Searching Videos and Multimedia

A topic that's popped up in a couple of my UNC class discussions: how do you search multimedia and video? Both search for those productions and search within those formats.
It's not nearly as easy as searching for text or photos. Photos can still be tricky finds, because they often rely on users adding comments, tags or other metadata in order to be picked up in search engines. At least with photos, they're often in the vicinity of related text, which helps make things a bit easier to search.

With multimedia, video and even flash productions, Google and other search engines can't always see the content. Here's a link to a short Wired magazine story on who'll become the Google of video: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-07/st_videomining/

Fun with maps

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OK, so with all this hullabaloo over programmer-cum-journalist Adrian Holovaty (He's the guy behind ChicagoCrime.org, a database of crime reported in Chicago. He was at The Washington Post, where he spearheaded projects such as a database on all the votes in Congress since 1991. Oh yeah, he also was awarded more than a million bucks from the Knight Foundation.) I wondered just how difficult it is to incorporate your own data with Google Maps.

I'd always figured that these so-called map mash-ups were for really hard-core programming types. But it's actually relatively easy to create a map, add a couple markers and link those markers to specific content. Obviously, it gets more complicated as you add more markers and make the map more interactive. But the possibilities are endless, and intriguing. It's not difficult to link such a map to an external database or XML file.

It's gotten me to thinking about how little we do to provide added value to Web content. Yes, we sometimes add photos or video, but rarely anything beyond that. We don't generally link to related stories, or archived stories, or even to related third-party content on the Web. We rarely post original source material. We rarely put maps or graphics online, and rarer still do we make those graphics clickable. As a simple example, with just a couple minutes per article, we could include a small Google map with each story locating specific details. For example, a small 100-pixel Google map could've located where the Charleston fire was. Or, we could use the map's polygon overlay to show the route of the funeral procession. Well, you get the idea...

Click on the red markers in the map above for links to some applications of the Google Maps API.

Newspapers and newscasts III

"And now for all you Shakespeare nuts..."

Looks like The Chapel Hill News, with the N&O, is trying its hand at a daily "OrangeChat" videocast. It consists mainly of a reporter reading from that day's report, intersersed with a couple still photos. They do have a segment outside talking with a woman in town.





Note: You need to have Flash installed to see the video posted above.

Really fast, really local news

A couple of blogs are beating charlotte.com and The Observer.
Davidson News is all over the town's local cable issue, which now has statewide implications. Last posting was about 11 hours ago.
Under the Water Tower shows that Fat City wasn't the only building to get its facade ripped off by storms.
Both sites benefit from the skills of people who are former reporters. In "Under the Water Tower's" case, former-reporter-turned-teacher Lolo Pendergrast uses new technology to become a photographer.
Both sites depend on people doing this work for no money, and postings depend on vacation and kids' schedules and other intrusive life events.
But how can we work with them now? Google Reader gives an easy way for our reporters and editors to monitor and get news tips. Can we start?

Newspapers and newscasts: part II

Following up from Rich's 6/11 post on newspapers getting into the online video biz. I checked in with my Maynard classmate Jack Sheard, who's the presentation editor at the Grand Island (Neb.) Independent. It's a pretty small Morris paper, but they're having some success in changing the way they do things. Some of that, Jack attributes to having a publisher who's willing and ready to jump in. They've been doing a lot with multimedia and video casting lately. Jack tells me they've just recently unveiled some revamped pages and ramped up video casts. Check 'em out at www.theindependent.com/video/

"We built a studio in our basement, spent some money getting the right equipment and hired the right people.

We moved to two newscasts each day. Each news cast has the top current headlines, the top events we're covering and sports and weather. They normally last 3 to 5 minutes or so. The first cast is recorded at 9 a.m. And is online by 11 a.m. The second is recorded at 4 and is online by 7. There is a lot of carry over from cast to cast, each cast containing about half new and half carry over.

Immediately after we film the news, we record a 60 second radio version that a local pop station runs. It runs the casts at noon and 6 p.m. Each cast on the radio is followed by a 30 second newspaper promotion."

They've hired a couple young video journalists from a local college, and they're also getting into the video advertising (think like the ads you'll see if you watch tv over your computer).

Five questions for online projects

Staffers from ajc.com spoke at an SND conference last weekend in Atlanta.
They highlighted five questions to ask before starting an online project:

• Does it have an audience? Who?


• Will it generate traffic?


• Does it provide a service to the reader?


• Will it have a long shelf life?


• Do you have the resources to pull it off?

More at Charles Apple's blog.

Naked melee development zoning (your neighborhood name here)

Those words drive traffic, based on the hit reports Dave has been sharing from our company website lately.
And it's also based on the hit reports I see on my neighborhood's blog. People buying real estate or planning to move first surf.
If we had naked melee zoning and newcomer stories, we'd get lots of hits.