of life on Mars. There's a plan of action laid out all the way up to 2108. Look out space, here I come!

But just in case I'm not ready when the morning comes, I'll be sure to use my wake up kit.

Oh, and by the way, I want this to post 6 hours ago, so I'd better get working on my gmail custom time settings...

April's Fools

I'm very excited about tomorrow (April Fool's day) because every year Google puts out some sort of crazy hoax that is just too funny to be true.

Alas, I am still awaiting the installation of my TiSP (toilet internet service provider). Not to mention waiting to get my Gmail Paper with all of my gmail conversations printed and shipped to my apartment in a large box.

But I guess I will just have to wait some more. In the meantime, I think I will go superglue a quarter to a sidewalk. With vending machine's charging $1.25 for drinks now, the quarter has regained some of its value! (that, and there's always the laundromats...)

unemployed man gets rich

Gosh, don't you ever wish to wake up one morning and just see you have $$$? Look at this story, this guy in Japan, doesn't have a job, 61 years old, but one day just opens his mailbox and see's 10000$ there! Sigh... check it out.

Old man gets rich

conscientious blog

http://www.jmcolberg.com/weblog/

this claims to be a 'fine-art photography' blog, but it has plenty entries on photojournalism and street photogs and stuff, i like it lots.

you know what else i like lots, is online mixtapes. make one and share for friends and neighbors alike!

ps. i can't wait to see everyone's videos on tuesday. are we watching them on tuesday? i really want to watch them on tuesday.

Fun with time-lapse

Blog Book...Yippy!

So, I was at the university bookstore just the other day and found a book on blogs in the bargain book section. Now, if you're like me and simply must scoop up any deal that happens to be advertised (yeah, I'll admit that I'm an advertiser's jackpot...impulse buyer all the way) you will understand that I bought Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World by Hugh Hewitt (I mean come on...it was like $2) and 5 other books as well. I fully intend to read this book when I get the free time...don't know when that will be...but hey! at least i made the effort to buy it and call it my own.

Anywho...thought it was relevant and interesting...didn't know if any of you had heard of it or not...

MSNBC news videos

Recently, I've really enjoyed listening to headlines and short news stories through the videos on msnbc.
I like how there are many videos to choose from.
There are some commercials but they're really short.


Check it out here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/23830107#23742326

Photographer's Journal

Recently, the New York Times posted an audio slideshow made by Jan Grarup, a photojournalist who has been documenting the refugee crisis in Eastern Chad and Darfur, Sudan for several years. The package is just over 3 minutes and well worth the time spent watching it. The photos are black and white---and amazing. Technologically speaking, there is nothing amazing or over the top about this piece. It is quite simple, but the subject matter and the images are what really spoke to me

Gannet launches web design

Many of you, Beth especially, will be glad to hear that Gannett has launched their new web design (at least for the Courier-Journal.com). It is a lot more simple, balanced and easy to read. It's definitely something to look at for a before and after effect.

Toilet train Fluffy...

If you've ever seen Meet the Parents, you can truly appreciate this. Train your kitty to use the toilet. Although it doesn't say anything about teaching the cat to flush...

Do you have a secret to share?

I came across this really neat Blog called Postsecrets. People are encouraged to send in postcards, decorate the back and share a secret. The secrets are funny, dirty, horrible, innocent and sometimes unthinkable. Every postcard is anonymous. It is currently the 16th most popular blog, according to Technorati. Check it out! It is a guaranteed laugh, gasp and "no they didn't."

Has anyone heard of this? I think it definitely beats out icanhascheezburger.com...you know the funny cat photo blog.

Pillow fight!

Browsing through multimedia at the AJC and came across International Pillow Fight Day photos in Atlanta. One of the photo captions reads: "Atlanta was only one of many cities that held pillow fights Saturday. Beijing; London; Dublin, Ireland; Los Angeles; New York; Paris; Sydney, Australia; and Stockholm, Sweden were among those participating in International Pillow Fight Day." Has anyone heard of this before?

Also part of the page is a note that the photo gallery format is new, and the AJC is asking for feedback about it.

Roadtrip Nation

For those of you who were curious about Roadtrip Nation, the PBS documentary that I am participating in this summer in New Zealand, here is the link. Check out the website. The movement is really picking up around the country. A Roadtrip Nation Campus team will be visiting Emory on April 3 if you are interested.

AJC's coverage of the tornado

As you all may know by now, a tornado ripped right through downtown Atlanta last week. The AJC did a really good job of covering all the bases: photos, videos, even a bird' s-eye view of the damage. Way to go!

Photographer's Journal

Jan Grarup's photos are pretty neat. Here's the soundslide of his time in Eastern Chad, Darfur, and Sudan.
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/world/20080215_CHAD_FEATURE/index.html

Video for the web...

Here's an article I found from a few years ago that covers several of the essential elements required for shooting good video, with emphasis on shooting video specifically for posting to the web. A number of the tips are repeats from class, but the article as a whole definitely helps to reinforce these important concepts. It touches on everything from gathering good audio (miking as close as possible to the source) to proper shooting techniques (steady, stable images with the subject in clear view, etc.), and even gives a little advice for properly conducting on-camera interviews (such as asking questions that can only be answered in full sentences versus simple "yes" or "no" replies--> an absolute necessity if you plan to edit the footage without voice-over narration). At the very least, the article serves as a nice, brief refresher course that's probably worth a quick read-through every now and then...

