Invisible Inkling

Ryan Sholin on the future of newspapers, online news and journalism education.

All About idealab

On IdeaLab: The Pitch mashes up journalists, bloggers, and social media types in Seattle

Over at IdeaLab, an IM interview with Jason Preston of Eat Sleep Publish about a series of events he’s organizing called “The Pitch.”
The premise?  Put together some of the smartest, most engaged, passionate thinkers about the changing media landscape in a room, buy them a few drinks, and let the conversation flow.
Jason:
“And I think that [...]

On IdeaLab: Stack Overflow is your premium question answer tool

I’m trying to get into the habit of posting a few medium-length items over at IdeaLab every week.  here’s a start:
Stack Overflow Sets an Example for News Commenting Systems

The premise?  Stack Overflow, a new-ish site for programmers to answer each other’s questions, has a great voting system for comments, which are really just the answers [...]

IdeaLab: Microblogging tools for your newsroom

Over at IdeaLab, I’ve posted a rundown of some of the internal Twitter for Enterprise type services that are out there at the moment, from the Prologue theme for WordPress (free!) to Backpack Journal from 37signals (not free!).
Plus, there’s a bit about the feature inspiration I picked up yesterday at blip.fm.

The evolving list of features [...]

IdeaLab: One week of ReportingOn, international style

Yes, yes, I know I haven’t written much here lately, but my reading and blogging time is mostly getting happily occupied with development on ReportingOn, which has been open for a week now in a public beta.
The most noticeable thing about ReportingOn so far is the strong Spanish- and Portugeuse-speaking turnout.  Seriously, North America, where [...]

IdeaLab: DIY Django development at ReportingOn

Over at IdeaLab, I’ve posted a bit of background on why I ended up building ReportingOn in Django instead of Drupal.  Frankly, to the users of the site, it shouldn’t matter which platform I chose, but to me, and to the future of the project as an open source basis for news organizations, I think [...]