February 2007 Archives
I was googling around today for a utility to make Web screen shots for a project I'm currently working on and stumbled across Nathan Moinvaziri's wonderful WebShot (for Win XP). The latest version is 1.31 and it came out on Jan. 7, 2007.
I was looking for something that would do screen captures of Web pages and this does just that -- and for free (donation requested and deserved). It captures the entire page, including the part not visible on the screen (yes, lots of other programs do this).
The program includes two programs: a regular GUI version and a command line version. I wrote a little perl script to run the command line verison, calling several sites up to get screen grabs and saving the images with a date and time naming convention so I can keep track of when the grabs were done.
This rules!
I had a question about the program and Moinvaziri, who lives in Arizona, did answer me within a couple hours. A big wow for a free product.
I noticed has done several other interesting programs. He also blogs on programming and TV. and has some beautiful photos on his site.
But what I liked best was this quote:
I’ve been programming for a long time. I am 23 years old.
Hey, try his programs!
Tags: screen shots | image utilities | web design tools
Way back in May, I wrote about Quigo. Now I see the New York Times is. About time!
John Battelle, Greg Sterling and others are noting that Quigo seems to have forced some changes at Google. Interesting ...
Tags: adsense | quigo | contextual advertising
Just for fun, see what the Social Meter score is your blog/Web site.
This site runs out and scans varioius sites (Technorati, Google, Bloglines, Yahoo's MyWeb, etc.) to see how popular they are.
(via Social Media)
Tags: viral | linking | reputation
Great day in Knoxville Sunday. Sunny, windy and warm (in the mid-60s).
Went jogging at my favorite greenway and did 7.75 miles in 1:20:48 (156 average heart rate bpm). Yep, that's Slowsky; I usually don't jog/walk that long -- or far.
It was good. Lots of folks and dogs out. Only two problems: it was phewy on the sewer plant side cause of the rain, I guess, and the strong wind broke a big limb that hit me in the shoulder while was I was on the river side of the course (sort of surprised me).
For the week, I've gone 15.75 miles jogging or on the elliptical. Including non-cardio, I exercised 3:04 hours and burned 2670 calories.
At my pace, maybe I ought to sign up with Jason Calacanis' highly public Fatblogging campaign. He's got a domain name, fatblogging.com, mapped to his blog, where he's been spending a good bit of time tracking his exercise and diet regimes, and trading tips on programs, diets and equipment.
I was listening to some good stuff to keep me moving: Michael Power's Prodigal Son
Tags: jogging | fatbloggers | michael powers | jason calacanis| knoxville | lakeshore greenway
More on newsroom transformation, this one Steve Yelvington, who asks: "When do we become the roadblock?"
This one is not a high-level shifting of the trends discussion, but about the often very painful decisions that have to be made while slogging it out in the trenches. Yelvington's call is for the online leaders to not be roadblocks as change rearranges their world, too
Tags: new media | newspapers | culture change
It wouldn't be news to say Jeff Jarvis is one of the most interesting people talking -- and writing -- about media.
Last week he proposed a new rule for newspapers: "Cover what you do best. Link to the rest."
it's a great concept -- disruptive as hell.
Jarvis didn't hone in on what this might do to wire services. But if I were AP, I'd be worried. If widely adopted, this makes the reason for having the Associated Press wires move from a "must have" to a "nice to have."
And we all know what happens in budgets to "nice to haves."
But the result could indeed be very good journalism. This is way beyond linking out, which Jarvis observes newspapers are becoming more comfortable with.
If aggregating news from other sources was the primary means of getting news from elsewhere, reputation becomes huge. And a site's usefulness to its users would be even more pivotal than it is today. National news might not be just what's on the wires.
Partial models are there -- even with a bunch of flaws -- in Digg, Netscape and Reddit, which are more mass media than niche. A story without national interest is unlikely to make the front page of these sites unless it's been gamed there.
This would allow newspapers to focus on covering their core communities like no others can.
Tags: online media | jeff jarvis | bloggers | newspapers | news
A reporter might arrive on a location to do an interview. The subject would sit there, waiting anxiously. "Can we start?" the subject says.
"Not yet" says the reporter. There is a pause. "I have to wait for the pencil to arrive".
Some fascinating thoughts from TV guy Michael Roseblum about online video and, maybe, how traditional print media organizations "are going to bury their former television competitors."
Some commenters lambasted his post as promoting a type of journalism that's basically not professional enough. But the question is: Is it good enough?
I think the answer -- at least for now -- is that VJ, backpack, MoJo, or just reporter with a camera video can attract an audience and be disruptive to the traditioanl TV model. And while the production qualities are derided by the "pros," the viewers are watching.
Isn't it a little like having the best story last?
I hope Michael Rosenblum is right!
via BuzzMachine
Tags: michael rosenblum | jeff jarvis | newspaper video
Hey, Chris Matthews, this is hardball -- Tennessee style.
