NewsTechZilla » From the Tech Perspective

WordPress 3.2 Available!

Scott Adcox — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 03:19:33 +0000

Gershwin is available, and there are some really nice features included. My favorite new feature is one I’m using right now…full page editing that gets rid of all the superfluous litter around the post composing screen and lets you just write. No worries, some nice smooth AJAX allows the major post editing options to appear with the move of a mouse above the title.

Check out this video for more on the newest features.

Also included is Twenty Eleven; the fully HTML5 default theme. I’ve played with it a little already and can’t wait to see what some of the top notch designers start coming up with going forward.Similar Posts:

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WordPress 2.8.4 UPDATE NOW!

Scott Adcox — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 23:37:39 +0000

For those of you running WordPress on your sites, you should see a prompt to install the latest Security Release. You need to update ASAP to remedy a security vulnerability that can allow your password to be reset by a hacker.

Do not hesitate on this one!Similar Posts:

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Success In The New News Industry

Scott Adcox — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:37:16 +0000

I’ve been kicking around an idea after reading the book Outliers: The Story of Success. One of the major themes of the book is that success doesn’t come just from having raw talent or outworking the competition. Successful people usually have talent, work ethic, AND are able to put them to use to become experts in an area just before a major change takes place.

It isn’t hard to draw parallels to the accounts in the book and what we’re seeing with the newspaper industry. The people who are successful at the end of the upheaval will be those who’ve become experts at the new rules and new tools of the game.

If I had to name the top three aspects of journalism going forward, I’d say it would be wise to focus on these:

Accurate
Real Time
Concise

Obviously, accuracy will always be a staple of journalism. Without accuracy we’re wandering into the realm of rumor and fiction. The market for accurate information isn’t changing. In fact, it’s probably growing due to the ease of sharing information real time and concisely. We don’t have to look far back in time to see why.

The idea of delivering accurate information real time and in a concise manner–that’s the real challenge. The new rules don’t have deadlines and editors cutting articles down to fit on pages. Instead, the new rules are throngs of first person accounts being broadcast in 140 characters or less as events are happening. The new rules are 140 character attention spans that spread inaccurate information as fast (or faster) than accurate information.

What are you doing today to put yourself in the position of being a trusted source of accurate and timely information served up in an individual sized package?

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WordPress 2.8 – A Quick View of the Highlights

Scott Adcox — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:42:29 +0000

WordPress 2.8 is rolling out today, and there are several features and enhancements I’m pretty excited about. They keep making my favorite content management tool better and better!

Theme Management Drastically Improved

We now have functionality similar to that of plugin management. Now there’s no need to find a theme, download it to your home computer, unzip it, and FTP it to your site. Just search through your WordPress panel, pick the theme you want, and install it. They’ve also drastically improved the interface for previewing a new theme.

Improved widget management and use

Very cool. You can now use a widget in more than on place on your WordPress site. This allows you to change the settings each time you use it. Widget management is also much improved for sites with multiple sidebars. Now you can see all of your sidebars at once instead of having to switch back and forth.

Tag management

Tags always seemed sort of freeform and open to me, and you can still use them that way. But now you have the ability to add descriptions and change the slugs on your tags right in the admin panel. Great for those times when you want to have a slug that differs from the tag terminology or to keep your tags and categories from stepping on each other’s toes.

There are some other cool features in the new release that make things like editing comments, auto-saving, and logging in (case insensitive) a little more handy to use. You can read about all the new features of WordPress 2.8 on the official site.

You should see the option to upgrade to 2.8 on your admin panel soon–remember, it’s automatic now. We’ll be on the lookout for bugs and irritations that may arise, and will patiently await the next release that addresses them!Similar Posts:

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SEO – A Five Year Plan

Scott Adcox — Tue, 26 May 2009 13:50:59 +0000

Matt Cutts recently answered the question “Will SEO exist in five years?” via video. Don’t worry, this is a really short clip, and there’s not a lot of geek speak in it at all. However, keep in mind that he’s a Google employee and he’s talking about SEO in the context of Google.

As we’ve pointed out here before, Google is the engine everyone is optimized for, at least for now. But if there’s one thing we know for sure about the web, it’s that things change on the web quickly. What if things are completely turned on their head in five years? Will SEO still exist then?

Short Answer–Definitely.

SEO is a lot like NASCAR–the rules are always being changed and tweaked, even mid-race. But the rule changes aren’t published out in the open. Instead, the information about the changes trickles down. Google changes their search algorithm, and the guys who live and breathe SEO notice the changes and adjust their strategies. As the rules become more apparent to everyone else, more and more people adjust, and more and more people exploit blackhat ways to game the new system. As a result, Google must adjust once again.

But…

When we talk about search in the future, the conversation will likely go well beyond what Matt talked about in his video. As we shift towards real time search, the game is likely to change drastically in ways we can’t foresee. This is going to be like adding the forward pass to football. So when we talk about SEO in the future, we aren’t necessarily talking about Google alone.

