Chris Snider

Let’s end the week with some quality linkage:

• The Bivings report compares how newspapers used the internet in 2008 compared to 2007.
• Monittor lets you embed a Twitter search on your web site.
• Marketing Pilgrim shares his favorite Wordpress plugins for new blogs.
• The amazing people at Six Revisions share some useful cheat sheets for designers.

I tuned into my first journchat last Monday night in-between helping my Drake students with their final web projects – and I was impressed for a couple of reasons.

First of all, I love the concept: “The mission of #journchat is to keep an ongoing, open dialogue between journalists, bloggers and public relations professionals.”

If anything, it might even be a little too broad. I’d love to have a similar chat for journalists to talk about how we can use social media tools in our everyday jobs.

I also enjoyed the format of hosting a chat on Twitter. I never really considered Twitter a great live chat tool until I saw what you can do using Twitter and Tweetgrid (just type in #journchat on Tweetgrid to see what I mean). You can follow multiple conversations and monitor multiple keywords at a time.

See what #journchat is all about 7-10 p.m (central time) tonight.

Follow @journchat or @PRsarahevans on Twitter for more information.

Let’s link…

• Looking for some gifts for the social media fan on your list? Look no further than Chris Brogan’s list.
• Help keep one of my favorite blogs (10,000 Words) free. Buy one of these t-shirts.
• Are you the future of journalism? Prove it and get a job from Publish2.
• I love Trulia. And now the real estate site I love has thrown out some ideas on how to save the job I love. 11 ways to save newspapers.

We can’t add more hours to the day, but we can work more efficiently. Here are some tools that could help reporters be more productive.

1. Google Reader
Don’t waste your time going to dozens (or hundreds) of web sites every day. Use the RSS feeds from those sites and just check one web site for all the latest information.

2. Google alerts
Want to know anytime someone posts a video, news story or blog about your beat? Sign up for Google Alerts or Yahoo Alerts and you’ll get an email with all the latest info.

3. Jott
Need to send a quick note to yourself from the road? Call Jott. Speak your message. And Jott will email you the text of what you said. (You get unlimited 15-second calls for free).

4. Mezzoman
Need to meet a source somewhere between your location and their location? Mezzoman suggests a halfway point.

5. Wikirage
Shows the pages on Wikipedia that are receiving the most edits over various periods in time – which roughly translates to what’s popular in that given timespan.

6. Google trends
Similar to Wikirage, this shows topics that are suddenly being searched an unusual amount of times on Google.

7. Alerts.com
Do you forget things, like meetings? Or birthdays? Get a text alert to remind you. Or set up a wake-up call. Or just check out all of their alert options.

8. Simplynoise.com
Does it get loud in your newsroom? A little white noise will drain that out.

9. iGoogle or Pageflakes
Create a custom home page and get all the info you need in one place (photos, weather, news, twitter, e-mail, calendar, facebook, music).

10. Technorati
Find out what the blogosphere is talking about – either in general, or in a particular area.

11. People finders
Trying to find out more about a person, but only know their name or e-mail address? Try Pipl, Wink and YoName.

12. Qipit
E-mail a photo to copy@qipit.com (even from your phone) and it sends back a PDF. Great for sharing notes written on a white board.

13. ask500people
Got a question that you need others’ opinions on? Ask 500 people.

14. Google docs
Do you work on multiple computers? Create and write all of your documents and spreadsheets online – so you can always access them from any computer.

15. Tweet Grid
Want to know what people on Twitter are saying about any given topic at any given time? Tweet Grid lets you follow multiple Twitter searches at once.

Just got an e-mail about the St. Cloud Times’ holiday yule log.

During these dismal times, we decided to offer the online readers a relaxing moment:  A Yule log burning in a fireplace with local holiday music.

The page doesn’t even contain an ad. Holiday spirit, or missed opportunity?

Big news out of the Pulitzer Prizes camp today is that online-only publications are now eligible to win journalism’s most distinguished award.

The Pulitzer Prizes in journalism, which honor the work of American newspapers appearing in print, have been expanded to include many text-based newspapers and news organizations that publish only on the Internet, the Pulitzer Prize Board announced today.

See the full release here.

Newspapers have been able to submit online content for a couple years, but this opens things up to sites like minnpost.com and the St. Louis Beacon.

And of course Mashable (where I first heard the news).

Perhaps this news helped the Pulitzer board come to its decision.

Who says you need a staff of developers and tons of time to make a great web site? These tools are easy to use and easy to add to your site.

1. Coveritlive.com
CoverItLive allows you to blog live from an event (you can even do it from your iPhone). It’s also a great tool for hosting live chats on your site.

2. Blip.tv
There are a lot of tools that can embed video on your site (YouTube.com Vimeo.com, qik.com), but I’m starting to be a big fan of blip.tv. It create a nice-looking index of your videos and make it easy to offer your videos as an iTunes podcast.

3. Mogulus.com
With just a video camera and an internet connection, Mogulus lets you broadcast live video. Also try justin.tv and ustream.tv.

4. Animoto.com
Don’t just post photo galleries. Turn your best photos into a music video.

5. Vuvox.com
Create slideshows, timelines and more that include photos, music and videos. See an example here (below the scroll).

6. Soundslides.com
Easy-to-use tool for adding slideshows with audio to your site.

7. Slideshowpro.net
Another great tool for creating slideshows and embedding on your site. Indystar.com uses this to let reader embed slideshows on their sites.

8. Google maps
We all understand the value of maps and map mash-ups. That doesn’t mean we all have the skills to create them. Fortunately there are some tools that help. Such as umapper.com, mapalist.com, mapbuilder.net, quikmaps.com and fmatlas.com.

9. Polldaddy.com
Creates polls that you embed on your site. I also just discovered Polls Boutique.

10. Response-o-matic
Creates a quick online contact form, or use it to make surveys and multiple-question polls. Also check out surveymonkey.com.

11. Mypodcast.com and gabcast.com
Think podcasting is hard? Think again. Mypodcast records your podcast directly to the web. Gabcast turns a phone call into a podcast.

12. Flickr.com groups
Your readers are already posting photos to Flickr. Why not start a group and embed those photos on your site?

13. YouTube reader videos
Your readers are already uploading videos to YouTube. Create a custom player to put those videos on your site.

14. Slideshare.net
You’re a wiz with Powerpoint and/or Keynote. Don’t you wish you could add those presentations to your site? You can.

15. Wordle.net
Text can be boring. Turn speeches into word clouds.

16. Issuu.com
Want to replicate the “print experience” online? Issuu helps your put your publications actual pages online so readers can flip through them.

17. DocStoc.com
Don’t make your readers download documents and PDFs. Let them read them directly from your site with embed codes from docstoc.

18. 4info.net
Send text alerts to your readers’ phones – and make money for doing it.

19. Feedburner.com
Sure, you’ve got RSS feeds. But can you track how often they are used? Or allow readers to subscribe via e-mail? Or put ads on your feeds? Feedburner can.

20. Widgetbox.com
Create a widget from your RSS feeds and encourage others to add your content to their sites.

21. Sproutbuilder.com
Creates even cooler widgets than widgetbox. Cool enough that you will want to put them on your site, too.

22. Sharethis.com
Make it easy for readers to share your content across social media platforms (see example at the bottom of this post).

23. Mofuse.com
Create a mobile version and an iPhone version of your web site in minutes using RSS feeds. See previous post on mofuse here. Also check out wirenode.com and mippin.com.

24. Odiogo.com
Reading is hard. Listening is easy. Odiogo turns your text into audio.