publishing kigali wire

graham holliday || kigaliwire.com

online distribution & collaboration

Tuesday, 17 November 2009

The old way...Tuesday, 17 November 2009

The “old way” of publishing and distributing news is old fashioned, cumbersome, expensive, a bit broken and, in the print world at least, it’s always late.

Journalism - Los AngelesTuesday, 17 November 2009

Doing journalism is expensive

Editing & Production - Washington D.C.Tuesday, 17 November 2009

Printing - DelhiTuesday, 17 November 2009

Distribution - New York CityTuesday, 17 November 2009

Sales - KigaliTuesday, 17 November 2009


Today we’re going to focus on distribution and how this works online

$644 million per yearBusiness Insider Jan 2009


because the old way is unsustainable. It reportedly costs the New York Times $644 million per year to distribute the print edition -

The new way...


Mainstream media have been working on the new way for quite some time. For at least 28 years...


And they still can’t make it pay. See video from 1981- youtube.com/watch?v=5WCTn4FljUQ


All the tools I use to distribute news about Rwanda are all online and (currently) free.

keywords || tags || links || #hashtags


The main drivers across all the tools I use are; keywords, tags, links and hashtags on Twitter and similar tools.

Alan Rusbridger, Guardian EditorTuesday, 17 November 2009

In this short video, Alan Rusbridger, Guardian editor, explains why Twitter is useful for journalists; for collaboration and distribution of news

Step 1 - Check your presence


namechk.comTuesday, 17 November 2009

make sure you can occupy the internet with your unique name - you don’t want a name that’s already been nabbed.

Step 2transparent

Step 2 - Be transparent


Blog the back storyTuesday, 17 November 2009

It is a little time consuming, but if you tell people how you are working and why, you might learn of better ways to do things - and on the internet it is good to be straight up.

Publish your roughbookTuesday, 17 November 2009

Even old notes and scrawls can have value

The Rwanda contextTuesday, 17 November 2009

A little on my situation in Rwanda and how the processes I’m going to describe are purely experimental and quite possibly not best suited to a developing country in East Africa... But I’m looking at this working 3 years down the line, not how things stand today.

Press freedom:157th out of 175 countriesTuesday, 17 November 2009

As listed in the Reporters without borders 2009 Press freedom index

Foreign press accreditation:$1,000 per yearTuesday, 17 November 2009

I don’t have press accreditation - not at this price - the fee is reportedly coming down very soon to a far more manageable $100 per year. As such, kigaliwire is pretty much a photoblog come news aggregator at the moment - original reporting will have to wait a little.

Broadband:4 hours to download a 45mb fileTuesday, 17 November 2009

We keep hearing about the arrival of super-fast broadband in Rwanda - but it’s not here yet - this is the cable that connects me to the world. It’s just outside my front door in Kigali. It costs $133 per month to have medium speed internet from Rwandatel at home. Speed varies greatly throughout the day; from pretty quick, to a complete stop.

10 tools foronline distribution& collaboration


1. publish2.comTuesday, 17 November 2009

Publish2 is a social bookmarking site specifically for journalists with a number of useful collaborative tools and a tip box feature


find a news story


Click the bookmarklet and editorialise the info bearing in mind where the link is heading - publish2, delicious, twitter, your new website - you have to keep in mind the end destination.


When you save the bookmark, it will appear on the Publish2 website - I have a small network here mostly consisting of foreign correspondents, foreign desk editors and those interested in African news.


The link also appears on Twitter which is by far the most highly engaged community I have discovered online interested in discussing and sharing information about Rwanda.


The link also appears on the excellent social bookmarking site - delicious.


The RSS feed from my account on delicious then feeds into the kigaliwire.com website in the breaking news column.

publish2 || twitter || delicious || kigaliwire

1 - 350+ people


With publish2 I can quickly distribute information across these four sites each of which currently have networks of between 1 and 350+ people

2. pixelpipe.comTuesday, 17 November 2009

Pixelpipe helps you wire up 100 or more online services. I use it to distribute photos, tweets, links, blog posts and audio. Sign up and add all the social media services you use - I spent 3 months or more slowly adding new services for kigaliwire. I now have around 80 different accounts.


Take a photo - this is my taxi in Kigali

photo + link to 45 sitesTuesday, 17 November 2009

And upload from the pixelpipe website


The photo immediately appears on all the photo sharing sites I have wired up - such as 23HQ pictured above.


And ipernity


Flickr

10 - 200+ contacts on 45 sites


On each photo sharing site I am trying to build small communities of folk interested in Rwanda and East/Central Africa and also just those interested in photography.


Pixelpipe also works from my mobile phone - there is an iPhone app which will work on a data network and/or wifi - throw in a couple of editing applications - camerabag for one - and I can publish across up to 100 sites while I’m on the move.

3. hellotxt.comTuesday, 17 November 2009

Hellotxt is similar to pixelpipe but allows me to send updates and photos and other media to yet more sites. I use pixelpipe to send updates to hellotxt which in turn sends them on to a bunch of other sites

4. tubemogul.comTuesday, 17 November 2009

A video distribution tool - like pixelpipe but focussed solely on video


Watch this short video to see how it works.

