Hearing praise from a fan of the NewsOK app & a fan of the Barons
Sports writer/columnist/reporter/expert/personality Berry Tramel shared this email with me last week:
Can’t thank you enough for the newsok app. Living in South Carolina, it brings me in touch with what’s happening in news and sports (mostly sports for me) back home. I was hoping you could pass it along to the necessary powers to maybe add a button for The Barons news. I’m a hockey fan and would like to read any articles written by the sports staff. Thanks for the time.
The customer was referring to the NewsOK iPhone app. We’ve had it for about a year and a half, and it’s definitely an experience meant for our NewsOK enthusiasts. It’s a steady stream of news headlines separated by many different topics.
Here’s just a bit of background on that topic. The constant stream of headlines on the NewsOK app is a departure from our app for The Oklahoman — those are meant for edition-based prioritized headlines that a reader of The Oklahoman might enjoy.
Two different apps. Two different experiences.
Regardless of all that, this reader really likes the NewsOK app, and that’s good. And I appreciated his feedback about the Barons headlines. That was a simple oversight. It’s there now.
Continue to enjoy the NewsOK app … or the mobile website … or The Oklahoman app … or NewsOK.com … or The Oklahoman Print Replica. It doesn’t really matter to us. We just want to find the best way to deliver news and information to you.
NewsOK TV app worth a spot on your home screen
The NewsOK TV app in the iTunes store might be the coolest app we have that we don’t talk about enough.
We’ve had it for quite a while — well over a year, I know. But our latest update (released in the iTunes store on Nov. 29) really makes it a nice addition to your phone. We added push notifications to the app, allowing users to get a note when we add a new video.
The iPhone notifications are pretty handy. It sounds like a pain, I know … getting an alert every time something changes on your phone. But these notifications are subtle enough not to annoy you and useful enough to make it worth the effort. The cool thing is that when Dave Morris‘ NewsOK TV crew adds freshly edited video to the website, I know about it while I’m messing around with my phone. I’m now much more likely to be informed and entertained. And that’s useful to me as a news consumer.
The notifications are really nice, but the app is easy-to-use, too. It’s a different way to ingest your news and information on your mobile device, that’s for sure. Rather than a lot of pesky reading and scrolling, it’s a relaxing watch and listen. And trust me, we produce enough video, that you get a wide sample of information just from the NewsOK TV app.
And our final cool feature worth mentioning? It’s the upload your video process. We know it’s cool because we’ve used it a live testing to get a video we shot from the field into our system for editing.
It works for us, so it can work for you, too. Shoot some video with your phone, then upload it to use through the app. You can even slice the beginning or the end off the video with an easy edit process in the app.
Trust me, if you shoot some breaking news and share it with us, you’ll likely go worldwide within minutes.
Download the app and use it. Before long, it won’t be our best-kept secret.
Catching up on the OSU bowl updates on NewsOK
See the photo gallery from the Bedlam game.
I wasn’t at my house for the live coverage of the BCS announcement last night. I missed the live show and immediate opinions from the experts. That’s OK. I think I know what they all said.
But I did get immediate word of the BCS poll results, thanks to NewsOK’s text alerts and email updates. I saw it quickly. Then I saw all the updates on Twitter and Facebook. I read the stories and blogs on my iPhone. I was informed and up to date. I even vocally shared my disappointment with the system to anyone within ear shot (yeah, OSU should be angry).
But browsing today, I had a chance to see everything I missed while I was out, including this video from the OSU football facilities with the team.
Excellent work from the NewsOK sports and video teams. They were both all over this story.
The Oklahoman iPad/iPhone app in Newsstand for iOS 5
The Oklahoman’s custom iPad application took another step with the release of Apple’s iOS 5 a couple weeks ago.
Our app became one of the first news applications in Apple’s Newsstand.
Your next question might be … “What is Newsstand?”
Well, if you have already upgraded your iPad or iPhone to iOS 5, you probably already know about Newsstand. If you haven’t, read this:
iOS 5 organizes your magazine and newspaper app subscriptions in Newsstand: a folder that lets you access your favorite publications quickly and easily. There’s also a new place on the App Store just for newspaper and magazine subscriptions.
Not every news media company that has a application on the iPad made their app available for Newsstand. But we did. Now, if you’re using our custom app on a daily basis and you’ve upgraded to iOS 5, then you get our daily editions through the Newsstand folder.
