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ulken.com · Eric Ulken’s adventures in online journalism

New at latimes.com: Electoral vote map

Now that the primary season is over and the general election campaign is heating up, it's time to introduce a fun little electoral vote map built by my colleague, Sean Connelley. What's unique about this one is that you can create your own scenario here and then grab some ...

The audacity of meme

Whether or not you believe Barack Obama is Mr. Wonderful, this percolating politics meme is kind of a hoot: Jason Kottke is aggregating tweets that start with "When Obama wins"...

What anger looks like

I'm not an angry journalist, but it's hard not to be drawn to the alternately sad/funny/heartless/clueless screeds at AngryJournalist.com. Seeking some aggregate wisdom from the 2,794 comments posted to date, I captured all the venom and slammed it through TagCrowd (omitting various forms of the words "angry" and "journalist"). ...

Where I’ll be later this month

I'm looking forward to attending the Journalism 3G symposium on computation and journalism at Georgia Tech Feb. 22-23. If you're a news geek, I can't imagine a better place to be. If you're going, ping me.

The Globe jumps the gun

For sale on Amazon.com: 19-0: The Historic Championship Season of New England's Unbeatable Patriots, by The Boston Globe. Guessing the Giants might quibble with that title. (via E&P)

Technical skills in journalism jobs

The students in my online media class at USC are looking for the technical skills that will help land them jobs in journalism, and I want to help them identify what those skills might be. I have a pretty good idea, of course, but I thought I'd be more ...

Why does Pinkberry prohibit photography?

Seriously, guys. WTF? Yet another reason to boycott Pinkberry and patronize yummy Cefiore in Little Tokyo instead. Who's with me?

My early Christmas present

OK. So, I know these are supposed to be for underprivileged children and all, but I just had to get my hands on the OLPC XO laptop, quite possibly the coolest tech gadget of the year. Sure, my BlackBerry probably has more processing power, but an afternoon spent playing with ...

Visualizing the primary season

Our latest interactive data project, launched today, is the 2008 Primary Tracker. It's a visual guide to next year's crazy presidential nominating season, which begins earlier and culminates faster than any in U.S. history. Check it out.

Competition in local data

News websites are starting to see some competition on the local data front from niche players that do one thing very well. Witness SignalMap, which maps users' reports of cellular reception, and CleanScores, a database of restaurant health inspections in L.A. and San Francisco (credit to Joe Murphy for pointing ...

November 19th 2008
Category: News 2 Comments

My next assignment: covering online journalism

I've spent 10-plus years working from within to change newspapers in some small way. Now I hope to effect change from the outside. Earlier this month, I left my job as interactive technology editor at the Los Angeles Times to travel and learn and share stories about the ...
November 6th 2008
Category: News No Comments

Who says newspapers are dead?

The scene at Second and Spring streets, downtown Los Angeles, 2 p.m. PST Nov. 6, 2008: For the second day since the election, the line of people seeking copies of Tuesday's paper outside the Los Angeles Times building is around the corner. (Copies of the paper are also listed at a substantial ...
November 5th 2008
Category: News No Comments

New at latimes.com: Slice and filter California election results

In my last few weeks at the Times, I've largely been preoccupied with imagining and building our election data widgets for use on election night.  It might seem silly to spend so much time preparing for an event that's over so quickly.  But I think we've found at least one ...
October 27th 2008
Category: News 2 Comments

Leaving the Times

I want to say something about what took place today at the Los Angeles Times, where I've worked for nearly 5 years. It's a drama that repeats itself in newsrooms across the country and has already taken place more times than I care to count during my tenure at the Times. The ...
October 27th 2008
Category: News 2 Comments

Backchannel on blogging

What happens when you put a bunch of bloggers in a room, feed them pizza and moderate a discussion on their craft? You end up with two real-time conversations: One in the physical room and the other in the Twitterverse. I know that's no surprise to those who populate this corner ...