http://pubforge.org/pubblog Talking about open source collaboration for public broadcasting Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:17:55 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Most public media sites, even those with a strong news focus, show relatively poor overall loyalty stats, with the average visitor coming twice a month or less. The standard report segments in Google Analytics don't give a very clear picture of what differentiates the loyal visitor, who returns twice a ... http://pubforge.org/pubblog/2009/06/22/how-to-track-behavior-of-loyal-visitors-in-google-analytics/ Bill Haenel of Haenel Communications Technologies has added geotagging functions to the main content modules of North Country Public Radio's custom implementation of his open-source CMS, Public Media Manager. These features operate within both the news module and the events calendar module, adding precise geocoordinates to individual stories and events, derived from text addresses entered ... http://pubforge.org/pubblog/2009/06/01/how-to-get-your-content-on-the-map-via-georss/ Somewhat related to John’s post about related news content from Google, I’ve been looking into ways to enhance our content by including references and information from other sources. I haven’t had time to do more than compile some links and try a couple of apis, but the kinds of things I’m interested in ... http://pubforge.org/pubblog/2009/05/13/mashups-and-related-info-sidebars/ I found an interesting feature of the Google News Service. We had our RSS feeds added to Google News' sources, so our news stories show up in the local news page. I noticed that when one of our stories showed up as a Google News Alerts email, there was link ... http://pubforge.org/pubblog/2009/04/27/finding-related-content-through-google-news/ Recalling a theme I heard throughout the Public Media Conference this year, I have been experimenting with a Google tool designed to tag and curate content. I have used Google Reader before, but never really thought it did anything that useful that my Outlook didn't do. Then I found the ... http://pubforge.org/pubblog/2009/04/11/curating-content/ It took me a long time to warm up to Twitter. On first glance, it looked like a huge potential time-suck with little payback--one more social media platform to distract my audience from my main site. I'd see that question header "What are you doing?" and the answer was always ... http://pubforge.org/pubblog/2009/04/10/how-to-use-twitter-as-part-of-the-public-media-toolbox/ At ncpr.org, I have created a map version of our Photo of the Day feature showing our last 25 selections. It works by using geolocation features at the photo-sharing site Flickr, passing the geocode feed address to Google Maps, then embedding the resulting map in the site. Some suggested uses: Map a ... http://pubforge.org/pubblog/2009/04/08/how-to-make-an-embeddable-photo-map-using-flickr-and-google/ Jeffrey Zeldman, publisher and editor-in-chief of A List Apart, spoke to several interesting web development issues in a new video posted on Big Think. Though not as smart or celebrated as Zeldman, I've been thinking similar things: we're at a point where open source tools, and open sharing of core ... http://pubforge.org/pubblog/2009/04/07/jeffrey-zeldman-on-the-future-of-open-source-css-and-cmss/ My friend Kevin Reynan from the Open Media Project traveled to SXSW in Austin last week, and captured an interview with Lawrence Lessig...you know, the Stanford law professor and the guy behind Creative Commons. (Kevin says "please thank whoever paid for the beer and food and the PBS happy hours during ... http://pubforge.org/pubblog/2009/03/31/lawrence-lessig-at-sxsw-on-open-media-and-public-broadcasting/ I think we would all agree that the Public Media Conference was outstanding this year, with so much information that we can use that it can feel a little overwhelming. I know that several times I heard the wisdom of setting priorities and focusing on what steps we can take ... http://pubforge.org/pubblog/2009/02/23/what-i-learned-from-ima09/