A Wednesday Night Shift in the Life of Jeff Bodner

A Wednesday night shift in the life of Jeff Bodner. Bodner has been working as a bartender at Our House in Allston since September 1st, after moving back from San Diego where he worked as a mortgage broker.

One of USAToday.com's many niche blogs is Whitney Matheson's "Pop Candy, Unwrapping pop culture's hip and hidden treasures." The blog features many aspects of popular culture, covering topics from wedding invitations to pumpkin carving, which is exactly what caught my eye.

Matheson decided to have readers send in their photos of their best carved pumpkins with a pop-culture theme, a perfect example of how the internet promotes citizen involvement with the news and small communities within a massive global environment. Righ now she is accepting photos of original costumes, which will showcase on Friday.

The idea is interesting and although I know it is a blog and follows a different format, I think that USAToday.com could have used the photos in a photo gallery on their beuatiful photo gallery page because some of these pumpkins are really amazing and creative. As well as creating an attractive way of viewing the photos, it would also create publicity for Matheson's blog, while the blog would promote the photo gallery page.

William Kamkwamba, "an African solution, to an African problem"*

William Kamkwamba told his story alongside the journalist Bryan Mealer who wrote the book "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind." Kamkwamba is a 2007 and 2009 TEDGlobal Fellow for creating a windmill that generated electricity for his village in central Malawi. At the time he was a self taught physiscist and made the windmill out of scraps from a junk yard. Listen to him and Mealer talk about how Kamkwamba did this and how he has improved the lives of his family and neighbors after a severe draught in 200o and 2oo1.

USAToday.com has a section on its homepage on the bottom left called "Interactive graphics" which includes such pages as their Fall Movies page, a stock market watch page and one that goes through Rhonda Abrams' six steps to a successful small business.

The small businesses page includes videos with Abrams' explaining her theory step by step. Beneith the video are worksheets, tips, soundbites and stories to accompany. The soundbites include such entrepeneurs as Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy, and John Schnatter, founder of Papa John’s Pizza.

At the bottom of the page is an invitation to take part in the USA TODAY/Gannett
Small Business Challenge in which entrepreneurs can apply for USA Today to follow their story and challenges.

What is intersting about the page is that USAToday.com was able to take a newsworthy topic and turn it into an educational page where users can interact.

Tracking H1n1 through USAToday.com

If anybody is worried about H1n1, or just wants to follow it in detail for the sake of knowing, USAToday.com is one of the places to go. Like most other online publications, they have a page that deeply covers the "swine flu", tracks the cases per region and includes blogs, articles, photos and facts about H1n1 and the influenza season in general.

Screen shot of USAToday.com

There is a map at the top of the page that shows, through color coding, which regions of the U.S. have been more affected. If you scroll your mouse over it, a bubble pops up (much like their 2008 census page) with the cumulative cases and the case rate per 1 million. The most interesting part however is the time-line beneath the map. If you drag the arrow down the time line, you can simultaneously watch the number of cases grow/shrink in the U.S.. View the video below to see the numbers changing.

video screen shot of USAToday.com using SnapShotz Pro

Below all the graphics at the top are several lists of articles related to H1n1. You can chose from USAToday articles, Blog posts, Gannet articles, photos, videos and even watch the latest "tweets" on the flu.

Nice discovery: USAToday.com's Photo Gallery

I discovered USAToday.com's photo gallery today.

screenshot from USAToday.com

It is a well thought out page, The black and grey color scheme is a nice rest on my eyes from the colorful and white on the rest of the site. The black is also helpful for letting the pictures pop. The photos are also well chosen by the editor, beautiful or impacting representations of the week's occurances.

At first I did not understand what the organization of the photos was like but then I noticed two drop-down tabs at the top left: "album" and "keyword." It's a nice way to allow users to narrow down what type of picture they want to see. If a reader is not sure what type of photo they're after and just want to browse through nice pictures, they can scroll underneath the featured photos and find "more photo galleries." Here they can see a selection of about 25 thumbnails with a gallery title. See screenshot below.

screenshot from USAToday.com

Another interesting aspect of their photo gallery is that there are albums that hold series' of photos submitted by the readers. One recent collection is called Picture America: a photo contest where readers got to vote on the winners from a selection by the judges.

One thing that surprised me however is that there are no spaces for reader comments. I think they could definitely increase traffic and user interaction if they could comment on the photos.

A day at the fruit farm stand

The Kimball Fruit Farm of Pepperell Massachusetts participates in 12 farmers’ markets every week. In this series, Dan Wadleigh and Frannie Nobel work at the stand at the Dewey Square Market outside the South Station metro stop, where they work every Tuesday and Thursday. Get to feel a bit of a day in the life of a farm stand.