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.