Sermon Podcasts

I’ve been hearing about priests podcasting their sermons and putting them online. I thought it was interesting, and I wanted to see how common it is.

Here is a link to a blog posting discussing the idea. It says that podcasting is all about niche markets, and church teachings are definitely niche markets. I think it is interesting how many aspects of our lives are becoming affected by new media.

"The Church and Sermon Podcast Hosting Niche"

Not to promote any specific churches or denominations, but here are two examples I found. The St. Philip’s one has a pretty impressive web site.

St. Philip's Episcopal Church

Peachtree Presbyterian Church

A Shocking Number: 84.8%

From the New York Times today comes this:

The results, from a January survey of more than 10,000 adults, are somewhat dramatic. 84.8 percent of iPhone users report accessing news and information from the hand-held device.

Holy freaking cow!

It follows with:

That compares to 13.1 percent of the overall mobile phone market and 58.2 percent of total smartphone owners – which include those poor saps with BlackBerries and devices that run Windows.

I knew Apple users were smarter, but that number stunned me. And, to be honest, made me exceedingly happy ... people still like news!

(Yeah yeah yeah, it's an old article. But Still!)

Fail faster

You always tell us to


see more crazy cat pics

faster. Funny stuff aside, I found a Web site about the beginnings of online journalism. The site contains some charts and diagrams that help you compare different types of Web pages.

Even The Simpsons Know the World is Changing

'stereoscopic photography'

i don't even know what that means or what it would look like. this is cool to look at though. like a camera for aliens. click for more

Pssst ... Another In-House Workshop

The Telecomm department runs an on-campus, in-building Bluejeans Workshop for students and small-market television photojournalists. It's cheap, local and a good way to get some more knowledge in your brain. 

It's $25 for a day's worth of education, not a bad deal at all.

Stuff to Look At

Seth Siditsky, Deputy Director of Photography at the Newark Star-Ledger, will be one of our editors next month. He's currently overseeing the multimedia work at his paper and sent along the following links, so you can see some of the things his staff has been up to.

The Littlest Victims: Violence and Innocence

Scott Winston's Quest for Another Title

A Wrestling Town

Atlanta Storms

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has put up a quick Google map of damaged areas, nice and simple but effective. 

Tinkering School

I swear, I'm not making this up and I so wish my parents had known about this ... founder Gever Tulley talks about 5.5 dangerous things you should let your kids do.

Don't have kids? Do them for yourself, now. Why not?

Okay, don't take apart MY STUFF though. That would be BAD.

Chipper Jones and the AJC Braves blog

I meant to post this like a month ago, and I just now remembered. Chipper Jones, a baseball player for the Atlanta Braves, commented on the AJC's Braves blog, posted by David O'Brien, for like an hour about a month ago. It was pretty cool, and he apparently reads the blog a good bit.
"By U Kno Who
February 6, 2008 9:51 PM | Link to this
I read the blogs pretty often. I like to know what is being said. Not so much during the the season because I don’t have that much time, but in the offseason, I read quite a bit especially when we make moves just to see how jacked up u guys get."

He said some pretty funny stuff, and that was the coolest thing about it, for me.

oh goodness gracious

http://www.fancast.com/home
freeeee tv on the web! what more do you need in life? users' favorite shows pop up as 'recommended shows' on the top of the site.

via zefrank.com

Yopublicans v. Demogurts

We didn't spend anywhere near enough time on web design to talk about flash (or Flash) eclipsing good thinking. Another class could be constructed around the principles of well designed AND well thought out sites.

Stonyfield Farm has launched a page looking for readers to vote on new flavors. And while it starts with some hokey animations, at its core it is a well-thought out idea presented simply.

No, there's no journalism here, but it's a simple enough concept to adapt to news environments - its the content, not the technology.

(PS - A vote for Cherry Lime Rickie is a vote for America.)

All out multimedia

This is a piece by the News & Observer out of North Carolina that talks about a serious issue through multiple venues. It starts out with a video, continues on with a photo gallery, and then moves into figures and research. I like the straightforward and direct design of the interface, and the sort of Soundslides-ish feel of it. It's easy to navigate, engaging and informative. I would give it my stamp of approval if such a thing meant anything at all.

Police Videos

Wow, the Greenville Online wasn't joking about getting news from the police cameras. In this video they are busting another set of troopers for playing favorites. What's with the police in South Carolina? Here is the link to all of their police videos.

Washington Post and unnarrated news videos

I've been looking for unnarrated news videos lately, like the one's we've seen in class, and The Washington Post seems to be a pretty good source for these specific kinds of videos. The paper's website has a news video section and a documentary video section. In particular, I enjoy the documentary section. The most recently posted documentary video, about a table tennis club, is interesting and completely unnarrated. The more video I watch, the more I really like unnarrated video. Unnarrated video focuses more clearly on the video's subjects, like a photo or straight news story does, and it just seems cooler and more artistic too.

And so the war has been decided...

