Get Appy column showcases apps for kids of all ages
Lillie-Beth Brinkman came by my office a couple weeks ago to discuss something very important.
Lillie-Beth is our Assistant Features Editor and writes the ‘Get Appy‘ for The Oklahoman and NewsOK.com.
She opened the conversation in hushed tones, so nobody could overhear her.
“Do you play Temple Run?”
I responded as professionally as I could:
“Uh … yeah. Who doesn’t?”
The result of that conversation and others that Lillie-Beth had about the iOS game led her to write this column about Temple Run and the nature of that game and many others like it on the market.
If you’re already playing the game, there’s a good chance you are in school or heard about it from the child who lives at your house and goes to school. A group of sixth graders I recently talked to from different schools are all big fans.
Lillie-Beth and I both have children that are in the same age range, so it should be no surprise that we’ve both been introduced to the simplistic, yet addictive game.
So I write this blog today only to point two things:
- I’m awesome at Temple Run … with a high score of 5,325,540
- That Lillie-Beth’s weekly Get Appy columns are fun to read and something worth finding each Tuesday.
Stepping into the Pinterest world
I’ve gone through a few of the unofficial phases of social media acceptance with Pinterest.
It’s the rite of passage for many individuals in the social media space. Sure, the steps are a little different if you are an over-achieving early adopter. I know lots of those people. But for us normal every-day mid-level early adopters, the steps below fit.
- Step 1: You ignore it and scoff at the fact that another site is trying to enter the social media space.
- Step 2: You poke fun at your friends and family members that are participating in the space.
- Step 3: You see more people engaging with the site. Some of them are even a lot like you. And you begin to feel ashamed that you haven’t tried it yet.
- Step 4: You sign up. But you don’t get it. You must be missing something. Maybe it’s all just passed you by.
- Step 5: Somebody engages with something you posted. It’s all starting to make sense.
- Step 6: Once it makes a little sense, you dive in a little deeper and see real value and possibility. Now you get it.
- Step 7: Find your comfort level and just be yourself.
There are some steps following these first seven steps. But you don’t always have to follow them. Actually, I recommend stopping when you reach Step 8 (below). Step 10 ends with addiction and perhaps swearing to never use the Internet again. Let’s hope none of us go that far.
I’m still in the middle of Step 6. But thanks to the help of sports web editor Lindsay Houts and technology superstar Jay Spear, we’re finally off the ground with some boards on Pinterest for NewsOK.
We’ve launched 12 boards. Some are growing faster than other. And we might launch more.
The bottom line is that I like the opportunity we have to showcase our great photography and our Features, Entertainment and Sports content that doesn’t often reach the top-viewed items on our NewsOK site that is driven by the breaking-news-what-is-happening-right-now-world.
So, I’ll continue to experiment with Pinterest. It seems like it’s here to stay.
I’ll eagerly await the day that my parents log in and Re-Pin something I posted (that’s Step 8).
And then I’ll start again with Step 1 of another social media platform.
NewsOK Sports honored for best multimedia coverage
In December, the Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE) announced its annual top 10 honorees for best website. NewsOK Sports was ranked among the nation’s best for the third consecutive year.
And then yesterday in Florida at the annual conference, The sports department was honored again. This time, it was for the efforts in the area of multimedia for NewsOK and The Oklahoman.
And once again, I point to the company we keep in these kinds of awards. Among the top 10 list in this group:
- Boston Globe
- Kansas City Star
- Los Angeles Times
- Minneapolis Star Tribune
- The New York Times
- Philadelphia Daily News
- St. Louis Post-Dispatch
- The Virginian-Pilot
Those are some of the largest news-gathering operations in the country. But ranking among the world’s best in the area of covering sports and covering sports with aggressive multimedia journalism is no surprise to us here in Oklahoma City. Though there was no ranking of the top 10 in the list, I would expect our work to be at the top in the fictional BCS of multimedia sports coverage.
We see the reporters analyzing games on video every night. We read reporters’ blogs on every subject we cover. We participate in their live chats each weekday. We follow them on Facebook, Twitter and more. We see the end result of the hard work of the people behind the scenes packaging it all together on NewsOK and on our mobile applications for The Oklahoman.
