muzak

first half songs by The Books – second track by Andrew Bird.  Both are collage artists of sorts – layers of sounds for our data layer maps.
files:

present1 – the first half songs plus me reading script – just to give you a feel of how it sounds

present3 – full 15 minutes of music.

present4 – first half The Book music only.  The Andrew Bird track could be replaced with something different in you guys want.  It’s your call.

click on download original on the left side of the page.

presentation without bullet points

http://lifehacker.com/software/presentations/take-your-powerpoint-slides-beyond-bullet-points-266156.php

super rough example screen shots

hey guys, I quick whipped up some super-rough-draft screen shots – meant only to be a guide.  They are callled screen1 through screen10, and I updated the googledoc to include reference to them.

screen1.jpg

screen2.jpg

screen3.jpg

screen5.jpg

screen6.jpg

screen7.jpg

screen8.jpg

screen9.jpg

screen10.jpg

work in progress…

see the first version of the presentation: keynote.pdf. It’s a PDF – just because I can’t upload the keynote file, and most of you would not be able to open it anyway.

presentation prep notes

narrative is interesting at this point.  we’ll need something more to “see” during tomorrow night’s chat (your last with me before we depart for ithaca), so please prep your show and your questions.

looking forward to it!

helpful link…

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/27/technology/27maps.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1185674824-rIy86jXTlN/ic+UuZPFgHQ&oref=slogin

presentation

15 minutes for presentation

10 minutes for Q & A

5 minutes setup/turnaround time

beginning at 10 a.m. friday: 3 presentations before and 3 after lunch (don’t know the order yet…)

REeesearch

So, as we chatted yesterday, we’re thinking our target demographic is the young adult, 25-30ish (I’m guessing middle class) who is settling down and looking to establish community ties much like their parents may have done years before.

While this isn’t the “digital native” demo, it’s clear that this age group has a high rate of internet adoption, and is using the internet to gather news.  Here’s some research to back up those claims:

This research shows the 18-24 demo and the 25-34 demo both read newspapers significantly less often than older age groups.  Both of those younger demos fell to 35 percent in 2006.  Readership amongst all age groups is falling, but it seems that the 18-34 group needs the most encouragement!

This newspaper research journal article shows that the Internet is ahead of newspapers in readership for 18-34 year olds.  It barely trails television.  Interestingly 34-54 year olds used the internet at the highest percentage:

“This is true because many people who use the Internet never use it for news. Internet use is now greater for those 35 to 54 years of age than for those younger than that, and this holds for news as well. This in part probably reflects the increased use of computers in the workplace. It also is probably in part because those who were less than 35 years old 10 or 15 years ago, when that group had the highest Internet use, are now in the 35 to 54 age group. However, use by those more than 55 years old lags far behind use of the newspapers and television news. Many in that age group simply have the habit of getting news that way, and it is still the most convenient way for them to get it. “

And some more pew data showing that 30-49 year olds are almost as likely to use the Internet as 18-29 year olds.

Design suggestions

1.  Again, I think the key here is that we sell this as a package, and design it as such. That begins with a consistent design for each of the interfaces.

Really, our idea is quite involved, but giving each interface a consistent design is going to give it that “oh this is an easy package to adopt for my news site!” feel.

At the most basic level, the thing needs a border (again to give it that tidy package feel), and it needs to be smaller so that it doesn’t overwhelm the page. Remember, this may be embedded on a news site’s homepage – it isn’t going to BE the homepage.

Now Marjorie thinks its too sterile, but I really like the wapo local explorer design – which is quite similar to our idea – minus the user-submitted laters. In particular, I like how it’s got that complete package look. And personally, I like sterile. I think that after myspace became an orgy of poor taste, people have really retreated to the clean and simple (see: facebook).

Now, the design will be consistent, but that doesn’t mean we can’t allow for news site customization – adding a logo, changing color, changing name to localize. Perhaps that can be an option in the setup process or be controlled via the editing interface.

2.  If we go with a flash presentation – which I think would give the thing a bit more sheen than a ppt – I think that we should really just photoshop the mockup.  I don’t know though – Jeff and Phillip need to discuss what would be the best in flash.  (Philip here is a Very rough version Jeff built in dreamweaver).

3.  Concrete suggestions:

• add “enter your address” entry form to center the map on the individuals neighborhood
• powered by google not needed – google maps will automatically add this to any map you build
• I love the “get published!” line – right out of that wired article!  However, I think it should be some sort of a cool looking button or something.
• border!
• shrink it!
• add a few markers and show an example of what the textbox might look like (headline, subhead or blurb, picture, link?)
• Arts and Cultural “Events” not “festivals”
• Maybe add a layer like “community announcements” that aren’t necessarily news.
• coordinate the design with editor interface and user submitted interface
• add editing tools to editor interface (like those on top of the box I’m typing into right now)
• in addition to “drag to new point” there should be an address input option
• in addition to headline – there should be a subhead or blurb line to clarify what info will be displayed in the gmap marker infobox

Thoughts on presentation

Rough outline of material that should be included in presentation – Medium agnostic – Please feel free to edit!

The Needs

• Interaction with local news
• Facilitation of citizen-journalists

The Audience

• Citizens seeking hyper-local access and interaction
• PEW research on under 36

The Challenge

• Provide local news sources with an easy-to-use online tool to facilitate community interaction and dialogue.

The Literature – O’Reilly’s Web 2.0

Web 2.0 news sources should:

• *Provide a service, not a software package
• *Control unique, difficult to replicate data sources that get richer the more individuals contribute to them
• *Trust users as co-developers
• *Harness collective intelligence
• Leverage the long tail through customer service.
• Provide software above the level of a single device
• *Use lightweight user interfaces, development models, and business models

* = addressed by our idea

The Idea

One, easy to use web application for news sources that includes

• user-created, geographically displayed news and information
• coupled with editorial controls for wary news outlets

Overview

• User-submitted interface
• Editor interface – to push through user and staff articles
• Display

Behind the Scenes

• Google Maps API
• Mapplets
• mySQL