Take a break from the “Apple is a closed system” meme

For just a second, anyhow. This post was sparked by a discussion on an online group I belong to. Said discussion was itself sparked by this piece in Gawker, which trots out the predictable anti-Apple arguments (Apple is creating a closed ecosystem for its products, etc.) The discussion turned to journalism and the fear that [...]

Apple tablet could be a game-changer for e-readers

An interesting post over at Gizmodo have me thinking about e-readers again. I went to an e-reader summit a couple of weeks ago hosted by the Digital Publishing Alliance here at the Reynolds Journalism Institute. It was pretty clear that the folks in the room all thought that e-readers would be a part of their [...]

How not to build an iPhone app

I don’t know if it’s the AP’s status as a co-op, or its decentralized nature, or its ties to traditional (old) media, or what the problem is. But once again, they’ve proven that they just don’t get it when it comes to new media. The AP launched a stylebook app for the iPhone/iPod Touch today. [...]

Memo to journalists: Don’t steal stuff off the Internet

Just because something’s on the Internet doesn’t mean it’s free. I tell students this all the time, but the story of a man who posted a photo to Twitter, only to have it used by Sky News, is a good cautionary tale for journalists. You can read the whole sad tale here courtesy of OJB, [...]

Why Google Wave is the next big thing for journalists

Apologies for the lack of posts. With the semester starting (and a flood in our server room yesterday) I’ve been a bit distracted from what’s been going on in the rest of the world. But here are a few things that have caught my eye: First off, the new iPhone. I’m not going to spend [...]

Quick and easy government page

The Oregonian has a very cool new government page using (as far as I can tell) the Congress API that the New York Times developed. Right now, you can use the page to find representatives, track a bill or search for a bill. That’s not a lot of different functionality than you might find on [...]

New Twitter tool for the iPhone

I bought Reportage on the recommendation of a Canadian Web site today. If you haven’t heard of it, Reportage is a Twitter client for the iPhone/iPod Touch. On the face of it, that doesn’t sound too interesting, but Reportage does a couple of cool things that make it worth a look if you’re a journalist: [...]

An easy way to help with Web readability

This isn’t technically a tip to save time, unless you count reading time as time spent when you could be getting things done. Here’s an easy way to make any Web site more readable. Although we wish they would, web designers don’t always think about our poor eyes when they consider body type — or [...]