Soundslides.

I enjoyed making my slideshow with TJ, soundslides was really easy to use, and we had fun getting the pictures.

It was a little difficult thinking of ideas for something sequential on campus to take pictures of, but then we realized we could take pictures of someone getting food.

Taking the pictures was interesting, cause I couldn't just take pictures of him all at the same level, I had to make a variety, which was fun to think of.

Soundslides is a cool program and it was neat and very easy to use.

Overall, this was a cool project and I liked having the small challenge of coming up with different ways to show somebody doing an everyday thing.

Pros and Cons of In:Site.

Here are what I view as the pros and cons of In:Site.

Pros:
-Easily accessible by its target demographic on facebook.
-Not too cluttered.
-Nice variation on subject matter.
-Strong Unity.
-Being a Facebook app gives In:Site nice user interaction, making this a community as well as a news site.
-Lots of multimedia including slideshows and video.

Cons:
-From what I could see, anyone can post, leading to questionable content.
-No realy "newsy" material.
-Lots of jumps.
-Some non-journalistic writing.

Overall though, I like what they are doing, and I think the site looks really nice.

In:Site.

What is In:site?

In:Site is a application on Facebook dedicated to bringing 16-25-year-olds, a sorely lacking news audience, news on arts in culture around the Seattle area, a subject chosen for its popularity among the app's target audience.

The app was made by a group of 20 students at the University of Washington and is the focus of a 10-week entrepreneurial journalism class, which helps students get hands-on experience.
The students plan on using popular social sites like twitter to gain exposure for the nascent project.

The site is a collaboration with Seattle-based news aggregator (a news site that gathers and displays news from other sources) NewsCloud, who helped with the tech side of the Facebook app.

I've been looking at In:Site and plan a follow-up blog with my opinions on the project.

To check out In:Site, click here.

Bad design.

I think the Seattle P.I. lacks hierarchy in the sense that none of the headlines are in bold. And just in general design, I don't like the way the ads are placed, it makes them look like stories.

HTML Test.

Hello, brave new world! I am here to save the journalism industry, To test my theories, please see what the experts have to say at this journalism link

Seattletimes.com VS. Seattlepi.com.

As we all know, after well over a century serving the public of the Seattle area, the Seattle Post Intelligencer has shut down its print presses. But, the fallen giant lives on through the massive collective of human knowledge known as the internet.

But how does the P.I.'S website stack up against its brother, the Seattle Times' site?

Well, first, let's compare the front pages:

The P.I: Here we see the P.I.'s front page is mostly local. Seattle-area news is given the most space, and blogs from P.I. journalists, right next to the local news, occupy a wider space than an AP feed of global news. None of the news items we see are bolded or given more importance over the other, there's not even a picture attached to any of them. This seems somewhat odd as I assume most readers are like me and would rather read about the Washington senate's introduction of a new income tax bill than who won the lottery, but the tax bill story is below the lottery one, easy to miss in its lackluster equality.

The Seattle Times' front page however, has a nice mix of local and global news, which is just what I pick up a newspaper for. Also, everything here is nicely distributed, the most important or pressing story is at the top of the page with a nice bold headline, and there is a picture near the top as well, just like the top fold of A-1 in the Seattle Times

Moving on from the front page, clicking on the "U.S." section on both sites gives you as different perspectives as each front page:

The P.I.'s story layout is badly cluttered, a few stories are given the same ineffective treatment the front page gives them, under those is a segue that just says "Additional headlines:"
and then there is a messy pile of stacked stories that creates a wall of news that is difficult to wade through.

On the Seattle Times' site, the layout is much more spaced, giving all the stories some nice breathing room. Each story here also has some nice links under them, including links to multimedia, such as video, additional pictures, graphs etc. This is an essential part of online journalism, especially for a journalistic organization like the Times that already has a another product, be it print, radio, or broadcast.
The P.I. just doesn't have the sheer amount of interactivity the Times' site does, and that is a little depressing. Considering that the P.I. doesn't have a print product anymore, wouldn't you think they could focus a lot of resources to gathering multimedia?


In conclusion, for sheer informational content and news gathering, I'd say the Seattle Times rises far above the P.I. when it comes to their website, but, one thing the P.I. has a foot ahead of the Seattle Times is that has a much more intimate localness to it.
There are non-journalist hyper-local blogs, the front page delivers Seattle news right to you, no matter how sadly level all the headlines are, and even has a nice searchable event calendar for the area. So, going for straight hard news, I much prefer the Times' site, but waking up at 11:30 on a saturday morning and wondering how the lovely April-rain soaked Seattle is doing on a down-to-earth level, I'd go right to the P.I.