This week, I've been reading... (weekly)

• Socdir | Your social media directory of tools.
  There are a lot of resources in this directory, from basic to complex tools, many of which are rated and assessed by users. Very handy
  tags: tools social media directory
  
  
  Heckta for OS X - photo magnifier 
  Hecta is an app for OS X which magnifies photographs without pixelation or blur.
  Photographers, designers, journalists — and you — can zoom in on the smallest detail with clarity and precision.
  
  
  Latent Semantic Indexing
  The long explanation is this: "LSI or Latent Semantic Indexing is a complicated term with a simple explanation. The main concept behind Latent Semantic Indexing is to discover words and phrases that are related in the context of any document or group of documents. Search engines, Internet Marketing Professionals, and Website Designers often use LSI in their day-to-day activities.
  Latent Semantic Indexing is the discovery process for finding related terms and phrases. LSI is a mathematical equation that will fold words into a matrix for analysis that will draw out semantically related terms."
  The short one is this: It's pretty good for finding out what words people are searching for in a specified geographic area, i.e. a useful journalism tool. 
  
  
  How organisations are engaging with the Snapchat community | journalism.co.uk
  Latest in the handy podcast series from J.co.uk 

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

This week, I've been reading... (weekly)

• How we built Ampp3d in eight weeks
  "Most publishers give their staff massive desktop monitors to work on, using desktop software tools, and a CMS that works on a desktop. And then the majority of users view the output on a mobile. "
  tags: technology future+of+news ampp3d
• Why venture capitalists are suddenly investing in news - Quartz
  "These days, BuzzFeed is rapidly expanding with $46 million in funding. Vox Media has raked in some $80 million in venture capital. Business Insider’s $12 million boost last week makes its haul about $30 million. And feel-good social curation site Upworthy has raised about $12 million since launching two years ago. 1 “Suddenly, the market for content just opened up,” said Sarah Lacy, founder of PandoDaily, which has secured about $4 million in venture capital since 2012. “It’s dramatically changed. I think a lot of it for me was Vice getting valued at $1 billion. No one had seen anything like that in the content space. And they’re trying to speak to a very specific audience that’s hard to reach in a deeply authentic way. It’s certainly not something you’re phoning in. It’s not a pre-written press release. It’s not a listicle.”"
  tags: technology news quartz future+of+news investment
• Spritz
  Text streaming sounds very cool, doesn't it? Spritz looks more than the latest shiny, it looks like it really is going to be the next very big thing.
  tags: technology Spritz future+of+news
• Open door: The readers' editor on… the line between comment and fact in live blogs | Comment is free | The Guardian
  Live blogging is a skill. It involves getting the tone as well as content bang on - and sometimes, as with this reader's gripe - the line between fact and comment gets blurred. The trick is to know what kind of live blog you're doing - and be consistent. 
  From the Guardian Readers' Editor blog: "The latest example was on the website today. Matthew Weaver's "news blog" … included the statement: 'David Cameron continues to try to give the impression of being on top of the crisis...' Now, is that fact or opinion? If you are claiming it is fact, then I am not aware of any objective standard against which one can judge whether the PM is 'on top of the crisis' (whatever that means) or not … As a more general point, what is the status of these news blogs? My preference would be for them to stick to the facts." In an exchange of email correspondence the complainant also said: "I would much prefer a news blog to do what it says on the tin – to give me the news unadulterated by the 'views' of the reporter. I don't mind in the least if that results in a list of updates – isn't that what news is? Opinion isn't fact.""
  tags: audience content liveblog liveblogging
• What Type of Content Gets Shared the Most on Twitter?
  There are some annoying 'sign up for more followers HERE' ads to ignore before you get to the content, but good insights when you do.
  tags: content audience social sharing
• Chartbeat CEO Tony Haile: What You Get Wrong about the Internet - TIME
  "If you’re an average reader, I’ve got your attention for 15 seconds, so here goes: We are getting a lot wrong about the web these days. We confuse what people have clicked on for what they’ve read. We mistake sharing for reading. We race towards new trends like native advertising without fixing what was wrong with the old ones and make the same mistakes all over again. MORE Here's An Updated Tally Of All The People Who Have Ever Died From A Marijuana Overdose Huffington Post These Disturbing Fast Food Truths Will Make You Reconsider Your Lunch Huffington Post Justin Bieber & Selena Gomez Kiss Over Breakfast, Another Baby on the Way for Christian Bale & More People Fed by Joakim Noah's intensity, resilient Bulls take down Heat Sports Illustrated 'True Detective' finale: Talk about it Entertainment Weekly "
  tags: chartbeat engagement analytic audience

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

This week, I've been reading... (weekly)

• Neil Gaiman's Journal: Storms and how they start

  "Twitterstorms are no fun when people are making up things about you or insulting you for things you didn't do or think or say. When scores of people from a group that you consider yourself a part of are shouting at you, it's incredibly upsetting, no matter who you are. "

  tags: Hugo twitterstorm twitter Neil+Gaiman

• How BitTorrent Rewrote The Rules Of The Internet | Fast Company | Business + Innovation