...the next-generation format war, that is. Though it may have once still seemed as though at least another year or so of competition between the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats remained prior to the deciding of a true and final victor in this particular format war, the answer has come at last. Blu-Ray reigns supreme. I myself was somewhat surprised to hear the news. Sony took quite the gamble in deciding to package Blu-Ray drives as a standard feature on each and every PS3 sold up to this point, but it looks as though the software giant knew quite well where the future of home entertainment technology was headed...And so, for all of those early adopters of HD-DVD technology, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but...you may have simply jumped the gun on this one...get the facts here.

ways to sleep better

Check this out guys. Specially women, those who have problem sleeping. I just came across this on Yahoo. How can you sleep better, and what are the top 6 reasons as to how you can sleep better quicker. No stupid matress marketing here. And yes, caffeine, believe it or not, is apparently one of the top reasons as to why you can't sleep earlier better.

6 Easy Sleep tips.

a box and sxsw

I bet you have many corded multimedia related technologies and sometimes cry when they get snarled.

You can make a box to alleviate your crappy tangled cord problems! Look how nice this looks.
-------
Also, spring break is happening and so is SXSW but I can't go. When I first heard about it I thought it was just super-music-film-fest, but nay! hip people and internerds alike flock there. Lots of 'interactive media' and tech industry networking. Apparently Twitter is getting ready for the 'deluge.'
'Spring Break for the Internet' returns to Austin

Video Journalists Invade TV

Yup, that's right, with the help of Michael Rosenblum, video journalists around the nation (and even the world) are taking over the traditional camera person-on air TV personality duo for a more efficient one-man band. Rosenblum swears by his company make-over, boasting that he can "cut the cost of production by 20 percent to 70 percent with no loss in picture quality or storytelling." Pretty amazing, right? Well, not for those camera people and on-air talent....

Media Bistro - for finding jobs and other such things

I stumbled across an old e-mail about Media Bistro, a Web site that lists journalism jobs by date posted, sells tutorials and lists classes offered online and around the country regarding journalism. Some topics for the classes include:

The Future of Photojournalism in a Digital World

How Online Video Is Changing the Internet

Writing for the Web

There are even classes about book writing and how to get books published, writing for television, etc.

There is also an area of the website dedicated to listing freelancers by specialty.

Can we go Mark, huh? Huh? Huh?

“CAREERS AT GANNETT” INFO SESSION
TUESDAY, 12:30 P.M., IN THE DREWRY ROOM

Gannett Company, Inc. is a leading international news and information company that publishes 85 daily newspapers (including USA Today) and operates 23 TV stations in the U.S.

Learn about “Careers at Gannett” from Cedric Bryant, manager of Executive and Professional Recruiting, on Tuesday, March 4, at 12:30 p.m. in the Journalism Building’s Drewry Room.

Bryant will discuss Gannett’s Talent Development Program and other employment opportunities in news and advertising for reporters, producers, copy editors, page designers, account executives, web editors, web designers and photographers.

All majors invited to attend this information session. Light refreshments will be served.

Online Video

I was just reading about print media and video, and I came across this article. It is about a year old, but I think it makes some interesting points that are still relevent.

"You Must Be Streaming"

One thing it says is, "The lessons seem obvious: Don’t do Web video if you don’t have anything interesting to show, and don’t compete with TV unless you can do something they can’t or won’t. In other words, use the medium."

I think this is a really good point, and we have seen some videos in our presentation research that are not that interesting. However, I think that a lot of smaller newspapers are in the first steps of multimedia journalism and video, and they have to start somewhere.

Microsoft Surface: A Big-Ass Table

To follow up Hyunah's Microsoft Surface post, here's the hilarious parody of the commercial.

Microsoft Surface Computer. I.E. Coffee Table

Has anyone seen this before?
Microsoft has invented a new touch screen computer that acts as a coffee table. You can digitally view photos on this computer, and even edit or resize the images. It senses objects that are placed on to the table/computer, and it can recognize what it is. It's really cool. You can also see that there is a "digg it" above the article.

Watch the video and see what else it can do here:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid932579976/bclid932553050/bctid933742930


You can read the article and see the website I got this video from here:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4217348.html

Facebook? Nyet, Livejournal ...

So, remember Livejournal? Where you vented in high school about teachers who didn't know how to teach, friends who stabbed you in the back, parents who didn't understand you ... and such things that really just proved how much of a whiny punk you were? Well, it's apparently still going strong in ole Mother Russia according to a French graphic. My French is terrible (READ: nonexistent) so someone else will probably make more sense of it, but I'm led to believe by Journalistopia that it's a breakdown of popular social sites across the world.

Here's the graphic.

Au revoir, mes amis ... is that right? ...

Better than an 8x10

I was looking for potential hockey-puck-worthy photos, and came up with a few:

Our first choice was a plate of food, but...

I could see how if you just got a ticket, you may want to order a photo like this as a hockey puck...

Or maybe if you got arrested... a commemorative hockey puck...

I didn't find any hockey photos, just wrestling. And snow photos.

But seriously, it is good to note that the format has changed a little for photo-viewing, in that the purchase options are now by default, hidden, and you have to click on "Buy this photo" to be bombarded by them.

Ping Pong

As we begin to shoot video, I looked for some well put together videos. I found this one on the Washington Post's website. It's about adolescents committed to the sport of ping pong. The shots are very crisp and the transitions are nice. It's very basic, but presented in an effective manner.

Ruckus

Jared's post raised the question in my mind about how Ruckus works, as partnered with the University of Georgia. I have not signed up yet so I am clueless on what it has to offer. Does anyone know what types of music is free to download on Ruckus? Can you find any song you want or is it limited to a certain database of songs/artists?

