Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

Statistics: Online Video Viewing Continues Booming, Total Online Streams Up 41% From Last Year

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

From the nielsenwire:

The Nielsen Company today reported overall online video usage and top online brands ranked by video streams for August 2009. Year-over-year, unique viewers, total streams, streams per viewer and time per viewer were up, led by a 41 percent growth in total streams.

Top Online Brands ranked by Video Streams for August 2009 (U.S.)
1) YouTube
2) Hulu
3) Yahoo
4) MSN/WindowsLive/Bing
5) Nickelodeon Kids and Family Network
6) Turner Sports and Entertainment Digital Network
7) Fox Interactive Media
8) Disney Online
9) MTV Networks Music
10) Blinkx

A chart for unique viewers by online brand is also included.

Source: nielsenwire

Wikipedia’s Rapid Reaction to Outburst During Obama Speech

Monday, September 14th, 2009

From the Blog Post:

If journalism is the first draft of history, what is a Wikipedia entry when it is updated within minutes of an event to reflect changes in a person’s biography?

This is the very live issue that cropped up in a heated argument on the discussion page that accompanies Wikipedia’s entry on Representative Joe Wilson Wednesday night, just 30 minutes after the Republican from South Carolina interrupted President Barack Obama’s speech by shouting “You lie!” As my colleague Carl Hulse reported in a blog post published about 10 minutes after the fight got going on Wikipedia, Mr. Wilson’s outburst came in response to the president’s statement that his proposed changes to health insurance laws would not give coverage to illegal immigrants.

Since Mr. Wilson’s shout was made during a live television broadcast — now archived on YouTube by The Associated Press — in front of all of his colleagues, the fact that it happened is not in dispute. After Wikipedia’s editors initially removed the first reference to the event from the entry on Mr. Wilson, citing concerns about sourcing and potential “vandalism,” the page was locked to prevent new or unregistered users from editing it.

That is when the argument among Wikipedians — which can be read in full on the discussion page starting here — really took off.

Much More Here.

Source: NY Times

Clicker: A New TV Directory for Online Content Set to Debut on the Web

Monday, September 14th, 2009

Note: Clicker is currently in private beta. Stay current as the when the service goes live via the Clicker blog or Clicker Twitter feed. On the homepage, you can register to be added to the beta list.

From TechCrunch:

While there are no shortage of video search engines out there, Clicker believes its offering is superior because it creates a structured database of programming, organizing shows by things like network, genre, and show name. This type of data not only allows for better search results, but it allows you to browse content without having to do text-based searches, which you probably won’t be doing when television and future web-enabled tablets start to serve up this content. Clicker already has a deal with Boxee.

The goal is really to be the best search engine for video content. Clicker will point you in the direction of whatever you are looking for (and will do embeds if they’re available), but won’t serve up the videos themselves. They will also delve into surfacing content not explicitly produced for television, but is still high quality web video content. But they don’t want to be YouTube, which is cluttered with user-generated content. Clicker is going for a different market.

From the Clicker Blog:

Clicker aims to provide the most comprehensive, unbiased and user-friendly way to navigate what’s available (and just as importantly, what’s not) to watch online, where and when you can find it, and finally, what’s worth watching amongst your infinite choices. We have made it our mission to make it dead simple for you to find the RIGHT SHOW, RIGHT NOW.

To accomplish this, Clicker is a hybrid of many other kinds of information and entertainment sites: one part directory, one part search engine, one part Wiki, one part entertainment guide, and one part DVR. At the heart of it all is a massive structured database, created by a team of people from search, media, data and content management backgrounds.

From day one, Clicker has mapped more than 300,000 episodes, from over 5,200 shows, from over 1,200 networks – in addition to 1,200 movies (soon to be 14,000 movies with the addition of Netflix), and 50,000 music videos from 20,000 artists. All of this programming is organized by episode, show, network, media type, title, and artist, as well as over 1,000 categories and sub-categories.

