Recently Frank Taylor blogged about a cool Google Earth trick that could be an intriguing visual online news tool: homemade street views.

The example he cites is from Taiwan, where developer Steven Ho lives. Taylor wrote:

“[Ho] has been waiting for signs Google would bring Street View to Taiwan, but finally couldn’t wait any longer. So, he spent a few days making his own Street View panoramas for National Taiwan University campus. It turns out March is the month when the Indian azalea bloom, so he decided to take his street view photos along the famous Royal Palm boulevard. Steven took the time to not only take 150 panoramas, but also process his KML [Keyhole markup language, which is to Google Earth what HTML is to Web browsers] so it looks and acts just like Google Earth’s Street View imagery. He also added in some 3D buildings for the campus and the palm trees.”

The result is impressive. If you have Google Earth installed (and I recommend upgrading to Google Earth 5.0, which was released in February), then download Ho’s Taiwan street view and open that file in Google Earth. After it zooms in on Taiwan, click on any of the camera icons to start your visual wandering of the campus.

If you don’t have Google Earth, here’s a video screencast of what the experience looks like:

This made me think: What if a news organization offered this kind of immersive experience related to a news story or ongoing topic?…

Google obviously can’t update its street view imagery too often — and even Google’s eyes can’t be everywhere (as the Taiwan project demonstrates). So what if news orgs, journalists, or bloggers rolled their own Google Earth street views to:

• Show the effects of a disaster such as a flood, hurricane, earthquake, or tornado. Or (on the bright side) the effects of a redevelopment project or environmental cleanup.
• Offer unique insight into the local environment: Culture, architecture, economy, etc.
• Walkthrough wayback machine. Overlay original current imagery with historic imagery from Google Earth (or elsewhere) to create a sense of transition from past to present.

It used to be that creating a Google Earth KML layer required a bit of a learning curve. Google’s Panoramio service makes that a bit easier — at least for very basic projects — by allowing you to upload photos and automating the KML generation process. You can also use Panoramio to enable photo browsing via Google Maps street view.

While many Google Earth developers are creating map layers related to current events (like the Fargo flood), there don’t as yet appear to be many mainstream news media projects involving Google Earth (aside from the New York Times and National Geographic).

Google, not surprisingly, generates a Google Earth map layer for Google News — which is a fascinating way to discover current news based on geography. To activate, go to the “layers” menu in the Google Earth sidebar, and expand the “gallery” to view the “Google News” layer.

Seems to me that Google Earth is a field ripe with engaging journalistic opportunity — especially considering the popular Google Earth iPhone application.

There’s a very active Google Earth community where you can find ideas and help. And the Ogle Earth blog by Stefan Greens is a great resource that “documents how Google Earth and other neogeographical tools are affecting geopolitics.” (Read: News value)

(NOTE: I originally published this article in Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits.)

Huessner interviewed me for this story because I’ve been blogging about it on Contentious.com and on E-Media Tidbits. She chose to include a few highly edited and interpreted quotes from me that I think grossly misrepresent my own views and the character of our conversation.

Yeah, being a journalist, I know that no one is ever completely happy with their quotes. I’ve been misquoted plenty in the past, and normally I just roll with it. But this particular case is an especially teachable moment for my journalist colleagues in mainstream media about understanding and covering the role of social media in today’s media landscape.

Today’s a pretty busy day for me, but I didn’t want to let this go unsaid any longer. So I made a little Seesmic video response to this story. Here I am speaking strictly for myself — not on behalf of any of my clients or colleagues. Yes, I am very emphatic here and somewhat critical. Please understand that my frustration is borne of seeing this particular problem over and over again.

Here’s a quick roundup of social media to check for updates and reactions. Some of this information is produced by professional news orgs and journalists, most is not. Use your own judgment regarding which to trust…

Twitter (UPDATED): It appears that on the ground in Mumbai, not many people are using Twitter to post firsthand reports. However, I am finding Twitter useful for links to blog posts, mainstream news reports, and photos and videos — which people from all over the world are monitoring and sharing.

