So my old buddies in the new media department of The Savannah Morning News are going all Web 2.0 and relaunching their web presence from a very 1999-era treatment to a clearly forward-looking model incorporating user generated content (blogs, flickr-like photo products etc), a clean (if gradient-heavy) design, and other helpful features like RSS. The beta of the site is available here; the old site is here. Like most newspaper sites today, there is a level of content that requires registration – but taking a page from MySpace and AIMPages, has the added benefit of giving the user a personalized home page where you can post entries, photos, link to other sites, etc. Kudos to the editorial and technical teams for putting this well conceived next-gen newspaper site together. Now if only there were a nice gallery of all my photos I shot during my time there at the then News-Press from 1989-1994, I’d be really happy!
Editor and Publisher has released the 2006 EPpy Awards (full list here), an annual competition in some 32 categories chiefly focused on new media in the print industry, and several buddies of mine can claim a part in some of the larger awards. My old friend from his AOL Sports days Jim Brady led Washingtonpost.com to Best Overall Newspaper-Affiliated Internet Service (>1M uniques) as their executive editor and vp. Former Augusta Chronicle photographer Natalee Waters current newspaper The Roanoke Times took home the same award in the under 1-million unique visitors category (one of her audio/picture stories can be seen here). In the Best Internet News Service under 1 million category, The Naples Daily News took the honor where my old boss John Fish and his director of new media Rob Curley won that award. Last but not least my old buds at SI.com took home the award for Best Internet Sports Service over 1 million.
C|Net.com reports on a new feature user-generated content play YouTube rolled out yesterday – the ability to recieve and post content sent directly from mobile devices. As evidenced by the role Flickr has played in events like the London 7/7 bombings, still images have flown around the web like wildfire in our mobile-happy world. Video has been more challenging, although major news outlets have carried some of these grainy clips on-air and on-line. But this new feature at YouTube suggests the next major news story may include plenty of citizen journalism video coverage if this feature gets even modest adoption.
Macworld sits down with Apple’s Sr. Director of Pro Apps Marketing to dispel rumours which were rampant last week that the development of Apple’s flagship pro-image workflow application had fired or reassigned it’s entire staff.
“The reports of Apple reducing their commitment to Aperture are totally false,” Kirk Paulsen, Apple’s Senior Director Pro Applications Marketing, told Macworld. “In fact, we’ve got more people working on Aperture right now than ever before. (Macworld)
Aperture’s current engineering team was assembled before the original team left. Aperture was never without an engineering team, and the product’s future was never in jeopardy. (Daring Fireball)