And here, too.
Tags: hardball | Tennessee politics | Knox County Commission
If not from TV, yellow pages? So says that seer Greg Sterling.
Tags: video | yellow pages | television | video advertising
PC World is reporting that Google will soon add its Docs & Spreadsheets Web apps to "Google Apps for Your Domain."
That's good news.
I did mail, calendar and start page options "Google Apps for Your Domain" recently and it's been excellent. My host AQHost was great about doing the DNS changes needed on a weekend just minutes after I asked for it. The switchover in mail and pointing to the start page and calendar were pretty seamless.
Gmail is much better than the Web-based Horde I had access to before and I'm weaning my self off Outlook Express (and all desktop mail apps for home).
For my personal use Web site (this one), it's convenient. But for a small business, this is pretty much a no-brainer, isn't it?
Google Docs and Spreadsheet meet most of my home word processing and spreadsheet needs, although I still use Office. ... But I can see a day ....
Once Docs and Spreadsheets is offered, that will leave only the web-photo albums of Picasa and Google Reader among the Google services I regularly use that is not offered in the "Google Apps for Your Domain."
Tags: Google | Microsoft Office
Have you heard of this guy. Slick Ballinger?
Whoa.
The 21-year-old Raleigh, N.C., native turned Mississippi bluesman has a debut album called "Mississippi Soul" on Oh Boy records.
By the time he was 18, Slick (real name is Daniel and he's an Eagle Scout) was already hanging out on stage with B.B. King and Pinetop Perkins. His decision to become a bluesman sprang from seeing the 1986 movie Crossroads.
Ballinger spent the summer of 2002 as a teen living with a 94-year-old bluesman in Mississippi in a house with no running water or electricity.
He musta learned something.
There are some mp3 and video clips on an older site and a lot of links to articles. Interesting to see (and hear) before they sharpened his image for the new album.
In 2004 he was named "most promising guitarist" in the International Blues Challenge.
If you like Mississippi blues, this is a must have. My fav cuts (so far) are the title cut "Mississippi Soul" and the bonus gospel blues song "Talkin' 'Bout Jesus.'"
Blues in all its rawness.
Best played loud.
One old lady was crawling on her belly
And some young girl was shaking like jelly.
-- "Let's get down"
Tags: Skip Ballinger | blues | Mississippi Soul
John Robinson, editor of the Greensboro News & Record, weighs in on the Atlanta Journal Constitution's far reaching revamping and mentions the Knoxville News Sentinel -- as well as his paper and some others -- as among those reshaping news coverage.
The News & Record is a paper I grew up reading in neighboring Randolph County -- and later competing against. It's been at the forefront of including more voices by encouraging blogging. Robinson points to several changes taking place at his newspapers and others. He also says a "different sort of paper" is coming from the News & Record. It will be interesting to see what results.
News Sentinel Editor Jack McElroy also weighed in on the AJC changes. And from the comments, not everyone is happy with change. Surprise!
Doug Fisher has a longer piece, including outlining a four-phase transition. Read it.
And that's just a little of the react to the changes at the AJC and elsewhere. Look here.
I find it all a little like flying into a thunderstorm -- blindfolded.
(via Will Sullivan)
Tags: journalism | newspapers | online media | culture change
And I was sure it was just me.
I do know a few people who haven't heard the news.
Melissa Worden of the X Degree blog has put together an interesting blogroll of journalism blogs.
Tags: journalism | journalist | online media | Melissa Worden
The News Sentinel's photographers have a wonderful exhibit of their work in the back lobby of our building at 2332 News Sentinel Drive.
It'll only be up through the end of February so come on by Monday-Friday during business hours.
The photographer portfolios of stunning photographs are displayed on eight iMacs, one for each photographer. Each photographer selected at least 40 photos -- some more than double that number -- that rotate in a slide show on the iMacs.
They do good work!
Tags: photos | photography | photographers | photojournalist | photojournalism
Now this was different. Not exactly Time's "We Media" couple of the year.
It's interesting to see the power of an online social network as "news source" and the amount of "media" this event attracted. It's looks like life imitating the filming of a realty TV show about life.
Watch the nine minute video, which had gotten 5,295 views in about a day. Decidedly viral.
Tags: UNC | Ryan Burke | breakup | google video | facebook | YouTube | viral | social networks
Starting from the premise:
If there are any folks in the newspaper industry who have notions still that they'll adapt the print product to attract some of my daughter's generation, or those in their 20s, and probably 30s, too, I'd say your chances for success are practically nil. As a long-time newspaper guy, I think the chances of my two daughters reading a print edition as they grow older are close to zero.
... Editor & Publisher columnist Steve Outing sought some opinions on what media will be like in five to 10 years and what it might mean for newspapers.