• A general search for “Mumbai” will collect everything.
• The hashtag #mumbai is slightly more selective.
• The hashtag #mumbaifamilies is helping connect loved ones.
• You can also read geotagged tweets originating from within 15 miles of Mumbai.

Social news sites and citizen journalism (UPDATED):

• Wikipedia had a current events page, 26 November 2008 Mumbai attacks.
• Mahalo also is tracking the news.
• NowPublic has multimedia coverage and an update on Twitter coverage.
• Ground Report also has coverage.

Blogs: (Updated. New items added to top)

• Canadian journalist Mathew Ingram posted about how this episode indicates that Yes, Twitter is a source of journalism — echoing the theme of my recent post: Can you commit journalism via Twitter?
• Children of Bombay: Eloquent first-hand account of escaping an attack scene from Sonia Faleiro.
• A Mumbai Help blog has been set up, and several prominent Indian bloggers are participating.
• The community blog Mumbai Metblogs has lots of coverage, including photos and video.
• India Uncut offers blogger Amit Varma’s firsthand account of escaping the scene of an attack.
• Gaurav Mishra offers a roundup: Real Time Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks.
• Maitri Venkat-Ramani also has a good roundup.
• On Global Voices Online, Neha Viswanathan posted a roundup of reports from several Indian blogs.

Organization sites:

• My E-Media Tidbits colleague Alan Abbey noted that the Jewish organization Chabad has been reporting on its own site about one of the hostage situations — at the Chabad House in Mumbai. Initial report and followup.

Maps: Here’s an embeddable Google Map of the attack sites

Flickr: Vinu has several photos from an attack scene.

In addition, here are some especially interesting efforts by pro journalists and news orgs:

The South Asian Journalists Association is hosting live discussions with journalists and experts in Mumbai and the U.S. about the terrorist attacks on hotels and elsewhere in Mumbai.

NDTV is streaming live Indian TV coverage.

I really used to hate stereograms.

When they became popular in the early 1990s, they often reduced me to serious frustration and headaches. I would stare at them — glare at them, really — trying to will their embedded 3D images to leap out. Everyone else seemed to enjoy these hidden illusions with ease. But my eyes and brain stubbornly refused to do the trick.

Then one day, I realized that I was looking at a dolphin. I just glanced at the cover of a book of stereogram art, and there it was. I was delighted to discover that the image wasn’t “leaping out” at me — rather, I was “seeing into” it. I wasn’t even sure how I’d started to see the hidden picture. All of the sudden, and quietly, it just worked.

Years later, I’ve come to realize that whenever I’ve identified a key mission or purpose I should pursue, it’s emerged (very much like that dolphin) from the background of the world around me. I get a sense that some vision is waiting to be seen, and I prepare my mind to be open to it. Then eventually I see it, and it feels like I always should have seen it.

In contrast, whenever I’ve tried the top-down, primarily rational (rather than intuitive) approach to choosing a course in life, I usually end up not really wanting what I’ve been working for, or liking what I’ve done — which is frustrating and demoralizing on many levels.

I’ve been quiet on this blog lately, mostly because I’ve been spending more time conversing, research, reading, and journaling. To be honest, I’ve been searching for purpose. For a couple of years now — although I’ve been doing a lot of interesting work, meeting a lot of interesting people, and learning a lot of interesting things — privately I’ve been feeling like I’ve been flailing around, seeking direction and purpose.

