News stories are often well told visually, particularly in an era where more data than ever is available. Business and tech news site Quartz launched Atlas, a slickly-designed command center for all its charts, where you can download, embed, or grab the data. And it’s an open source product, so you can create your own version. McKinsey looks at …
Friday 5 — 6.19.2015
Buzzfeed released a news app — and it’s a triumph of substance over listicles. The iOS-only app has a clean design and feature set for mobile, streamlined social sharing, and easy customization options. It’s relatively late to the game compared to the pared down and newly-free NYT Now, but will still likely be a contender for …
Friday 5 — 6.12.15
Cancel all your meetings today and read: “What is code?“ Finished with item number 1? Then turn your attention to the Nieman Lab’s elegant explanation of Apple’s news initiatives announced this week at WWDC. Here’s why we should stop designing for millennials as if they were an entirely homogeneous generation, alien to the ones that preceded it. Instead, …
Here’s why Google indexing tweets matters
This week I was looking for an article about the pressures of media coverage on scientific research to send to a few colleagues. All I could remember was that it was in the New York Times recently, and had the words “perils” and “publishing” in the title. So I searched within Google News for “perils publishing science nytimes” …
Friday 5 — 6.5.2015
Google Photos, a free tool to store and organize your photos, has launched. Having finally shuttered Google+, Google is recognizing photos as the stickiest feature for user retention. The new service raises legitimate concerns about privacy — a photo repository reveals a great deal about our family structure, travel habits,and health. An automated “Assistant” creates animations and stylized …
Friday 5 — 5.29.2015
It’s worth reading every one of Mary Meeker’s internet trends slides. I’m struck by the relative rapidity and impact of the trends in the American work environment, including what motivates the millennial workforce (hint: not money), the ways connectivity has changed the nature of work, and the rise of online platforms, marketplaces and their impact. The …
Friday 5 — 5.22.2015
For those of you already planning your Memorial Day driving routes, Google Maps has released useful, new features alerting users to delays and detours as you enter your destination. Beyond the time estimate, new cards provide additional context about potential delays. Related trivia: Google Maps also released the top destinations from Memorial Day 2014. Google is once again showing tweets in …
The institutional odyssey
Exploring best practices — and unanswered questions — as we navigate social conversation in today’s digital organization Back in the mid-90s, establishing an institutional web presence began with writing a million dollar check to Oracle. As a next step, you hired a fleet of technical employees, one of whom was called a “Webmaster”—schooled in the …
Friday 5 — 5.15.2015
The big news for publishers this week was Facebook Instant Articles. The New York Times and Buzzfeed were among the first publishers on board, reaping the benefits of reach, fast-loading articles, revenue sharing, and data access. While some fear it’s a deal with the devil, Poynter is more measured in its assessment. What do Facebook Instant …
Friday 5 — 5.8.2015
No matter how much time I spend trying to do a respectable job managing my digital assets, I take a look at the state of my photos online and despair. If you feel the same way, these photo management tips are for you. The Instagram engineering blog performed a fascinating machine-learning analysis of the rise of a new …