But perhaps our best option for a new reader isn’t even out yet — and it comes from a pretty unlikely place.

Well-known startup developer-turned-budding publishing company Betaworks is making a serious gambit to change social reading as we know it today. Last year, the company snapped up forlorn social news aggregator Digg, and gave it a new lease on life. Today marks the company’s follow-up acquisition of Instapaper, a stunningly simple article saving service that has been known and loved by journalists and the broader public for years. With both companies now under the same umbrella, it’s no surprise that Betaworks is planning on somehow revamping newsgathering on the web.

But how? Well, filling Google Reader’s shoes is a great start.

continued…

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If you’re still concerned about how where to go after Google Reader shutters on July 1st of this year, then fear not: there are plenty of reasonable and free alternatives to port your sources. Here’s a roundup of a few apps that will fit your individual needs as a news-consuming journalist and also give you a great RSS experience without breaking your budget.

What’s your favorite RSS alternative? Let us know in the comments!

1. For Those Who Want the Old Google Back: The Old Reader

The Old Reader is exactly what it claims to be: a recreation of the Google Reader as it was in 2011, before the introduction of the new design and share features to align the product with Google+. The free service is still in beta, but is able to seamlessly import an existing RSS feed list. The design is minimal — like the classic Google Reader — and allows users to follow other people and share their stories easily on Facebook or via email.

The app has already gotten a flood of beta invite requests from users eager to port over as soon as possible, so the teeny startup behind the app is overwhelmed. However, with a new mobile app on the horizon, it’s easy to guess that The Old Reader will be the closest to a Google experience as possible. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Luckily, those doldrum days between Christmas and New Years have become a boon for people who are looking for a good deal, and you can see that phenomenon no better than in the Apple app store. Whether you’re taking advantage of a new device or interested in updating your apps, these four products will become your go-to for on-the-fly reporting and task management — and might make you a better reporter in the process. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

In late 2010, Google developed their new smart TV platform entitled Google TV. The service is built on the Android operating system, and functions as a set-top box to allow users to watch on-demand video services, such as YouTube, Google Reader, and Google Chrome. This integration allows users to subscribe to your site and have regular updates pushed to their Google TV devices (similar to an RSS feed with an RSS aggregator). Mobile phones and tablet devices are changing the landscape of the web for organizations, and soon you may even ask “how does my site look on TV”? This is especially important since Google TV will soon be able to access the Android Market, according to recent news. Since Google TV lies somewhere between mobile devices and desktops/laptops in terms of functionality and user experience, here are a few helpful guidelines to make sure your site is ready for prime time on Google TV.

Design for the Big Screen

According to the Leichtman Research Group, as of 2010, 61% of US households own at least one HDTV, with 26% owning more than one. These high resolution displays mean that there is an increased distance between the user to the television, which means that elements on websites need to be large enough to be seen across the room at a glance. Larger elements also means increased white space between elements. Lets take a look at the New York Times on Google TV.

New York Times on Google TV

Along with this, websites need to make sure that the most important information is at the top of the page. Web designers call this property “above the fold”, meaning that you include information at the top of a page to prevent users from scrolling vertically to find more information. Since HDTVs will more than likely be widescreen displays (either 720p or 1080p), this means that organizations should rely on either horizontal or grid navigation to make it easier for users to go through your site.

Function over Form

Keep in mind that the processors for most Google TV devices will be somewhere between your mobile phone and your desktop or laptop in terms of processing power. Google has partnered with Intel, Sony, Logitech for current Google TV devices, and new partnerships with Samsung and Vizio ensure that new, faster devices will be coming to the market by the holiday season. Websites designed for Google TV will need to be able to load quickly without a lot of extra animations or Flash videos. Google TV can display Flash content, but it will not be at the same speed as a desktop or laptop, so keep that in mind. Let’s take a look at Al Jazeera on Google TV.

Al Jazeera on Google TV

Make Navigation Big and Simple

One thing the Al Jazeera site illustrates is that you should also look to use access keys for navigation, such as arrow keys or letters on the keyboard. The mouse pointer on Google TV is small and hard to see, so enabling navigation by keyboard to access a menu or a section of the website creates a great user experience. The key is to simplify user navigation as much as possible. Primary actions for the user should be available in one click; don’t hide key features for your site in menus. You should also provide a legend to explain your keyboard-based navigation system. Don’t make your users think too much about how to navigate your website on Google TV, or else they may change the channel.