  Fascinating, short read about how BitTorrent's use of Micro Transport Protocol has dramatically grown its user base, and made the net a less congested place. "Under uTP, any BitTorrent transfers you have going on in the background will politely wait for your streaming to be finished before they jump in. Then, in the uncrowded hours of the late night, uTP lets your torrenting get going, soaking up all that suddenly spare bandwidth. Now that uTP is used for 80% of BitTorrent transfers, traffic no longer peaks in that 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. time slot. This is also why the monthly userbase has grown from 60 million in 2008 to 170 million today--all while the share of peak traffic continues to go down. "

  tags: bittorrent internet innovation

• The world's largest photo service just made its pictures free to use | The Verge

  "Getty Images is dropping the watermark for the bulk of its collection, in exchange for an open-embed program that will let users drop in any image they want, as long as the service gets to append a footer at the bottom of the picture with a credit and link to the licensing page. For a small-scale WordPress blog with no photo budget, this looks an awful lot like free stock imagery. "

  tags: copyright photography photos Getty

• Wrexham.com overturns ban to film council meetings - Journalism News from HoldtheFrontPage

  "A hyperlocal news website has been successful in overturning a ban on the filming of council meetings. Wrexham.com has published what it believes to be the first ever video of a Wrexham Council meeting following several rejected requests in recent years."

  tags: council transparency democracy

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

This week, I've been reading... (weekly)

• 14 takeaways from the news:rewired digital journalism conference

  Does exactly what it says on the tin.

  tags: news:rewired

• Crossing the language boundaries across your newsroom: journo to dev and back

  An open Google Doc that considers how traditional reporters and developer reports (for Noah Veltman considers them very similar in their goals) can work together and communicate more effectively. I see huge opportunities for better cross-working with these two groups; sometimes it feels like developers occupy that previous Bad Guy space owned by IT. Better communication and empathy is the start. "the secret is not to treat developers like a service desk — what ProPublica’s Al Shaw calls “the deli counter,” where you just hand in your order. The developers are reporters, too, and you should treat them as such. Communication in particular is hard. Email is bad; tickets are slightly better but still aren’t synchronous. Using chat or direct communication is better. Having time to test things can be very contentious. There are other concerns for developers: Are you going to reuse this later? Is this an ongoing project? Will the data be updated? How is that going to work? How is this going to be maintained? What’s the game plan? What is the minimum viable product, and what can be delayed until later?"

  tags: developers coding hacking editorial

• How To Say “This Is Crap” In Different Cultures - Erin Meyer - Harvard Business Review

  How different nationalities give management feedback. Very good, and also faintly horrifying... "Managers in different parts of the world are conditioned to give feedback in drastically different ways. The Chinese manager learns never to criticize a colleague openly or in front of others, while the Dutch manager learns always to be honest and to give the message straight. Americans are trained to wrap positive messages around negative ones, while the French are trained to criticize passionately and provide positive feedback sparingly."

  tags: management leadership

• The Battle of Little Bitcoin: Native American Tribe Launches Its Own Cryptocurrency - Forbes

  Really interesting read - how MazaCoin is now the national currency of the Lakota Nation. "After signing a joint venture agreement with the Oglala Sioux Tribe Office of Economic Development early in 2014, Harris immediately began mining his new currency to produce 25 million MazaCoins ahead of its launch to serve as a “national reserve” for the Lakota Nation, which can then be used in times of crisis (like the collapse of Mt. Gox) to help stabilize the currency. A number of these coins were handed out to interested businesses and individuals within the community, to encourage them to get involved in trading and speculating ."

  tags: bitcoin cryptocurrency disruption

• Slides, Links & Tutorials from NICAR14 // Ricochet by Chrys Wu

  A brilliant set of how-to tutorials around data, curated from NICAR14 by Chrys Wu. Shows more than ever how even a basic grasp of coding can make you a far more skilled and effective journalist.

  tags: nicar14 coding data how-to tutorials slides

• Some Bot to Watch Over Me - NYTimes.com

  "For a month now, I have been spying on my apartment. I have spied in the afternoon, and I have spied late at night. Since I can see most clearly into the living room, my voyeurism has been focused there. Often I see only an empty room that could use a little art on the walls. Sometimes I catch the cat sleeping on the rug. One night last week, I watched my girlfriend watch TV. "

  tags: technology future scary cool shit

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Social media monitoring and analytics (infographic)

Not 100% sure who I owe a hat tip to for tweeting a link to this infographic about social media monitoring (I suspect David Thackeray though).
It is exceptionally useful, anyway, and I thought I would store it on my blog as it's a reference source I will probably come back to in the future.

The World of Social Media Monitoring and Analytics

Powered by Demand Metric - See more at: http://www.demandmetric.com/content/world-social-media-monitoring-and-analytics-infographic#sthash.MfJdn18b.dpuf