The end of still photography?

Submitted by yelvington on June 28, 2006 - 3:35pm

Mindy McAdams has a fascinating conversation going over at her blog about how HD video is good enough to use for print stills. A lot of us have thought for a long time that the day would come when "selection of the moment" moved from the field to the (virtual) darkroom. I have a sense from the comments that we're not quite there, but getting close. Thanks to Seth Gitner for citing this thread on the NAA's Feds-Newmedia email list. I've added Mindy's blog to my RSS aggregator.

Little things that mean a lot

Submitted by yelvington on June 26, 2006 - 11:48am

I'm a firm believer that little things mean a lot in building community. Small talk, for instance, is a big deal -- it's how we establish the ground rules for interpersonal communications, and it opens the door to bigger and deeper conversations.

There's a great list of 150 things you can do to build social capital at BetterTogether.org. I passed it around to participants at the API's small-market online strategy seminar last week.

Metasites, user-driven context engines

Submitted by yelvington on June 23, 2006 - 3:46pm

At Morris DigitalWorks, where I do have a day job, we have another project in the hopper that we'll unveil next week.

Publishers create websites. But there's another approach, one that grasps the basic truth that the Web is already full of great content. That approach leads to metasites, and there are some great examples: Slashdot, Newsvine, About.com, Topix.net, Digg, and Beta.netscape.com.

Thinking so you don't have to

Submitted by yelvington on June 22, 2006 - 4:09pm

I've become a big fan of Ze Frank -- a New York vblogger whose real name is Hosea Frank. His intense, up-close, jump-cut bursts of incredulity are always funny, but since I've spent a lot of time traveling lately (Stockholm, Brussels, Kansas City, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Minneapolis, Washington) I really appreciated his rant about Delta Airlines and his riff on Minnesota, which was my home for over a decade.

Hitting on all four cylinders

Submitted by yelvington on June 21, 2006 - 2:35pm

I'm in Reston, Va., waiting for my turn in front of the room at the American Press Institute. The seminar is "Internet strategies for community markets." Gordon Borrell is up right now and is pointing out the inherent weakness of one-note news sites, citing Pew research that says the "yesterday market" -- the people who went online yesterday seeking local news -- is 9 percent at best, while there are many other things to do online.

He's so right.

The middle-aged web

Submitted by yelvington on June 20, 2006 - 2:24pm

Pew has some interesting data on Internet penetration and usage around the world, and it appears that there's a big uptick in the numbers of middle-age Web users.

Yet the myth persists of a medium dominated by young users. The young, I think, are living in mobile text messaging and -- when at home -- AIM. To connect with younger people, do we need to be more "snacky?"

Feeling Minnesota

Submitted by yelvington on June 20, 2006 - 2:17pm

I'm in Minnesota today at a workshop on digital storytelling pulled together by Nora Paul of the University of Minnesota's New Media Institute. It's a bit of old home week for me -- we're meeting at the Star Tribune. Participants include Ken Riddick, Will Tacy, Jamie Hutt and Matt Thompson, all currently at startribune.com, as well as longtime site designer Jamie Hutt, former editors Rusty Coats and myself, and various current and former competitors.