It was Memorial Day, I decided to go for a long bike ride to see the beach at Alameda. I needed the exercise, and the weather was perfect. I was enjoying myself greatly — but as I was biking back along Crown Beach in Alameda, I saw police, firefighters, and onlookers gathered. I asked what was happening, and they told me that a man was stranded offshore. A firefighter pointed out into the water, and I could see a head bobbing above the waves, about 150 feet out.

“It’s shallow out there, he’s standing,” said the firefighter. And indeed, the man didn’t seem to be struggling. But he wasn’t waving or shouting for help, either.

More onlookers gathered, and I snapped some pictures. I couldn’t get a good photo of the man in the water, but I photographed the gathering crowd, and tweeted it both on @agahran and @oaklandlocal, a local news/community site where I’m a senior editor.

alameda rescue1

Rescue workers, locals, watch drowning man, Crown Beach, Alameda, CA

I heard locals talking, and asked them if they knew the man. “He was depressed, off his meds, lost his job,” said one neighbor. “He just walked out into the water with all his clothes on. He’s trying to kill himself.”

In that moment, I froze. I couldn’t be a journalist just then. It felt too personal.

Crowd gathers as man drowns, Crown Beach, Alameda, CA

alameda crowd 2

alameda drowning

You can't see him, but the drowning man was about here offshore, Crown Beach, Alameda.

About a year ago, a good friend from Boulder, who’d grown distant, took his own life. Max was a few years younger than me, a doting father, an artist, sociable and often grinning.

But a few years ago, his life fell apart, I’m not sure why. It happened when my own life was in major transition, and I was feeling the stress of that change. While I never considered suicide, I could relate to feeling overwhelmed and rootless.

I’ve been haunted by Max’s death — and really spooked by suicide ever since.

Back on the beach, a kiteboarder zipped out to the drowning man and circled him several times, coming back to report to emergency personnel on the beach. It seemed like it was taking a long time to mount a rescue so close to shore

So yesterday I rationalized: “This isn’t Oakland. I’m off duty. I don’t need to cover this. I don’t want to cover this. I’ve tweeted my pictures, that’s enough for now.”

So I left. I biked across to Bay Farm Island, where I saw an orange emergency helicopter fly in across the water, hover over the man’s location, then leave. And I continued my bike ride, and went home, trying to shake the spooked feeling.

Last night I got a call from the Bay Area ABC station, KGO7, asking for permission to use my photos in their story about the incident. I said yes, as long as their web story linked to Oakland Local. Here is the KGO story. (Getting them to add that link took some further prodding, but they did it — legacy news orgs often overlook/downplay local news startups, and I get tired of that.)

Reading and watching KGO’s story, I realized how I’d messed up yesterday. They got the story right: Why were so many emergency personnel there on the beach, just watching a man drown 150 feet away?

I was grappling with my own complex connection to suicide. When I considered what I’d cover, if I did cover it, I could only envision a typical story focused on the guy who was killing himself. I didn’t want to do that — I’d have felt like that would be gratuitously pimping out his misery. It was yet another reason to turn away.

But KGO got the story right, the story my own pictures told: Where was the rescue?

As it turned out, Alameda police and firefighters are not currently certified to mount a land-based water rescue. They had to cut back on that training due to budget problems. To attempt such a rescue without certification apparently meant the city could get sued. So they just stood there and watched.

Which is horrible. And I should have asked about that.

According to KGO:

The Alameda Fire Department says budget constraints are preventing it from recertifying its firefighters in land-based water rescues. Without it, the city would be open to liability.

“Well, if I was off duty I would know what I would do, but I think you’re asking me my on-duty response and I would have to stay within our policies and procedures because that’s what’s required by our department to do,” Alameda Fire Div. Chief Ricci Zombeck said when asked by ABC7 if he would enter the water to save a drowning child.

Alameda firefighters could not even go into the water to get the body, so they waited until a woman in her 20s volunteered to bring the body back to the beach.

On duty, off duty.

I’d told myself this incident was out of my journalistic jurisdiction, and I was not on the clock for Oakland Local right then. All a rationalization because I was having an emotional response that made me feel helpless, depressed, out of place.

Meanwhile, those Alameda cops and firefighters were on duty — but said that status was precisely why they couldn’t act.

We all failed that day, And Ray Zack, 53, of Alameda, drowned while we stood by.

Meanwhile, in Colorado, my good friends Randy and Kit Cassingham told of a rescue that did happen. Everyone was on duty. But knowing Randy and Kit, if they were off duty, it wouldn’t have mattered. They would have rescued the teenager who fell off a cliff during a post-graduation party in a remote rural mountain area.