Source: Clicker Blog / TechCrunch

UPDATE: See Also: Clicker: More Than Just A Video Search Engine (via SEL)

Digitization: Chronicling America Illustrated Newspaper Pages from 1906 Added to LC Flickr Photostream and Other Chronicling America Links

Saturday, September 12th, 2009

From the Announcement:

The Library of Congress has added another year’s worth of historic illustrated newspaper pages to the LC Flickr photostream. The New-York Tribune Illustrated Supplement section of 1906, printed on Sundays, includes published images of signature events of 1906, including: construction of the Panama Canal, 3 weeks of coverage on the San Francisco Earthquake, the Chicago meat packing industry, storm devastation in Hong Kong and Alabama and more….In Flickr, you can tag it, add a note, share it….and even read more about it!

Access the Library of Congress Flickr Stream

Access the Chronicling America Database and Directory

See Also: Milestones: Library of Congress, National Endowment for the Humanities Celebrate Millionth Page in Chronicling America Program

See Also: Now Available: Webcast: One Millionth Page in Chronicling America

See Also: New from the Library of Congress: Chronicling America Topic Guides

See Also: Library of Congress Flickr Stream Adds European Images

Source: LC

The Economist Now Has a Facebook Page and YouTube Channel

Friday, August 28th, 2009

Direct to Facebook Page

Our page is regularly updated with new articles, upcoming events, topical videos and debates to keep you in touch with the latest analysis of international news and events.

Direct to YouTube Channel from The Economist

Containing videos from the multimedia centre on Economist.com and other brand-related videos, you can view the latest Economist content here. Currently we are featuring a videographic about piracy in Somalia and a film on child brides in Afghanistan.

Source: The Economist

Spanish Language Content: Univision.com Boosts Video Search With AOL’s Truveo

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

From the Article:

Visitors to Univision.com are in for a completely different video-search experience, as they will now be able to browse a comprehensive worldwide library of Spanish-language videos made available thanks to a new partnership between Univision Interactive Media and Truveo, the AOL-owned video-search engine.

Source: MultiChannel News

Consumer Reports “AdWatch” Takes Hard Look at Health Reform TV Ads

Saturday, August 15th, 2009

Consumer Reports “AdWatch” Takes Hard Look at Health Reform TV Ads

Consumer Reports magazine is launching a new blog dedicated to separating the fact from fiction in TV ads about health care reform that are flooding the airwaves during Congress’ August recess.

The Consumer Reports Health blog “Health Reform AdWatch” — now online at http://blogs.consumerreports.org/health — finds that an ad sponsored by health insurers doesn’t tell the full story about patients’ pre-existing conditions. Another TV spot by a strange-bedfellow coalition of industry and patient advocates is found to be “vague” and “simplistic.”

The goal of “AdWatch” is to help people weed through the claims made by these ads, and it directs people to comprehensive, well-researched information about health care issues.

Source: Consumers Union

Heads-Up: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone to be Interviewed on PBS Thursday Night

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

A quick note to alert all of you interested in Twitter that company co-founder, Biz Stone, will be on PBS (The Tavis Smiley Show) tomorrow night. Check your local listings here.

Can’t watch on the old school tube? No worries. PBS makes the complete program available online and you should also find it here sometime late Thursday or early Friday.

Here’s the blurb for the show along with a video clip from the program where Biz discusses the recent Twitter denial-of-service attack.

Digitization Projects: Google News Archive Increases In Size

Friday, August 7th, 2009

From the Blog Post:

We’ve recently updated our index, quadrupling the number of articles included in News Archive Search. We now include articles from several new publications, including the Halifax Gazette, Sydney Morning Herald, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and the Village Voice. Working with our partners, we’ve also added new international publications such as the Manila Standard, The Nation from Thailand, and many others.

Source: Google News Blog

Newspapers Spanning 130 years Donated to School

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

From the Article:

The parent company of The Salt Lake Tribune is donating editions of the paper from 1871 to 2003 to the University of Utah, which will conserve the fragile volumes and keep them available for public access.

The university also plans to digitize the pages to create a searchable database.

The Salt Lake Tribune has bound past editions of the paper into more than 2,500 oversized volumes. This month MediaNews Group made a donation transferring ownership to the university.

