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

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 ...

Recently dugg on latimes.com

Just testing out Digg's widgetizer, which can generate all kinds of custom widgets that you can place on your site. Here's a list of recently popular stories from the L.A. Times: digg_id = 'digg-widget-container'; //make this id unique for each widget you put on a single page. digg_theme = 'digg-widget-unstyled'; digg_width = ...

Borked again

Hate it when that happens.

Google’s Street View comes to L.A.

Google Maps has introduced Street View for Los Angeles! Let the Easter egg hunt begin! This is where I am now.

Something everyone working on the web should see

If after watching this you aren't convinced that we're living through the biggest revolution in the history of human communication... watch it again. ;-)

Which file extension are you?

(Note: If you are not a geek, do yourself a favor and skip this entry.) If you were a file extension, which file extension would you be? Take this quiz to find out. I, apparently, am a GIF. Who knew?

Google Earth — Live!

This is the coolest thing. I am aboard a Lufthansa 747 en route to Germany, and I am seeing my 3-D flight path in real time in Google Earth. The yellow line is our flight path. It begins in the place where I started up Google Earth -- so ...

What’s in my Dock?

My Dock (for non-Mac users, this is where the most frequently used applications are kept) is literally overflowing with cool stuff. I must share... Mail — The nerve center of my online life. Who says e-mail is dead? Address Book — Helps me keep tabs on my 205 contacts -- ...

Celebrating 10 years on the web

Though the actual birth date of the World Wide Web was some years earlier, many people think of 1995 as the year that the web phenomenon was born. Thanks to the development of a user-friendly graphical web browser called Netscape (offspring of Mosaic), that year saw the beginning of ...

My new favorite site

I love Flickr! See my photos and a very cool Flash slideshow I made with the few photos I had from ONA.

March 6th 2010
Category: News No Comments

Checking in from Canada

In the four months since my last post — yes, I'm a terrible blogger — I've moved to Vancouver and started teaching at the University of British Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. Among other things, I'm coordinating the school's Integrated Journalism course, required of all first-year students, and advising some ...
November 9th 2009
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Posted here and there

The problem with writing for several outlets is that your stuff lacks a home on the Internet. But it's nothing that a little aggregation can't fix. In case you missed it, here's some of what I've been writing in the last few months: Today at De Nieuwe Reporter, the Dutch online ...
October 2nd 2009
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What would you teach aspiring journalists about the internet?

It's officially official: I'm headed to Vancouver in January to spend a semester as the Canwest Global Visiting Professor at the University of British Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. I will be teaching online journalism as part of the school's integrated journalism course. I'm looking forward to helping students think critically ...
September 2nd 2009
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Police radio play-by-play lands German Twitterer in trouble

I did this online journalism-related write-up last week for Spiegel International. It didn't run there, so I'm posting it here (with permission, of course): When a 71-year-old pensioner killed three people and wounded a fourth in a shooting spree last month in North Rhine-Westphalia, the police response unfolded in real time ...
August 22nd 2009
Category: Idea file No Comments

Search trends and geography

I know it's been around for a year or more now, but I still can't stop playing with Google Insights for Search, that small window into the universe of data that Google collects on user behavior. It's a trend-spotter's dream, and — particularly with its geographical filters — a potential ...