Tag Archives: alpha

Journalism Daily: FT.com’s innovations, plinth reporter plans a party and the need for media blackouts

A daily round-up of all the content published on the Journalism.co.uk site. You can also sign up to our e-newsletter and subscribe to the feed for the Journalism Daily here.

News and features:

Ed’s picks:

Tip of the day:

#FollowJourn:

On the Editor’s Blog:

Journalism Daily: thelondonpaper to close, tax and video for freelancers and video mag ads

A daily round-up of all the content published on the Journalism.co.uk site. You can also sign up to our e-newsletter and subscribe to the feed for the Journalism Daily here.

News and features:

Ed’s picks:

Tip of the day:

#FollowJourn:

On the Editors’ Blog:

Online Journalism Blog: ‘Wolfram Alpha for journalists’

Paul Bradshaw takes a look at new seach engine (or computational knowledge engine) Wolfram Alpha, with a journalist’s hat on.

Bradshaw finds, for example: “From a journalistic perspective, [some of its] features are a time-saver if you don’t fancy browsing through almanacs and biographies for the same facts. But that’s it. And it’s not clear where the information is coming from or how accurate it is (Karen Blakeman, whose review is worth reading, told me it gets some things wrong, ‘even chemical structures’) – that’s the advantage of Google or Wikipedia: you can evaluate the credibility of the source relatively intuitively; Wolfram, however, presents itself as the source, and where links are given in ‘Source Information’ these are often just to homepages.”

Full post at this link…

Q&A: Nir Ofir, founder of iamnews

Still in the alpha, invite-only stage, website iamnews has plans to become the world’s first open newsroom for media organisations and reporters.

Journalism.co.uk put some quickfire questions to Nir Ofir, founder of the site, which is aiming for ‘networked journalism’ between news providers and journalists and is not just another ‘citizen media news’ start-up.

1) How will iamnews set itself apart from other citizen journalism projects?
iamnews.com is a tool, a collaborative powerful news tool in the hands of publishers and reporters. It is not a news destination site or a citizen media news brand. We are here to create a simple and easy to use tool but not trying to become the editors. We hope to create an alternative to news agencies by syndicating the content in reasonable prices and policies.

2) You mention in your open letter on the site that ‘There is also no current solution for quickly investigating the reliability of this material, or the reputation of its sources’ – how will iamnews address this?
It is a process that will take time. iamnews is an invitation-only service. We are sure that publishers and reporters will invite only people that they trust. We also created a rating and feedback system for publishers and reporters, who will rate each other and give feedback about their work.

3) Similarly, how will the platform make money and what compensation is offered to contributors?
iamnews is hoping to become a news syndication service for the big media organisations. All the content that will be made in iamnews will be available for them to purchase. Revenues will go to the publishers and reporters that participated in the creation of the articles.

4) Are you looking to partner media/news organisations?
Sure! We are now working on an open newsroom solution for news organisations. So they can create their own open newsroom, create news assignments and engage their audience in the creation of news.

5) Are there any citizen journalism/networked journalism projects that your particularly admire? If so, why?

I was watching ohmynews closely and loved the fact that there is a mix of professional and amatuer news making over there.

Traffic soars to Times Online blogs

Global page views of Times Online’s blogs rose past the 2.5 million mark in May this year, according to figures from the publisher – an increase of 500 per cent compared to May 2007.

The graph below shows the overall growth of its top performing blogs. Daniel Finkenstein’s Comment Central and Paris correspondent Charles Bremner’s Le Blogue are shown to perform consistently well, while The Game blog and Money Central (no doubt spurred by the recent economic downturn) have increased in popularity:

The site’s top 10 blogs in terms of global page views in May this year were:

    The Game Blog 562,835
    Money Central 552,941
    Comment Central 541,598
    Alpha Mummy 170,862
    Fanzine Fanzone 136,760
    Charles Bremner 114,884
    Formula 1 103,607
    Snakes and Ladders 94,202
    Mousetrap Technology 88,496
    Red Box 85,96

    As you can see the top three account for the majority of the blogs’ traffic. Figures for TimesOnline’s page views from May’s Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe) report suggest the site recorded 117,826,926 page impressions. These stats therefore suggest blogs accounted for roughly 2.12 per cent of the site’s total page views.

      Innovations in Journalism – live streaming video from mobiles developed by Qik

      We give developers the opportunity to tell us journalists why we should sit up and pay attention to the sites and devices they are working on. Today, it’s live video streamed over the web from mobile phones from Qik.

      image of qik website logo

      1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
      Hi. I’m Bhaskar Roy, co-founder of Qik.

