The view from the mountains

Long winter breaks like the one I am still enjoying up here in the Blue Ridge Mountains are such a tease. Unless I go into education (which isn't going to happen even though it runs in the family), this month-long vacation will be the last one I see in a very very long time. Naturally, I am soaking up every last moment before I have to turn my brain back on on Jan. 7. I am savoring these last few days during which I don't feel guilty at all for being lazy. Being up here in an enormous mountain house in Hendersonville, NC with most of my family isn't a shabby way to spend it either. Hope everyone is enjoying this time off and looking forward to the new year as much as I am.

Trial and error with embedded video

As the end of the year begins to rear it's ugly head, my goal is to wrap up a few projects I've been working on, the main one being the Flash site for the Young Mansion that is for sale in my hometown of Hollywood. After a few rounds of proofing with my client, I only have a few minor edits to knock out until it finally becomes live! (Cue the flashing lights and show tunes music!).

Tonight's goal was to add a .FLV video clip of the house being featured on HGTV that the client provided. As any other fairly-web-savvy-novice-Flash designer with limited reference books would do, I turned to my good friend Google. With a simple search of "adding video in Flash," I came across a few helpful tutorials and pages. But to my surprise, the one that helped the most was this article from Adobe's own Developer Center. Over time I've grown accustomed to crappy FAQ sections on software's "help" Web pages, so this was a breath of fresh air.

With a few tries, I was able to embed the video into the "Press" section on it's own layer and keyframe, complete with a standard control skin. I then uploaded the video to the client's server so that it downloads progressively. If you have some time to spare, head to the site and make your way to the Press section to tell me what you think! (Seriously, feedback is appreciated. Did it work in your browser? Which browser do you use? Are you on an Apple or PC? Lemme know!)

My next learning goal: Learning more about streaming video and using Flash Media Server. Stay tuned!

My new toy: a Blackjack PDA

Christmas has practically come out of nowhere this year, but I assume it only continues to fly even worse as I get older. We've still got 2 days left, but "Santa" thought it would be helpful if I helped him pick out my gift in person. So after playing with all the new shiny phones at the AT&T store, I am now testing out the convenience of blogging via my new blackjack pda. I'm still getting used to these tiny buttons (I think my longer girlie fingernails are going to have to go) but I fell in love with the fact that it runs on windows, so everything regarding navigating menus is relatively familiar. Even my own Web site, mallorycolliflower.com looked pretty decent in the browser, to my delight. Just in the time it has taken me to write this post, my finger typing speed has improved. Good thing Web browsing is unlimited! :)

What you don't know you're missing

I have been thinking lately about how my bloglines page has become my dominant portal of information. For people who are still uninformed or completely naive about the wonders of the blogosphere, I came up with my three solid reasons to jump on the blog bandwagon and join in the community fun. Aside from the obvious reasons of being in-the-know about things that interest you and networking with other bloggers, here is what you're missing...

1. Free Stuff (seriously) - Getting my daily dose of good indie music I've never heard is one of the highlights of my day. At HearYa, they know good music and they want you to know it too. I can usually look forward to a free MP3 (or three or four) of songs by an artist who is trying to get stuff heard, and I can go buy more if I really like it. I can't say that I've been disappointed yet. I also signed up for my free subscription to Nylon Magazine (at least a $25 value), an offer being advertised only to readers of the Urban Outfitters blog. I know it sounds like I'm an advertisement, but why not take advantage of stuff people are giving away?

2. Sales You Wouldn't Have Heard About - If you're one of the millions of people who do most of their shopping on the Web and you always wish you had those discount codes that go in the boxes at check-out, start subscribing to some feeds. I've found more codes and sales from subscribing to SheFinds, Shopperism and Savotron (to name a few) than any Saturday newspaper ad insert. It's like signing up for those annoying store e-mail lists, minus the annoyance of a flooded inbox.

3. Better time-wasters - When YouTube gets boring and you've run out of online games to play during slow days at the office, you can count on blogs to save the day. Rolling Stone's blog recently posted the Almost-Impossible Rock & Roll Quiz. Do you know how many songs on The Beatle's Abbey Road album are credited to George Harrison? I didn't think so.

