Tech and Behind The Scenes

Actually, if Google Wave is as great as it's cracked up to be, LA Times writer Mark Milian predicts that reporter's jobs will become easier.

It may be a little premature—Google's only giving out 100,000 invites so far, and while that seems like a lot, those invites are going to developers, beta testers, and some paying customers of Apps—but Milian's got some ideas about how journalists could use Google's new collaborative tool.

You may notice that double bylines aren't very common. That's because trying to co-author a news story stinks. ...We're not going to e-mail our co-writers with every new lead and minute detail we dig up. But if we're sharing a virtual notebook, we can scan through ... or search the newest findings as they're logged, make comments and highlight our favorite bits.

Then, when it comes time to write, we can rearrange and discuss the story's flow in the same software. Thanks to the openness of Wave, collaborative pieces between bloggers could become more common.

We also thought Milian's idea about story updates would make online producers very happy: currently on the web, when updating a breaking news story, either the news org replaces the old version with the updated version, or appends "UPDATE" at the end, or sprinkles updates throughout the text.

He suggests using Google Wave's revision timeline feature (which sounds like a smarter version of what already exists in Google Docs) on a blog so that readers can see what was changed and when, without some poor producer (our words) having to manually flag the changes.

What else would you use Google Wave for?

flickr: mugley share alike.

Overheard: "I started looking for journalists with computer science backgrounds. There aren't many. [Now we are searching for] people with tech backgrounds who are coming to journalism. You should know at least one programming language. On the front end, HTML, CSS. On the backend, Ruby, python, Perl. Beyond that, the key concept is that they have to have that journalistic sense. Those are the folks I'm looking for, and not in a hypothetical sense. We are actually hiring." Aron Pilhofer, editor of Newsroom Interactive Technologies, New York Times

"We are also actively hiring. You must have a love for the news, a friendly disposition—I don't want jerks working for me. (Laughs) And tech generalists. I'd say, our team, we all have various tech superpowers. We'd like someone whose superpower is a background in data science. I'd also love someone who has server management skills." Brian Boyer, news applications editor, Chicago Tribune

Like that? Like that? We just coined that. We're so proud.

One bright spot in the media/design/every industry that's imploding freefall is that highly-skilled workers are still in demand, no matter the industry. So architecture firms, which on the whole are hiring less than they were, are still competing for top talent—which in this case means specific computer programs or engineering knowledge.

And personality still means a lot, too.

LPA Inc. looks for architects who can interact with engineers.

"The whole idea is to have these people sitting next to each other and talking," Dan Heinfeld, LPA president, told the Orange County Business Journal.

Maybe brush up on your Klingon, too? (Ooh, sorry, low blow.)

TED is looking for a freelancer to produce the archival DVDs that'll be recorded at the TEDGlobal conference, happening next week. And no, you don't get to go to Oxford.

From the listing, posted on our job board:

We are looking for someone to project manage and execute the authoring and packaging process. Your experience should demonstrate advanced knowledge of:

- DVD Studio Pro
- Final Cut Pro (for minor edits)
- DVD menus production
- Chapter Marks
- DVD-5/9 specs
- DVD-related codecs
- Broadcast-safe specs
- Sourcing and working with DVD replication and packaging facilities
- Assuring final media's playability across a wide variety of DVD hardware

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