Every week I come across some web-based service that makes it possible to do in a few clicks what a year ago would have required anything from a day of fiddling to months of developer time. Today’s tool is one of a number offered by Dapper, a company which aims to “make it easy and possible for anyone to extract and reuse content from any website.” The tool is the Facebook Appmaker.
It took me around 30 minutes to create a Facebook app which would allow Facebook users to display a feed from my blog. You first need to create a ‘Dapp‘ (basically a custom RSS feed), and then use the Facebook Appmaker to create an app based on that. It’s basically a lot of clicking, and copying and pasting according to the instructions.
Given the ease of use, this means there’s now no excuse for news organisations not to offer Facebook apps for any aspect of their news service - including pages which do not already have RSS feeds.
And here’s the real beauty - a basic app for your news feed is only the beginning.
Because you can create custom RSS feeds from anywhere, you can create custom apps that do any number of things. Similar to Yahoo! Pipes, you can create mashups - or ’scrape’ web content from pages that do not offer RSS feeds (there’s even a Firefox extension that will detect RSS feeds created by other people for any site you’re on).
So, for example, although Google does not offer an RSS feed of searches (Google News and Blog Search do), I created this RSS feed for the search ‘new online magazine launches’ - and then a Facebook app based on that. You could combine any number of RSS feeds, and you can add filters too. From that you can create your own Facebook app, Flash widget, Google Gadget…
Stop there. Do you understand the implications of this? You are not just publishing content any more - you are creating a bespoke news service, built on content from elsewhere, using your journalistic knowledge and editorial experience. Do you know what you have done?
This isn’t news, just evidence for what we already know.
Dig further into the data and you get some curious insights, by the way. Country with most searches for ‘footballer’? Nigeria (followed by the more predictable UK and Ireland) City? Edinburgh. Most searches for ‘celebrity’? Philippines. ‘Politician’? Malaysia.
Virtual intern Natalie Chillington rounds up last week’s online journalism-related news
Google
Google will announce a new metrics tool to measure web site audience, to rival current power players Nielsen and ComScore.
Lots of debate over whether Google is making us stupid
WordPress
Puffbox.com announces it will be sponsoring WordCamp UK in July,bringing together around 100 devotees of WordPress in Birmingham for aweekend of code and conversation.
Twitter
Debate over whether you should use Twitter for live blogging at a conference.
The same people behind the tech news site WebProNews have launched Twellow, a new search tool and directory for finding Twitter users
MySpace partners with NBC News and msnbc.com to find a citizen journalist to cover national conventions of the Democratic and Republican parties later this summer in the US.
Nokia has acquired German social networking service Plazes,expanding it’s mobile internet services. Plazes offers a location-basedservice, with friends posting messages about their location and whatthey are doing from their mobile or PC - sounds like Twitter.
Domestic Chinese mobile phone service provider MICAT has announcedan agreement with social-networking website, MySpace. Together, theywill be launching “MySpace MICAT,” a social platform for Chinese mobile internet users.
Facebook introduces Chinese-language versions of its social networking website, marking its first move into the world’s largest internet market.
Web
Interactive map shows the aftermath of Parkersberg tornado
YouTube is home to nearly half of web clips watched in the UK
Magazine publisher IPC Media buys gaming website Mousebreaker in an effort to increase its access to an audience of young male internet users.
Yahoo to announce the results of a major staff reorganisation as internet firm tries to reassure investors and staff that it can improve its performance and competitiveness.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was due to vote on new internet domain names this week. It is thougth that from early 2009, users will be able to acquire generic addresses such as .love
Media
Debate over ‘Pay-per-view’ future of online journalism
House of Lords report says growth of news sites is harming investment in news gathering
The Associated Press will begin rolling out details of its new pricing to members this week, a plan that will return up to $21 million to its U.S. member newspapers.
Debate over the usefulness of blogging to journalists continues
BBC launches new revamped online catch-up service, iPlayer with integrated radio shows.
