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Kevin: Consumer electronics and television is starting to look a like the computer-driven home media centres that have been around for a few years. Roku and XBMC port Boxee are going head-to-head, but we're also starting to see connected televisions with their own applications. The battle for the living room is going to get interesting.
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Kevin: A Knight News Challenge 2010 proposal to develop business services and a collaborative newsroom for hyperlocal news sites in Philadelphia. Some very interesting ideas here.
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Kevin: I have to say that I'm still struggling with Wave. I find the interface inscrutable, and apart from group working on a project or story, I'm still looking for useful applications that are better than what I have now.
However, Leah Betancourt at Mashable looks at ways that news organisations are already using Wave, including a virtual 'town hall' or 'town square' by the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman and as a content planning tool. I can see how the latter works. As I said, I can see how it might be good for collaboration, especially with either staff outside the newsroom. -
Kevin: Kara Swisher at All Things D (a Wall Street Journal Joint) is throwing cold water that Microsoft might pay publishers for content exclusive to Bing. "While it might be a dream of publishers–hard hit by the digital tsunami and blaming Google for the crisis–Microsoft is not likely to fork over the big bucks they’d need for exclusive indexing of their content." She quotes a source saying: "…it's not going to be bank for publishers".
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Kevin: A thorough rundown of changes coming up at Facebook. This is especially useful for developers creating applications for Facebook and any publisher who is using Facebook to help promote their content and engage with their audiences.
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Kevin: Pete Cashmore says that Rupert Murdoch is scoring an own goal on his attacks on Google. "News Corp is merrily making itself irrelevant to web consumers, while continuing to use Google as its punch bag rather than addressing the radical transition of media into the online world."
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Kevin: This is an introduction for a video interview with Michael Rosenblum about local television news in the US. "Michael Rosenblum believes local television news as we've known it for decades is dead. News directors, station managers and broadcast group owners "just don't know it yet."
Rosenblum believes the only way to make the video storytelling model work–profitably–is to cut costs far closer to the bone than any old media company's going to be willing or able to do."
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Kevin: Fascinating post by Steve Buttry and interesting comments about the need for 'mobile-first' news strategies. Steve writes: "News organizations are belatedly, reluctantly and often awkwardly pursuing “web-first” strategies. As we fight these web battles, I am increasingly coming to believe that “web first” is what the military would call fighting the last war. News organizations need a mobile-first strategy."
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Kevin: Ben Metcalfe (a friend of ours) has launched a new venture called Plato's Forms. Ben lays out the problem: "Well, the problem space we are addressing is the perpetuation of of miss-information and inaccurate information within the online news environment. " This is coming from a PR/product perspective rather than a news and information perspective.
I think about this from a slightly different perspective. It's pretty easy for inaccurate information to perpetuate through the news system (there is increasingly less distance between online and print). We often quote other sources (according to the AP, BBC, Reuters.) At any rate, interesting project with concepts that have other application.
Daily Archives: November 24, 2009
CoTweet: Twitter tools get collaborative
Searching for the perfect Twitter tool is a bit like searching for Shangri-La: You know it’s out there somewhere and you can find it if you just search hard enough.
I was a Twhirl addict for a long time, but recently switched to Tweetie as Twhirl was hammering my Mac’s processors a bit too much. Tweetie is more compact and has a better user interface, but there are things that it doesn’t do that Twhirl did.
Such is the way of Twitter clients. If you pooled all the features of all Twitter clients, you’d have all you need to create a spec for the perfect client, but no single client fits that bill yet.
When it comes to managing Twitter accounts in a business context, Tweetdeck is many people’s favourite, if only because it lets you save keyword searches. If you’re monitoring Twitter for mentions of your company, that’s invaluable functionality. But still has its drawbacks, including awful design and excessive demands on screen real estate.
CoTweet is a newcomer to the market, but already has an impressive feature set. Because it’s a web app rather than a local client, multiple people can manage multiple accounts. It also allows you to assign Tweets to a colleagues for follow-up action, with automatic email assignment notifications, and to make notes on individual Tweeters. That should help companies monitoring Twitter for customer care purposes make sure Tweets don’t fall between the cracks.
Other cute features include scheduled tweets and inline access to Bit.ly’s shortened URL stats so you can see how many people have clicked on a any given Bit.ly link.
CoTweet does need a bit of love and attention where usability is concerned, though. The interface is a bit confusing and, just like every other Twitter client, there are things that it could be doing but isn’t. I particularly like Tweetie’s conversation view, where when you click on a Tweet it will show you all the previous Tweets in that exchange, and I can imagine that might be useful for CoTweet users too.
Overall, though, CoTweet shows promise and provides a very different view of Twitter than most other clients. Definitely one to watch.