In the name of design I started my practical (home) exam in Mulitmedia-journalism a Tuesday morning in December. Inspired over the years by a number of slick and shining splash-screens, I knew that I wanted to design a cool hoover (vacuum cleaner) illustration.

Our assignment was to design a website and fill with content for the support group: Menn mot hybelkaniner – Men against dust collecting at home. We had to interview people, come up with tips and techniques for keeping the house clean. Check out a copy of the webpages here on stepheno.net .

I am sorry that all the pages are in Norwegian, and as this was my first Flash video conversion I am not sure how fast they load.

Adding some multimedia content to the more traditional webpages using interactive accessible video. The pages were all designed in Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 (which also kept me stuck at school for the software) since I did not have time to code it all raw. (I normally prefer raw-coding instead of WYSIWYG, since I feel you have much more more control.) Considering the site was created in less than I week I am quite pleased with the result, although doing it all over, or with a couple more hours of time I would have made a number of changes.

Benjamin Kuhn‘s Newsware is an interesting concept that does look interesting. In todays world of citizen journalism, being mobile is one of the most important features. One reporter is supposed to write an article and record both usable video and audio. Therefore the less hassle the equipment is the easier it will be to get the job done as quickly as your editor needs the story. So inspiring designs and concepts are always welcome.

(Pictures copied from YankDesign.)

Kuhn’s Newsware having so many individual parts I find a little of a minus. Nevertheless you can read more at TechEBlog and YankoDesign if you are interested.

Your next dictionary of choice? VisuWords – Visualizing words in a visual online graphical dictionary. Linking words together finding similar meaning, or suitable verbs or nouns that are connected to the word you chose to lookup.

VisuWords uses an open source database called WordNet. I previously was a fan of dict.org, however I do like visualization ref.: Bubbl.us Online Mapping, and I think that this graphical dictionary will prosper.

(Found VisuWords via. Del.icio.us.)

Although there are a great deal of indications that do point in the direction that some of the traditional journalism will die, Check out Wayne Smallman’s The death of the professional photojournalist?, I believe traditional journalism will survive parallel to the amateur journalist (Work for Yahoo & Reuters Without a Salary).

I have previously thought about how difficult source verification must be, with large amounts of user submitted news material. If you consider the fact that for a site or newspaper to become one of quality and especially trustworthiness, the news has to be true, often meaning several and/or respected sources. The possibility is definitely out there, for a large amount of people to be able to fabricate stories with their camera cell phones. At the moment, since the quality is so low on video and pictures from the phones, it provides even a greater chance to give an incorrect representation of an event. However I believe the quality from cell phones will improve quickly, but I do expect some news hoax in the mean time.

I don’t normally watch much news on TV, but I happened to catch just a glimpse of a story on CNN regarding the changes in the news due to public submitted cell phone pictures and video. (I have not been able to find the story on the net.) However I heard that there is an enormous amount of pictures and videos that are submitted to CNN and similar agencies. Going through it all and finding actual newsworthy material is not always easy. This is why “editorial” services like scoopt.com are a success and will continue to thrive. Scoopt.com allows users to submit pictures, videos or blogs, they then screen it and contact established news agencies willing to pay.
In addition in the CNN report, they discussed that there can be dangers of “sneaking” camera phones with to events and happenings that might initially forbid them.

An example, perhaps not such a good one, of the product and danger can be seen in the recent leakages of Saddam Hussein’s execution, where an already tense situation between the Sunni and Shia muslims will likely only elavate following the rather shocking execution video. CNN has the story: Fallout spreads from the execution video.Another expectation is that PR companies are already or will soon submit cell phone videos or pictures to profile their customers. Back to business and money…

Some comments to my article (Laptops NOT a Microsoft Bribe?) on Digg.com made me realize that I should be a little more clear of where I stand on the issue.

Firstly Credibility
If you knew a travel operator had sponsored some journalists writing a merry story or review about a rather unknown holiday beach somewhere half around the world, the chances are you would find them slightly less credible on their review. At the same time it’s so much better for them to disclose the fact that they actually were sponsored. Because not disclosing it, would then in fact perhaps be “misinterpereted” as a bribe.

