New Media and the Presidential Inauguration
Submitted by Colleen Kaman on January 16, 2009 - 8:31am.
Wondering what innovative media projects are following President-elect Obama’s inauguration? We have a few suggestions.
One of the most exciting is Inauguration Report, a collaboration between NPR, CBS News, American University, and volunteer programmers. Users can participate via Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, an iPhone app by including the phrase #inaug09 0r #dctrips09 (pound signs are not required for flicker and youtube content). The site is also mapping the location of reports nationwide. As of late Thursday, a couple of days before the start of the festivities, the feed was already jumping. Some posts offered congratulatory remarks to President-elect Obama and others looked for last-minute rides but the majority explained how to participate.
Other media outlets also gearing up for the events:
The New York Times is calling for inauguration photos. CNN and Facebook are partnering to allow viewers to watch the festivities live streaming, update Facebook status, and follow friends’ updates.
Current and Twitter have teamed up to offer use to follow and post their own Twitter messages real-time and in conjunction with the live broadcast of Obama’s Inauguration.
Fellow C4FCM reasearcher Nadav Aharony notes that Hulu has a countdown to the swearing-in, an option to embed the feed into your website, and many other Obama/election related clips.
Of course, you can always post or link your photo or video links to the C4FCM site here.
If you're going to Washington DC, before you post your blogs or photos you need to check out Citizen Media Law Project’s guide to covering the event. The guide offers valuable information about heightened security, credentialing requirements, permits, and who to call if you have any legal trouble while at the events. The guide is also available as a handy one-page printable summary you can carry with you.
Both the Presidential Inaugural Committee and The Washington Post have set up guides that include mobile texting services about event, scheduling changes, and transportation alerts for attendees.
If you know of any of other ways to prepare for or participate in Obama’s Inauguration, pass them along.
MSNBC perfects video search for inauguration
To complement this already comprehensive list, one may add MSNBC.com's new, sophisticated search feature for Web videos, whose launch has been made to coincide with Obama's inaugural speech on Tuesday.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123206940674788409.html
MSNBC Makes Videos Easier to Search, Clip
TECHNOLOGYJANUARY 16, 2009
By ELIZABETH HOLMES
Web users looking for a particular clip of Barack Obama's inauguration address won't have to wade through the entire speech to find it.
MSNBC.com, the news Web site of NBC, is adding a feature Friday to its online video player to make it easier to find specific passages of videos and allow users to paste selected clips on other sites, like blogs.
Akin to using the "find" function on a text document, the MSNBC.com video player will let viewers scan the transcript of a video to locate a specific passage. The user can then highlight the text on the transcript and the player will automatically play that portion of the video. Viewers can clip that snippet of video and transfer it to a separate blog or Web site.
Users "want to pick the most interesting pieces," said Charlie Tillinghast, the president and publisher of MSNBC.com. "It allows users to dig into primary source material like a reporter would."
The new feature comes on the heels of another addition made to the player last fall. During the campaign season, MSNBC.com added a subject index to videos of the presidential debates. Clicking on a keyword -- democracy, for example -- prompts dots to appear on the video's timeline indicating where the subject is mentioned.
The launch of the latest feature is timed to Mr. Obama's speech Tuesday, and MSNBC.com will offer the feature on inaugural addresses dating to the time of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The feature will be used on a range of videos from MSNBC and NBC, a unit of General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal, including the "Today" show and "Meet the Press."
MSNBC's Digital Network had 8.4 million viewers for its news and information Web videos last month, according to Nielsen Online Video Census. MSNBC Digital Network was second only to Yahoo News in video viewers for news Web sites but bested the online portal in average time viewers spent watching. MSNBC Digital Network had an average of 31 minutes, while Yahoo News watchers spent just under 12 minutes.
Hulu, a joint venture of NBC and News Corp. (which owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal), already allows watchers to make clips and embed them onto other sites. But MSNBC.com is the first news site to make the feature available, said James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research.
Although only a small portion of the population blogs or posts to Web sites, allowing users to clip and paste videos has a multiplier effect. Viewers "spread the love by having you as the reader clip it and pass it along," Mr. McQuivey said.
Write to Elizabeth Holmes at elizabeth.holmes@wsj.com
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page B6
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