I’m not sure what to do with this. But I know now, really know, that a journalist can’t ever truly be off-duty. Certainly not for life-or-death events. I could not have save this Alameda stranger, any more than I could have saved my friend Max. But I should have asked more questions, and not given in to how I was feeling. I don’t blame the Alameda emergency responders for their inaction, but that situation had a dreadful wrongness about it.

I’m trying to figure out what to do with this. Suggestions are welcome, please comment below.

UPDATE: This sad event gave me an idea for the upcoming Code for Oakland event I’m helping to organize. What if emergency response agencies/dispatch could coordinate with qualified local volunteers in all kinds of emergencies? Like, say, people with Red Cross lifeguard certification? Stay tuned…

This bugged me — and when stuff nags at my mind, even weird minor stuff, I have a hard time getting back to sleep. The hotel room was dark, and my eyeglasses were out of reach. I didn’t feel like getting out of bed. But my cell phone was within reach, on the bedside table. (It’s my main alarm clock.)

So I grabbed my phone and snapped a quick photo of the building with the blue sign. Then, looking at the phone on my phone’s screen, I could easily read: Central Bank.

central bank

sign on top of their downtown Louisville, KY building.

This satisfied my nagging curiosity, kind of like scratching an itch. I was soon back to sleep.

It occurs to me that this is a potentially significant use of augmented reality enabled by mobile devices — and the only “app” I needed was the software controlling my phone’s camera!

Most AR apps I’ve seen are kinda gimmicky or not very compelling. For instance, seeing local coupon offers overlaid on a camera app (which Junaio does), or local tweets similarly overlaid, hasn’t really thrilled me.

But being able to compensate for poor vision or a lack of information about what things are? That’s useful.

Now if only someone could do a similar service for audio that would automatically filter out noise in a train or bus station to tell you what the hell those announcers are really saying…

,http://m.cnn.com/primary/_E5uyqH-isfp12PXn2

• Mark S. Luckie, the multimedia journalist behind the killer blog 10000words.net. He’s also associate producer for EW.com/Entertainment Weekly and former online producer for the Los Angeles Times and Contra Costa Times.
• Don Wittekind, assistant professor in the visual communication sequence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Our session is part of American Tapestry: Covering a Changing America” — an event at the Knight Digital Media Center for the leaders of the News21 project. The participants are mostly journalism educators who use this project to give new journalists multimedia experience. Our goal in this session is to show them cutting-edge and unusual tools to spark their — and their students’ — imaginations.

Here’s what we’ll cover…

First, I’ll talk about these tools:

• Gigapan: Amazingly interactive, detailed photographs you can really get into — and the community that makes and loves them. (More about Gigapan)
• ManyEyes: A free online library of tools from IBM that help you visually explore all kinds of data and information. You can share and embed your visualizations.(More about ManyEyes)
• Silobreaker: This Europe-based news aggregator uses semantic web technology, including visual interfaces, to make news more relevant and fun to explore — and thus, more compelling and useful. (More about Silobreaker)
• Envirovote: This Medill News21 project tracked the potential enviromental impact of the 2008 elections — in real time, while the elections were happening. Developer Brian Boyer says that building the visual aspects of this site took just a bit of HTML on top of Python/Django. “The coding for the chart graphics took just 10 minutes. Actually, calculating the percent green on the chart is harder than drawing it on screen! The code that creates the numbers took several hours.” More Envirovote info from Boyer and co-developer Ryan Mark.

…After that, Don Wittekind will cover immersive mulitmedia. He says: “True interactivity is unique to the Web. TV can’t do it. Print cant’ do it. Radio can’t do it. So if News21 is going to lead the way, we have to do it!

“Adobe Flash can do much more than slide shows and slick animations. Flash allows journalists with a little programming knowledge create immersive experiences that allow viewers to become part of the story. I’m pushing the concept of interactivity in the form of calculators and simulators. So the actual tool is Adobe Flash ActionScript, but my presentation will be about why we should be creating highly immersive projects.”

See Don’s examples.

…Then Mark Luckie will wrap up our demos with:

• Mapbuilder: Rapid mashup tool for Google Maps and Yahoo Maps
• Dipity: Interactive timeline tol that organizes updates from sites like YouTube, WordPress, Twitter, and 7500 news sites into “channels.”
• Intersquash: Tools for building iPhone-optimized sites
• Widgetbox: Popular widget directory and gallery. You don’t have to build everything yourself!

gigapan-dc

Gigapan fragment, DC Union Station

Gigapan isn’t brand new, but it’s a fascinating visual tool that allows people to deeply explore panoramic photographs — and to collaboratively tell stories through pictures.

