September 2011
31 posts
2 tags
Knight Digital Media Center has a treasure chest...
kdmc tutorials
KDMC produces a wealth of digital media tutorials to support our training sessions and classes. While the focus of some tutorials is on technology and journalism, most are general enough to be of use to anyone.
Select a category to find related tutorials
Audio Recording, Capturing and Editing
Audio Recorders Make an informed decision when buying a...
3 tags
Tracks of Life: Looking back at September 2001
I originally wrote this in September 2001, sometime after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. It’s good to look back sometimes.
It is time for man to make a new appraisal of himself. His failure is abject. His plan for the future is infantile. The varied forms of his civilization in this century are smashing each other. — Philip Wylie, Generation of Vipers
I walked into Denny’s and was...
August 2011
17 posts
1 tag
Is Chrome's rapid release sked easier on IT?
Autoupdate is one of Chrome’s killer features. It is magical because it continuously updates an entire development platform invisibly, frequently. Supporting it has driven how we structure our development processes. It was also one of Chrome’s first features. Delving back into project history long before we launched publicly in 2008, the autoupdate project was one of the very...
2 tags
I've acquired a heck of a lot of bookmarks...
Having coding tools a click away is great, until the bookmarks become unorganized and unruly.
So I went through some bookmarks I have in a folder called Dev Apps and figured I’d share some of what is in there.
By no means do I use each of these on daily basis, or even visit them each day. But it’s good to know they are there.
So, if you’re looking for some new sites —...
1 tag
A hurricane wanders into a Journal Register...
About 14 months ago the Journal Register Company’s Ben Franklin Project challenged our staffers to imagine their reporting and newsgathering processes without any of the systems they were used to using. At that time the assignment was to promote innovation and challenge our existing workflow. That experiment showed long-tail value this past weekend as journalists from across Journal Register...
3 tags
In the name of moving on to new things - per the...
A key tenant of the Cult of Done Manifesto is “The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done,” and with that I consider myself done with this map of U.S. Bank Failures since 2000.
The code is up on GitHub if you want to grab it, make it better or see how a beginner unaware of shortcuts tackled this. You can also download the data. And if you have ideas on where...
1 tag
Dunno how long the "There is your dagger" line of...
View the clothing and other items.
Can you write a blog post from the command line?
With Posterous CL I just did… Thanks to David Reynolds for putting together this little python script that allows posting to Posterous sites.
I’ve been wanting some kind of Posterous desktop editor for a while now. There are a few for Tumblr, but nothing for the lesser known micro-blog platform.
Email is probably the most common way to post to Posterous, but here’s a fun...
4 tags
View & organize Fusion Tables and shape files in...
UPDATED: Looks like if you open a Fusion Table from the Google Docs interface you get a docs ID for the table sted of the FT ID, meaning you would have to go to File —> About to get the ID. Still, the docs interface is way handy for organizing and renaming, so I think I’ll keep with it for a bit.
SECOND UPDATE: If — in the Google Docs interface — you trash a table, it...
2 tags
Do print readers remember more?
View this through Storify’s new slideshow feature
2 tags
Others will have more intriguing stories about how...
… it’s Apple’s early commitment to education and Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniack wanting their products in schools that affected me first-hand, and allowed me so many opportunities at a time when computers were showing.
My personal memories…
— The first computer I ever used — back in second grade in 1982 — was an Apple IIe. I remember when Mrs. Jelle told us...
2 tags
From my @evernote Stash: @mattwaite's "Molten...
The other component of the data ghetto that bothers me is that you can’t find that data outside the ghetto. Please, someone point me to a place where there’s dynamic content being fed to the story level pages. I have yet to see where someone’s crime data is being fed into a story about a crime, i.e. a map of murders from the data ghetto’s crime application dynamically generated on a story page...
4 tags
"Tweeting" shop, holding the door open and...
Typing this sitting next to a lime tree at a campground in Big Sur, where — I have to say — the time to sit and ponder the world while looking at the Pacific Ocean for the first time has been fantastic. As such, can’t add too many sleek online formatting features…
…
Talking shop is one of the fine newspaper traditions, those hours you would spend with co-workers...
4 tags
That's a #MozNewsLab wrap, but I have a feeling...
Well, the pitch is complete, the proposal submitted and now it’s time for my last official post as part of the Mozilla-Knight Journalism Learning Lab…
I can’t express enough how lucky I was to be part of such an immersive experience and be exposed to so many interesting individuals. And it’s safe to say it’s already had an impact on my day-to-day work with...
7 tags
Stuck in a rut and in need of a map?
UPDATED Aug. 6: So the address search which worked after I uploaded it seems to be a bit wonky, so back to the drawing board I go.
Well then check out my Madison City Council map, or fork the code.
I’ve been so wrapped up in my Mozilla-Knight Journalism Learning Lab project that I need to make something that works and make it quick. Thus, there is a lot of room to add value to this map....
3 tags
AP's guidelines for "Off the record", "Background"...
Not everyone understands “off the record” or “on background” to mean the same things. Before any interview in which any degree of anonymity is expected, there should be a discussion in which the ground rules are set explicitly.
These are the AP’s definitions:
On the record: The information can be used with no caveats, quoting the source by name.
Off the record: The information cannot be used...
