![wired:
Not much happens in Geraldine, a small farming community in the interior of the South Island of New Zealand, about 85 miles from Christchurch. So when Hayden MacKenzie, a fourth-generation farmer there, picked up the phone last Tuesday and got a request to participate in a secret project—one that he wouldn’t even learn about until he signed a vow of silence—he and his wife Anna figured that they’d take a shot. That evening, two men showed up at his cozy farmhouse. They bore a peculiar red device, a sphere slightly bigger than a volleyball perched on a short collar, and attached it to his roof. Then they left.
Only when the men returned the next day did they reveal what they were up to. Inside the red ball was an antenna that would give the MacKenzies Internet access. It was custom-designed to communicate with a similar antenna that would be floating by in the stratosphere, over 60,000 feet above sea level. On a solar-powered balloon.
Oh, and the men work for Google.
[MORE - EXCLUSIVE: How Google Will Use High-Flying Balloons to Deliver Internet to the Hinterlands]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/1f6f818909e8785b91f86a29154a6722/tumblr_mof038YZ061r69k7do1_500.jpg)
Not much happens in Geraldine, a small farming community in the interior of the South Island of New Zealand, about 85 miles from Christchurch. So when Hayden MacKenzie, a fourth-generation farmer there, picked up the phone last Tuesday and got a request to participate in a secret project—one that he wouldn’t even learn about until he signed a vow of silence—he and his wife Anna figured that they’d take a shot. That evening, two men showed up at his cozy farmhouse. They bore a peculiar red device, a sphere slightly bigger than a volleyball perched on a short collar, and attached it to his roof. Then they left.
Only when the men returned the next day did they reveal what they were up to. Inside the red ball was an antenna that would give the MacKenzies Internet access. It was custom-designed to communicate with a similar antenna that would be floating by in the stratosphere, over 60,000 feet above sea level. On a solar-powered balloon.
Oh, and the men work for Google.
[MORE - EXCLUSIVE: How Google Will Use High-Flying Balloons to Deliver Internet to the Hinterlands]
Visually based storytelling takes time and, relatively, a massive effort. We need to change that … by changing the machinery of our newsrooms so that these story forms can be produced quickly by teams that include reporters, visuals experts and technical experts. With practice, we can slash the time it takes. And we can make the work we’re doing now seem old-fashioned.
“It’s not a one-size-fits-all kind of deal. I think we need to tailor the news accordingly,” Erik Reyna
Learn how the AP-Google Scholar will create a site to help non-programmer journalists make news package templates.
Before Twitter updated its lists feature last week, users could create only 20 lists with 500 accounts in each; now, they can create 1,000 lists with 5,000 accounts in each. The update impacts the role Twitter plays as an international news source by enabling journalists to be even more organized and save time as they gather, report and share news and information.
“Good data projects understand that an audience can only consume so much information at any given time,” Nilkanth Patel.
Learn how the AP-Google Scholar will build a service that allows reporters the ability to easily enhance their stories with multimedia, charts, data-driven visuals and photography. http://journalists.org/next-gen/ap-google-scholarship/nilkanth-patel/#qa
A great summary of last night’s ONADC event, which featured Justin Myers of The Chronicle of Higher Education and Derek Willis of the New York Times discussing how journalists could use algorithms and other tools to save time and human resources.
The Guardian’s Data Journalism workflow.
I discovered that I could make more impactful journalism and help more people make great journalism if I went all-in on learning how to program.
Learn how the AP-Google Scholar will help personalize broadcast news with his second-screen app and framework for local news.
npr:
Edward Snowden: ‘I do not expect to see home again’ The whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations speaks out.
The man who leaked NSA information to the press revealed himself over the weekend. Read and listen to analysis from NPR’s Tom Gjelten on NPR’s The Two-Way.
Edward Snowden is currently holed up in a hotel room in Hong Kong—a move NPR’s Frank Langfitt explores in his Morning Edition story filed from Shanghai.
It appears, by the way, that Snowden made a tactical error by heading to Hong Kong, which has an extradition agreement with the United States. He should’ve traveled to Iceland, where he might have had more of a shot.
EDIT: The Washington Post reports that Snowden checked out of his hotel room.
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