It’s part of Carnegie Mellon University’s Global Connection Project

What’s so cool about Gigapan?

• Conveys a strong sense of place — almost a 3D feel
• People can create their own experience with snapshots
• Provide text or link context
• Allows examination and discussion of details
• Plays nice with Google Earth

I like Gigapan because it offers an experience sort of like this:

More about Gigapan…

Key technologies:

• Robotic camera mount for capturing very high-resolution (gigapixel and up) panoramic images using a standard digital camera. Current cost: $279
• Custom software for constructing very high-resolution gigapixel panoramas
• Interactive web site for exploring, sharing and commenting on gigapixel panoramas and the detail this community discovers within these images
• Google Earth interface allowing you to add a compelling layer of context for panoramic images.

Example Gigapans:

• Boston Back Bay Charles River
• Union Station (almost)
• Palm Deira
• Burning Man 2006

Here, Tom Vilot demonstrates how the robot works to shoot a Gigapan image:

Cool things you can do with a Gigapan image on the Gigapan site:

• Zoom and explore
• Take a snapshot
• Conversations (like this)
• Google Earth browser

Posting images to and participating in Gigapan community makes your story not just about your site! It makes it easy for Gigapan and Google Earth users to connect with you. Especially Google Earth — their user base is HUGE! I’ve seen estimates of 350-400 million downloads — probably higher than number of actual users, but still it’s a LOT of people! Get Google Earth, participate in Google Earth community.)

Whadya think? Forgive me for being temporarily trendy….

(UPDATE: Turns out the comments I’m complaining here are not comment spam — but man, they sure look like it. See Karoli’s comment below for an explanation.)

I love Flickr and other photo-sharing services. Not that I’m much of a photographer myself, but I love that Flickr makes it easy to designate and find Creative Commons-licensed images. I even have a Flickr CC search plugin on my Firefox search bar, and I use it daily. That’s because I prefer to include an illustrative image with every post. It just makes blogging more fun.

Whenever I use a CC-licensed image, I always comment back thank the owner and let them know I used it as an illustration, and where. I figure it’s the least I can do.

Because I leave lots of comments on Flickr to thank photographers for their CC-licensed images, I’ve been noticing lately though that comment spam seems to be picking up on Flickr. That’s a bummer.

Case in point: This morning I used this great duck picture by Wolpix to illustrate this E-Media Tidbits post by Steve Klein. When I went to leave my comment, I noticed many other comments that appear to be spam — they’re identical, except they’re left by different “users” — as if someone set up fake Flickr accounts for the purpose of leaving spam.

Spam in this environment especially sucks because it cuts off conversation and dilutes relevance.

What could Flickr do – or are they doing something I’m missing — to either prevent comment spam or discourage it by making it harder?

Last night, after a day of mostly overcast skies in Boulder, CO, the clouds finally dissolved around 3am leaving a clear view of the total lunar eclipse. I was out in my driveway with my husband, who’d set up his whompous Meade LX 90 12-inch telescope, and was thrilled to see the moon “get eaten away” and turn blood red.

The most lyrical explanation I found of why the moon turns red during a total lunar eclipse is from this Science@NASA story: “With the Sun blocked, you might expect utter darkness, but no, the ground at your feet is aglow. Why? Look back up at Earth. The rim of the planet seems to be on fire. Around Earth’s circumference you see every sunrise and sunset in the world — all at once.”

I used that same explanation to my spellbound six-year-old neighbor, who (along with his mom) joined us at the scope for an unforgettable hour of viewing and discussion. He totally got it — including when I pointed at the ground to show him where the sun was: “Think through the earth,” I said. “OK, I can do that,” he replied seriously. He was quite taken with the eclipse.

Of course this morning I wanted to see photos of the eclipse from around the world, so I went to Flickr. I found lots of great photos from last night’s eclipse. Many of them include, in captions, people’s experiences of seeing this eclipse. Worth checking out. My very favorite is this one (you’ve gotta read the caption).

I’m finding that when something visually interesting happens, I tend to go straight to the photo-sharing sites to see first-hand independently produced images — often before I go to mainstream news coverage of the event. Especially with something like an eclipse.

The thing is, when you view an eclipse it’s generally a very personal experience. It’s not just looking out into space, but having a sense of where you are standing, and what the viewing conditions are there. It’s an intriguing personal connection with space — but it’s basically about two points in space.

In contrast, browsing Flickr the day after an eclipse lets you experience the eclipse through others’ eyes (well, at least their cameras) from wherever it was visible around the globe. This goes beyond the connecting of two mere points, and your perspective on the eclipse expands.

Worth a look.