5. bit.lyTuesday, 17 November 2009

Bit.ly is a url shortener with useful statistical analysis. Short urls are important for services like twitter where space is at a premium.

6. RSS + Yahoo Pipes + FeedburnerTuesday, 17 November 2009

Raw RSS feeds from a number of news sites and filtered feeds sent through Yahoo Pipes are the main online information sources I use for kigaliwire. Feedburner allows me to make RSS feeds easily available and people can subscribe to the website via email using feedburner. It also allows me to open up the information on the website for others to build things with - not something I’m looking at doing, but it make the site yet more “porous”


Yahoo Pipes is a fantastic tool for gathering, filtering and sorting huge amounts of information - the only downside is it’s a wee bit flakey, slower than straight RSS and needs a little bit of a learning curve to figure out how to set it up - it does, on the other hand, greatly improve your understanding of how RSS works and how data flows across the Internet.


In fact, Kigaliwire grew out of a Yahoo Pipe experiment I was playing with in which I filtered news for different countries/topics and sent the resulting feed unedited into twitter as a “world news wire” service using a service called twitterfeed


the idea was/is whenever a country or issue “kicks off” I would turn off the auto twitterfeed updates which are ugly, slow and not 100% reliable...


And go human....


If there is a breaking news event in Haiti I could theoretically turn the twitterfeed tap off and update things manually in a more web-twitter friendly manner.


During the Iran troubles, Iranwire was getting retweeted a lot, but there was no human doing anything - it’s just an custom built newsfeed coming out of Yahoo Pipes. A human could add so much more value - that’s what I hope @kigaliwire is doing for those interested in Rwanda.

7. Specialist search enginesTuesday, 17 November 2009

I am starting to send my updates and blog posts through Afrigator - an African blog search engine and aggregator - more likely to get kigaliwire discovered if I let it swim in a pool where people are looking for Africa focussed information. Afrigator also has a twitter like service called gatorpeeps - I send all twitter updates to gatorpeeps too.

8. tweetdeck.comTuesday, 17 November 2009

More a monitoring tool than a distribution tool - I use tweetdeck and/or tweetgrid to monitor twitter for talk about rwanda using live keyword searches


You could call it a “social newswire”. It sometimes works like an early warning station or just points you to information that you might not have come across using other monitoring methods.

9. pingomatic.comTuesday, 17 November 2009

Pingomatic allows me to tell a wide variety of blog search engines whenever I update kigaliwire.

10. netvibes.comTuesday, 17 November 2009

I use Netvibes to aid in the transparency practice - I try to send all raw feeds of information I have coming to my desktop into a publicly available version on netvibes. You can do similar with igoogle and google reader, but netvibes is a very flexible alternative. Because it’s web-based, it also allows me to work whenever I’m away from my desktop or working from my mobile.


But you can never rely on any of these online services to work all the time - they are online and they are free - so what do you expect?


Now, I fully realise this is a hell of a scattergun approach, but as I mentioned at the beginning this isn’t about how things stand at the moment - this is about 3 yrs down the line.


Throwing all this information about Rwanda into a tonne of different “rooms” on the Internet may, in 60-80 per cent of cases - be futile. Even though I’ve only just started on this, I can already see sites like Plerb, Kwippy and Jaiku are pretty useless for talking about and disseminating information about Rwanda - but I can add new services as they come along and drop those that don’t work as and when

Foster debateTuesday, 17 November 2009

One of the key tasks is to try and foster debate on those sites where people are discussing Rwanda

Entertain??Tuesday, 17 November 2009

Find the “rooms” where you can entertain folk - discuss Rwanda in a more lighthearted way, discuss the quirkier aspects of living here.

Encourage the conversation... Unlike...Tuesday, 17 November 2009

But, most importantly it’s to encourage conversation wherever that may be - I fully expect most conversations related to Rwanda to happen offsite, off kigaliwire.com. Conversations are already happening on flickr, twitter, ipernity, 23hq, radar and on the blog - this is just the start. Although realistically, I’m not sure if one person can really manage all of this. Possibly for a place like Rwanda it might be OK - but any topic with a high level of interest in a country with high levels of internet penetration then you might potentially be swamped - not so in Rwanda, at least not yet.


Whatever you do, don’t copy and paste the old way of doing things onto the web - it doesn’t work as you can see in this short video...


Lastly, the Internet evolves rapidly - Twitter is the hip kid now, but in 6 months? 1 year? 2 years? It’s very important to keep up to date with changes and new tools and to try them out for usefulness.

twitter || RSS || deliciousTuesday, 17 November 2009

For the moment twitter, RSS and delicious do all the heavy lifting for me. I spent almost no time looking for new tools. I just keep an eye on some folk who do this a lot of the time, sometimes for a living.


I “auto-monitor” what a number of mediawonks, journalism professors and media obsessives are bookmarking and tweeting by filtering a lot of the info they find through Yahoo Pipes - this saves me HUGE amounts of research time. Thanks guys....


