Innovation in College Media

Above, YouTube’s 90-minute documentary, free to view now. More details at ReadWriteWeb.

News developers worried about new cost to use Google Maps (Poynter): I can’t think of too many college outlets this would possibly effect, but it could be the start of new development in the mapping area, which has relied on GMaps to do a lot of heavy lifting.

17 Alternatives to Klout (ReadWriteWeb): If you don’t know what a Klout score is, you’re probably better off not reading this. If you do, you’ll want to check out this article. “…You might want to explore other alternatives that can help you measure your social media effectiveness. We have come up with 17 different services, some free, some fairly expensive. I have tried most of them and will give you my impressions so you can have a head start with your own explorations.”

Welcome to The Verge (The Verge): Former members of the Engadget team who’ve been writing at This is My Next, unveiled their new site today. “We’re focused on bringing you — our extremely savvy and frankly very handsome readers — the best and most comprehensive coverage of the consumer technology world. Not just the nuts and bolts, 24-hour news cycle stuff, but more in-depth coverage, bigger stories, and content that goes further.”

Google Reader Redesign Upsets A Lot Of People (webpronews): I’ve looked at the new Reader, and I wasn’t too miffed by the redesign. Of course, I haven’t really been looking at it much over the past few months. “Believe it or not, a lot of people are unhappy with the new design. This is fairly commonplace for redesigns in general, but users of Google products would probably do well to get used to it, if they’re not already, because I have a feeling we’ll be seeing plenty more Google+-related design changes for various products in the near future.”

Revealed: Why Techmeme links to them instead of you (Techmeme): “Over time, nearly every major tech news publisher has asked us a variant of “Why do you always post them and not us?” or “Why did you pick them over us for that story when we posted first?” So it’s probably time to address this issue in a general way.” If you write about technology, this is probably important to you.

Avería: The Average Font: This is pretty cool for type geeks, downloadable too. “This is the story of the creation of a new font, Avería: the average of all the fonts on my computer.”

WeVideo goes commercial with cloud-based video editing (GigaOm): There’s also a free version, but it’s pretty skimpy. “Video editing startup WeVideo is launching a new product that will enable organizations to use its collaborative editing products in the cloud. The WeVideo Commercial product is aimed at bloggers, journalists, marketers and other video creators who wish to easily edit, manage and publish videos from a single online platform.”

New website builds dossiers on journalists, hopes transparency will lead to trust (Poynter): NewsTransparency.com aims “to make it easier for the public “to find out about the individual human beings who produce the news — human beings with opinions, relationships, history, and agendas.” The site consists of journalist profile pages which, like Wikipedia, allow anyone to add information and, like Amazon, enable ratings and reviews. They also collect articles written about the journalist’s work.”

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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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