It's a good read, whether you agree with their independent assessments or not. Here's one sampling ...
It's going to get really interesting. The sea change that newspaper companies have been dealing with over the past few years will continue to accelerate at a pace that will surprise even the most forward thinking. It'll cut across all media -- not just newspapers -- but the rapid change and blending of all media online is now happening fast and furiously.
-- Brad Feld, VC
Even if these bright people are off the mark by, say, five years, the changes foreseen require a realignment of capital and human resources on the order of the industrial revolution.
The funny thing is the answers (and even Outing's premise) implicitly suggest the change has already occurred -- the raised-on-PC generation has already shifted -- and the business economy has yet to just reflect the change. That portends an almost tsunami wave of disruption as teens become adults. The surf seems unusually rough today.
Tags: newspapers | online media | interactive media
Nice piece on Charles Scripps by Dan Thomasson, former and longtime editor of Scripps Howard News Service.
Tags: E.W. Scripps | Charles Scripps | newspapers
Just beneath the surface of convergence and newsroom transformation, lies a darker, more cynical view of changes within newsrooms.
And, unfortunately, that darkness could drag newspapers efforts to adapt into the abyss.
Consider this from a recent survey of sportswriters about blogging. One longtime sportswriter said:
It’s the worst kind of insidious, stupid-creep to have ever infected our profession. Blogging blurs the lines between journalism and pajama-wearing nitwits sitting in their mother’s basements firing off bile-filled opinions. Newspaper editors and managers sit around at meetings and wonder why their circulation is falling and they have themselves to blame for lowering all of us into the foul-smelling muck of the blogworld.
The above was described as the strongest responses of the 150 respondents to a University of Mississippi survey on sports blogging, but it may reflect the view of many. The survey results as well as an analysis were sent to participants last week.
Fifty-three percent said blogging was a top down initiative, but most were involved in blogging in some way.
Sixty-four percent either disagreed or strongly disagreed that blogging increases audience.
Forty-two percent said blogging is not making an important contribution to their media outlet's sports coverage.
Sixty-five percent see no chance of blogging replacing traditional coverage.
The survey's summary said:
This negative attitude was fairly consistent, both in terms of qualitative and quantitative response, which suggests that respondents were actively resisting any possible changes associated with blogging.
One of the conclusions in the survey analysis was:
Perhaps even more importantly, most journalists did not perceive a value in blogging, in terms of increasing audiences, contributing to their media outlet or in their own professional development. It might be more correct to say that even when journalists saw value in blogging, they believed that value was offset by additional problems.
We just think we've come a long way.
Tags: blogging | sports | culture change | sports blogging
That blogger Amanda Marcotte resigned under fire from John Edwards' presidential campaign emphasizes what is wrong with public debate in America.
It's not about issues and candidates. It's about code words and political correctness.
When someone, in this case, Bill Donohue, the president of the Catholic League, points to a blog posting someone made before they joined a campaign and says, this is poltically incorrect, you must go. Something's wrong.
I'm not surprised Marcotte is gone; it was the right decision given the circumstances. But it's the new "Did you inhale" question of the MySpace Generation: Did you ever say something dumb, political incorrect or stupid online? And remember, it's still out there ... somewhere.
It's an issue for job seekers, political candidates and even the candidates' digital foot soldiers.
Of her departure, Marcotte said:
"The main good news is that I don’t have a conflict of interest issue anymore that was preventing me from defending myself against these baseless accusations. So it’s on."
And so it is.
(via Instapdunit)
Tags: john edwards | bill donohue | amanda marcotte | blogger
Where do most people get their news? Not from newspapers it seems. Not even a second!
When pollster Zogby did a survey just a couple weeks ago, people said:
Where do you get most of your news and information?
Internet Sites 39.9%
Television 31.5%
Newspapers 12.2%
Radio. 12.1%
Magazines .8%
Blogs 1.5%
When asked, "Which of the following is your most trusted source for news and information," they said:
Internet sites 33.2%
Television 21.3%
Newspaper 16.0%
Radio 14.0%
Magazine 2.0%
Blogs 1.7%
I think this one of the strongest showings by Internet sites vs traditional media that I've seen.
See more poll results at JD Lasica' Social Media site, which had an exclusive on this poll, in a PDF here. It has some fascinating data.
This is disruptive as hell...
A new Borrell Associates’ report due to be released Tuesday finds that newspaper-run websites are making more money from VIDEO advertising than TV station sites are by a ratio of almost 3 to 1 ($81 million to $32 million).
See the post on Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog
I took a quick look at the report and in addition to what Terry Heaton notes, I noticed the Borrell report is projecting double-digit, triple-digit and gains over 1000 percent for local DMAs in 2007 from 2006. If 2006 was the year of YouTube, those outsized gains would certainly make 2007 the year of the video ad.
