WHAT: The Society of Professional Journalists’ Digital Media Committee is proud to present an evening of exploration into the much talked about topic of “hyperlocal journalism.”

To give you an idea of the topics that will be discussed, here are a few questions that the panelists will be asked:

• How do you make money selling local news?
• What is a day in the life of a Patch reporter like? What about the editor(s)?
• What content on Patch sites is being consumed the most?
• What, if any, multimedia skill sets is Patch looking for when they hire reporters?

The end of the evening will be Q&A with questions from the audience. Questions via Twitter and e-mail are encouraged for those individuals who cannot attend in person. Send your questions to spj_dmc@yahoo.com or use the hashtag #spjpatch

#spjpatch

WHO: 4 staff from Patch (we will update this information with specific names as it becomes available)

WHERE: Illinois Technology Association
200 South Wacker Drive
15th floor
Chicago, IL 60606

WHEN: 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

LIMITED SPACE: The Illinois Technology Association has generously donated the space for our event. However, seating is limited to the first 125 attendees to sign up. Tickets are FREE! Please bring your ticket with a valid form of ID in order to be admitted into the building.

Get your tickets now -

http://hyperlocalnews.eventbrite.com

WHO SHOULD ATTEND: Journalist, citizen journalists, hackers, programmers, professors

What is PATCH? (in their own words):

“We’re a community-specific news and information platform dedicated to providing comprehensive and trusted local coverage for individual towns and communities.” Read more…

Creating and publishing interactive charts no longer requires expensive software.

Forget about building simple line graphs. Using Chartle.net you can create any number of visual charts to display your data online.

Here are a few examples of the types of charts you can make using Chartle.net:

Using Chartle.net does not require registration and is free.

Every chart you build can be published, shared and embedded on your website or blog.

Data for your chart can be entered manually or inputted using an excel spreadsheet via the ‘import’ feature.

You can also adjust the size of the chart you create to fit your site.

Before you publish your Chartle you’ll be asked to give it a

? Title

? Author

? Description

Click here to view an example of this interactive Chartle.net chart.

Need to make a modification to your chart? You can create a new chart using the data stored in a currently published chart.

Hilary Fosdal is the Interactive Content Manager for Barrington Broadcasting Group. She blogs at hilaryfosdal.com and tweets @hilaryfosdal.

Sree Sreenivasan is dean of student affairs at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, a social networking whiz, and an all-around cool guy. He recently stopped by The Boston Globe to talk to reporters and editors about the joys of Twitter and how to tweet efficiently and effectively. He showed us some handy Twitter-related tools that journos can use to locate sources, find story ideas, and get more people to check out your work. Here’s a quick sampling:

1.) HootSuite – web-based service allows you to track tweets, manage several Twitter accounts at the same time, and schedule when your tweets will be posted (so you can tweet into the future)

2.) Twiangulate – Find out who the people you follow are following. Great way to discover new sources.

3.) FriendorFollow – Find out who’s following you back (and who isn’t)

4.) Twitcam – Live video streaming. Looking forward to trying this – sounds really cool.

5.) Twitpic – I use this service. Easy way to share photos and images.

6.) Search.twitter.com – Find trending topics.

7.) Monitter.com – Search tweets by location. Another site worth checking out is Trendsmap, which lets you view trending topics in any location, in real-time.

For more tools and tips, check out Sree’s Social Media Tipsheet and his Twitter Guide for Newbies & Skeptics.

…and YO – a word to the wise!  As you probably know, there are zillions of Twitter apps, tools and services floating around out there, and new ones are being created every day. Many of them require that you type in your Twitter username and password to use them. So be careful! Don’t hand over your Twitter housekeys without doing some due diligence first.  Before you type in your Twitter account information and password into any website, make sure it has a solid rep and has been reviewed by some reliable media experts (like Sree, or the good folks here on SPJ’s Digital Media Committee

———————————————————————————

Emily “Spikey Em” Sweeney is a staff reporter at The Boston Globe. You can follow her on Twitter (@emilysweeney) and find her on LinkedIn, among other places.

Think you know all you need to know about Google? I thought I did — but last night I learned I only knew about a fraction of the cool things Google can do.

Jake Parillo, Google’s Midwest Global Communications and Public Affairs Manager, walked us through dozens — if not hundreds — of ways to use Google. Here are some of my notes:

- Google results are ranked by an algorithm, which take a number of factors into account.