One of the big reasons we went this route was the automated download feature. Newsstand will download the daily edition of The Oklahoman as soon as it’s available. Now, our readers don’t have to wake up, open the app, download the latest edition and wait for it to be available. When they wake up, the edition will already be there (as long as they have a good wifi connection in the air while they sleep).
This is pretty cool feature that I’ve found useful since I upgraded. Sure, iOS 5 has lots of neat enhanced swiping features, a cool reminders app and the ability to airplay your device on big screens, but I really like the automated download of my daily newspaper through Newsstand.
That’s my favorite feature.
QR codes make debut in The Oklahoman
Last Thursday, we quietly started something new in The Oklahoman.
We published our first QR code (quick-response code) as part of our organized effort to build a better bridge from our printed newspaper and the multimedia that’s available on NewsOK.com. With a smart phone like and iPhone or Android device — or with an iPod Touch — users can now see all the multimedia elements we have on NewsOK without getting up from their chair as they read the newspaper.
The first codes appeared in the sports section on Thursday. We added the Weekend Look section on Friday. We added the Business section on Saturday. On Sunday, those little codes were everywhere. We weren’t quiet about it anymore.
I even had a story on Page 2-A on Sunday, where I said this:
We are trying to find solutions for our readers who want everything at their fingertips. We know The Oklahoman’s print readers like to hold the newspaper in their hands. And we know that a lot of those readers also want to interact with our content — videos, photos, commenting, etc.
Here are the quick facts:
- We’ll have a code in the right rail of each section front. Scanning in those codes will take readers to a list of every story in that section and the videos, photo and more that are associated with them.
- We’ll have codes placed sporadically with some of our stories every day. Those codes will take readers directly to the multimedia that’s associated to that particular article.
- We’ll have codes with our daily poll question on Page 2-A. You can vote on the poll question right there.
- We’ll have codes in the weekend sports sections that drive users directly to our mobile Gameday pages for OU and OSU football.
- You can download The Oklahoman’s free iPhone app to scan these codes. We have a built-in scan-code reader that works great. But you can also use any generic scan-code reader applications that’s available for your device.
Enjoy the codes. I think you’ll find that it allows great access to all our content with just a swipe and click on your phone.
NewsOK week in review: Mobile gameday coverage, Mr. Know It and early morning mowing
Follow the OU and OSU games on your mobile device
This is the one thing I’m most excited about this week. We’re making one huge improvement to our live college football game day coverage this year. We’re launching special game coverage pages for OU and OSU so users can easily see all our live content from their mobile device. Go ahead … log on with your iPhone while you’re sitting on the couch …. or while you’re sitting at the tailgate or inside the stadium …. or while you’re shopping with your girlfriend. This page will serve every need. We’ll have our live chat, a live photo gallery, a live boxscore, updated blog posts, update articles, a complete scoreboard and more — and it will be formatted specifically for your mobile device. It will truly be everything you need on your mobile device.
Full Access — Print + Digital
I could write a book about the great offerings we have for Full Access to all our products on multiple devices. But nothing says it better than this video commercial, so I’ll just stop typing ….
Ed Godfrey — the music man
Trace Adkins (not Ed Godfrey)
Outdoors editor Ed Godfrey had an excellent blog post late last week. After listening to Trace Adkins’ new song, “Just Fishin’,” Ed decided to rank the top 10 fishing songs of all time. Ed didn’t think Adkins’ latest would reach the top 10 of all time fishing songs. I disagree.
2011 Football preview — Digital Part 1
You still have time to read all the content in The Oklahoman’s 2011 Football Preview. NewsOK built a special page for the “Dynamic Duos’ coverage, including pages for OU, OSU, High School and Big 12/Nation. There really no better way to get fully prepared for the football season.
2011 football preview — Digital Part 2
The site mentioned above is great for NewsOK users, but what about our iPad users? Well, we also created special PDF editions for OU, OSU and high school football previews. The editions are built specifically to look great on your iPad. It’s high design and in-depth preview coverage built for you to store on iBooks on your device. You don’t have to have an iPad to download these special editions. Go ahead, read it on your laptop or even your iPhone. But if you have an iPad, you really have to give this a try. 1) OU edition. 2) OSU edition. 3) High school edition.