Does anyone know if you can transport the songs on your ipod BACK onto your computer? I recently lost everything on my hard drive, including my music, but I still have my ipod in tact.

Music on my mind...

Here's yet another link I was recently introduced to that has proven quite helpful to me as of late. The site is called freeplaymusic, and what it provides is a database of over 2500 royalty-free songs that are free to download. All music from the site can be used for both commercial and non-commercial purposes. Though one might be tempted to think that free music of this sort must come with some sort of catch, perhaps in terms of overall quality, I can personally attest that after having scoured the site for a few hours, sampling different offerings here and there across several different genres, I found myself continually impressed with the general consistency in quality I heard from song to song. Sure, this isn't the work of A-list artists by any means, but that's not to say this stuff wouldn't be perfectly suited for use as background ambience in a short video piece, audio interview, podcast, etc. We just recently used a few songs from the database for some of the graphics we put together for the Red Clay Chef competition this past weekend, and the music definitely worked to enhance the overall production value of the event. And hey, like I said before, IT'S FREE. No need to worry about copyright violations or anything of that sort...So, check it out for yourself and let me know what you think.

regarding next week

Hi guys,

Can someone please tell me what we are doing and what we are supposed to do again for next week?

Priyom.

Animated Editorial Cartoon

Flash Goddess Mindy McAdams pointed me towards this: The Detroit Free Press has posted an animated editorial cartoon. All done in Flash, they put it together in one day.

Thoughts?

"In Character" at NPR: The Cookie Monster Interview

NPR has been running a series called "In Character" where they examine iconic American characters like Darth Vader. It's also an interactive series as listeners are able to submit their essays with the chance for them to be heard on-air. Of course, the best tidbit is the video interview with Cookie Monster that is not to be missed. They even ask the "Inside the Actor's Studio" questions to find out his favorite dirty word.

Tips on shooting video

So I found this great little tutorial on tips for shooting video at the Knight Digital Media Center written by Ellen Seidler and Paul Grabowicz. Some of this we covered it class, but it's still worth the time it takes to skim through it.

Moving from Print to NPR

Poynter's Chip Scanlan has an interview with NPR's David Folkenflik that's well worth a read. Folkenflik was a reporter for the Baltimore Sun before moving to NPR in 2004.

Some quotes to ponder:

In the body of the story, you really need to guide listeners by the hand -- there are a lot of external distractions as they hear the stories. So you have to convince them this is worth listening to and you can't expect them to remember everything as the story moves along.

You need to honor the way people speak, to let their cadences unspool and thoughts unpack, more than I did for written articles. You have to learn to get out of the way more. And I had to cast aside my ignorance of (and relative lack of interest in) technology to recognize its importance in conveying the stories I want to tell.

What Goes Online, What Doesn't

Mindy McAdams, the Flash Goddess, posted a list of things to think about when deciding what to turn into a multimedia piece. Worth taking a look at as we'll be discussing this next week in class.

Sky Mall rocks!

I am at home in Kentucky this weekend and I flew to get here, which means two things to me...long lines in the airport and Sky Mall magazine. While I was flipping through, I saw something really cool. The EX-V8 Exilm Digital Camera has a You Tube capture mode on it. According to the company, you can shoot and upload videos to You Tube in seconds. If anyone is in the market for a new camera and likes to upload video, this camera is cool!

At Long Last ...

... my web site is no longer a design disaster. Poke at it, tell me if it's broken. 

Basic design was inspired by Khoi Vinh's Subtraction site. Damn, that's elegant. Read about his grid, though I don't think he's using tables, it's probably all CSS. 

I want to control text like that.

Because one occasionally needs to vent

So this has nothing to really do with multimedia, but it's an interesting perspective on the career which most of us seem to have chosen. AngryJournalist is a place to just vent about stuff that irks you in your pursuit of truth and journalistic integrity. Or in your pursuit of a good job. Anyway, I thought some of the commentary was ... enlightening ... and interesting. It's all anonymous, but it's still worth a look. Some people bring up really interesting points, whilst others whine about things, and then there's the occasional dork who tries to be cheery.

One thing I notice throughout most of the pages are people complaining about other journalists and editors who don't see a point in going digital.

The flu

I have been sick all week, so I decided to look up multimedia about the flu. Unfortunately for Ole Miss, the youtube framing covers up the nameplates they made on the video (one disadvantage to using free video hosting).

Journey of a Diamond

I was looking at this thing about the journey of a diamond on msnbc's website, and it is very interesting. It had a lot of black and white photographs of the miners in Africa and their lives, and it made me think about what Mark said the other day about how poor people are always photographed in black and white. I think black and white has a very different feel from color, and there should be an intention behind using it. When do you think it is appropriate/necessary to use black and white versus color to tell a story? What kind of effect do you think it has?

An Interesting Crime

Stories like this make me proud to be an American, where we're at least free in most senses to speak our mind and make up crap on the internet. Apparently in Morocco, that's not the case. A Moroccan computer engineer, Fouad Mourtada, who is 26 years old, is accused of stealing a Moroccan prince's identity. No he didn't get his social or look through the prince's trash for information. He created a profile on facebook of the prince. It's not that funny of a story being that the man is being beaten in jail. This just shows the absurdities of modern technology and anachronistic laws.