Secondly Finances
There is no doubt that the finances of an established newspaper compared to a privately financed hobby blog are going to decide what the reviewer is capable of reviewing. In that light, if a “poor” reviewer should be given the possibility to review something that he at a first glance can’t afford, that should be a good thing. Though how the product is acquired is even more importantly something that should be told during the review. However if the product is already on the market, the established newspaper should strive to self finance the products.

Thirdly Not a Perfect World
Even the established newspapers might have owners that just grant them enough cash for their survival; therefore a free product to review might be greatly appreciated. In an ideal situation, the press is supposed to be free. Not told by anybody how to write an article or review something, in that way the reader is hopefully receiving a more correct picture of reality. But again, representation of reality will always be skewed. A lot of people don’t want to lose face or credibility and therefore might not inform readers that they have received a product for free. I’m sure this is the case every single day, and we can only be glad that Microsoft’s contribution, along with the others (Acer, AMD), has been brought to our attention.

Fourthly I’m biased
I mentioned it in my last post’s edit, but I’ll mention it again. My experiences with Microsoft’s operating systems have not been all that good, along side with Internet Explorer. Where I used to spend countless hours trying to make my webdesigns work for IE, when they looked nice on all the other browsers, just because Microsoft didn’t want to follow the standards. In addition that error pages and domains that are not found, even if you just forget the www, will lead you back to Microsoft’s search pages I interpret as an attempt to generate “false” internet traffic to their own sites.

Fifthly I’m not writing more quite yet
I’m sure I could write a great deal more on this matter, and I know there are books on similar issue’s. But for readability and other things I need to get done I’ll call it a day for now. 

(This post, like many of my other posts, is just me thinking aloud, and I don’t have the facts in front of me and may be totally wrong. And if so please tell me.)

More about this in the news:
Scott Beale is donating auction proceeds to EFF: Windows Vista Laptop on eBay, Proceeds Going To EFF
Amit Agarwal: What other bloggers are doing with their Microsoft freebies
Microsoft gives laptops that are not optimal for Vista Premium(?): Microsoft Gives Bloggers Sub-Aero (2.8) Laptops
B.L. Ochman: Edelman Has New Ethics Scandal Brewing With Microsoft’s Blogger Bribe Campaign
Chris Abraham: In Defense of Edelman over Bribery Charges

An interesting networking shift in professional media-house The New York Times‘ new decision. They are including links, allowing you to post directly to Newsvine, Facebook and Digg. This approach has previously been popular on various blog sites. But that The New York Times(The NYT’s) has incorporated these features, show that the speedlinking has reached a new high.

Now it will be interesting to see what the effect of The NYT’s bold approach will have on other news-agencies around the world. There is definitely a lot of potential users at Digg and the others, which don’t bother to read The NYTs daily.

Following my post on Claiming Digg and Technorati you will see I have placed my own “Share” links at the bottom of my singe-post pages.

Yahoo and Reuters jumped on the user-contribution (submitting) bandwagon. Just like many smaller mediahouses, readers are now able to send in their own coverage of the news. Yesterday they official launched YouWitness news.

You might not be surprised to hear that YouWitness news is already integrated into myYahoo (you already have an account if you use Yahoo mail, or belong to the GeoCities generation). The benefit of this is definitely one of convenience.

Users don’t have to setup and register new accounts, and yahoo has a traditionally user oriented interface (as evident with their mail, file, photo and other services.). The other positive aspect is that you will actually be able to read and see pictures or videos of events from all around the world, rapidly after events have happened.
But at the same time there are some negative aspects.

A quick reading of Reuters Terms of Use basically gives them the rights to your pictures or texts for free. Both Yahoo and Reuters will economically greatly benefit from this new “service”, meaning more press coverage they can offer to their paying customers or advertising revenues.

Considering the fact that you as the contributor might be the journalist and photographer, you will be working for free. If you sent the same story/picture to your local newspaper, the chances of a monetary reward might be greater. Additionally if the news is that interesting, Yahoo and Reuters might have it a couple minutes later nevertheless. But in regards to publication and widespread Yahoo and Reuters may be the solution.

Let me know your thoughts on YouWitness.