Augmented reality and the annotated world

Posted on December 30, 2009 by Steve Mays

The following is from a post by Jeff Jarvis in which he talks about augmented reality and the annotated world and the ever-changing definition of journalism and local news.

“Every address, every building, every business has a story to tell. Visualize your world that way: Look at a restaurant and think about all the data that already swirls around it — its menu, its reviews and ratings and tags (descriptive words), its recipes, its ingredients, its suppliers (and how far away they are, if you care about that sort of thing), its reservation openings, who has been there (according to social applications), who do we know who has been there, its health-department reports, its credit-card data (in aggregate, of course), pictures of its interior, pictures of its food, its wine list, the history of the location, its decibel rating, its news…

And then think how we can annotate that with our own reviews, ratings, photos, videos, social-app check-ins and relationships, news, discussion, calendar entries, orders…. The same can be said of objects, brands — and people.”

His post includes a few videos but this is my favorite:

When I think about the implications of this technology, and what it means for news organizations, I have what I have come to think of as Wile E. Coyote moments. The realization most will never catch the Road Runner (Beep, Beep!) The future –which is here– belongs to small, flightless birds that refuse to play by our cartoon rules.

PS: If you’re satisfied seeing the world through emails and text messages, your BlackBerry will be fine. If you want to augment your reality (and you will), it will be with an iPhone or similar device.

Jonathan Brownfield: Sports Photographer

Posted on December 29, 2009 by Steve Mays

I don’t remember how I happened across Jonathan Brownfield. One of those six degrees of Twitter things, probably. Jonathan is a professional sports photographer and has shot games involving “our” teams so that was probably it.

Along the way he mentioned visiting family in Missouri over the holidays so I tweeted him with an invite to stop by for lunch/tour/interview. Today was the day.

Here’s some background from one of Jonathan’s websites (for those that take a pass on the interview):

“While in high school, I started working as an assistant for Sports Illustrated photographer, David Klutho. That marked the beginning of my career as a professional photographer. This lead to having over 20 photos published in Sports Illustrated.

When I started college I began working for the University of Missouri Athletic Department and became their Head of Photography. Besides shooting, I coordinated a group of photographers to make sure every home event was covered.

During my sophomore year I was recruited by Hooters to photograph some of the local girls for the 2008 and 2009 calendars and the 2008 Miss Hooters International Beauty Pageant.

I currently shoot sports for US Presswire.

Now days my work is regularly seen in USA Today, ESPN Magazine, and in the LA Times.”

Did I mention that Jonathan is 23 years old?

I made a list of questions to ask a professional sports photographer only to discover that Jonathan has branched out from that (still a passion but now kind of a weekend thing). I rambled on with my questions so I’ve chopped the visit into two, 20-minutes chunks. The first one is mostly bio and social media. The second finally gets around to some sports stuff.

AUDIO: Interview Part 1

AUDIO: Interview Part 2

I was very impressed with Jonathan. Accomplishing what he has at 23, it would be easy to conclude one’s poop is odorless. He is what your grandmother called “a nice young man.”

You can see some of his photography here. He blogs here. And he’s @johnnybond86 on Twitter.

Monsanto Twitter silence on AP story

Posted on December 13, 2009 by Steve Mays

I just spotted (in Google Reader) an Associated Press story about Monsanto with the headline: Monsanto seed business role revealed. Here’s the first graph:

ST. LOUIS — Confidential contracts detailing Monsanto Co.’s business practices reveal how the world’s biggest seed developer is squeezing competitors, controlling smaller seed companies and protecting its dominance over the multibillion-dollar market for genetically altered crops, an Associated Press investigation has found.

I was curious what the twitterverse was saying about the story and found an endless stream of links and comments. No surprise there.

I’ve been following one of Monsanto’s Twitter feeds (@monsantoco) for a while and dropped into see how they were responding to the story and the Twitter buzz.

Nothing since Friday morning at 9:10. Hard to draw any conclusions without know more but with almost 3,000 followers, why wouldn’t you use Twitter to “engage in the conversation.” If not now, when? If not Twitter, how? If you’re going to use social media to tell your story, you gotta be there if/when the story gets unpleasant or be conspicuous by your absence.

