RealMatch has changed the game of recruitment and founder Gal Almog is leading the charge. The company has revolutionized the model of employers and job seekers posting and clicking through gigs on various sites with their Real-Time Job Matching technology. It’s like a dating site for recruitment, says Almog. A user uploads a resume and specifies what they’re looking for and when a job opens up, the technology alerts you. Employers and advertisers post jobs on one site and it gets distributed through RealMatch’s network. “We do all the heavy lifting,” as Almog puts it.

So what does this have to do with newspapers? Everything. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Google Public Data Explorer uses datasets from organizations like the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, the U.S. Census Bureau, and the Office of Management and Budget from the Executive Office of the President. As you can see in the above chart, data can be filtered and animated across whatever factors are available in the dataset, and even supports geo-location. Organizations can upload their own datasets using an open source XML-based metadata format called the Dataset Publishing Language (DSPL). Example datasets and full documentation about DSPL are located at Google Code.

Visualizations of public data like this can add great context to news stories, and the embedded charts and links update automatically to share the latest data available from the dataset. The Google Public Data Explorer is a Google Labs project, so it is still a work in progress. You can give your feedback at the Google Public Data Explorer Group if you have any feature suggestions.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The new wizard allows you to quickly construct graphs from any set of numerical data without deciphering the mystery of the Google Charts API URL syntax. Right now, the wizard is limited to creating line charts, pie charts, bar graphs, radar charts, scatterplots, and more. Here is a quick graph I put together using a random data set:

The great thing about the Google Chart Wizard is the way you can present your chart once you’re done building it. You have the option of sharing the graph using a URL, or you can drop the single line of HTML code it provides you into any content management system. There is even an option to add your graph as a widget using the Google Chart API, which is a great choice for those who want a little more fine-tuned control over the graph’s presentation and functionality.

Aside from charts, you can also create QR codes, which are matrix barcodes that you can scan with your smartphone. The QR code below was generated using the URL for 10,000 Words.

If you need a little inspiration to get you started, than that’s no problem either. The Google Chart Wizard also features a gallery of example graphs so you can get an idea of the sorts of visualizations you can put together using this handy tool.

Create your own graphs today at http://imagecharteditor.appspot.com.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

I don’t live in the area any longer, I have friends and family who do. There are a few different news sources both in town, and regionally, that were covering the storm as it was happening.

But when I wanted to get information about what was happening, I chose Twitter over all of them.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

A few months ago, a screenshot circulated on the Web of an article from The Washington Post showing nearly a dozen links to Facebook; the different links allow users to recommend or share the article, or to become a fan of their Facebook fan page. CNN’s articles include buttons for Facebook and Twitter with their articles, along with a general “Share” button including links to other services. These buttons are meant to increase engagement between users and their friends, but these examples may show that sometimes news organizations need to fill whitespace on their pages, and they do so by adding additional social widgets.

Whether or not the user experience of using social media buttons on news sites is good or bad, the overall numbers show that good content is the fuel of the social web. A recent study by AOL and Nielsen shows that 23% of social media messages include links to content (published articles, videos, and photos), which equates to roughly 27,000,000 pieces of content shared each day. A number like that may be a case for including as many share buttons as possible on your website, but less is more when it comes to adding these social sharing buttons for a few reasons.

From a marketing standpoint, it’s important to make sure that an organization’s social media sharing options are focused based on their audience’s demographics, and minimalistic enough so that the user doesn’t have to spend too much time figuring out their next step for sharing the article. That not only includes the quantity of social sharing buttons, but also the placement of these buttons. The New York Times does a great job with their social networking buttons, including Facebook and Twitter and a button to more services in a simple box near the top of the article. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution also takes the simple approach to content sharing by having only one social sharing button with each article. The other benefit of having a minimum of sharing buttons for articles is a shorter load time for the page.

Have you seen any good (or bad) implementations of social sharing buttons on news organization websites? Share your findings in the comments!

