More competition?

As if the blogosphere hadn't democratized content production enough, now comes word of a new tool from HP Labs that the company says will allow anyone who can create a PDF to publish a magazine.

From the HP Labs site:

"Called MagCloud, the service makes it possible to create digitized magazines and economically print, promote, sell and deliver them on demand.

It costs nothing to publish a magazine on MagCloud.com. You simply upload a high-resolution PDF file, and the system takes care of the rest: printing, mailing, subscription management and more."

I guess our only solace lies in the fact that while anyone can now create a magazine, very few can create a good one.

Where to get good Web photos?

Now that digital photography has pushed photojournalism into the hands of the masses -- in much the same way that blogging pushed journalism the same direction -- it stands to reason that there should be some cooperation between the two.

I've always wanted someone to explain in simple terms how Creative Commons licensing works on Flickr and other photosharing sites -- most of my questions were answered by this post by Skelliewag.

Copyblogger also has a good post on the same subject. Happy hunting!

A new (?) video resource

This may be old news to you, but I just got hip to Newsmarket, a resource for journalists looking for online video content. I came across the site on Environmental Leader (a great resource in itself for business writers looking to stay on top of green trends).

It seems as if most of the video content on Newsmarket comes from corporate communication sources, which makes it both familiar, and suspect. You do have to register and create an account, but once that hurdle is passed, it seems like most -- if not all -- video content is free.

Best of all, the site content is broken down by "beat," which IMHO is a great way to organize a website!

Not sure if the embed is as easy as YouTube, though. Still, a quick search for the companies that you cover is never a bad idea, no matter the platform.

Coolest thing ever

OK, that's a big statement to make, and an award I don't give out often. ("Coolest thing ever, that I've seen so far today" would probably be more accurate, and that's an award I give out at least once daily.)

Anyway, by now you should know that it's important to take time to tag your stories; however, keeping it simple is sometimes hard, as tag discipline falls apart in the face of long, wordy articles.

If you want to get to the meat of the story in a cool way, you could do a lot worse than working with Wordle. This tool, created by IBM researcher (and ex-They Might Be Giants drummer) Jonathan Feinberg, shows you exactly what your story is about.

For example, here's a Wordle-generated tag cloud of a recent story I wrote about Intel's green business practices.


Kind of easy to see what the highlights are, no?

(FYI Wordle works for resumes too. If you want to get a quick snapshot of your career, post your entire resume into the "create" box -- and be prepared to be boiled down to a set of meta-tags!)

Hello to Everyone In The Cleveland Area

Hey everyone,

A thank-you to Brad Kenny for recruiting me to be the new local ASBPE president. Still getting my feet wet, to be honest, but will try to make the most of the opportunity. I look forward to talking with all of you!

Brian Sparks