1. 50th Anniversary of NASA

An animated robot named Automa is your guide for an interactive timeline of 50 years of NASA's accomplishments. The site is both a visual feast and educational.

2. NY Times: How a Market Crisis Unfolded

The New York Times encapsulates the ongoing U.S. financial crisis in a timeline that combines photos, audio and existing stories in one well-rounded interactive package.

3. TimeSpace: Election

The Washington Post's audacious effort to wrangle election photos, video, articles and more into one space takes a little effort to understand, so they threw in a how-to video. But the concept is remarkable: it shows when and where political events happened, right down to the street level.

4. C-SPAN Debate Timeline

The Oct. 15 debate between presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama is broken down into colored rectangles that signify the different issues covered that night, as well as the individual speaker. Clicking on the sections brings up a transcript of that portion of the debate and a link to a corresponding video.

5. Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure

If you don't finish National Geographic's visual explanation of undersea creatures with a thorough understanding of them, you just weren't paying attention.

6. British Timeline

The BBC has a number of timelines that explore facets of British history, but this particular one spans from the prehistoric Neolithic and Bronze Ages to the events of present day.

7. 2008 US Movie Box Office

The year's top-grossing films are beautifully visualized in this horizontal scrolling timeline that makes it easy to see the life span of movie powerhouses like Iron Man and The Dark Knight




If producing Flash-based timelines isn't quite your area of expertise, there are a few free online services that will help you create a timeline without much effort:

Dipity

Dipity is the go-to source for creating timelines with ease. Users can add dates manually or by uploading any RSS feed. Dipity users have found some creative uses for the online tool, including today's top stories presented in timeline form and a visual chronicle of the popularity of internet memes.

Timetoast

Anyone can create an embeddable timeline like the one below of the history of computer games for free.

Viewzi

Finally, Viewzi is a visual search engine that offers a number of ways to view results, including a timeline. While it's not clear if the timeline view is or will be embeddable, each individual search is linkable for reference purposes.



Previous timeline coverage:
• How to create embeddable timelines with xtimeline

Labels: design

There are just five days left until the US presidential election and according to cable news channels there are plenty of undecided voters out there. So in an effort to help voters make up their minds, here is a collection of match games, quizzes and polls from both mainstream media and the media-minded that will help you decide which candidate matches your interest. And even if you're already gunning for either John McCain or Barack Obama, the following will help you confirm you've made the right choice:

1. ABC News: Match-o-Matic

ABC's fun Flash-based quiz is made more interesting by the cartoonified candidates.

2. USA Today: Candidate Match Game

USA Today employs sliders and radio buttons to help users share how they feel about major issues.

3. Glassbooth

Quiz-takers are first asked to rank the issues that are relevant to them, then are asked questions about those issues.

4. VAJoe.com: Candidate Calculator

A straightforward multiple choice quiz on pertinent political issues

5. SelectSmart.com Presidential Candidate Selector

Use sliders to weigh in on the issues in this 26-question quiz

6. Google: In Quotes

Google places the candidates' quotes on topics like the Iraq war and energy side by side for easy comparison.

While researching for the map of newspaper endorsements for president, it became apparent that most newspaper names are just variations of the same familiar titles: Times, Post, Journal, etc. So, after running Wikipedia's list of US newspapers through TagCrowd, here are the most popular newspaper names in the United States:


1. News (299)
2. Daily (259)
3. Times (177)
4. Herald (128)
5. Journal (122)
6. Press (94)
7. Tribune (86)
8. Sun (66)
9. Star (58)
10. Gazette (43)
11. Courier (42)
12. Record (42)
13. Post (40)
14. Sentinel (34)
15. Observer (33)
16. Democrat (28)
17. Register (28)
18. Enterprise (27)
19. Reporter (26)
20. Independent (25)
21. Chronicle (24)
22. Leader (24)
23. Citizen (22)
24. Review (20)
25. Weekly (20)


And of course, in the grand tradition of 10,000 Words, here is a word cloud created with Wordle (click for larger version):




Also on 10,000 Words:

• What is...? A handy guide for the new media novice
• 8 Ways of visualizing the news
• What the journalism industry can learn from porn
• Better Days: The Golden Age of Newspapers

Labels: news on the news

1.Thou shalt not tweet every second of thou's life.