Polaroid's New Inkless Printer

As sad as I am about the discontinuation of Instant Polaroid Cameras and Film -- actually, I'm REALLY sad about that, Polaroid has invented a new inkless printer that is also mobile and portable. You can send your pictures from your digital camera or your cell phone if you have bluetooth. The photos are "virtually indestructable," according to the promoter. America is finally stepping up, since something like this has already been in Japan and Korea many years ago. As cool as this is, I'm skeptical about the quality of the printer, and I'm still sad about there being no more Polaroids in the future.

Here's the video.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/podcasts/showandtell/site/2008/01/16/st.ces.printer.cnn?iref=videosearch

Yeay! There are some jobs for multimedia people. A lot of these have to deal with design...but hey, puruse and see what'll work for you. You might find something you didn't expect to find and be wowed....

Learn 4 Good

oh hey one more

if you have an iphone and have taken snazzy pictures with it, you should put one in a contest. deadline march 31st!

http://www.ippawards.com/

Indekx.com

A Spanish 3010 classmate showed the class this website the other day, and I thought it was a pretty cool idea. Indekx.com is a website that presents a map of the world as its homepage, and certain countries are represented by clickable flags. When a viewer clicks on a flag, he or she may then choose between several newspapers published in the chosen country. I don't suppose that this offers any insight as to how individual papers can improve their own multimedia aspect, but it is a multimedia convenience for worldly newspaper readers.

bloggery

check it yo!

www.tumblr.com

it's another blog type thing, except I don't think you could make posting multimedia bits any easier than they did. what makes me sad is you can't comment on posts.

"The DV Rebel's Guide"...

...is essentially the Bible for all things related to digital filmmaking, as well as the sole classroom text I can honestly admit to having read cover to cover more than once. Though the techniques described by Stu Maschwitz (author and digital video genius) are definitely geared more towards those interested in narrative filmmaking, the message he puts forth applies much the same to all types of video production. That message, in and of itself, is quite simple: production value is what your audience sees, feels, and believes when they experience your finished product. It is the "perceived quality" of the finished video or movie, and is in no way tied to the budget of a given production. Throughout the text, Maschwitz demonstrates that even when filmmaking with a low-to-no budget, production value can still be achieved simply by cutting a few corners here and there. So, for a rather enjoyable and fairly quick read, I would definitely recommend checking this one out. The practical knowledge it puts forth is both eye-opening and amusing, and each and every time I find myself reading it I can't help but feel more inspired about experimenting with new and different tricks and techniques the next time I find myself behind the camera. As cheesy as that may sound, you'll see what I mean...

See more about the book at its main website here: The DV Rebel's Guide

Good Tips on Audio Slideshows

Colin Mulvany has posted a good round up of ways to improve your audio slideshows.

Wonder How To

I was looking around the net tonight and I stumbled on this page. It's pretty awesome...it looks like a pretty neat (yup, neat) resource for those interested in video. Check it out and enjoy the ride.

In other news, anyone ever heard of Blackle? It's an energy-saving search engine, created by Heap Media. Check it out and save the world.

Athens music, circa 1986

A little piece of history here, a documentary of Athens music made in 1986, the time of REM's come-uppance. Not everyone in it's recognizable of course, and it seems to have a little bit of "making of" in it that's not from 1986, but still kinda cool to see some of this shizzy. Is that a young Mr. Weaver of Weaver D's I see in there?

bloggggrg

hey it's pi time a.m.! (3:14). If I seem tired in class you know why.
So I actually got that link to that How to Be Creative thing from this thing, A Photo Editor. but for some reason i didn't think of linking it in the first place, so now I am. It is the blog of Rob Haggart, an actual photo editor of big time magazine. Some notable posts, here.

What's really wrong with newspapers

portfolio website design

inside the great magazines

Ethics of Blogging

I'm working on a paper in Fink's Media Ethics class about the ethics of blogging. We've talked a little about this in class, but I was wondering if you had any input about the limitations of these ethics. I found a few websites that have attempted to set boundaries, such as CyberJournalist. Has anyone given this thought or have any guidelines they follow?

Soundslides

I have been looking at Soundslides presentations at various newspapers, and the Shelby County Reporter in Alabama has some kind of nice ones, but I thought they could use some improvements.

The Shelby Shufflers had some nice images, and some of the audio with the music is nice too. However, I think it gets too long and redundant.

The Blue Star Salute has some nice images and audio in parts, but the images do not always go along with the audio. The thing that bothered me most about this one was that all the pictures were up for the exact same amount of time and were not coordinated with the pauses or phrasing of the sentences in the audio. The part where the cannon is shot off is really nice though.

Nothing to do with Journalism ...

... but it's a lot of fun - Pong as played with Post-It Notes. 

Anyone want to try something like this? Can you use this idea for a news story?

NASA

I googled "multimedia," and the search engine results led me to looking at NASA's webpage. There are a lot of multimedia related topics. A lot of audio clips, and videos. Take a look if you're interested. I love space!

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/index.html

Intro to Final Cut Pro...

Again, here's yet another link to a site that many first-time users of Final Cut Pro might find somewhat helpful. Like last week's post to Creative Cow, this site offers a series of free downloadable podcasts designed specifically for those without any prior non-linear editing experience, or for those simply looking to re-learn a few of the basics. Topics covered on this site include logging and capturing (the starting point of all DV editing, unfortunately), the layout and program interface, as well as how to use and navigate the timeline, amongst others. Yes, they may seem a bit basic at times, but that's the point - to familiarize yourself with essential features and functions of the software and to then build upon that knowledge once sufficiently mastered.

