Flipboard Kind of Makes Me Want an iPad
…but the customer reviews in the iTunes store make me think: “Not quite ready for prime time.”
If you’ve downloaded Flipboard already, what’s your experience been? Is the app working for you?
To learn more about Flipboard’s promise, visit the website.
Have a Look at These New Sites Around the Web
Just wanted to bring your attention to some news-related projects that launched this week:
Reporters looking for advice from other reporters should take a look at ReportingOn.
Ryan Sholin’s revamped site is like a help forum for news developers and journalists, particularly beat and local journalists. Follow ReportingOn on Twitter. You’ll find me on ReportingOn too.
The hyperlocal news and data site Everyblock released its source code, much to the delight of Django developers everywhere.
Everyblock is the brainchild of Adrian Holovaty, one of the co-developers of the Django framework. Read more about the project, poke around and see what you find.
Personally, I’d also like to see the source code for the Everyblock iPhone app, but one thing at a time.
If you want to learn more about mobile site design, consider signing up for W3C’s first-ever live training session in Cambridge, UK.
The event takes place Oct. 13. Registration — at a hefty €399.00 (about US$558 at today’s exchange rate) — includes lectures and hands-on workshops, as well as access to the nine-part course. Read the full description, register online or read more about the W3C Mobile Web Initiative.
And finally, if you’re here because of the list of “100 Best Blogs for Journalism Students,” welcome!
Feel free to browse around. A few of the most popular posts on Ricochet include:
- Have Reporting Work You’re Proud Of? Enter the Online Journalism Awards (Hurry! Deadline is July 8.)
- 10 Golden Rules for Video Journalists
- How to Tell a Multimedia Story: The Pitch
What ideas and tools would you like to know more about? Drop a comment, or ping me on Twitter @MacDivaONA.
Revenue 2.0: Ideas for Making Money on News Sites
“News is the stuff we put around the advertising.”
—Quoted by so many people in news and advertising no one remembers who said it first
Yesterday a group of journalists of varying experience and expertise got together to do something about advertising. That’s right: News people were proposing ideas for making money.
The one-day sprint, Revenue 2.0, took a “less chat, more splat” approach to revenue solutions for mobile, classified ads, ads for small- and medium-sized business, and display ads used (or not) on the homepage.
The classified ads proposal is up on the #rev2oh site.
Notes from the other teams will be posted tomorrow morning. From what SND President Matt Mansfield tells me, the concepts-oriented document I wrote on behalf of the homepage and display ads team will go up on SND Update with mockups from team members Kristen Novak and David Kordalski.
Meanwhile, read the thoughtful day-after post by Patrick Cooper and the #rev2oh tweet archive.
Where and How to Watch Election Day Results Online
As news organizations, watchdogs and voters prepare for the Super Bowl of politics, it seemed like a good idea to survey what will be online for Nov. 4.
Some sites will start their coverage early. Already, the massive, all-volunteer Twitter Vote Report has been logging and mapping voting problems and good experiences.
Most complaints so far have been about long wait times and registration confusion. To participate, send a tweet with the #votereport hashtag.
New to Twitter? Not on Twitter? There are other ways to send a report. Developer Nathan Freitas has come up with some additional ways to look through the data.
At 6 a.m. ET on Election Day, the Washington Post will begin tracking voter experiences and related national news on their Vote Monitor page. To participate and to send news tips, post a Twitter message to PostVoteMonitor.
In addition, WaPo has interactive maps, live discussions, blogging and articles peppered around its site and on their politics page. Be sure to have a look at the very cool TimeSpace map and timeline mashup.
The New York Times just announced a slew of goodies for election coverage. A very handy tool for those who want to jockey returns is the pop-up dashboard, which will include live election returns beginning at 6 p.m. ET, as well as electoral vote tallies from network news, CNN and the Associated Press.
The Grey Lady is also trying to create the largest online archive of polling place photographs taken by voters. Add your photo to the mix under a Creative Commons license on the Polling Places page.
Addicted to Flickr? Editors at Yahoo News will be culling election-related photos from the site and posting them on yahoo.com and news.yahoo.com. Put the word “election” somewhere in the title, comment or tag to be part of the search.
If you’re going to be out and about, bookmark the Online NewsHour’s mobile site. In addition to updates on the election, there’s a handy list of poll closing times and electoral votes.
NPR political analyst Ken Rudin has predicted Obama will win the race, but as we know, it ain’t over till it’s over. Want to map your own hypothetical outcome? Check out the You Predict map. The NewsHour will begin its TV broadcast at 9 p.m. ET, but you can follow developing coverage online now.
The Star-News may create the longest CoverItLive transcript ever with its Election Day live blog, which begins at 6:30 a.m. ET. The Wilmington, N.C., news organization reports record early voting returns in several counties. Thousands more are expected at the polls tomorrow.
STLToday.com, the website of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, will have their reporters and photographers out in force, documenting any polling problems that may occur. In addition, they’ll be streaming Qik video from separate Democratic and Republican election parties, blogging and posting staff and reader photos. The content will go live Tuesday afternoon. Keep tabs on the coverage at www.stltoday.com/news/politics.
On the West Coast, the popular L.A. Times blogs Top of the Ticket and L.A. Now will be posting updates throughout the day. Around 4 p.m. PT, the homepage will flip from the usual center art surrounded by story links to an electoral map that will track returns for the presidential race as well as 12 hotly contested propositions. Sometime after, the site will launch a separate section on California.
MSNBC will be revamping its homepage for elections coverage. Before then, you can embed a customizable live results widget like the one below on your site.
Photo by Hilary McHone/Flickr
Journalists Get Geeky in Georgia
Starting Friday, journalists and researchers from all over will gather at Georgia Tech for Journalism 3G: The Future of Technology in the Field.
Though there hasn’t yet been a lot of discussion on the group’s CrowdVine site, a look at the member list shows a wide swath of interesting minds and movers who are pushing online journalism to be more than just text + photo + video + comments.
According to the conference website, there almost 220 people have registered. If you can’t make down to Georgia, you can watch the live webcast starting Feb. 22 at 1 p.m. ET
