Knowledge Hemispheres Consolidated Feed for New Media

10 Tips to a Great Podcast Sound

Mon, 4 Jun 2012 09:00:00 -0400

What defines a good podcast? Make no mistake -- there is a difference between a good podcast and a not-so-good podcast. A high-caliber podcast is much more than just decent content. The sound quality, and the way a podcast is recorded, will impact the value of the podcast as well. Podcast structure and pre-planning are also important; do not skimp on the production, as it too can make or break a podcast.
Podcast production takes effort, but anything worth doing is worth doing right. Use these tips to help produce a quality podcast that will be distinguished above other related podcasts...

1. Invest In A Good Microphone
A gritty sounding podcast is tantamount to a radio station that can not be tuned in completely. Poor quality podcasts are not going to be tolerated, and listeners will simply unsubscribe rather than being subjected to a poor quality recording. There are a variety of microphones available, and different types are designed for different situations. Find a microphone that suits your recording environment. Sound quality really does matter.

10 Tips to a Great Sound

Competitive Intelligence for Webmasters

Wed, 30 May 2012 09:00:00 -0400

Some companies compete by getting into the minds of their competitors. Competitive Intelligence is the process of collecting information about competitors in a competitive environment. These tips and tricks will help marketers better understand competitive intelligence, and how to effectively compete in their marketplace.

Individuals and companies use a variety of methods to gain information about their competitors. Some methods are controversial, and may even be considered unethical, but it is important that you are aware of them. Even if you don't want to use the questionable tactics yourself, it is important that you and your staff understand them, so you can be prepared and protected if your competitors decide to use them to learn your company strategies or secrets.

Competitive Intelligence

Facebook shares tumble as underwriters desert stock

Tue, 22 May 2012 00:44:00 GMT

Facebook shares fall sharply in opening minutes on Nasdaq and end Monday more than 11% below Friday's offer price

Shares in Facebook fell by 11% on Monday as underwriters deserted the stock and questions continued to be asked about how Nasdaq, the second largest US stock exchange, handled the flotation.

Pre-market trading had seen heavy selling of the stock, which was supported just above its $38 listing price on Friday by the leading banks who bought shares ahead of the initial public offering (IPO).

Within minutes of the shares going on sale again on Monday they were in freefall, and were soon trading close to $33 before recovering to end the day at $34.03.

The fall added to the embarrassment over Friday's share issue, when trading on Nasdaq was delayed by more than 30 minutes due to technical glitches. Facebook's arrival set a record transaction volume for a market debut, with nearly 89m shares traded.

By midday on Monday in the US some investors still did not know whether orders placed on Friday to buy or sell the shares had gone through. "I heard a lot of brokers ranting and raving on Friday about this," one adviser to Morgan Stanley's brokerage affiliate, Smith Barney, told Reuters. The adviser said Smith Barney had a "large number" of market orders that were entered on Friday for the trading debut of Facebook stock that had still not been reconciled.

Nasdaq's chief executive, Robert Greifeld, said at the weekend he was "humbly embarrassed" by the outcome. The exchange had now modified its system for handling initial public offerings.

"It was just a poorly done deal and it just so happens to be the biggest deal ever for Nasdaq and they pooched it, that's the bottom line here," said Joe Saluzzi, the co-manager of trading at Themis Trading in Chatham, New Jersey.

Henry Blodget, the former Wall Street analyst who, ahead of the IPO, called the shares "muppet bait", said on his Business Insider site on Monday that the lack of big jump in first-day trading was probably good news for millions of small investors, who had been discouraged from piling into the stock.

He reckoned that a fair value for the company would be somewhere between $16 and $24 a share, depending on its results.

That would value Facebook at between $50bn and $85bn – a substantial amount, but far from the $104bn (£65.8bn) that the $38 share price put on it.

Investor sentiment cooled over the weekend after seeing the lack of "pop" – a spectacular jump in price – for the shares on Friday. But the Nasdaq itself rose 2.4% as US stocks rebounded from their worst week in a year. Apple stock rose by 5.8%, apparently as some investors who had unloaded the company's shares last week to buy Facebook reversed their positions.

Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter, who came out with an "outperform" rating on Facebook before the IPO, said he thought underwriters had overestimated demand for the company's stock. Last Tuesday, the underwriters, led by Morgan Stanley, increased the offering's price range from $28-$35 to $34-$38. On Wednesday, Facebook's early investors and other stockholders increased the number of shares they were selling in the IPO. Both had seemingly been signals that there was strong demand for shares.

"The late addition of 84m shares to the offering overwhelmed demand, limiting the first day price," Pachter said in a note to investors.

Having been listed at $38, with a greater number offered due to "high demand", the shares then began trading on Friday – after an embarrassing glitch – at $42.02. But they soon came off that level, to settle at a closing price of $38.32.

By Monday, sentiment had apparently turned against Facebook so thoroughly that underwriters seeking to unload the shares were forced to take substantial losses as the market marked the shares down.

Having seen a number of investment funds buy the shares on Friday as fund managers loaded up in the expectation that Facebook would bring a boost to their portfolio, the remaining buyers in the market on Monday were less willing to pay a premium – leaving the underwriters with no option but to accept a loss if they wanted to pass the shares on.

Charles Arthur

Forsyth County Schools Adds Ethernet To Engage Students, Reduce Costs

Mon, 21 May 2012 21:48:00 GMT

Georgia's ninth largest school system, Forsyth County Schools, is enhancing its technologically dependent educational tools and reducing its spending by using a new high-speed Ethernet network.

Local newspapers' crisis: what hyperlocal means, and why it works

Mon, 21 May 2012 20:27:00 GMT

Today's extract from What do we mean by local?* is by Ross Hawkes, the founder of the hyperlocal news website Lichfield Live. He is also a senior journalism lecturer at Staffordshire university.

He argues that journalists working for traditional "big media", through a culture of centralisation, have become too remote from their audiences...

Patch reporters in the true sense of the word are a dying breed. Gone are those who are known by everyone who is anyone in their local area with a finger firmly on the community's pulse...

If you do not have your ear to the ground how can you accurately represent the views of the community?

That is not to say there is a need for a physical newsroom in the centre of a patch, thanks mainly to the tools that now allow the journalist to set
up a newsroom anywhere... But utilising this technology requires something that is not readily found in the modern newsroom – trust...

News is still the central ingredient in a media business but the difficulty lies getting bodies on the ground in an affordable way... The rise of the hyperlocal publishers has been testament to the opportunities being presented to those with an understanding of the modern, digital community.

One of the accusations regularly levelled at hyperlocal publishers is that no-one is making significant money from them yet. While this may be true, positive signs are there...

Part of the growth and perceived success of the new hyperlocal movement is down to passion and knowledge for the communities they serve – and recognising that "local" is no longer a catch-all term.

The idea of "community" cannot even be described as a purely geographic phenomenon, with many people having a greater empathy and connection to an online social group than to their physical neighbours.

The emotional connection between audience and publisher is particularly important in a society that is used to choice and being able to interact with their media, be it through phone votes, Twitter hashtags or red-button offerings.

For many of the successful hyperlocal sites, the "one of us" mentality and the open nature of the work has been crucial.

There is also the social currency factor. With many websites being run as voluntary, non-profit enterprises or sapling start-ups, there is a greater goodwill element involved in the support they get [which is] borne out in newsgathering.

Eyes on the ground have always been a crucial part of the local journalist's life. But the effect of this network within a community is increased thanks to the ready availability of social media.

The opportunity to interact with an audience in real time, all of the time, has allowed the new breed of reporters to put themselves firmly at the centre of a local, social circle.

By positioning themselves at the heart of their community, hyperlocal journalists can understand the needs and desires of the audience they are serving.

In the current, technology-driven and globally-connected society, the journalist has the ability to be at the heart of the community at all times.

It is important to recognise the difference between centralised services and centralised reporting. It is possible for a newsroom to exist beyond the realms of bricks and mortar, by utilising the many technological tools available...

If anything, this latest incarnation of entrepreneurial journalism at a local level is merely the industry going full circle to the days of pamphleteers and individual publishers.

The only difference is the platform and range of tools now available...

