Storify adds slideshow view for blog posts, presentations and broadcasts

You can now view Storify stories as slideshows. The platform, which allows you to curate social media and web content, now lets you convert any Storify to a slideshow by simply adding “/slideshow” at the end of the URL of a Storify.

You can then embed the slideshow into a blog post or article. There are details of how to do that in this Storify blog post.

For example, Joseph Stashko has created this Storify on Steve Jobs’ stepping down as CEO of Apple. Here it is as a slideshow.

According to a post on Storify’s blog:

Slideshows were originally designed for TV, to make it easy to show a story on a monitor during a newscast or other show. But really, they could be used for anything – displays at live events such as conferences, or also for business and social media presentations created with Storify.

The full Storify blog post is at this link.

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Luke Harding: ‘We’re sort of used to the gunfire, but this was clearly directed towards us’

Around 35 journalists were relieved yesterday to have been allowed to leave the Rixos Hotel in central Tripoli, where they had been trapped for five days amid heavy fighting between rebels and Gaddafi loyalists.

Many of them moved from the Rixos to the Corinthia Hotel, further away from the fighting around Gaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziya compound. But a report this afternoon from Guardian correspondent Luke Harding suggests that, despite Gaddafi having been ousted, they are still in some danger from loyalists. Talking to his colleague Mathew Weaver over Skype from the Corinthia, Harding said the hotel was “sprayed” with heavy ammunition fire for five to 10 minutes.

I was just downstairs in the lobby having lunch … and I went up to the second floor and there was a surge of journalists in from the terrace and there was gunfire. This was where we’d all been setting up our satellite dishes and people had been doing live braodcasts. There’s been a fantastic amount of gunfire over the last few days so we’re sort of used to it but this was clearly directed towards us which was why everyone came charging in.

It’s hard to know who, but it seems there were loyalists in the high rise blocks to our left that opened fire on the hotel.

There isn’t much security here, there are a couple of guards in the hotel who panicked and fired inside, which sent everyone scarpering. I just took the lift up to the 13th floor and locked myself in the room. The firing went on for about five to 10 minutes.

I just went to see my neighbour Kim Sengupta from the Independent. He is two [floors] down from me, and he has four bullet holes in the wall and one on the ceiling. This is not Kalashnikov fire – this is a very well-built, modern hotel – this is clearly something much heavier and someone has just sprayed the hotel with it. As far as I know, nobody has been hurt.

This is indicative of just how insecure Tripoli is.

See more on the Guardian’s Middle East liveblog at this link.

Follow Luke Harding on Twitter: @lukeharding1968

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Google’s +1 button now acts like Facebook share

Google+ users can now use the +1 button to share content with their circles of contacts within the new social network.

Following the development this week the button will act like Facebook’s share button in that anyone with a Google+ profile can directly share a link to their wall (or stream in Google+ terminology).

Google made the announcement on its blog yesterday and said it would be rolled out over the next few days.

The +1 button was launched at the beginning of June, allowing anyone logged in to a Gmail account to recommend web content to their contacts, who would then see a personally ranked suggestion when using Google Search. At the end of June Google+ was launched by the search engine giant which appeared to be taking on Facebook by creating its own social network.

The fact the button now acts like a Facebook share widget may persuade a few more news sites to adopt it. Take up early on appeared to have been slow based on often lower traffic referrals when compared to other share buttons.

In yesterday’s blog post, Google also announced another development of interest to publishers: the creation of “snippets”.

When you share content from the +1 button, you’ll notice that we automatically include a link, an image and a description in the sharebox. We call these snippets, and they’re a great way to jumpstart conversations with the people you care about.

Of course: publishers can benefit from snippets as well. With just a few changes to their webpages, publishers can actually customise their snippets and encourage more sharing of their content on Google+. More details are available on the Google Webmaster blog.

The video below takes you directly to an explanation of snippits.

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#followjourn @cghgreen – Chris Green/journalist

Who? Chris Green

Where? Chris is assistant news editor at the Independent

Twitter? @cghgreen

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, we are recommending journalists to follow online too. Recommended journalists can be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to joel at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

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Petition for Hillsborough papers release exceeds 120,000 signatures

The BBC reported yesterday that an online petition calling for cabinet papers relating to the Hillsborough disaster to be released had collected 100,000 signatures, which is the amount required for the issue to be considered for a debate in parliament.

This number has continued to rise and is currently over the 120,000 mark.

The papers in question are said to contain details of conversations involving former prime minister Margaret Thatcher about the Hillsborough disaster. The BBC originally requested that the papers be released through a freedom of information request two years ago.

