Rabid Badger

Social Media, Breaking News and Your Community

Wayne — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:50:46 +0000

Lately we have seen the power of media shift. It used to be that the news channels and newspapers had the “scoop” and would be the first to publish the breaking stories. Today with more mobile devices and easier network access, we’re seeing individuals break news stories more from their personal blogs and communities or through social media like Twitter. In the last few weeks, we have seen this happen with the Iranian Elections, the death of Micheal Jackson and even a building collapse in New York.

On the flip side of this, people take advantage of this to spread fake stories as well. Just as many people were dealing with the death of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett yesterday, there were others spreading false claims about the deaths of Harrison Ford and Jeff Goldblum. Both of which were picked up by Twitter as well and spread near and far before the hoax warning caught up with them. In the past, we have dealt with these things in urban legends and email which gave rise to sites like Snopes. However the massive social media networks of today move faster than these sites can cope.

So my questions you are:

How do you verify breaking news?
What part does your site play in the part of breaking news?
Do you post breaking news on your site?
Have you thought about the ramifications of an incorrect story?

New Sample Video Post

Wayne — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 20:25:29 +0000

Testing the video embedding of this theme.

vBulletin 4.0 UI Suggestions

Wayne — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 21:19:08 +0000

Here is a list of my suggestions that I would like to see in the vBulletin 4.0 user interface. These aren’t necessarily design issues but things I would like to see.

1) Reduction of dropdowns. I know its hard to offer controls to features in a limited space. But instead of a forum tools menu, it would be nice if we had a widget bar with control icons. Also the search box should not be hidden and should be context sensitive. What drop down menus are left should be done with CSS unordered lists for a lighter application.

2) PNG icons and buttons throughout. Even if they are matted and don’t support alpha-transparency, they should be used. This will allow easier style changes and people can use alpha transparent PNG files for great effects in their layouts.

3) Lightboxes for image attachments. Hover over the thumbnail and the larger one appears. No clicking, no loading a new page.

4) URLs that open in the same browser window by default. Users should know by now to right-click or CTRL-Click links to open in a new tab or window. This would provide a better consistent flow with other existing Web 2.0 applications and pave the way for XHTML Strict.

5) Advanced CSS editor without the boxes. Just show me the entire thing if possible.

6) Include EditArea in the template and plugin editor for line numbering, search and other features.

I am sure I will come up with more as time goes on. I am not a developer and don’t know if they will get implemented but better to post them.