Crucial Mac software for students

A blog “More Willie” has a great post about Crucial Mac software for students. My favorite application is iAlertU. It’s an alarm for your laptop. You arm the alarm with your IR remote and it beeps just like a car alarm. Using the built in motion sensor it can detect if someone moves or tries to use your computer. If they do an alarm sounds and the screen starts flashing. It also snaps a picture with the built in iSight camera. Click here for the Crucial Mac Software: College Edition.

 

Can someone say…Overreacting?

The house has voted to ban social networking sites from schools and libraries (for minors). But why…Cory from LostRemote.com says you can blame…Dateline (and every other over reactive media network). Does he have a point? Maybe.

 

Why I haven’t blogged recently

You see, normally I blog in the evening (or morning depending on how you look at it). But recently I have had my nights taken away by ABC. No not necessarily working late but rather the word tonight was taken away. Also a similar not, you DVR might have also lost track…if it was set to record World News Tonight, well it won’t record World News.

 

For historic value only

I came across this in one of my old blogs. This post was dated December 5, 2005. It’s always interesting to look back.

WNT’s leap towards the future of News

Today ABC News announced that Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff are being named as the next co-anchors of ABC’s World News Tonight. While I am quite excited about the idea of an MU grad anchoring the evening newscast for one of the big three there are many more important features to this announcement. ABC is willing to look at their product in a different light.

Typically most newsrooms (national and local) had one product, their newscast. Yes, in local news you may have more than one newscast throughout the day, but that was still your only product. As the internet continues to play a larger role in news, newsrooms across the county have copied their newscast to a website. While I have not doubt that ABC still views WNT as the main product they are not afraid to let their website play a vital role in that product. They will doing everything from placing reporters stories on the website before the newscast to expanded coverage of their stories online.

There is nothing worse than newsrooms regurgitating their scripts and packages on the internet. I am glad to see that WNT is going beyond that. It will be interesting to see how their website and blog will compare and compete with NBC’s Night News’.

 

Blogging rule number one: follow your own rules

Anytime anyone asks me my input on their blog or blogging in general, my response is that in order for it to be successful they have to keep it up to date. Well, I have failed at that. It would be easy for me to just say that I have been busy…so I will…I have been busy. Or maybe I stopped blogging regular to prove my point. That’s it, I stopped blogging just so I can show you how quickly the number of people viewing my blog went down. Here see for yourself. (I’ll do my best to prove that if I continue blogging my numbers will pick back up).

 

A dog of a blog

Sometimes blogs give users control over the type of feedback they give. An interesting example is Orlando Sentinel's Scott Maxwell’s Taking Names blog. After his post about Jeb Bush's dog, Marvin, dying users logged on an published letters to Jeb from their dogs. I mean dogs logged on and left messages to Jeb.

 

CBS.com summarizes interns blogging on Blogophile

Every Wednesday CBS.com’s Melissa P. McNamara summarizes roundup of the “buzz on the must-read blogs.” If you check out today’s Blogophile she talked about the discussion from the New York Times article (See post below). I proud to say my blog made it on the Blogophile.

 

More on interns blogging

As the NY Times article circulates around, (See previous post) it seems as though some University staff suggest that MU should tell students not to blog about their internship experiences. I can understand encouraging students to make sure that they follow the policy of the organization they are working for. Here is the e-mail I sent out:
“I don't think that as a University we should be telling students not to blog about their experiences. An internship is the perfect opportunity to allow future journalists to learn the basics of blogging. This summer I will be blogging my internship experience and have already made my supervisor aware of this. Interns should be treated just as regular staff would be. If an intern wants to blog all that they need to do is run it by their direct supervisor. The supervisor may wish to check in frequently on the blog to make sure things don’t get out of hand. If anything the media organization may learn a lot by reading the perspective of an outsider on the their newsroom or operation.”

 

Am I already violating ABC corporate policy?

NOTE: Be sure to check out all my latest post on my Matt Sokoloff’s Posterous blog.

Catey Terry, the NY Program coordinator, sent me this link to a NY Times article “Interns? No Bloggers Need Apply.” First off, I am not looking for a book or movie deal. I’ll be happy if my mom reads my blog. With that said, I think it is interesting that companies are being forced to react to interns blogging. Is the workplace environment that horrible that the interns shouldn’t be talking about it on a blog, or should they just be paying interns at least minimum wage (not that I’m complaining).

My thought is that media organizations, especially those that target a younger audience, should encourage interns to blog and post those blogs on the organizations site. Oversight might be needed on some blogs, but for the most part it could provide for a very entertaining and real look at what it is like to work behind the scenes at a that organization. While, I have not heard explicitly what ABC’s policy on blogging is, I did make them aware that I would be blogging for credit. Might I be asked to stop blogging because of corporate policy? It’s possible.