Tag Archives: NPR

by Michelle Lentz

The Inauguration is historic in a multitude of ways, not the least of which is the sheer amount of new media coverage and access. Here’s our guide to some ways to interact with the Inaugural festivities.  The fun begins around 11:30 am EST.

Twitter

Follow the feeds for inauguration or Obama.

Use #inaug09 to show up on the NPR Inauguration Report 2009.

Follow the US Government or the Inauguration Committee.

Current and Twitter are joining forces again, as they did successfully during the Presidential Debates.  According to Current, “We will broadcast as many of your inauguration tweets as possible over the ceremony, in real time. We’ll also be streaming the event live right here.”  The hashtag to be picked up by Current is #current.

Streaming Video

Stuck at the office and not near a television? It’s alright. The Web will take care of that for you.

As mentioned previously, Current will be streaming the Inauguration, with tweets interspersed.

Hulu.com will be streaming the event, courtesy of Fox.

Joost.com will be streaming live and currently offers an Everything Obama channel, in case you need an early fix.

Ustream is streaming live with their trademark conversation surrounding the stream. They’re also offering streaming to your iPhone – Inauguration on the go.

The ever-reliable C-SPAN will offer four different live feeds.

CNN.com is live streaming, with Facebook status updates. As far as I can tell, it’s sort of like Twitter and Current. RSVP via the Facebook event.

Traditional Media

Of course, all of the traditional network stations, as well as the 24/7 news channels are broadcasting the event. But there are some interesting additions.

Nickelodeon will be broadcasting from the event so that your kids can learn about the event in a fun way.

The coverage will show up during commercial breaks and, most prominently, during the periods between regular shows in prime-time. Nick will offer a retrospective of past presidents taking the oath of office and interviews with young people about Obama’s election and his inaugural address.

NPR: NPR will be broadcasting live all day, but has also fully embraced social media. All week they’ve been tracking normal, everyday people who are heading to DC for the Inauguration, just hoping to get a seat or having been lucky enough to score tickets. They are running the Inauguration Report, and its user-generated content. Tag tweets, YouTube videos, and Flickr with inaug09 or dctrip09. (For tweets, add a # in front of the tag, ie,  #dctrip09.) You can also download their iPhone app from the social networking section of the iPhone app store.  They also have an app for Android (search IR09). Finally, you can send a text message to 66937 with the required tags, including the #.

MSNBC is sending the Inauguration to a movie theatre near you. Well, maybe near you. The coverage will display in 27 theatres across the nation. Tickets are free, but you have to buy your own popcorn for the four hours you’re there.

Comedy Central still has Indecision 2008 up and running. They’ll be live-blogging all day tomorrow, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart will br broadcasting live tomorrow evening.

Flickr & YouTube

Not only does NPR track Flickr images, but others have groups/photos as well.

The Inauguration Committee, showing they are quite plugged in, has a Flickr account using Creative Commons licensing.

The Inauguration Committee also has a YouTube channel with everything from prep videos to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Flickr has started an Inauguration 2009 group for everyone to share their inaugural images.

Blogs and Sites

Obviously, Change.gov is on top of things with every sort of social media available to them. He is the first Social Media president after all.

The Inauguration Committee has a fairly extensive site, mostly to help you with your visit to DC. But it also has a great blog with everything that’s happening behind the scenes.

Random Fun Things

Obamicon.me: From Paste Magazine, you can turn yourself into an icon, based on the art from Shepard Fairey’s iconic poster.

Atom.com brings us the Inauguration Speech Generator in the style of Mad Libs. Remember Mad Libs?

And we cannot forget to learn from the past, lest we be condemned to repeat it. Hulu and iCue bring you 23 separate Inaugural speeches from Presidents past, starting with McKinley.

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Contact Michelle on Twitter or via email at michelle [at] writetech [dot] net. Find her online at Write Technology or Wine-Girl.net.

by Michelle Lentz

This week, NPR has been running a series on Morning Edition on The Email Age. Two of the pieces, in particular, caught my fancy.

You see, I lived in Outlook. My whole world is loaded into the contacts, email, tasks and calendar. It’s sad really. This week I switched to a Mac and decided to leave the comforts of Microsoft and use Mail.app. It was a fight, but I won by customizing Mail pretty in-depth.  Why was it so important? Because I get hundreds of emails a day from multiple email accounts. It’s ridiculous at times. And I’m not the only one. According to a Radicati Group white paper, the number of email users world wide is approaching two billion. In 2006, the average corporate email user received 126 email messages per day – up 55% from 2003! The Radicati Group estimates that if email traffic continues this trend, the average user will spend 41% of their time managing email by 2009.  That is, in my opinion, a lot of wasted time.

So how do we cope with this? The NPR series brought up two interesting theories: Email Free Days, and Seriosity Attent.

Email Free Fridays have been implemented in several large organizations (US Cellular was spotlighted in the article). Imagine a day at work that is free from internal email. If you want to discuss an idea, set up a meeting, or get an answer, you need to either pick up the phone or go find your co-worker. I rather like this idea. But it doesn’t eliminate email entirely for the day. For instance, if my husband’s advertising agency implemented this, it wouldn’t help him too much – he’d still be deluged by  emails from his clients. Just because company A has email free Fridays doesn’t mean it applies to companies B-Z. But it’s a nice thought and would serve, I would think, to foster communication internally and at least slightly cut down on email for a day.

Attent is a new email productivity tool by Seriosity.  This is a really interesting tool. Attent turns email into its own economy using Serios (think dollars). Each week you are given a set number of Serios. For this example, we’ll use 300. For each email you send, you must attach at least 1 Serio. If it’s a really important email, you might attach 50 Serios; for a less important email, you might attach 5 Serios. In this way, you are taking the time to consider each email you compose and deciding if it’s worth the email or might be just as easily expressed in a phone call or Face to Face communication. Similarly, the person receiving the email can instantly judge whether it is important and should be acted on right away (50 Serios) or if it is something that can wait until later (5 Serios). Like Email Free Fridays, this only will work internally or with other folks who are using Attent.

Attent hosts all of the Serio Accounting information (your Serio Bank Account) on their servers, and all that is required is a plug-in for the email king of them all – Outlook. It’s an interesting experiment. I like that it forces you to consider – is this really worth an email? Watch a Flash demo of Seriosity Attent.

In order to manage my chaotic email, I’ve installed MailTags, MsgFiler, YAI, and more. It doesn’t control the sheer number of incoming messages, but at least it helps me organize them and stay semi-productive. How do you control and organize your emails? Would your company be perfect for something like Email Free days or Seriosity Attent?

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Events, news, apps, and more – let me know at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, via Twitter, or via Pownce.