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Blackbird Pie is a tool for embedding tweets into a page using hypertext. You may have seen this used on our last Tools of the Day post when we discussed sparktweets. Blackbird Pie has primarily been used by Twitter Media on their blog in example posts. Here’s an example tweet generated from the 10,000 Words Twitter account using Blackbird Pie:

The benefits of using Blackbird Pie is that you get some elements of Twitter functionality via the tweet, such as marking it as a favorite, retweeting it, or replying to it. Hashtags are also linked directly to Twitter search, to help you pull in more context.

The downsides of using the tool are that you would need to have a basic knowledge of HTML in order to troubleshoot any copy and paste issues from the tool, and the correct timestamp does not carry over in the pasted tweet. Also, the code provided for these tweets do not work in Tumblr.

Give Blackbird Pie a try and add some fresh-baked tweets to your posts!

Speaking of linked hashtags, What The Trend is just the resource for you when you need to figure out what a specific hashtag means, and to discover why it may be trending at the moment. With over 100,000 trends being tracked from all around the world, What The Trend is the premiere database of hashtag definitions.

You can also discover the top 10 trends at the moment, discover new trends in other countries, and even register your own hashtag for inclusion in the rankings. Journalists can use this tool to not just discover what’s generating buzz at the moment, but can study other successful hashtags to discover tips they could use for their own Twitter campaigns. What The Trend makes discovering this information simple and fun!

Visit them at http://www.whatthetrend.com and sign up for a free account.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

WHEN: 8 weeks, May 24 – July 19
Online Chats: Tuesdays, 8-9 p.m. ET

WHERE: Online. Click here to register.

LEVEL: Intermediate/Advanced

In this class, we’ll explore the many interactive digital tools available to today’s journalist. Through weekly assignments, you’ll gain hands-on experience building maps, photo galleries, slideshows, and timelines, and learn how to use live-blogging and curation tools to take advantage of social media and real-time reporting.

In order to maximize the technology available, you have to know what tools are out there and when and how to use them. We’ll discuss innovative examples of journalism and technology to determine the best practices for developing your own tools and storytelling techniques. Students can opt to post stories and packages to their own blog or website, or contribute to a private class blog.

In this class, you will learn:

• How and when to use interactive online tools to enhance your reporting
• How to present and curate information using maps, video, photo galleries, slideshows, and timelines
• What role social media should play in your research, reporting, and promotion
• How to use a Content Management System and the basics of site management
• What you need to know about Flash as a journalist

By the end of this class, you will have:
A portfolio of interactive components to support your reporting including a map, video clip, photo gallery or slideshow, timeline, live-blog transcript, and curated social news package. You’ll also gain familiarity working with a Content Management System.

Click here to register today! As an added bonus for our faithful 10,000 Words reader, use the promotional code WORDS50 to get a $50 discount!

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Just a few months ago, the new presidential administration was greeted with antiquated computers and technology that forbade access to social networks like Facebook or even outside email. Fast forward to today and there are now a variety of ways to connect and interact online with the White House.

The official White House site has been revamped and updated to include a blog to keep the world abreast of President Obama and crew. The site also contains a number of photo slideshows based largely on photos from the official Flickr photostream.

The White House’s official YouTube channel contains loads of speeches and press briefings and — to dispel earlier allegations of technology favoritism — the same content is also available on Vimeo.

After Barack Obama’s landmark use of social networking during his presidential campaign it should come as no surprise that the White House is also friending people across the world. The president’s pad has more than 126,000 followers on Twitter and follows a number of government agencies, including FEMA and NASA.

The White House also has more than 205,000 fans on Facebook and the president himself has more than six million fans, more than anyone else on the site. The White House is also on MySpace, along with both President Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden.

2. The Vatican

As highlighted in this month’s issue of mental_floss magazine, The Vatican — the centuries-old religious institution — is also down with new technology.

The official newspaper of The Vatican, L’Osservatore Romano, is available online in several languages as are many programs from Vatican Radio. The official radio station of Vatican City also has podcasts available for listening or to download.