Trinity Mirror launches a series of branded YouTube channels for the video content of its regional newspapers.
ITN has signed a ’six figure’ deal with Al Jazeerato make 800,000 hours of archived video content available to thebroadcaster. As part of the deal, the network and production companieswill have access to Channel 4, Reuters, Granada and ITN.
The Independant hires the former head of the prime minister’s digital PR operation Jimmy Leach, to lead online development.
Some journalists still opposed/scared of the internet
Other
Freelance journalist Sean Langan released after being kidnapped by a group associated with the Taliban in a three-month ordeal.
“prime-time advertising on public television will be phased out, with the lost revenues to be replaced by taxes collected from internet, mobile phone and commercial broadcasting companies
“Internet and mobile operators will have to stump up a tax of 0.9 percent of sales—which could raise up to 380 million euros ($595 million), in support of the state-owned France Televisions, which controls the country’s four public channels. A further 80 million euros ($125 million) will come from taxes on commercial broadcasters.”
Given the potential future insecurity of the licence fee in a converged media world, you’d be forgiven for wondering how many MPs, Ofcom bosses and BBC eyes will be looking across the channel to see how and if this works - not to mention Channel 4 as they angle for their piece of the future public pie with 4iP.
Next up: newspapers call for a tax on Google. Oh, sorry, they already did that.
Allison White has written this wonderful roundup of last week’s news for the OJB. But now she’s got a job. Persuade her to do this again in the comments…
Google
-Announced no desire to create content and will respect copyright.
It added face-blur technology to its Street View mapping serivce to protect privacy. Also speculation from Groves Media on whether this technology is more of a threat to civil liberties than CCTV.
Microsoft
-Looking to limit the kinds of computers that can use their low-cost OS, making them poor computers even if they could be better and still be as cheap.
-The Microsoft/Yahoo struggle is still ongoing – rumor has it that Carl Ichan is buying up stocks in Yahoo to replace board members
who will sell to Microsoft. Seems he is replacing board members but his plans are not evident
Twitter
-Poynter did a good roundup of the Twitter coverage of the Chinese earthquake. Also gave news of situation and stories in Burma.
-Twitterfone is a new app for mobiles that allows users to call and leave a voice message, which is translated to text and then posted on Twitter. Has issues like knowing how to end the call.
-Funny meme on Twitter is finishing this sentence: “When Obama wins, …” Mine was “When Obama wins, college will be free and pizza will be subsidized”
-Effort underway to make clickstream tracking opt-in only in US. Marketers say it will be the death of their industry, but will most likely be like opting out of telemarketers.
-RIAA and MPAA still insist on using DRM on content bought to limit customer .Microsoft may also be planning to use a copyright ‘cop’ on the Zune for NBC. EA backs down on using DRM after user outcry at the idea
-Wikipedia to become a print edition, some debate about if the authors should get paid but Techdirt says it is non-controversial and they should not be paid.
-The FBI backs off of the Internet Archive – they wanted records of who used it now journalists can rest more at ease
-In the case against Ray Niro, writer of Troll Tracker blog, tried to prove he was not a “real” journalist and could not claim rights as one because he wasn’t trained, was bias and that he was a corporate mouthpiece. Defense took apart the claim of what it really means to be a journalist.
Nimbuzz moving in on Skype’s territory by making an app for both mobile and PC
Comcast bought Plaxo Inc., the social networking site. It turns online address books into online networks.
A new social site for health issues is iMedix, and although in beta is pretty poor in the community department. The people on it now are rather ‘happy-go-lucky’ as is some of the content which may not be appropriate for the kind of users it wants to attract (people with health problems)
-Social Networking Sites are now allowing people to basically export their data to other sites: MySpace with a few other partnered sites, Facebook to anyone, and Google to anyone. Although Facebook is closing access to journalists and is looking to take off its 5000 friends limit.
Web
Two sites, Newstrust and Newscred, have set up a system to rate the credibility of Web sites. Buzz Machine says it won’t work because there is just too much bad stuff and too easily discredited good stuff.
