Haunted Travels Week
October 30, 2003
The Travel Channel is broadcasting an excellent convergence package, with shows every night this week about everything from haunted hotels to America’s Most Haunted Places. Complementing the broadcasts on the Web are a slew of interesting interactive features: You can listen to one of several ghost stories read by tour guides and authors. You can explore spooky cities through interactive maps showing local legends of haunted hotels, possessed prisons and spooky cemeteries. You can cast your vote on the World’s Creepiest Places — and then visit Famous Graves and spots spooked by American Historical Figures. You can even read some of the best ghost stories submitted by the audience. And for fun, check out the Zap-a-Ghost! a game.
This package is so good, it’s spooky!
Electronic AP details unveiled
October 30, 2003
The Associated Press has unveiled more details of the forthcoming shift to eAP, the Electronic Associated Press, a new initiative to make AP a more interactive network of multimedia content. (See previous entry about the eAP).
John Reid, AP’s director of services and technology and a senior vice president, described the initiative as a new generation of content management and distribution systems to be rolled out in the next 30 months.
Reid outlined six elements of eAP:
* eAP Central: A common database repository for all AP content.
* eAssign: A new system within AP for making, coordinating and tracking assignments; elements can be made available to members and other customers as well.
* eCategorize: A software engine to categorize, index and search.
* ePackage: Tools for editors to build multimedia packages that are easy to use as part of a newspaper page, Web site, television presentation or wireless device.
* eDistribute: Providing AP content through the Internet that is tightly integrated with customers’ systems.
* eSolutions: AP’s use of all the advancements to provide technology or technical services to customers.
“It’s something that, going forward, really is going to revolutionize the way that we provide content, the way that members electronically interact with AP, just as much as the photojournalism revolution of a decade ago did” with the introduction of digital satellite technology, Reid said.
AOL News moves to HTML
October 29, 2003
Exclusive: 
AOL News has a new publishing system and is now publishing for the first time in HTML, which means that subscribers can access AOL News on the Web as well as through its proprietary software, AOL News Director Gary Kebbel tells CyberJournalist.net. Previously, AOL News was published in a proprietary system called Rainman.
“A nice side effect of our HTML publishing is that our editors’ work now is available on MyAOL and AOL Search for members at work, who sign in with their screen name,” he said. “This is a big change for us because most business, education and government computers don’t allow the AOL client to be downloaded on them. Now, we can get around that by providing AOL News in HTML via MyAOL and AOL Search to members at work.”
Here’s a screenshot of the new AOL News.
“More than just a redesign, this was a paradigm shift that required the creation of an entirely new publishing process and publishing tool,” Kebbel said. “We also had to modify our work processes to adapt to our new environment. One of the strengths of AOL’s proprietary Rainman pages is that they are very light and easy to download on a 28.8 modem. We agonized over the page weight and HTML code to optimize it for competitively fast downloads.”
Electronic newsprint editions on the rise?
October 28, 2003
More people are reading a daily newspaper without ever touching it, reports The NewsHour’s Terence Smith. Here’s a transcript and audio of his report on the growing trend of electronic newsprint editions, and how newspaper publishers are working to keep pace with changing technologies. About 160 U.S. newspapers — and more than 225 papers worldwide — offer electronic editions.
FT.com to launch keyword alert service
October 28, 2003
FT.com is launching a keyword news alert service to help drive new subscriptions. The service will send subscribers regular e-mails with news updates on their chosen subjects whenever relevant articles are published. Users can select from a range of criteria, including market sector, company name or individual name.
Related headlines:
CNN.com launches e-mail alerts
New York Times’ News Tracker
Google’s new News Alerts
Step-by-step e-mail interviewing tips
October 28, 2003
E-mail interviews are now like telephone interviews ? they have their shortcomings when stacked against the in-person interview format, but they’re also a reality for journalists under deadline pressure. Here’s a look at the advantages and disadvantages of interviewing sources via e-mail. And here’s a look at how to use this form of communication efficiently for reporting.
Amazon.com: Search inside the book
October 27, 2003
Amazon.com has launched a fantastic new tool, a digital database that users can search for words and phrases in a text — not just the title or author. The new feature creates a reference library of sorts, including about 33 million pages from more than 120,000 books. This is a great resource for journalists searching for information.
On Wired.com, Gary Wolf takes a more in-depth look at this project: “To build the archive, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has had to unravel a tangle of technological and copyright problems. His solution promises to remake the publishing business and give Amazon a powerful new weapon in its battle against online competitors such as Yahoo, Google, and eBay. But the most interesting thing about the archive is the way it resolves the paradox of the book, respecting its physical form while transcending its limits.”
The Author’s Guild is already up in arms about this. “When we learned of the program, we thought that it would be impossible to read more than 5 consecutive pages from a book in the program,” The Guild said in a statement posted on its Web site. “It turns out that it’s quite simple (though a bit inconvenient) to look at 100 or more consecutive pages from a single lengthy book. We’ve even printed out 108 consecutive pages from a bestselling book. It’s not something one would care to do frequently, but it can be done. So a reader could choose to print out all the fish recipes from a cookbook in the program. Or the section on Tuscany from a travel book. We believe readers will do this, and the perplexing question is whether the additional exposure for a title — and the presumptive increase in sales — offsets sales lost from those who just use the Amazon system to look up the section of a book when they need it.”
Blogs spreading like wildfire
October 27, 2003
A recent study by research firm Perseus Development found that 66 percent of the 4.12 million blogs online have been “abandoned” — not updated for at least two months. But The New York Times reports on another number not released as part of the study: That number of active blogs is expected to rise from 1.62 million last year to 3.3 million to 5.86 million in 2004. Nevermind the number of inactive ones. Wow. That’s a lot of people self-publishing online.
Online journalists to gather in Chicago
October 24, 2003
The nation’s leading Internet journalists will convene in Chicago Nov. 14-15 for the fourth annual Online News Association Conference and Awards Banquet, including the announcement of the winners of the prestigious Online Journalism Awards. Jack Fuller, president of Tribune Publishing Company, and Andrew Sullivan, social and political commentator and former editor of The New Republic magazine, will be the keynote speakers for ONA’s 2003 conference. The conference will also bring together seven of digital media’s most forward-thinking leaders ? including Esther Dyson, a top authority on emerging technologies ? for a bold look into the future. Here’s the full agenda and information on how to register.
‘Homeless not helpless’ in Kansas
October 23, 2003
An excellent package of cross-media journalism from 6News, the Journal-World and LJWorld.com looks at the personal experience of being homeless in Lawrence, Kan. Using video, a flash interactive and daily reports, the package tells who the homeless are and examines services in the city intended to help those in need.
Also check out the exhaustive coverage of the start of Kansas University women’s basketball preseason by their sister site, KUSports.com. You rarely see such in-depth multimedia coverage of a subject, let alone by a small site.