Mapping!

I finally took some time out to play with Wayfaring.com and created a map of places that I've lived while in college in Gainesville. It actually got me thinking and I didn't realize that I'd gotten the chance to live in two different dorm buildings and two different apartments. It didn't feel like I had moved that much but I guess I did. It also made me very nostalgic and sad that I'll be graduating soon with no clue what I'm doing afterwards. I think I'm going to take a lot of time over winter break refining my resume, re-doing my portfolio Web site and really getting my LIFE organized. I know that process alone will get me more motivated to start applying for jobs all over. Of course I'll be taking the GRE soon, but it wouldn't hurt to start networking and what-not. I almost lost track of the purpose of this entry, which is my map!
I tried to add a little bit of data to the waypoints, including the year(s) that I lived there and who my roommates were. I'll have to think of some other cool places to map soon too.

New Web Project: The Young Mansion

After finally getting my butt in gear and finishing up a simple Flash site for my sister's boyfriend's mother (6 degrees, I know) and her customized school-spirit shoe business, ItsaShoeThing.com, I'm so ready for a new project.

Right on cue comes a new client (how fun for me to be able to say "client!" Makes me feel very legit.). The historic Joseph Young house in Hollywood, my hometown, is up for sale again and the homeowners just happened to have their kids pictures taken by my sister. In turn, they saw her site, loved it, and hired me to build something similar to showcase their home. The house has real estate listings on the Web with a few pictures, but what he and I have in mind is something much more visual, focusing on the tiny architectural details that are tucked in every corner of that house that no one would notice from any real estate site.So far my dad and sister met with the realtor and took some great shots of the place. My job starts now, and I'll keep my progress up to date here. Big props to my sister Courtney, we're really working as a team on this and it wouldn't be happening without her help. I'm really honored in a way that little ol' ME got scooped up to build this thing. I just hope my work stands up to the challenge!

We have liftoff!

For a moment today I was sad that I would be at work at 11:38, when the space shuttle Discovery would be taking off from Cape Canaveral. Then I remembered how good Florida Today is with their online multimedia having to do with the space program. I thought for sure I could maybe dig around and find a web cam of some sort and get a glimpse of the launch. What I found was even better! Right there on the homepage was an embedded Windows Media stream of the shuttle launch, LIVE! It was great, complete with mission control commentary and a full-screen option that didn't mess up the browser view or anything. Just below the video, there was a section of very cool interactive Flash features that were fun and informative to click through. They really know what their readers want, and did an awesome job serving it up today.

Read blogs please!

Why don't more people use Bloglines? I've tried hard to get my friends and family to sign up for the RSS reader service, but to no avail. I'll never traditionally "bookmark" another page ever again, and I don't know why anyone would want to. If you haven't tailored your own RSS reader and personalized your feeds, do it. It's super simple and you'll never go back to the old ways, I promise you.

This leads me to the latest feed I've subscribed to that I really enjoy lately. Yahoo has been doing a series of videos called "People of the Web". The stories they find highlight people, some famous and some not, who are using the Web in unexpected or unique ways. One interesting segment told the story of the founder of FarmersOnly.com, an online dating service specifically for people living in more rural areas, with similar interests in farming, agriculture and the "cowboy" way of life. They are short videos, but surely the stories have plenty of journalistic value and are told very well. I get excited when my Bloglines tells me it's updated!

Find a feed that you like that will light a fire under your rear to setup RSS. Use Google Blog Search or Mozilla's Sage RSS add-on, to find people writing about ANY topic you could imagine. Check out what other people have on their Bloglines. It's addicting, but do it anyway!

Being picky with the NY Times online

What a day for online news. I am disturbed and dismayed that there wasn't a set of eyes at the Times that caught the numerous typos in this interview. And not just any interview. A one-on-one Q & A with Florida's very own golden-armed quarterback Tim Tebow!

Copy and pasted (no edits):

A lot don’t have much hope or anything to look at as positive. I said, ‘Eveyrone looks at you all like you’re nothing.

