News Design School

Deadline approaching for Data Journalism Awards

Bob — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 20:20:12 +0000

The Data Journalism Awards are organized by the Global Editors Network, Google, and the European Journalism Centre, a Netherlands-based nonprofit that has been running data journalism workshops for years.

The jury that will choose the best data journalism of the year includes representatives from ProPublica, the New York Times, Thomson-Reuters, the Sunlight Foundation and La Nacion. Judges will select a winner for local/regional and national/international work from each the following three categories.

data-driven investigative journalism
data visualization & storytelling
data-driven applications

The deadline for submissions is April 10, 2012. Any data journalism submitted must have been published or broadcast between April 11, 2011, and April 10, 2012. The winners of the data journalism awards will be announced at the Global News Network’s World Summit in Paris on May 31, 2012.

(From The Huffington Post)

Review: Ghostery for Firefox works well

Bob — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 22:01:38 +0000

I have been getting more and more ticked off about spam in my inbox, unwanted text messages (I have one loser who keeps changing his/her phone number to avoid the block on my phone, all to send me a “Hey-y-y” text), and robo-calls. Gads people, leave me alone. WTH?

I use Norton anti-virus, so I have been free from viruses and worms, though my computer has been attacked. I use Ad-Aware and occasionally have to remove something. So with all this hoo-hah about Facebook’s new privacy guidelines, I got fired up about being followed online.

This brought me to Ghostery. Ghostery is a browser-based plug-in tool (I use it with Firefox, but it also works with IE, Chrome, Safari and Opera). It scans each page before loading and looks for scripts and other elements, such as tracking cookies and even iframes.

The neat thing is that you can customize what you want to block and what you want accept, down to individual companies and/or web sites. For instance, you could allow Google Analytics or AdSense to run while totally blocking ad-tracking sites.

It does slow down some page loads while it sifts through the list of what you allow and what you want blocked. But we are talking a half-second at most. I can live with that for feeling a little safer online.

All in all I am happy with it, but then again, I seem to be the only one I know who is happy with Norton. Your mileage may vary.

Ghostery can be found here

No related posts.

Facebook, Google are selling who you are

Bob — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 22:56:55 +0000

“If it’s free, then you are the product being sold.”

I have said before that the media don’t sell time or space to advertisers, they sell eyeballs. Our eyeballs. And the attention we give to their advertising.

Level 1 is when people make “things,” such as furniture, automobiles or food. In economics, I have heard this referred to as “use value.” In other words, people produced items that had value because they used it.

Level 2 is when people work for someone or a company and receive money for it, their labor has “exchange value.” This is at the heart of the capitalist system. This holds true even in the current Information Age in which people move ideas from place to place instead of physical items.

Level 3 brings us to Facebook. How in the world is Facebook worth $1 billion? It’s free. Facebook sells some ads, but $1bn? Level 3 is when a company sells US, or rather sells information about our online behavior. So people aren’t doing any kind of work. Their mere existence and day-to-day activities are what produces value, BUT they themselves don’t get any value from it.

It is a B2B money-making situation using people — us — as the method. I suppose you could argue that we do get some value out of using Facebook, connecting with friends through posts or messaging. But is it worth selling a record of your behavior by a company who is in it only for the money.

But I find it most distressing, almost as in the film The Matrix, that we are being used by a large corporate entity to make it money. Google is kind of the same situation. If you are still allowing Google to track your searches, then it is selling information about you and your interests and making good money by watching you and what you do online.

It’s kind of creepy if you ask me. I may have to opt out. If that’s even possible in today’s world.

Ah, letterpress. Paper. Ink.

Bob — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:08:30 +0000

I love old printing. I guess because I, in fact, am now old. Long gone are my days in a composing room, reading lead type upside down and backwards. Sigh.

Here is a brief vid about letterpress printing in one of the few shops in the UK still pressing ink on paper.

Upside Down, Left To Right: A Letterpress Film from Danny Cooke on Vimeo.

No related posts.

Some good deals on design books from MoMA

Bob — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 23:10:09 +0000

The Museum of Modern Art digs into print material this week with two events for lovers of letters. The one of interest to those interested in newspaper design: MoMA stores are currently offering 50 percent discounts on more than 1,300 book titles, including Type Directors Club’s Typography 29 and Architectures of Herzog & de Meuron: Portraits, by Thomas Ruff, through Jan. 24 (after the 24th, the discount will increase to 75 percent until Feb. 13).

Check out the MoMA web site: http://www.moma.org