Zoom, Zoom, Zoom

The Chrome Browser in Google TV supports the non-standard CSS property called zoom. What does this do, you ask? According to Sitepoint, this property controls the magnification level for the current element. This means that text, videos, and other elements on your page can be enlarged to allow for viewing across large distances or for visually impaired users. Because zoom is a non-standard property, you would probably have to test this on Google TV for troubleshooting purposes.

KQED on Google TV

Overall, these are just a few things developers can do to optimize news websites for Google TV. Other news organizations have already started developing for Google TV, including USA Today, Huffington Post, and KQED. Google has provided a full optimization guide, as well as a number of optimized templates. What news organizations have you seen on Google TV? Share your findings in the comments.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

If you have a blog created with WordPress, TypePad, or Blogger, you can use Blog2Print to create a book directly from your blog’s RSS feed. The book can include photos, comments, and be printed in black and white or color.

Create an interactive timeline

You can create an embeddable, interactive timeline in minutes using Dipity‘s RSS feature. To create one, copy the URL of the RSS feed and select RSS as your input source. The resulting timeline can be embedded in any website much like a YouTube video.

Catch up on the tweets you missed

You ever got the feeling that you’re missing important Twitter messages when you’re away from your computer? By adding the RSS feeds for individual Twitter users or lists to your RSS reader you can make sure you never miss a tweet. Just select the orange RSS icon on any Twitter page and add the feed address to your RSS reader of choice.

Catch only the best tweets

Even if you archive your favorite tweets using an RSS reader, you may quickly become inundated with the number of tweets coming in. The Twitter Tim.es has a solution. The online tool aggregates the most shared links among your Twitter friends and presents them as an online newspaper. Using the site’s RSS feature, you can make sure that the most interesting links being tweeted are sent directly to your reader.

Read your RSS feeds in your email

Sometimes a feed reader isn’t the most convenient way to stay on top of your RSS subscriptions. Feed My Inbox allows you to direct your RSS feeds to your email, which is especially convenient for those sites that don’t have an automatic email delivery option. The first five feeds are free.

Create a custom newspaper

The big word in digital news is customization: readers want to be able tailor their reading experience to just the content they are interested in. You can do the same by creating your own FeedJournal. Simply give the site the RSS feeds you want to read and it will output a printable newspaper that you can read either online or off.

Spruce up your reading experience

Some of the most popular RSS readers were built with functionality rather than aesthetics in mind. Helvetireader is an extension/plugin (depending on your browser of choice) that will turn Google Reader into a Helvetica-inspired reading environment.

Listen to your RSS subscriptions

The audiophiles out there will appreciate BlogRadio, a service that will collect your RSS feeds and read them to you in the natural-sounding voice you choose. BlogRadio is available as a downloadable desktop application or as an app on your mobile device.

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RSS, short for “Really Simple Syndication,” is a valuable tool for web users, but especially for journalists who use RSS feeds to streamline their online reading and newsgathering process. RSS makes it easy to keep track of many different blogs at once and to be notified of breaking news in your beat.

What is RSS and how does it work?

Most online news sites and blogs have one or several RSS “feeds” that you can subscribe to and be notified of new posts and articles. Reading these RSS feeds requires an RSS reader. There are many different kinds of RSS readers, but the easiest and most intuitive is Google Reader. If you don’t have a Google account, just complete the short registration process by clicking the “Create an account” button. From there you can start adding your favorite news feeds.

Sounds great. How do I do it?

Visit any site or blog that you want to subscribe to and look for an orange RSS icon or use Cmd-F (Mac) or Ctrl-F (PC) to find the word “RSS” on the page. Click on the link and you should be taken to a page that gives you the option of adding the feed to Google. Select this option.

If you can’t find the RSS feed or just want to add your feeds within Google Reader itself, click the “Add a subscription” button located in the top left area of Google Reader and enter the URL/web address of the site you want to add. If the site has an RSS feed, Google Reader will automatically add it to your list.