And we watch the group in our sports department pull this off every single day.
So here’s to another tip of the hat to the sports editor Mike Sherman and the sports department for their fine work.
‘Endangered Black History’ nDepth series comes highly recommended
We are in the middle of a six-part series titled, “Endangered Black History,” that I would highly recommend our users take a look at.
We’ve organized this coverage as part of our nDepth – Stories of the Ages presentations, where we tell a story in a long-form and high-design format. We’ve completed dozens of nDepth stories over the past few years, but this is perhaps our most ambitious project, because we’re linking six of them together over the course of a few weeks.
We’ve already released Part 1: The Overview, Part 2: Langston and Part 3: Boley. There are still three more to come.
Graphic artist Chris Schoelen is producing the designs, reporter Ken Raymond is writing the stories, video producer Paige Dillard is producing the videos and web editor Nick Tankersley is putting it all together on the web pages.
They all deserve high praise for the extra effort that benefits our readers, but the work goes far beyond them — videographers, photographers, editors and researchers have come together to make this a successful story-telling effort.
It easy to navigate. The stories are detailed and descriptive. The videos add more context to the words that surround them. And the photos — well I’m a sucker for historic photos.
But here’s my favorite part: We went with Facebook comments to keep the conversation going in this series, and it’s proved to be an interesting way for users to share the series with others and offer their own commentary and insight.
Take a look. But don’t worry, there’s no rush. We’re going to keep this package active on the site for years to come.
ScissorTales blog is back — check the NewsOK Opinion page
I love it when I get to write in my blog about another blog — especially when the blog I get to write about is returning to past prosperity.
ScissorTales is back.
The blog is featured on our Opinion page and showcases additional opinions and insights from the team of Editorial writers at The Oklahoman.
Recent posts include:
- Too Many Debates: “Nineteen, count them 19, debates have been staged so far, not including informal candidate forums. How many more of these Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney verbal showdowns can viewers stand?”
- No More Middle Man: “When managing a tight budget, cutting unnecessary expenses is a good place to start. House Bill 3111, filed by state Rep. Jeff Hickman, R-Fairview, would end the state government’s role in collecting dues for labor unions.”
- More Cheese Please: “Wendy’s ‘Old Fashioned Hamburgers’ might want to consider a motto change, seeing as how the fast-food chain no longer has plain hamburgers on its menu.”
- Dancing with the Snows: “When is the exercise of religion on public property not an invitation to an injunction? When Indian culture is involved. The latest example among many is a Utah tribe’s snow dance to benefit ski resorts in Colorado. “
ScissorTales is created to get more content delivered to readers who want it. It’s a quick read, and it’s easy to interact with.
It’s just one more way to our talented writers to get more information to their audience.
A review of the 2012 Signing Day coverage on NewsOK
Last Wednesday was the annual Signing Day, and our sports staff was all over the coverage throughout the day.
If you are one of those people who are really interested in football recruiting and mapping the future of the OU and OSU football programs, you already knew about this page. You probably even participated in our live chat surrounding the coverage, and you probably had been following the coverage leading up to the big day on Wednesday. So you read all the all the stories and watched all the videos before you went to sleep on Wednesday night.
But if you prefer not to follow each potential recruit through the non-binding commitments in the Fall and Winter, and you just want to know who signed on the dotted line and what positions they play, this page is for you right now. You should take the time this week and review our Signing Day 2012 coverage.
It’s put together nicely by web editor Lindsay Houts, sports editor Mike Sherman and Assistant Sports Editor Ryan Sharp.
- You can visit the OU Signing Day page to see a bio and specifics about every player the Sooners signed.
- You can visit the OSU Signing Day page to see a bio and specifics about every player the Cowboys signed.
- You can go through all the stories and see all the updated signing lists.
- You can watch all the videos we produced last week during the heavy coverage our sports staff produced.
I know that it captured the interest if an intense group of NewsOK users. Last Wednesday marked our second-highest day of traffic in terms of page views in 2012.
