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.

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!)

Even The Simpsons Know the World is Changing

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.

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.)

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?

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.

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.

Good Tips on Audio Slideshows

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

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?

... huffpuffhuff ...

Last post ... don't forget we'll have Dennis Dimick from National Geographic in the lab at 11 a.m. on Thursday, January 31. 

Assignment: All About You

For Tuesday, February 5:

Please record a series of short interviews with yourself answering the question, "Who am I?" This will form the basis for a digital autobiography. Please also collect about 10 digital images of things that represent you - pictures of yourself, things you like, etc. I'll do quick portraits of everyone in class next week from which we'll build some title/splash pages. Anything you can think of, bring it in. There are flatbed scanners in the glass lab across the hall from our lab if you need to scan anything. 

We'll be using SoundSlides to assemble these, it's become the standard for audio slideshows. Free demo is available on the site if you want to play with it. Forums have lots of good info in them, as well.  

Assignments: Web Posting, Audio Editing

Two things to have done by 5 p.m. Friday, February 1:

Web Site: Please have your web site posted to your UGA location. Your main page needs to be saved as "index.html" in order for it to work right. (Browsers will default to displaying it if the URL is incomplete.)  You should have two pages - a main/home page and a resume page, designed off a template with text handled by CSS.

Audio File: Email to me an MP3 file of your dining hall/restaurant sounds. Aim for 30-60 seconds in length. After doing your edits, go to File -> Export as MP3. Make sure you know when you're saving it to. 

A note on Audacity: It does not like to have the project files moved around, so try to get this all done in one sitting.

If you want to do this at home, you can download Audacity from the web. Please follow the instructions carefully - in addition to the main program, there is a "LAME" plug-in you need. Not only do you need to download that, but you also need to go into Audacity's preferences and tell it where the plug-in is. Info is on the site. (Click on "Other Downloads" to get to Windows versions.)

TEST your file before emailing it to me. Nothing is worse then sending out digital stuff that's busted.

Email me or drop by if you have questions or concerns, I'm around almost all the time.

ASSIGNMENT: Audio, Web Pages

Assignments for Tuesday:

AUDIO: Detail, natural sound from a restaurant. Change into a register, sizzle of a griddle - things that would help tell a listener where they are without being told that's where they are. Also look for some ambient, background noise - something you could run quietly throughout a piece.

WEB: Two web pages, designed using templates with editable regions. One should be a main (or home) page, the second a resume page. Think about the navigation scheme, how it would expand to cover other pages (stories, photos, videos, etc.)

Hit me with questions. I'll be in my office Friday after about 1 until 4:30 or so if you have issues.

Lab Hours

Please note this semester's lab hours:

Monday, 3:30 to 6:30
Tuesday, 8 a.m. to 11 a.m.
Thursday, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Ira Glass videos

Here are the links to the four Ira Glass interviews, they're each about 5 minutes in length. We'll talk about these next Tuesday.

Section 1
Segment 2
Portion 3
Episode 4