Last month the information commissioner Sir Christopher Graham ruled that there was a public interest in the information being released. It also accused the authority of an “excessive delay” in responding to the original request, which was then to deny the release of the information under a series of exemptions.

The Cabinet Office has since appealed the decision, the BBC reports in this article.

Trinity Mirror Regional’s head of multimedia David Higgerson blogs here about the potential impact of the ultimate decision on the government’s claims of transparency and openness.

… it’s only by seeing the documents in full that we’ll know the current government believes in true openness – an openness where the agenda is set by the public, not by the civil servants.

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App of the week for journalists – Wunderlist

App of the week: Wunderlist

Operating systems: Apple (iPhone and iPad) and Android, plus web, Mac and Windows

Cost: Free

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? The app is a ‘to do’ productivity app which allows you to schedule tasks. It syncs with a web version or application on your PC or Mac to allow you to manage tasks individually across devices or as a team. Newsrooms could use Wunderlist to manage their story prospects and journalists can use it to keep track of what they are working on.

There are a lot of task manager apps out there but Wunderlist succeeds where some others fail. It’s intuitive and allows you to set up numerous lists for different areas of work and personal projects, with reminder alerts and an overdue list.

Launched last November, Wunderlist has just hit one million users. The company was launched exactly a year ago by 25-year-old Berliner Christian Reber along with his five other co-founder friends (hence 6Wunderkinder as the name of the company).

Reviews: 4.5 stars in the App Store, 4 stars in the Android Market.

Have you got a favourite app that you use as a journalist? Fill in this form to nominate an app for Journalism.co.uk’s app of the week for journalists.

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#followjourn @pbarclaytimes – Patrick Barclay/journalist

Who? Patrick Barclay

Where? Patrick is chief football commentator at the Times

Twitter? @pbarclaytimes

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, we are recommending journalists to follow online too. Recommended journalists can be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to joel at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – setting up Newsbeat for analytics

Poynter has a handy guide for improving your grasp of site stats using real-time analytics tool Newsbeat.

Newsbeat combines the functionality of Chartbeat with added features. For example, you can see how every article or page is performing. Chartbeat only shows the 20 most active pages. Plus, Newsbeat enables you to create personalized staff logins. So, for example, reporters’ logins can default to their articles, and editors’ logins can default to their sections.

See some of the advantages to using Newsbeat and a full guide to setting up Newsbeat at this link.

Tipster: Joel Gunter

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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Tool of the week for journalists – Duedil, ‘Lexis-Nexis-meets-Google-meets-LinkedIn’

Tool of the week: Duedil

What is it? Duedil is a website which launched in April 2010 and allows you to access company stats and figures for free. Gigaom described it as “Lexis-Nexis-meets-Google-meets-LinkedIn”.

It’s still in beta but is a kind of social network for company information; transparent data available on a site with an intuitive user interface.

You can, of course, access the information via Companies House (for a £1-a-report-fee) but what Duedil does really well is allow you to explore and drill down.

Graphs, charts and timelines present current stock information, the number of employees and opinions on the firm, including tweets.

How is it of use to journalists?

Whatever your area of journalism – from fashion to politics to local newspapers – you no doubt have to keep an eye on the finances, details of directors and employee numbers of companies within your field of expertise.

What’s really nice is that if you log in with your LinkedIn profile, it automatically suggests companies you might be interested in.

Even if you never use Duedil for journalistic research, it’s worth exploring and curiously addictive once you start browsing.

Here’s an example: Journalism.co.uk is interested in following newspaper groups, media organisations and tech companies.

Let’s take News International Publishers Ltd. You can click to see various details.

For example, you can click on the financials for various years.

You can then look at the list of directors and find James Murdoch’s current and past positions presented on a timeline.

Now click on the group graph and see the family of related companies.

Here’s another example, this time for Johnston Press. Here you can see the stock information, number of employees:

Under the “opinions” heading, you can also see the tweets that comment on JP.

It is worth checking and data you access from Duedil (you can report bad data if you come across it and receive £5 as part of its guarantee).

Simply by following companies on Duedil – in the way you would follow people in a social network – you may well come across data to inspire further investigation or information that reveals a connection.

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#followjourn @georgialewis76 – Georgia Lewis/journalist

Who? Georgia Lewis

Where? Georgia is a freelance journalist and editor

Twitter? @GeorgiaLewis76

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, we are recommending journalists to follow online too. Recommended journalists can be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to sarah.booker at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

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