Depending on the serious of the AP investigation, there are probably lots of emails and phone calls and maybe even a few meetings, to decide if/how/where to respond to the story.

If anyone on Learfield’s senior management team are reading this, take a few minutes at your next meeting to talk about how you would respond to a big, negative story about our company. I really think we could engage quickly without making our lawyers all jittery and nauseous.

Disclosure: Monsanto is an advertiser on at least one of the radio networks owned by the company I work for.

UPDATE: Monsanto did get a response up last night. And linked to it from Twitter. Probably hard for a company that large to move any faster.

“How Twitter is changing the face of media”

Posted on November 13, 2009 by Steve Mays

This post by Soren Gordhamer (at Mashable.com) resonates for those of us who followed/participated in the “reporting” of “the hostage situation that wasn’t” here in Jefferson City.

“Sure, in the past, you could always email or call a friend to inform him or her of a quality news story or TV show; now, however, in a matter of seconds you can share this information on your broadcasting network via Twitter or Facebook, with tens, hundreds, or even thousands of people. It’s not my or your media anymore; it’s our media, and we can all broadcast it.” [Emphasis mine]

“In the past, what people thought of as “news” was what was reported that day in the New York Times or CNN. In an age where we all possess our own broadcasting network, though, smaller stations have greater power. Of course, a post on Twitter from CNN, which has over two million followers, will get more views than one from Joe Smith who has 20 followers will, but Joe Smith is at least in the game now, where he was not previously.”

“In the new media landscape, the task of defining what is the news that matters to people lies less with a few major media outlets, and much more with the millions of small outlets like you and I who each choose what to talk about. Increasingly, lots of littles, in aggregate, are becoming more powerful than a handful of bigs.” [Emphasis mine]

“Media is also becoming more personal. More and more people expect their broadcasting networks to be people with personalities, not simply sources of news. We want to know as much about the person reporting news as we do the news they are reporting. [Emphais mine] Broadcasting is more a personal act than ever, as users seek to have connections not just to content but to people.”

Mr. Gordhamer is the author of the book, Wisdom 2.0 and the organizer of the Wisdom 2.0 Conference.

This tweet just in…

Posted on November 11, 2009 by Steve Mays

Yesterday’s dust up in Jefferson City provided a good look at how local news media (and civilians) would use Twitter to “cover” a breaking news story. I haven’t seen all the tweets posted by @misourinet but during the few minutes I was in the newsroom, our reporters we’re being cautious about what they posted. I think we did retweet some stuff that turned out to be inaccurate but I’m not sure about that. I did get he sense they were trying to be restrained and confirm information.

Some news outlets were posting corrections as fast as updates. And the public was under no constraints at all. Missouri Lt. Governor Peter Kinder had his BlackBerry hotter than Tim Pawlenty’s wife. Unfortunately, much of what he tweeted was wrong.

Old news dogs will decry such Twitter frenzy but I didn’t have any trouble sifting the wheat from the chaff. And this kind of rumor wildfire has always been there, it just wasn’t up where we could watch it. It was one-to-one, not one-to-the-universe.

At one point, I saw a young woman –a reporter, I assumed– with a Marantz recorder and microphone (I had one just like it). The plan was, I suppose, to record an interview or some “nat sound,” go back to the radio station (?), “cut up” the audio, write a story and hope to get it done in time for the next newscast. Or post it to the station website.

I don’t know if that’s enough –or fast enough– any more.

All I had was the iPhone but if I could have gotten an interview, I could have posted audio and/or video immediately. From where I was standing.

Back on Twitter for a minute… people like Tony Messenger and Chad Livengood long ago established their Twitter cred. Following their updates was as close to real-time updates as you’re gonna get in a situation like this (one of the local radio stations did cut into syndication natioal shows with updates a couple of times).

I think our network (@missourinet) picked up 50 or 60 new followers yesterday, on the stength of frequent, accurate posts.

Was there a “better” way to follow yesterday’s events? I’m not sure what it would be. Will we get better at using this tool (both to monitor events and to report them)? I’m sure we will.