Everything you’re doing for people, standing around and singing autographs. You’re making an impact on people.

Does the new media department not have copy editors? Or heck, even spell check?!? I, like most Florida fans who read the Times, was super excited to read this article! But what a disservice to Tebow. It kills the clip that his mother I'm sure would be cutting out and pasting neatly in his scrapbook.

And the Times isn't alone today in sports news slip-ups at Tebow's expense. The error in this story at ESPN.com is even more cringing:

Gators quarterback Jeff Tebow had seven carries for 29 yards without attempting a pass in the most recent matchup, but has been impressive both on the ground and through the air in his first year as the starter.

What. The. F$%K?! It's a SPORTS Web site!!!! This writer needs to be fired. Right now. He makes not only sports journalists but all journalists look naive, uneducated, careless and unprofessional. And that's just not cool.

When Web works...and when it doesn't

Joe Strupp at Editor & Publisher wants you to learn from other newspapers' mistakes, but he also wants to tell you what they have been doing right in the changing game of online news.

In his special to the journal, Web Editors Reveal Online Flops or Failures, he outlines 12 DON'TS for online newspapers with examples from some pretty heavy hitters.

Editors at the Denver Post learned the hard way that "technology can pop:"

When The Denver Post's Web editors upgraded technology to allow an automatic refresher of the pages every 10 minutes, believing readers wanted the freshest news, they forgot about the die-hard crossword puzzlers. Many fans of the word game called and e-mailed complaints that every time the page refreshed, their work was wiped out.

He goes on with other tips and pointers, which all made perfect sense to me. Online news execs need to realize that just because there is a new feature or way for readers to interact with the paper online doesn't mean that they will WANT to or bother to take the time. I think Strupp gets the point across that it is a trial-and-error type of situation because everything IS so new. Time will tell.

Want awesome pictures of your kids?

This might seem a bit off topic but it is 100% relevant to the skills I'm learning to use in journalism. I promise.
My sister Courtney is launching her children and family photography business, Candids by Courtney. If you live in the tri-county area in South Florida and would love some amazing candid shots of your kids running around and having fun, go here now! She's really found a knack for this, as you can see by the photos on her Web site. She is also keeping a blog. Snag her services before she gets booked up! She's that good!

And that's where the relevance comes in. Her new 100% Flash site was designed by, you guessed it, yours truly! For my first all-Flash site, I'm really pleased with it. But there are a few things I still would like to learn.

Anyone know how to make a Flash photo gallery with scrolling thumbnails? Good tutorials out there? I've been browsing around and all I can find are pay-for software that will build one for you. Not what I want. Especially for a site dealing with basically all photos, I want it to look crisp and professional.

As far as design goes, it's about as basic as you can get. I wanted to keep it simple for my first time, and focus more on working buttons and links, etc. So far everything works!

We've got it made...

...or so I thought. But not according to Helen Popkin at MSNBC, who gave this rant about the havoc that technology is wreaking in the lives of today's mindless youths. Are her points valid?

Completely Unrelated

Summer isn't just about internships and easy classes. It's time to take advantage of just that, free TIME! I like to paint every now and then to relieve a little stress. Thought I would share my latest, an ode to the Stones. Enjoy :)

Herald work

Just a quickie to share two other slideshows I've done for the Herald. The first is from a memorial day monument dedication ceremony in Alachua back in May. I used Windows Movie Maker and a licensed song from a Grammy-award-winning gospel singer that my editor picked out.

After using Soundslides, I prefer it much more over WMM (which doesn't lend itself well to journalism purposes), but being at a small weekly paper out in the boondocks of northern Florida, internet connections and lack of Flash capabilities made it easier to just make a .wmv.

Alas, my most recent story is indeed a Soundslide (my most journalistic yet I think!) of a historical marker unveiling in Bland, Fla. I've racked up a nice amount of clips too, all of which can be found with a simple search for "Mallory" in the High Springs Herald archives. I'm nice and busy, but summer's almost over. Can you believe it?

9 Rules of Journalism

This article came passed along from a friend. Michael Rosenberg of the Detroit Free Press gives an entertaining lesson in journalism practices. His satire stands out, but there are certainly some sad truths in what he writes.