Flickr photo of Pope Benedict XVI by Paul Resh

The Vatican’s official YouTube has almost 200 videos that range from morning prayers to papal visits. The Vatican even has its own iPhone app that contains prayers and scriptural readings and is available in six languages.

3. Major League Baseball

MLB has all the bases covered with its wide range of ways to follow games electronically. The most impressive offering is MLB.TV, a subscription service where baseball fans can watch live games online in high definition. The site streams 100 games a week to hundreds of thousands of subscribers and the quality is hard to match.

If you prefer your baseball on the go, MLB has a series of iPhone apps including MLB At Bat, where fans can find the latest scores, standings and schedules, and MLB World Series 2009, an interactive game that features all 30 MLB clubs.

The official MLB site contains various other ways to get your baseball fix, including a series of blogs, podcasts, video clips and photo galleries. There is also an official Facebook page where social networkers can step up to the plate.

4. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

The FBI, America’s hub of criminal investigation with a reputation for secrecy, recently announced a slew of online efforts that will make the agency more open and approachable.

The Bureau’s official Twitter feed shares criminal alerts and press releases with its thousands of followers and similar content is shared on the official FBI Facebook page. The videos featured on the FBI’s YouTube channel give an insider’s view of such operations as bomb training and prostitution stings.

In an effort to spread news of and apprehend the fugitives on its famed Most Wanted List, the FBI also has several widgets available that anyone can embed on their blog, site or social network profile and apparently the new media approach is working. The widgets have directed more than 2.5 million people to the FBI website and the Most Wanted widget averages more than a thousand views a day, according to a press release.

The FBI even plans to take its Most Wanted list to Second Life where virtual visitors can keep tabs on real-life criminals.

Also on 10,000 Words:

• 12 Things to tell your tech-impaired editor
• Great online journalism from non-traditional journalists
• Create brilliant multimedia projects from the mundane
• Visual and inte
ractive guides to the economic crisis
• Sports arenas: How to put a multimedia twist on traditional coverage

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

1. perspctv

If there weren’t 14 other sites on this list then perspctv would be the one stop for any election news seeker. The site culls the latest news, blog posts and tweets and provides insightful charts and maps as well as an embeddable widget for keeping track of it all.

2. Patchwork Nation

We know the candidates are campaigning all over the country, but who are they campaigning in front of? The Christian Science Monitor has the answer. The site’s analysis shows both Sen. McCain and Sen. Obama spent a good chunk of their time in wealthy suburbs and big cities.

3. Election ’08 Twitter Chatter

Everyone knows Twitter is abuzz with political views, skews and insights, including the observations of Twitter stars FakeSarahPalin and CNN’s Rick Sanchez. Twitter Chatter is one way to wrangle these conversations as well as to see on a map where they are coming from.

4. FiveThirtyEight.com

FiveThirtyEight.com is the dream of any political statistics hound. The site has the latest polls, the latest news, the latest charts, graphs, statistics, hypotheticals…the latest everything. It’s like a political rabbit hole…check it out only if you have time to spare.

5. Map of 2008 Presidential Contributions

“Show me the money!” Okay it’s 2008, not 1996, but if you’re curious to know where the campaign money is coming from, Political Base has you covered with a well-designed Google map as well as a list of big name contributors and a handy search form.

6. Tube the Vote!

Tube the Vote strives to provide a balanced view of issues that are affecting this year’s presidential election by scouring the web for video, blog posts, Flickr photos and more that celebrate or repudiate either side.

7. Candidates’ life journeys

Get to know the presidential and vice presidential candidates a little better by following the milestones of their lives on a Google Map. Anyone can follow the journey of John McCain, Barack Obama, Sarah Palin or Joe Biden.

8. PolitiFact’s The Attack Files

Voters tired of the spin and searching for the truth will appreciate PolitiFact’s analysis of recent campaign assertions. Was Sen. Obama referring to Sarah Palin when he mentioned “lipstick on a pig?” No way, says PolitiFact. Does Sen. McCain support tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas? Not that simple, according to the site.

