I don’t get to teach technical writing much anymore, so when I touched on it in a new media class I took the opportunity to freshen up some older web resources. A business memo, a lab report, or a professional e-mail are all variations on the basic report structure described in this document. Feel free to modify these guidelines…
Newspapers and their fans make a lot of noise about the professionalism of journalism, that journalism needs to be paid for, that the Internet is no substitute for the hard core objectivity and insightful commentary newspapers offer. and so on. Whether these arguments are true or not does not interest me. I have found…
As gimmicky as “steampunk Huck and Tom” sounds, the characters actually may be quite well suited for steampunk. Twain’s novel Tom Sawyer Abroad was a play on Jules Verne-style adventure stories, and featured a mad professor and his absurd, futuristic airship. And Tom Sawyer had his own mystery story with Tom Sawyer, Detective. However, Twain…
Word. This list was published in 2008, so it’s unthinkable that student could graduate from a journalism program today without these competencies. I’d have to add “the fundamentals of coding a multimedia project” and I want to add “the ability to mine a database for a story.” With all the new changes brought about by…
Grammar signifies more than just a person’s ability to remember high school English. I’ve found that people who make fewer mistakes on a grammar test also make fewer mistakes when they are doing something completely unrelated to writing — like stocking shelves or labeling parts. In the same vein, programmers who pay attention to how…
As tablets, smartphones, and microportables of various sorts become more common, this is not a surprise. It’s really only a question of when. Newsweek will eventually transition to an online publication, owner IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI) said today, marking the beginning of the end for the magazine’s 79-year run as a print weekly. —Bloomberg.
Imagine writing a letter of reccommendation for one of the hundreds of students in your money-saving Massive Open Online Course: I’m pleased to recommend the person who identifies herself as Amy Clayton in my MOOC of 11,389 students, Education and Society. I have known Ms. Clayton since she began the course on May 16, 2012…
On the topic of massively open online courses, an academic says what many of us who teach online are thinking. Do you really WANT TO SAVE SOME MONEY using INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY? Ok, try this one on for size. Why weren’t you blathering on asking why the heck we all bought Blackboard or if you really…
A certificate of debt, found in a regional archive, attests that Mittenwalde lent Berlin 400 guilders on May 28 1562, to be repaid with six percent interest per year. According to Radio Berlin Brandenburg (RBB), the debt would amount to 11,200 guilders today, which is roughly equivalent to 112 million euros ($136.79 million). —Reuters.com. But…
In the past few days, I’ve read a few of those head-shaking “you won’t believe how poorly college students write” essays, which always make me uncomfortable. They typically quote student “mistakes” out of context — maybe the assignment was to brainstorm or take risks, rather than produce polished gems; maybe the student is not a…
There’s a lot of interest in infographics nowadays, but doing them correctly — and making them look simple — is not easy. From 9to5 Mac: Nielsen released smartphone purchasing data yesterday that depicted Apple grabbing more than a third of the total smartphone market in the most recently surveyed month. Android was over 50 percent. That is almost…
Google, which declined to comment on the gender breakdown of its social network, has a long tradition of using its own products internally before releasing them to the public. Products like Gmail and Google Buzz had lengthy incubation periods inside the company before they were released to the public. But that internal testing process can…
It’s a stretch to say Atari has turned 40, since there isn’t much left but the name, but this is still an interesting read. Companies began collapsing and Atari was soon sold to a man named Jack Tramiel. Over the next decade, Atari made computers, a game console called Jaguar and a handheld game machine…
Get to the point. Make it clear from the get-go what your release is about. Don’t try to be cute. I used to get releases all the time from PR people who buried the news or tried to get creative with their writing. Sometimes, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what some…
Even the things we do for fun – playing sports, joining a band, riding a horse, writing a story – you have made into a competition. You’ve taken our creativity and told us that it matters not because it fulfills us, but because we can sell it to a college and reap the returns on…
Great satire from The Onion. Breaking Story So New Reporter Literally Has No Information
Close enough is not good enough in journalism. One of those versions, which was broadcast on the ‘Today’ show, contained an erroneous repetition of a key question and answer – about whether Sandusky was sexually attracted to young boys, Nils Frederiksen, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania attorney general said on Sunday. The repetition, Sandusky’s lawyers…
Microsoft executive Steve Sinofsky jogs to the side of the stage to replace a frozen Surface tablet computer, during an otherwise slick product demo in Los Angeles. Video: Microsoft’s Surface tablet ‘fails’ during Los Angeles showcase – Telegraph.
While signing up for some online training for work, I found this screen, which seems to ask me to grant my consent to permit the service provider to use my private information in one of zero ways.
I find it really amazing that it has taken this long for Amazon to finally shrink that ridiculously huge margin, which persisted like fake stirrups on a horseless carriage.