Source: AP

See Also: Tribune donates ‘first draft of history’ to U. (via Salt Lake Tribune)

NPR (National Public Radio) Unveils Website Redesign

Sunday, July 26th, 2009

Hot off the presses, word that a complete overhaul of the National Public Radio website at NPR.org is now live. The new site looks great (we viewed the video tour linked to below). Site search (which has been in beta for a while) should work better. It’s now powered by the Google Search Appliance.

One feature that info pros will love? How do free program transcripts sound? For the first time transcripts for many NPR programs will be available at no charge.

NPR’s Scott Simon provides a video tour of the new site here.

For the socially minded, a new embeddable media player will let you place NPR content you select on webpages blogs, etc.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that the NPR Library blog, “As a Matter of Fact” continues to be updated. ResourceShelf is honored to be listed on the blogs blogroll. If you’ve never visited or haven’t visited in a while, you should stop by. An RSS feed is also available and we wouldn’t be surprised to see a library Twitter feed sometime soon.

More who, what, where, why, and how about the NPR redesign and enhancements here (via the NY Times).

Hat Tips:
@nprtechteam
A.C.

Reference Tools: Reuters Makes Handbook of Journalism Available Online (Free)

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

+ Background Here

The first entry is abattoir (not abbatoir); the last is ZULU (a term used by Western military forces to mean GMT).

In between are 2,211 additional entries in the A-to-Z general style guide, part of the Reuters Handbook of Journalism, which we are now making available online. Also included in the handbook are sections on standards and values; a guide to operations; a sports style guide and a section of specialised guidance on such issues as personal investments by journalists, dealing with threats and complaints and reporting information found on the internet.

The handbook is the guidance Reuters journalists live by — and we’re proud of it. Until now, it hasn’t been freely available to the public. In the early 1990s, a printed handbook was published and in 2006 the Reuters Foundation published a relatively short PDF online that gave some basic guidance to reporters. But it’s only now that we’re putting the full handbook online.

+ Access to the Complete Handbook

Source: Reuters
Hat Tip: CARR-L

New from Harvard: Berkman Center Launches Media Cloud Research Tools

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009

Word of the release of an exciting new project from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Thomson Reuters.

From the Berkman Center Site:

Researching the nature of news, and media information flows, has always faced a difficult challenge: there is so much produced by so many outlets that it is hard to monitor it all. Researchers have used painstaking manual content analysis to understand mass media. On the web, the explosion of citizen media makes such an approach far more difficult and less comprehensive. By automatically downloading, processing, and querying the full text of thousands of outlets, Media Cloud will allow unprecedented quantitative analysis of media trends.

Today’s launch allows a first view into some of what is possible on the Media Cloud platform. At http://www.mediacloud.org you can generate simple charts of media coverage across sources and countries. The actual capabilities of the system are much greater, and the Media Cloud team is actively looking for other researchers who will bring their own questions as the tools are further developed. Ultimately, Media Cloud will provide open APIs that can support a variety of lines of inquiry.

From the Complete Complete News Release

Thomson Reuters has contributed its Calais Web Service to the effort.

Media Cloud offers a way to quantitatively examine complex questions about the shape and flow of news coverage in the Internet era, such as:

* What types of stories are covered by which media sources?

* Where do particular news stories begin?

* What areas of the world garner attention, and which do not?

* How does the blogosphere’s coverage of an issue compare to the mainstream media?

* What role do comments and other participatory channels on the Web play in setting the news or political agenda?

See Also: Video Tour Of Media Cloud By Ethan Zuckerman

Direct to Media Cloud

Source: Berkman Center for Internet & Society

New: Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism Now Offers Weekly New Media Index

Friday, January 30th, 2009

From the Web Site:

The New Media Index is a weekly report that captures the leading commentary of blogs and social media sites focused on news and compares those subjects to that of the mainstream press.

PEJ is launching the New Media Index as a companion to its weekly News Coverage Index. Blogs and other new media are an important part of creating today’s news information narrative and in shaping the way Americans interact with the news. The expansion of online blogs and other social media sites has allowed news-consumers and others outside the mainstream press to have more of a role in agenda setting, dissemination and interpretation. PEJ wanted to find out what subjects in the national news the online sites focus on, and how that compared with the narrative in the traditional press.

Direct to First Weekly Report

See Also: Weekly News Coverage Index (Traditional Media)

Source: PEJ