9. Election 08

iPhone users will be glad to know that they don’t have to be at a computer to track the latest on the 2008 presidential race. The iPhone application is a great source for tracking the latest polls as long as you don’t check to often — Election 08 is sometimes behind in its updates.

10. McCainPedia/Obamapedia

To say these two wikis are unbiased would be a big misstatement — the former is run by the DNC, the other is populated by Obama fans. Still, using modern technology to encourage citizen participation is never a bad thing.

11. What Would You Say to the President?

This genius bit of citizen participation encourages everyone to not only speak their mind to President Bush, but to presidential hopefuls John McCain and Barack Obama as well. Recent responses — which are themselves wholly interesting and telling — are displayed on each page.

12. Google Maps (campaign trail)

This Google map knows where the candidates will be and when and makes that information at the click of a button. Campaign appearances for both candidates are listed in reverse chronological order as well as marked on a map.

13. Google Maps (video)

Video of campaign speeches from both Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain are tracked and mapped on these map mashups that incorporate video from YouTube.

14. Everymoment Now

Everymoment Now uses a unique graph to chart the number of times a candidate was mentioned on any particular day since August of this year. Clicking on a bar in the chart reveals news stories that were published that day as well as more detailed charts and graphs.

15. ABC News’ Match-o-Matic

If you plan on voting in the upcoming US election, but still don’t know which can
didate to vote for, the Match-o-Matic is sure to help. The humorous, interactive quiz gives the user two quotes — one from Sen. Obama and one from Sen. McCain — and the user selects which one they agree with most without knowing who said it. The final tally reveals which presidential candidate’s platform the user is more likely to side with.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Perhaps the most novice-friendly online widget creator is Widgetbox. The site not only provides a variety of widgets to browse for inspiration, but makes creating a Flash-, HTML/Javascript-, or web-based widget as simple as possible. For the Flash and web-based options, users can simply plug in the URL to the content to be widgetized and the site does the rest. Those users who want to create HTML/JS coding from scratch are assured their widget won’t be crap — Widgetbox reviews each widget and bounces malformed ones with suggested corrections before it is made available through the site.

Those who want to provide blog content in widget form can create a Blidget, or blog widget like the example on the right, in literally minutes. The blidget can be branded with a logo and a variety of colors and instantly be made available to fans of your content. A complete guide to creating widgets with Widgetbox can be found here.

iWidgets provides yet another reason to skip the pricey programmers. Multimedia techies with a basic knowledge of web development can create widgets that mimic the look and feel of social networks like MySpace and Facebook and move away from the basic rectangle look that many widgets have adopted. iWidgets touts its “PowerPoint-style drag-and-drop” approach to widget creation which is helpful for those budding widget developers. Creating widgets on the site is visually intuitive and offers great flexibility.

One other online widget creator worth checking is Sprout, which offers video, audio and photo integration. Sprout has a few widget templates to choose from or you can build your own using the site’s Flash-based editor (whose interface has the same feel as working in Flash). Best of all the online service is free.

No matter how a widget is created, it must be created with the user in mind. StickiWidgets has a definitive list of the ten things to consider when building a widget that everyone should read before embarking on a widget-making odyssey.

Now that you know how to create a widget, read this post to see what a good widget looks like.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

There widgets for everything on the web, including news. Here are some of the best.

NBC Nightly News

The Nightly News widget, adorned with a photo of news anchor Brian Williams and available through Yahoo! Widgets, pulls stories through the site’s RSS feed.

CNN

CNN’s podcast widget makes the audio shows available instantly and provides a link for downloading

Yourstreet

Yourstreet’s news widget is customizable: users can input their zip code and receive news from a variety of local sources.

MSNBC

The NewsScroller is the word in customized news widgets. Users can set the type of news they want, the colors that it appears in, expandable story items and more.

delawareonline

Delaware has a number of widgets available, but the standout is its video widget that makes the online news site’s video content embeddable in any site or blog.