2. Thou shalt ease up on the CAPS LOCK and exclamation points!!!!!!!1!!

3. Thou shalt not be a spammer.

4. Thou shalt not just replyeth, but also have original thoughts.

5. Thou shalt not send more than one tweet to beat the 140-character limit.

6. Thou shalt not be upset if thou isn't return followed.

7. Thou shalt Twubble.

8. Thou shalt not use Twitter solely as an RSS feed.

9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's followers.

10. Thou shalt love the Fail Whale as thyself.

Labels: social networking

Burger King's notoriously creepy King commercials as well as the company's recent debut of ads featuring awkward singing duo Shroom & Swiss have made one thing clear: weird is the new jingle.

In the age of Tivo and DVRs, advertisers have to do a lot more to compel viewers to watch their commercials. Many have found that the way to capture the minds of the elusive 18-34 male demographic is to emulate those crazy YouTube videos that they are watching. This has led to an onslaught of head scratchers like Quiznos' "Eat $5" campaign, Skittle's piñata man, and a centaur touting the virtues of Axe Body Wash.

While some intentionally weird campaigns have been successful (BK's King is now a sought after Halloween mask), most just end up falling flat. Television viewers are a lot more sophisticated than advertisers give them credit for and can recognize when they're being pandered to.

It's hard to think that this trend in advertising — along with the prevalence of reality TV — isn't a part of the dumbing down of American television, but as long as campaigns like the King continue to go viral and become cultural phenomena, advertisers will continue to do whatever works. The fundamental point of any ad is to get people talking about the product, which, ironically, is what I have just done.


Burger King: Shroom & Swiss, Wake Up With the King

  


AXE: Chocolate Man, Centaur

  


Skittles: Piñata Man, Long beard

  

Labels: design, news on the news, video

The presidential debates are over and the endorsements from newspapers all over the country are pouring in for both Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain. 10,000 Words is your guide to keeping track of these endorsements and by clicking on the map below, you will be taken to an interactive map so big it needed its own page.

Labels: maps

Since the inception of "new media" journalism, newspapers and magazines have struggled to make sense of the multitude of emerging technologies that have changed the way news can be presented. Many media organizations have caught on, some are inundated, and many are still struggling to make sense of it all.

GOOD Magazine, the socially progressive publication for "people who give a damn" has not only made the most of burgeoning technologies like YouTube and Flash, but has also challenged traditional revenue models and publishing practices. Other media outlets take notice: This is how GOOD is changing the industry.

1. It understands video

Many media organizations have recognized the potential of YouTube channels as a way of promoting video segments and as a tie-in with an existing brand. However, a large portion of the video in these channels is unoriginal content that has been schlepped from a previous broadcast or video bank to pander to online viewers.

On the other hand, GOOD Magazine's YouTube channel is populated with a host of original and clever video infographics that synthesize complex topics in a few minutes. In addition to the videos below, the publication's original five-part series on Skid Row, a section of Los Angeles populated by the homeless, proves that it is not a one trick video pony.


Oil Addiction



Palin v. Biden



Business of Death

2. It can say a lot with few words

Since 2006, the California-based publication has been known for its visually stunning, yet easy to digest print infographics that are every bit as educational as their video counterparts. Some say the New York Times is the pillar of online graphics, but the marked difference between the two is GOOD approaches its subjects with a wink and a smile. In the flat graphics below, as well as interactive graphics like "Wanderlust," an exploration of history's greatest journeys, the mag maintains an unmistakable voice that makes it rise above its media peers.


Vampire Energy, Currency: The Sinking Dollar

  

3. It challenges the traditional price structure

Magazines have always had a set price. Pay any more and you will make some clerk very happy. Pay any less and prepare to be escorted to the nearest jail. GOOD Magazine, however, took a cue from Radiohead and decided to let potential subscribers pay what they want for the publication. Not only can readers give more or less than previous fixed rate of $20 a year, 100% of the revenue goes to various nonprofit organizations. A bunch of business types probably just let out a collective scream of horror, but the model seems to be working: GOOD has donated more than $850,000 to global non-profit organizations.

According to the site: "Our goal is to create a collaborative community of individuals, businesses, and non-profits. We feel that the content is the invitation into this community and we didn't want to make the invitation too expensive."

4. It takes the news to the people

Not too long ago, GOOD's pocket publication was featured as an innovative way of saving the 10,000-word story. While the 6x6 inch newspaper — available in select Starbucks locations — consists mostly of a large infographic rather than a slew of words, its innovation lies in the fact that it is both a free and easily accessible counterpart to the magazine.

