Semi-definitive history of ‘online’ Pulitzer Prize winners

Steve Myers, of Poynter, researched these winners for his piece on Why it matters who won the first ‘online’ Pulitzer?

Interesting how he breaks down the nature of the work.

– Did it appear first in print or online?

– Was it created for the web or for print?

– How do print and web stories mesh to form one narrative?

 

Insightful for anyone hoping to achieve a Pulitzer Prize one-day…

 

A semi-definitive history of ‘online’ Pulitzers

2006, The Times-Picayune 
Print-native news outlet, mostly print-native work.

2006, The Sun Herald
Print-native news outlet, combination of print and digitally native work.

  • The Sun Herald’s entry for its Katrina coverage also was heavy on stories, but it included an extensive description of its online work: a news blog, frequent home page updates, photo galleries of damage (by its own photographers and from readers), forums that people used to get in touch with one another, and an interactive map of damaged areas.

2008, The Washington Post

Print-native news outlet, combination of print and digitally native work.

  • News stories comprised the bulk of the Post’s entry for its coverage of the Virginia Tech shooting, but the Post also included a description of how it had developed its online coverage throughout the day. It started with an initial, one-line report of a gunman on campus and later included stories with fatality counts, an audio report, live Internet radio, cell phone videos and user submissions.

2009, The New York Times
Print-native news outlet, mix of print and digitally native work.

 

Read the complete list at Poynter.

Personal photos of the Space Shuttle Discovery arriving in Washington D.C.

Last week, a friend of mine, Kirby Plessas, witnessed the arrival of Space Shuttle Discovery into Washington D.C.

Here are some of the photos she took, see the full set on Flickr.

 

A crowd awaits Space Shuttle Discovery at the Udvar-Hazy Smithsonian in Northern Virginia (outside Wash DC).

 

Space Shuttle Discovery has arrived.

Continue reading “Personal photos of the Space Shuttle Discovery arriving in Washington D.C.”

Renewable energy production variability by hour of day, and by season (graph)

– …illustrate the variability of wind and solar generation relative to the comparatively smooth output from other generation sources

– Power produced by geothermal, biomass, biogas, and small hydro generators can be easily dispatched, meaning it can be either increased, decreased, or controlled to remain fairly constant.

– Wind resources are often more available at night.

– Solar power is not generated until the sun comes up, and can increase and decrease quickly as the sun rises, sets, or is blocked by cloud cover. However, much of California’s utility-scale solar capacity is based on concentrating solar technology, which embodies enough thermal storage to continue generating power for a few hours after the sun goes down

– The variability of wind and solar power generation leads to challenges in power system operations and planning.

– The contribution towards total generation from eligible renewable resources also varies seasonally. For the dates charted above, the amount of renewable generation as a percentage of the total generation ranges from 8% on Oct 18, 2011 to 14% on May 9, 2011.

via – Today in Energy, EIA

Amazon releases a Kindle competitor to Instapaper, Pocket

There is a booming market for apps that allow you to read while offline. The two most popular of these apps, Instapaper and Pocket, let you save an article for later like on an airplane or in your underground nuclear bunker.

Now, Amazon is entering the game by offering the same service for the Kindle. A new app for Mac and PC allows you to “Send to Kindle” and then read on your e-reader or on a smartphone/tablet.

I think this gives the Kindle an edge in two big ways. One, most of us are likely to carry our Kindle with us when going into non-internet zones. That’s why we bring it, to pass away those long hours with books, but now we may be able to do so with articles and blog posts as well.

Two, we all know reading on an e-reader is preferable than doing so on the backlit displays of smartphones and tablets.

It will be interesting to see how this Kindle competition affects the market. I always thought that Instapaper and Pocket had a niche market. They must be scared to see the 10-ton behemoth, Amazon, entering the fray.

Infographic – 20 reasons to switch to Google+

Click for the full infographic.

 

Ok, this is a pure advertisement for Google+, but I do love the social network.

Partially because competition is always good (Facebook needs a kick in the teeth sometimes) and because I’ve never like the blue boxes of Facebook. The design and flow of Google+ works better for me…it feels like a real social network, not all gimmicky like Facebook.

 
Of the top 20 here are my five favorites:

#3 – Better mobile app (loads fast and better designed)

#11 – Better search (duh it’s Google)

#12 – Elegant notifications (great for multitaskers)

#13 – No more friend request fatigue (Circles are awesome)

#19 – Single post muting (mute posts in your stream)

 

Are you on Google+, or have you never gone back since it launched?

