Links a seguir | Links to follow

From the BASIC series by Paul Bradshaw

Esta semana foi uma complicação, e não trabalhei assim muito para o blog. Mas hoje vou dar-vos três links excelentes, que deverão seguir. Paul Bradshaw terminou a sua série BASIC Principles of Online Journalism (que receberá uma atenção mais elaborada aqui no Lago em breve), com a segunda parte de C is for Community&Conversation, de onde retirei o gráfico acima.

This week has been a total mess, and i didn’t work for the blog that much. But today i’m suggesting three excellent links that you must follow. Paul Bradshaw finished his BASIC Principles of Online Journalism (that will get a more ellaborate attention here at the Lake soon), with the second part of C is for Community&Conversation, from which i pulled the graphic above.

Conversation is publishing.

The one-to-many relationships built by print and broadcast media have been disrupted by the arrival of the internet. By mixing these with the one-to-one cultures of telephony it has created a new, emerging, culture of many-to-many relationships.

For a long time the most popular use of the internet has been email. For the net generation, that is being replaced by social networking and instant messaging. All demonstrate that people don’t want to passively consume content online – they want to use it, produce it, and exchange it.

When the Chinese earthquake (among others) happened, it was reported on social networking sites before news websites. The information moved very quickly from people talking about what was happening to them; to people talking about what was happening to their friends; to people talking about what was happening to their friends’ friends: conversation.

Meanwhile, communities formed to pass on and clarify information more efficiently than the news organisations (for example, translating accounts, mapping, and mashing up). An online journalist who ignores this is ignoring a fundamental element of their job.

BASIC Principles of Online Journalism: C is for Community & Conversation (pt2: Conversation)

Ryan Sholin escreveu um post sobre como se podem e devem cruzar os meios e os assuntos, o que acaba por vir no seguimento da sugestão anterior.

Ryan Sholin wrote a post on how tools and stories should cross, which in a way comes as a following for the suggestion before.

So here’s what I’m proposing:  If you’re the online editor, or the interactive director, or the news developer, or the innovations editor, or the title of your choice, when you come across a story — whether it’s a noisy breaker or a long-term FOIA-rich piece that a reporter is putting weeks (months?) of their life into — stop for a minute and think about which tools to deploy in response.

Obvious enough, right?

Just keep in mind, you’re allowed to stray from the established norms (blotter = database, profile = slideshow) and cross-pollinate stories and tools to make something new.

Cross-pollinate or shrivel

O Mark Hamilton mudou um site do Joomla para o WordPress, e partilhou um pouco do processo. Ele sugere uns plugins que eu aproveitei para aplicar no meu próprio website (em breve falarei mais disso), e que são muito úteis para melhorar a segurança e a expriência do utilizador.

Mark Hamilton moved a website from Joomla to WordPress and shared a bit of the process. He suggests a few plugins that i ended up using in my own website (i’ll write more about this soon), and that are quite useful in improving safety and user experience.

Based on experience with attacks on my own blog, the first three plug-ins I added were preventative:

• Bad Behavior, which blacklists and picks off spambots before they hit the site. In the last seven days, it’s blocked more than 5,700 attempts.
• wp-cache, which serves up frequently requested pages from a cache it creates, speeding up page loads.
• WP-reCAPTCHA, a captcha based verification system for comments. I know captchas are not the flavour of the moment, but it’s working.

I’ve been slowly adding other plugins as required:

• Add to Any, which creates an Ajax-y “share/save this” button for each post, with links to all the popular services.
• Audio player, a simple but configurable MP3 player that lets me insert audio with an tag.
• Category Order, a drag-and-drop way to organize the order categories appear in, allowing me to set the order of the sections in the menu bar.
• Contact Form 7, a really simple and easy way to get an email form into the site where ever I need. It’s configurable, too.
• Events, an admin panel add-on for adding events that will (once I get it set up) feed a calendar of events page. Lots of options, including setting a kill date.
• WordPress.com Stats, because everybody loves stats, and because I understand I will need this when I get around to finding plug-ins that will allow me to put up a most-viewed list.

Going WordPress