Tag Archives: co-founder

Innovations in Journalism – Pownce.com

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Each week we give technology developers the opportunity to tell us journalists why we should sit up and pay attention to the sites and devices they are are working on. This week it’s file sharing site Pownce.

pownce.jpg

 1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
Hi, I’m Leah Culver, co-founder of Pownce.

Pownce is a social messaging website where members can send messages, files, links, and events to their friends.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
A journalist could use Pownce to distribute a link to a story and get feedback. It’s a great way to gather information and share ideas.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
There are plenty more features on the way including a more complete API and a new way to view links and files.

4) Why are you doing this?
We started Pownce as a better way to share stuff on the web. We were very frustrated with the current methods for sharing files and decided that we could do better.

5) What does it cost to use it?
It is free to use, but if you’d like to share very large files you can purchase a pro account for $20 a year.

6) How will you make it pay?
Right now we make money by selling advertising and pro accounts.

Innovations in Journalism – Imooty.eu

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Image of imooty website

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

Hello. I’m Kristoffer Lassen. I’m the co-founder of Imooty.

Imooty is an interactive compendium of news stories from across Europe. It provides direct access to the latest breaking media coverage from the most important newspapers and media organizations based in the European Union, Switzerland and Norway.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?

Imooty makes it possible for users to compare and contrast vast amounts of information.

By clicking the European map, readers may browse through a particular country’s major and minor papers and blogs in English and local languages.

One can easily search for a particular term across all European papers or simply navigate by the common news topics such as politics, science, or business.

MyImooty allows users to create their own media universe. By collecting and saving the most frequently accessed news topics, you may collect your favourite sources on a single customized page. Each time you return to your page, the news is updated and sorted by subject, search terms and titles.

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

The technical and conceptual goal of Imooty is not only to provide access to the latest breaking news, but also to enable a convenient way to review news archives.

With its integrated search engine, users may find specific content located in several different databases and retrieve them through a single business transaction. We’re also in the process of adding Podcast and IPTV modules.

4) Why are you doing this?

I’m Norwegian and co-founder Blaise Bourgeois is French but we are both expats living in Germany.

We are both interested in commentary and analysis of current events; however, keeping up to date on both the media landscape here in Berlin, as well as in our respective home countries was unmanageable.

So we set out to create a platform that could solve this problem. We believe that as the European Union continues its development, more people will migrate and follow news and current events in different languages from nearby countries.

5) What does it cost to use it?

Access to the latest news is free and we simply redirect traffic to the newspapers. Reklama: Bene pigiausios auto dalys internetu svetainėje UAB ŠIAULIŲ AUTODOTA As mentioned, also archived news will be searchable on the platform and such content will be displayed in the same format as the latest news (headline with a teaser text below it). Access to this information is a premium feature.

6) How will you make it pay?

Our business model is based on a combination of sales commission and advertising revenue.

Image of imooty website also

Innovations in Journalism – ScribbleSheet

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image of scribblesheet website

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

I am John Ndege, co-founder of ScribbleSheet.

ScribbleSheet is a citizen journalism site that focuses on contrarian opinions and unreported news typically with a young adult slant.

Its about empowering people people to express themselves so everyone has a voice.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?

Its a great place to find interesting stories mainstream publications forget or simply ignore. The youth angle helps give an insight into what the under 30’s think about politics, society, business and technology.

For writers, ScribbleSheet gives them the opportunity to improve their skills and gain feedback from the community. Editors of major publications should take note they may just find their next writer on ScribbleSheet, there are some talented individuals on the site.

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

We don’t believe in standing still. We are continually evolving, adding new features and responding to user feedback. We cannot reveal anything just yet but expect some major changes in the coming months.

4) Why are you doing this?

If I want to read alternative and insightful stories about politics and society that have a youthful slant I have few places to go.

If I am an aspiring writer with intelligent things to say but lack the expertise or time to commit to a blog where do I go? There are not many places that fit these requirements yet there is a burgeoning need. Just think about all the student journalists after they graduate, most stop writing. This needn’t happen.

5) What does it cost to use it?

Everyone’s favourite word – FREE!

6) How will you make it pay?

Advertising initially, with other possible revenue streams to follow. However, at the moment we are focused on acquiring readers and writers. Presently we are looking for angel investment.

Canon developing built-in watermarking system for photographers

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According to site OhGizmo, camera manufacturer Canon has filed a patent for a camera that will take a photo of a photographer’s iris as they take a picture.

This iris image will then act as a watermark and could help snappers identify unlicensed use of their images – particularly online.

On the copyright theme, Kevin Smith, co-founder of picture agency Splash News, discussed with Journalism.co.uk the merits of Scan X – the technology employed by the agency to track their content online and protect revenue.

Smith admitted that the procedure was expensive for Splash – as such putting it out of reach for independent and freelance photographers. However, patents such as Canon’s could see this technology dripping through to a more affordable level.

Valleywag: Digg has secret editors

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Hold onto your hats, this might get rough.

Valleywag says Digg co-founder Kevin Rose has admitted that his social news site, a supposedly democratic venue where users pick the headlines, employs moderators: “We have site moderators that ban spammers, remove illegal content, and keep an eye on things. Always have, always will.”

Two views on the future of blogging UK – granular quantity or ‘quality’ big blogs

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The British blogosphere had an ripple of excitement last week with the launch of Messy Media‘s first offering – Westmonster.

In interview with Journalism.co.uk developers Lloyd Shepherd and Andrew Levy talked about their strategy for launching, what they hope, will be a relatively small number of ‘high quality’ blogs ‘that appeal to a mass audience’.

And up their sleeves? A worker-centric blog about the City, blogs on motoring and journalism, as well as a celebrity title written for ‘people with a brain’.

They want big audience, US style (and bigger advertising returns – no doubt?). Can it work like that? They say they want to win the audience with ‘quality’ rather than quantity.

But can a popular, eyeball-heavy blog just be quality without the quantity?

Ashley Norris, co-founder of Shiny Media, told Journalism.co.uk that Shiny was a ‘mini content factory‘ continually producing a mix of content – news, opinion, and extra background material – in a bid to keep readers coming back to the site, again and again, during the day.

And it’s a strategy he thinks has still got legs, saying there is still huge potential to launch niche blogs in the UK, building large audiences through multiple publications, as more and more leisure pursuits find an outlet on the web.

“There is a massive opportunity, part of me thinks that at the moment we should just continue to churn out blog after blog after blog in different verticals, because virtually every time we have done it, after a time it has reached a point where it’s getting a significant amount of UK traffic and interest from UK advertisers.”