Tuesday, October 31, 2006

All Saints Eve

Happy Halloween to all and though this isn't a holiday that I celebrate to the nines, I did enjoy surfing the Internet today and finding many photos presented by newspapers.

Boston.com links to ExploreNewEngland.com, which has full coverage of Halloween, including photos of readers' costumes, which are a must-see. The site has pictures, maps of haunted spots, a guide to Salem, which includes a photo gallery, message boards, and even blogs! Be sure to click on the link that leads to the audio slideshow of the Globe's inside look at Myths & Monsters, a haunted house in Salem, Mass. All in all, it's quite comprehensive for a site on Halloween.

Boston is not the only city getting into the festive mood either. Have a look at the Miami Herald's Photos of the Day, where Halloween is the theme. I especially enjoy the shot of Governor Jeb Bush, though he probably didn't make that face merely for the holiday.

NOLA.com presents Haunted New Orleans where everything is covered from vampire sightings to voodoo. Be sure to see the photos of people in their costumes and photos taken by readers themselves.

Lastly, the New York Times gave us a slideshow of Halloween Across the World. The best shot there in my opinion was the one of the little girl in the penguin costume...standing next to a penguin.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

20 Years Ago

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the playing of Game Six. I won't even explain what I mean. You should know it.

Boston.com celebrated the anniversary with some Web material. Eric Wilbur blogs about that fateful night and brings up many things, including the fact that Buckner's error did not cost the Red Sox the championship. The game was already tied, and the Sox had a chance to win game seven and lost that too.

To this day, I'm still trying to explain that to bitter and ignorant Red Sox fans.

Wilbur also includes two YouTube videos which are must-sees.

As sidebars, the site has a message board for readers to discuss where they were on the night of Oct. 25, 1986, the archived game story written by Larry Whiteside, the box score of the game (courtesy of baseball-almanac.com) and a couple of photos from the game. Also included is a column about the game from two years ago written by Dan Shaughnessy.

I was only two years old when Game Six occurred, so I did not see the game live. However, I do own the DVD set of the series and I watch it whenever I want to see Mets success at its best. Though it's been beaten to death, I think the story is still worth telling even 20 years later. That's why I appreciate Boston.com spending some time on the subject.

By the way, don't feel sorry for Bill Buckner. His career will always outweigh that error in my mind.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Helpful Hints from OJR

A Monday post on the Online Journalism Review blog by New York Times online producer Jonathan Morgan has assembled material for journalists to sift through regarding how to get with the program and become Internet savvy.

The list of sites is very helpful as it is broken up into categories such as making multimedia and blogging and content management systems, giving journalists plenty of ideas and knowledge on how to make themselves more useful in the ever-growing world of new media and web journalism.

I for one intend to study up on how to make podcasts. OJR suggests this article for podcasting.

Monday, October 23, 2006

You Get What You Ask For

One of Boston.com's top stories today is how a recent study has shown that the prices of homes across the nation are dropping and that Boston has already reached a low, but probably won't get any worse. The story uses the study, suggests reasons for the decline and then cites responses from real estate agents, experts and homeowners who have their homes on the market.

Then the editors opened the forum to readers and the readers have pulled no punches. Responses have ranged from "Who funded this study, the National Association of Realtors?" to "I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – the Globe’s coverage of the local real estate market is a mockery. That Moody’s report came out over 3 weeks ago. Time for some new blood over there," to "This study and story are pure fiction. It is worse than it looks...not better."

As of now, there are nine pages of comments to this story, sparking quite the discussion among people over real estate prices. Many of them have made good, insightful comments about the story and the real estate market itself.

Thus, I wonder if the Boston.com people had anticipated this. On the one hand, they've gotten people to speak extensively about a story on their website , creating demand for it, but on the other hand, they are getting mostly negative feedback and they're even questioning whether it's propoganda or not.

Quite a double-edged sword I'd say.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

MySpace Impostors II

I continue to harp on MySpace phonies simply because I am still amazed at how the creators of these pages have nothing better to do.

Bryan McGonigle at the Globe wrote a story on Monday about political figures in America, who are targeted with fake MySpace pages. Apparently, Senator John Kerry likes Harry Potter and President Bush eats kittens.

Again, it's humorous, but I kind of wonder if these are the products of teenagers aiming to make jokes or if it's the result of adults who have nothing better to do with themselves. Free speech sure takes strange forms these days.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Covering the tragedy

Yesterday was a whirlwind day for me as I traveled to New York for a postseason game, only to find that a Yankees pitcher was killed in a plane crash that struck a Manhattan high-rise and that the game was postponed due to rain that hit the city almost at the same time the plane hit the building.
While sitting on a JetBlue plane last night, I watched television coverage of the tragedy, but today I had an opportunity to see the New York Times and their multimedia department must have been working overtime last night because they have a slew of items for readers to see.
If you visit Times.com and go to the site's special section on the crash, you can find a plethora of items to click on. First up is an interactive graphic mapping the flight of the plane from its start at Teterboro Airport to its demise on East 72nd St. Next is a video report on the story itself. Then, Tyler Kepner, the Yankees' beat reporter, provides an audio report giving what he knew about Lidle. Joe Drape is up next with audio covering eyewitness accounts of the crash. Lastly, there are two slide shows; the first one shows the neighborhood people and their reactions to the crash while the second one has some very telling photos of the crash scene itself.

