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5 Must-Have Chrome Extensions for Journalists

Lauren Hockenson — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 15:00:35 +0000

It’s no secret that one of the keys to being a successful journalist these days is mastering the art of combing the Internet. And, a large portion of finding great stuff on the Internet relies on properly and efficiently utilizing clever tools that elevates your online skills from “great” to “practically superhuman.”

Chrome is now the most popular Internet browser, and for plenty of good reason: in addition to having a straightforward search bar and integration with all of Google’s great tools (auto-complete in the browser!), users can customize their web experience with a host of add-ons. These add-ons, called “extensions” by the browser itself, can do amazing things — and boost your reporting abilities to make you more organized, connected, and efficient.

Here are five extensions that are popular for their great utility in any journalist’s arsenal, and they are all absolutely free to download.

What’s your favorite Chrome extension? Let us know in the comments.

OneTab

Reporters everywhere are singing the praises of OneTab because it beautifully solves one of the biggest pain points for online journalists: the agonizing slow-down of a computer once it crosses its maximum threshold for open browser tabs. If you tend to have dozens and dozens of tabs open at any given time, this extension will speed up your computer without losing all of your hard-earned tabs. continued…

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Why Premium Youtube and News Don’t Mix

Lauren Hockenson — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 14:30:53 +0000

On the surface, it’s been a huge year for Youtube and its string of premium content providers. The website is becoming bigger, and has recently acquired startup Epoxy to help developers and distributors get their work on the site faster and more frequently. In addition to the rise in Youtube developers like Maker Studios and Machinima, new premium channels are popping up left and right — fashion and lifestyle network StyleHaul netted $4.4. million in Series A funding this February, and Demand Media’s newcomer Tastemade plans to do the same for food.

But news companies aren’t clamoring to take part in Youtube. In fact, the video company endured a messy breakup last month with Reuters and Wall Street Journal, pulling millions of dollars in funding and laying off more than a dozen contractors in the process. To put it simply: premium Youtube ventures and news do not mix. continued…

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Google Offers Journalism Fellowship

Mona Zhang — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 16:50:25 +0000

Though Google may have contributed to the ailing journalism industry, the search giant will now be offering journalism students 10-week long fellowships. The first of these fellowships will start in the summer of 2013, and are open to both undergrads and graduate students.

The fellowship is aimed at “students interested in using technology to tell stories in new and dynamic ways,” said the announcement. Fellows spend their first week at the Knight Foundation and the last week at Google. The program is especially suited to readers of 10,000 Words, as the intersection of journalism and technology is exactly what the fellowship is about. Below are the qualities that the program is seeking: continued…

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Basic Tech Tips For Journalists: Reverse Image Search

Meranda Watling — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 15:00:00 +0000

In a world with Photoshop or photo editing software at nearly everyone’s fingertips, it can be hard to know if that stunning image making the rounds is real or even recent. Also, it can be hard to track down the original source of photos or images when they pop up on Pinterest with a link to a Tumblr that links to another Tumblr that links to a blog that doesn’t cite the source.

While there’s no fool proof way to find the original, there are a few ways to track down other copies of the image and potentially the original source. One of the easiest places to start is with a reverse image search.

It’s probably a good idea for journalists to plug any images they share into these sites before passing it along or repinning it with credit to the wrong source. Why use it? Last week in the wake of Super Storm Sandy, one of the most shared photos I saw pass around social media was of soldiers standing in a downpour guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It was a real shot — from a few months before, not from Sandy as it was being purported to be. (Sandy spawned so many fake images, several places started tracking the real from the fake.) Reverse image searches also could help you find other similar photos of local landmarks that people have taken over the years if you search by one you have.

It’s just another tool in the toolbox and a useful trick when it works. There are a few image search options out there, so if you want to find more just search in your favorite search engine for “reverse image search” and see what comes up. The two I’ll discuss are probably the most well known, but feel free to share more ideas in the comments or links to this post.
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3 Reasons the Updated Google Trends Tool Will Benefit Journalists

Ryan Lytle — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 10:00:31 +0000

This week, Google announced that it is merging its Google Trends and Insights for Search into one Google Trends tool.

From Google’s blog post announcing the move:

Now we are merging Insights for Search into Google Trends, wrapping it all up in a clean new interface to give you a clearer view of what’s on the world’s mind. The new Google Trends now includes features from both products and makes it easier and more intuitive to dig into the data.

Both Google Trends and Insights for Search have been useful tools in the industry for years, offering journalists a way to see popular search terms and compare keywords, respectively.

While each tool has separate and distinct functions, there are benefits to packaging them into one super tool. Here are three reasons journalists will benefit from this update:

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Top 25 Most Popular Apps For Freelancers

Meranda Watling — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 23:39:15 +0000

When it comes to software and apps to help them work, it’s no surprise freelancers like free apps. But here’s another non-surprise from a recent survey of about 100 freelancers conducted by BestVendor: They also love cloud computing. Most of the top 25 most popular apps from that survey were a combination of both.