Photo slideshows

Here is a SoundSlide I did for the High Springs Herald of the Newberry Watermelon Festival. A fun afternoon indeed.

My dad let me know about this photo slideshow from the NY Times by Micheal Kamber about the search for the three missing soldiers around Baghdad. I'd love to do this for a living, but not there. I really like community news and events like the Watermelon Fest. Kudos to the journalists who have the guts to embed themselves overseas. They're doing things that were once unheard of in reporting the news.

Long Time No Blog

Amen for the end of the semester. Summer is upon us in steaming hot Gainesville and the city is already clearing out. I'll be sticking around with an internship at the High Springs Herald in their Web department. It's a small town weekly with a community focus and I really can't wait to get started. In the meantime, I submitted my final Web portfolio project for MMC4341. I also ditched the old site at my domain, mallorycolliflower.com, and replaced it with my portfolio. Long story short, I've been busy as usual but the summer is a welcomed change. The hot Florida humidity does a pretty good job of slowing down the pace of life.

Flash 4 Exercise

Took me quite a while to finish it, and I'm still not 100% satisfied of course, but here is my Flash 4 exercise. If only I had used a better camera the photos would have turned out a little nicer. I'm eager to learn to make some more exciting looking buttons too.

CNN does Flash

CNN.com has a cool Flash peice on the new Air Bus A380 that just took its first trip across the Atlantic. It can hold up to 500 passengers and some airline execs are talking about cruise-ship style planes in the next generation of flying machines. But check it out for yourself!

TV Channel dedicated to viewer-created content

I wish I had digital cable. I don't, but Nick does, and he drew my attention to Current, a cable television station dedicated to high-quality viewer-created journalism stories. The station has a Web site that offers all the content aired on TV to their online viewers. Current strongly encourages high ethical standards in the creation of their content, but acknowledge that citizen journalism is the direction the media is heading, if it hasn't already taken that turn. The stories are thought-provoking and entertaining. It's my new favorite Web site, and definitely worth a look.

Online Journalism Ethics

Although its a few months old, this article from the Poynter Institute came from my Problems and Ethics in Journalism professor. It's 100 percent relevant to me and my classmates, and to any "citizen journalists" who contribute via blogs and online content. Enjoy!

Three-button Animation

Just finished my second flash exercise. I'm pretty proud of it, especially that none of the images were imported. All were drawn by hand in the Flash program. I was having a little trouble with the LSU button. It seemed I could stop and start the tiger flash portion with the button, but I only want to be able to start it. I checked my Action Script and everything seems fine. It's driving me a little CRAZY! Any suggestions?? Thanks and enjoy!

Keeping Busy

Been very busy lately. Here's why. I'm learning a lot though!

Below is a little recap of my work so far for Advanced Online Communications.
What do you think...?

CSS Exercises -
one: Basic CSS
two: Typography
three: Specifying Fonts
four: CSS Navigation and color palette
five: Positioning

And now the most exciting part! FLASH!
Flash Exercises -
one: simple two-object animation
two: three-button controlled animations

Fun Tech Photos

Engadget recently hosted a photo contest for its readers, inviting them to submit any creative photos related to technology in some way or another. They've compiled their top 150 choices into a photo gallery that's really fun to flip through.


Free samples (some of my personal faves):

You're invited...

...to James Brown's funeral.

Glancing at all my blog feeds, I stumbled upon Rolling Stone magazine's blog, particularly this entry about the Godfather of Soul. I clicked around and found myself a little taken aback at this photo in their photo gallery. It reminded me of this photo of Elvis.

I thought it was really cool that they published that photo and that I got the priviledge of seeing Brown in his final resting stage.

Editing savior

I found a Web site that is going to get me through my reporting class. SparkNotes guide to common errors.

