I pore over content and my feed reader, trying to perfect comment, and content, so that it is comprehensive, definitive, and unable to be questioned. I feel the need to cover the issue from all angles, as if I must attempt to encompass the breadth and wealth of thought out there. And yet I’m overwhelmed by the quantity of more, better, reasoned, experienced content creators out there, and so hesitate to speak.

The speed of change is so quick that, even if I could reach that point of perfection, it would be out of date within days, hours, or even minutes. So, inspired by this post by Bryan Murley from Innovation in College Media, I commit to not being overwhelmed.
In that post, Bryan harks back to something he wrote in 2006.

We can’t allow ourselves to get so overwhelmed with the pace of change that we become immobilized by the sheer volume of change that is taking place.

And with that, I welcome you back to the earley edition.

It is not that comment will be spurious or ill-formed, but I will shoot my thoughts and ideas on digital innovation from the hip with confidence, within reason and, hopefully, with an accuracy that will make my contribution to the crowd worthwhile.

Read on, friends.

Bryan’s Innovation in College Media post featured in October’s Carnival of Journalism, hosted by Will Sullivan at Journerdism.

Not much logic behind the recommended kayak route – Seattle to Sydney. Wouldn’t something like San Diego to Brisbane (since I’m going to Brisbane) make more sense? But we’re kayaking some 12,700km (7,923m), there is no sense.

At least that way I can comment on the things I may otherwise intend blogging about but never have the time to really commit to a full post.

The next few rounds of links to be posted to the blog will be fairly extensive, as I’ve picked through the last 100 or so blog posts I had tagged for following up in Google Reader, and have another couple of hundred unread ones yet to clear.

Perhaps it will breathe some life into this ailing blog.

James Mowery from Performancing was demonstrating how it works.

A lot of bloggers on mainstream news sites already do ‘live blogging’, often on a regular day and at a regular time, and this tool could make their lives a little easier. Even if not working with an already clunky CMS, managing a live blog can be difficult at the best of times.

I like the ability to embed the live discussion within a blog’s post page – or on any page – and then easily manage things from the Cover It Live interface. A three-pane view shows additional functions (like inserting a poll), the content box, and incoming comments.

The Media Library is a great tool.  You can permanently store content in folders (audio, video, images, polls, links, ads and prewritten text), then drag relevant content for a specific live blogging session into a prepared show folder.  (see demo)

The benefit of this is preparing a live blog with what you already plan to say and present.  Many mainstream media blogs don’t really provide the functionality or interactivity of an actual live conversation.  A blog post is made, and then the live blogger takes and responds to comments, with no real further addition to their initial post it is essentially a statement up for discussion.  With Cover It Live, that can be spread out in real time, inviting more interactivity.

Image function could be improved.  During the live blog session you can  post images or video that the participants will be able to open and watch.  The way Cover It Live works, images at this stage can’t be too detailed as it looks like they’re restricted to about 330 x 220 px.   A full screenshot, for example, is difficult to view, whereas a portrait image of a person comes out looking fine.  In image selection, general web thumbnail standards should apply – crop tight.

Different templates can also be created that will show your branding before the blog goes live, while in progress, and once the live blog session has ended.

Cover It Live is probably best served covering a live event, and that was probably its intent.  I can see the downside for mainstream news bloggers who take the statement-response approach would be that newcomers to the conversation have to try and catch up with what has already been said.

On the standard static screen, they can at least read all the other comments and responses, easily, before choosing to engage themselves.
The live blog I sat in on, including a review of Cover It Live:
http://performancing.com/blogging/its-kinda-regular-blogging-its-live

And a review focused on live blogging news events using Cover It Live:
http://www.beatblogging.org/blog/2008/02/chating-live-wi.html

My Reading List, in the right sidebar and here, continues to be tagged with followup items every day, hundreds of which I am yet to follow up on.  At some point I’m going to have do delicious those items or incorporate the feed into this blog so it doesn’t look like I’m doing absolutely nothing!

In the meantime, the new post is above, on Cover It Live.

Things looked to have worked fine initially, but now I seem to have lost all style and formatting associated with the site.

So apologies for the bare bones look, I’m not quite sure what happened.

From now on, earleyedition.com/blog is redirecting to earleyedition.com, since there is no real difference between the ‘blog’ and the rest of the content of this site.