LiveNewsCamera.com allows viewers to see the news as it’s happening, uncut. Pope speeches, Iraqi parliament hearings, and the like.
PRWeb now allows users to search for their press releases, although this may bring fewer balanced results in a search
Harry McCracken from PC World has left to start his own tech web site.
A lot of talk going on about Seesmic: consensus seems to be that it is rough now with great potential and it is hard to imbed on some sites.
MSNBC has created a new widget to scroll news and also two games to see main news headlines. Not sure if they’re effective, but they’re trying
Media
Time Warner may be looking to unload that do not transfer well to web (i.e. Coffee table mags)
Using video to truly enhance a story – not having it be a stand alone piece but a short snipit filled with things print can’t show, like emotion.
From Thoughts of Nigel: 3 ways China should handle Western media – give access to reporters, don’t freak out on negative coverage, and work on building a worldwide reputation
How journalists can use web bookmarking services to manage, find and publish documents.
Every newspaper has a library, and most journalists have kept some sort of cuttings file for reference. But what if you could search that cuttings file like you search Google? What if you could find similar articles and documents? What if you could let your readers see your raw material?
That’s what online bookmarking - or ‘social bookmarking‘ - tools allow you to do. And they have enormous potential for journalists.
There are a number of social bookmarking services. Del.icio.us is best known and most widely used and supported. For this reason this article will focus mostly on Del.icio.us.
Managing cuttings
The most basic function of bookmarking services is allowing you to effectively manage ‘cuttings’, i.e. online reports, webpages, and articles.
When you register at Del.icio.us you can add buttons to your browser. The next time you’re on a webpage that you think you might want to refer to later, click on that ‘add to del.icio.us’ button to bookmark it. You’ll be given some extra options before you save - and this is where it gets really useful.
The first option is to add ‘notes’. This is a useful place to copy a key quote to, or your own remarks. The second option is to add ‘tags’, i.e. categories, key words, people, etc. The great thing is that this can go in as many categories as you want. So you might tag something with ‘health’, ‘NHS’, ‘report’, and ‘experts’ - or ‘localhistory’, ‘birmingham’ and ‘industry’, for example.
These tags will then be listed on the right hand side of your Del.icio.us page so you can instantly access anything with a particular tag.
Finding new leads and information
Once you start bookmarking webpages, it gets interesting. The ’social’ bit of social bookmarking is that you can see anything tagged ‘NHS’ by anyone else, helping you to spot leads or information you would otherwise have missed.
You can also see who bookmarked the same webpages as you (it will say ’saved by 23 other people’, for instance, underneath), and what else they have bookmarked.
And if you are interested in the sorts of things a particular user is bookmarking, once you’re on their page you can click ‘add X to my network’ to do just that - your page will then contain a link to ‘your network’ which will show anything bookmarked by those users. Regularly checking this can keep you up to date on your chosen field, as well as proving new leads. Consider them your researchers, or tipsters.
Publishing
Some have called it ‘link journalism’ - the very act of gathering sources as an act of journalism itself. Others point to the way the internet can make journalism more transparent: no longer is there a restriction on space or time - readers can, if they wish, click through to full documents, reports and archive material. Or video, audio and images. Or online tools and services.
Social bookmarking sites make it easy to make your raw material available. At its most basic you can include a link at the bottom of your article to your Del.icio.us page - which is what Jo Ind at the Birmingham Post does with her health articles (del.icio.us/birminghampost), or Radio 4’s iPM. You could link to subcategories (my bookmarks on social bookmarking are at http://del.icio.us/paulb/socialbookmarking, for instance). While the article remains the same, the links are continually updated, by you.
But you can also use Del.icio.us’ built in RSS feeds to automatically publish bookmarked articles on your article webpages (or indeed anywhere you wish), as The Guardian’s Jemima Kiss does with her ‘PDA Newsbucket’, and many blogs do with a simple sidebar widget.
