Posts

Page 10 of 26

  • Ideas |

    How the git mergetool solved my anxiety, fears, and most importantly, my merge conflicts

    by Suyeon Son

    Back in March, another student fellow Nicole Zhu and I worked on a team challenge for which we were the primary coders. One day, she emailed me: “Uhh. I messed up. Sorry. I think you have to delete your repo.” She had been attempting to resolve a merge conflict, ended up in vim somehow, nope’d out of there, and messaged me to let me know her solution was to delete everything and re-clone. More sadly,...

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  • Ideas |

    The devil is in the details: shifting gears from developer to designer

    by Suyeon Son

    For an entire quarter, I had the privilege (a curse to some) of focusing all my time on a single project. Romaine, a social platform/tool for selecting courses, had a simple goal: how do we harness the community nature of the question, “what class are you taking next quarter?” My initial solution was laughably naive and simple. ‘Just link each course to Facebook!’ I thought to myself. We’d be done in no time. Ha, ha....

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  • Ideas |

    What can we learn from the history of social network analysis?

    by Matt Hong

    When I joined Knight Lab as a student fellow six months ago, I became determined to make progress on a social network analysis (SNA) tool. As journalists we continually look to provide quality information through captivating perspectives and I believe that network data fulfills a part of that purpose in capturing the details of our society from a structural point of view. But the fact is that network analysis is a tough problem to tackle....

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  • Ideas |

    Resources to build and deploy web applications quickly

    by Nicole Zhu

    Beginner coders often look to learn specific languages, like JavaScript or Ruby on Rails. While this is important to understand concepts like control flow and functions, as learners become more comfortable with these technologies, their focus shifts from tutorials and side projects to designing solutions for real-world problems. These solutions typically include common core features that start to require backend and devops experience: data and user storage, a presentable user interface, and a live link...

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  • Lab projects |

    New journalism/technology prototypes unveiled Wednesday

    by Rich Gordon

    On Wednesday, December 3, journalism and computer science students in the latest version of Northwestern’s “Collaborative Innovation in Journalism and Technology” class will unveil the prototypes they’ve built over the past 10 weeks. You’re invited to see what they’ve come up with. The students have been working since September, when I and Associate Prof. Larry Birnbaum of the computer science department in the McCormick School formed seven interdisciplinary teams out of the 25 students enrolled...

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  • Ideas , Profiles , People |

    Pop Up Archive's Anne Wootton and Bailey Smith on born digital audio, search and transcriptions

    by Miranda Mulligan

    "Obligatory question: what shows do y’all love to listen? Give ‘em to me. The more obscure the better." "Oh my god, Miranda. There's this podcast, Serial, that is so good." Unless you've been ignoring the future-of-journalism chatter completely, chances are you've begun to tire of the whole "podcasts were dead and now they are back" discourse. This story is everywhere and it’s not exactly accurate, as they never really were "dead." That said, if you...

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  • Ideas |

    In our ears… November edition

    by Miranda Mulligan

    Around the Lab, some of us are long-time podcast junkies and some of us were about eight years old when podcasts came on the scene. We've been publishing our research into web audio from our primer on its history to why it feels stagnated. However, we haven't published much about podcasts or podcasting (because everyone else is writing about it, including listicles from just about everyone from The Atlantic to The Huffington Post) or about...

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  • Profiles , People |

    Jake Shapiro on PRX, developing Radiotopia and the future of web audio

    by Neil Holt

    Follow the full series of Q&As with smart folks shaping the future of media. Find more articles about podcasts, podcasting and audio on the Web. When I first started researching web audio, I was surprised to find again and again that an organization I’d never heard of was leading the charge, pushing hard on the current state of sound on the internet, and helping the medium into the 21st century: Public Radio Exchange, more commonly...

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  • Profiles , People |

    Alex Blumberg on StartUp podcast, Gimlet Media and the future of podcasting

    by Neil Holt

    Follow the full series of Q&As with smart folks shaping the future of media. Find more articles about podcasts, podcasting and audio on the Web. Alex Blumberg is a man who needs little introduction... At least not much of one within public radio and podcast circles. He's produced stories for This American Life for years and co-founded the award-winning Planet Money. Lately, Blumberg has been climbing the iTunes charts with StartUp, a new podcast chronicling...

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  • Ideas |

    How to get rich in the podcasting gold rush: Steal these 6 ideas from Odeo

    by Neil Holt

    Odeo’s vision for casual content creation didn’t take off in the mid-00’s, but with new interest in web audio maybe these ideas are worth another shot. Before there was Twitter there was Odeo, the web-app that aimed to make podcasting accessible, discoverable and social. While it’s mostly remembered as the humbling misstep Ev Williams, Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone took along the path to building Twitter, it was filled with innovative audio ideas the net...

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  • Ideas |

    Leaps and sounds: 6 product categories creating the future of web audio

    by Neil Holt

    In our "Why web audio can’t grow up" article, we presented the case for moving away from “podcasts” as the de-facto definition of web audio, to create new audio platforms and new ways to experience interacting with audio on the web. Quick summary: Podcasts are difficult to share, tough to discover and not inherently suited to community building. They just feel old! Luckily we’re not the only ones who’ve noticed the problem, innovators of all...

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  • Ideas |

    The 4 Stages to Internet medium maturity: Why web audio can't grow up

    by Neil Holt

    Audio storytelling on the net has looked the same for about a decade - why are we accepting the status quo while text and music evolve? Screen grab from Comedy Central. The current state of audio on the 'net It doesn’t take a genius to see web audio has problems. In a Knight Lab brainstorm we pinpointed more than 20 things we can’t stand about how audio storytelling works on the net. Plus we’re not...

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  • Ideas |

    From Carl Malamud to Dr. Dre to Ev Williams: The history of web audio

    by Neil Holt

    When Dr. Dre sued Mega Nerd, and now famous serial-entrepreneur, Sean Parker’s Napster back in 2000, digital music distribution seemed like the biggest danger to the rapper’s fortune. Maybe the threat triggered something in the hip-hop mogul’s mind. What was once a threat became booming business for the good doctor in May when he sold Beats Music to Apple as part of a massive deal. Dre nearly became hip-hop’s first billionaire in the process, and might...

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  • mozfest , Ideas , Events |

    Rethinking the listicle. What can it do for "serious" news?

    by Mallory Busch

    Odds are, you’ve read more than a handful of listicles. They proliferate social media, they’re sweet and short (but short on nutrition), and in a culture of distraction, it's hard not to love a numbered article. This October, I facilitated a session at Mozilla Festival, seeking to discover where these listicles belong "serious" news reporting. The proposal might sound strange considering that most listicles are headlined with some variation of “50 hottest …” “8 simple...

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  • Team news |

    New Team Member: Heather Billings, Designer/Developer

    by Joe Germuska

    Heather Billings We are pleased to announce that Heather Billings will be joining the Lab as a designer and developer. Heather comes to us from the Chicago Tribune, where she has been a member of the News Apps team for the past three years. I'm very excited to have the chance to work with Heather again. When we brought her onto the team at the Chicago Tribune, I was already impressed by her smart, humane, and generous presence on social media. The...

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