Stop-motion football fun
Speaking of getting ready for the football season, a couple of our video animation experts and one of our artists were busy making outstanding intro animations for our videos. Check out the “Making of NewsOK 2011 Stop Motion Intros” video, starring Kyle Roberts, Billy Davis, Steve Boaldin and Berry Tramel. (Berry did no work on this project, but we think it’s important that he appear in all videos this Fall). This video is really cool, because it shows the amazing talent we have working in our building every day. I’m impressed.
Steve Lackmeyer and the MidTown controversy
Steve Lackmeyer was in MidTown a week ago for an inaugural outdoor food market celebration. He previewed the event with a story. He was at the event as a reporter. He was there when the event was shut down by a number of local agencies. He blogged about it. He Tweeted about it. He wrote a couple of follow-up stories about it. He was so on top of this story that you might wonder if Steve orchestrated the entire thing just so he can report on it. Well, Steve’s a well-respected voice in our community, but he’s not that powerful. He is, however, a quality reporter that stays after stories once he starts to report on them. For that, all of our readers appreciate him.
I dare you not to read this story
We had a well-read story for our Oklahoma readers on Tuesday. It became a well-read story on an international level on Thursday when the Drudge Report linked to the story. The headline says it all: “4:30 a.m. mowing leads to Oklahoma City man’s arrest.” There’s really nothing more I can say to make you click on that story.
Alan Herzberger — star photographer
When we saw the first evidence of smoke to the southeast of our building on Tuesday afternoon, the breaking news reporters sprang into action. As our photographers and reporters raced to the scene and our editors raced to put the information we already had on the top of NewsOK, I took my iPhone a walked to our parking garage to snap a photo of the smoke from a distance. As I walked back to the building entry, I emailed the photo to pics@newsok.com. Before I reached the elevator, I saw the alert that my photo was live on our August User-Submitted Photos gallery. On the elevator, I emailed that to Robb Hibbard, our Digital News Editor. And when I returned to my desk, the photo I took moments earlier was at the top of NewsOK.com — 620 pixels wide. I was very proud.
Mr. Know It debuts
Look closely at that photo on the right. Is that Mr. Know It? Or is it a cardboard Mr. Know It? The debate in our newsroom rages on, but the important thing is that Mr. Know It is available to visit all areas of central Oklahoma. We just can’t know for sure if it’s a real-life Mr. Know It or a cardboard Mr. Know It. It doesn’t really matter, as Communities Editor Don Gammill (the real-life one) says: “He’s generally available to travel, and he’s easy to work with. You’ll never hear him complain, and he’s always smiling.”
A new web editor will join us
I hired a new web editor that serve a multitude of purposes for NewsOK. Her name is Lindsay Houts, and if you are in the social media circles in Oklahoma City, you are already know her. She’ll start soon, and you will see her involved quite heavily with our sports coverage in the digital space. I hope you connect with Lindsay and welcome her to our team.
Most-viewed article
Remember that story about the man who was arrested after he was mowing his lawn at 4:30 a.m.? It was our most-viewed article of the week. We even followed up the story to get more information for our readers. After all, the first story was so popular, we felt there was a little more to tell, so check out Friday’s story, as well.
Most-viewed blog post
Travis Haney was the author of our most-viewed blog post last week. Well, this makes two straight weeks for Travis. His post, “Here we go: A&M gone, now what for OU?,” was the most-viewed post in the NewsOK blogging network. He was breaking down all the options for OU in the conference realignment mess facing the Big 12 Conference.
Most-viewed photo gallery
The wildfires in Oklahoma were our top news item this week. The stories, videos and photos dominated the NewsOK home page, and rightfully so. The gallery was highly trafficked. These photos were from the journalistic professionals that consistently serve up the best images about and around Oklahoma. (In other words, they aren’t the phone snapshots I take from the parking garage).
Most-viewed video
This week’s Press Row video with Jenni Carlson and Berry Tramel also covered conference realignment and the Big 12 Conference. It led all videos this week:
This week on NewsOK: New apps, updated apps and everything from Bennie Owen to Kendrick Perkins
Serving another iPad experience
We launched our custom iPad application for The Oklahoman last October. I wrote about it plenty, and we received quite a bit of national notoriety for this application. Since the launch in Oct. 2010, we opened the subscriptions up for all subscribers to The Oklahoman, as well as offering a la carte subscriptions for $9.99 per month. But we also launched a different iPad app with a completely different experience in the past month or so. This one gives readers a page-by-page experience on their iPad. In other words, it acts as an interactive PDF of the newspaper edition. Since we launched it, we’ve received a lot of positive feedback. The one review we have in the App store says this: “This is exactly what reading the paper electronically SHOULD be like.” That user is a true believer, but others prefer the customized tablet experience we had already built. Us? We honestly don’t care which application you use. We are simply trying to provide the best digital experiences possible for our users who continue to move their reading habits to new devices. The Oklahoma Print Replica app is just another option for you. And it’s free to all subscribers of The Oklahoman.