Twitter is already making waves with folks at Google over their ability to provide up-to-the-second information about what’s happening on the web. Twitter let’s you know what’s going on right now, and there’s huge value in that. At this point, that is pretty simple to game though, right? Get a bunch of followers (real or fake) and retweet the hell out of a link to your page. So how will search engines get around that in the future?

Context, context, context

I can see context and reputation becoming more and more a part of search, and I think reputation is going to have huge value in the future.

For instance, let’s say you’ve been on Twitter for a year or so already and have updated with a few thousand tweets, many of which center around local news stories. You’re engaging and have established yourself as credible, so you’ve built a good following of other locals on Twitter who discuss local issues with you and click on the links you tweet.

Bots and junk accounts are pretty easy to spot on Twitter, so I’m making the assumption that there’s a scoring algorithm that can tell “good” accounts from “bad” ones. As a result, you have a “good” Twitter account. I’m thinking of something like Google’s Page Rank, but for Twitter–check out Twitter Grader for an idea of what this would look like.

So a link from you about a local event will be considered relatively authoritative, much more so than a link from a junk account coming from the other side of the world. This should be reflected in real-time search results. Your credible link to a story should carry some weight.

Not Just Twitter, Google Can Play Too

It’s true that Google doesn’t do real time search yet, but they a mountain of contextual information at their disposal. What about all those gmail messages we’ve been “archiving” instead of deleting for the last few years? There are lots of links buried in those messages, and lots of organic, authentic content around them to provide context. And don’t forget chat. This is all archived information, which doesn’t really lend itself to up-to-the-second search, but emails and chat sessions are still flying around like crazy, and once Google can grab and process this information on the fly they will. If nothing else, there’s plenty of test data to train an algorithm.

Oh yeah…then there’s that mountain of cash they are sitting on. It looks like Google is more interested in a partnership than Twitter is–for now. At some point the Twitter guys may actually give in and cut a deal. Everybody has a price, right?

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Social Network Links on Every Post

Scott Adcox — Mon, 18 May 2009 13:26:23 +0000

Aunt Bea asked a question about placing social networking links at the bottom of posts. Simple answer…there’s a plugin for that–Sociable makes it super easy to place those little buttons at the bottom of every post. Right out of the virtual box, Sociable automatically puts these links a the end of every post.

In fact, Sociable offers so many choices for social bookmarking links that you’ll probably need to choose only the networks you think your users are most likely to use.

How do you decide which sites are the best to use? I always start with the ones I use myself, guessing that the people who are interested in the same things I am will be using the same networking and bookmarking sites.

Is there a social bookmarking site you use that we don’t offer? Let us know and we’ll add it!Similar Posts:

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Is Your Newsroom Using Twitter? Effectively?

Scott Adcox — Fri, 08 May 2009 03:46:50 +0000

Before I get to anything that may come across as negative, let me say that I follow lots of people who work in at my local paper, The Knoxville New Sentinel. And there’s one huge reason I follow them…

They are engaging.

(I’m going to go ahead and get my #followfriday in now so you can follow some of these cool folks. Like I said, they are engaging, so you don’t have to be local to enjoy following them. So check out @jigsha, @jacklail, @michaelsilence, @randomchick, @knoxgirl75, @sugirly, and no telling how many others I’m forgetting)

I don’t follow them to get links to articles posted in the paper. There are several RSS feeds for that, and I only subscribe to one. I didn’t realize what sets these folks apart from our local television stations until I read a comment from @cathymccaughan on this post from the other day–they don’t tweet their headlines.

I’m not following a bot that spits out tweets every time an article is published. I’m following people. Disclaimer–I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having a Twitter account for a newspaper or blog that does nothing but spit out tweets on publish, but that’s not where it should end. “Being on Twitter” just isn’t good enough in the long term. For instance, @newstechzilla sends out a tweet every time we publish, but it’s not really engaging. It’s just a 140 character RSS feed. To converse, you need to follow @sadcox or @newscoma. And (surprise, surprise) we don’t spend the whole day talking about journalism and technology. But we are engaging. Well, Trace is anyway.

Now, having said all that, Michael Silence has been doing something lately that I think is pretty interesting in his KNS blog. He’s been giving us previews of upcoming op/ed pieces and letters to the editor. I think this approach plays well on Twitter as well.

If there is a Twitter account that covers the entire newsroom, here’s something to think about. Instead of tweeting out headlines of completed and published stories, how about giving me the confirmed facts of a story an hour before it’s published? Let me follow it’s development real time and see the finished product on the site and/or feed. How about engaging me?

Not only will I get the facts as they are developing (which I can usually get from a less-authoritative tweeter anyway), but there’s a good chance I’ll be impressed with the skillful way it was pulled together for the end product.Similar Posts:

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Twitter Could Be The Fabeled Google Killer

Scott Adcox — Thu, 07 May 2009 13:27:52 +0000

Why else do you think Google is so anxious to buy them?

Twitter is a great communication tool, but it’s real power lies in something it hasn’t fully exploited yet–search. Not search in the sense that Google does search, but search in the sense of the way you want to search.