The result is a manageable newswire of (hopefully) all the important info I need to be aware of in the development of journalism and online tools in one manageable RSS feed

kigaliwire.com || kigalibackwire.tumblr.comTuesday, 17 November 2009

This is just the start - I hope to integrate kigaliwire into SMS, get a couple of young Rwandan journalists onboard, get accreditation and do some original reporting myself, develop it across other services. I’m already looking at incorporating some mapping services for the election in August 2010. A lot more to come hopefully.

kigaliwire.com || kigalibackwire.tumblr.com

image and video credits

Me:

Walking around Nyamirambo looking for the football room - kigaliwire - http://www.flickr.com/photos/kigaliwire/4032316663/At the newsagent. 500 Rwf for the daily rag - kigaliwire - http://www.flickr.com/photos/kigaliwire/4025572221/Selling flour and other goods in USAID bags on Kigali market - kigaliwire - http://www.flickr.com/photos/kigaliwire/3881681987/Heading home - kigaliwire - http://www.flickr.com/photos/kigaliwire/4017073730/My taxi in Kigali earlier today - kigaliwire - http://www.flickr.com/photos/kigaliwire/4080553128/The Rwandatel ADSL wires - kigaliwire - http://www.flickr.com/photos/kigaliwire/3952170399/Pixelpipe on iPhone - noodlepie - http://www.flickr.com/photos/noodlepie/4094385547/

Everyone else:

Saturday afternoon NYT Sunday section delivery - picturing it - http://www.flickr.com/photos/picturing_it/2573472909/NBC News Reporters - Shavar Ross - http://www.flickr.com/photos/shavar/27675241/Washington Post Newsroom - Burnt Pixel - http://www.flickr.com/photos/keithwj/130596384/Printing Press in Chandni Chowk - dixie_law - http://www.flickr.com/photos/dixielaw/3351665779/NYC #70 - digital_freak - http://www.flickr.com/photos/digital_freak/183723501/[The New York Times] - paalia - http://www.flickr.com/photos/paalia/3596228512/Brick phone - http://www.retrobrick.com/moto8000.html1981 primitive Internet report on KRON - earthweek - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WCTn4FljUQfree - TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³ - http://www.flickr.com/photos/gi/121409547/Alan Rusbridger on the Future of Journalism from Carta on Vimeovacant sign - renaissancechambara - http://www.flickr.com/photos/renaissancechambara/3542465749/Hello world! - grytr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/grytr/298119908/Everywhere but here - scissorhands - http://www.flickr.com/photos/scissorhands33/3430164569/Tubemogul promo video - tubemogul.comYahoo Pipes - Daniele Muscetta - http://www.flickr.com/photos/dani3l3/504501322/Working. - ianmunroe - http://www.flickr.com/photos/ian_munroe/3830078377/Slums in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - World Resources - http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldresourcesinstitute/2550699761/Apple Valley Tin House - NikZane - http://www.flickr.com/photos/nikzane/3176895180/Tibet: The monk Debate - silverlinedwinnebago - http://www.flickr.com/photos/silverlinedwinnebago/1424137472/Day Seventy Five - Dustin Diaz - http://www.flickr.com/photos/polvero/3362547124/Discussion - svennwerk - http://www.flickr.com/photos/svenwerk/858381180/BBC Comedy videoChanged prioroties ahead - ➨ Redvers - http://www.flickr.com/photos/redvers/532076662/Heavy lifting - turbotoddi - http://www.flickr.com/photos/turbotoddi/3892716969/


http://www.flickr.com/photos/kigaliwire/3952170399/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/noodlepie/4094385547/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/noodlepie/4094385547/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shavar/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shavar/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shavar/27675241/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shavar/27675241/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dixielaw/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dixielaw/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/digital_freak/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/digital_freak/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/paalia/3596228512/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/paalia/3596228512/

http://www.retrobrick.com/moto8000.html

http://www.retrobrick.com/moto8000.html

http://www.youtube.com/user/earthweek

http://www.youtube.com/user/earthweek

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WCTn4FljUQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WCTn4FljUQ

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gi/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gi/

http://vimeo.com/4359127

http://vimeo.com/4359127

http://vimeo.com/user1191984

http://vimeo.com/user1191984

http://vimeo.com/

http://vimeo.com/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/renaissancechambara/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/renaissancechambara/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/grytr/298119908/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/grytr/298119908/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/scissorhands33/3430164569/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/scissorhands33/3430164569/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dani3l3/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dani3l3/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ian_munroe/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ian_munroe/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldresourcesinstitute/2550699761/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldresourcesinstitute/2550699761/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/silverlinedwinnebago/1424137472/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/silverlinedwinnebago/1424137472/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/polvero/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/polvero/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/svenwerk/858381180/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/svenwerk/858381180/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/redvers/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/redvers/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/redvers/532076662/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/redvers/532076662/

publishing kigali wire

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online distribution

alan rusbridger

yahoo pipes

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