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EducationShift
Is University of Missouri's iPod Touch 'Requirement' Fair?
The news out of the Missouri School of Journalism two weeks ago was a little confusing. The school announced it would be requiring all incoming freshmen journalism pre-majors to purchase an iPod Touch or iPhone. At least that was the lede in stories by the Columbia Missourian and The Maneater. But the "requirement" wasn't really a "requirement," if you read...
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MobileShift
Live-Blogging EconSM Gathering About Social Networking on Mobiles
SAN FRANCISCO -- I am at the UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center right down the hill from where I live in Potrero Hill. Yes, it is "Bike to Work Day" today in San Francisco, but I couldn't bike down in nice clothes. So I split the difference and walked most of the way here. The topic is how social...
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4MR
4-Minute Roundup: HuffPost Investigative Fund; AP on Mobile Apps
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. This week I look at the new Huffington Post Investigative Journalism Fund, which has $1.75 million to start a new non-partisan site that will do investigative work and then give it away to any news organization. I also look at the latest moves by Disney, distributing video on YouTube and possibly on...
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MusicShift
Maximizing the SXSW Experience with Social Media
Every year, thousands of bands, music industry professionals, and hardcore fans flock to Austin, Texas for the mighty South By Southwest (SXSW) music festival. Over the course of nine days, three distinct but interwoven conferences take place -- Interactive, Music, and Film. For the uninitiated, SXSW can be an overwhelming, daunting experience. But for tech-savvy patrons, technology has made the...
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MobileShift
The Promise and Challenges for Mobile Media in the Developing World
Mobile phones are everywhere. They have long surpassed the Internet in number of users, and in some parts of the world, mobile phones now rival television in reach. The mobile tech economy (at least until recently) was booming with telcoms and handset manufacturers fiercely competing in emerging markets, and software giants like Microsoft and Google entering the mobile industry in...
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Guides
E-books are electronic books, or books you can read on your computer or on handheld devices such as e-readers or smartphones. The first e-book was likely created by Michael Hart at the University of Illinois in 1971, when he typed in the text of the U.S. Declaration of Independence onto an early version of the Internet. Hart founded the Gutenberg Project, an online collection of e-books that are taken from public domain books.
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Digging Deeper
Vodafone's Child Porn Filter Blocks Innocent Czech Tech Blogs
Last summer, the British cell phone carrier Vodafone announced it would be offering a new filtering service for its Czech customers. "Child pornography and promotion of racism [are] such socially dangerous content that we have access to it automatically blocked for all of our customers," said Philip Premysl, senior manager of corporate social responsibility of Vodafone in the press release....
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World View
Africa News Empowers Citizens to Report Online
Over the past couple of months I have been following a new African news portal, Africa News, the latest in the 12-year history of African online news media. Africa News goes much further than previous attempts to create online news communities serving Africa; the site includes content submitted by locally based citizen journalists who use mobile phones and the Internet...
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World View
Cell Phone Use, Texting Widespread in China
BEIJING -- As basketball fans geared up for the U.S.-China pairing on August 10, a banner headline in the China Daily predicted more than a billion fans would watch the game. There were watch parties everywhere -- at ex-pat bars, local dives, even the hotel room two doors down from me. And in the lobby, even the security guard...
more »Thought Leader Q&A
Locative Media Project Aims to Collect Stories of Atlanta
The technology and journalism fields have long been dominated by men, especially in the upper management of big companies. But the J-Lab and McCormick Foundation want to shine the light on new ideas from women who work at mainstream media outlets but want to start something up on the side. That's why they started giving out grants in their...
more »Guides
The iPhone is the first cell phone offered by Apple Computer, combining its popular iPod MP3 player with a multi-touch-screen smartphone with web browsing. Apple CEO Steve Jobs played the tech world's wizard as he unveiled the iPhone on January 9, 2007 at the Macworld conference, where people lined up to gape at an early version of the phone behind glass.
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Spain's National Obsession with Mobiles, Texting
A few weeks ago I told you about the perpetuation of print newspapers here in Spain, and in that post I mentioned the fact that you don't see a whole lot of laptops being used on the streets of Barcelona or Madrid. One might think that this is an indication of a lack of love for gadgets. Quite the contrary: You may not see laptops, but what you do see are cell phones -- and tons of them.
more »MobileShift
12 Lessons Learned from Locative Media Project at Medill
Lojo Connect, our ten-week project that has explored ways that newsrooms can use location-based storytelling, including online interactive maps and GPS-driven stories, is coming to a close. You can read our previous posts on MediaShift to learn more about our project and limitations we encountered along the way.
more »MobileShift
Learning the Limits of Locative Media
Once our "LoJo team" finalized our locative story idea, we had to decide which format and technology worked best. We debated the advantages of driving tours versus walking tours. Driving tours are particularly attractive when tour locations are miles apart, which is the case with some of Chicago's planned Olympic venues. But a driving tour would limit our story to people with cars and to locations with available parking. We ultimately decided on a hybrid driving and walking tour.
more »MobileShift
Medill Students Use 'Locative Media' for Mobile Storytelling
If you've ever been on an audio tour of a museum or tooled around with an interactive map, you've experienced "locative media." Reliant on numerous emerging mobile and location-based technologies (from GPS-enabled mobile phones to Google Maps-based applications), locative storytelling provides multimedia content that enhances a user's connection to a given place.
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Twitter Helps with Reporting, Filtering the News
Last May on MediaShift, we wrote a series of articles about a new microblogging tool called Twitter, which was just beginning to gain visibility among the digerati. At that time, many bloggers were still on the fence as to how useful the service really was. Many thought it was a waste of time. Others just didn't understand if it...
more »Digging Deeper
The mobile web, or mobile Internet, is the experience of browsing the Net or using Internet functionality such as online maps and web search on your cellular phone or personal digital assistant (PDA). The promise of the mobile web is to let you do things like check email or news headlines, find good local restaurants, and get driving directions while you are on the move.