Finally, I feel like the picture is starting to emerge. Here is the outline so far…

• Relevance: I think I can help foster a greater practical understanding of relevance — connecting the dots between information and people. This could, in turn, help people create automated tools that can spot and convey relevance. Imagine a “relevance engine” that could scan a seemingly random group of news stories or datasets and indicate not just which ones are probably most relevant to you, but explain how each is relevant.
• Helping people discover and share useful information. On this front, I think I could be most immediately useful by helping to free professional and amateur journalists from the constraints of traditional news organizations (most of which probably won’t be around much longer, and which have also succumbed to a toxic culture that directly undermines journalism and communities). Journalists have developed very useful skills, and I don’t want that value to be lost as this particular corporate house of cards collapses.
• Energy. My work and interests keep bringing me back to energy (electricity and fuel). It truly makes almost every other good in the world possible. Plus, the fragility, unevenness, and difficulties of how energy is produced, transported, and used around the world lie at the root of many thorny problems (war, poverty, drinking water, medical care, climate change, etc.). I want to directly support the development of more diverse, less destructive, and less centralized energy sources around the world — as well as more efficient ways to use that energy.

…That’s what I’ve gleaned so far from the patterns in the world around me and how they’re resonating in me. I have a sense that there’s a deeper purpose that unifies these three missions — but I can’t quite articulate that yet. Still, I do believe it’s important to keep my personal focus on practicality, not theory — on helping people in the real world. And I am passionate about all these missions.

I’m curious what Contentious.com readers think of this emerging outline for the next big phase of my life and career — as well as my intuitive process for choosing direction.

How do you figure out what you should be doing in life? Are you rational about it, intuitive, or both? I’d love to hear how other people wrestle with this kind of quest — or if it’s even a conscious effort you make.

Also read what UK Tidbits correspondent Paul Bradshaw has to say about this phenomenon on his Online Journalism Blog. He offers a ton of links to places where social media-based coverage and analysis of the quake is happening

Meanwhile, from Seesmic’s Newspod video alerts I heard that there’s a lot of on-the-spot video happening on YouTube. Here are a couple of videos I found…

News is going to be more and more like this, I think…

For a change of pace, here’s an audio podcast. My good friend and environmental journalism colleague Dale Willman just got back from a three-week trip to Indonesia where he was training radio journalists there how to do an environmental radio show — and just how to do radio production, period.

Yesterday Dale and I had a fun conversation about his trip, the state of media in Indonesia, and why text messaging is so popular there.

Listen now! (Or right-click to download)

Dale Willman

In the studio: One of the Indonesian radio journalists Dale helped to train.

Picking up on my post yesterday, Univ. of Florida journalism professor Mindy McAdams challenged me (and her other readers) to translate my quick list of what j-schools should be teaching into a something more testable and measurable that could be translated into a curriculum.

Here’s my first shot at that:

• Content management systems (including blogging tools): First, I’d have the students run a group blog on a topic of their choosing for a year to get comfortable with the content and commenting apects of blogging. (A group blog is likely to get more activity and discussion than individual blogs.) This blog should be based on an expandable, customizable tool like WordPress. Then the students should be taught the basics of information architecture, and from that figure out how to expand or customize their blogs to deliver or integrate new kinds of content or services. This could be as simple as finding and installing WordPress plugins to add features, or integrating content from other places (such as Flickr or del.icio.us). The goal would be to get them to not just understand, but demonstrate that on their own they can envision, research, evaluate, and act upon options to do more with their content online. There’s a lot you can do without getting too geeky. They need to gain the confidence that many options are within their personal grasp — they don’t always need to get permission or beg someone else to do things for them.

There’s a lot more on my list, of course…

• Mobile tools and mobile media strategies. These students all have cell phones anyway. Require them to subscribe to mobile news and information services, and critique the quality of the service and user experience. Also, require them to create whatever kind of content their phones support (photos, video, audio, GPS data, even just SMS to Twitter, etc.) and post or stream it from their cell phones. Include participatory exercises based on SMS or MMS to include students who don’t have data plans on their phones. Free services like NowPublic, Flickr, Qik and CNN’s iReport could be especially helpful and even fun for your exercises.