Free Dreamweaver tutorial

I haven't been able to fully explore the content of this site, but I think that a website called Learn That can be helpful to those of whom need a little extra help regarding Dreamweaver. I found a free Dreamweaver tutorial there that seems pretty thourough. It might help out whenever we need some help and Mark can't be reached for help.

UGA alerts

As most of you know now, our school is getting ready with its Emergency Programs. UGA Alerts is what it is called I believe, I'm not really sure. I've been getting automated calls and texts on my phone lately, which is a good thing, because it shows that the system is working. How many people have subscribed to UGA Alerts from this class? I am just curious to know.

We specially don't need any trouble after the Virginia Tech incident.

Speaking of which on a similar note, more on college shootings, check this out.

"A gunman at Northern Illinois University kills five people before shooting himself."

perverse and often baffling

Yay Friday. Today you will listen to the most recent episode of This American Life for free soon ("Tough Room"), or else soon it will not be free. Or just get the podcast. Beginning part is cool, about how writers at The Onion select their funniest stories. And then seriously you must listen to Act 4 about Malcolm Gladwell's first journalism job at the Washington Post.

After that you will read this post, "How to be Creative," written by this guy who runs a blog of cool doodles he makes on the backs of business cards. This list is helpful not just for elite hip creative types, but also maybe multimedia journalists. examples.
1. Ignore everybody
3. Put the hours in
16. The world is changing
36. Start blogging

Robert Capa

It's the man himself. He's the photographer that Mr. Johnson always alluded to in photo journalism class. He's also the one with the famous quote, "If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough." Recently, The New York Times published an article about a lost suitcase that was recently found, which contained negatives from the Spanish Civil War by Capa. The Times printed an article that is three pages long, but also has a slideshow to go with it. It's an interesting piece.

Valentine's Day

Okay, it's Valentine's Day, and I'm hoping for something interesting in the way of "True Love Stories" from somebody. So, first I found the Palm Beach Post's "Love Conquers All" bit. I was a little uninterested for the most part, though the last one had a bit of an interesting side to it. The Oregonian has two pieces for Valentine's Day, one on an elderly couple getting hitched and the other on a florist, both of which were lacking. And for some seemingly inexplicable reason, hometownannapolis.com decided to post 4 photos in a Soundslides (minus the "sound" part) about pets getting dressed up for Valentine's Day.

My enthusiasm for this holiday remains deflated.

first web site

Just wondering, how many people have had personal websites before. I mean, websites that were created not for any class assignment but just for fun or something like that. And I don't mean having a blog, that doesn't count. Maybe some people had a Geocities? Angelfire? I remember thinking that the free web hosting sites were about the coolest things ever. Anyone else?

Animal videos help adoption

I know that homeless animals are not "news," but I do want to give kudos to The Augusta Chronicle and other newspapers that offer a video pets section on their websites. The section features a weekly video of animals, often up for adoption at local animal shelters. (This week the feature was about an emu that was running around on I-20 that got adopted.) It's hard to decide on adopting a shelter pet as you see it in its tiny cage. The videos offer people a glimpse at the animals out of the cage, and interacting with others.

Lost and Found

Just wanted to let y'all know that I found some foam-covered ear buds on the desk in the corner. Anybody missing a pair?

~Jake

Multimedia, LA Times style

As I was surfing the internet, I came across the LA Times website. I immediately went to their photography & multimedia section (surprise, surprise). They're doing some pretty amazing work (minus the sound being turned all the way down on one of their audio slideshows). I looked at one in particular, it's an installment called The Lifeline. It consists of three parts about wounded soldiers in Iraq. Each installment is about 5-6 minutes, but I'll warn you...it's a bit graphic and not for the faint at heart.

Slide Show Issues

Given how many emails and messages I've gotten, we'll go over the uploading and linking again on Tuesday.

Problems uploading slideshow and getting it RUNNING

Ok, MANY people are apparently having problems uploading their slideshow to the server.

This is what I did. I couldn't even upload my slideshow "folder" with  dream weaver. What I did was I MANUALLY went to and logged in my drive, and uploaded each and every individual file from the "WHOLE" slide show folder to my web server folder at my drive.

After THAT, when I refreshed on dreamweaver, all the files showed up. But then after I edit my webpage and do the resume link thing and save again and resynchronize. It doesn't work. The link doesn't even show up when I run my page... as if my page hasn't been updated at all, after I check it on safari, fox or whatever.

Well I hope there is help soon, because some people are still "doing" their slideshows right now. I've been done with that for a while, just been trying to get it "uploaded" and running for over 2 hours now.

"Wounded Marines learn something new"

Multimedia is everywhere!
This is a slide show of war veterans learning the process of filmmaking through an apprenticeship program by the Wounded Marines Careers Foundation.

montgomery advertiser

I like ballet a lot. The Montgomery Advertiser has a video of the Montgomery Ballet rehearsing and then one after that, about the children who dance at their studio. These two are under a big "LifeStyle" video section. They're not bad. Some parts I wish the camera person would stop trying to zoom in, even though seeing things closer is nice, but then the dancers move and the shot kind of trails after them.