New Media + Politics = A Whole New Ball Game

While it's certainly been years since the Internet revolutionized the way politicians campaign and raise funds, the massive flood of media throughout our culture continues to evolve. Some political hopefuls are keeping up with the game, while others are keeping the bench nice and warm. In case you've been living under a giant boulder, there's a presidential election in less than two years people! Here's a look at some who are doing it right and others who could learn from them. See for yourself:

DEMOCRATS

• NC Senator John Edwards (officially running) - His Web site is very..."hip," for lack of a better word. You can see what he's currently listening to, the books he's reading and a list of his favorite links (he's a huge UNC basketball fan!) . In addition to a typed blog, he keeps an up-to-date video blog too! And if that's not enough for you, check out his MySpace, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube pages. He deserves the "cool-guy-who-gets-it" award.
  


• Illinois Senator Barack Obama (committee formed) - A clean site with some well-produced video, including this one of his announcement to form a presidential exploratory committee.
  


• Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich (officially running) - His site is just shy of a jumbled mess, but to be fair, he gets points for his video blog too.

REPUBLICANS

• Former NY Gov. George Pataki (expressed interest) - He currently uses the 21st Century Freedom Web site as an outlet for his political campaign (Wiki explains the conditions for listing a candidate and rules about Web sites). You can soak up all of his campaign news from his Podcast.
  


• Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (expressed interest) - Overly-busy Web sites like his make my brain (and fragile eyes) go crazy. He gets a nod for his Podcast, but minus points for broken RSS feed links.
  


• Former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney (committee formed) - What I liked about his site was MittTV, his presentation of a series of videos (not just his TV spots) that are well-produced and get his ideals across. While similar to a video blog, I liked that it was sharp-looking and still user friendly.

Because of the rules and regulations regarding candidates and their Web sites, it will be interesting to see new domains popping up once official bids have been announced. Of course there are several other potential candidates from parties that aren't red or blue. Wikipedia's 2008 Presidential Election page breaks it down really well. Someone who's interested in the ever-changing role of the Internet in politics (and who has more time on their hands than me!) would have fun grading the candidates based on their level of "Web-savviness" and ranking them against each other. Has anyone else seen/heard/read/blogged about such a thing? I'm very intrigued!

The Abe Assignment

After being totally ambitious (and bored) over winter break, I went ahead and got a head start on exercise one for my adv. online media class. It was due this morning and I really wish I had received my design textbook before I had to turn it in. I do believe that I am fairly creative, but assignments with unlimited creative freedom make my brain run in circles. I finally gave in to a really simplistic design layout. You can check out my final product here.

AT&T hanging up on Cingular

Although not necessarily journalism related, I knew Cingular customers particularly in Gainesville would rejoice in the latest news from AT&T. Whether or not service will improve, my grudge against anything Cingular is slightly soothed by the fact that they're phasing out that name. It's a shame the amount of money spent on advertising for that stupid little orange stick figure and its commercials. Service with the most dropped calls?? I think not.

Gator MANIA!

Fellow gators (and hopefully any college football fan) might enjoy this little tidbit from Monday night's Gainesville debauchery. This has got to be the best damn little city in the world.

No love for the Gators?

After a long, long night of reveling in the glory of the Gators' miraculous win against Ohio State, I opened my Web browser and was a little troubled.

I am long-time CNN watcher for my news. I have their Web site as my homepage so I can browse the day's headlines before whatever surfing (or shameless Facebooking) that I do. But that may change real soon.

This morning amid their "Latest News" links I found out that Hilary Swank officially confirmed a rumored relationship. So glad she clarified that. I read that celeb socialite Paris Hilton pleaded not guilty to her DUI charge. Thank goodness that's settled. And in case you follow celebrity real estate, you may be interested that Suzanne Somers' Malibu house won't be going on the market any time soon. It caught on fire yesterday.

These three stories were not categorized among the headlines and were listed among stories about terrorism, politicians and international conflict; stories that undoubtedly belonged where they were.

Granted not everyone in this country is concerned with which university's football team reigns at the top for the year, but surely the outcome of the National Championship college football game ranks higher on the news priority list than Hilary Swank's newest love affair! Am I alone in my feelings on this? If CNN was a newspaper, would front-page photos of Chris Leak hoisting that beautiful crystal football be replaced with pictures of Paris Hilton? Seems like CNN could be the next big celebrity tabloid.