Whereas decades ago newsstands populated the country, nowadays most casual magazine readers have to go to a bookstore (or the airport) to get their weekly news. Because the pint-sized paper is available in a coffee shop where customers are in a reading mood, it will potentially change how people will seek out print media.

5. It's still a magazine

With all its revolutionary efforts in online news and pricing structures, GOOD Magazine is still a magazine. Whether it's the mag's thought-provoking articles like "How Not to Win the Presidency" or clever essays like "Save the Earth with Dirty Towels," the portable version is a necessary counterpart to GOOD's web efforts. Most importantly, whatever media the publication is presented it in, the content is consistent and shares one equal voice.

Between watching the Scream series with Courtney Cox as reporter Gale Weathers and the latest zombie movie Quarantine with Jennifer Carpenter as a reporter trapped in the mayhem, I get it: Hollywood does not like journalists. If a reporter is featured in a movie, they will most likely be one or more of the following:


1. Reporters are ruthless bitches who will stop at nothing to get the dirt.

2. TV reporters are always followed by a cameraman who is most likely wearing a beret.

3. Reporters gather like wild dogs outside of courthouses, yet only one reporter asks a single question.

4. TV anchors are always drinking, cursing or fighting during commercials.

5. Reporters are either power hungry or incredibly inept. Or both.


Did you learn the tenets of journalism from movies? Share your lessons learned in the comments. And be sure to check out Great (or greatly amusing) fictional journalists. Shout out to Tricia Takanawa.

Not too long ago, five ways to learn a new language and five blogs in languages other than English were presented in the hope that blog lovers would expand their online reading. If you haven't yet begun learning a new language, there are a few ways to make reading blogs in foreign languages much easier.


Mloovi will translate any RSS feed into any of more than 30 available languages including Croatian, Filipino and Swedish. The results, like Google Translate or Yahoo! Babel Fish, a little spotty and shouldn't be quoted, but it is a definite help.

On the other hand, if you want readers of your blog to be able to read it in another language, ConveyThis offers a button that will translate your content with one click. The site requires registration, which only take a couple seconds, and a button like the one below are available instantly.



On a smaller scale, Twanslate will translate tweets (or anything under 140 characters) into Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Italian and Russian. Simply follow @twanslate and follow the instructions to send a direct message and received the translated reply in seconds.

Labels: blogging, rss

Most journalists take a vow of relative poverty when they first enter the field with the unspoken understanding that they will, in exchange, perform a great service to mankind by reporting the news that shapes the world. I knew I was giving a little bit of that up when I took a position as an entertainment journalist, but I relished the opportunity for creative freedom — plus, I love all things pop culture.

I've found that my current position and my previous work at the Los Angeles Times are at opposite ends of the multimedia production spectrum: On one hand, at the Times I was producing stories that had a very long-lasting impact in the lives of millions, but I was restricted in the creativity of the projects I could produce. On the other hand, at EW I have full autonomy in whatever project I want to create, but the projects, which themselves are becoming formulaic, are just a passing curiosity with no real long-term impact.

My ideal journalism job would be a mix of the two, infusing both creativity and innovation into big picture news stories. Additionally, my ideal job would incorporate my passion for sharing new media skills with others.

10,000 Words has served as a supplement to my day job and is an outlet for me to share the things that I am interested in with other like-minded journalists and web enthusiasts. I am passionate about the work I am currently producing, but my ideal job should be like this blog, an opportunity for me to create innovative content that is both useful and timeless.


This post is a part of the TNTJ topic of the month: "What would your ideal journalism job be and why?"

Recent Posts:

• Improve Your Mixes With This Critical Listening Exercise
• 7 Unexpected Moments of Guitar Awesomeness
• How to Quantize Audio in Pro Tools Using Beat Detective and Elastic Audio

Recent Posts:

• Successful Self-Promotion for Photographers [Book Review]
• Amod GPS Photo Data Logger Review
• This Week in the Digital Photography School Forums

Recent Posts:

• Our Updated Endorsement Chart: Obama Leads 28-11.
• TRAIL MIX: Race Heats up the Campaign, While McCain May Face the Music on Letterman
• A Talk with Nobel Winner Krugman When He Was E&P's Columnist of the Year

E-Media Tidbits

Recent Posts:

• 40,000 Hits: Why News Sites Should Run More Cartoons and Infographics
• Journalism and the Business of Staying Relevant (and Honest)
• Why Journos Should Learn Yahoo Pipes

Recent Posts:

• New Zealand Politician Tracker
• Anton Corbijn Music Videos on Google Maps
• Present Your Vacation on Google Maps

Recent Posts:

• Belarus Association of Journalists urges international press not to forget journalists' plight
• 'Rogues gallery' brings traffic success to News & Star website
• Mainstream media's power shifting to new media, says FT's Lionel Barber

"An aggregation of journalists who blog (mostly) about journalism."