The report says: "Remarkably, newspapers have made the transition to Web-based video advertising quicker than their local broadcast competitors have."
A key has been "long-form" video in classified verticals, like our online advertising folks' Digital Edge Award finalist: KnoxJobs.tv
There's quite a bit of good, new information in the report.
Tags: video | television | newspapers | borrell
Mark Hamilton weighs in the Knoxville warehouse fire coverage that I wrote about here. He quotes extensively from University of Tennessee journalism professor Bob Stepno's post on the fire and adds:
Count all the different bits and pieces of media that Bob found telling the story of the warehouse fire. Note that there is as much cit-j as pro-j in the mix. Note how quickly it happened. Look at this: “…the News Sentinel’s KnoxNews.com had five stories, three slide shows, links to a half dozen videos and as many bloggers’ reports.”
That’s the new reality of journalism. Newspapers that aren’t ready for it are at risk because there are other organizations out there in the community: hyperlocal journalism sites, local aggregators and group bloggers and the like. And Google finds them just as easily as they find the local newspaper.
In additon to the fabulous content that the non-pros created, the Knoxville News Sentinel's vets also did a great job of responding to the new rules of news. The police reporter at the scene, veteran reporter Don Jacobs, dictated updates to Web producer Katie Kolt. He shot video and hustled that in. An off-duty photographer, Saul Young, who happened to be nearby at an Old City nightspot when the fire started, got a ton of photos and came back to the office to get them to a Kolt to go on the Web.
Somewhere between the the cit-js and pro-js, we had the student-js, who also got great photo coverage.
Now that the smoke's cleared and icicles have formed on the ruins, it is a fascinating event to look at in terms of news coverage. And the journalistic fire it exposed is just starting to burn.
Tags: citizen journalism | fire | Knoxville | blogging | UGC | user generated content
Two interesting takes on Google Docs: Charlene Li and Scott Karp.
Obviously, Google Docs aren't as good as Microsoft Office. The question is are they good enough -- or how long will it take to make them good enough.
For home managing, it appears close for Li, although she finds much to dislike. For Karp, the inability to work on a Google Doc on a plane and its slowness in certain operations are real barriers to adoption.
Would you dump office for Google docs?
Tags: google docs | microsoft office | word | excel
Hmmm ... this is not my editor's AP. The august news wire, The Associated Press, is doing some experimenting. They've turned a young "product specialist" in the Online Video Network loose on the streets for eight weeks with a video camera, a Typepad account and some moxie.
The results are well hidden inside ASAP, an edgier AP youth news package and Web service, but really you can just go to the vblog directly. The vblog, called Reel City Tales, is done by Ilana Arazie and her latest delves into that vexing issue of how many dates a girl should wait before having sex. She gets varied responses.
I think something good could happen here while the suits aren't watching. I hope AP lets it last longer than eight weeks. Check out her latest tale.
Tags: vblog | sex | innovation
The early bloggers, people like Jeff Jarvis and Glenn Reynolds, point to 9/11 as the seminal event that forever changed their blogs and blogging as a way of writing about and interpreting news.
I wonder if "Knoxville's Great Warehouse Fire of 2007" (I think I stole that line from somebody) is a seminal moment in the way local news is covered here in Knoxville? I can't remember a news event that has been covered in quite the same way. We've had live blogging from news events, but this, it was different.
If you're just catching up, two warehouses and another building in the downtown area caught fire just after 1 a.m. Wednesday and burned through most of the day, leaving four firefighters in the hospital and raining embers down on much of downtown.
People living in the nearby downtown condos on North Gay captured the late-night-into-day fire with digital still cameras and video cameras. The results are just a search away on Flickr and YouTube and personal Web sites. Bloggers here and yonder logged in with personal tales, links and tidbits.
The city's Web site posted a slide show. The sheriff's department shot aerial video.
All the traditional media used their Web sites for as-it-happens news. At the News Sentinel, where I hang out, we had quite a bit of video, audio, tons of photos, stories that seemed living they changed so much. You can see a lot of the multimedia and sidebars attached to this story.
Email news alerts flew out. Cell phone alerts buzzed in. Page views and visits ratcheted up.
The adrenaline high was palpable even in the print version, but definitely in the Web version.
Journalism professor Bob Stepno rounds up some of the varied coverage. He notes:
By afternoon, people were online writing about the fire from West Virginia to New York to the other side of the Atlantic.
Jump the Shark, a blog about Knoxville media mostly, put it this way:
Technology has reached the point that just about anyone, anywhere, can capture a news event as it's happening, snap a few photos or shoot home video, and have it on the local or national news within minutes.
I've believed that in the abstract as a concept, but now I've seen it in action in my town. And it's good stuff.
Tags: citizen journalism | Flickr | YouTube | fire | Knoxville | blogging
I couldn't agree more. The click stalling is a real pain.
Tags: Wordpress | Snap Preview