• Social media. The point here is to help students learn a key tool for engaging communities, while also gaining experience with how influence works and information travels through social media. I suggest starting with whatever social media services most of the students are already using (like Facebook, MySpace, Ning, LinkedIn, YouTube, or Twitter) and explore both the one-to-one and group interaction options through exercises. For groups, it’s probably better to get them involved with existing, active groups on these services — rather than try to start a new group from scratch. Where possible, use both web-based and mobile options for these services. They should learn to use these tools for community outreach, story/issue research, and promotion of their work.

• Economics and business theory/models. Journalism students should be taking courses in the media business that offer the fundamentals of historical, current, and emerging media business models. They should learn what budgets and balance sheets look like, how grant funding and investment works, and how to evaluate the economic environment they’re operating in — including how it’s changing. Get them used to seeing the big picture and looking ahead. Practical skills could include analyzing the economic environment of the local community, spotting emerging trends that could offer journalistic or other media opportunities, and writing a basic business plan to capitalize on those opportunities.

• Business skills. This could involve evaluating and estimating revenue options from grants to investors to advertising to subscriptions to partnerships and more, as well as knowing what steps to take to pursue that funding. Example exercise: Develop a strategy and action plan for increasing online revenues for the campus or local daily paper — including calculation of expenses and revenues, and a timeline for implementation. In addition, they should be aware of what it takes to start and run a business — requirements for taxes, healthcare, getting SMS shortcodes, working with advertisers, etc. No part of the business that supports their journalism should be alien to them.

• Management skills. I’m envisioning this both from an entrepreneurial and organizational perspective. In all exercises, put the students in a decisionmaking role and guide them through learning how to manage time, resources, and people — whether employees, collaborators, or community members. For instance, if a class project is increasing online revenues for the campus paper, divide that mission into sub-tasks, assign someone to manage each part of that project, and require them to make decisions and delegate. Teach them how to use tools like Basecamp to coordinate team efforts. In fact, it might be a good idea to coordinate projects with other j-schools around the country or world, since increasingly in the media business project teams are widely distributed. The point is to encourage them to take charge of the process, not just to pigeonhole themselves as content creators.

• Marketing, advertising, and SEO. In addition to taking a marketing basics class oriented toward media products and services, j-students should learn the basics of search engine optimization — since findability generally translates into traffic, engagement, and revenue for most media ventures. Exercises can include learning to use Wordtracker to optimize headlines, stories, and metadata to increase both traffic and relevance; using Google Analytics to analyze traffic patterns to a news/info site (such as for the campus paper) and suggest strategies to boost traffic and engagement; developing and running Adwords campaigns (with a modest budget) to promote a class project; researching niche ad networks that might help support various types of coverage or beats, etc.

• Community engagement and management. This is perhaps one of the most marketable skills any journalist can have for the next several years or decades. The point is to get them used to creating news as part of a conversation, rather than simply as a one-way product for publication. It’s about promoting constructive public discourse through active engagement. Exercises could include participating in an active community forum; working as a volunteer moderator for an active forum where contentious topics arise; taking and active role in editing and discussing a Wikipedia page of interest; helping to coordinate (not just cover) local events like town hall meetings, conferences, or festivals; participating in or running local meetup groups, etc. These experiences tech how to handle conflict, foster consensus and diversity, produce events, and demonstrate respect and understanding for communities in order to build credibility. In this respect, working through local government, advocacy groups, social service agencies, neighborhood associations, and ethnic or religious groups could be as valuable (maybe more valuable) than working through journalistic or media organizations.

…I realize that my list sounds like a hell of a lot of stuff, but I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface in terms of what today’s journalists really need in order to take advantage of current opportunities, spot emerging opportunities, and take charge of their own destinies (rather than relying on a paternalistic news org to shelter them while they write, write, write).

I realize also that there may be resistance in journalism schools to much of what I propose, for reasons ranging from “we’re not a vocational school,” to IT staff resisting implementing the kinds of tools I’ve mentioned, to the need to integrate curricula more closely with business schools, to the tenured faculty who must teach at least some of these topics not knowing or caring much about them.

