Entries from May 2007 ↓

If you were born during a different time period, what would it be and what would you be doing?

Facebook recently released free local classifieds, also known as Facebook Marketplace. The interface could be a little cleaner, but it’s no worse than Craigslist…no telling how this will effect the classifieds industry. I use a combination of Craigslist and LiveJournal to get things for free or cheap. Facebook is extremely popular among college students as a social networking site, but will they post ads? Depending on the reaction, I’ll have to add Facebook to my “I hate being broke” browsing.

A Craigslist and Google Maps mashup called Mapskrieg shows exactly where Craigslist housing listings are located. In some cases, you could probably get a great satellite view of the area. I poked around Gainesville and Miami (my hometown), and sent the link to some friends who are looking for a change of residence. Looks like a really useful tool.

I know the Gainesville Sun and the Independent Florida Alligator both carry classifieds online. The Sun’s are a searchable database, while the Alligator provides a .pdf due to limited resources. It doesn’t seem like it would be too hard to grab data from Craigslist and other popular online ad sites and create a ginormous pile of ads. Mix it with Google Maps. Make it easy to search. Give it a feed. Give it to us for free, we’re gonna get it anyway, we might as well be spending time on your site.

I’ve come across a lot of tutorials in the past few days, while I was looking to continue my Flash education. I know that I need to keep learning and using the program.

Some of them teach drawing, which I’m worst at. (I can’t draw at all.) Some take ActionScript to a new level of “cool,” and I’m comfortable with the programming aspects of Flash. I’ve come across a few that teach frame-by-frame animation, which I grok would be only a marginally useful skill in the field.

I’ve also been looking at current online journalism using Flash, trying to figure out how they did what they did and whether or not I know how to do it. In many cases I do.

My question to you is: Where to start? Learn to draw, or learn more AS?

In middle school, we had to do science projects every year. One year, dad and I played with batteries and sodium solutions. Another, we tackled woodworking. But my favorite was when we decided to find out what paper weight and design was best for paper airplanes.

I know people who can do amazing things with paper airplanes, but we were going for straight distance. We chose 4 paper weights and 10 designs. It was a very good weekend.

One that can be relived via Paper Pilot: Battle of the Air. Design a digital paper airplane and see how it will fly!

While the online media are doing great things with Flash packages in order to tell stories, the concept behind Paper Pilot is to get the user to participate. I would love to see a story package that included something like this, where appropriate, of course.

Journalism doesn’t have to be serious, straight-faced news. I’ve seen a few Flash news stories disguised as games, but not many. What do ya wanna bet those few got more page views and time? If you know of any cool Flash news games, leave ‘em in the comments.

Last year I installed Ubuntu on a partition of my hard drive. My intention at first was simply to learn my way around the operating system. After a few months, I stopped booting into Windows.

Then I started taking multimedia classes. I learned that the journalism industry uses Flash and Photoshop and so I needed to learn these programs. Back to Windows. ::sigh::

I dream of a day when newspapers switch to Linux distros and adapt to the free open source software that is available.

Video and Audio: There are a few different programs to choose from to edit video, but my favorite is Cinelerra. Cinelerra can capture and edit audio and video without the proprietary formats of commercial Windows software. Sure the interface is ugly and hard to navigate. So it’s missing some of your favorite iMovie features. It does the job, once you get all the dependent libraries installed and figure out how to use the formats.

Graphics: The Gimp. No, the interface isn’t as pretty as Photoshop’s, but the learning curve is probably the same. And it’s not as full featured, but that’s why its free. Gimp can handle the majority of projects, provided you don’t need to keep your files small, your pixels tight, and your colors Web-safe.

Flash: I actually sat here for 20 minutes searching for a Flash substitute for Linux. I know there is one, I even saw it in an article recently. Then I realized it doesn’t matter. Its free open source Flash-style animation for Linux. It’s gotta be good!

Web Development: Forget about Dreamweaver! Nvu is the ticket. You know that view design feature never works right anyway. Nvu can handle HTML, CSS, PHP, etc. Just because you don’t know how to pronounce it until you visit thew Web site doesn’t mean it’s not valid software.

Web Browser: Firefox. Linux won’t run Internet Explorer, so run with the fox. Who cares if you can’t test your work in IE? Those people should be using Firefox anyways.

The point is, as much as I rant and rave against proprietary software, there’s a reason to use it. If you’re dead set on using Linux, there are a couple of different ways to get Adobe products running on a Linux box. Over the summer, I’ll be trying to get WINE set up, but if any of you have tried this, let me know.

DISCLAIMERS: There are all valid solutions for multimedia needs, but they are also tricky to use. I do not have a Mac. This post was written for ProBlogger’s Top 5 Writing Project.

This great map of Florida forest fires presented by the Florida Division of Forestry.

The air smells like a Christmas Eve party in Miami and looks like clouds are forming a few feet above the ground. I’ve had a sore throat for 2 weeks.

The Gainesville Sun’s coverage is thorough and updated every few hours. But no links! I want links to related articles, forum posts and multimedia. And the map is…eh.

Google will be helping Arizona, California, Utah and Virginia make public records available and easy to find online.

Help Florida! While our records are pretty much online, its a ridiculous pain to find anything…just ask anyone from UF’s Fact Finding class.

Download Squad has an excellent interview with Lawrence Swiader, the Chief Information Officer of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Swiader talks about the development and technological aspects of the project, as well as the relationship forged with Google.

While I still have issues with the accessibility of the project, I think this is something newspapers should take a good hard look at.

Some great advice from Al’s Morning Meeting:

Instead of “How Do You Feel?”

It has been such a treat this week to lead a Poynter seminar for public-radio reporters. One of our guest faculty members is National Public Radio’s Audie Cornish, who often covers big disasters like the aftermath of Katrina, Alabama tornadoes and such. One of her goals is to get close to people in time of trauma. She offered our group some alternatives to the “how does it feel” question. On her list was:

* What happened?

* What happens next?

* What did you do?

* What do you make of this?

* How do you explain what has happened to other people?

* When it first happened, what did you think — and what do you think now?

* What surprised you about how others reacted?

* What are you worried about?

* What are you telling your children/family?

* What does this make you think about your own community?

* Why do you still live here?

I always thought the “how do you feel?” question was so dumb. The answer is always predictable. Cornish’s questions force the subject to take a moment to answer. Which is good, cause then you’re more likely to get a substantive quote or interesting information. These questions aren’t just for radio or traumatic events. Think about how they apply to day-to-day reporting and multimedia.

Can you think of any other good questions to ask during an interview that will ?

A discussion between Newsies members about funding for athletics vs. academics. Led by yours truly. This experiment didn’t go as well for me as for some other groups, so check out the blog for more discussions.