That guy you know from the Internet, probably.
Making interactive maps less interactive: Making maps, part 1: Less interactivity. Brian Boyer of the Chicago Tribune on a mission to teach you how to make interactive maps that don’t suck. Step 1 is indeed to make them less interactive. I buy it.
There’s a full tutorial spread out in a few posts. Follow along, kids.
On the difference between gameplay and gamification: Josh Korr on “why gamifying the news is so challenging.”
Sean Blanda has some good advice for The New York Times that could work for any medium-large news organization. It’s not as much about location apps as it as about a game-like user experience.
Everything we use is free and open-source. Our platform is Ruby on Rails backed by Mysql databases running on Ubuntu servers. The cost here isn’t software, or even hardware, which is relatively cheap these days through hosting companies like Amazon EC2 (on the high end) or Slicehost (on the low end). The price most news organizations (and it’s not just small ones) seem reluctant to pay is for people — developers like the ones in my group who can build the infrastructure to support the rich, deeply engaging web features that so many people love about our site.
You don’t know what it’s like for the web guy at a newspaper.
All day long, requests and ideas funnel in his direction, with no end in sight, and little help.
Web guys, this is for you.
Reporters, listen up. Here are five ways you can put together something wonderful for the web without asking the web guy a single question. All you’ll need to do at the end of each of these exercises is to send him a link or a hunk of code, if that. He’ll know what to do with it.
None of this requires any technical know-how. You don’t need any training to point-and-click your way through this process. Don’t sweat the details about things like ‘settings’ or ‘encoding.’ If questions come up, type them into Google. You’ll find the answers.
Most important: Don’t wait around for someone else to hold your hand through this stuff. You’re an adult. You can handle this on your own. Get started today.
(Yes, I know, I know. Next time I’ll use the phrase ‘web gal.’)
A short explanation of how interactivity can change the game. Get off the stage, and let the readers add information of their own. Let them form a community around the information you’ve packaged for them. via Ingram.
Kevin’s notes on Newsvine, especially the bits about making it clear to the user what exactly they’re supposed to Do (capital D)… Define your verbs, indeed.
When I find myself face to screen with an online news site that is still in the Nightly Shovelware Posting stage, I think of two things: How can I add multimedia to this, and how can I add interactivity to this.
I think a lot of us go the same route, especially those with more background in photography or Web development than straight-ahead text reporting. We think: How can I make these pictures move, and how can I get readers involved in this story.
What we might miss in our efforts is the opportunity to take advantage of one more element the Web presents better than print:
Data.
Computer-assisted reporting has been around for years, but now here we are with tools like MySQL and Django and Google Maps and more. Each one of these things can be a thousand times more effective at building a story out of information than an Excel spreadsheet.
Matt Waite, a reporter with the St. Petersburg Times, posts this call for mashing up data with your multimedia and interactivity chops:
“Blogging and Flash and video skills will get you a job, no doubt, but they’re only one part of the web. Being able to present data along with your blogging, your Flash graphics, your videos, will have employers bidding for your services.”
As usual, there’s more to news on the Web than just posting pretty pictures. So the next time you wonder “What’s next?” after you add multimedia and interactive elements to a site — and if you ever think you’re finished adding those two things, congratulations — start looking for ways to integrate database work and analytical journalism. Your readers will thank you.
A few familiar social bookmarking icons can now be spotted on stories at NYTimes.com. Just look for the Share heading in the Article Tools box. Click on it, and Digg, Facebook, and Newsvine buttons drop down, along with an all-important Permalink option that issues a linkrot-proof way to blog about the story in question, no trip to the RSS feed or old Link Generator page necessary.
via TechCrunch
Mindy McAdams has a totally useful list of research on interactivity. Remind me to build a page like this out of my references.
Ryan Sholin 