What if I don’t know which blogs I should add?

If you aren’t sure which blogs you should be following, you can also enter keywords such as “education” or “health” in the same box. Google will recommend blog feeds based on your search terms. After you begin adding blogs, Google Reader will recommend similar blogs that you should be reading. These blogs are found in the “Recommended sources” menu in the left sidebar.

I’ve added feeds to my RSS reader. What now?

RSS works a lot like email. You will get notifications of new posts and articles in what looks like an inbox. Take a look at the Google Reader layout. On the left, you’ll see a list of the blogs and sites you’ve subscribed to. The number next to it indicates the number of “unread” items. The space on the right is the actual blog post or article.

But wait, I only see a headline or a paragraph.

Some sites make excerpts or headlines available in their RSS feeds to encourage you to read the story on their site. To read the rest of an abbreviated article, click on the headline. A new tab or window should pop up with the full article.

Wait, I’m still totally lost.

Click here for a detailed explanation of RSS or check out this video guide to RSS in plain English.

Also on 10,000 Words:

• The 20 Essential RSS Feeds for Multimedia Journalists
• Beyond Twitterfeed: Innovative uses of Twitter in the newsroom
• What is…? A handy guide for the new media novice

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Mloovi will translate any RSS feed into any of more than 30 available languages including Croatian, Filipino and Swedish. The results, like Google Translate or Yahoo! Babel Fish, a little spotty and shouldn’t be quoted, but it is a definite help.

On the other hand, if you want readers of your blog to be able to read it in another language, ConveyThis offers a button that will translate your content with one click. The site requires registration, which only take a couple seconds, and a button like the one below are available instantly.

On a smaller scale, Twanslate will translate tweets (or anything under 140 characters) into Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Italian and Russian. Simply follow @twanslate and follow the instructions to send a direct message and received the translated reply in seconds.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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“An aggregation of journalists who blog (mostly) about journalism.”

“All the Journerdism news links and commentary you can handle in your RSS reader.”

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Romenesko

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Was your favorite feed left out? Share your essential RSS feeds in the comments. And of course, be sure to subscribe to the 10,000 Words RSS feed.

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Break it up

Newspapers ought to take a cue from DailyLit, a forward-thinking site that makes classic literature like Dickens and Dumas, as well as newly released books, available for online reading through installments. Users can select a book they want to read and receive daily chunks of it either through email or RSS.

RSS itself is a great way to encourage readers to follow a long with a particular story. Instead of making an excessively long story available online in one piece, deliver different sections of the story through RSS over the course of a few days to ensure the reader digests more of the story.

The same idea could be applied to Twitter: instead of sending a portion of the story through RSS, simply send a link to Twitter followers/readers.

Let the story stand alone

GOOD Magazine, which, along with the Las Vegas Sun, is at the forefront of new media innovation, makes a free 6×6 inch, mini-newspaper available in select Starbucks locations that concentrates on a single story. This week’s story is on carbon emissions and is made up of a large and detailed graph of how greenhouse gases affect the world. The first fold-out page is a full-sized ad that the reader sees before reading the story (ad revenue!). Not only is this a genius way of putting a story in front of readers who will likely have a few minutes to spare, it is also a great way to promote brand identity.

More pics: Front cover, Inside ad, Full-page story

Go mobile

Now that more Kindles are finding their way into consumers’ hands and the iPhone and BlackBerry have made reading on a cell phone less of a chore, it’s time to adapt long investigative pieces or feature stories for reading on mobile devices. If people are willing to read books on a Kindle, they are likely willing to read the newspaper. And now that news sites are being optimized for the web, it’s time to optimize the stories themselves.

Whichever way the story is presented, it must reflect the growing segment of the population who don’t have time to read long pages of text. After all, what good is a story if no one reads it?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

1. SpeakEasy Voice Recorder

Average Rating: 3 Stars Price: $4.99

From the developer: Record and playback notes, reminders, or just about anything from your iPhone’s built-in microphone. SpeakEasy gives you a recording studio that fits into your pocket. Intuitive and fun, SpeakEasy is the premier voice recorder for your iPhone.