Content is still king

One of the key issues facing regional journalism is the inability to woo audiences in a defined geographic area. This is because the definition of local to the individual can vary, as can their point of access.

Traditionally, local media sprung up around closely-connected communities. But with a more transient and commuter-led society, the issue of how to get the product to market becomes far greater...

Journalists at a community level, fusing the power of communication granted by the internet and its many tools with rich, valuable local content, will be able to thrive.

The quality of reporting certainly cannot be undervalued, mainly due to the fact that for many local reporters this is the gap in the market they will be attempting to exploit.

In terms of the big, headline stories then speed is likely to be the space they are attempting to fill. However, in terms of longevity then it will be going back to basics.

For all the technological breakthroughs and tools now available, no-one has yet replaced the ability of a journalist to get their nose stuck in and dig out a story.

This is where big media's centralisation policy falls down. By not having the staffing levels or funding to make a case for sending a reporter to a parish council meeting or village fete, they are missing events that have real meaning to that particular community.

By going back to basics and patch reporting, the hyperlocal journalist can have a steady supply of stories that will appeal to a local populace, as well as raising his or her profile within the community.

Physical presence still carries more weight than faceless email. If centralisation is leading to lack of face-to-face contact, the situation is being compounded by the lack of value placed on communication as a whole within journalism and the wider media industry.

Speculative meetings and time spent establishing contacts do not make a mark in the plus column on the balance sheet...

Those media groups that are not able to adapt to the shifting face of localism and are not prepared to meet the demands of their consumers should not be allowed to distort the marketplace further.

It could be argued that attempts to support and underpin crumbling media businesses are actually acting against the public interest by blocking the rise of viable alternatives.

And the big newspaper groups cannot have their cake and eat it. After lobbying hard to prevent the BBC from offering an improved online offering for local communities, many of these organisations have failed to do anything to support the argument that they even had viable products worthy of protection...

The battle for local audiences

There is no doubt that lessons could be learned from both sides of the battle for local audiences.

Traditional media has years of experience behind it, while new start-ups and hyperlocal initiatives have the spirit of adventure within them.

However, the barrier between the two is still firmly up in some quarters. The phrase "citizen journalist" is often trotted out in a derisory manner by many of the old school within the industry as a way of undermining the efforts of some new model journalism enterprises to give greater power to their audience.

After all, reader interaction is nothing new. The letters pages of regional newspapers across the country for decades have been the original user-generated content...

Differentiating between journalism and information is crucial in the whole debate over citizen contributions, particularly when working out how to harness community engagement and support in a local arena.

Few members of the public actually have any great desire to be a journalist – those who do tend to train professionally. What they do have is a thirst to become involved in the discussion surrounding their community.

Often this manifests itself in allowing input into the finished piece, by providing an element of the published article and working with, rather than for, the reporter.

Hyperlocals have grasped this concept of partnership as opposed to top-down management of communities and the information and news contained within them. All of this begs the question: why doesn't closer integration exist?...

Most hyperlocal sites will not, at present, have the resources to regularly tackle a wide range of issues in great depth over an extended period of time – but this is the area where traditional media can utilise its knowledge and expertise.

Therefore, there is no reason why this new breed of ultra-local sites cannot act as a community news wire, breaking stories for the wider media to delve deeper into.

This theory of an almost two-tier journalism, created through partnerships, could lead to a greater sustainability for both traditional media organisations and their newer counterparts, improve the understanding of what local is and inform how best it can be exploited in a journalistic sense.

Tomorrow: The experiences of Mike Rawlins, the non-journalist who runs a news website in Stoke-on-Trent

*What do we mean by local? is edited by John Mair, Neil Fowler & Ian Reeves and published by Abramis. Available at a special Media Guardian price of £12 from richard@arimapublishing.co.uk

Roy Greenslade

Juilliard To Launch Online Courses - T.H.E. Journal

Mon, 21 May 2012 18:53:08 GMT

Juilliard To Launch Online Courses
T.H.E. Journal
Juilliard is partnering with online learning solution provider Connections Education to offer Juilliard eLearning, a group of online courses structured to Juilliard's standards, available for all K-12 students, educators, and interested adult students ...

