E-Media Tidbits

CoverItLive.com This liveblogging tool is getting popular, but has had some notable performance glitches.

CoverItLive is quickly being adopted by bloggers and journalists reporting on a range of events. I sampled some liveblogs of major events over the last several weeks, and used it myself to report on the Feb. 23 State of the Black Union meeting in New Orleans, hosted by Tavis Smiley. (Here's part one and part two.)

So far I'm finding that when CoverItLive is good, it's very very good. It allows you to disseminate information very quickly in a variety of formats. The interface is easy to learn, and the ability to incorporate comments and take instant polls enlivens the coverage considerably. You can set up your liveblog well in advance and put a widget on your site, allowing readers to sign up for an e-mail reminder at a time of their choosing. (Here's my widget for liveblog I intend to do in June at the New Media Consortium conference.)

But on the rare occasions when CIL is bad, it's very, very bad. The service has crashed during a few high-profile events -- leading to effusive apologies and pleas for patience from the company.

Some examples of recent event coverage via CIL:

• Feb. 28: The Salt Lake Tribune used CIL to provide play-by-play and commentary during the state boys prep school school basketball tournament. Senior Web producer Kim Mc Daniel commented on Barb's Tidbit: "We're hoping the real-time posting and interactivity will be even more enticing to readers" than the liveblogging they've tried in the past.
• Feb. 17: When blogger Startibartfast set out to use CIL to cover the Daytona 500, he learned that his blogging platform, Wordpress, doesn't support iframes -- which is needed to make CIL content appear on your site. So he went to plan B: He posted the coverage on his Blogger site. Here's a discussion about Wordpress and iframes.
• Feb. 5: Joshua Levy used CIL to blog Super Tuesday primary results at TechPresident. It's still a fun read a month later. The polls are especially interesting, although they reflect one of my gripes about CoverItLive -- the results display doesn't list the number of respondents.
• Jan. 15: CIL's most spectacular failure occurred when it crashed during Steve Job's keynote talk at MacWorld 2008. According to Rafe Needleman at Webware, about 30 livebloggers were affected. (For what it's worth, Twitter crashed at the same time, according to the same report.) CIL president Keith McSpurren quickly apologized and explained that the failure was due to "minor" technical problem ("one loose screw taking us down"), and pledged that quality assurance would be tightened. CrunchGear (one of the blogs hit by the Jan. 15 crash) ran into the same problem on Feb. 10 while covering a Sony Ericsson press conference.

Overall, it's easy to see why CIL is gaining popularity. I would have loved to have had it when I liveblogged a Democratic presidential candidates forum in June2007. It would have been especially useful for those of us who worked the Scooter Libby trial last year.

By the way, here's an intriguing open-source project to develop another liveblogging tool, based on Django and integrated with Twitter.