Another day, another set of questions from a journalism degree student - this time, one of my own, Azeem Ahmad. If you want to help him by answering the questions, post your comments below.
How important is blogging to you, and your business?
If my ‘business’ is education and freelance journalism, then: enormously important on every level: generating ideas, gathering information, publishing stories and ideas, and marketing and distributing those and, I suppose, myself as a journalist and (*cough*) academic. I find conversation extremely helpful in working through ideas and finding new information, and blogging is a wonderful way of having that conversation with some very well informed and intelligent people. I hope it makes me more intelligent and well informed in turn.
Why do you think blogs are so popular?
To read? Because they allow niche publishing on areas that aren’t necessarily widely covered. Because they have personal voices and not institutional ones. Because they rank highly on Google and so are easy to find. Because they are inherently social and tend to be passed around. Because they are generally more about usefulness than news values.
Why do you believe that so many people now have blogs?
For the same reason so many people have conversations. We like to talk about things that interest us, we like to connect to people who are interested in the same things. Some of us even like to work through ideas. There’s also that instant feedback thing where you realise people are talking back.
What do you understand by the term ‘Citizen Journalist’?
Oh God. I treat it as a broad term covering anyone not employed professionally as a journalist who produces journalism materials, whether that’s photos or video of a newsworthy event, or blog analysis or commentary. But I think we’re wasting valuable time if we fuss over semantics.
Do you think the events of 9/11 in New York catapulted UGC, and blogging into the mainstream?
For some people they clearly did. For others the July 7 bombings were key, or the Asian Tsunami, or Virginia Tech. There have been a few key events, each bringing UGC and blogging to new audiences. And then a long tail of millions of smaller events where people have only found news by going on blogs.
How importantly do you value UGC (User Generated Content) such as photos/videos that are sent in by the public?
As a consumer of mainstream news I tend to find them generally quite ‘fluffily’ treated, as a novelty. For big news events the tone changes to one of ‘authenticity’ and drama, but that can still be offputting. They are much more interesting and valuable for me when published in contexts designed for UGC, e.g. Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, blogs. On those places there is no one with a megaphone telling me how I should interpret this media.
Do you see blogging as an alternative to traditional journalism?
I see blogging as a challenge and a complement to traditional journalism. Having news coming from outside of a commercialised, bureaucratised news industry, outside news cycles, is enormously important. The shift in the balance of power so that readers can highlight the inaccuracies of journalism, or add useful context, without having to write a letter to the editor, is much needed. Having voices from outside the media industry is important. And having journalists whose success is based on their relationship with their readers rather than their relationship with their editor, is refreshing. Traditional journalism can learn a lot from all of this.
It seems that they have made a basic mistake of selling text links on the home page, which bear no real relation to the content of the page - and then by leaving simple “links” in place which will enhance the position of those client sites in Google.
Here is a screen shot of the bottom of the Economist home page this lunchtime:
The list of advertisers is areas which are often found trying to gain advantage in the search engines by link buying.
… multiple links to the same site, a mass of keywords, and they are simple links that pass pagerank.
… There seem to be several howlersmistakes:
Text links being sold to advertising Clients not particularly relevant to the page. Bearing in mind that the practice has been under fire from Google for some considerable time, that was asking for trouble.
Allowing those links to be visible to search engines. The recommendation is to add a “nofollow” attribute to the links, use Javascript, or to use a redirect.
To do this with Credit Checking Services and “Cheap Loan” Finance companies seems - on top of the above - to be like running a red-flag up the flagpole for the sake of it.
… The moral? Take great care when you implement adverts and text links: you are in bed with an elephant.
“Techcrunch and Huomah are reporting that Google is looking into launching a Do It Yourself Publishing Service for Magazines.”The patent abstract says that Google is investigating
“A method includes receiving personalized content from a plurality of content sources. The personalized content is based on user input. The method further includes receiving a personalized advertisement based on user input, and creating a customized publication including the personalized content and the personalized advertisement.”"
More here. Thanks to Richard Grimes of the NUJ New Media mailing list for the link.
