Response to Jennifer Woodard Maderazo’s ‘Five Videoblogs that do it right’ – WEEK 9

Maderazo’s article really got me thinking this week about the sensation of videoblogging.

Mobile phones have come equipped with cameras, video tools and video-calling for a couple of years now, giving people the opportunity to film themselves (and others). These functions are now almost universal on all new phones, which leads me to think that videoblogging was always waiting in the wings for some media-savvy techno to come and discover it.

Maderazo hits the nail on the head when she says that you can catch an episode of a blog “without feeling that it’s interfering with your life”. This is exactly why good videoblogs are so satisfying.

Multimedia has increasingly allowed consumers to express themselves in new ways, and videoblogs are a prime example. Videoblogging also demonstrates how consumers have changed positions in the media world – they now make news as well as consume it. Sometimes their blogs become as much a part of news as the work of professional journalists.

Blogs such as Perez Hilton’s are often a source of information for gossip magazines, which monitor his blog for the latest celebrity information.

Click on the links below to visit the blogs listed in Maderazo’s article. Also listed are sites to help you learn more about videoblogging.

·         http://www.aliveinbaghdad.org/

·         http://dailybuzz.mobuzz.tv/

·         http://www.askaninja.com/

·         http://tv.winelibrary.com/

·         http://www.rocketboom.com/

·         http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7005.pdf

·         http://brianwynn.blogspot.com/2007/12/getting-started-

with-videoblogging.html

·         http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/mikeg/Lists/Posts/

Post.aspx?List=1b3bbb8f%2D4b5a%2D4f72%2D94c4%2D94cb80bc3866&ID=1165

This is one of the ‘Ask A Ninja’ blogs – the topic is podcasting

Response to the reading by Stephen Quinn titled ‘Straits Times online, multimedia, and print’ – WEEK 8

(Picture taken from http://jons-ashes.blogspot.com/)

Singapore’s highly-popular website STOMP is a unique example of media convergence and citizen journalism.

Unlike websites such as OhmyNews and brisbanetimes.com.au that stand on their own without a print counterpart (with the slight exception for OhmyNews because it developed a paper after the success of the website), STOMP is the online arm of the Singapore newspaper The Straits Times.

STOMP allows citizen journalists to file news stories and photos, and many of these are then picked up and used in The Straits Times. More than 80 per cent of the news on STOMP is user-generated.

In Australia, the major newspapers have embraced convergence in a smaller form. For example, the websites of major papers such as the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age offer places for readers to comment on their stories, and also advertise for any photos that readers may have of news events.

We also have a wholly online newspaper in The Brisbane Times.

However these are relatively small developments compared with STOMP – Australia is yet to come close to establishing an online news site with predominantly citizen-generated content.

But with the speed at which technology is moving, it may not be too long before we start seeing convergence embraced in a bigger way here in Australia. Watch this space.

The following video looks at the citizen media revolution, and profiles STOMP.

Video taken from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwGn8atZhVc

Response to Robert Niles’ ‘Which is the best free photo gallery editor?’ – WEEK 7

After reading this article I became inspired and had a go at uploading a gallery onto the web.

As I already had a copy of Picasa and an account with Google (which owns Picasa), I decided to use this program to produce my gallery.

While this process wasn’t quite as easy as the article seemed to imply, I didn’t find myself getting as frustrated as I have with other applications and tasks, such as the process of embedding a Soundslide into a blog post (which ended with only a temporary result).

As the instructions in Niles’ article referred to the newest version of Picasa (Picasa 3), I first had to download the new verison.

I then set about uploading my photos onto the web, which took only a minute or two. (Although I did have only 10 photos and I imagine that with a slower connection and a bigger photo album this process would become quite arduous.)

From there it was a matter of finding the embed code (located under ‘Link to this album’, then ‘Embed slideshow’ as I found after a few minutes), and pasting this into my blog.

Below are the links for a number of photo gallery sites.
• http://picasaweb.google.com
• http://www.picturetrail.com/
• http://www.bubbleshare.com/
• http://www.slideflickr.com/
• http://gallery.menalto.com/
• http://www.slide.com
• http://photobucket.com
• http://www.viewbook.com/

Response to ‘New tools for reporting’ – WEEK 6

First, some breaking news: Fairfax has just announced they will be cutting 550 jobs, with about a third of these being in editorial.

The reading identifies the number of different ways that people, not only journalists, can impart information to the public, mainly using the medium of the internet.

With all the varied ways that already exist, it begs the question: how many more ways will people come up with in the future, and is technology never-ending?

It seems that one thing will remain constant – that new ways of communication will continue to be determined by the technology we already have or ‘old media’ as it is sometimes called.

We only need to look to blogs and video blogs to see how mobile phone technology has affected the way we put information onto, and gather information from, the web. Without the already established technology of the mobile, video blogs and related technologies would not be possible.

With such a plethora of information now available, the problem of evaluating validity information arises. This problem will only continue to grow as more people move online and create information resources.

Check out the ICT in Libraries website for an extensive look at evaluating information on the internet. http://www.ictl.org.uk/U1O3CG/page_02.htm

Response to ‘OhmyNews in South Korea’ – WEEK 5

In this week’s reading, director of OhmyNews International Jean Min makes an interesting statement about how OhmyNews tries to combine traditional journalism with citizen journalism. This comment alludes to the issue of how, no matter where the future of media is headed, new developments will always be based on what has preceded them.