WMBB

At last check, Hurricane Fay hadn’t made its way to the Florida panhandle, but if it does, or if any storm system should hit the area, anyone with this widget will be the first to know.

The clear winner when it comes to widgets is National Geographic. The site offers 11 different widgets for everything from the Photo of the Day to a U2 widget.

Photo of the Day Widget

Daily News Widget

Place of the Week Widget

The cream of the crop is the Mysteries of the Ancient World Game widget which does what every good widget should do: it encourages interactivity by providing content (in this case a game) that the user would be interested in; it has a stellar and exemplary design that separates it from other online clutter; and it promotes brand identity.

You’ve seen some exemplary widgets, now check out this post to find out how a good widget gets made.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Blogs

One of my biggest dreams is to attend the Olympics games, but I opted out this year for two reasons 1) I was concerned about the restrictions on journalists and 2) I have a strong aversion to Chinese food. That said, I’ll see you in London in 2012. In the meantime, there are a number of other media and interested parties that will be covering the Olympic Games:

• The New York Times Olympics blog
• Los Angeles Times: Ticket to Beijing
• BBC Sport Olympics 2008
• ESPN Olympics Blog
• Indian Olympic Blog
• San Jose Mercury News Olympic Games Blog
• Beijing Olympics Fan
• Reuters
• FanNation Beijing Olympics Blog
• Reuters
• Times Online: Barnes in Beijing

Google also has an interesting way of keeping tabs on the Games. Just enter the name of the event you are interested in plus the word ‘olympics’ in the search field and Google will return a schedule of upcoming events. You can also get updates from a number of Twitter users.

For those journalists reading from Beijing, PopPhoto has some advice for navigating around China and the Olympic atmosphere.

Video

In addition to offering more than extensive coverage of the Olympic Games in the US, NBC will make an additional 2,200 hours of streaming video available online at NBCOlympics.com. On the other side of the world, CCTV.com and Adobe have partnered up to offer more than 5,000 hours of streaming video to mainland China and Macau via CCTVOlympics.com

In countries where NBC doesn’t have exclusive rights to Olympic video, the games will be broadcast online on YouTube. This includes 77 territories in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

US residents who are unable to watch the Games either on television or online have the option of downloading Olympics on the Go, a Tivo-like service that will download selected events straight to their computer. Best of all, the service is free.

Multimedia

The New York Times, that stalwart exemplar of multimedia, has some pretty comprehensive coverage, including two awesome Flash-based interactive projects: Olympic Medal Count Map, which uses expanding circles to illustrate the number of medals won over the years by various countries, and Passing the Torch, a visual history of the Olympic torch.

The Chicago Tribune’s photo gallery “Olympic athletes you can root for” is a compelling look at Olympians who may not be household names. Some of the venues where the athletes compete and visitors will tour, including the Olympic Sports Centre and Tiananmen Square can be viewed in 3D by clicking here.

Print

Text is the foundation of journalism and there have already been a number of feature stories published online that are worth a read.

From BBC News: The Olympic torch’s shadowy past

From Sportingo: The top ten greatest Olympic moments

From mental_floss: What happens to Olympic facilities after the games are over?

From WebUrbanist: 8 Pivotal Olympic Villages And Venues Then And Now

Widgets

Left to right: USA Today, NBC , Google Gadgets, Widgetbox

Mobile

When you just got can’t make to the television in time to catch your favorite Olympic event, be sure to turn to any of the following mobile sites offering Olympic coverage:

Yahoo!

Sky

NBC

New York Times

Sports Illustrated/SI.com

USA Today

Times Online

Advertising

Coca-Cola wasn’t yet invented at the first Olympic Games, but the beverage corporation and a number of other companies are making up for lost time by plastering their image all over Beijing and the web.

