I’m obsessed with social networks. From the moment I started playing with Facebook YEARS ago I saw an amazing opportunity. It’s an amazing way to stay in touch with people and share connections. THEN Facebook added applications… And that’s when I saw the amazing opportunities for newsrooms and educators. Students could add applications and share the information that matters to them. I jumped into the applications game and challenged my students to build one for KOMU. In the meantime, everyone from NPR to the BBC have applications that share news and information. Heck, even Google has a news feed reader. But now Google has finally shared why Microsoft bought into a piece of Facebook… That’s because Google has its own social network it plans to launch. The idea is to socially network all of the information you’re already gathering on Google. It’s a way to socially link all of the applications we all use on Google: iGoogle, Blogger, Picassa, Orkut, Maps. All of the tech blogs have the details. I kind of feel like Google is late… But the company tends to surprise me.Honestly, as a news nerd, I’m excited to see the newest opportunities to share information… Whoever is offering it, I want to try to delivery information with the help of that tool. Now wouldn’t it be great if I could beta what they’re calling Makamaka?

Every week, I give students the chance to report “differently.” They have a chance to work with broadcast students who are working on “traditional” news while they can take the topic and expand upon it. What is fun is seeing the amazing work the students came up with. They ranged from audio slideshows to a couple of different interactive maps — one an interactive Flash map, the other an interactive Google map. I’m really proud.

The massive fires in California were an amazing opportunity for journalism. Poynter has a TON of interesting thoughts and perspectives from journalists who covered it. One of the recent entries that I’ve read is about a professional photographer who allowed anyone to use his photos as long as he was given credit. He did it by using Creative Commons on Flickr. I actually use Creative Commons on my personal pictures as well… Although most are private. Look around Twitter! You can find amazing stories being told there. I can’t say I would have imagined that possibility a few months ago. I saw it as a great way to communicate information to a newsroom, but I hadn’t seen it as a direct way to communicate to an online viewer. Now I see it as genius. A small newspaper was broadcasting live information on Justin.tv. Anyway, there are many websites out there that have documented the amazing out-of-the-box thinking from journalists this week. I love all of it!

I’m working towards a massive project. I’m trying to find a way to collaborate with three different newsrooms (one NPR station, one local paper and my NBC affiliate station). I’d like to give my market the most thorough election site possible for November 2008. Content from all three would feed into the website so no one has to hand type in the links to each newsroom’s election content. That’s not even the hard part.

The hard part is learning how to communicate with each newsroom. I set up a project using Base Camp… But I’ll be honest. I think most people ignore the comments I and some project members post. Either way, it is a good place to keep all of the thoughts, documents, links and images that we all need to talk about. If someone claims that I didn’t tell them, I can prove that to be untrue. So I’m glad to have a place to collaborate work. There are a number of other open-source/free sites that have popped up since I started working with Base Camp this summer. One of my favorite is a very fun brainstorming tool called bubbl.us. I’ve tried it out a bunch of times to help sort out the many ideas that churn through my brain. There area couple of other products that have popped up, but I haven’t had time to test them.

Anyway. I’m trying to collaborate with three different newsrooms that have different workflow and different personalities. I’m obsessed with workflow and communication. But I have to say, this has been some of the most challenging conversations. The good news: As I continue to communicate, I’m starting to figure out ways to reach everyone.  I’ve also found using a database training manual as a good way to reach many of my student/employees who work on the komu.com content. A student of mine and I put it together with the help of Drupal. It’s also the content management system that we hope to use to build our election website.

So much to do, so little time.

A year ago I had a moment of genius. I thought how cool it would be to match voters up with candidates by using a social network tool called introNetworks. It’s a flash-based social network site that would be SUPER COOL to use and give people the insight about candidates that match closer to their viewers… but not so close that they won’t want to learn more about their candidate. Well, my idea came true. I got an email from introNetworks saying a group called Neighborhood America is using my idea. I couldn’t afford it so I’m thrilled to see someone else put the money into this technology. I’m also very, very jealous that I didn’t have the funding to do it myself. I highly recommend checking out the how-to video on how this works. It’s exactly how I had envisioned it.

I love, love, love to see how major newsrooms are taking advantage of technology.

First, using the simplicity of building maps using Google Maps, the LA Times came up with this one. Also, this looks like one of the first major opportunities for MSNBC to use its FirstPerson project. It’s a pretty slick little set up that gets online users involved in sharing their personal pictures, video and first-hand account. I’m hoping to help the newsrooms affiliated with the Missouri School of Journalism to improve this kind of interactivity through a multi-newsroom election project. I’ll brain dump on that soon… But not while I’m at work. I’ll need more time to focus my thoughts.

One of my students found an article in Time magazine that is pretty appropriate to think about when it comes to teaching people about new media. As technology is more transparent, media blends together better. A little first person article mentions how life is changing in a common household. Attention spans are different now.

Plus… I just found out about this. Super dooper cool. Journalists are opening up. I attended a meeting today and quickly learned that the work I’m trying to do really matters. When the New York Times is buying into the idea of delivering news in whatever format a person wants it… It must mean I’m on the right track.

What am I talking about, you ask? I love news. I love delivering the news. I have spent most of my career finding ways to share news abd information to a broadcast audience. When I realized there were SO many ideas on news delivery using technology. That’s why I jumped into this new media world. I wanted to help find ways to share and create information delivery methods. When I started this, I never realized how fast technology would advance and how seamless it could be to share information. And things are only getting started. I’m excited to see the simplicity of sharing information on social networks, how easy it is to build personalized news feeds… I could go on. Either way, it’s great to see the big guys jumping into this fun world in a way I can’t.