Innovation in College Media

Time for some curated links I’ve come across this week:

FUN

Instant Pie Chart: See abo.d. Enter values, a title and colors for each segment, click the buttons and you’ve got yourself a pie chart. Sure, it’s not Excel, but what do you expect from “Instant”?

Home: A Ghost Story: “An immersive story that uses your personal network – the web, email, video and your phone.” You can also opt for a “lite” version that only uses your computer.

7 ways to avoid scary web design (Mintleaf Studio): Most of the advice is actually standard fare these days, but certainly worth a Halloween-themed reminder.

Social Media: Love It or Hate It? Video Contest (iContact): Winner gets $10K, which is a pretty nice payday for producing a short video. Click the link above for details. via ReadWriteWeb

J-INDUSTRY

Why Not Occupy Newsrooms? (New York Times): CEO excess isn’t only a Wall Street phenomenon. If you haven’t read this column from Monday, you should do so now.

Will Social Media Make Us Anti-Social? A Talk With Gary Shteyngart (The Atlantic): “I know professors who can’t read an entire book–professors of English literature, mind you. So everyone’s attention span has been shot. We’re no longer used to processing long strings of information. When a book is no longer a book but yet another text file, it’s very hard to say, “OK, I’m gonna devote myself to the 300 pages of text on my screen” when I have all this other stuff that I need to do.” (The 1920s called. They want their complaint about that new-fangled “radio” back)

#ASNE chat, Oct. 25, 2011 (American Society of News Editors): This week’s chat dealt specifically with internships, so lots of stuff there for students and advisers. This is a Storify of the chat session.

Seven things you should know if you’re starting out programming (The Guardian): Jonathan Richards made the leap from a print journalist to the world of programming. This is his advice.

TECH AND TOOLS

Wanted: The unfollowemator (Ryan Sholin): “As a Twitter user, I want a way to automatically unfollow users who mention specific terms with a certain sentiment, so that I can easily filter out people with which you just can’t argue.”

Codify: Elegant, Creative Coding Directly on the iPad – No (other) Computer Needed: Codify is a lightweight coding environment that allows you to work directly on the iPad. That is, you don’t have to use the full-blown iOS API, and you don’t have to connect a computer or fire up Xcode. You just start the app and begin coding, in a way that ought to be very friendly to users of Processing. via @darthcheeta on Twitter

The Guardian launches n0tice, an open community news platform (Nieman Journalism Lab): _Today, a major paper is getting into the community messaging game: The Guardian is launching n0tice, a social news platform that draws a little from Craigslist, a little from Foursquare, a little from Ning.

“It’s a place where you can share news, post details about forthcoming events or let people know you have something to sell or share,” the project’s FAQ puts it. Just like IRL message boards, “everyone else in your locality will be able to see what you’ve posted and also take part.”

New Storify Editor Interface Rolls Out – With StoryPad Tool For Gathering And Sharing Media: “One new tool we think users will really enjoy using is a revised bookmarklet and all-new Storypad that lets you collect and save media from all over the web and add it to your story. You can easily share what you’ve gathered with other Storify users, and you can use media from anyone’s Storypad in any story. So whatever you find online can become part of your story.”

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Students Beware, Facebook Changes and Privacy: Karl Hughes digs into some of the changes to the new Facebook interface. I’m curious if students will really notice how much of their privacy is being given away by the new features, or if they’ll care?

The Ultimate WordPress Cheat Sheet: This is for the guts of WordPress programming, not CSS or HTML.

Digital Dualism versus Augmented Reality: “I fundamentally think this digital dualism is a fallacy. Instead, I want to argue that the digital and physical are increasingly meshed, and want to call this opposite perspective that implodes atoms and bits rather than holding them conceptually separate augmented reality.”

Figment (Found via someone on Twitter): “Figment is a community where you can share your writing, connect with other readers, and discover new stories and authors. Whatever you’re into, from sonnets to mysteries, from sci-fi stories to cell phone novels, you can find it all here.”

Google introduces “Infinite Digital Bootcase,” acts as virtual librarian: “Google introduced the newest form of bookcase to your browsers today — what it calls an “Infinite Digital Bookcase,” and damn does it look cool.” Certainly an interesting move as more publishers move into the tablet market. More info on the official Google blog.

Hollywood unions, networks and studios mount anti-piracy offensive: “A broad coalition of film studios, TV networks and entertainment industry labor groups has launched an education campaign to teach the public about the evils of piracy and prod their employees and union members to support an anti-piracy bill in Washington.

“Through internal videos, newsletters, emails and booths set up in company commissaries , media giants such as NBCUniversal, CBS, Viacom, Sony Pictures and Warner Bros. are encouraging their employees to join a newly formed group called Creative America, a grass-roots organization launched this summer to muster support in the creative community for tougher anti-piracy legislation.”

I wish people would stop using the word “grass-roots” to describe industry-backed efforts to influence policy. Also, the PROTECT IP Act will have some impact on students if its passed, so might be something to write about.

Internet links not libel, top court rules (CBC): Via @Hermida on Twitter, what should be obvious is recognized by the Canadian Supreme Court.

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