"All the Journerdism news links and commentary you can handle in your RSS reader."




Recent Posts:

• Stickam Adds Mobile Video Streaming to Compete With Qik, Flixwagon
• Woices: Echoes From a Location
• Mashable's Guide to Upcoming Conferences and Events

Recent Posts:

• Our Blog Network: 10.13.08
• Authors, Set Your Sites On Success
• Newsfeed Update: 10.13.08

Recent Posts:

• Gannett Pushes for More Tech Hires, Data Centers, Niche Sites
• Welcome to the Redesigned, Revamped MediaShift
• Journalists Consider Risks, Conflicts of Running Personal Blogs

Recent Posts:

• Recording phone calls: For reporters
• The Hearst Awards for student journalists
• Sharing the passion of journalism

Recent Posts:

• FREE Training from the best in the business
• Van Mon: The Forgotten Existence
• Sole Man

Recent Posts:

• 40,000 hits: why news websites should make more of cartoons (and infographics)
• Lessons in community from community editors: #1 Shane Richmond
• Wiki journalism comes to the UK

Recent Posts:

• The secret to a successful online guerrilla marketing campaign?
• Focus on 'what,' not 'where,' in planning your journalism career
• Steven Smith departs and the question arises: Who should lead newspapers' online transformation?

Recent Posts:

• How to Get Search Engine Traffic to Your Blog
• Keys to Success - Jerry Seinfeld Style
• If you have a spare 55 minutes and 33 seconds this weekend....

Recent Posts:

• MyThings Raises $5 Million to Help you Organize Your Stuff
• SourceForge Announces Hosted Applications
• Hey Businesses! The Majority Of Social Media Users Want Your Attention

Recent Posts:

• BBC reaches out to join online conversations
• Glaring omission in NYTimes piece on linking
• US newspapers lag behind in use of multimedia

Romenesko

Recent Posts:

• Newsday has been losing money for at least three years
• Atrios recalls when Slate's publisher dissed Krugman
• Additional items for October 13, 2008

Recent Posts:

• 50 Beautiful Movie Posters
• 8 Strategies For Successful Relations With Clients
• Finance and Applications: A Free Icon Set

Was your favorite feed left out? Share your essential RSS feeds in the comments. And of course, be sure to subscribe to the 10,000 Words RSS feed.

Labels: rss

For a brief period in 1999, I attended the film/video program at the California State Summer School of the Arts in Valencia, Ca. Since I was a little tyke I always wanted to be a Hollywood filmmaker and — until a life-changing encounter with an astute English professor — I had no intention of being a journalist. But some of the lessons I learned from the experience have stuck with me today and contributed to my success as a writer and as a person. Here are some of the tidbits I learned:


1. A diverse crowd means diverse points of view

Often our wacky troop of 24 aspiring filmmakers would be given a single assignment (i.e. shoot a film that encapsulates happiness) and the result would be 24 very different projects, all of which were compelling, but all of which told a very different story. The same goes for journalism: If you send several different journalists out to cover the same story, the resulting coverage should be very different. If the hypothetical group of journos all return with the same angle, we have not done our job as investigators and as human beings.


2. Things don't always go as planned

For my final project, I shot footage of the California Institute of the Arts campus and hand-spliced it together with footage of a fellow student singing "Lucia di Lammermoor/The Diva Dance" from The Fifth Element soundtrack. I intended it to be a music video of sorts, but because I miscounted the number of frames, the whole thing was thrown off and it didn't match the music at all. Yet the final piece was something avant-garde and and like my then professor Valerie Soe said "when it did match up it was beautiful." This has taught me that its okay to make mistakes, especially in multimedia design, because sometimes the outcome is better than the original plan. The experience also gave me a greater appreciation for Final Cut Pro.


3. Just because you're a filmmaker doesn't mean you can't do other things too

The beautiful thing about CSSSA was that there were such a wide array of students who attended the program. There were dancers and dramatists and thespians and writers and animators and musicians, all existing in this one space. But just because you were enrolled in one particular artistic field, didn't mean you couldn't experiment within one of the other disciplines. There were dancing filmmakers and writers who acted, etc. This instilled in me that just because I am a journalist doesn't mean I have to limit myself to one niche of the profession. The best journalists — and now the most highly coveted — are those who are schooled in a number of different facets of the industry and open themselves up to learning new things. These are the journalists who think outside the proverbial box and are the future of the industry.



CSSSA Film/Video, Class of 1999

Now that newspapers have hired armies of developers to create mobile versions of their sites, old media is catching up to what most of the web has already known: the mobile web is where it's at. The good news is you don't need a team of developers to create a mobile-optimized version of your site or blog, just a couple minutes and one of the following free online tools:

1. MoFuse

Creating a mobile site with MoFuse couldn't be simpler. Just input your existing URL and a few registration items and a mobile version of your site is ready instantly. There are a number of other options for creating redirects, analyzing statistics, monetizing the newly created site and more.

2. Wirenode

Wirenode touts on its front page that it can create a mobile site in about five minutes, but it actually takes less than two. The other three minutes can be spent customizing the look of the mobile page, including adding images and changing the default color scheme.

3. UBIK.com

For those who want to build a mobile site from scratch, but don't want to bother with the initial coding, UBIK has a number of available editable templates created especially for mobile phones. Building a mobile site with UBIK is a little like building your first blog: You select the templates and edit this and that until you arrive at a look that suits you. The site is very novice-friendly, meaning experienced designers and coders might feel a little underwhelmed.

4. Google Reader

By appending Google Reader's mobile URL with your own RSS feed (ex: http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/feed/http://feeds.feedburner.com/10000words/wxYG), you can instantly create a mobile version of your site that contains just the headlines of your content/posts, because after all a stripped-down version of a site is what mobile users are really after.

5. Google Mobile Optimizer

Google's officially sanctioned mobile site creator will display all of your content, including full text, links and, optionally, images in a nice mobile version. Simply enter a URL and Google will output the mobile-optimized site in seconds.

6. Mippin

The online service touts its ability to make searching the web on a phone easier, but it also instantly creates a bare version of any site, much in the same way the aforementioned sites do. The difference is, Mippin's default layout looks better than any of the other online tools and the creation process is less convoluted.




Once you've created your mobile-optimized site, you will need to place a link to it on your existing site or augment your code to redirect mobile phone users to the appropriate version of your site.

Search Engine Guide and Sami Mäkeläinen both have great tips and advice for creating a mobile site. The one thing to remember is that a site should be presented in a way most beneficial to users and if those users are mobile phone owners, a mobile-optimized site will do just that.

Labels: mobile

Not too long ago, millions of Americans would gather around the television to watch a presidential debate, then discuss it at the water cooler the next morning. Now, millions of people all over the world gather in front of their computers to blog, tweet, chat, upload and download information about the debates as they are happening.


Even those who simply sit in front of the television to watch the proceedings still have the option of pausing, rewinding, and fast forwarding to watch a political event at their own pace.

In today's techno savvy world, users have more information than ever at their fingertips. A candidate's complete political history has more often than not been scrutinized and made available on numerous websites, even before their candidacy is announced. Any juicy tidbit or eyebrow-raising misstep is quickly blogged, analyzed and passed around social networking sites within minutes.

The American people are no longer slaves to traditional media and, through the net, are empowered to speak their mind on any number of topics and share their beliefs with anyone who will listen (or read). The anonymity of the internet means anyone can say anything they want from the comfort of their home — even those things that just a few decades ago would have been called treason or warranted social ostracization.

The water cooler, and even the AOL chat rooms of our not so distant past, has been replaced with sites like Twitter's Election 2008 and television coverage has been rendered obsolete by YouTube clips and online, interactive political analysis. People are even free to make their own buttons and bumper stickers should they choose to.

But is too much information a good thing? With so many voices crowding the web, it is easy to get inundated and ultimately frustrated by the many points of view. Yet it is this freedom of speech — and the internet's inherent ability to support it — that makes this country so great.


Want more politics? Check out these previous posts:

• 15 Ways to follow the 2008 election online
• Elections 2.0: Tracking the Presidential candidates
• Citizen journalists driving online politics
• Politics as (un)usual