Innovative Interactivity (II)

Ten free tools to manage your personal brand online

By Tracy Boyer ⋅ May 27, 2009 ⋅ View Comments

Now, after you have finished the major overhaul of your Web presence with my tips from yesterday, the next important step is to listen to what others are saying about you, your site, and your company. Managing your personal brand is incredibly important these days, especially with the introduction of social media. Thankfully, there are many free tools that will do this for you and deliver the results right to your RSS reader and/or email account.

Five self promotion tips to help land a job

By Tracy Boyer ⋅ May 26, 2009 ⋅ View Comments

With jobs getting harder to come by, it is increasingly more important to promote yourself creatively and thoroughly. Regardless if you are in between jobs, still in school, or employed, you need to spend some more time on you – professionally speaking. Here are five tips on what you can do to enhance your online presence to ensure that potential employers will notice you.

Post’s onBeing 2.0 and Times’ [LENS] blog launched

By Tracy Boyer ⋅ May 25, 2009 ⋅ View Comments

While I was away, two exciting projects launched: Washington Post updated their onBeing series with a new 3-D interface, and the New York Times introduced [LENS], a photojournalism and multimedia blog with horizontal scrolling. Both of them caught my eye initially because of their innovative interfaces, but held my interest because they will provide top-notch multimedia content from a variety of sources.

The importance of professional organizations in our industry

By Tracy Boyer ⋅ May 20, 2009 ⋅ View Comments

With tight budgets these days, memberships to professional organizations might be the first to get the boot. However, I would argue that these organizations are one of the only things keeping us going in these hard times. Think about it: where else do passionate members congregate at annual meetings to better their craft, and dedicated volunteers organize and judge competitions to highlight exceptional work?

Behind the scenes of “One Week in Iraq”

By Tracy Boyer ⋅ May 18, 2009 ⋅ View Comments

In this edition of “Behind the Scenes,” Bauer Media radio producer Adam Westbrook discusses his recent project, “One Week in Iraq.” Commenting about the project Westbrook said, “The whole process has been a real learning curve for me, and I’ve had to teach myself a whole new raft of skills from slideshow production to css.”

Data visualization tools for free or cheap

By Tracy Boyer ⋅ May 14, 2009 ⋅ View Comments

After finally taking the time to watch the NewsU webinar on data visualization that I blogged about back in March, I was inclined to research more about different apps, tools and concepts required to create compelling data visualization interactives. Interestingly enough, I have found that regardless of owning the Adobe suite, anyone can put together stunning graphics with open-source applications.

Recession-proof highlights for multimedia enthusiasts

By Tracy Boyer ⋅ May 13, 2009 ⋅ View Comments

Are you in the blues from all of this bad news lately? Today has been a day full of pleasant surprises for me, with links to free tutorials, blog entries full of invaluable advice, and even a new multimedia company on the horizon! Dig into all of this great stuff and feel the excitement … there are good times ahead of us, folks!

Behind the scenes of New York Times “Olympics Medal Count Map”

By Tracy Boyer ⋅ May 11, 2009 ⋅ View Comments

I’m finally getting around to catching up on all of my side reading before I head out of the country. I skimmed through New York Times’ “Talk to the Newsroom” article on the interactive news team back in January, but I never went back to read all of the latest questions until now. One Q&A in particular caught my attention because it described how they built the classic “Olympics Medal Count” map that everyone raved about. It also led me to another blog by producer Lee Bryon describing his role in the project. If you were like me and also missed this conversation, take the time to read it now as it really helps to get the creative juices flowing.

Bombay Flying Club launches Wasteland

By Tracy Boyer ⋅ May 10, 2009 ⋅ View Comments

Bombay Flying Club launched their latest multimedia project over the weekend, with a version running in Canada’s premier newspaper, the Globe and Mail. “Wasteland” is the first chapter in what will be an on-going series about industrial pollution in the Third World. Shot with the Canon 5D Mark II, and produced by four exceptional journalists, it’s no wonder that the project is impressive to say the least.

Summer series – calling all guest bloggers

By Tracy Boyer ⋅ May 7, 2009 ⋅ View Comments

Thanks to everyone who took part in the poll earlier this week to help me decide what to do with II over the summer. The results were almost dead even to a) not blog at all until fall, b) have many guest bloggers, and c) blog beforehand and set their publish dates. So, I am going to take your advice and combine b and c. (I don’t think I could just walk away from this blog for three months, but I’m happy to see that my dedicated readers would return regardless!) So, if you are interested in writing a guest post, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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Archive for May, 2009