• Record voice memos, reminders, lectures, meetings, or anything you wish.
• Add a title, comments, or even a photo from your photo library or camera while recording.
• Group and organize your recordings by category.
• Interruption protection lets you pick up and continue your recording after a phone call interruption.
• Pause and continue recording with a single touch.
• Playback and quickly scan your recordings with the touch slider.

2. Writing Pad

Average Rating: 4 Stars Price: Free

From the developer: Store notes and send email using ShapeWriter on your iPhone. ShapeWriter is a revolutionary text input technology that enables you to enter text into the iPhone by tracing word shapes rather than typing letters. Each shape traced on the soft keyboard with your finger is recognized as a word. Error correction is fast and easy. For rare names and acronyms, type only once and you will be able to shape write the next time. Shape writing is many times more efficient than letter-based handwriting recognition.

3. WordPress

Average Rating: 3½ Stars Price: Free

From the developer: Robust but simple to use, the WordPress for iPhone Open Source application allows you to create and edit content on your WordPress blog(s) with support for offline use. The app includes the following features:

• Support for WordPress.com blogs and self-installed WordPress blogs (version 2.5.1 and higher)
• Embedded Safari for true previews of posts
• Full support for tags and categories
• Photo support for both camera pics and library photos
• Support for multiple blogs
• Ability to password protect a post, save as draft, or mark for later review
• Auto-recovery feature recovers posts interrupted by phone calls

4. TypePad

Average Rating: 3½ Stars Price: $4.99

From the developer: Update your blog and share pictures with the world from wherever you are with TypePad. Built to connect with the award-winning TypePad blogging service, TypePad for iPhone and iPod touch enables you to…

• Write new posts for your blog in just a few seconds.
• Post photos to your blog from your iPhone’s camera or photo albums.
• Alert your friends when you post to your blog by automatically updating Twitter.

With TypePad on your iPhone or iPod touch, you can share your ideas and photos as they happen, from wherever you are. And since it integrates with TypePad on your desktop, you get all the great features of the world’s premier blogging service.

5. Twitterific

Average Rating: 3½ Stars Price: Free

From the developer: A fun application that lets you read and publish posts (called “tweets”) on the Twitter social network. Stay connected with friends, family, and co-workers through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

6. Kyte Producer

Average Rating: 3½ Stars Price: Free

From the developer: Use your iPhone to instantly share photos and slideshows with your friends on Myspace, Facebook, or any website, blog or mobile phone.
Instantly broadcast pictures as you take them, or create slideshows from your iPhone’s picture gallery. You can even chat with your audience in real-time!

7. EverNote

Average Rating: 3½ Stars Price: Free

From the developer: Evernote helps you remember everything from your real and digital life using whatever device or platform you find most convenient.

Evernote for iPhone is part of the Evernote service. With it, you can take notes, snap photos, create to-do lists. and record audio. Everything is seamlessly synchronized with the web, and made available across all the devices and platforms you use, including iPhone, Evernote for Mac, Evernote Web, and Evernote for Windows.
Snap photos of any thing from whiteboards to business cards to wine labels, and Evemote will make the text within those images searchable.

Need something from last week or last year? Evernote instantly connects to the Evernote web service so you can get what you need. Find what you’re looking for by searching or filtering by tag, date, location. and more.

8. NetNewsWire

Average Rating: 3 Stars Price: Free

From the developer: NetNewsWire is an RSS reader for iPhone — you can read news from the millions of weblogs and sites that publish RSS feeds.
Because NetNewsWire syncs with all of NewsGator’s free RSS readers, if you read an item on your iPhone, you don’t have to read it again on your Macintosh or other computer. It’s automatically marked as read everywhere.
You can also save items for later via the Clippings feature, and any item you clip is available on your other computers. It’s an easy way to save something to read when you have more time.

9. Jott for iPhone

Average Rating: 3 Stars Price: Free

From the developer: Jott for iPhone is the ultimate mobile notepad that turns your voice into notes. Capture your to-dos as quickly as you can say” Get strawberries for dessert. “We transcribe your voice into text and place the resulting notes in your lists. When you complete items, just cross them off with a swipe of your finger.

