What I love about Capitol hill is that it’s not just a neighborhood, it’s a community.

We know what to do after days like today. In fact I think I can remember buying something at Frager’s not so long after a day like this

*Please Share and Distribute.

Anyone want to start the T-shirt Campaign? Get in touch.

]]> http://www.ben-connors.com/blog/rebuild-fragers/feed/ 0 http://www.ben-connors.com/blog/photo-spher/ http://www.ben-connors.com/blog/photo-spher/#comments Mon, 06 May 2013 02:10:15 +0000 Ben http://www.ben-connors.com/blog/?p=401 The best new feature on my Android is… the “photosphere.”  It’s a really fun medium to play with. While I enjoy being able to produce an equirectangular pano from 54 (accelerometer aided) snapshots, like this:

AND… It’s even cooler that I can use a ‘Tiny Planet’ filter to show the same image like this:  

 
I’m stoked that I just discovered how to share the fully immersive experience with a little embed like this:

Some relevant links after the jump.

Muppets

Nigeria*

*Warning entering old-school web space. Chance of SD video and Flash players.

Haiti,

Al Jazeera’s The Stream

More Stream

Arab Spring

The Fold from The Washington Post

War Room Risk

Jack Jacobson clearly cares:
He cares about efficiency,
He cares about accurate record keeping,
He cares about each individual constituent,
He cares about thoughtful use of citizen’s time,
He cares about effective use of resources
AND he cares A LOT about conserving paper.

We’ve lived here for three years and today we got 5 of these in our mailbox.

#NotSomeoneIdPutInALeadershipPosition
#FailedMarketingCampaign
#IsElection2012OverYet

The Fold is a daily current-events show run by a lean mean staff of predators (That’s Producer-Shooter-Editors for the uninitiated), who I’m honored to lead (at least nominally) : Kristen Boghosian, Kate Musselwhite, Brook Silva-Braga, and our incredible intern Rachel Jacobs.

The Fold isn’t just another webcast. It’s the lynchpin of a new app called PostTV built by our mad scientist buddies over at @WaPoLabs. The app is designed specifically for an exciting new Google product called GoogleTV.

By giving away the GoogleTV operating system to manufacturers, Google is following same revolutionary path they blazed with Android cellphones. And since GoogleTV runs on android, you can install the App on android tablets too. I’ve even got it running on my phone. (If you’re interested in testing the app for Android phone drop me a line.)

I’m not just excited about “The Fold” and PostTV because they are snazzy new whiz-bang products. I mean, they are, but much more importantly they represent a foundation for fuller richer story telling.

My two favorite things about working on The Stream, were

Number 1:
Giving the audience a stake in the conversation and adding more voices to the news narrative.

The Fold represents an increase of voices in a different way. The maturation of internet-enabled-TV represents another opening of the information space. For the first time in history a small team at legacy newspaper company can provide a realistic alternative to the nightly news.

And Number 2:
The Stream sought to create a hybrid of digital and televisual, by amplifying the best parts of many-to-many conversations.

At the Fold we’ll pay attention to social, but our strength is the knowledge of people sitting with us in the newsroom. So we’ve tossed out the old linear editorial model, our show is built to be skipped through. We get, how YOU get the news. Twitter, facebook, maybe radio, by the end of the day, you might want a recap, but what your really need is insight and filter, and we’ll strive to provide that.

I hope this little brain dump has gotten you as excited about The Fold as I am. To learn more about how we’re redoing nightly news for the cable-cutter generation, follow @Fold on twitter, or check out our new facebook page.

Still 4mb. Much to learn I guess.

We’re ramping up for big things. Stay tuned.

In a spasm of creative energy, coffee and insomnia I created this infographic comparing Obama’s 3 DNC speeches. It’s a pet project and while I spent a lot of effort to make it as accurate as possible it has not been vetted up to my usual journalistic standard, and I’m pretty sure the text is a see  sea of typos.

*Update 3:30AM
Who says I don’t finish things. LOL finally got all the info I want in here. Text version of my thoughts below the image.

Here’s what I learned:

“In 2004 Obama gave the shortest and most jam-packed speech. He began a signature use of first-person-plural emphasizing “participation.” He also frequently used first-person-singular as he introduced himself and talked about his “father.” He also laid out his “hope” for “America,” and threw his support behind “John Kerry.”

In 2008 Obama claimed the stage, speaking for nearly 45 minutes, and drawing over 12 minutes of applause. He talked about “America” being “one” “country” as he tempered his use of the third-person-plural ‘them’. He “promised” to “change” “America” and make “Washington” “work” if elected over “John McCain.”

In 2012 Obama’s speech was briefer and more humble than the previous speeches. He placed less focus on first-person-singular (himself) and indulged in less cheering and applause. He focused on the second-person crediting the audience for the successes of his first term. Obama’s speech was less focused but touched on “future” “challenges” like “war,” “jobs” and “energy.” Unlike the previous election cycles, he did not focus on his rival or any other individual.”

In the meantime this is the view from my bedroom window, updating about every 60 seconds.

The Stream has always been best live. Twitter provides the neural pathways on which the audience communicates amongst itself.  It’s that “many-to-many” conversation that let’s the program transcend the old 20th century medium (typical TV). Twitter, however, is ephemeral. Once the show is over, so is the shared experience.

I have always hoped the show’s ‘rewatch’ experience would be just as connected as the live one. While I worked at the stream I archived 150 shows worth of live tweets.  A few weeks back I learned a new bit of youtube API. It’s a way to get the timecode of a youtube player to trigger javascript events. Now I can replay the archived tweets as if in real time and of course all the tweets are actionable.

Below is a proof of concept. It pulls straight from an automated archive, all it requires is the date,  the approximate time of the first frame, and the duration. It still has some flaws. Overlapping tweets are mutually exclusive in this iteration, so I limit tweet length to 10 seconds. This is probably too fast for the UX, but pausing video will pause tweets playback as well.

I hope to see players like this from the Stream and other social shows in the future.