      Qik’s vision is to enable anyone with a camera-phone to stream live video from anywhere in the world to the web, TV, mobile phones, and gaming consoles.

      2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
      For news – immediacy of information is very important. Qik enables journalists to capture and report news live from wherever they are – without having to wait for the news truck to arrive.

      It enables journalists to conduct better interviews by taking questions from anywhere in the world. It provides the ability for viewers on the web to send real-time chat messages to the person streaming the video straight to their phone enabling a high level of interactivity.

      As a result journalists are able to conduct richer, better interviews. It also enables journalists to leverage anyone who may be at a particular event to capture the story for them.

      3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
      We are just getting started! 🙂

      In our current invitation-only alpha release, users with Nokia smartphones can stream live video from their phones to anywhere on the web and playback their Qik videos from their phones.

      We are working on addressing other smartphones and Java-enabled phones. We are also working on providing the ability to stream live from phone to phone.

      4) Why are you doing this?
      We truly believe that sharing and experiencing moments of your life with your friends, family and/or your world is invaluable.

      5) What does it cost to use it?
      We are currently in a free, invitation-only alpha stage.

      6) How will you make it pay?
      We are at a very early stage of bringing this innovation to market and focused on ensuring that we deliver high value to the billions of camera phone users globally.

      Innovations in Journalism – Seesmic.com

      Image of seesmic

      1) Who are you and what’s it all about?

      I’m Cathy Brooks, Seesmic executive producer.

      Seesmic is a platform for global conversation. We take all the best of blogging, IM, Twitter and social networks and bring them together, creating a rich environment for debate and discourse using video as the medium.

      2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?

      Think of it as having access to a global pool of expert sources.

      With 4,000 people from 25 countries currently in the system Seesmic provides journalists with eyes and ears in virtually every major part of the world.

      When Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in December 2007, the Seesmic community almost exploded with discussion, revealing a deep, rich pool of commentators whose backgrounds and geography would have made them invaluable to a reporter.

      Seesmic also can serve as a sounding board for story ideas and topics, often resulting in finding experts whose knowledge can support a journalist’s efforts.

      3) Is this it, or is there more to come?

      This is just the beginning. Seesmic opened its doors in September 2007. We have been in a closed, alpha stage with invite only access to the platform since late 2007 and will be opening more widely to the public in 2008.

      We will be building out our community substantially as we open to a more widespread audience. We also will develop and produce both original and sponsored programming as well as create an array of channels for conversations.

      4) Why are you doing this?

      Because in the massive echo-chamber that is the world of social media there are myriad ways to broadcast thoughts and messages to either one, a few or many people, and there are even some ways to have group discussions, but there is a distinct lack of resources allowing people to truly communicate and converse in a meaningful, rich way.

      By leveraging video as the conduit, Seesmic provides a truly personal and human connection.

      5) What does it cost to use it?

      There is presently no cost to the user and we will always provide a free service. There may, in the future, be subscription level “professional” versions with additional features and functionality but that is still in the future. Find out argos opening times and events

      6) How will you make it pay?

      Presently we are building our community and our technology. We have several potential options for revenue – from contextual advertising and sponsored channels/programming to subscription level services that provide additional features and no advertising.

      Image of seesmic website

      New football email from the Times gets hackles up @ Guardian’s Fiver

      Imitation might not be the sincerest form of flattery for the people who write the Guardian’s daily email about football gossip – The Fiver.

      Reacting with the elan of a chided teenager, The Fiver dedicated last Wednesday’s edition to ripping the piss out of the newly launched Times football email – Ahead of the Game. Mocking the launch thus:

      Yes, folks, we’ve had a brainwave! The Fiver is dead – long live Behind The Times, our original, groundbreaking, new, crazy, alpha-male email about FOOTER!!! So sign up to our flagship new venture, and we will send you FIVE minutes of F.U.N. about FOOTER to your inbox EVERY DAY!!!! AT 5PM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It’s a bit like the Fiver… only TRULY USEFUL. And about FOOTER! Yes, you heard that right! It’s about FOOTER! And you really can use it!

      And later:

      120

      The number of minutes Ahead Of The Game should wait each day at 4pm before sending out their all-new funny email about footer. That way, they could save themselves a load of unnecessary bother by simply cutting and pasting the contents of the Fiver and sending those out (but not before correcting all our spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, and adding some funny jokes).

      Followed by reams of links to old news stories.

      Funny? Well, for a bit.