The videogame as film metaphor: Google Chrome ad

Eye tracking research has always been important to print designers, and has become even more critical in web design. This video ad has drawn heavy attention because itscored highly in eye tracking tests, but I'm interested in it because it employs the simple but powerfully evocative metaphor of a game of pong to draw viewers in. It makes me think about videogame conventions as storytelling devices in other media.

More programming in Scratch

I've been learning to use this Java-based language to create lessons for our interactive journalism camp, which starts tomorrow. Based on reactions, this is my best one to date, on photojournalism:

Learn more about this project

More here

With each project, my thinking on the completion of the Nancybelle project gets clearer.

My take on CoverItLive, now at Poynter

I'm now a contributor to Poynter.Org's E-Media Tidbits. My first piece, a follow-up report on CoverItLive.com, has just been posted. Feedback welcome.

If you'd like to be in on the NMC conference in June...

Nancybelle Valentine's family tree

This information is based on interviews with Nancybelle and her mother, a 2001 newspaper interview with her mother, and searches of the 1880 and 1930 US Census data. The one area of uncertainty is the information on Nancybelle 's grandmother. Her name was Rovutter Daniel Wilson, but she was known as Annie within her family. I found a census record for an Ann Daniel that largely corresponded to the information Elder Nancybelle gave me about her grandmother. Thus, the lines drawn from her images are wavy to denote this uncertainty.

If you have trouble reading the text on the image, try this page.

The images of Nancybelle and her sister are by James Vanderzee.

Meant to mention

The paper that Ursula Wolz and and I co-authored about this project can now be read online in the 2007 Proceedings of the New Media Consortium Summer Conference. It's called "Multithreaded Interactive Storytelling for Literary Journalism" and it starts on p. 38.