Citizen journalism would not have been possible without the journalism that came before it. New visions and developments come about from a desire to do things differently than they are being done already, and to improve the journalism we have.

Other industries work in the same way, such as the automotive industry. A new model of a particular car may be brought out every few years, and it will have the same elements at its core, but a different look and feel, as well as some added features.

Journalism works in this way too, and will continue to it seems because media organisations and their consumers will always be striving to do things faster, better, and differently.

Read Poynter Online’s article about ‘The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism’: http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=83126
It’s a few years old, but still worth a read.

For a look at the citizen journalism situation in China, read this ABC article: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/06/26/1962255.htm

(Video taken from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaVzMA8-pcI)

Response to Chris Anderson’s ‘Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business’ – WEEK 4

This article didn’t answer as many questions as it did create them, and I was left wondering:
• When, if ever, will this ‘free’ revolution end?
• Will it be economically viable in the future for product prices to drop as rapidly as they are now? Can this revolution be sustained?
• Will what is free be determined by the price-makers/companies as it is now, or by consumers?
• What will happen as consumers begin to expect more extravagant things to be free and the markets cannot deliver?
• How devious will companies become with cross-subsidies to lure customers and gain profits?

Free products need to be appealing in order for the system to work – it would be no good to offer something for free in the hope that people will buy another product when the free item is useless.

Nothing can ever truly be free – there are costs somewhere down the line, because making money is the aim of the game. Consumers will start to become more and more aware of this over time, and perhaps won’t be as easily ‘sucked in’ to the schemes of businesses and companies.

Check out this article from ITnews about the consumer demand for free content.
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/65946,consumers-demand-free-online-content.aspx

Response to Stephen Quinn and Deirdre Quinn-Allan’s ‘User-generated content and the changing news cycle’ – WEEK 3

This article prompted a lot of thought. It seems UGC can create problems for the media industry – on the one hand news outlets stand to gain from UGC because it gives them a number of views and reactions to news as well as some scoops from citizen journalists.

On the other hand it can present ethical issues for journalists, because it means they have to make a decision of whether using UGC is worth the time they have to spend time checking facts on stories that may turn out to be fake or legally problematic. Also, it takes them away from their own stories.

I think that while it is important to recognise the value of UGC and how it can provide greater coverage of news events, its value is something that needs to be assessed on a case by case basis, as it won’t always be accurate or suitable for use in the mass media.

YouTube has a range of videos about user-generated content, including this one called ‘Future Talks: user generated content’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eef4Fgrb5c4.

Read this article from Entrepreneur.com called ‘The rise of user generated content’: http://www.entrepreneur.com/technology/managingtechnology/web20columnistfrankbell/article183432.html

A short video with the YouTube CEO on the power of user-generated content can be accessed by clicking here:  user-generated-content1

(Video originally from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcAwrLw92rw)

Picture from http://www.denso-europe.com/uploads/Navigation/multimedia.jpg

Response to Stephen Quinn’s ‘Why and how Convergence is Emerging’ – WEEK 2

It is difficult to discuss multi-media journalism without talking about convergence. In this article we are offered a detailed analysis of the factors influencing convergence, and there are a number of them.

However the one which I believe is the most vital is the issue of time. It is the first of the social factors Quinn mentions, when he says that 21st century people are “time-poor”. Certainly in our societies we have come to expect our information to be delivered faster and more conveniently.

This need drives media organisations to increased competition with their rivals, and also forces them to come up with new ways to use their mediums to get the news to consumers as effectively as possible.

These days, it seems that news can never get to us fast enough. Quinn says: “The aim is to supply news and information whenever and wherever the audience wants it.” (p.5) This is arguably the reason why so many organisations are moving their news online, where it can be accessed by a larger range of people – online provides a faster, cheaper and (generally) more efficient way of delivering news to the public.

This week’s Age featured an interesting article on the internet replacing television. http://www.theage.com.au/news/perspectives/broadcast-tv-on-the-terminal-list/2008/08/04/1217701947769.html.

Picture taken from Real World Wireless Applications 2006, ‘Today … Convergence’, viewed on August 6 2008, http://www.outr.net/newsletter_future_devices.htm.)

The multi-media arena

Response to Jane Stevens’ ‘Multimedia storytelling’ – WEEK 1

The multi-media arena is continually changing. New contestants and platforms are introduced, and new battles begin between media conglomerates. Jane Stevens’ article looks closely at multimedia journalism and brings up a range of points worthy of discussion.

Stevens’ article demonstrates how multi-media journalism has made more choices available to consumers in terms of how they want their information delivered, and this highlights the fact that never before have audience needs been more important or evident than they are now.

One of the most pertinent discussions in the article, I believe, concerns the importance of ‘storyboarding’. While setting out stories and their components is important, I would argue that there are an increasing number of journalists who are being sent out to cover stories immediately after they break, and therefore have little time to work out what information they need or how they might put the story together when they return to the newsroom.

Instead they have to find and upload their stories quickly in order satisfy the public’s appetite. Preparation would probably make for a better story, but it seems that is somewhat of a luxury for journalists fortunate enough to get the time to do it.

You can read Stevens’ article on the Knight Digital Media Centre website at http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/reporting/starttofinish/choose/

You may also be interested in an article that appeared in last week’s Age about the upcoming introduction of online television next year: http://www.theage.com.au/news/tv–radio/abc-pushes-right-digital-buttons-with-online-tv/2008/07/23/1216492540320.html