Juilliard To Launch Online Courses

Mon, 21 May 2012 18:41:00 GMT

The Juilliard School will offer its first ever online courses, starting next academic year, in the subjects of elementary, middle, and high school music.

Adobe eLearning Suite 2.5 - Broadcast Newsroom

Mon, 21 May 2012 15:03:01 GMT

Adobe eLearning Suite 2.5
Broadcast Newsroom
Give your eLearning a makeover using best-in-class tools to author and enrich content. Professional HD Video, audio, and Blu-Ray creation. Cellphone video shows rescue teams tending to injured students after a bomb went off outside an Italian school.
Monday 5/21 Insider Buying Report: PAA, HEKIT Business Net

all 17 news articles »

Blubrry PowerPress 4.0 Adds Support For Latest iTunes Podcast Spec

Sat, 12 May 2012 18:44:48 +0000

Media community Blubrry has its podcast publishing plugin for WordPress, PowerPress 4.0. The update adds support for the latest iTunes podcast specs and more. iTunes upgrades include: An updated iTunes image requirement — RGB 1400×1400 — throughout the plugin for better cover image quality throughout. “Feature Episode” that allow podcasters to designate a primary episode, which [...]

Tracking is not Learning

Sun, 06 May 2012 17:33:06 +0000

SCORM and the LMS are the Achilles Heel of training. Tracking data has become synonymous with measurement. This week I got an email from a vendor promoting the tracking capabilities of the product. It made realize how often tracking data is used to misrepresent training success. Many people think that metrics pulled out of an LMS indicate [...]

5 Tips For Recording Voiceovers

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 17:51:48 +0000

The Pro Tools Expert blog has shared their take on 5 tips for recording great voiceovers that apply directly to podcasts. They include: Banish (computers) to a separate room or to a specially designed cupboard. The room needs to be as dead as possible, especially at mid and high frequencies. Don’t record in front of [...]

Redesigned Technology blog moves to new address

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:49:11 -0800

The L.A. Times Technology blog has been redesigned, and we're rolling out a new URL. Please update your bookmarks.

Microsoft Stores taking $25 deposit on Nokia Lumia 900

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:14:31 -0800

AT&T, Microsoft and Nokia haven't said when the Lumia 900 will hit stores or how much it will cost, but if the flagship Windows Phone is just a device you have to have, you can now pre-order it.

Learning Tech 2012 Conference News

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:53:23 +0000

Conference News! This April, in Chicago, I will be speaking about mlearning design and strategy at Learning Tech 2012. I love Chicago. It’s a city with an energy that makes events especially invigorating. I hope to see you there, April 23-25. For more information, I contacted Courtney Green in New York to ask her about [...]

Vote for your Website Search Engine Friendliness

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 12:34:51 +0000

Filed under: Website Design Tagged: Search Engine Optimization Poll

6 Basic Web Design Tips For Beginners

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 10:19:03 +0000

Looking to create your first website? Or even you want to update an existing small business online. Few things you should consider first while designing a website. A study shows that number of small business were disappointed with their first website and feel that it has not delivered what they wanted. We hope that these [...]

Come Read our DevLearn11 Reaction Piece

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 05:50:22 +0000

If DevLearn 2011 at the Aria in Las Vegas did anything, it confirmed one certainty about elearning: elearning is exhilarating. eLearning is esoteric, cutting edge, tumultuous, and sexy. And elearning is an industry. Yes, elearning is a thrilling industry that combines esoteric theory like gamification, cutting edge tools like Cloud technologies, tumultuous teetering between HTML5 [...]

And we’re still looking for that LMS…

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:35:39 +0000

It’s been a long and busy 10 months since my last blog post with lots of ups and downs, celebrations and sorrows, accomplishments and let downs. Some of these I’ll get around to telling because I want to share what I’ve learned, good and bad. One of the things I would put in the “let [...]

Lord Stephen Carter admits Digital Britain report overlooked consumer issues

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:51:00 GMT

Lord Stephen Carter has acknowledged a lack of content about consumer issues such as privacy, internet neutrality and behavioural targeting within January's interim Digital Britain report