- On a search results page, click “+ Show Options” to specify your search results.

- A few cool search tricks: don’t worry about capitalization, put a minus sign in front of terms you want to exclude from results (example: vacations -chicago will show you all vacation results that do not include Chicago), and search for content on a specific site by using site:chicagotribune.com (example: bears site:chicagotribune.com will show you all Bears stories on Chicago Tribune’s Web site). More search tips.

- Google’s search pages will continue to evolve. For example, when you preform certain queries, Facebook and Twitter updates are included in search results.

ADVANCED SEARCH

- Look into Advanced Search when you have time. Here’s where you’ll learn to include certain phrases, exclude others, etc. This is also where you’ll find a list of topic-specific search engines from Google including a U.S. Government search (google.com/unclesam), which will show you results from government sites only. Also check out Google Scholar.

- You can also find sports scores (search a team name during a game for scores), times around the world (“time (city)”), stock quotes (search a stock symbol to get up to get market results), and weather (“weather (city/ZIP)”). Google can also be used as a dictionary (“define (word)”), calculator (1+1), currency converter (“dollar to (currency)”), and a unit converter (“inch to (unit)”). You can also type in your flight (“(airline) (flight #)”) to find out if the flight is on time. Google contains so much data, that you can even search “population of China” and a graph and number will be the first thing to pop up. Click that to enlarge the graph to compare it to another country’s population – or the world’s.

- There are also language tools to translate a Web page. You can find these by using Google’s Chrome browser or downloading the Google toolbar.

HOT TRENDS

- Check out hot trends to find out what people are searching for right now.

- View Hot Topics to check out the larger-picture queries.

GOOGLE INSIGHTS FOR SEARCH

- It’s a tool that allows you to see the interest of a term on the Web over time. You can specify search, location, date range, seasonality and category. You’ll also see where that search term is the most popular. Type in several terms to compare the results against each other. (See: Thanksgiving)

- You have the option to turn on and off news headlines, which help give context to your graph.

ALERTS

- Keep tabs on your beat (or your reputation!) by turning on alerts — from news stories, blogs and more — to get immediate, daily or weekly updates on any search term you’re interested in. (I’d suggest your name and/or your social network handle)

NEWS

- Customize your Google News page by picking and deleting which sections you want — and don’t want to read about. You can specify the news to be just from your location (Detroit, etc.) or you could decide to have the headlines focus on your beat (ex.: health, or more specifically cancer).

- The Google News archive: Google’s constantly working on digitizing offline content; however some of the archived information does come at a price.

READER

- Set up your reader to have all of your favorite blog and site updates sent directly to you in one place.

MAPS

- Jake suggested using maps a number of ways including for before and after photos (referenced the Buffalo plane crash house, Haiti), creating an area map that readers can tag specific locations (ex.: potholes, wildfires, etc.)

- Jake also showed us how you could scroll through a time line of Google Maps satellite images (for example you could go through the building of Chicago’s Trump Tower) — but I forget how he said you can do this. If anyone remembers, please mention it in the comments! He said some of the maps and satellite images available go back to the 1940s.

- Google will soon offer bike directions in Chicago (in addition to walking, driving and public transit)

- If you have GPS on your mobile device you can type in coffee (or anything you’re looking for) and the map will show all of the coffee houses closest to you.

DOCS

- If you’re not a fan of Microsoft products, and don’t use them (like Google), try Google Docs for all of your word-processing, spreadsheet, presentation and form needs. Jake said the Docs are so secure that government agencies rely on them. Another plus is that since you save your documents online, they’re available to you everywhere you log in.

Some last cool tips, tricks:

- Try Google voice and video for free Internet chat

- Call 1-800-GOOG-411 for free search results over the phone

- You can text a query to Google, and it will send you answers

That’s about it! Jake promised to send us materials from the session, so we’ll try to post those too.

In the meantime, check out what folks had to say about the event on Twitter — and flip through photos from the evening.

Did I miss something? Have questions? Leave a comment!

Amanda Maurer is a digital news editor at the Chicago Tribune, who specializes in social media. She blogs at acmaurer.com; you can also follow her on Twitter at @acmaurer.