Cadillac releases sophisticated array of semi-autonomous sensors for self-driving cars

Google isn’t the only company working on a self-driving car. Cadillac today announced that it is actively road testing a semi-autonomous system called Super Cruise that can control a vehicle’s steering, braking and lane-centering capabilities. Super Cruise, according to Cadillac, is designed to help make freeway driving easier on the driver when either stuck in traffic or during long hauls down the interstate.

The system works by combining on-board radar, ultrasonic sensors, cameras and GPS data to give your car the ability to read lane markings and detect curves in the roadway.

via Laptop Magazine

 

For certain luxury cars, we are already half-way (or more) there. From the Cadillac news release:

Many of the building block technologies for Super Cruise are already available on the all-new 2013 Cadillac XTS and ATS luxury sedans, as part of the available Driver Assist Package:

  • Rear Automatic Braking
  • Full-Speed Range Adaptive Cruise Control
  • Intelligent Brake Assist
  • Forward Collision Alert
  • Safety Alert Seat
  • Automatic Collision Preparation
  • Lane Departure Warning
  • Side Blind Zone Alert
  • Rear Cross Traffic Alert
  • Adaptive Forward Lighting
  • Rear Vision Camera With Dynamic Guidelines
  • Head Up Display

The key to delivering semi-autonomous capability will be the integration of lane-centering technology that relies on forward-looking cameras to detect lane markings and GPS map data to detect curves and other road characteristics, said John Capp, General Motors director of Global Active Safety Electronics and Innovation.

 

 

Pretty crazy to think about all the technology needed to self drive a car. That’s 12 sensors/alerts/displays with more needed to fully automate the simplest of driving tasks. Makes our brains seem pretty sophisticated.

There are over 1,000 Google Doodles

Doodles are the fun changes made to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous artists, pioneers, and scientists.

How did the idea for doodles originate?

In 1998, before the company was even incorporated, the concept of the doodle was born when Google founders Larry and Sergey played with the corporate logo to indicate their attendance at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert.

Two years later in 2000, Larry and Sergey asked current webmaster Dennis Hwang, an intern at the time, to produce a doodle for Bastille Day. It was so well received that Dennis was appointed Google’s chief doodler and doodles started showing up more and more regularly on the Google homepage.

Who designs the doodles?

There is a team of illustrators (we call them doodlers) and engineers that are behind each and every doodle you see.

 


Continue reading “There are over 1,000 Google Doodles”

Talk is cheap…so make a Long Bet (for charity) to prove your prediction

Pronouncements about the future come easy. Even when made with an air of authority, they’re usually just cheap talk, rarely revisited. Only the tiny fraction that have proven correct tend to be remembered, when their authors want to take credit.

But what if there were some cash at stake?

The Long Bets Foundation, a new project masterminded by Well founder Stewart Brand and Wired editor-at-large Kevin Kelly, hopes to raise the quality of our collective foresight by incorporating money and accountability into the process of debate.

The idea is simple. If someone makes a grandiose claim, any skeptic can challenge it – “Would you bet on that?” – and the Long Bets Foundation will keep tabs on the wager, whether it takes five years or five decades to come to pass. If proven right, a predictor can relish the victory; if wrong, the challenger gets the glory.

 

 

The Bets:

– Over a ten-year period, the S & P 500 will outperform hedge funds, when performance is measured on a basis net of fees, costs and expenses. – $1,000,000 – (Warren Buffet vs. Protege Partners, LLC)

 

– At least one human alive in the year 2000 will still be alive in 2150. – $2,000 (Peter Schwartz vs. Melody Haller)

 

– Large Hadron Collider will destroy Earth. – $1,000 (Joe Keane vs. Nick Damiano)

 

– By 2020, a professional sports team (NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS) will integrate and have a woman as a team member/player. – $500 (Thomas Leavens vs. Martin Nisenholtz)

 

– By 2025, the states will have voted on at least one constitutional amendment to cede US federal power to a global government. – $800 (Thomas Quigley vs. Steven Midgley)

 

See more on the record bets.

 

By preserving the terms of the wager in public view, Long Bets promises to be more than a service for confident prognosticators. Over time, it hopes to foster better understanding of how predictions in aggregate work out in reality – what kinds of truths are easiest (or hardest) to forecast, and what kinds of people are right (or wrong) most reliably.

According to the Long Bets Foundation, all stakes are treated as charitable donations, tax deductible when the bet is made. Bettors designate nonprofits to receive the proceeds. Meanwhile, the foundation holds the funds in an investment account for the life of the bet, with half of the growth covering administrative costs. A competition designed to thrive in the public eye, Long Bets uses time as a teacher.

via Wired, May 2002