Real time search. Search that is uber-relevant.

The difference lies in the approach. Simplifying things a bit, Google’s aim is to index the entire web and make it available to you, and they are the best at it. Twitter’s aim is to index a small part of the web. All they want is the most current (up to the second) information that people are actually reading and telling their friends about. In short, Google wants everything ever published. Twitter wants everything people actually want to read about right now.

And this just in–Twitter has announced they are not only indexing links, but also indexing the content on pages as well.

Which type of search is more valuable to you?

I know most of the stuff I read online is new. I’d assume the same is true for most journalists as well. But there’s also an advantage of a real time search engine dominating the market is for content publishers. All of a sudden, you aren’t competing with everything ever published for traffic. Instead, you are competing with other publishers who are discussing the same topic.

Take in to account the ease with which you can find and connect to these other publishers, and the result may end up looking something like open source software with news stories having many contributors adding to a story real time.

It doesn’t matter that Twitter hasn’t made a dime yet. The people at Google are smart, and they see what’s coming.

The people at Twitter are smart too, and that’s why they haven’t sold.Similar Posts:

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Leveraging Twitter With Tweetmeme

Scott Adcox — Wed, 06 May 2009 18:46:11 +0000

If you haven’t heard about Tweetmeme yet, chances are you will soon–like right now. In fact you can see evidence on this page–that little “Retweet This” button is provided by Tweetmeme.

I’ll give you the high points. Tweetmeme is a service that’s sort of like Digg in that it allows you to “vote” for a web page and keeps up with these votes. The twist is that it also actually tweets the page. It uses Twitter’s OAuth to authenticate your account and increments the Tweetmeme count on the page you’re reading.

This is good for readers because it gives you an easy way to share pages.

But it’s huge for content producers because it makes it easy for your readers to get your content in front of people with whom they’ve built authority–their Twitter followers.

Much like Digg, Tweetmeme features the most popular pages being tweeted on its front page. It also breaks tweets down by subject automatically. Idea for journalists or bloggers looking for a story: go to Tweetmeme and see what people are reading about right now.

We just added the Tweetmeme button to our pages yesterday (there’s a WordPress plugin), and I’m interested to see how it affects our traffic. Currently we get about 10% of our traffic from Twitter, and that is largely dependent on our posting frequency. At the very least, this should make it easier for our readers to share our posts on Twitter, and hopefully it will help them increase traffic on their own sites as well!Similar Posts:

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Six Ways TweetDeck Makes Twitter Better

Scott Adcox — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:52:52 +0000

Trace and I are obviously huge fans of Twitter, but if you’re only using Twitter the website, you are missing out on all kinds of cool things people are doing with Twitter the service. TweetDeck is definitely my favorite application that utilizes Twitter because it makes it so powerful. I’ve fielded a couple of questions from Tweeps on using TweetDeck, so I thought it made sense to list a few quick tips to unleash its power for journalists and everyday users.

1) Livestream
This is the main selling point of TweetDeck. Instead of constantly reloading a web page, TweetDeck is constantly updating for you. Other applications, like Twhirl, do this as well, but I like TweetDeck’s style. By default it separates Tweets into three columns–”All Friends”, “Replies”, and “Direct Messages”. Right out of the box, it helps you keep Tweets organized. If you don’t use any of the other features, TweetDeck is still great, but if you haven’t played with the other features, read on…

2) Groups
I love, love, love groups! This powerful feature lets you classify your Tweeps and display them in a column by themselves. I have several groups, and display different ones at different times. My “All Stars” are always being displayed, while “Tech Tweeps” and “Political Tweeps” are sometimes turned off.

3) Filters
After you’ve set up your groups (or not), you can then filter the displayed column (filter button is at the bottom of each column) to only display tweets with the terms you specify. Pretty cool, especially if you are following a particular story and only want to read tweets from people who are discussing it.

4) Facebook Integration (and more)
I didn’t mention Facebook yet? You can pull status updates straight from Facebook to TweetDeck. That means you don’t have to load Facebook to get the gossip on what your non-Twitter friends are up to. All you have to do is click on the Facebook check box and sign in. TweetDeck does the rest! There’s also integration with TwitPic and 12Seconds.

5) Easy to Reply, DM, and RT
When you mouse over the image of a Tweep in TweetDeck, you’ll see several options. They allow you to Reply, Direct Message, and ReTweet, along with other options. Very handy if you are a user who uses Twitter not just to update your own status, but also to interact with others.

6) Other Settings
Everything is adjustable. You can change amount of time between TweetDeck’s auto updates, color schemes, max tweets in a column, and sound notifications among other things.

Of course, TweetDeck isn’t perfect. At least one person I’ve talked to has commented on not being able to change the width of individual columns, and it would be great if you could manage multiple Twitter accounts like you can in Twirl. I’m sure there are other features I’m overlooking because I simply don’t use them.

What’s your favorite TweetDeck feature? Are there other desktop applications for Twitter you like better?Similar Posts:

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