Category Archives: Multimedia

Birmingham Mail looking at developing community-based sites

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In addition to the launch of a new website, The Birmingham Mail is looking at developing and hosting a series of community-based education websites.

In interview with Journalism.co.uk, editor Steve Dyson said the newspaper was looking at a range of options for local community sites.

One of the options, he said, was to host sites for local educational institutions, where students would write the content.

“What we are planning further down the line is local community websites, again hosted by the Birmingham Mail, but they may well be sites in their own right,” he told Journalism.co.uk.

“We are looking at a variety of community sites, mainly around schools and media courses in schools, where they have asked if they can fill a local community website for us.

“We are talking to educational groups about it. There are about 15 schools around Birmingham that are developing media courses and as part of the courses they have to have websites which have to be updated daily by students. What we are talking to them about is hosting it for them.”

Dyson stressed that these sites were very much in the early planning stage but were being considered along the same lines as the series of community sites launched last year by the Teesside Gazette, another Trinity Mirror paper.

Indiana Star uses time-lapse photography to beat video rules

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US newspaper The Indiana Star is using ‘time-lapse’ photography to overcome a rule that precludes websites not affiliated with the NFL from showing footage of American football matches.

Speaking to the Associated Press Photo Managers, the paper has experimented using a still camera and motor drive bursts – which allow shots to be taken in quick succession. These images are then put together using Quicktime to create ‘a video-like experience’, the report says.

The Quicktime-packaged shots are combined with video of post-match press conferences and audio from fans and the ground before the game.

Journalism.co.uk multimedia reporting competition ends tomorrow

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The deadline for entries to the Journalism.co.uk multimedia reporting contest is tomorrow.

The competition will reward innovative use of online multimedia to deliver a piece of journalism – relating in some way to travel – with prizes of luxury Sandstorm Kenya travel bags.

For more details of how to enter visit the competition link or email Oliver [at] journalism.co.uk.

The future of podcasting

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Last night’s Radio Academy event on the future of podcasting proved a lively affair with criticism from Matt Wells, head of audio at Guardian Unlimited, of the BBC’s podcasting strategy and debate over podcasting’s relationship with radio.

The latter produced the following exchange between Trevor Dann, director of the Radio Academy and first speaker in the clip, and Wells.

[audio:http://www.journalism.co.uk/sounds/mw.mp3]

But as fellow panellist Nathalie Schwarz, director of radio at Channel 4, went on to point out: it doesn’t matter – the generation that are going be most in tune with podcasting won’t care what it’s called – adding weight to Wells’ suggestion that calling it radio is a hang-up of the traditional media.

Schwarz also levelled Wells’ views on the BBC’s podcast service: how you define success in podcasting, she suggested, should be related to what you are trying to achieve.

“The brave new world isn’t just about big numbers and mass reach – I think that’s the old style world of looking at RAJAR as a almost a trading currency to get commercial revenue.”

The entire evening’s discussion can be listened to courtesy of the Radio Academy’s website.

Manchester Evening News launches interactive traffic map

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The Manchester Evening News has augmented its first use of interactive Google Maps with a new addition detailing traffic congestion and roadworks across the city.

Manchester Evening News launches interactive traiffic map

The newspaper is using information on bottlenecks and traffic build-ups sourced from the readership to construct maps of problem areas.

Manchester Evening News launches interactive traiffic map

The traffic map follows the addition of the Manchester Evening News Murder Map, an interactive feature detailing all the killings across the city since 1999.

The murder map was seemingly inspired by the groundbreaking crime maps used by newspaper in the US. ChicagoCrime.org and LA Times.com homicide map were amongst the first to take advantage of easily accessible public information on crime in the US.

Multimedia local coverage for Ipswich murder trial

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Reporters at Suffolk papers the East Anglian Daily Times and Evening Star in Ipswich have joined forces to provide rolling coverage of the murder trial of Steve Wright, the former Ipswich publican accused of murdering five prostitutes in the town between October and December 2006.

Video reports from the trial, which began yesterday, will be available online, in addition to live text updates under a special section on each site. The sites also feature an interactive timeline and Google Earth map of key sites relating to the trial, as well as background information on key individuals in the case.

Speaking to HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk, web editor James Goffin said four reporters were covering the trial – two in court, and two manning a video relay. He added that the court reporters were equipped with a laptop with a mobile connection allowing them to send copy straight from the court to the website.

In the article, Goffin estimated that page impressions on the sites would double during the trial.

Nokia mobiles gets a multimedia blog publishing application

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Telewaving is today launching Wavelog, an application that allows users to post multimedia content directly from Nokia mobile phones to blogs.

The Wavelog system works with s60, the software run on smart Nokia multimedia phones like the N95.

According to the developers the software, which was developed and tested on Nokia N95 mobile phones posting to the WordPress, can run on any blogging platform.

The system sounds similar to the software developed by Nokia and Reuters for their mobile journalism project.

That system allowed journalists to upload multimedia reports from their N95 phones to a back-end WordPress blog that desk editors would then have access to.

The Telewaving system is also able to upload text, images, audio, and video and is able to upload over any network connection (this may just be US networks, though).