A weekend of rowing
Last weekend was a big weekend for the Oklahoma River with the USRowing Master’s National Championships in town. We had the event covered with a series of stories, photo galleries and videos. Dave Morris did a stellar job with a video recap of the event on Sunday. And the blog post from photographer John Clanton was top notch. Of course, the photos galleries were probably the most popular element of the weekend (NewsOK readers absolutely love photos).
Growing Oklahoma Watch coverage
We launched a third Oklahoma Watch page recently. Oklahoma Watch, you might remember, is a “non-profit, investigative and in-depth reporting team that collaborates with other news organizations and higher education to produce journalism that makes a difference in the lives of Oklahomans.” We launched a page on NewsOK late in 2010 as we began our combined Women in Prison series with Oklahoma Watch. And recently, we started Oklahoma Watch pages on Tax Credits and on Immigration. It’s all found on our Oklahoma Watch page. But more than anything, it’s proof of what we think our role is here … the continued focus on serious issues is something that we at The Oklahoman and NewsOK are committed to.
The Kendrick Perkins saga
The Kendrick Perkins saga has been pretty interesting this week. It began on Saturday, when news from Beaumont, Texas, came out with information about Kendrick Perkins being arrested early that morning. It was a misdemeanor, but it didn’t look good. Jenni Carlson wrote a column about it, pointing out exactly how it didn’t look so good. “But to be an NBA player in your hometown doing a youth camp and raising money for life-skills and drug-awareness training for kids, to be arrested less than 24 hours after going to the hospital and being told to cool it, to blow off a charity game and a camp banquet to then go out to a club and get arrested, that is plain dumb.” Darnell Mayberry followed up with reports from the Perkins camp saying that he’s innocent and he wants to clear his name: “‘He was not drinking alcohol, nor was he intoxicated,’ said White, CEO and founder of EAG Sports Management. ‘Not one drop of alcohol Friday night. We’re not sure why they said Kendrick was intoxicated.‘ ” It’s interesting, and NewsOK will have it all covered. What else are we going to do … cover NBA games during a lockout?
This just in — I have a favorite app
I’ve had my iPad for about six months now. I love it. This week, I finally decided on my absolute favorite app. It’s one I downloaded months ago but never really used on a regular basis. This week, I opened the MLS MatchDay 2011 app and realized how much information it gave to soccer fans of the top U.S. league. Granted, I don’t follow the league that closely, but I casually follow what’s happening in Major League Soccer. And if central Oklahoma would have joined the league with a team in 2004 (check the NewsOK archives for history on that), I would have been following the league very closely. As it is, I just felt I should share that for its functionality and content, the MLS Match Day app is my favorite.
NewsOK TV video worth seeing each day
NewsOK TV is a show that Dave Morris and Angi Bruss have been doing for the past month or so. It’s always a great recap on what people are talking about every day.
Download our videos on NewsOK.tv app
Speaking of NewsOK TV, I highly recommend finding and downloading our NewsOK TV app for your iPhone. We updated the app with new functionality on Aug. 10, and it’s definitely worth a look. Check out the iTunes app store for the latest upgrade. It’s all you need to see every video that we produce at NewsOK.
A trip through The Oklahoman archives
Bennie Owen
I received this question from a NewsOK user this week: “I’m looking for an article … that was printed in 1969. Do you know if the online paid subscription archive would go back that far. Thank you for your time.” My answer: “I would recommend using our archives for The Oklahoman. We should have everything you are looking for dating back to 1901. The link is available on the NewsOK home page sub-navigation.” The Oklahoman’s archives are a real treasure that are sometimes overlooked. Just for fun, I did a quick search for Bennie Owen (I wanted to be sure I could find some I ended up with a long list of stories. After all, Bennie Owen is a legendary football coach at OU and the namesake of the field at Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Here is just one item I found – a notes column from Charles J. Brill that included a passionate plea to make Owen the athletic director at the school. I love reading old columns from our archives. You’d enjoy it, too.