Check out BestVendor's infographic to learn more about the survey and see a few of their respondents' also-rans that didn't make the main list this time. Click the image to see the full size version.

In its survey due to be released Thursday, the New York-based start-up site aimed at connecting users with useful apps and software found not one of the top 25 most popular apps cited by the freelancers was a desktop-only program. Some of them have desktop components, but most were cloud-based apps or sites.

So what were the pack leaders? Well, if this were the Olympics, let’s just say Google would be the medal leader in this event, with seven of the top 25 apps the freelancers cited — more than a quarter of the list, including two of the top three. Yet, it didn’t take the No. 1 spot: File sharing and backup service Dropbox bested the big G for that honor.

Beyond file storage and email, several of the tools were directly related to the business aspects of working as a freelancer, with software to help manage projects, invoices, billing and budgeting.

To be fair, the demographics of the relatively small sample of freelancers surveyed about what software and apps they use to manage their work was skewed a bit: 44 percent worked in technology and digital media according to BestVendor. Also, primarily they were based in the U.S. and Europe. But this is still an interesting list of ideas for freelancers looking to add primarily free tools to their tool box.

In rank order, the 25 most popular freelancer tools are:
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Google Uses Print Newspaper Ad To Advertise Search Ad Effectiveness

Meranda Watling — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 12:32:06 +0000

Google searches frequently help drive traffic to news stories at newspaper websites.

But here’s a different twist on the relationship between the search giant and newspapers: Using a newspaper to drive advertisers to the search giant.

That’s what Google apparently hopes to achieve in its new ad, which Globe and Mail media reporter Steve Ladurantaye discovered in his paper and then tweeted. Or maybe the message to take away is the opposite, as Ladurantaye tweeted about the half-page ad: “An ad for Google ads in today’s Globe demonstrates the value of print ads, yes?”

Mashable follows up noting the ad apparently also ran in the National Post, another Canadian paper and Globe and Mail competitor.

(H/T Romenesko for catching this tweet.)

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TechRaking 2012: Three Questions To Ask Before Building A News App

Lauren Rabaino — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 15:13:30 +0000

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF. — Today at the Googleplex, a group of roughly 200 journalists and technologists are talking about how to create a more perfect union between muckrakers and technologists at CIR’s TechRaking conference. The Chicago Tribune’s Brian Boyer gave a seven-minute ignite talk directed toward “the people who are bosses of people who put data on the web.”

Boyer’s metaphor? News apps are like pottery: It’s supposed to be useable; it’s a craft. Does your mug still work when their’s hot coffee inside? Or does the handle force your fingers to touch the cup, burning your skin and rendering the cup unuseable?

The questions Boyer’s team asks before approaching every project:

Who are you users?
What are their needs?
What can we do for them?

The example he used was for a nursing home database. The users? People with elderly family members in nursing homes. Their need? They read scary reports about nursing home abuse and want to know if grandpa is going to be OK. What can you do for them? Give them a database so they can search for offenses at Grandpa’s nursing home.

Just because you have location data and time information doesn’t mean you need to build a map and a timeline. In the example above, Boyer had the information for nursing home locations and time of incidents, but that’s not what’s useful for people using the app.

“Our work sings when it helps folks find their own story,” Boyer said. Don’t overdo it for the sake of overdoing it.

His final four points:

Craft is useful
Fight your urges
Know your audience
Make useful stuff

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Google Gives Rare Peek Into Its Meetings

Elana Zak — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 15:56:16 +0000

At times, it seems like an outright mystery what will make the Google gods happy. What keywords are really going to make your article jump to the top of a search page? How much does spelling matter? What elements make up the secret sauce?

That is all about to change. Google is making a concerted effort to pull back the curtain and has started releasing videos of its internal weekly search meeting, “Quality Launch Review.” The move, says the YouTube video description, is part of the company’s “continued effort to be more transparent about how search works.” continued…

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How Journalists Can Celebrate Women’s Day

Mona Zhang — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 10:06:55 +0000

Recently there has been much discussion of the underrepresentation of women in the media industry. It can be easy to lament about the situation, difficult to understand the reasons, and even more difficult to actually do something about it. How can an industry work towards gender equality, when many other industries and the culture at large reflect these biases?

Enter UNESCO’s Women Make the News initiative. This advocacy initiative, starting with International Women’s Day and lasting through April 30, aims to promote gender equality in the media across the world. According to a UNESCO report, women make up 36 percent of reporting jobs and 27 percent of management jobs in media companies worldwide. This year’s initiative focuses on the difficulties for rural women to access media, and gives those in the industry suggestions of how to participate. continued…

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Google Glasses: Augmented Reality or Dystopian Horror?