All in all, I think it's a superb effort on the part of the Times to produce the interactive material.

Also, while I was on the plane watching the television news coverage, WNYW FOX 5 had a segment where the anchors were discussing the plane itself and to describe the Cirrus SR20, the producers used a YouTube clip of the plane. I cannot find that clip, but I thought it was interesting to see the television medium turn to a site like YouTube for information. If I find the clip, I'll post it.

Talk Trash

Boston.com is sponsoring a chat today with MBTA General Manager Daniel Grabauskas beginning at 1 p.m.

Now's your opportunity to voice your displeasures on the many things that are wrong with the public transportation in the city. Do you hate the fact that the T only runs til 12:30 a.m.? Hate the way the MBTA is implementing the automated fare collection system? Hate how green line drivers never leave the doors open long enough? Well, say something!

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Practicing my skills

On Monday, I heard gunshots on the street outside my apartment building while I was watching telelvision and soon, the police and emergency medical technicians came and blocked off the street. Looking out my window, I saw very little, other than flashing lights and some people wandering the street hoping for a peek.

With the help of a tool that Professor Kennedy demonstrated in class, I was able to get some information on this disruption outside my window. According to BPDNews.com, this is what happened:
At about 8:22pm yesterday officers from District 4 responded to 62 Hammond St. for reports of shots fired. On arrival officers located a victim suffering from gunshot wounds who reported that he was shot while in front of 62 Hammond St. The victim was transported to Boston Medical Center with non-life threatening injuries. Officers recovered ballistic evidence at the scene but no suspects were apprehended.
I live at 96 Hammond St., so you can see that I was right near the action. It was good to get this information to help me figure out the severity of the incident. Hopefully, there will be an update on catching whoever it was who disrupted my block.

BPDNews.com is certainly a useful tool, as was discussed in class. I hope that one day it will add a feature similar to Chicagocrime.org, which is great because it maps out crimes and allows users to filter and customize information according to their needs.

Monday, October 09, 2006

GoogleTube

It didn't take long for an internet power to gobble up YouTube and its fast-growing popularity. Google announced today that it will buy YouTube for $1.65 billion, the most expensive purchase in the search engine company's history.

This comes on the heels of YouTube announcing that it has closed deals with CBS, Vivendi's Universal Music Group and BMG Music Entertainment to allow content from those companies to appear on the video site, thus avoiding potential copyright infringement lawsuits.

$1.65 billion is a hefty price to pay for a company that is less than two years old, but according to the AP report and numbers from comScore Media Matrix, YouTube's audience was up to 72.1 million through this past August.

Now Google owns it and its vast empire, which includes e-mail, blogs (hello, Blogger.com!), maps, digitzed books and now online videos, will continue to grow.

Sunday, October 08, 2006

300 million people roaming these great states

John Donnelly at the Boston Globe wrote in today's paper about the nation's population growth, specifically about how it will reach 300 million in the coming days and how it could continue to surge.

The story is accompanied by fun graphics about the United States' population growth between 1990 and 2000 as well as percentages changes by state, the percentrage of immigrants in the country and the projected amount of people separated by race between now and 2043. My favorite facts in these graphics are that Nevada and Arizona are the highest growing states in the nation and that the hispanic and asian populations will rise by 113.9 percent and 131.8 percent, respectively, in the next 37 years.

Have a look for yourself and see how much this country is going to grow.

Friday, October 06, 2006

I want MyESPN

On ESPN.com, the site has a MyESPN function that allows you to filter content based on your favorite teams. I use the function frequently to get me the right stories and podcasts on the Mets and my other favorites.

This week, ESPN has announced that they will overhaul MyESPN that will allow you to arrange content in a visually-pleasing way, even going as far as giving you the option of making multiple pages that can be tabbed.

It's looking pretty good so far. Click here for the preview.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Spotting an impostor

Regardless of what MySpace is worth, there are issues with the social network. A few days ago, a friend linked me to Keith Hernandez's MySpace profile. Hernandez is a former baseball player and current broadcaster for Sports New York (SNY). I opened the link, interested in the fact that he had a profile, when I saw that it was clearly a fake. Hernandez would not use this as his profile quote: "I'm not gonna say women belong in the kitchen but they certainly don't belong in the dugout!"

MySpace is littered with fake celebrity profiles. If you look at Hernandez's friends, you'll find some of his colleagues (Gary Cohen and Chris Cotter) and former teammates (Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden), none of which are profiles that are actually managed by those people.

In August, Jessica E. Vascellaro of the Wall Street Journal wrote an article (courtesy of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) on the fake pages and the efforts of two men who are trying to verify the true celebrity pages. She writes about the problem that fake celebrity pages presents:
"The proliferation of celebrity posers frustrates the many MySpace members who use the site to follow news about -- and send fan mail to -- pop icons and other prominent personalities who join for cheap publicity."
This is the main reason that some people will never take the Internet seriously. How can anyone ever be sure they're reading the truth when it is so easy to falsify things such as celebrity profiles?

Granted, I found some of the things posted funny, but overall I think these pages are useless and have no business being in existence. It also makes me believe that a) many people have nothing better to do than post fake pages and b) some people's lives are so uninteresting, that they are forced to live vicariously through someone else's life.