I hope you continue to come back, and that it starts looking like normal again some time soon!

It was a future filled with optimism and hope when this blog launched during the first semester of 2004.

It was the early stages of the explosion of the new web log, or ‘blog’, craze, and today, in 2008, the optimism continues as digital media takes off.

Here’s to another four years, and more.

In that light, I’ve created a Portfolio category which also includes a radio interview submitted during a broadcast course, as well as another early podcast.

It won’t be the definitive portfolio, but at least for now I can add a few things to that category so some of this blog’s content can actually be found.

And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice: “We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight!” We’re going to live on! We’re going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!

Huzzah.

Being for all intents and purposes Australian, as an American citizen I feel this an obligatory post.

The Future of Local TV News? « Rosenblumtv

Who would buy an edit suite today? Not in an era when you can edit just about anything on a laptop. Makes sense.

Extend that argument to cameras, satellite dishes, transmission towers in an era in which anyone can put video up online with a server and an online connection and suddenly the whole architecture of local tv news as we know it starts to collapse.

[...]

Go over the local University. Get yourself a dozen bright and eager young journalists. They all have their own cameras and laptops anyway. And start your own local news channel.

There is no ‘barrier to entry’ except your own anxiety.
Someone is going to do this. Why not you?

Amen.  And while not every university student has a video camera, even the movie mode of a half-decent point-and-shoot camera is going to yield a decent 320×240 video image – pretty much your standard online video viewing size.

If you don’t have a video camera but WANT one you can get some of the higher quality ones (HD, 3CCD and external microphone) on eBay, brand new, for much less than the retail. I link you here to pages that have a review (not in-depth), retail price and eBay prices of a couple of cameras.
JVC GZ HD7
Canon HV20
Sony HDR CX7K

I’ve signed up to a few popular sites to see how useful they are – and because I’m a complete nerd. I did hold off for a quite a while on signing up to some of these, but I now feel it’s almost a responsibility to be involved and try to understand them more.

I honestly haven’t put much effort into expanding my social networks across these sites yet, and hadn’t visited some for several months before writing this post.

I’m on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, Friendster… probably something else, but I can’t remember at the moment.

You can read about Twitter in this article in The Australian yesterday, where it’s suggested Twitter may not be a complete waste of time.

“There are people who talk about their frivolous daily activities,” Owyang says.

“I remove them. For me it’s more of a business communication tool than a frivolous personal introspection tool.”

LinkedIn has been described as invaluable for professional and career networking. The following is a profile link promotion button. It will probably be part of a future redesign of earleyedition.com.

And Twitter has been described as inane, which of course it can be, as can blogs. But there are useful ones out there too. The badge below may be incorporated into that redesign I mentioned.

I refuse to give up on this blog, despite the horrendous lack of posting recently.

“Surely you could just provide links?” I hear you cry.

Here’s a relevant one:
Blogosphere boom’s pace slackens – but is beginning to fracture along cultural lines, according to the last par in that story. Interesting.

I may have also forgotten my brother’s birthday a month ago…. Happy Birthday….

Posting has been sporadic lately thanks to the time commitment of a two-week internship with ABC TV.

I do have things to blog, mainly pointing to interesting online media stories of late.

The other thing is related to that. This blog has become more and more a collection of links to online media stories and information, and occasionally my thoughts thereon.

I’m fairly comfortable with this, as it seems to be in keeping with my increasing interest in the converging world of online journalism, where newspapers and television are increasingly competing in the same video market.

I was reading through my Introduction to Broadcast Journalism lecture notes to see again the different shot types – pan, tight, mid, wide, etc. – and noticed some of the notes I took in class (almost two years ago now).

…give camera person as much info as will help get the right shots
- fine line between giving info and telling camera person what to do

But when online, usually I am the camera person. So I should know how to get the right shots myself, and be able to tell the camera person (if I do happen to have one) exactly what I want and how I want it.

…a nervous editor interviewing wooden film critics, could be a public-access cable clip. Often, the Times reporters’ videos are like tentative, so-so versions of TV-news spots, unremarkable sound bites interlarded with scripted blah-blah boilerplate.

The lessons seem obvious: Don’t do Web video if you don’t have anything interesting to show, and don’t compete with TV unless you can do something they can’t or won’t. In other words, use the medium.