Here are photos from tonight’s Google 101 for Journalists: Getting the Most from the Web

Google 101 for Journalists in Chicago

Every day, millions of people around the world use Google’s search engine to find what they’re looking for…Tonight, a room full of Chicagoland journalists rediscovered Google. I was among them. Read more…

Interactive timelines are a great visual way to inform and engage users about your news topic.

Dipity timelines can do more than display simple text. Adding photos, links, and pulling in RSS feeds are just a few of the fun features you can play around with.

Timelines created in Dipity can be displayed using a standard linear graph or in ‘Flipbook’ mode which is similar to a multimedia carousel or ‘List’ which displays the content in a cataloged format.

Whether you are detailing a series of events that lead up to a major news event i.e., the spread of the swine flu, or providing a historical and chronological display of events i.e, the History of the New York City Marathon timelines are no longer confined to the boring textbooks of yesteryer.

HOW TO START CREATING YOUR OWN DIPITY INTERACTIVE TIMELINE

Go to Dipity and create a free user account.

Click ‘Add a Topic’

A window will appear asking you to choose a method to craft your timeline: Web search, RSS Feed, Blank.

To begin creating a standard timeline choose Blank.

The window will allow you to give the timeline a Title, Desciption, upload a timeline profile picture, add SEO tags, pick a theme, a timezone, and allow you to determine who you will allow to view your timeline.

I would suggest picking a free theme and allowing anyone to view your timeline.

To start creating events on your timeline click the blue button ‘Add an Event’.

A new window will appear that asks you to include a:

• Title
• Date
• Description
• Upload a picture or paste an image URL
• Add a link
• Include the location of the event (Dipity will generate a map for the location of the event)
• Add a video URL

Once you click ‘Save’ the event will be added to your timeline which you can view in the standard Timeline format, as a Flipbook, List or on the Map.

You can always go back and edit or delete any of the fields by clicking the event located on your timeline.

You can click ‘Add a Source’ to feed other online account data into your timeline i.e., Flickr, Tumblr, FriendFeed and Yelp, to name just a few.

Once you have completed adding in all your ‘events’ you can embed your Dipity timeline into your website, blog, or Facebook. Dipity will generate a customized embed code when you click ‘embed widget’.

Dipity is also social media savvy and allows other Dipity users to comment on your timeline and has Twitter, Facebook and a host of other social networking apps to help you spread the word about your cool new timeline.

Still have more questions? Check out the Dipity FAQ.

If you experiment with the RSS timeline feeds you’ll discover that Dipity automatically pulls in the images embedded into your posts or articles. Personally, I think this is a great feature – one less field for me to fill in!

Examples of Dipity interactive timelines:

• All things SPJ
• H1N1 Vaccine
• Apollo Timeline

Hilary Fosdal is the Interactive Content Manager for Barrington Broadcasting Group. She blogs at hilaryfosdal.com and tweets @hilaryfosdal.

The first thing you’ll need to do is create a free Google Account. Click here to create a free Google account.

If you already have a Google Account created go to http://maps.google.com

Once you have logged into your account in the upper-left hand corner you’ll see the words ‘My Maps’.

Click on ‘Create new map’ to get started building a new interactive and embeddable Google map.

Give it a title and a description so you can easily identify it the next time you want to reference it. You’ll see why this is important in a moment.

Decide whether you want your map to be displayed publicly or only with people you choose to share the map’s URL.

Click ‘Save’.

Type into the search field the address of the location you want to add onto your map.

For example, I will type in ‘Chicago’ and click ‘Search Map’ and a red balloon appears on the city of Chicago along with a bubble with more information on Google maps.

Click ‘Save to My Maps’.

(click image to enlarge)

A box will prompt you to choose the title of the map you want to save this address in. This is where you realize how and what you titled your maps can help you tag addresses faster.

The bubble will expand to include a field for you to input a description of the address.

(click image to enlarge)

This gives you an opportunity to explain why this address is important to your user.

Advanced step:

You can choose to use either plain text, rich text or HTML to add information. There is also a mini WYSWIG (what you see is what you get) editor to assist you in adding photos, hyperlink text and much more.

You can also change the icon that points to the address. Instead of a red or blue balloon you can choose from one of many Google ‘default icons’.

Advanced step:

You can create and add your own icons to your Google maps by clicking ‘add an icon’.