I’m not saying this would be easy. But I do think what I’ve outlined, in addition to teaching core journalism skills and values, is what today’s j-students really need to prepare for the kinds of careers they are most likely to have — and the kinds of media they can play a key role in inventing or developing.

Thoughts?

(And thanks, Mindy, for making me think this through more.)

This morning as I was making tea, I learned via NPR that Pakistani opposition leader and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated at a campaign rally in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

Google News already offers a slew of mainstream news coverage of the assassination — based almost entirely on reporting done outside Pakistan, since tight restrictions on journalists remain in force in Pakistan even though President Pervez Musharraf lifted lifted six weeks of emergency rule on Dec. 15. (More on that country’s press restrictions from the International Federation of Journalists and the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists.)

Given the current dearth of available professional journalism from within Pakistan, the country’s lively blogosphere — much of it in English — has become a key source of original and diverse news, analysis, commentary, and context from around that troubled nation. Today especially would be a good time to start paying close attention to Pakistani blogs.

One of the easiest places to get started is a blog aggregator with the unlikely name of Teeth Maestro…

Teeth Maestro is run by Dr. Awab Alvi, a Pakistani dentist practicing in Karachi. This site offers an RSS feed and e-mail alerts — but for a couple of months now I’ve been following alerts from this site via Twitter.

In fact, I would recommend that if you’re skeptical of the value of microblogging services like Twitter, you should definitely sign up for Twitter today (if you haven’t already) and start following Teeth there. The key value to keep in mind about Twitter: Since it’s mobile-friendly for posting and receiving, and since it just works, it’s proven exceptionally useful during crises.

Since the Twitter site is rather a blunt instrument for using the service, you might want to download and install Snitter — a slick third-party Twitter interface based on the Adobe Air platform, for Windows or Mac. Snitter offers many nice interface options, include optional pop-up/fade-out mini-window notifications of new “tweets.” There are many Twitter applications to suit various devices and needs, including various mobile interfaces. You can find a fairly comprehensive list on the Twitter fan wiki.

Another great resource for following Pakistani blogs today is the Pakistan section of Global Voices Online, a popular blog aggregator that syndicates blogs from over 100 countries. As a matter of fact, GVO editor Georgia Poppelwell tipped me off about Teeth on Twitter at a November conference in Catalonia, and I’ve been following both Teeth and the GVO Pakistan section ever since. (Thanks, Georgia!)

What do you think of the contribution Pakistani blogs are making to the coverage of and public conversation about the Bhutto assassination and other current events in that country? What other resources would you recommend? Please comment below.

(NOTE: I originally wrote this for Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits. This is a re-edited cross-post.)

However, my Macbook is not doing so well. Something went wrong with the power system and I can’t charge it. Most likely the electrical outlet adaptor I’d been using fried out and took with it either my laptop’s power adaptor or battery. I don’t think the hard drive or motherboard is fried because the machine worked until the charge ran out completely. But I cannot charge my machine at all right now, that’ll have to wait until I’m stateside. Sunday or Monday I’ll be visiting an Apple store in the states to diagnose the problem, replace the components, or replace the machine.

I’m just accepting this as a backhand blessing from the Goddess of Serendipity, who continues to smile upon me (or laugh at me, I’m not sure which sometimes). It’s good for me to take an enforced online vacation. I’ll live.

Anyway, Barcelona ROCKS! Come here if you can. Meanwhile I’m off to tour a Gothic Cathedral, followed by more tapas. I could live like this, I think — although I would need a functioning computer as some point or my head might implode.

Right now I’m attending the second day of the Seminari Internacional de Periodisme Digital, held at the chic modern Neapolis center at Vilanova i la Geltru, on the Spanish coast of the Mediterranean. I’m posting highlights from my notes via Twitter. If you want to follow me there, I’m agahran on Twitter.

The session about to begin now: Citizen journalist case studies. Pau Llop of the citJ site Bottup (“Bottom Up”), and Marta Torres and Laura Rahoa of BdeBarna.