Project Help

So on Cade White's blog there is a list of newspapers that are incorporating video and other multimedia paraphernalia. It’s not updated in the least, but, hey, it’s a start. This could be especially helpful to those who don’t have their newspaper picked out let for their projects. Very helpful stuff. And anybody let me know if there is a more updated version somewhere else.

Hi all,

In my internet surfing, I have found one of hte most hilarious ideas ever. This is not very journalistic, but it involves multimedia and I think everyone will get a kick out of this. At Prankvote.com two college roommates have this vindetta against their third roommate that plays out through pranks that they play on him. Some of these ideas are really creative; my favorite is the spiderman one. Anyways, the premise of the whole thing is that people go to the site not only to watch these (sometimes cruel, but you-can't-help-but-laugh) videos but also to vote on what happens to Ernie next!

When you get to the site, start with Video 1; it will explain everything. Then, progress from there.

You can also find these videos on Youtube, but you can't vote.

Indiana University School of Journalism

The Indiana Daily Student is an independent newspaper serving the campus at Indiana University. It is what The Red & Black is to UGA. I checked out their multimedia and found a video entitled "People are still having sex' dance party". It's about 4 minutes long, not too journalistic (no narrative, no real point), but it's definitely interesting. Check it out.

Downloading Youtube Videos Without Hassle!

The question of whether videos online from sites like www.youtube.com, etc can/should be legally downloaded or not is still a very debatable issue.

Besides that point, I have noticed that the "downloading itself" has become more difficult than just a few months ago. If you go don't know what I am talking about, there are softwares available out there that help you "download the videos from websites like youtube, etc, DIRECTLY to your hard drive". Apparently there have been many versions of "Youtube downloaders, etc".

Here's how you can find out about the process a little.

The problem is that, out of all the many softwars there are out there for downloading videos from online, they all seem to stop working after a while. Apparently they are not "free" anymore. They ask you to pay after a couple of downloads, or even without asking to pay, the software just stops working without any reason! Makes you think of capitalism or corrupted software? Does anyone know why this is happening; because they were said to be free first.

Anyways, for the benefit of everyone, I've even come across a website that lets you use the site itself to download online videos directly to your hard-drive. This seems to work and is more convenient perhaps for many people because you don't have to bother having a softwared downloaded first that will be used for the "online video downloading". Enjoy!

Priyom.

Blogs and anonymity

The authors at firejoemorgan.com, a really cool baseball journalism blog, revealed their identities to the public on Tuesday after having remained anonymous since the blog's inception in '05. It's a big deal because it's a pretty popular blog (it won a popularity contest between 64 sports blogs at Busted Coverage), and because of the blog's unique purpose: exposing b.s. sports journalism. In this way it's kind of like media matters, but for sports, so not as important.

When the authors revealed their identities on Tuesday they cited "The people we make fun of have a right to face their accusers." and "We don't want anyone to be able to write off what we say as the un-credited ramblings of people too afraid to stand behind them. (The ramblings.)" as reasons for shedding their anonymity. Authorial anonymity isn't unique to to online journalism (at least I don't think it is), but blogs seem to really lend themselves to the practice, and I guess that has advantages and disadvantages. One the one hand, anonymous blog posters don't have any built-in credibility like a print reporter that has a byline next to his story, as the authors perceived in the second quote that I pasted here. But on the other hand, anonymous blog posters can be freer in who they target and in how scathing they are toward their target (i.e., they can curse more). The guys that run firejoemorgan aren't pros, though, so I don't guess revealing their identities will have a real impact on their work. They don't contact their targets either.

Knowing your way around Google

Most of us feel like we have a pretty good grasp on how to search for topics easily in Google, but did you know that Google can do a lot more than simply search the web? It has quite a few tricks up it's sleeve, both trivial and useful. There was a list of 10 Google tricks on Digg.com, but the bandwidth overload had exploded the website. So someone in the comments posted a link to 7 Clever Google Tricks Worth Knowing. Even if you feel like you know all the calculator, define:, site:, and "phrase" tricks, I promise you there's something you don't know in this list -- maybe even something that will change the way you use Google.

BBC Again

For online news lately, I've been going abroad to the BBC. They have phenomenal web content. On top of their podcasts, video and online journalism, they have Learning English. This section is for people who are trying to improve their English. They provide simplistic news and then definitions to difficult words. I thought how popular this would be for a paper in the United States or for a Spanish one to do "Learning Spanish."

Video Editing

I figured that since we will start working with video soon, I would post a link to a site I was recently introduced to called Creative Cow. It features a number of forums and blogs about anything and everything related to editing and post-production work, from performing a basic edit to creating stylistic graphics, texts, and other various effects. It covers a number of computer applications as well, including Final Cut and After Effects. One of the great features of the site is that it offers free video podcasts that act as step-by-step visual tutorials for completing various tasks in these programs. This link will take you directly to the Final Cut portion of the podcast section, and while some of the tutorials are designed for achieving very specific tasks, there are a few that cover the program's general interface as well as how to perform simple insert and overwrite edits.

Can one image tell a story?

I read a blog entry by Mindy McAdams about multimedia journalism. At first, McAdams says that an image in and of itself is not capable of telling a story without movement or words. What do you think of that?

Toward the end, seemingly a complete opposite idea, McAdams argues that as many words as possible should be cut because things tend to be too wordy.

Or is this to say that we should always pair words or audio with images, but that the words should be simple and important, only?