Scroll down on the left-hand side on the Google maps where it says ‘Hide’ and un-check any addresses you might have erroneously typed to make them disappear from your map.

To embed your Google Map into a blog or Web site click on the word ‘Link’ in the upper right hand corner.

Copy the HTML code and paste it to embed into your Web site.

Advanced step:

You can customize how your map is displayed even further by clicking on ‘Customized and preview embedded map.’

Here are some fun examples of Google maps:

Report on Halted Development in Your Neighborhood

Grand Theft Auto IV Locations

myFOX Pets: Pet-Friendly Places (myFoxdfw.com has created a number of interactive Google maps you can check out)

Hilary Fosdal is the Interactive Content Manager for Barrington Broadcasting Group. You can read more of her work on Running for Food.

A funny thing happened when I was learning all about WordPress this month at their WordCamp in New York City: I stumbled upon a new Windows desktop application available for download that was created to make blogging easier.

As WordCamp attendees stampeded to an SEO workshop, I attended a Live Writer (beta) presentation by Dani Diaz, a Microsoft developer out of Philadelphia.

The first question Dani posed to the audience was: “How many of you time-out of your online session and lose your material when you are blogging?” My hand shot up.

With WYSIWYG authoring, Live Writer allows bloggers to create posts on their desktop with all the capabilities of blogging software. The settings allow users to transfer posts from Live Writer to major blogging software accounts, fully formatted to that software. That is, you can set Live Writer, for instance, to WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, etc., formatting and when you have completed your post, just send the whole thing over and it will be posted to your account. You can do this with countless blogging accounts by adjusting the Live Writer settings to tell the post where to go.

Here’s how the company explains it on their blog:

Windows Live Writer is a desktop application that makes it easier to compose compelling blog posts using Windows Live Spaces or your current blog service.

Blogging has turned the web into a two-way communications medium. Our goal in creating Writer is to help make blogging more powerful, intuitive, and fun for everyone.

Among the features:

• integrate text and multi-media to the working Live Writer page
• integrate live links. Frequently-used links recur automatically as you type them.
• set publishing schedules. (This one was popular with the crowd)

Live Writer was also built for full compatibility with Windows Live application.

Jessica Durkin is a member of the SPJ Digital Media Commmittee, the Region 3 director for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and is a big advocate of entrepreneurial journalism. Jessica is based in Scranton, PA. She started http://inothernews.us to track online comunity news start-ups. She’s @jessdrkn.

The Knight Digital Media Center at UC Berkeley is still accepting applications for their Web 2.0 Training workshop:

The Web 2.0 workshop provides participants with hands-on, newsroom-focused training on innovative publishing tools and technologies. Workshop fellows create data-driven map mash-ups, use Google publishing and data visualization tools, create SEO-smart blog posts, shoot, edit and post HD video, create publication widgets, and use Facebook and Twitter both for reporting and for driving traffic.

A major component of the intense 12-hour daily schedule is engaging in discussions lead by national leaders in journalism, technology, business, and newsroom innovation. Participants leave with new tools for reporting and with new insights on how to serve new and emerging audiences. Fellowships for those selected to take part in the workshops cover all food and lodging for the week, the only thing not covered is travel to Berkeley, California; which is to be paid by the applicant’s news organization.

Sound good? The next workshop will be held Dec. 14 – 18, 2009. You can apply online here. The deadline is November 6.

The Palm Beach Post wants to deliver news to the neighborhoods.  I’m not talking about those old “Neighbors” sections that languished and failed so miserably in our print editions.

I’m talking about Backyard Post.

It took William Harnett and his crew 574 days to pull it off, but who’s counting?  It features an interactive map, where users can click on their neighborhood and find out about schools, parks, libraries, and even create their own pages to share news and connect with their neighbors.  What you see know is just the start of what Harnett and the Post envision.

“Why shouldn’t the local newspaper be the party that delivers that level of detail and organization to its community?” Harnett writes. “Think of the value you can build on top of that foundation of neighborhoods. Not just value for your users, but value as well for the 80 percent of local businesses in your typical market that don’t consume any form of newspaper advertising.”

This is what newspapers sought to do, but couldn’t quite accomplish, with those failed “Neighbors” sections.

It’s an ambitious project but yet another idea of how newspaper web sites can reach through the computer lines and into people’s homes, no longer simply being the rolled up piece of paper at the edge of the curb.