newsonaut
Turning inner space into outer space
Thursday, November 1, 2012
That Google app may be too smart for its own good
A colleague recently asked me: “What’s another word for ‘performance’?” My first instinct was to try to think of a few myself, but he ruled them all out — he needed yet another word.
Then a light bulb went on — I fired up the Google app on my iPhone and used my voice to ask the exact same question. Within about two seconds, Google gave me both a definition, which it read out loud, and four synonyms. And that was just for starters. Scrolling down, I found an entry from thesaurus.com, which had more synonyms than you could shake a stick at.
What a performance indeed — by the Google app.
Of course, I had to try the same question with Siri just to see how it compares. Siri had to “think about that” for awhile, and finally came up with an entry from WolframAlpha with many synonyms. Siri was a few seconds slower on the uptake and less polished in presentation.
Google is so fast that it might actually be too fast. As you speak, you can see the words forming on the screen. Sometimes they’re wrong, but as you keep speaking, Google figures out what you mean and shows the correct words. But woe be to you if you pause.
For example, if you ask: “What’s another word for . . .” you’re whisked to thesaurus.com without the benefit of stating the word you were looking for. Siri, on the other hand, doesn’t penalize you for pausing. So slow can be good sometimes.
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Tuesday, October 30, 2012
iBooks 3 minds its Hs and Js
Kindle’s inability to hyphenate has alway been a deal breaker for me. The unsightly gaps this creates in the justified text it insists on presenting is unprofessional and inexcusable.
iBooks 3 just came out, so downloaded it out of curiosity. When I saw that it defaulted to rag-right text, I assumed this was Apple’s way of making a lack of hyphenation less apparent and chalked it up as at least some progress. But then I noticed that there is indeed hyphenation — and that it works even with justified text.
As you can see from the iPhone screenshots above, justified text with hyphenation looks fine — as long as it isn’t all caps. Still, this places iBooks miles ahead of the Kindle.
The terrible job iBooks does with all caps is not exactly endearing, but at least there is the consolation of knowing that these situations are rare.
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Saturday, October 27, 2012
Easy infographics for time-strapped newsrooms
Looking at some of the infographics being published these days, I can’t help but wonder where they find the time and talent to create them.
First, they contain a lot of information. That all has to be gathered and sorted. Someone has to pick what is used and write it up in a way suitable for a graphic presentation. Second, they contain a lot of art. Someone has to have the creativity to present the information visually.
When you work for a small publication, it all seems like an impossible task. Unless you use infogr.am.
I’ve checked out a lot of the web-based programs available for creating infographics, but I keep coming back to infogr.am because of its ease of use and great graphics.
Census data came out recently on languages spoken in Canada. The numbers were available for both here in Kamloops and for all of the country. I was easily able to pick out a nice template, plug in the figures and have a beautiful interactive chart comparing languages spoken here and in the nation as a whole. I estimate it took between 30 and 45 minutes.
Like anything else, you’ll have to spend time getting used to how infragr.am works, but it’s well worth the effort. Best of all, a bunch of new templates have been added recently, so you don’t have to worry about boring your readers with the same old graphics every time.
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Thursday, October 11, 2012
Kindle's typography is not good enough
John Gruber is right — there is no excuse for a dedicated reader like the Kindle to produce justified text without hyphenation. It makes for unsightly, amateurish gaps between the words. The Kindle should be the epitome of good typography, not just another run-of-the-mill, good-enough device.
Amazon’s goal should be for Kindle typography to equal print typography. They’re not even close. They get a pass on this only because all their competitors are just as bad or worse. Amazon should hire a world-class book designer to serve as product manager for the Kindle.
As I’ve said before, this is a deal-breaker for me. But my fear is that hyphenation may soon become a dead art for no other reason than a lack of protest from readers. When old people in the future speak wistfully about the bygone days of hyphenation, the young ones will give a patronizing smile and change the subject.
Be sure to read the rest of Gruber’s Kindle review over at Daring Fireball.
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Saturday, October 6, 2012
Some things never change
Meet John Doe — a movie directed by Frank Capra — was released in 1941, yet the opening scenes could easily have been from today.
First, we see a plaque on the outside of a newspaper building extolling the virtues of a free press. A worker comes along and chisels that off with a jackhammer. Then other workers replace the plaque with meaningless tripe about The Bulletin being a “streamlined” newspaper.
The next scene shows newsroom staff being called into the editor’s office to be informed that the new owner is laying them off — 40 people in total.
Newspapers reinventing themselves and cutting back . . . has there ever been a time when the industry wasn’t in turmoil?
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Friday, October 5, 2012
Easing into data journalism
If you’re as afraid of the word “spreadsheet” as I am, this blog might be for you — Baby Steps in Data Journalism. You’re still expected to be able to do things like “split the contents of cells in Excel,” but at least there are instructions on how to do it.
It’s run by Mindy McAdams, online journalism professor at the University of Florida. I’ll be keeping an eye on this one.
Here’s a good resource gleaned from the blog: The Data Journalism Handbook. There’s a free online version with lots to read.
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Monday, October 1, 2012
Why we need to pay attention to usatoday.com
USA Today has taken a major step forward into the digital age — and other news site publishers should sit up and take notice for two major reasons.
