Innovations In News

By Chris Wilson

Developing this map was a leap of faith. While the Bureau of Labor Statistics is a treasure trove of economic and employment data, the files are far too granular to eyeball for a sense of the big picture. The county-by-county employment data for this map came as a 77MB file that was far too large to stick into Excel and sort by year or location. So it wasn't until three-quarters of the way through the development of this map that I first got a real look at the data.

The story here speaks for itself; in the past year, virtually every part of America has seen a catastrophic decline in employment. While it's a bit morbid to marvel over, it is interesting to watch the red circles cascade through the country, striking first in areas like Michigan and spreading from there. Normally, I think that a good editorial multimedia project should be accompanied by a short narrative that guides readers through the data to get them started. In this case, however, the storyline was all too apparent without my gilded prose.

Using old-fashioned reporting techniques combined with high-tech databases and satellite photos, Washington Post reporter Blaine Harden provide a different look inside North Korean labor camps. Hardin work with other Post journalist, designers and developers to build this flash feature after he obtained the satellite photos and confirmed the exact locations with his sources. The feature is a Flash AS3 interactive to display the images and the data points. You can also download the Google Maps XML.

This interactive video presentation uses three new technologies developed by the Product Development team from The Washington Post. It will be used for special projects and regular video shows like the upcoming onBeing.

Fluid: A 3-D media navigation tool that allows for hierarchies and multiple types of dusplays. Built on Flash Actionscript 3 and using Papervision 3D, Fluid can display numerous videos in 3D space allowing users to navigate through them without scrolling.

Web-Com: A threaded and user-moderated comment system that provides a visual representation of the most valuable comments and conversations among users. The comments are cataloged in a database and displayed via Flash. The most liked comments become larger and conversations (replies) gravitate to the center. Users who like a more structured view can switch modes to see them in a list.

Omni Viewer:The Flash video player can display lives broadcast and progressive streaming at any size and in full screen. The new controls provide an intuitive interface t also allows users to quickly move through the video without buffering delays.

All three tools have a Django administration tool that provides editors with the ability to build and edit special media packages and to choose which views or technologies to use.

Currently, we are serving the videos via Brightcove but the player allows for live RMTP streams, mp3 or any flv file.

The feature was developed by the Product Development team known as the Web Ninajs. Jesse Foltz developed the code-intensive Flash interface and Lee Trout developed the behind-the-scenes databases, scripts and administration tools.

The visual content of Scene In was shot on the Canon 5D Mark II. Because of the audio limitations of the camera (no headphone monitoring and no manual adjustment of the levels), the audio interviews were recorded with a wireless Sennheiser ME66/K6 microphone onto a Marantz audio recorder and later synced in Final Cut Pro.

The player for Scene In was developed in Flash, and the chapters denoting each fashionista were created using cue points in the Brightcove console. The interface was also developed in Flash AS3 and we wanted to offer people a simple experience that made it easy to either watch all the videos in sequence, like a video slideshow, or to choose an episode by name (list) or location (map). Users can comment on each video or skip to the next one, choosing to engage where they have interest.

The comment system is build using Django and Flash AS3. The idea is to provide a visual representation that allows users to quickly see what are the highest rated and most discussed comments. Expect to see this comment implementation more in the future.