Lenovo, a similarly ubiquitous sponsor of the Olympiad, has put together Voices of the Olympic Games, an online site in which real Olympic athletes share their stories and experiences. Olympians like Peter Lopez, a member of the Peruvian taekwondo team, seem genuinely excited to blog about Beijing, and — good news here — he and others are blogging in their native language.

As Panasonic will gladly tell you, the electronics giant has been sponsoring the Olympic Games for 20 years. This year is, of course, no different. It’s Japanese site offers Olympic-themed video/ads and other goodies like desktop wallpaper. In the U.S., the Panasonic Mobile Tour is already underway. A huge rig equipped with the latest in television technology is traveling around the country to show off the Olympic Games in high definition.

McDonald’s will be feeding many visitors to Beijing in the Olympic Village, and, in some selected countries, will offer its “China Menu” which includes a burger topped with sesame seeds, chop suey and ginger sauce. And finally you can catch Olympians in all their glory in a visually arresting set of ads for Powerade by clicking here (SFW).

You can check out my personal contribution to Olympic fever at Entertainment Weekly. How are you covering the Olympic Games? Or, if you are a fan, how will you be following them? Share your plans in the comments.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Building a Facebook application is still very much for those with technical knowhow, but there are a few third party applications making the process easier. First, start off with this post from Tony Hirst that details a few of said applications, including Dapper Facebook AppMaker.

It’s never to late to create a winning Facebook app, according to Stanford instructors Dr. BJ Fogg and Dave McClure. Some of their other musings: “simplicity and clarity are the key to app success” and “copying success is a cheap/fast way to succeed.” I couldn’t agree more.

Facebook and MySpace are of course two of the hundreds, if not thousands, of social networks floating around the web. But what other social networks are popular around the web? According to this map Orkut is popular in Brazil and India, hi5 is popular in Portugal, Mongolia and Peru, and Blogger is a hit in France and Pakistan.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Instead of waiting for traffic updates online or via radio, some internet users are turning to Commuter Feed. The site lets Twitter users send updates about local traffic around the country directly to the site, where the feeds are searchable by city or metropolitan area.

Politweets tracks the political discussion happening in the Twitterverse by aggregating tweets about political candidates. The most recent tweets about Democratic candidates are on the left and Republicans are on the right. In the middle is a list of candidates positioned by how much they are being discussed (Barack Obama is currently at the top of the pile).

Because the web is all about citizen journalism, truemors is made up of news submitted by the average Joes and Janes of Twitter. It’s kind of like a micro social news networking site that aggregates the content that people care about from a variety of news sources. Twemes is also a great way of indexing what people are talking about online. The site is useful for searching tagged tweets on any subject, like, for example, John McCain.

Twitterers are already discussing major news events, including Super Tuesday and Sunday’s Academy Awards; it’s just a matter of major news organizations grabbing the opportunity and creating their own news hubs.

Did you know Twitter isn’t just for sending text? TwitPic and Twixtr both allow users to send photos either online or via mobile phone through Twitter. So instead of simply including links to new stories, anyone can add photos to accompany their tweets (and we know photos are a great visual attraction).

Twittervision combines Twitter and Google Maps to create a real-time visual idea of where tweets are coming from. The only requirement to appear on the site is a location and an image defined in your Twitter post. The 3D version is also worth a look, if only for the coolness factor.

Twittermap creates a visual display of geotagged tweets and can also be used to find Twitterers by location. Those familiar with data mashup editor Yahoo! Pipes can use geo twitter to get a geotagged feed of your Twitter posts, which can be displayed on a Yahoo or Google map.

There are a lot of interesting and useful sites based on Twitter and with the Twitter API up for grabs, there is no reason that journalists can’t be a part of the next evolution in news.

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.

Also on 10,000 Words

• Super Tuesday Coverage Around the Web (Cybernet)
• Google Trends Predict Super Tuesday Outcome (Advertising Lab)
• Keeping Tabs on Super Tuesday (ReadWriteWeb)
• Google teams up with Twitter to make Super Tuesday geomap (Webware)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.