Ricochet by Chrys Wu » Mobile/Tablet http://www.chryswu.com/blog Where Ideas For Online News Bounce Around Fri, 30 Sep 2011 22:02:17 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Flipboard Kind of Makes Me Want an iPad http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2010/07/21/flipboard-kind-of-makes-me-want-an-ipad/ http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2010/07/21/flipboard-kind-of-makes-me-want-an-ipad/#comments Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:23:34 +0000 Chrys http://www.chryswu.com/blog/?p=984 …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.

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]]> http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2010/07/21/flipboard-kind-of-makes-me-want-an-ipad/feed/ 0 Have a Look at These New Sites Around the Web http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2009/07/03/news-sites-tools-projects-mobile-web/ http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2009/07/03/news-sites-tools-projects-mobile-web/#comments Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:42:58 +0000 Chrys http://www.chryswu.com/blog/?p=738 Just wanted to bring your attention to some news-related projects that launched this week:

ReportingOn logo
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.

Everyblock logo
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.

W3C Mobile Web Initiative logo
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:

What ideas and tools would you like to know more about? Drop a comment, or ping me on Twitter @MacDivaONA.

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]]> http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2009/07/03/news-sites-tools-projects-mobile-web/feed/ 0 Revenue 2.0: Ideas for Making Money on News Sites http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2009/03/22/revenue-20-ideas-for-making-money-on-news-sites/ http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2009/03/22/revenue-20-ideas-for-making-money-on-news-sites/#comments Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:09:58 +0000 Chrys http://www.chryswu.com/blog/?p=695

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.


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]]> http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2009/03/22/revenue-20-ideas-for-making-money-on-news-sites/feed/ 1 Where and How to Watch Election Day Results Online http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2008/11/03/election-day-results-polls-vote/ http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2008/11/03/election-day-results-polls-vote/#comments Tue, 04 Nov 2008 03:52:54 +0000 Chrys http://www.chryswu.com/blog/?p=341 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

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]]> http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2008/11/03/election-day-results-polls-vote/feed/ 0 Journalists Get Geeky in Georgia http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2008/02/20/journalists-get-geeky-in-georgia/ http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2008/02/20/journalists-get-geeky-in-georgia/#comments Thu, 21 Feb 2008 04:14:05 +0000 Chrys http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2008/02/20/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

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]]> http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2008/02/20/journalists-get-geeky-in-georgia/feed/ 0 Looking for Examples of New News http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2008/02/20/looking-for-examples-of-new-news/ http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2008/02/20/looking-for-examples-of-new-news/#comments Wed, 20 Feb 2008 05:51:22 +0000 Chrys http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2008/02/20/looking-for-examples-of-new-news/ Ryan Sholin at Invisible Inked is looking for bright spots that redefine news.

He’s started a list that shows some creative Web executions. Several commenters have added sites of their own. For example:

What I find interesting is that most of the examples on Ryan’s page are from newspapers. Other organizations (NPR, anyone?) must be doing interesting things as well. C’mon, represent!

If you’ve got redefining work of your own, feel free to show it off here in comments, and let Ryan know.

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]]> http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2008/02/20/looking-for-examples-of-new-news/feed/ 0 A Quick Way to Make Your Site Mobile-Compatible http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2008/02/03/one-way-to-make-your-site-mobile-compatible/ http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2008/02/03/one-way-to-make-your-site-mobile-compatible/#comments Sun, 03 Feb 2008 21:11:33 +0000 Chrys http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2008/02/03/one-way-to-make-your-site-mobile-compatible/ Mobile is the next big thing for news organizations, but not everyone has the time or manpower needed to create a site that looks good and works on all, or at least most, phones.

Google to the rescue.

DownloadSquad points out that anyone with an RSS feed can create a link for Google Reader’s mobile site by adding the feed URL to the prefix:

http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/feed/

For example,
http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/feed/http://feeds.feedburner.com/cw-ricochet
will create a live RSS link that goes straight go GReader. Try it here.

Its not foolproof, but it does appear to work for Feedburner URLs.

A similar workaround may be available for Yahoo!Go, Yahoo’s mobile application, but I haven’t found one yet. Hints or pointers would be appreciated.

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]]> http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2008/02/03/one-way-to-make-your-site-mobile-compatible/feed/ 0 Times of London Revises Mobile Site http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2007/12/13/times-of-london-revises-mobile-site/ http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2007/12/13/times-of-london-revises-mobile-site/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2007 16:18:07 +0000 Chrys http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2007/12/13/times-of-london-revises-mobile-site/ The Times Online has a new ad campaign touting its revamped mobile site.

I pointed my cell phone browser to www.timesmobile.mobi, but so far I’m not impressed. It’s just one clickable banner ad at the top plus a list of links and linked headlines and a few fingernail-sized photos. (Ooo. “Fingernails.” Perhaps I’m coining a new term here for supersmall graphics.)

Somehow, I was expecting a richer experience, story summaries under the linked heds at least. A link to weather, traffic, sports and games. (Admittedly, at the bottom of the page there’s a link to the football, er, soccer page.) And since so many Internet-enabled phones can play sound, how about some audio?

I’ll check back in another week or so to see if perhaps I visited too early. In any case, the site could be better.

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]]> http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2007/12/13/times-of-london-revises-mobile-site/feed/ 0 Dagens Nyheter Launches Newspaper Phone http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2007/12/12/dagens-nyheter-launches-newspaper-phone/ http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2007/12/12/dagens-nyheter-launches-newspaper-phone/#comments Wed, 12 Dec 2007 20:22:15 +0000 Chrys http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2007/12/12/dagens-nyheter-launches-newspaper-phone/ Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter announced it has partnered with Nokia to launch the world’s first newspaper phone.

The device, known as DN-Mobilen, is a Nokia 6120 classic 3G running the Symbian OS. Subscribers pay $31 a month for a calling plan and unlimited access to the newspaper’s website.

Though Europe is ahead of the U.S. in cell phone use, it lags behind Asia, and therefore presents a huge opportunity for media companies that can develop an easy-to-use tool for readers. At least that’s the thinking.

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]]> http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2007/12/12/dagens-nyheter-launches-newspaper-phone/feed/ 0 A Different Take on Group Stories http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2007/12/11/a-different-take-on-group-stories/ http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2007/12/11/a-different-take-on-group-stories/#comments Wed, 12 Dec 2007 04:27:02 +0000 Chrys http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2007/12/11/a-different-take-on-group-stories/ An experiment in group fiction via Twitter launched today when 140 writers answered the call to join Cameron Reilly in writing a story called The Darkness Inside.

The idea is pretty simple: All writers follow @twittories. Reilly, as editor, lets each writer know when it’s their turn to add up to 140 characters of storyline and posts the entries to the website. (He also reserves the right not to post anything deemed illegal in his home country of Australia.)

The Twittories example could be a neat if inefficient and legal pitfall-filled way to draft a breaking news story for a topic of interest to a large community, such as the San Diego wildfires that broke out earlier this year.

In a time when the public is asking for transparency while clamoring for speed, this could be a daring approach to posting breaking news from the field online.

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