All of your lists are backed up on Jott.com, where you can manage them when you are at your computer. For existing Jott customers, your lists and notes will load after you’ve d
ownloaded the app (may take a minute if you have a lot).

10. Lonely Planet

Average Rating: 2½ Stars (Spanish) to 4½ Stars (Vietnamese) Price: $4.99

From the developer: Want to never be at a loss for words, no matter where you are in the world? With your iPhone, and a little help from Lonely Planet, you’ll have the local lingo licked.

Lonely Planet, the world’s leading travel company, now offers its 10 most popular phrasebooks in downloadable audio format, specially tailored to make the most of your iPhone. Don’t just skim the surface on your next trip; with 530 spoken (and phonetically written) phrases in each guide, you can shop, socialise and shout like a native.

And a few worth copying by other news organizations…

Fox News UReport

Average Rating: 3 Stars Price: Free

From the developer: FOX News wants you to report the news. The uReport Application for iPhone allows you to do just that. You can easily take or select pictures of news happening around you and send them directly to FOX News Channel from your iPhone. If we determine your submission is newsworthy, your photo could appear online or even on air!

MLB.com At Bat

Average Rating: 3 Stars Price: $4.99

From the developer: MLB.com At Bat from MLB.com, the official site of Major League Baseball, delivers real-time scores and in-game video highlights of every game directly to your iPhone.

You’ll get each highlight moments after the play happens so you never miss the important action. The application will automatically detect your network and play video encoded for either EDGE/3G or Wi-Fi bitrates. MLB.com At Bat will provide this breakthrough service for the remainder of the 2008 season – including playoffs and World Series. It’s a whole new ballgame!

Now Local

Average Rating: 3 Stars Price: Free

From the developer: NowLocal is the best way to find news that’s happening around you. Using the iPhone’s location services, NowLocal automatically delivers you news from the best local sources, wherever you are. So as you move from place to place, it’s easy to quickly check what’s going on around you.

For more news iPhone news apps, click over to Mindy McAdams.

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In the spirit of the day, here are some of the possibilities of RSS:

1. Get sports scores

2. Check the weather

3. Create a custom newspaper

4. Get constant updates on the latest in multimedia and technology news and commentary

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Takkle, an offshoot of Sports Illustrated, is hooking them while they’re young. The site has an active network of high school athletes and fans who can submit photos and video of their favorite teams or participate in throwdowns on just about any topic.

Impressively, the site ranks the top 25 basketball players and top 100 football players from high schools across the country. Takkle users can rate each player as over or underrated, view stats and debate the player’s cred in the comments section.

Elsewhere on the site, SI.com’s College Football’s Greatest Rivalries video series is well-packaged and is sure to get football fans talking. All the greats are there including University of Florida v Florida State, USC v UCLA and Army v Navy. The opportunity to debate the prowess of one’s home team exists elsewhere on the site at FanNation, but it would have been nice to have a comment section or direct link to each rivalry’s discussion board to make the debate more immediate.

Bleacher Report is perhaps the best citizen journalism sports site not tied to a mainstream media outlet. In the vein of Associated Content, users can register and write their own sports-related articles, which, when posted, can be reviewed and rated by other users. Writers are free to speak their minds and throw unbiasedness out the window (especially today’s front page story “ESPN: The Ultimate Hypocrite”. Totally valid argument, but wow what a headline.) Bleacher Report covers most of the major sports, including football, basketball and soccer and its thriving community is making it one of the best on the web.

And because no post is complete without a good map, soccermap.net takes soccer league tables and plots them on a user-friendly map. The site is Europe-centric, but is very comprehensive and is RSS-enabled for news on any specific league. The site’s stats can even be embedded as a widget on any webpage.

Read more about tackling the online sports section in this previous post.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

ReadWriteWeb has encapsulated the reasons why Twitter and journalism go hand in hand:

Unlike TV or newspaper, Twitter allows for a conversation. Like its new media brethren, blogs, Twitter encourages discourse and feedback. For reporters that aren’t afraid to get down and dirty, Twitter is a golden opportunity to build a rapport with readers and gauge public opinion. It also makes readers feel more connected to the news when they can participate in a discussion about it as it happens, often times with the people reporting it first hand.