Mona Zhang — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:42:12 +0000

Google is expected to start selling glasses by the end of the year. No, they are not foraying into optometry, but rather finding a new way to stream the contents of your smartphone straight at your eyeballs. The glasses, which reportedly resemble a pair of Oakley Thumps, will run on Android and be equipped with 3G, 4G, GPS and a low-resolution camera. Other Google technologies like Google Latitudes and Maps could superimpose information to augment your reality—say, tell you what’s nearby, or what your friends think of that restaurant.

The glasses, which are expected to cost around the price of a smartphone ($250-600), would have a small screen a few inches from the wearer’s eye. Seth Weintraub at 9 to 5 Google reports that head tilting would be used to navigate the device, which will be easy to learn, becoming “second nature and almost indistinguishable to outside users.” But one man’s augmented reality could be another’s dystopian horror. The New York Times’ Nick Bilton thought perhaps the future bodes “throngs of people in thick-framed sunglasses lurching down the streets, cocking and twisting their heads like extras in a zombie movie.” continued…

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International Data Journalism Awards debut

Meranda Watling — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 10:00:05 +0000

There’s no dearth of ways for journalists to congratulate and recognize themselves with awards. Whether you’re a small local newspaper or the most-watched national news show, there exists a seemingly endless list of contests and prizes to celebrate everything from the best public service journalism (Pulitzer anyone?) down to the most-specific specialized reporting (Media Orthopaedic Reporting Excellence Awards?). But within that sphere of contest categories, there’s not really been a contest solely focused on data journalism.

Now there is: The Data Journalism Awards, which purports to be “the first international contest recognizing outstanding work in the field of data journalism worldwide.”

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Big Name Websites Protest SOPA

Meranda Watling — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 19:53:04 +0000

Some of the sites U.S. Internet users rely on most plan to take part in an online protest Wednesday, Jan. 17, against SOPA — the Stop Online Piracy Act — and related bill PIPA — PROTECT IP Act — currently under consideration.

We here at 10,000 Words have covered what the act is about before and why it would matter for journalists. But this net-wide protest by some of the Internet’s biggest names is big news, and will hopefully bring attention to the masses of people who will be affected by the restrictions it would impose but haven’t yet heard of it — those people who visit these sites but don’t follow Congress or Internet/media industry news.

Wikipedia: Plans to black out its English site for 24 hours for the first time.
Google: Doesn’t plan a blackout, but does plan to use its homepage to protest the law.
Reddit: Plans to take down its site for 12 hours in protest and instead post information about the measure, including video of the house hearings/testimonies taking place.
BoingBoing: Announced last week it will go dark for the day and has been sharing tips since on how you can join the crowd.
WordPress.org: This blog host plans to take its main site dark in protest, and even posted instructions on how its users can take down their WordPress blog for a day as well, with links to the many SOPA-blackout plug-ins available.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but there are a few people keeping such lists, including All Things D. Politico, apparently, estimates as many as 7,000 sites will go dark. There’s also a pretty good list here of tech companies that have expressed opposition to the bill (not all are protesting, but it’s an interesting list to take into consideration).

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Google Launches Election Page

Ethan Klapper — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:23:35 +0000

Ahead of tonight’s Iowa Caucus, Google has released a new portal site to find everything someone would ever want to know about this year’s presidential election. The site, google.com/elections, is a dashboard for many of Google’s products that could come in handy for following the elections.

When you go to the site, you’re greeted with a Google News-style splash of the latest campaign news. But this is not your typical Google News experience. On the left rail, users are able to filter this Google News stream by candidates or issues. continued…

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Publishing Your News Content to Google Currents

Maurice Cherry — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 15:46:45 +0000

Here on 10,000 Words, we’ve shown you a few tips on how to define your newsroom’s mobile presence, as well as some other helpful tips for reaching news junkies on the second screen. A recent report from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism showed that 53% of tablet owners are daily news consumers. And while the iPad still dominates the tablet marketplace, Android tablets are popping up all over the place this holiday season from manufacturers like HTC, Motorola, and Samsung. Even Amazon has recently entered the fray with their own Android-powered tablet device: the Kindle Fire. Google continues their rapid-fire push into the tablet arena with their latest application: Google Currents.

Google Currents allows users to browse their favorite magazines, newspapers and websites in an attractive and elegant format. Google has joined with over 150 publishing partners to offer content, including Saveur, Popular Science, Fast Company, ProPublica, Forbes, The Atlantic, and more. Consumers have over 180 editions of formatted content to choose from once they download the app to their Android or iOS device. But the best thing about Google Currents is that anyone can create their editions for the app. Google has created an intuitive self-service platform that gives you the ability to customize, brand and style your Google Currents edition to match your organization or website. (Note: the Google Currents app is only available in the US, but users worldwide can create their own editions.)

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