Also, just a little random piece of fun:

View the most EMAILED links for today from CNN.com:

1.
Surfing cat
2.
Defendant slugs lawyer
3.
Friendly moose raises eyebrows

Effective Journalism?

Mark's question in class about video footage, and what qualifies as being an effective means of journalism, really stuck with me. When I was looking at news about the recent storms that hit my hometown in the The Courier Journal, I came across this video. A reporter for the paper took a home video of the storm. Does this count as journalism?

Assignment: SoundSlides, readings

By Friday, please post your autobiographical SoundSlides piece to your web site. Link it off the resume page as a minimum, but it would make a nice "About" link that you could add to your template and have on all your pages.

Think about how you can use the site as a self-promotional piece, how you could use it to sell yourself for a job or internship.

Additionally, for next Tuesday, please read chapters 7, 9 and 10 in the Journalism 2.0 book.

I will be on campus from 8 to 4 or so on Thursday (disappearing around lunch), but will not be here on Friday and unreachable until Sunday afternoon. (Heading off to the boonies.) Stop by if you have issues or expect to.

Examples from Class

The first one on music teacher Nancy McClellan who is apparently retiring. This goes on too long, it is visually and audibly redundant after a while. Needs a tighter edit. Careful with the click - this is set to auto-play when the page loads. I hate that.

Up next, we watched a piece looking at a graphic designer turned sculptor. Pay close attention to the audio here - it has some issues, particularly with the frogs and/or crickets fading in and out. A quick solution to this would be to record a few minutes of just pure, natural sound to layer into the background. That would help take out the sudden fades.

Lastly, we have Kuni Takahashi's piece on poverty in Illinois. Twice as long as the music teacher presentation, this flows much better. Note the use of text slides to help advance the story and fill in details. It gives the reader more information without bogging down the flow. (And why are all poverty stories shot in black and white?)

Just a Quickie

"No Mr. President, it's called a quiche."
This is just something I found that I really enjoyed. I liked the subject matter and I like the design of the site so much that I'm now semi-determined to learn Flash. Dear me.

Medals of Memory.

Cleaning the clutter

I suppose I'm still considering Prof. Fink's newspaper management class, but I cant help but wonder why the abh continues to clutter the website...They have the same concept, "spotted" as say the Washington Post's "Day in Photos" but only one site makes me want to look at the photos, the other I pass off are more advertising. Just wondering what yall thought could be different to catch the reader's eye ...

BBC

Recently I started reading the BBC more. I've been fed up with CNN because it's constantly political analysis. The BBC has great podcasts. You can subscribe for free and play them on your RSS or ITunes. It's simple and informative. I've been listening to a podcast on global news. Besides the podcasts, they have live radio. While it has some news about England, it is mainly world news. It's a great tool for information.

blogs

An adjunct prof at NYU named Clay Shirky writes about the internet, a loooot, and going through some of his stuff I found one that was kind of exactly what we were talking about last class w/ blogs and publishing and "publishing," just with a little more elaboration and forecasting.

http://shirky.com/writings/weblogs_publishing.html

Yardbarker and Dontrelle Willis

I follow major league baseball compulsively and a couple of months ago I came across this sports blog site, yardbarker.com. The coolest thing about it is that some athletes have their own verified accounts and they post articles and comment on other people's articles. I only really follow one athlete there, though - Dontrelle Willis, former Florida Marlins and current Detroit Tigers pitcher. I follow him because he posts a good bit and comments a ton, sometimes on articles that don't pertain to him or baseball at all. A user named MixMakers posted an article about LeBron James using profanity on live tv and Dontrelle commented "so what. who cares."

It's fun to think about rich athletes just dicking around on the internet. It's also an interesting side of journalism, having the subjects of mainstream news stories commenting in their own words in their free time, and as part of a community too.

I stumbled upon stumble upon....

So, am I the only one who is completely behind technologically speaking and just discovering the Stumble Upon Website? It's similar to the Digg website we saw in class Tuesday, except that there are different things to tag or choose as favorites in terms of media categories. In Stumble Upon, (which I'm sure there are many more features) you can choose your favorite photos, videos, websites, people, etc. as opposed to just articles. Well, if anybody else knows anymore about it, please post (This is mainly because I just found it and I'm sure some of you know a little bit more about it than I do. That's not saying much though).

Problems with homepage assignment

Hey guys,

How's everyone's home page doing? Apparently, I'm having a problem with the resume site. I guess once you load all your files to mydrive, the .doc files are not recognized. Well, we are not supposed to link our direct .doc resumes anwyays, but here's my problem.

This was what I did. I uploaded my main page first, which works fine. But the resume link still shows the .doc file though, which upon clicking doesn't work. Anways, then I go back to my original template, edit the editable region and put my resume "there", save it again, as a template, AND as another html file. I also link the resume section to this page then. After I re-synchronize, and try to run it - it still doesn't work. It's the same home page as before. I am having resume page opening problems - it still shows the link to the doc file, which upon clicking doesn't work. Anyone else having the same problems? Any help on this will be appreciated. Thanks.

Priyom.

For those interested in video production...

...here's a little wish list compiled by the TeleArts DV Rebellion just before the holidays last semester. In it, you'll find everything you need to produce some great video footage, all on a fairly shoe-string budget for those without deep pockets. Consider it a DV survival kit, if you will, perfect for the digital video rebel in all of us, or for the everyday multimedia journalist-whichever title you might prefer.