Note: The Hitwise data featured is based on US market share of visits as defined by the IAB, which is the percentage of online traffic to the domain or category, from the Hitwise sample of 10 million US internet users. Hitwise measures more than 1 million unique websites on a daily basis, including sub-domains of larger websites. Hitwise categorizes websites into industries on the basis of subject matter and content, as well as market orientation and competitive context. The market share of visits percentage does not include traffic for all sub-domains of certain websites that could be reported on separately.

What’s the weather, what to wear? Obama helps you everywhere!

How does it work?

The site gets a detailed weather report from a weather.com service, analyses a relation of temperature, humidity, strength of wind and some other characteristics and, finally visualizes the most comfortable set of clothes to wear this day. Of course, our commander-in-chief models the clothes you should be wearing.

Why do you need it?

The site sez: You don’t have to check your thermometer anytime you go out in order to decide what clothes to wear. No more ‘let’s look out of the window to see what people wear today’ or go out to the balcony to feel if the clothes you’ve chosen is ok not to get freezed or hot. All you need is to check what Obama or his friends wear.

Moreover, obama-weather.com can become your major adviser while planning a business trip or a vacation journey. You’ll always know for sure what type of clothes you should take with you.

How to use it

Maybe a fun feature for the end of the weather segment or at the end of the newscast.

Browser Browser maker Opera has released its latest ‘State of the Mobile Web’ report this morning, claiming that there was a huge surge in mobile web usage past September, reports TechCrunch.com.

Last month, more than 35.6 million people used Opera Mini (which is now serving over 500 million pageviews per day on average on a wide range of mobile devices), up 11.5% compared to August 2009 and more than 150% compared to September 2008. The Norway software developer also claims more than 2 petabytes of data is now processed by its servers on a monthly basis. That’d be 2,000 terabytes.

Data traffic through Opera’s mobile browser — which compresses up to 90% of the data to save network bandwidth – rose 8.7% in September compared to August, the company said. In total, it gained about 4 million new Opera Mini users in that same period of time.

Opera also said users in the top 10 countries (Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, South Africa, United States, United Kingdom, Poland and Vietnam) save up to $672 million USD per month, or over $8.1 billion USD per year, thanks to the compression rate of 90% and the subsequent savings in mobile data charges from users’ operators.

To calculate these numbers, which I question, Opera looked at the top operators in each country, determined how much they typically charge per MB of browsing, and averaged those figures together. The average cost of browsing in each country was then multiplied by the amount of traffic generated in each country, and the resulting totals were summed and compared to the totals for uncompressed data traffic. The big caveat: Opera’s survey only reflects metered rates (cost per MB) and not flat-rate subscription options, which skews the numbers in their favor.

The fact that mobile web usage continues to surge is hardly surprising, but Opera’s monthly reports reflect the rate of increase quite nicely on a monthly basis. Here’s a graph that shows the evolution as measured by data consumption:

Asks How CNN, Others ‘Like Being Patted on the Head’ by White House-

From Mcnorman’s Weblog

Newsbusters: On the Oct. 19 broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Special Report with Bret Baier,” Hume gave his best effort to rationalize why White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Obama Senior Advisor David Axelrod used two Sunday morning news show appearances to beat up on the highly rated news channel. According to Hume, it was because they disapproved of the stories his channel broke over the last few months.

more about “Hume Defends Fox Video“, posted with vodpod

Search Engine Optimization. Everyone who posts content to your news site or channel must understand that:

CONTENT is King,

but KEYWORDS are the keys to the kingdom.

This video from Google lays out the schematic for Google News.
Among the “need-to-knows”:

Google News provides SEO tips for publishers

If you need a review of your web channel, or newsroom staff training, contact me. GRIFF

Every news operation should have a style guide, but as anyone whose ever written one can tell you, the writing can be frustrating and unrewarding.

ADVANTAGES OF A STYLE GUIDE
Aside from the obvious benefit of having everyone working off the same page, one of the biggest benefits of a style guide is the Writing Guidelines.

In her blog, Advancing the Story: Broadcast Journalism in a Multimedia World, Deb Halpern Wenger says, “One of  the criticisms leveled at TV news sites is the hit-or-miss quality of the writing. Part of the problem, as many in the broadcast industry freely admit, is a discomfort with or lack of knowledge about writing in “print style.”

Luckily, some forward thinking news organizations put their style guides online and they are generally loaded with help for punctuation, titles, capitalization rules, etc.

Reuters: http://handbook.reuters.com/index.php/Main_Page
Times of London: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/tools_and_services/specials/style_guide/
BBC (pdf): http://www.bbctraining.com/pdfs/newsstyleguide.pdf

AP sells its style book: http://www.apstylebook.com/?do=product&pid=978-0-917360-53-4

Why share this stuff? Dean Wright, Global Editor for Ethics, Innovation and News Standards says transparency, service, and geography are behind Reuters decision to publish their styleguide.

“As we’ve seen over the past decade, the barriers to publishing have dropped so that anyone with an idea and a computer can be a publisher. But it’s also become clear that publishers have a varying standard of truth, fairness and style. Our handbook is a good place for budding journalists to begin. Reuters serves a global audience and the handbook recognises the cultural and political differences that our journalists face in reporting for the world.”

Fox News reporter Craig Boswell was the victim of a accident outside the Jackson family compound in Encino, Calif. (from Broadcasting & Cable)

You can recruit new followers by targeting one of life’s few remaining captive audiences: drivers in traffic.

Put your Twitter handle on your News cars

Sometimes, the simplest ideas have the most power. Your news cars are seen by thousands of people each day. Another variation on this would be to print some vinyl decals for your followers to put on their cars. Offer it as an incentive to sign up – “.. and we’ll give you one of these I FOLLOW WXXO on TWITTER!”

A couple of entrepreneurs are already turning this into a business model.

At Tweet My Bumper, enter your Twitter user name along with the usual other basic information, and Tweet My Bumper will print and ship you a bumper sticker that shows your Twitter name along with the tag line, “Follow me in traffic. Follow me on Twitter.” It will cost you around $5.

Of course, your promotions department can get them printed in bulk for a tenth of that. Give it a try and let me know what happens

Bob Kaplitz of the AR&D media consulting company recently posted “Just a Mug Shot.”
His video blog shows how a creative field team can turn a little video into a lot of storytelling.

Limited video doesn’t have to be a limitation. It can be an opportunity. On-camera storytelling can be the answer — but you have to do it the right way.-Bob Kaplitz, AR&D