Time out Tuesday: Spaced

What? You say I'm phoning it this week? Look, Spaced is about showing respect for your audience to get it without spelling it out, telling an honest story, making it entertaining and most of all, understanding your consumer and how to reach them. Sounds a lot like journalism no? Aren't we all trying to figure out how to reach a new audience and getting them to value our craft enough to want to pay for it? Plus, I think you'll agree, we're a much more cynical America then the one of of just ten years ago, people are more media savvy, they demand transparency and they demand to be included in the discussion and they want to feel like you get it, that they get it (even if they always don't, sorry, but it's sometimes true).

But seriously, inspiration is where you find it. If you're not listing to music, visiting art museums, sketching, cruising YouTube or looking at some other form of creativity other than inside the journalism field, then you my friend are only cheating yourself.

Now go enjoy a kick @$$ show. :D

body/percussion

The Third Coast Rhythm Project visits the youth program at San Juan Community Center to teach kids to make music using their bodies as instruments.

The promising, the inspirational and the dumb@$$

The promising NPR.com is undergoing a redesign. A very clean design with simple navigation, lots of white space and tons of information without the need to scroll or click through. Plus customization like picking your local station helps to really create a "home" for the user. Plus the demo video itself is very well put together to! Could the conversation (i.e. Web 3.0) be here? Well... almost. But this is a step in the right direction?



The inspirational Stop motion goodness and with some ok tunage behind it. Creativity up the wazoo, slightly made less cooler knowing that's it's not a shoe-string indie video and instead the official music video. But still... wow o_0



The dumb@$$ This is just silly. Silly delicious. But what do you expect to find on dem internetz?



Enjoy.

To the moon: The flagmaker

Some days you just have to stand back and realize it. There's no money in it, all your friends are looking for jobs, the doomsayers are becoming prophets, it's long hours with sometimes little thank you, and most days it seems like no one even sees your hard work unless Michael Jackson or Britney Spears are involved, but some days, you remember it. You remember why you love this job.

I met this really amazing gentleman on Monday for a story to tie in to the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission.

Oscar Torres reflects on his part in creating the American flag that astronauts placed on the moon.



What a character. :)

Time out Tuesday: We choose the moon

This site just started popping up over the last couple of weeks. It wasn't exactly clear what it was about at first, but it looked intriguing.



We choose the moon was an interactive site that attempted to relive for another generation what the experience of the first moon landing was for our parents and grandparents. It being the 40th anniversary of the moon landing it seems only obvious that it be this weeks Time out.

Played out in real time, the AOL, JFK Presidential Library and Museum and NASA designed site, followed the Apollo 11 mission from pre-launch to the final lunar landing encouraging visitors to explore the Flash site at whim and follow history.

By employing video, archival audio from the capcom, infographics, motion graphics and various twitter feeds, "followers" were able to get up to the moment "communication" from the mission.

It was all a very impressive effort and maybe a sign of things to come. I can see the next moon landing, we're on track to return to the moon last I heard, or even a mission to Mars being "followed" this way. Heck forget space travel, I'd sure like to see other forms of reporting done in this "sandbox" style.

40 years ago all they had was TV antennas, newspapers, and magazines. Today, well if you're in the business, I don't have to tell you, it's a whole different story.

Time out Tuesday: Lynda serves up FREE! training

To tie in to the launch of the new version of Apple's Final Cut Pro, Lynda.com has decided to offer up some free training. No doubt to get upgraders quickly up to speed with all the new features, but that doesn't mean there's nothing in there to be learned by folks like you an me who can't upgrade or are (stuck with) using FCExpress.

The range of topics range from the basics like logging and capturing to the advanced like stabilizing video with "smoothcam" to the extras like color correction and an overview on Motion. And at nearly three hours of training, there's bound to be something in there that even the Bruce Strong's among us didn't already know or had forgotten.

So dive in, learn yourself some. :)

The Shriner

The Shriner's were in San Antonio this year for their annual convention. They've been doing all sorts of things all weekend and ended their visit today with a parade past The Alamo and through downtown.

I saw this man sitting on a stool and it just looked so icon to me with his surroundings and that bright red hat that I couldn't resist a shot.

Staffer Tom Reel was assigned to cover it, but I decided to tag along. I kind of need the distraction right now. There's a full slideshow over at MySA.com (with a ton of Tom's pics and my own) it's not active yet or otherwise I'd provide a link.

Time out Tuesday: Sour's 'Hibi no Neiro'

I have no idea what they are saying, but that is some inventive use of a worldwide fan base. There's not much to say about it, just watch and enjoy.

It's the Fourth

Enjoy :)