Notes from NAB

Jeff Huff is WPBT's Vice President of Creative Services and is filing a blog from the 2008 National Association of Broadcasters' meeting:

April 15 at NAB was interesting since Tim Robbins blasted the attendees with his keynote address. As with political speeches, the buzz was pro and con but no one was "who cares". I didn't get a chance to see his speech but I hear he dropped a lot of words broadcasters could get fined for. His point I understand was to get broadcasters to understand they have an immense power to pull the country together. Well, I won't spend a lot of time on this but if you like you can look it up on YOU TUBE.

How ‘Tweet’ It Is

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting with a few co-workers rambling on about wikis, blogs, Facebook and other web 2.0 tools we like to use personally and professionally. Twitter came up and so did my curiosity level. I’d heard of Twitter but hadn’t really explored it. Driven by my techie curiosity, I visited the website and learned that Twitter is “a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” Like a blog you control the content, how often you update it (or Tweets as we Twitter-savvy folk say), and you can invite your friends and family to create their own Twitter accounts or they can follow your Tweets through their mobile phones. And so you build your own community of Twitter-friendly folks. What sets Twitter apart is its content limit; you have 140 characters to say what you want. In other words, get to the point.

Widget Madness!

Yesterday I had the opportunity of sitting in on a forum called Widget World: The ME Revolution at the iFocos We Media conference. Jeff Nolan, VP of Business Development at News Gator kicked off the forum by defining widgets and how they work. So what exactly is a widget? Simply put, a widget is a self contained container of content that is portable. Widgets contain not only text, but images and video. Still not sure what a widget is? Well, if you’ve ever had a Facebook page or iGoogle page you know that you can add different applications to your profile such as daily quotes, horoscopes, videos, local weather, etc…, these examples of widgets.

Notes from WebWise

This morning, I'm writing from the Miami Beach Convention Center, where WebWise 2.0, a meeting hosted by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and locally by the Wolfsonian-FIU is going on for the next few days. Look for the video on uVu soon, particularly this mornings session, which was a real primer for Web 2.0. (You can read the WebWise Blog here)

Although there is already debate on what Web 3.0 is and what it will mean, there are still many people who are just beginning to come to terms with this great experiment in social networking, information sharing and online collaborating that we have come to accept as the norm with projects like uVu (and this blog).

Obviously it goes way beyond our simple efforts but take a look at these sessions, when they get posted (I'll update the link when they do) and you'll have a chance to catch up on 2.0 before 3.0 gets here.

“Metadata”…that’s hot!

Live from We Media 08 Miami in the University of Miami…

During the first break out session of We Media 08, I (and the rest of the uVu crew) attended Search World | Trust, relevance and rights.

Session Chair: Jim Kennedy, VP Strategy, The Associated Press. Guest speakers included: Fabrice Florin, Executive Director, NewsTrust, Mary Hodder, Founder, Dabble, Josh Cohen, Director, Business Development, Google News .

I have to say that I was pretty excited about this session because someone from Google would be there. The session started out with Jim Kennedy showing us a fun party trick. He told us to go to www.google.com and search the news of the day. Jim searched “power outage” and what do you know, the #1 news result on Google was from The Boston Globe (odd that the number one news result on the Florida power outage came from Boston). I thought that was amusing.

The topic of the session: “How do we filter search results?” Right now they do not have the answers.

Mary Hodder started the conversation with the topic of Metadata. In short Metadata is data about data. Metadata is used to organize content. It can also be used to make your content discoverable (such as tags) by search engines. What is content if no one sees it, right? Mary noted that publishers see media different from the users. We (the content provider) need to find a common ground and create a standard format. This way, systems will be able to grab the hooks from the metadata. In its basic form, the content provider will provide the title, summary, author, and publisher’s information. SIMPLE WORKS!

Fabrice Florin went on to ask users of NewsTrust to evaluate content on basic core of journalism standards (12 key qualities) on how the information performs. By doing this their members are developing a general idea of how to create content.

So what is Google’s position on all of this talk of standardization and metadata? They believe the more information the better; however the scale of standardization would be tremendous. There are millions of content creators…it is not all about the news organizations on the internet. People get their information from all over. This leads Google to geocoding. Wikipedia defines geocoding as “the process of assigning geographic identifiers (e.g., codes or geographic coordinates expressed as latitude-longitude) to map features and other data records, such as street addresses.”

Confused? Us too.

NBR's Webster is Back!

I must begin this blog entry with an apology. Back in May (yes, way back then), I published my first entry in Impromp2. And, in that entry, I promised to bring you relatively regular entries about different features of the Nightly Business Report website. Well, no matter how you define “regular,” I failed miserably. I could list all the reasons for my failure here, but why clutter this blog up with excuses? Instead, I want to jump right into the real content – your introduction to another feature of the NBR website.

This time, let’s talk “Statewide Stocks.” This feature allows you to review the performance of the biggest publicly traded companies in any state in the union. How do you use it?  Simply click this link: “Statewide Stocks.” When you get to the page, click on the dropdown menu next to “Select a State.” Pick your favorite state.

NBR's Webster

If you’re confused by the title of this entry, no worries. I’m about to explain it all. I’m NBR’s Webster. Basically, that’s just a cute (at least I think it’s cute) way of saying I’m Nightly Business Report’s Web Producer. Now, if you aren’t too familiar with Channel 2, you might be asking yourself why someone would be writing about Nightly Business Report in a blog focused on television and community events in South Florida.

Well, Channel 2 produces Nightly Business Report – the nation’s most-watched evening business news program. We’ve got hard-working bureaus in New York, D.C., and Chicago, but the heart of NBR is in South Florida. That’s why, if you watch the program, you’ll see Paul Kangas (NBR’s long-time anchor and – to many fans – a stocks god) sitting in Miami.

I’m not going into anymore details about NBR here because you can learn them by exploring the “About NBR” section of our website. What I am here to do is tell you more about NBR’s website itself. The site is a great resource for experienced investors, novice investors, and even folks who have never invested in anything.

I’m going to use each Impromp2 blog entry I write to highlight one feature on the NBR website. This time, I’m going to tell you about “My Portfolio.” This feature requires registration, but that registration opens up the wonderful world of investment tracking to you. Once you register and login, you can build one or more investment portfolios that track specific stocks, bonds, stock options, and other investments you own. This will create a central place for you to see the value of your bundle of investments at any time. Yep, you can access the “My Portfolio” feature 24/7.

Those of you who don’t have investments can use “My Portfolio” to track your wish list of investments. That’s right, you don’t have own the investments you put into your NBR portfolio. Maybe there are a couple of companies you like, and you simply want to see how well (or how poorly – though we hope not) you would have done if you had invested in them. You can do that in “My Portfolio.” Maybe you simply want to see if you could make some money by investing in a treasury note. You can do that in “My Portfolio.” Or, maybe you need to follow stocks for your economics class. You can do that in “My Portfolio.”

Just one tip: You need to know the ticker symbol of the stocks you want to add to your NBR portfolio. Fortunately, the portfolio can help you look up those symbols if you know the name of the company. Just look for the “Symbol Lookup” link.

So, go forth now and explore the NBR website (http://www.pbs.org/nbr). And, don’t forget to check out the “My Portfolio” feature.

- Jaime