Twitter is built for the new news cycle. “Traditional news operated on a 24-hour cycle. Blogs shortened this to minutes and hours. Twitter shortens it further to seconds,” [Patrick Ruffini of TechPresident] writes. “It’s not right for every piece of information. It’s certainly not well suited for longer analysis. But when it comes to instantly assembling raw data from several sources that then go into fully baked news stories, nothing beats it.”

CNN’s Rick Sanchez (@ricksanchezcnn) is a great example of how a mainstream news organization is using Twitter to deliver news. In addition to providing links to CNN’s news content, Rick also engages in conversation with many of his thousands of online followers.

Other traditional news media making use of Twitter are BBC News, CBC News (Canada), Le Monde – World, the New York Times, CNN Breaking News, The Oregonian, Orlando Sentinel, ESPN, and a host of others indexed here. It’s about time your news organization was added to the list, right?

Creating links to news stories on Twitter and redirecting them to your site is a great way to generate additional traffic or to notify Twitter users of breaking news. The site is also useful for liveblogging or tracking reaction to local stories.

Twitter is used more often for personal discourse, but journalists should approach twittering of their personal lives with caution. Tech blogger extraordinaire Tiffany B. Brown explains why she tweets and why having the public following your public life may not be such a good idea. Nevertheless, Twitter has quickly become the essential tool in every newsroom’s and journalist’s arsenal.

Also on 10,000 Words

• The top 7 mistakes new Twitter users make
• Twitter is…
• How to analyze your Twitter followers and friends
• 10 Journalists you should follow on Twitter

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Old standby The Weather Channel/weather.com is also a vibrant social network. Users can post photos and video of good and bad weather happening around them and discuss local climates on the site’s message boards. In addition to its hour by hour, weekend, 10-day and monthly forecasts, Weather.com boasts interactive maps, a bookmark-worthy blog written by weather experts and meteorologists and other weather-related tidbits that are too numerous to mention.

By now you’re familiar with the broadcast TV weather map that has the temperature of an area overlaid on a map of that area (i.e. 75° in Miami, 32° in Seattle). Weather Bonk has scaled that map down and made it available with just a click. Regional temperatures across the globe are plotted on an interactive Google Map, along with storm warnings and embedded webcams.

WunderCam and EarthCam also take advantage of webcams stationed around the country to display local weather condition. While the sites’ individual coverage doesn’t exactly blanket the United States, there are many webcams to choose from.

Do you love a good sunset? Wish the natural splendor of the sun setting on the horizon would last forever? Well, Eternal Sunset took this idea and ran with it. The site is collection of 266 webcams around the world, all facing west to capture the sun set in 48 different countries. Eternal Sunset also has two maps that assist in determining where the sun is setting at any given moment.

Sunset at 9 am PST, 6 pm Central European Time. From left, Carro, France, Santa Ponsa, Spain, Riederalp, Switzerland

Eternal Sunset Realtime Global Map

Several sites, including WeatherBug, RSS Weather and the aforementioned Weather Channel, are taking advantage of RSS technology to make up-to-the-minute weather alerts available through RSS feeds. Distributing something as useful as weather predictions through RSS is a great way to encourage users to subscribe to your content and is also a great branding tool.

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The Dallas Morning News’ Cowboys Blog is a shining example of everything a blog should be. Its in depth coverage is complemented by stellar photographs, RSS feeds, and up to the minute scores. A handy calendar in the rail makes the blog searchable by date and visitors can receive Cowboys updates on their mobile device.

RUWT? (Are you watching this?) cuts through the 50 million sports channels and alerts you know when your game is getting good. Games are ranked Guarded, Elevated, High and Severe, which indicates a soon to be classic sports moment.

Totally Scored keeps track of the entire football/baseball/hockey/soccer/basketball game through RSS feeds. Users can select a feed dedicated to a sport or to a particular team. There a hundreds of teams to choose from which would satisfy any sports fan.

CollegeFanz puts sports into an interactive environment, which includes a virtual stadium and a customizable “dorm room.” The site looks great and has some great features but those features aren’t integrated into the site very well. Read a full review at Mashable.

NASCAR fans will get a real kick out of the Formula One Grand Prix Circuit map that shows satellite images of racetracks around the world.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.