Steven King

Christian, husband, father and professor of multimedia journalism at UNC Chapel Hill. I also served as an overseas correspondent for CommissionStories, Director of Innovations and Editor of Video for The Washington Post. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-26166541-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

[steven-king-blog]

This isn’t Darwin’s Galapagos: The wildlife-rich islands are more tourist-friendly than you think

Tourism is evolving in the Ecuadorian archipelago, as more visitors choose to immerse themselves in island life.

Check out my latest 360video project on The Washington Post. There is also a behind-the-scenes post here:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/lifestyle/galapagos/?tid=a_inl 

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VR Experiments: A little sunburn won’t kill you — Center for Local Media Innovation

It is vacation time and the first thing you do is turn on your out-of-office reply before heading out the door. You pack your suitcase…

[steven-king-blog]

Newspaper Academy: 10 Online Tools for better interactive stories

Free Interactive Graphic Tools for journalists with little or no coding experience. Links for presentation to Newspaper Academy on Thursday, May 7th. 

Infographics:

1. Infogr.am

http://infogr.am/

2. PiktoChart

http://piktochart.com/

extra reading on infographics: 14 best dataviz tools

Timeline Tools

3. Timeline.js

http://timeline.knightlab.com/

4. Time Glider

http://timeglider.com/

Mapping Tools

5. My Google Maps

http://maps.google.com

6. Carto DB

http://cartodb.com  | Dummy Data

Image Tools

7. ThingLink (image rollovers)

http://www.thinglink.com/

8. Glyph Maker (coming soon)

http://glyph.media.mit.edu/

Interactivity

9. Riddle

http://riddle.com

10. Mother Jones News Quiz (Advanced and Code Required)

https://github.com/motherjones/newsquiz

Want more?

Follow @journalism2ls for the latest news tools

My tool bookmarks: https://www.diigo.com/user/steven_king/tools

[steven-king-blog]

Reposting for a workshop today!

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“Humility and the willingness to learn in order to go beyond our current limitations are at the heart and soul of innovation. “

[steven-king-blog]

Carnival Travel Insurance Review

Recommendation: Don’t waste your money

My family purchased the Travel Insurance for a Carnival Cruise and we had to cancel the trip. We expected the cost to be refunded because as you can see on the website and we were told on the phone  “Cancel for Any Reason” but we recently discovered that “any” really only means:

Death of family member documented with official death certificate 

Medical Issue with verified doctors orders 

Loss of employment documented with W-2 forms, unemployment documentation, pay stubs which verify job loss and length of employment

There might be more but those are the ones listed on the claim form

We made three formal claims (number of cabins) to a 3rd party Aon Risk Services  which was a good bit of effort and we were notified 9 days later our request was denied. We did receive a credit for a future booking that was about the value of the insurance cost. 

I have since read the fine print and though legal, the “any” reason is pretty limited. I wish I had seen these 982 mostly bad reviews.

This was going to be our first time traveling on Carnival and though we now have a $275 credit, I think we will go back to Royal Carribean. 

My advice, do not buy the travel Insurance for a Carnival Cruise because there is little chance you will actually get your money back. 

[steven-king-blog]

VR Journalism @jiConf

A Collection of links and resources from the panel.

Panel Members:

Dan Archer is the principal of Empathetic Media, a collective of journalists and technologies creating augmented and virtual reality environments to tell stories.

https://twitter.com/archcomix

http://www.empatheticmedia.com/

Joi Lee is the director of the denizen journalism project at RYOT. RYOT is a new, advocacy-based news platform that incorporates virtual reality and mobile, first person, citizen journalism, allowing the viewer to be transported to the story.

https://twitter.com/RYOTnews

http://www.ryot.org/virtualreality

Dan Pacheco is the Peter A Horvitz Endowed Chair in Journalism Innovation at Syracuse University and has been working in the academy and with news organizations on incorporating VR in journalism.

https://twitter.com/pachecod

http://www.vrstorytelling.org/

http://www.vrstorytelling.org/category/vr-at-newhouse/

http://www.vrstorytelling.org/tip-sheets/

student work: http://bit.ly/vrhall

Steven King is an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill and is the moderator of this panel. Steven has been working in immersive video with new outlets, including The Washington Post is developing new technologies for better 360 storytelling.

https://twitter.com/steven_king

http://www.vrjournalism.io/ from UC Berkley 

How to build 360 live streaming system

https://www.facebook.com/groups/gearvr/

[steven-king-blog]

Rift’s delay and no Mac is bad for journalism industry.

The last two announcements from Oculus this month have major implications for journalism publishers. The major newspapers and media companies are experimenting in the 3D Virtual reality world and for good reason. This platform has great storytelling potential and is an environment I enjoy and am excited to work in.

Earlier this month Oculus announced they would not hit the targeted Christmas shopping season this year and that the consumer Rift device would be available  in  Q1 of 2016. Yesterday, Oculus continued to show evidence of a young company unable to meet promises and demand by announcing they will “pause” development for OS X.

“Our development for OS X and Linux has been paused in order to focus on delivering a high quality consumer-level VR experience at launch across hardware, software, and content on Windows. We want to get back to development for OS X and Linux but we don’t have a timeline.”

Both are pretty big news for publishers. In order to make the production of Virtual Reality content viable for publishers they must be an audience that can consume it. By Oculus missing the Christmas buying season, which is vital to fast adoption of a consumer electronic device.

By “pausing” development for OS X and conceding that most macs can't run the Rift, they have a major strike against them towards mass adoption. It is true that Mac users make up only 15% of U.S. computer users which make the decision to drop them seem simple when pressing a deadline but recent media studies show 65% of ‘American Early Adopters’ are Mac users. With the lose of those Early Adopters and consumer leaders it will be difficult for the Rift to have a fast growth curve.

