Worth a look 20 Nov

The Outernet - Integrated Multimedia VideoJournalism: The video journalist Decree [del.icio.us] Posted: 19 Nov 2007 08:51 AM CST One to save and savour. Videojournalism guru David Dunkley Gyimah has produced a 23-point (and growing) video journalism manifesto. It's a call to arms and two fingers in the direction of the "professionals [who] tell you it is impossible to be multi-skilled."

Diamond Road Online [del.icio.us] Posted: 19 Nov 2007 08:43 AM CST A fascinating development of interactive journalism that has grown out of a television documentary series, Diamond Road Online is an 'interactive documentary that learns from your choices and grows from the community.'

Mercury News Photo » Where We Live » Blog Archive [del.icio.us] Posted: 19 Nov 2007 08:39 AM CST San Jose Mercury News has a cool interactive panoroma - in the style of a collage - focusing on a small town. It uses software created by a company called Vuvox.

Code Couture releases TextTime: a revolutionized word count - Editors Weblog [del.icio.us] Posted: 19 Nov 2007 08:31 AM CST Instead of using wordcount to measure the length of text, this software estimates how much time any given piece will take to read. I can hear the news editor now: "Give me 72 seconds on Brown's environment speech. You've got ten minutes."

CNET TV's debut

Today I've mostly been watching the first UK site to put professionally-produced video content at its heart. CNET TV is the latest from what claims to be the largest online-only publisher in the UK, whose sites reach 9 million unique users across the country. Its aimed at enthusiasts in technology, music, computergaming, film and tv - all of which have there own 'channels'. Here's the trailer:

Unsurprisingly, there's not masses of content up there yet - it is day one, after all - but it's still enough to get the idea of what's going to be on offer. Each channel has weekly episodes of its own flagship programmes, as well as interviews, news reports and packages from around the place. Its all highly-polished stuff and unashamedly modelled on tried and tested TV techniques. So on the technology channel, for example, we get Rory Reid's review of the Toyota Prius in a package that wouldn't look out of place on Top Gear. Likewise Andrew Lim's news report of the iPhone's arrival in London could grace any television news bulletin. Less slick (and less expensive) is the pair of silicon.com journalists discussing social networking - but you've still got to love that image quality.
What's perhaps surprising is that there's little evidence so far of huge innovation in the form that this wealth of content takes. That may come with time as CNET lets its people loose on some more experimental storytelling techniques.
Revenue will come from advertising - HP is signed up as exclusive launch sponsor - and sponsored links (including some from the BBC: are they allowed to spend our licence money on such things?) at the bottom of each video page.
Let's hope it'll be enough to pay for all that expensive production and on-screen talent.

Worth a look, 16 Nov

Crime map - bay area news [del.icio.us] Posted: 16 Nov 2007 10:14 AM CST An award-winning piece of multimedia interactivity from the Bay Area News Group. A number of US papers are making good use of mapping community stories, particularly using their crime data. This is a prime example.

News.blog: YouTube tests high-quality video, News at CNET.co.uk [del.icio.us] Posted: 16 Nov 2007 05:33 AM CST THe experiment "will change user experience"

Journalists must unlearn misconceptions to improve writing - Editors Weblog [del.icio.us] Posted: 16 Nov 2007 05:22 AM CST Three misconceptions: that kids have short attention spans; that they don't want detail; that they can't understand maths or data

Feels like fall at MultimediaShooter [del.icio.us] Posted: 16 Nov 2007 04:30 AM CST "New-wave vignetting": a term to add to the growing dictionary of storytelling techniques.

Amazon to debut Kindle e-book reader Monday CNET News.com [del.icio.us] Posted: 16 Nov 2007 04:26 AM CST e-book reader will also display newspaper digital editions

Readership Institute: Get Smart About Your Readers [del.icio.us] Posted: 16 Nov 2007 04:24 AM CST Data as journalism, journalism as data

Web Design: 23 Actionable Lessons from Eye-Tracking Studies [del.icio.us] Posted: 16 Nov 2007 04:23 AM CST "Contrary to what you might think, the first thing users look at on a web site isn't the images."

How to strike creatively II

Adrian Monck has embedded a funny YouTube clip from the strike
by Hollywood writers. Here's another one that's doing the viral rounds. Doubtless the NUJ will be taking note of this new picket line weapon.

Worth a look 15 Nov

Los Angeles Times - Marlboro Marine [del.icio.us] Posted: 14 Nov 2007 06:32 AM CST Great multimedia piece from the LA Times. Photographer Louis Sinco talks about his iconic photo of 'Marlboro Marine' Blake and follows him as he comes to terms with life after leaving Iraq

Cincinnati.Com Data Center: CinciNavigator [del.icio.us] Posted: 14 Nov 2007 04:33 AM CST Geotagging by the Cincinnati Enquirer

Editors: Remove the Online Blinders editor on the verge [del.icio.us] Posted: 14 Nov 2007 04:15 AM CST Why do so few newspapers send their video to networks such as YouTube?

How to get the measure of online video Media The Guardian [del.icio.us] Posted: 14 Nov 2007 04:13 AM CST Video accounts for 10 per cent of UK viewing

Long-Form Video Gaining Viewers on the Web [del.icio.us] Posted: 14 Nov 2007 04:12 AM CST Anything over 20 mins counts as long form, and more than 6million people watched such videos online in October 07. Usage is doubled since August

Dallas Morning News creates video trailer for newspaper series - CyberJournalist.net - Online News Association - Future of Media [del.icio.us] Posted: 14 Nov 2007 04:09 AM CST Innovative attempt to bring in readers of a new newspaper series

Journalist stares at screen. Live

Just having a look around blogtv.com, a new videocasting-live-for-the-masses service, when what should I stumble across but recorded footage of Oliver Luft of journalism.co.uk and his experiment with the beta of the service. Hard to tell what Oliver makes of it - most of it seems to be him staring silently at the screen and typing - so we'll just have to wait to see his published piece for the full verdict.


Also of note today: dotSub, a video site that specialises in adding - or rather, encouraging users to add - multilingual translations to uploaded videos.

My sex change confession

[Transcript] As you can see I've had something of a makeover this week. Alright then a complete sex change. It's thanks to Sitepal, whose service allows me to get an animated character to do the work of my videoblog for me. I can change how I look, how I sound. I can even translate myself into languages I don't speak. Such as Japanese.
Or I can use my own voice, while taking on the guise of various current and former US presidents.
Thanks Bill. And by the way, I did not have sexual relations with that woman.
Sitepal services start at around a fiver a month. Which might even put it within in reach of the odd blogger. And most of them are odd, let's face it.

Right, not much time this week so just a couple of clips to show you. First is a recent winner from the National Press Photographer’s Association in the US, by Everett McEwan from KWGN-TV in Denver. The guys at Multimedia Shooter consider it their new benchmark for quality news video, and it's a superb example of great narrative editing.
It's just 2 minutes long, so do check out the full version to see whether there's a happy ending.

This week’s featured multimedia journalism project comes from News.com web site in Australia. It's called Culture in Crisis and is an impressive, detailed look, using audio slides, text and video, at how aboriginal people have been treated in the country and what the future holds for them.

Finally a warning from our health and safety department. Mobile technology can be an alluring concept, but you can take things too far. Unless you want to film a multiple pile up with yourself as the star, don't try this at home.