1. Sponsorship. Yes, readers are initially hit with the mother of all ads when they visit the site, but the ads at USA Today have a few things going for them. First, they’re actually attractive and interesting. Second, they’re easily dismissed with a nice big X. And third, they act as major sponsors, so we see precious few other ads cluttering up the site.
2. A news site layout. It is first and foremost a website about the news — not a website that tries to imitate a newspaper. It’s amazing that publishers have taken so long to come around to this. A news site is not a newspaper with hyperlinks. Instead of doggedly sticking to print habits, we need to free ourselves and take full advantage of the fact that people consume news differently on the Internet than they do on paper.
Newspaper editors desperately want to tell us what is important, and so insist on telling us what the top stories are. Readers appreciate these efforts, but they are also just as interested in the latest news and the most popular news. USA Today breaks from tradition by giving these three points of view more or less equal prominence. Quartz — the new biz-news site from The Atlantic — does this as well.
For years, I’ve seen other types of websites beautifully rendered by designers with incredible talent. But for some reason, news sites always seemed to lag behind — looking like they were tossed together by a programmer with an eye for functionality and little else. It seems now that news sites are finally seeing the light. And it’s not just about making things “pretty.” An attractive, easy-to-read site is one that will keep people coming back time and again. We know how important typography is for newspapers — why do we skimp on it for news sites?
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Friday, September 28, 2012
Introducing, the new media Twitter list
I’ve created a Twitter list for new media. It will likely evolve as I find some sources better than others, but you’re welcome to it. I have to say that I find most personal accounts to be full of insider chatter that takes up too much time to sift through. Those are the ones that will likely fall by the wayside. I prefer the institutional types of accounts where the tweets are more informative. To that end, even though my newsonaut account is personal, I try to keep mainly to information.
By the way, lists are a great way to make order of the Twitter chaos. I’ve decided that I don’t really need a lot of people cluttering up my timeline when all I really want is to see what they’re tweeting. As I mentioned before, it’s all about information. And thus was born the list. For my main timeline, I only follow accounts I have a personal interest in. The rest — the majority — are in the list.
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Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Behold, Quartz, the future of web apps
Web apps with responsive design have been coming into their own recently, but they took a big step forward this week with the launch of Quartz, a high-end business news site.
If you visit Quartz on your computer, be sure to grab the right edge of the window on your web browser and resize it. You’ll find that as it gets smaller, the layout changes. Known as responsive design, the idea is to have one site (or web app) that works on both the desktop and on mobile devices from tablets to smart phones of various sizes.
There’s no need to download a special app and install it. A responsive web app works wherever you have a web browser.
Quartz, with an elegance that’s hard to beat, is a beautiful example of how web apps should be done. Sponsorships mean it is not cluttered with ads, allowing the design to sparkle. And best of all, the stories are interesting and well-written — I was immediately drawn in by a piece about how Facebook is targeting audiences in developing countries.
My only criticism is that the site seemed slow on my 2007 iMac and first-generation iPad. It could be that the extra coding needed for a responsive design also weighs it down. Notice, for example, that photos resize as you make the window bigger and smaller. I imagine it takes a fair bit of behind-the-scenes magic to make this happen. Still, refinements are likely on the way.
Other than that, I’m giving Quartz an enthusiastic thumbs-up. I unabashedly predict it will set the standard for other news-oriented web apps.
To learn more about Quartz, be sure to read Josh Benton’s excellent overview at Nieman Journalism Lab, a site that’s a must-read for anyone interested in the future of news.
Oh, and by the way, newsonaut is also responsive — at least for smart phones. If you’re reading this on a computer, try making the window of your web browser as narrow as you can and see how the site layout changes.
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Monday, September 24, 2012
Spundge may be filling a need we don't really have
Spundge is a new tool for journalists that promises to make our lives easier by helping us monitor Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr all in one place. You can also throw in some RSS feeds.
So I immediately signed up and created a “notebook” for Kamloops, the location of newsonaut head office. The result is a stream of items from the above-mentioned sources that have the word “Kamloops” in them.
It is indeed handy have all these sources in one spot, but there are a couple of problems.
First, the data from Facebook, YouTube and Flickr is pretty much useless. It mainly consists of personal posts that have no news value. So that leaves us with Twitter, which brings up another problem.
The tweets brought in from Twitter are only those that have the keyword “Kamloops” in them. But of course not all newsworthy tweets about Kamloops have that word in them. It would be great if they did, but they don’t.
So now I’m left wondering why I would use Spundge when a Twitter account that follows all known Kamloops news sources does a better job. And if I want to search for tweets with the word “Kamloops” in them, Twitter can do that, too.
Of course, there is more to Spundge than a simple data stream. You can collaborate on your notebooks and share them. And for a major event, I can see this having value. Even so, I’d be surprised if adding Facebook and the others to the mix would be very helpful. Twitter pretty much has a lock on the news.
If you’d like to learn more about Spundge, Andrew Phelps has a nice overview, including quotes from corrections guru Craig Silverman, at Nieman Journalism Lab.
Be sure to try it for yourself. Just because I had a less-than-stellar first impression doesn’t mean you won’t find it useful.
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