Chris Snider

It was a big news day yesterday. Not necessarily big news here in the trenches in Des Moines. But a big news day nationally.

Which gave us a good chance to see how the big boys played the bailout news online. Here’s a look at home pages from USA Today, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times – all taken a little after 3 p.m. central time on Monday. Continue reading…

Today, we celebrate simple.

The web site Umbrella Today breaks your weather report down to one simple questions – do I need an umbrella today?

Type in your zip code, and you’ll get a giant NO (you don’t need an umbrella) or a YES (you do need an umbrella).

You can even sign up to receive a text message on days you do need an umbrella – so you don’t ever have to go back to the site again.

We had visitors from Apple (yes, that Apple) in Des Moines this week to demo their Podcast Producer software. The Apple folks wanted to show us (and some representatives from Gannett) how media outlets could use Podcast Producer to speed up their workflow for video and audio programs.

Whether or not we ever decide to use Podcast Producer, it certainly was interesting to spend three hours of my day with people from Apple — not something that happens all that often here in Des Moines.

The most interesting thing in their presentation (to me) was a slide that asked the question: “Why Apple?”

Then they gave their answer: innovation, integration and simplicity.

It’s intriguing to me that they are able to boil the answer to that question down to three words. If I were answering the question “Why DesMoinesRegister.com,” I’m not sure I could give an answer in three words. I’m not even sure I could give it in three sentences.

My initial thought would be, “Authoritative, interactive, breaking.” But I’m already thinking of important things we try to be that aren’t on that list. Like “local.”

I do like the ideas of focusing what you do very narrowly – and making sure you filter your work through that narrow filter. I’ve been through that process for at least a couple newspapers before – and never come out with a filter that stuck.

Back to Apple: We also were getting a glimpse into their “three-screen” focus. Apple wants people to be able to create things once and easily deliver to three screens: mobile, desktop and TV.

I got to see Apple TV in action for the first time. It was impressive, although I think I would save $300 and just plug my computer into the TV.

I’m one week into a six-week course on search engine optimization, which means we’ve barely learned the difference between a search engine and a directory. But I wanted to pass along five valuable lessons I’ve learned so far.

1. The top 5 search engines receive more than 90 percent of all search traffic. They are: Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Ask. The top three are pretty much neck-and-neck in terms of the audience they reach in a given month.

2. If you’re not listed on the first, second or third page of search results, you’re most likely not going to get any traffic through search.

3. The instructor of my class, Bob Viers, suggests steering clear of some sponsored links. “Research has shown that sponsored links that appear to the left or to the right of the Web search results are not very appealing to Web surfers.”

He suggests instead buying sponsored links that look like actual listings.

4. To see how people actually use search engines, check out Dogpiles’s Searchspy, which shows you what people are searching for at that moment.

5. Some search engines, including AltaVista, allow you to see which sites are linking to your site. Just seach for +link:yoursitehere.com. For example, here’s a list of sites linking to DesMoinesRegister.com.

Before you drop $600 on a copy of Photoshop CS3 for that designer or copy editor on your staff, you might want to consider what you can do for free with the online photo editing site photoshop.com.

The site has been in beta testing for months now, but officially launched last week. Once you upload your photos, you can do some basic cropping and toning of photos. A couple more “Photoshoppy” features include being able to pop certain colors in a photo and being able to turn your photo into a sketch.

Some features:

• 2GB of online storage
• The ability to upgrade to more features and more storage
• Create online galleries to share your photos with friends
• Easily edit and upload your photos on Flickr, Facebook, Picasa and Photobucket

The site doesn’t come anywhere near offering the features of Photoshop CS3 (it’s more comparable to Photoshop Express), but if all you need is the ability to do some basic cropping and toning, this might get the job done.

The idea of online photo editing is nothing new. Other sites out there include Picnik, Splashup and Phixr.

I’ve been a Picnik.com user for about a year now – mainly for its ability to crop photos to the exact size I need for our online eyepieces (which, sadly, Photoshop.com can’t do). But it’s impossible to ignore a site with the name “Photoshop.”

Look for more features from this site in the future. If the trend is toward web-based applications, you can guarantee this one will be huge.

The Chicago Tribune has the best presence I’ve seen of any newspaper on Facebook, Twitter and Digg.

The paper created a persona based on former Tribune owner Robert Rutherford “Colonel” McCormick.

See them here: Twitter | Facebook | Digg

Creating accounts based on Colonel Tribune as opposed to simply creating a “Chicago Tribune” account humanizes the paper. It lets readers know that there is a real person (or maybe four real people) behind the account, not some RSS feed blindly posting stories.

But the most important part of this entire experiment is that Colonel Tribune actually interacts with people on those social networks. It’s not enough to just throw your name out there and expect the general public to participate all on its own. Social media uses are smarter than that. Continue reading…

Last night, this blog went mobile. And it only took about five minutes to set up (I even threw in an iPhone version for good measure).

I already had an account with Mofuse, a free service that lets you create mobile sites using RSS feeds and manual links. You don’t have a whole lot of creative control, but you can choose a color palette and upload a logo for your blog. You can even pick your own little icon for your iPhone version.

If you think you’re going to get enough traffic, you can set up mobile ads using AdMob.

I’ve got a little experience with this site, having created a Des Moines-based iPhone site using whatever RSS feeds I could think to use. Continue reading…

Paltalk is a web site that offers instant messaging, group video calls and chat rooms – all for free.

How do I know this? Certainly not because I was searching for a solution to my instant messaging and group video needs. I know because I received this video via email: Continue reading…

Animoto is a great little service that takes photos, adds the music of your choice, and turns them into a music video.

Here’s the company’s 50-word description:

Animoto is a web application that, with the click of a button, produces videos using images and music that a user selects. Using their patent-pending Artificial Intelligence developed to think like an actual editor & director, the resulting video has the emotional impact of a movie trailer and the visual energy of a music video. Continue reading…

Ultimate Shawn Johnson Gallery

One huge advantage newspapers have over all of the competition is the quality of our photographs. So how do we take better advantage of that?

Obviously producing daily or weekly or monthly “best-of” photo galleries makes sense. But here’s another idea: Tap into our vast archives of photos.

Two photo galleries at DesMoinesRegister.com have accounted for more than 4.5 million page views in the past two and a half months. That’s more than 8 percent of all traffic to our sites in that time. Continue reading…