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
The Blessing and Curse of the iPod Touch
Here at MediaShift, we have had some less than perfect experiences with mobile devices and the Internet. Earlier this year, Mark wrote "a manifesto about what would make for a smarter smartphone." And last summer "I grumbled about the bad time I was having with my new smartphone." The Treo 680 was under-delivering in the one area that had convinced me to purchase the phone in the first place: surfing the web.
more »Digging Deeper
Politico 2.0: Ruffini Blogs, Twitters, Crowdsources Obama Donations
Patrick Ruffini is the epitome of the new breed of political consultant. He's a numbers wonk who swears by Microsoft Excel. He's a tech geek who's had his own political website since the mid-'90s, and he writes for various big-name group blogs such as TechPresident and TownHall.com -- as well as his own blog. And though he has worked...
more »MobileShift
How to Make Smartphones Smarter
The cell phone industry in the United States is at a crossroads. Verizon announced it would open up its networks to other devices, AT&T opened its already-open network and Google has been pushing the carriers to adopt its more open Android platform. Whether any of this makes any sense to you, there's an obvious trend towards openness by cell...
more »MobileShift
Pocket Journalism Takes More Than Stylish iPhones
An AP technology story out of Japan hit home week. It detailed how young folk in Asia are abandoning the PC by the drove.
more »Media Usage
How Cell Phones Are Killing Face-to-Face Interactions
Whether you are dating someone, interviewing someone, or just meeting someone for the first time, there is a special quality about face-to-face interactions. You can catch the subtle tone in their voice, see their expression as it changes from sad to outraged, and you can look them in the eye to see if you trust them. So it's unfortunate...
more »MarketingShift
Marketers Grapple with Giving Teens More Control Online
SAN FRANCISCO -- A curious thing happened at the Hotel Nikko in downtown San Francisco today during the Ypulse Mashup 2007 conference about those wired teens. Yes, a lot of older folks dressed business-casual tried to look hip and decipher what the kids were doing online in social networks, on mobile phones and in virtual worlds. But on numerous...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Why My Smartphone Is Dumb About the Net
I've got a problem: I hate using the Internet -- on my phone, that is. I am one of those people whose ears perked up at the idea of being able to take my online activities, such as reading news, watching videos and social networking with me wherever I go, on my phone. And after investing in a flashy...
more »Your Take
Is getting news on your mobile phone a satisfying or frustrating experience?
So many people have cell phones with web access that media companies are falling over each other to deliver content to cell phones. A recent article in the New York Times noted that CBS, News Corp. and ESPN are all putting big resources into mobile content, news and video delivered to cell phones, but the article also pointed out that...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Doing More Than Just Twittering Our Lives Away
When I first signed up for micro-blogging service Twitter last September, I remember reading that day that Evan Willliams, one of Twitter's founders, was in a horse drawn carriage winding through the streets of Marrakech. I found that fascinating. That day, I wrote one update ("I'm blogging...") and didn't sign in again until April of this year. Why? Because...
more »Digging Deeper
Twitter Founders Thrive on Micro-Blogging Constraints
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and co-founder Biz Stone have taken executive transparency to new heights, not only using their own Twitter micro-blogging service frequently to share details of their personal lives, but also publishing their own phone numbers and business address on Twitter's Contact page. So it was easy for me to get in touch with them to set...
more »Guides
Your Guide to Micro-Blogging and Twitter
Micro-blogging allows you to write brief text updates about your life on the go, and send them to friends and interested observers via text messaging, instant messaging, email or the web. The most popular service is called "Twitter", which was developed last year and became popular among techno-gurus at the 2007 South by Southwest Conference in Austin, Texas. Part of the magic of Twitter is that it limits you to 140 characters per post, forcing you to make pithy statements on the fly.
more »MarketingShift
Marketers Get Weak Signal from Users on Cell-Phone Ads
There is an interesting disconnect between the way marketers view advertising on cell phones and what average folks who use cell phones think about those same ads. Marketers, ad agencies, research firms, cell phone makers and carriers are salivating over the prospect of delivering marketing messages to people via their cell phones. But survey after survey shows that people are not quite as excited about it -- in fact, most people consider it an outrage to be bothered by ads on such a personal device.
more »MusicShift
A Heated Conversation with the iPhone
Last night, I was visited in a dream by the new Apple iPhone, which strangely enough I was able to converse with. The phone hovered above my head vaporously, its disembodied voice coming out of the speaker in silky, hushed tones. This is what I can remember from the conversation.
more »Citizen Journalism
Saddam Cell Video Subverts News Packages
There's a certain predictability and glossiness to news "packages," special reports on breaking news that journalists knew were going to happen ahead of time. So when a pope dies after a long illness, the U.S. invades Iraq after a long runup to war, or the Democrats are sworn into power in Congress, you know there will be spiffy graphics, an on-the-scene reporter, and even an original musical intro on CNN.
more »Your Take Roundup
The Definitive Guide to Cell Phone No-No's
I went to New York City last weekend, and noticed all the people on cell phones while waiting for their planes in the airport. OK, there's not much to do in these waiting lounges so why not call people up? But it got worse when we were loading onto the plane and someone stood right in the middle of everyone else and spoke loudly into their cell phone. Everyone around looked annoyed but it make no impact on the person in conversation. When it happened again while loading onto another flight this weekend, I decided it was now a trend.
more »Tags
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