E-Media Tidbits

This week I'm in Chicago for the Unity 2008 conference. Last night and this morning I had pleasure of hanging out with fellow Tidbits contributor, Barbara Iverson, who teaches journalism at Columbia College and blogs at Currentbuzz and also helps run the community site ChicagoTalks.

We put together this video roundup of cool stuff that journalists working in online media should know about:

(That video won't display in our e-mail newsletter, so here's the direct link.)

Here are the links we mentioned in the video, plus a few minor corrections and updates:

Houston Chronicle mobile site: From a mobile device, simply pointing your browser at Chron.com takes you straight to the mobile version. Or you can preview it from your computer at mobile.chron.com. David Herrold helped develop this. Similarly, if you visit USAToday.com on your mobile device, you go straight to their mobile site.

...However, my experience (on my new 3G iPhone) is that several news organizations, including ChicagoTribune.com, do not apparently offer this crucial convenience for all mobile visitors. On my iPhone, entering ChicagoTribune.com takes me to their regular site, not their mobile site -- which is a considerable usability hassle. So make sure you're sending your mobile visitors directly to your mobile site: Test your mobile site on the iPhone and other popular mobile devices.

Chicago Tribune story today:CTA Bus Tracker online program adding more routes -- which leads their print metro section today, and is available online, but which was pretty hard to find via a mobile device.

The Windy Citizen, "Chicago's open-source newspaper," offered its contributors excellent preparatory tips for covering the popular local Pitchfork music festival.

Jing: Barb recommended this tool for quick screencasting and other multimedia fun. In the video, she said it was by TechCrunch. Actually, it's by TechSmith.

AEJMC pre-conference info (pdf), Aug. 5, 2-6 p.m., Chicago.

Hey Jeff Jarvis: What's with the racy advertising on your blog?

Unity 2008 on Facebook: Among other things, this Facebook group allows attendees to find roommates and do other kinds of online networking around this event. (Must have a free Facebook account for access.)

You can also sign up to receive Unity 2008 conference news via text messaging on your cell phone.

Twitter users: I think this is probably the conference "hashtag" for denoting posts about Unity: #unity08. (If there is another hashtag in use for this, please mention it in a comment below.) To use this, you must follow hashtags on your Twitter account. It's easiest to follow current tweets via Summize.

OhMyNews has been offering some interesting innovations in citizen journalism, which Barb discussed.