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Al Tompkins, Poynter faculty member


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YouTube video about how Al produces his video blogs



A dozen sites
I'm diggin'


1. Some have called Seesmic "YouTube meets Facebook." It's a social networking site with mega video capability. What if news sites allowed people to post comments via video rather than just text?

2. Blogger.com is better than ever now that you can post vertical photos. And Google Docs has upgraded its feature that enables you to embed a presentation in your blog.

3. As ABC's John Stossel explained, "Intrade is set up like a commodities market where buying and selling goes on 24 hours a day. Instead of betting on the price of copper or oil, you can bet on politics, economics, the weather, pop culture, etc."

4. Msnbc.com's NewsWare site includes games, widgets and tons of other stuff.

5. iCue is a new NBC News site that uses archived news and political video in educational ways.

6. See how much the airlines will ding you for an extra bag or overweight luggage.

7. I have been a big fan of Snapz Pro X as a screen and video capture device, but I may be falling in love with ScreenFlow.

8. My 300 or so favorite online resources and news ideas for journalists.

9. Virtual Gumshoe offers investigative links to help you find people, search criminal records and more.

10. RetailMeNot delivers more than 13,000 discount coupons to online sites. Do not buy ANYTHING online without checking this site first to see if you can get a discount.

11. Finally, a way to get those camera lights off your video cameras so you are not blasting the subject with light. The Xtender looks xcellent.

12. A Final Cut editing tutorial.

We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and links.



Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends on the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.





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Thursday Edition: National Missing Children's Day Tomorrow

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Like Al's ideas? Hear more in our broadcast and online seminars.

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* Click here (sent Monday-Friday at 7 a.m.)

Buy Al's book, "Aim for the Heart," here, and Poynter receives a small cut as an Amazon affiliate.
Tomorrow marks the 25th National Missing Children's Day. Here is some information from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children:


Putting Chips in Patients with Alzheimer's

A Florida adult-daycare facility is making plans to implant a computer chip that is about the size of a grain of rice into patients with Alzheimer's. The identity chip would be implanted into the patient's forearm, sort of like veterinarians implant chips in dogs and cats.

The patient's family or the patient himself/herself would have to approve. As you can imagine, there are already opponents.


Did Tons of Jobs Really Go Offshore?

Newsweek takes a look at where jobs really go when people lose them. Recently it has been tempting to blame everything on jobs going offshore. But Newsweek says the whole offshore boogeyman has been overblown.


Inmates Not Allowed to Keep Victims' Photos

In Georgia, the governor signed a new law that forbids inmates from keeping photos of their victims in their prison cells. It seems like common sense. Do other states have similar laws?


Al's Morning Multimedia: How to Show Numbers

I often tell journalists to describe big numbers as shapes. It is hard to imagine what a billion of anything means. Here is an outstanding example of how this kind of thinking looks.

Photographer Chris Jordan tries to help us understand how many cell phones Americans retire every day (426,000). He shows how many Americans show up at emergency rooms because of drug misuse by displaying 213,000 Vicodin pills. And wait until you see how many plastic bottles Americans use every five minutes (2 million).


We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.

Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends upon the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.

Posted at 12:54:20 AM

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