In my opinion these two delays limit the viability of the Rift as a real publishing platform for at least another year if not a lot more.

These two disappointments, well-hidden in other PR announcements, are most likely signs of other problems inside the young company trying to become a major consumer electronics provider very quickly so I am afraid to know what the next announcement will hold. That being said as a consumer and storyteller I am pulling for Oculus and hope they make it big very fast for the sake of journalism publishers across the world.

UPDATE: If you are trying to download the MAC OSX Oculus SDK you can find “Archived” downloads here: https://developer.oculus.com/downloads/#status=archive 

[steven-king-blog]

Newspaper Academy: 10 Online Tools for better interactive stories

Free Interactive Graphic Tools for journalists with little or no coding experience. Links for presentation to Newspaper Academy on Thursday, May 7th. 

Infographics:

1. Infogr.am

http://infogr.am/

2. PiktoChart

http://piktochart.com/

extra reading on infographics: 14 best dataviz tools

Timeline Tools

3. Timeline.js

http://timeline.knightlab.com/

4. Time Glider

http://timeglider.com/

Mapping Tools

5. My Google Maps

http://maps.google.com

6. Carto DB

http://cartodb.com  | Dummy Data

Image Tools

7. ThingLink (image rollovers)

http://www.thinglink.com/

8. Glyph Maker (coming soon)

http://glyph.media.mit.edu/

Interactivity

9. Riddle

http://riddle.com

10. Mother Jones News Quiz (Advanced and Code Required)

https://github.com/motherjones/newsquiz

Want more?

Follow @journalism2ls for the latest news tools

My tool bookmarks: https://www.diigo.com/user/steven_king/tools

[steven-king-blog]

Free Interactive Graphic Tools for journalism

1. Infogr.am

http://infogr.am/

2. PiktoChart

http://piktochart.com/

Timeline Tools

3. Timeline.js

http://timeline.knightlab.com/

4. Time Glider

http://timeglider.com/

Mapping Tools

5. My Google Maps

http://maps.google.com

6. Carto DB

http://cartodb.com  | Dummy Data

Image and 3D Tools

7. ThingLink (image rollovers)

http://www.thinglink.com/

[steven-king-blog]

Interactive and Design Internships

Do you have internships for UNC jSchool developers and designers? Please share.

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[steven-king-blog]

Links and steps for UNC Wordpress

UNC Students, Faculty and Staff have access to create a Wordpress website at no cost on UNC servers. For a basic site, this works well but does not have all the same features and customization other paid Wordpress install have such as custom templates and extra plugins.

To set up Wordpress for free on UNC servers. 

Go to web.unc.edu

Login with Onyen

Enter a subdomain url and name for the site

Select template

Customize Template

Create Posts

Create Pages

Create Menu

Add Plugins

Need help?

UNC Web Support

Wordpress Documentation

Lynda.com WP Video Tutorials (Free for UNC Faculty and Staff)

To add a UNC domain follow these steps: https://web.unc.edu/support/registering-and-mapping-a-domain-name/

To register a non-unc domain follow these steps: http://help.unc.edu/help/registering-a-non-unc-domain-name/

Looking for full hosting of a Wordpress site with full custom templates and plugins? I suggest WebFaction or HostGator.

[steven-king-blog]

In the beautiful town of Jonesborough, Tenn. home to the storytelling festival and @leetrout (at Jonesborough, Tn)

[steven-king-blog]

My JavaScript coding style

I was reading through a tutorial by cwbuecheler where he stated his coding style. Thinking this would be helpful to my students I thought I would do the same. 

I prefer Readability over speed or size.  Therefore, I use lots of whitespace and tab properly. I like brackets and braces and use them even when not necessary to provide structure and always open them on the same line not a new one. I comment often knowing that my students are always diligently trying to digest every line of every repo on my GitHub account.

I name my variable something meaningful and my functions have verbs like parseData() or buildTable().

I write the script and get it working. Then try (not always, ok rarely) to refactor, clean up and make pretty for the world but not at the expense of delaying a project.

[steven-king-blog]

Love the conference rooms named after fonts @centerLine Digital. (at Centerline Digital)

[steven-king-blog]

Targeted Ads

I remember back at washingtnpost.com in early 2006 talking with Matt Haverkamp discussing that our ads are too broad and they should be more focused. "If I am looking to buy a car, we (washingtonpost.com should know to give me car ads."

Matt foretold the future that has been around now for a few years but they are just now getting really good at it!

Today, I had to be impressed with the ad grouping from Facebook. All five ads were dead on!

1. I teach Sketchup as a Free Tool in my J187 Intro class and have presented on it at several conferences. 

2. Just got back from a cruise and published a proof-of-concept on detecting a user's location on a cruise ship without using location services (GPS).

3. Love seeing new innovations. Elio. That looks cool!

4. Working with a freelance client on enhancing his SEO and local search footprint. 

5. I have a GoToMeeting with a teach company today about a developing an SDK for FilmSync. I have not searched gotomeeting or anything similar. I simply clicked the link to attend the meeting.

6. And finally here is the funny one, API for Dummies! Yes, apparently I know nothing about APIs and need the dummy manual. Actually, this is pretty accurate based on my searching for students resources in my intermediate level interactive media class. 

So, obviously interest detection is getting better for Ads. I want to know how we can use that for News delivery.

[steven-king-blog]

UNC getting ready for students! #construction (at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

[steven-king-blog]

We once used these when we were doing "new media." I have nothing to read any of theses today.