A Google A Day

Have you played agoogleaday?  It's Google's new interactive trivia game released this week.  The question gives a few sentences that serve as clues.  The player uses the first sentence's clues as Google Search keywords and explores the links to find the answers.  Each answer helps figure out the next sentence's search words, until the player finds the answer to the entire trivia question.  I think this is a fun way to learn random facts.  The first one I tried was about Robert and Rohan and their musician father.  In the end, I learned that Bob Marley had a ton of kids.  The creators are smart because they include links to let people share the question on Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, and email and to follow the question on Facebook and Twitter.  This allows them to stay in contact with the users who might forget to keep playing after their first try.

But, this game leaves me with questions about Google's motives.  Are they trying to increase their site hits or is it a way for them to interact with users?  Will they eventually give in to the pull of more profit and let the trivia question be sponsored (publicly or secretly) so that the answer ends up promoting a product, company, event, or person?  I'm sure that over time Google's motives will become clear and only time will tell if this becomes a popular game or not.

8 Goes Green, Trendsmap and O&CO

On the journalism side of life

 This week, my classmate Nan Wu and I worked on a blogpost for KOMU's 8 Goes Green project.   It aims to be "a guide for greening up."  With Spring arriving, our post was about keeping lawn products, like fertilizers and pesticides, out of our local watershed.  We also provided an alternative to chemicals - composting - and how to learn to make it.

One cool site to watch this week has been Trendsmap.  It provides a real-time look at the most used words and hashtags on Twitter around the world.  If you spend some time on the website, you can watch the words and hashtags grow/shrink and move around on the map.  Clicking on the links allows you see the tweets that mention the word or hashtag you clicked on.  I watched the word "anderson" - as in Mizzou's old men's head basketball coach and Arkansas's new head coach - move from being over the mid-Missouri area to being above Fayetteville, Ark., thanks to his decision to switch teams.

I also think it's interesting to look at where on the world map there's blank spots.  The three most prominent spots - besides Antarctica - are Eastern Africa, most of the Asian continent including Russia, China and Mongolia, and Northwestern Australia.  I believe it says something about how that area has adapted to technology, which says something about the economy.  But, I don't believe China fits into that assumption.  We know they use technology profusely and that the Chinese government tends to restrict access to certain internet sites.  The last reports I've seen show that China has blocked Twitter, which is reflected on the Trendsmap.

On the personal side of life

Last weekend, my family and I visited New York City.  We took a food tour of Greenwich Village with Foods of New York.  We visited a variety of places including a pizza joint, cheese shop, bakery, and Cuban restaurant.  My favorite spot was OLIVIERS & CO., better known as O&CO.  Their main product is olive oil made with hand-picked olives grown by family farmers mostly in the Mediterranean.  The olives are cold-pressed to keep their rich flavor, not hot-pressed like industrial growers.  We tasted basil olive oil on a toasted baguette slice with sea salt and I knew I had to have some for my own kitchen!

It had a rich olive flavor with the light, crispness of basil.  My bottle arrived Thursday and my Friday afternoon snack was exactly what we had in NYC.  I can't wait to try it on pasta and see how else I can work it into my cooking!

The World's Focus

We are trained as journalists to write and present information in a way that everyone can understand.  We don't cater to a specific industry so we don't write in lingo.  But with some stories, lingo is the only way to go.

I believe that the nuclear crisis in Japan is an example of when lingo is the language that works.  There's no way to explain in layman's terms what it means for a nuclear reactor that creates energy to melt down.  But that doesn't mean we shouldn't take the time to explain the unfamiliar terminology.  Present it as a sidebar, web extra, or graphic, like the New York Times did below.

Although the world has become increasingly concerned with the nuclear reactor meltdowns in Japan, most people outside of the nuclear science community don't understand what that means.  This interactive graphic goes through the process of a meltdown step by step, with an explanation at each turn.  This is important so that viewers understand the significance and global impact of a nuclear meltdown.  A little extra time makes the world of difference to viewers.  This should be a lesson to journalists when they find themselves talking in lingo - explain it.

A week ago, the biggest news story was the revolution in Libya.  Since last Friday, this critical story has been eclipsed by the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis in Japan.  But that doesn't mean Libya isn't a big story with global impact.  It shouldn't be placed in the backseat, because it, too, affects many people around the world.

Beluga Review

I've been hearing whispering about Beluga - a new application for phones and on the Internet that's similar to Twitter but lets the user only send the message to a specific group of people, called a "pod."  I decided to give it a try.

Six of my sorority sisters and I text constantly.  And we always send the messages to the other six.  When the iPhones could do group messaging, I got that set up.  But only five of us had AT&T iPhones, so we couldn't see the sassy responses from the two non-iPhoners.  Then one got the Verizon iPhone, which surprisingly and frustratingly doesn't connect with AT&T group messaging!  And the last dumb-phoner is getting an Android next month so we definitely wouldn't be able to see her messages.  My solution: a trial run of Beluga.

Beluga has an application that works on all smart phone platforms and the Internet.  I set up our pod and invited the girls.  By that afternoon, we had everyone on Beluga and we were seeing everyone's messages!  Here's how Beluga works on an iPhone::

On the homepage, the user can see all the pods they're in and people they might know.  It's possible to change the pod's image, which we've changed to a sorority symbol.  When some of the girls were trying to change their profile image, they ended up changing the pod image.  It was a quick fix and funny after more than one girl made that mistake!  Also, the pod can be named.  Yes, my pod's name looks funny, but it's all of our first initials and I wasn't feeling creative when I made it!

When the user selects their pod, this is what shows up.  The name of the pod is at the top and the comments are listed with the most recent one first.  This is an example of the chat and what it looks like when someone's added to the pod.

To send a message, the user taps where it says, "Send a message."  The user then has the option to turn on their geolocator, attach a photo, or just send text.  When the geolocator is used, an extra icon shows up next to the time stamp (exampled above in my messages).  Tapping on that links to a Google map with the location the person was when they sent the message.

It's possible to set up a push notification with Beluga.  I have it set so that it shows up like a text message (above) but doesn't buzz or make a sound.  It's the only push notification I have on my phone so I always see it.  I also like that it tells me which pod the message is from because I have a feeling I'll be in more pods soon!  My friend has push notifications for almost every app under the sun so sometimes she misses that there's a new message.  But, the app shows up with the red circled #1 that indicates there a message - even if there's 8 messages!
There's another feature of Beluga that I haven't tested yet.  It's an event planner within a pod, and I'm looking forward to using it soon!

 The website is just as easy as the app to use.  Nothing difficult to decode here and it lets your dumb-phone friends join in on the conversation!  It's sending my friend who still has a dumb phone text messages and letting her text back in response.

Potential Use in the Newsroom
I see two uses for this in the newsroom: intra-newsroom communications and community communications.  Beluga would be helpful for intra-newsroom communication during breaking news because everyone who was working on the story could see the information at the same time, instead of having to relay it.  It could also be used for teams, like the investigative team, to brainstorm stories or new leads to follow when they aren't able to get together for a meeting.  As with breaking news, it could keep the team in the loop during an investigation.


A community pod would be an interesting way to converse with your viewers.  Creating pods for weather spotters or other topics that create conversation within the community would be helpful in gathering information and photos from all over the viewing area.  It would still allow the newsroom to guide the conversation while the community talks within itself.


Overall, this app is working better than I expected it to.  It's solved a problem for me and actually increased my communications with my friends.  And it's worked well on every phone!  I plan to continuing using this and possibly joining or creating more pods - even within the newsroom.