‘Know it’ all about the state quarterbacks
We launched two new know it pages this week in preparation for the football season. You can now read everything you need to know about OU quarterback Landry Jones and OSU quarterback Brandon Weeden. We can only hope there’s no know it curse, though. Two years ago, we launched pages for Sam Bradford and Zach Robinson. Bradford was injured in the first game. Robinson’s numbers fell short of legendary ‘know it’ status. We wish better ‘know it’ luck to Jones and Weeden.
Most-viewed video
Get ready for a steady diet of Berry Tramel and college football. We start with the most-viewed video this week:
Most-viewed article
The most-viewed article this week was Berry Tramel’s column about the Sooners and their future conference affiliation: OU wants no part of the SEC.
Most-viewed blog
Berry led the blog charge this week. This was also about college football: Big 12 football: Houston is no solution.
Most-viewed photo gallery
The gallery is more than a week old, but it still was popular this week. It was the photo gallery we created to go with our obituary of legendary OU quarterback Jimmy Harris. It should be noted, of course, that the primary column that the gallery was linked to was Berry Tramel’s column: The quarterback who never lost.
The Oklahoman’s iPhone app serves well in San Diego
I was in San Diego last week — a truly enjoyable weekend vacation.
But I was surprised at one detail. I stayed at a hotel that didn’t offer wifi. It wasn’t a small hotel; This was one of the major hotels on the San Diego harbor.
What kind of hotels don’t offer wifi? Apparently quite a few, says my wife, who tends to travel more frequently than I do. I think that will change very soon, says me — a disappointed hotel customer.
Sure, I could purchase wired Internet access with the connection in the room, but I didn’t even bring my laptop. (Who needs a laptop anymore? I use my iPad).
One point to note, I don’t have 3G access on my iPad, so I had no way to use NewsOK or download editions of The Oklahoman on my iPad.
So how did I stay in touch with the news in Oklahoma while I was away?
Well, I do have 3G connection through my iPhone, so I used the NewsOK Mobile site for my breaking news on the best news website in the world (that’s NewsOK). I enjoyed that, all the while keeping in mind that our mobile audience is our fastest-growing user-base that we have on the site. I see why. It’s a nice way to get a quick view of what we’re playing up.
But the cool thing I used that I don’t normally use was The Oklahoman’s iPhone application (normally, I use the iPad application). I downloaded the Friday, Saturday and Sunday editions of The Oklahoman on my iPhone and browsed the articles, videos and photos in a clean, packaged reading experience on my phone.
So, I’ve written plenty about the iPad app and I’ve written plenty about the NewsOK site and mobile site. But I don’t often talk about how great the iPhone app is.
But now that I’ve used it in a real world situation where I needed it to serve my needs as a news consumer, I’m a big fan.
The Oklahoman takes the stage at Apple’s WWDC
This photo made the rounds in our building on Monday.
It’s an image of the the annual Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC). Take special note of The Oklahoman logo on the right side. It’s referencing our iPad application.
The speaker was apparently talking about the major news companies that have developed apps and begun to reach an audience on the iPad. Apple will have an app called Newsstand that will help deliver editions directly to our subscribers. The speaker was explaining that the media companies behind him were ready to take advantage of this upcoming app.
I’m not sure, but I don’t think the image was up there for an extended period of time. But it did cause our esteemed Creative Director Scott Horton in our Audience Development department to post this on Facebook:
Technology is moving so fast that our 15 minutes of fame has now dwindled to 15 seconds. Someone at Apple must think we’re doing pretty good by listing us with some of the top publishers in the world. Congratulations to our team for all your hard work on the new Oklahoman iPad and iPhone app. – Apple World Wide Developers Conference, San Francisco, June 6, 2011.
Scott is one of the world’s biggest fans of Apple, so I will speak with him about getting The Oklahoman’s name above the New York Times’ logo. He’ll have that discussion with Steve Jobs, he says.
A question from the audience … Are we on Android devices?
I received this email from a user over the weekend:
“I was curious is there are any plans to expand your digital offerings to Android based devices?”
The answer? I’ll just repeat it here:
“We do have a NewsOK app for $0.99 for Android devices. We also have an app for The Oklahoman (daily downloadable editions) available for Android devices. You should find those in your various Android app stores.“
