Monthly Archives: February 2009

Experiences in social media from the Birmingham Post’s Jo Geary

Insightful presentation from Development Editor Jo Geary on some of the lessons she’s learned while building the Birmingham Post’s presence in social media. You can also find it on her blog here.

Guardian tops Reddit submissions list

The Guardian has had more stories submitted to Reddit.com than any other major newspaper site.

The news follows the Telegraph topping the Digg list and the Times topping the StumbleUpon list.

The graph shows how many pages have been submitted to Reddit for each site. It’s based on an analysis of newspapers’ Reddit submissions that also suggests the Telegraph is catching up with the Guardian – they tied for the number of stories submitted over the last week.

Submissions to Reddit: Guardian wins

Submissions to Reddit: Guardian wins

USA Today’s awesome jobs forecast interactive

 

USA Today interactive - click for larger image

USA Today interactive - click for larger image

Here’s a hugely rich interactive from USA Today which does a number of things very well.

Firstly, it’s an intelligent use of resources: the recession is likely to last for some time, and be the biggest ongoing story of our time. With everyone talking about it, you need something with that ‘wow’ factor, that will not only attract a great deal of attention now, but also a long tail of repeat visits.

Secondly, it’s personalised – not only can you get information on jobs growth in your state, but your particular industry in your state.

Thirdly, it’s dynamic – the graphic promises to be updated each month “with revised data from Moody’s Economy.com.”

There’s one major element missing – interaction. Find a way to capture users’ experiences (value) and you have an extra dimension that really capitalises on all the attention your interactive is getting.

Still, I’m not complaining…

How to build an iPhone app

You may have seen this on Mashable, but equally, you may not, so I thought I’d pass it on. Demonstrating the value of being open about your processes (because this document will now be viewed by thousands of people), PhotoKast created this 37-page guide to how they developed their iPhone app. Very useful reading if you’re thinking of doing something for iPhones.

Building PhotoKast: Creating an iPhone app in one month

The day-to-day activities of a web editor. In summary


After years writing for both print and web, I decided to express myself in a different way. I’ve done photojournalism for some time now, but I need another form of expression to convey humour in my narration. Photography is cool, but much too refined for lampoons (feel free to disagree with me). Paul pointed me to a few websites on infographics, and I thought: wow, this is cool.

I use Graphjam to teach myself, and the business writers, how to create charts to illustrate business stories. Prof Randy Pausch, that great 3D imaging engineer, said that if you want to teach someone a very difficult computer concept, use a ‘head fake’. Tell him to build a game, not a programming language, and the whole learning process will be a lot easier.

Writing/producing for the web: BASIC principles of online journalism (Online journalism lesson #3)

Here’s the 3rd in my series of classes in online journalism. Having already set up an RSS readers and Delicious account, a Twitter account and a blog, this week they start the news website, and learn about writing and producing for the web: