Scientists have made amazing discoveries about the human body over the years, but because journalists and scientists speak two different languages, trying to explain those discoveries can be difficult. What better way to explain the complex processes of the body than through new media?

Specialized Bicycle Components has put together an amazing interactive Flash animation to demonstrate how bicycles, and more specifically the company's products, interact with the human body. The centerpiece of the project is a figure stripped down to blood, bone and sinew that mimics the different movements of a bicycle rider. Users can toggle between a number of bike moves, including the spin and the hammer, and simultaneously isolate several systems in the body, including the nervous and circulatory systems.




The next presentation isn't for the faint of heart (pun intended). Hybrid Medical Animation, in order to present the viewer with a clearer understanding of the beating heart, has created the Hybrid Interactive Heart. Users can toggle between the opaque tissue of the organ and a "glass" version that shows the inner workings of the heart. The result is absolutely mind-blowing and somewhat hypnotic. A similar video animation shows the beating heart with blood flow.




As part of its Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit, the Museum of Modern Art hosts a project entitled The Inner Life of the Cell. According to the creators "We follow a macrophage as it patrols the wall of a capillary and encounters a chemical signal from a capillary cell indicating that an inflammatory event has occurred in surrounding tissue." In layman's terms, it is a visually stunning video that shows with scientific accuracy what's going on beneath the skin.




(Note: The next site is admittedly a little morbid but is totally safe to view at work.)

Interactive Autopsy, as it's name suggests, allows visitors to go through the steps of performing an autopsy, including removing and weighing the internal organs and cutting and stitching the body. In the middle of the interactive is a brief video of a forensic pathologist who discusses the removal of the brain. At the end of the project is a link to read more about the instruments used in autopsy that, honestly, rival those used in any Hollywood horror movie.

Labels: flash, video

In a continuation of 12 Useful online tools for journalists, here are 12 more tools for getting the job done.


Gcast
Computer-free podcasting

Who needs thousand of dollars in equipment (okay maybe hundreds) to record a podcast, when Gcast lets anyone record a podcast by calling a toll-free number on their phone? The recording isn't exactly broadcast quality, but it is useful for recording in the field.


Listen and Write
Improve note-taking

In the last post, Learn2Type was suggested as a means of improving typing skills. Well once you have the keyboard mastered, it's time to visit Learn and Write and practice recording skills while listening to actual news stories.


wikirage
Find out what's going on

Wikirage lists the pages in Wikipedia that are receiving the most edits per unique editor over various periods of time, according to the site. This means journalists can find out what's popular (or controversial) on the web and the world without leaving our cubicles.


Urban Dictionary
Speak the lingo

Language changes all the time and if you're covering teens and preteens, or just very cool adults, Urban Dictionary will help in translating those unheard of words. The dictionary was especially useful in helping a former editor understand the word homothug and whether it should be used in print.


Tablefy
Compare data

Tech savvy journalists love a good Excel spreadsheet, but if more of us use Tablefly, a useful tool for comparing one or more things to each other, then Excel may go the way of the dinosaur.


Alerts.com
Manage appointments

The free service makes it easy to juggle multiple appointments with sources, editors or whomever, by sending alerts directly to you by email, phone or text. The site can also send traffic and weather alerts, baseball scores and gas prices, or updates about your favorite websites.


Hey!Spread
Video distributor

Journalism is all about getting as many eyes on a story as possible. Hey!Spread makes it easier with their tool for distributing video to almost 20 different video hosts, including YouTube, Google Video and DailyMotion. P.S. It's not free.


SimplyNoise
Block out distractions

Newsrooms can be a noisy, raucous affair that makes it difficult to concentrate when writing a story. The white noise generator from SimplyNoise will block out your surroundings with just a slide of a little orb.


FindSounds
Find sounds (yes, it's that simple)

Producers, especially those in radio and multimedia, will appreciate this online search tool for finding all the booms, clicks, bangs and dings that make audio projects sing.


eufeeds
Stay in touch with the world

Eufeeds is a one-stop shop for finding out what newspapers around the world are reporting. Its front page can be used for quick scanning and reference or click one of the almost 30 countries to read several of its newspapers at once.


The Alphabetizer
Sort your lists

The aptly named Alphabetizer takes any lists and sorts in alphabetically in just a few seconds.


Time and Date
Distance calculator

Journalists, present company included, love to say this place is about X miles from this place. Instead of pulling out a ruler and map, use Time and Date's distance calculator to get a more accurate number. The calculator came in handy in this post when determining the distance between England and Israel.


And one bonus tool:

Tell Zell
Resignation form creator

For our colleagues at Tribune Co. properties, including the Los Angeles Times, this handy form will let you craft your resignation letter with just a few drop down menus. This would be hilarious if the situation wasn't so dire.

Labels: audio, video

I'm not a fan of the documentary mostly because the great majority of the ones I've seen are stodgy, tedious and/or boring. Sure, there are a couple of docs that have bowled me over like the gritty film Dark Days, the Oscar-winning The Times of Harvey Milk and more recently The Secret World of Haute Couture, but most just don't interest me.

There are, however, two excellent, recently released documentaries that made me realize why most others fail: because they don't appeal to my generation, the MTV-watching, iPhone-owning youngsters with the attention span of a pine nut.


The first of the two is Bigger, Stronger, Faster*, a documentary film on steroid usage in America that owes much of its greatness to its coverage of a sensitive topic with humor and pathos without seeming overwrought. The movie enhances its coverage of the subject with witty graphics and the pace never seems to slow, though it has an almost two-hour running time. The film has an impressive 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, an indication that it is better than the average doc.

The second is VH1's four-part series Sex: The Revolution, one of the channel's ongoing Rock Docs features. The documentary is not as titillating as its title suggests. Rather it approaches the subject matter with a rock star attitude while maintaining a high level of informativeness. The doc is full of talking heads, of course, but they are cool talking heads relaying information and experiences without the haughtiness seen elsewhere. Sex, along with its sister doc The Drug Years, take topics that can be found in most textbooks and present them in a way that makes viewers feel invested in the subject without being tawdry or talking down to the audience.

Another most compelling documentary I watched recently is Sicko by filmmaker Michael Moore. I know his methodology and style may be suspect, but his film put a human face on the serious issue of health care in America. I'm not much of a crier (last time was my graduation from college), but as I watched American citizens who had long been unable to afford essential medical procedures finally receive appropriate care in Cuba, I felt the tears begin to flow. It speaks to the power of the medium that it provoked such an emotional reaction. Now if only all documentaries could do the same...

Labels: video

1. Track flight patterns


2. Document the reconstruction of a Katrina-ravaged home



3. Capture the excitement of a carnival



4. Watch a fire burn



5. Shorten a cross-country trip to four minutes



6. View the progress of a winter storm



7. Track the activity in a busy parking lot



8. Watch the sun set



9. Journey through the Panama Canal



10. Visualize 8 years of aging



11. View the wonders of underwater sea life



12. Roll out the fog of San Francisco

...and how to create time-lapse photography

• Most newer video camera models have interval recording built into the camera, a detailed rundown of which can be found at Photography Today. Those that don't can make use of SingleFramer, a free software that captures individual frames from DV cameras, either manually or automatically.



• Time-lapse software Flix is a great option for those projects that can be captured on a webcam (like the winter storm video above). The software is $10 after a trial period and also works with digital cameras.



• Instructables has a detailed description on how to use a graphing calculator to determine mathematically correct intervals to create time-lapse videos from photographs. An example of this method can be found at Digital Photography School.



• If calculators aren't your speed, the Pclix LT100 works with compatible photo cameras to shoot images at pre-determined intervals, anywhere from 1 second to 100 hours, according to the manufacturer. At $140 plus the cost of cables, the tiny device is a little more expensive than a graphing calculator, but its certainly better for the mathematically challenged.

For more on time-lapse photography, read this previous post or for more inspiration check out the Flickr "timelapse" pool.

Labels: photos, video

Google Maps helps you drive, but have you ever driven on a map? There are a number of driving simulators that use online map technology to provide a 2D driving experience. Map Channels' Street View Driver lets users get a first person perspective of driving down any of the cities mapped by Google Street View. It's not the exact sensation of driving, but users can accelerate and decelerate and turn left or right down any mapped street.


Geoquake kicks the concept into high gear (pun intended) by adding a virtual steering wheel and letting drivers pick their own car for a fast-paced drive through a number of cities, including Tokyo, Las Vegas and Manhattan. GoogleDrive is comparatively underwhelming, but it's still fun to zip the little car through any street mapped by Google.

For those who are better spectators than they are drivers, this mashup of a YouTube video of the recent Big Wheel Race in San Francisco with a Google Maps widget shows viewers the actual race while plotting its course on the adjacent map. The result is, dare I say, genius and the technology has practical applications in journalism.



The Clipper Round the World Yacht Race may be traveling the globe, but its impressive map remains in one place. The paths of competing yachts are tracked in real time on a Google Map with stats available for each vessel. As of this writing, the yachts are headed from New York to Nova Scotia and Team New York is narrowly ahead of Team Uniquely Singapore followed by Team Glasgow: Scotland with Style. It's exciting, kind of like watching a carnival's water pistol horse race.

The more literary inclined will enjoy We Tell Stories: The 21 Steps, a continuous story that unfolds over one map. The "digital fiction" work is inspired by The 39 Steps by John Buchan, but Buchan didn't have a Google Map. The story itself is a good read and definitely breathes new life into a well-worn medium.



If it's between 5:30 and 8:30 a.m. Central Time, you can find AirFox Live hovering over the virtual skies of Google Maps. Most TV stations have a news helicopter, but Fox News Chicago is making the most of theirs by streaming live video shot from the copter as it cruises the Illinois skies. When the cameras aren't rolling, the site has a live skyline cam and a slideshow of some of the best aerial views of the city.


This post is the fourth in a five-part series on maps. Previously: Online tools for getting more out of maps, Exploring the Earth, Tracking down criminals with crime maps

Labels: maps, video

The number of news organizations producing video exclusively for the web is increasing. Here are some things to keep in mind when shooting video for the web:


Picking a camera

Most major news outlets by now have a stash of video cameras (okay maybe just one) available to multimedia/ video shooters. But if your newsroom is just catching up and/or is reluctant to spend a gajillion dollars on a video camera, know that a web quality camera can be bought on the cheap. Purchasing a video camera that can also shoot photos and capture audio is ideal for the backpack journalist who plans to create a total multimedia experience. There are some other technical factors to consider, including external mic and headphone jacks and a firewire terminal. This previous post lists some inexpensive cameras that will get the job done.

Once you have the right camera, play around with the settings and become familiar with them, but don't mess them up before you get out to the field. You don't want to have shot an exclusive interview and later found out you messed up the white balance settings — which is to say check your white balance settings. You can't always fix it in post.


In the field


One of the top causes for headaches in the editing process is not having enough footage to produce the best quality story. The trick is to shoot more footage than you think you will need, including B-roll and ambient sound. However, if the video will be produced on a tight deadline, don't shoot too much or you will end up with a mess of video clips that must be sifted through and uploaded.

Video should be shot outdoors whenever possible to take advantage of the great lighting the sun provides, but sometimes this isn't an available option. Make sure to turn on overhead lights, lamps or whatever will help to brighten up the room (unless you're going for the scary, shadowed, whistleblower look. Some cameras will produce a grainy effect in low light situations that should be avoided whenever possible.

The importance of a tripod cannot be stressed enough. Not using one will cause visible shaking that is incredibly distracting, especially on relatively small computer screens. If the boss was too stingy to cough up the money for a tripod, you can still steady the camera by leaning against a wall with your upper back and both legs spread in a 'V' in front of you for leverage. For low angle shots, kneel on one knee placing your elbow on the raised knee and holding the camera to your eye. If this sounds too complicated, use a steady flat surface such as a table and increase the height of the camera using thick books. Avoid using the camera's zoom function as any shaking becomes more apparent the more the camera is zoomed.


Interviewing

Be sure to use a good pair of headphones (not earbuds) to be sure of audio quality before you begin to roll. In an interview situation, have the speaker talk naturally before you the actual interview begins to make sure there is no audio interference and you can in fact hear them. If you are a one person show, keep one headphone on and keep an eye on the camera, but remain engaged with the interviewee. You can also keep both headphones on but slide the arc of the headphones to the nape of the neck to lessen the distraction.

If you are blessed with a tripod or monopod, avoid panning and tilting during an interview because it is also distracting and you will hate yourself come editing time.


Editing time!

Final Cut Pro is the industry standard for editing video for good reason: it has more features than one will probably every need. But when it comes to the web, iMovie or any of these alternatives will suffice. Editing on the cheap isn't a bad thing. A video is only as bad as its editor (and shooter).

As internet connection speeds get faster and faster and more internet users have taken to the idea of watching video pieces on the web, the temptation increases to put even longer video clips on the web. But it is important to remember that many web surfers have the attention span of a walnut and rarely sit through long video.

Again the importance of using headphones, especially when editing, is paramount. You may have shot Peabody Award-worthy video but if the audio sounds like crap, then the whole clip is a wash.


For more tips on shooting video for the web, visit Creative Pro, Ourmedia, the Online Journalism Review, or andydickinson.net.

Have a tip for shooting video or your own personal technique? Share it in the comments!

Labels: video

Nothing brings the world together like the Olympic Games. The same goes for multimedia journalism, so the two are a match made in heaven. Media outlets around the world are gearing up for the 2008 Games in Beijing. In addition to airing 1,200 hours of Olympics coverage on five different channels, NBC plans to broadcast 1,000 more hours of video on the web. That means all the badminton, taekwondo and Greco-Roman wrestling you can handle.

The Beijing Guide, a website run by the China International Travel Service, has photos and 360° views of popular Beijing attractions including the Temple of Heaven, Tiananmen Square and The Gate of Heavenly Peace.



The upcoming Olympic Games aren't without their share of controversy as evidenced by the efforts of Reporters Without Borders, Human Rights Watch (which has a well-designed and resourceful site), and the many protesters around the world.

BBC News has an eye-opening take on the history of the Olympic torch, which has incited protests almost everywhere it goes. Track the progress of the Olympic torch, or perhaps the site of the next protest, using Google's Torch Relay map. The map has detailed information on past and future locations of the torch, whenever available, and includes photos of each location.

The International Olympic Committee recently approved blogging as a means of coverage because blogging is "a legitimate form of personal expression and not a form of journalism." Right. And don't expect any multimedia elements: bloggers are banned from posting any video or audio. Olympics bloggers must adhere to strict standards and must write about their experiences rather than news stories.

There are a number of blogs already covering the progress of the Olympics including Beijing Olympics Fan, Reuters' Countdown to Beijing blog, Beijing Olympics Blog on FanNation and this now defunct blog on the architecture of Olympic arenas in Beijing (with includes stunning photos).

Labels: blogging, video

November 4 is right around the corner, so if you haven't had a meeting or two about elections coverage, now's as good a time as any. If you're already on the ball or if you need to get rolling, here are some online sites that are infusing new media into traditional political journalism and powered by citizen journalists.

For the average citizen, presidential primaries can be a confusing and complicated process. Regular guy/techie Jim Edlin presents an alternative to the existing process of electing a president with the site OnlinePrimary. Visitors are asked to rank the presidential candidates and the results are posted on the front page.



One part of the political process that is a head scratcher for the average person is the Democratic Party's use of superdelegates. The Superdelegate Transparency Project aims to remove a little bit of the mystery behind these all-important politicos by examining who they are and who they plan to vote for (right now, the count is in favor of Hillary Clinton). The site also provides in-depth, yet easy to read information on how the delegate process works.

In a play for the Naked News crowd (link semi-NSFW), SexyPolitics is encouraging political awareness by adding a little incentive. It's simple: take a quiz on political candidates, issues or general political knowledge and the more questions you get right, the more articles of clothing the "stripper" removes. The questions can get admittedly difficult so you're going to have to work hard to get that sexy prisoner to disrobe. If you're only interested in taking the quizzes, there is an option to skip the strip. On the plus side, the site is making politics and a whole lot more interesting and, ahem, sexier.



YouBama, a portmanteau of video sharing site YouTube and presidential candidate Barack Obama, is exactly what its name suggests: a site for sharing videos of the presidential candidate. Users have uploaded roughly 600 videos of campaign ads, attacks on the competition, news clips and poems(?).

Can you really tell a lot about a candidate based on his or her website? Dustin Brewer thinks so. The freelance web designer judges the candidates' web presence from a purely technical standpoint, examining the lines of code and overall design. Barack Obama comes out on top for his site's clean and modern look and cross-browser compatibility, while John McCain and Mike Huckabee fall to the bottom for their lack of effort and faulty coding.

Every political candidate has their own website, faulty or no, but 23-year-old Meghan McCain is getting serious mileage out of the web by blogging her experiences while on the road with her father, newly minted Republican presidential nominee John McCain. The site is like a journal/family photo album and makes the elder McCain seem less staid as he and some other candidates can appear to be when making the rounds on television.

Speaking of blogs, a recent Harris poll showed that "only" 22 percent of Americans of read political blogs regularly, but I'd like to flip that notion on its head. Considering there are roughly 303 million people living in America and blogs really became mainstream in the last few years, I'd say that's quite a lot of people reading political blogs.

Consider also that the public's reliance on newspapers and television as a source of political news is slipping (but you knew that already), according to the Pew Research Center. That means its time to beef up online political news and perhaps look to the average Janes and Joes for a little inspiration.

For more politics, check out previous posts on tracking the presidential candidates online and unusual political news coverage.

Labels: blogging, citizen journalism, video

Video editing doesn't have to mean shelling out tons of cash for Final Cut Pro or limiting oneself to iMovie or Windows Media Maker.

Jumpcut is perhaps the best online service for video editing. Anyone can upload and edit video without downloading expensive. Once registered, you can upload video up to 100 MB in size and cut it or pare it down using the web-based video editor. Once the video is edited, JumpCut provides HTML code to embed the video in your site. Best of all JumpCut is free, which means more money for expensive gadgets. Check out an example of how the site works by clicking here.


Motionbox users can upload up to 300 MB video to the site (100 MB at a time) and edit it as they wish. Users can stream the completed video for free, but must upgrade to the premium version ($29.99 a year) for downloading capabilities and unlimited upload space. Motionbox is not a substitute for professional video editing, but it is a cheap and easy alternative.

SmashMash, in addition to video editing services, offers the ability to upload photos and create a Ken Burns-y like slideshows (kind of like SoundSlides but with more versatility). SmashMash will provides embedding codes and even has support for light animation.

Kaltura is YouTube meets wiki. It offers a web-based platform where many users can collaborate on the editing of one or more videos using a Flash-based editor. Kaltura is geared toward businesses and the created video can be embedded on your site.

If your video is nice and edited, but was captured on a less than stellar device such as a cell phone, commercial digital camera or webcam, FixMyMovie can quickly improve its quality. The site will increase the video's resolution, remove noise, and brighten any darkness. Users can either use the site's upload tool or send the offending video via email. The process can take up to an hour depending on its size. After the video is scrubbed clean, FixMyMovie will email you a link to the enhanced version where it can be downloaded or embedded on the web.

Labels: video, wiki

Sports journalism has an intrinsic fan base, so it only makes sense to parlay that readership into online sports communities.

Takkle, an offshoot of Sports Illustrated, is hooking them while they're young. The site has an active network of high school athletes and fans who can submit photos and video of their favorite teams or participate in throwdowns on just about any topic.

Impressively, the site ranks the top 25 basketball players and top 100 football players from high schools across the country. Takkle users can rate each player as over or underrated, view stats and debate the player's cred in the comments section.

Elsewhere on the site, SI.com's College Football's Greatest Rivalries video series is well-packaged and is sure to get football fans talking. All the greats are there including University of Florida v Florida State, USC v UCLA and Army v Navy. The opportunity to debate the prowess of one's home team exists elsewhere on the site at FanNation, but it would have been nice to have a comment section or direct link to each rivalry's discussion board to make the debate more immediate.

Bleacher Report is perhaps the best citizen journalism sports site not tied to a mainstream media outlet. In the vein of Associated Content, users can register and write their own sports-related articles, which, when posted, can be reviewed and rated by other users. Writers are free to speak their minds and throw unbiasedness out the window (especially today's front page story "ESPN: The Ultimate Hypocrite". Totally valid argument, but wow what a headline.) Bleacher Report covers most of the major sports, including football, basketball and soccer and its thriving community is making it one of the best on the web.

And because no post is complete without a good map, soccermap.net takes soccer league tables and plots them on a user-friendly map. The site is Europe-centric, but is very comprehensive and is RSS-enabled for news on any specific league. The site's stats can even be embedded as a widget on any webpage.



Read more about tackling the online sports section in this previous post.

Labels: maps, rss, social networking, video

More than 77 million users watched roughly 3.2 billion videos on YouTube last December, according to a recent comScore report. There are no clear estimates of the number of embedded YouTube videos floating around the web, but it is safe to say that if the de facto file sharing service crashed tomorrow, a lot of blogs and news sites, including 10,000 words, would suffer greatly.

So, similar to preparation for a natural disaster, here are some alternatives that let users upload and embed video. Veoh, Moonk, Dailymotion, blip.tv and many other sites (more from WebWare and Mashable) do the same thing for free.

Its worth noting that YouTube is just now starting to roll out higher resolution video, but most of the clips on the site are still of poor quality, especially next to its competitors.

If embedded YouTube videos of copyrighted work find their way onto your site and the page is still receiving traffic, it is wise to go back and check periodically to see that the video has been taken down by site administrators.

In honor of YouTube, here is one of my new favorites: I Met the Walrus, an inspiring, Academy Award-nominated film by director Josh Raskin. Watch it before it gets taken down.

Labels: video

The handheld video camera is the cornerstone of any multimedia journalist's arsenal and the Sanyo VPC-HD700 is bringing high-definition recording to the party. The small and sleek camera records HD video and doubles as a high-powered still camera. It comes with a remote control, has in-camera editing abilities and saves files to SDHC Memory cards. My one qualm is that it doesn't have a dedicated audio recording feature, but with a little ingenuity and conversion, that can be resolved. The HD700 is available for $350 at Amazon.

For high-definition video without the HD cost check out the Aiptek A-HD 720P High-Definition camcorder, which retails at Amazon for $134.99. The viewfinder is small and the zoom is not much help compared to other handhelds, but its great for newsrooms on a budget (which is to say, almost everyone).


The Tony Hawk HelmetCam is a tiny camera that can be strapped on to any helmet and is great for capturing elusive action shots (I wish I had one for a project on downhill skateboarding). The compact camera is great for recording from the viewpoint of a staffer and records 640 x 480 video in a range of formats. The HelmetCam is available from Amazon for $30.


With all the useful and cool gadgets available, it may be easy to run out of room in your proverbial backpack. There is, however, always room for the ZRAD Super Mini SPY Cam. The tiny camcorder is about the size of a pack of gum and record up to two hours worth of video on a single charge and can store up to 33 hours of video. The video output is not broadcast quality and is barely web quality, but is useful for capturing spot news on the fly when a larger camera is impractical. The SPY Cam is available from Spy Gadgets for $129 (please refrain from actual spying).





If you size is not an issue and pitch perfect, broadcast quality is what you're looking for, look no further than the M-Audio MicroTrack II. The battery operated audio recorder has two-channel WAV and MP3 recording and playback and stores to Compact Flash cards. It records up to four to five hours on a single charge and connects with a USB cable for quick uploading to the web. The recorder also has input jacks for professional and consumer microphones and headphones. The MicroTrack II is available for $300-$500, depending on where it is purchased.





Recording phone calls with sources can be a pain (but not as much as the transcription), but the Teleport 2.0 makes it a little easier. The gadget connects your telephone to your PC's USB port, and records incoming and outgoing calls. It also keeps a log of calls made and is compatible with any telephone set. The Teleport 2.0 is available for around $70. A friendly reminder from 10,000 words: remember to check state laws before recording phone calls.

Labels: audio, video

It's easy to be inspired by the work of mainstream media powerhouses like The New York Times and CNN, but there is great multimedia to be found outside of the traditional journalism sphere.

The role of individual musicians in an orchestra is illustrated in the following clip from the short film "Das Sein und das Nichts". As the music plays, the contribution from each musical instrument is visually represented.



Many people are aware of the spread of HIV, but unclear about how the disease attacks the body. The slick-looking video "Targeting HIV replication" is more Star Wars than PSA and interprets the debilitating process in a very easy facile manner.



People in Order, a series of short films that translates statistics in a very visual and emotional way, is one of the greatest video series I've seen this year. The four shorts by filmmakers Lenka Clayton and James Price were filmed over four weeks in February and arranged 471 Brits by age, yearly income, relationship length and pregnancy.

The embedded videos are "New Age, BANG, Old Age," in which a person of every age, between 1 and 100, bangs a single drum. The second is "New Love Order" in which 48 couples are arranged by length of their relationship. The other two films are "We Make This Much Money" and a video showing women at various stages of pregnancy.






Along the lines of People in Order and my previous post about finding multimedia in the mundane is a series of photos dubbed "Taking pictures of strangers," courtesy of mental_floss blog. The photos of random people are innately compelling without the need for a news hook or a nut graf.


A series of video and flat graphics illustrate how New York reaches out to the rest of the world. The project tracked international phone calls and ISP connections between NYC and locations around the globe and it is presented in a visually arresting way. The multimedia project is available online and is on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.






Finally, this simple, yet effective animated gif of how a sewing machine works takes what could have been a flat graphic and turned it into a hypnotic, "so that's how it works" moment.

Labels: video

Poor weather. The size of the weather page is shrinking on newspapers across the country and the meteorological report is almost always at the end of the television newscast. Many radio stations still read the weather at the top of the hour, but that's been happening since Marconi pushed the on button. But there are a group of online sites that are bringing a new twist to an old phenomenon.

I didn't believe it when someone said at last year's Online News Association conference that old standby The Weather Channel/weather.com was also a social network, but indeed it is. Users can post photos and video of good and bad weather happening around them and discuss local climates on the site's message boards. In addition to its hour by hour, weekend, 10-day and monthly forecasts, Weather.com boasts interactive maps, a bookmark-worthy blog written by weather experts and meteorologists and other weather-related tidbits that are too numerous to mention.

By now you're familiar with the broadcast TV weather map that has the temperature of an area overlaid on a map of that area (i.e. 75° in Miami, 32° in Seattle). Weather Bonk has scaled that map down and made it available with just a click. Regional temperatures across the globe are plotted on an interactive Google Map, along with storm warnings and embedded webcams.



WunderCam and EarthCam also take advantage of webcams stationed around the country to display local weather condition. While the sites' individual coverage doesn't exactly blanket the United States, there are many webcams to choose from.

Do you love a good sunset? Wish the natural splendor of the sun setting on the horizon would last forever? Well, Eternal Sunset took this idea and ran with it. The site is collection of 266 webcams around the world, all facing west to capture the sun set in 48 different countries. Eternal Sunset also has two maps that assist in determining where the sun is setting at any given moment.



Sunset at 9 am PST, 6 pm Central European Time. From left, Carro, France, Santa Ponsa, Spain, Riederalp, Switzerland




Eternal Sunset Realtime Global Map

Several sites, including WeatherBug, RSS Weather and the aforementioned Weather Channel, are taking advantage of RSS technology to make up-to-the-minute weather alerts available through RSS feeds. Distributing something as useful as weather predictions through RSS is a great way to encourage users to subscribe to your content and is also a great branding tool.

Labels: maps, rss, video

The ongoing strike by the Writers Guild of America has changed the media world as we know it. Major awards shows have been revamped, scores of TV shows have been put on hold, and movie scripts are being stockpiled. The result is a proliferation of reality shows and online content and a boom in online advertising.

Where does your average news site fit in with all this? Now, more than ever, users are turning to the internet for original content. That means its time to push video and multimedia content to the forefront to snatch up visitors who now have a little more time on their hands.


There are a number of online services offering TV programming on the web, including my faves Joost, LikeVid, Mogulus, video giant YouTube and the still-in-beta, NBC/News Corp. venture Hulu. Be sure to check out this mashupof Google Maps and live TV streams from around the world and visit Mashable for an exhaustive list of TV on the web.

Online programming also trumps TV because the user's close proximity to the computer decreases passivity and negates the use of Tivo, the enemy of television advertising. The aforementioned sites should provide some inspiration on how to present your original content on the web, if you haven't done so already. If you have, what's your strategy for showcasing online video and multimedia?

Labels: video

The Queen of England has one. So does the Japanese Prime Minister. And nearly every presidential candidate has one. Does your local politician have one?

It's pretty easy to set up your own YouTube channel and potentially reach millions of viewers so it makes sense that many politicians have their own videos on the crazy popular video site. There are many local, national and international politicians staking their claim on YouTube, but if your local politicians aren't one of them, why not put your own video on YouTube?


Chuck Norris stumps for Mike Huckabee in the Republican
presidential candidate's YouTube vid.

If you already have footage of local candidates' speeches, rallies and forums put them on YouTube and watch the users flock to the videos (and if you don't have footage, shame on you). YouTube visitors looking for information on their fave candidates will very likely be drawn to your content and, if you include a link back to your site, traffic to your related content. Controversial or though-provoking videos are likely to inspire discussion and debate even after the 2008 election is over. Uploading to YouTube is simple and is the height of community and hyperlocal journalism.

Labels: video

Time-lapse photography is a very visual way of illustrating change over long periods of time in a matter of minutes. Still photos taken at predetermined intervals create the illusion of something happening more rapidly than it actually is. Time-lapse can be used to show the change in a neighborhood or the evolution of a work of art. The technique, however, is rarely used in journalism because of the time commitment. But if you've got a spare camera, the internet is making it easier to learn how to become a time-lapse master.

EzineArticles has a tutorial on how to create a time-lapse video with your digital camera and Kinsman Physics Productions has a complete rundown of how the technology works. If you already have a set of photographs that you'd like to convert into a time-lapse video, try JPGVideo, which can also be used to string together any series of photos.

Here are a few more examples of how time-lapse photography can be applied to journalism:

The following video shows the construction of a single building over the course of a year


This video uses time lapse photography to document the change made to the Virginia Tech massacre Wikipedia article in the first 12 hours after the event.

Labels: photos, video

I recently covered some elections-related sites that will aid in following the 2008 presidential candidates and as the Internet is ever changing here are a few more:


Many candidates are courting the young vote even more so than 2004's Vote or Die campaign. Mitt Romney has invited Jumpcut users to create his official campaign TV ad. So far the Romney camp has received more than 100 submissions, some of which are pretty good like this one and this one.

It seems like every candidate has a MySpace or Facebook page but kudos to Barack Obama for his presence on LinkedIn, the more professional social network. You can also find out who in your network supports Obama.

Yahoo! has partnered up with the Huffington Post and Slate to create a make-your-own debate that lets the user choose the candidates that they want to see go head to head on a particular issue. The site also incorporates Yahoo! Answers technology to let users post and answer election-related questions.

And because inspiration is knows no boundaries, check out Google's Australian election coverage which includes a Google map embedded with photos and other political content as well as the YouTube channels of various Australian political parties and RSS feeds.

Labels: maps, rss, social networking, video

Gizmodo is my go to source for new, useful and sometimes wacky gadgets, some of which have practical uses for capturing multimedia in the field and on the go:


Field reporters who don't want to carry a bulky tripod will fall in love with the XShot. The device attaches to the mount on the bottom of your digital camera or video recorder and allows for freedom of movement, unlike a tripod for which you must stay in one place. Xshot extends from 9 inches to 3 feet and is a steal at 24.95.








The Riproar Creation Station takes the green screen out of the TV station and puts it wherever you are. The kit comes with a camera, a mic, 2 green screens, a tripod and editing software. At $129.99, the Creation Station is great for creating online newscasts in newsrooms that don't have the more expensive equipment.

Whether you're trekking through Baghdad or climbing the Rockies to get a great story, the Trackstick II should be in your pocket. The device tracks your every move at 5 second to 15 minute intervals which can be uploaded into Google Earth using the built-in USB port. Let your readers know exactly where you've been by uploading your location into an map or an interactive graphic.