Technology360

Mobcasting the news

At NPR, we have occasional brown bag lunch (is there any other kind of lunch at NPR?) presentations.  Today's was extremely informative and given by our social media expert, Andy Carvin (twitter @acarvin).  His topic was Mobcasting the News: Crowdsourcing, Volunteers and Journalism (slides) and audio.  Recommended.  --Dennis

One Old Media Brand That Gets It

Frédéric Filloux has some important things to say about the importance of content distribution via API and some nice things to say about NPR's implementation of it.  All the more remarkable since it was published by CBS News (also in Filloux's Monday Note under a different title). 

He writes:

... But NPR’s most remarkable achievement remains its digital diversification, based on two basic concepts: ubiquity of platforms and openness. Coming back to the iPhone app, it relies on NPR’s API created just a year ago. In this issue of the Monday Note, we explored the advantages of opening news content through API (Applications Programming Interface). APIs allow anyone to tap into structured content, by sending requests aimed at specific items. APIs are not platform-dependant: the XML feed can either go to an iPhone application or a website. ...

Be sure to follow the link above, to a post titled, Opening the News.  --Dennis

'Better Than Free' revisited

At the end of January, Kevin Kelly, one of the founders of Wired and formerly publisher/editor of Whole Earth Review, posted what I think was the best essay of 2008 of relevance to us in the media -- Better Than Free -- in his blog called The Technium.  The post has also attracted a number of good comments in the months since.  I linked to it at the time and compared it to Chris Anderson's upcoming writing on the same topic.  The essay is now available as a "manifesto" in pdf form at ChangeThis.

On this topic, also see his People Want To Pay and Where Attention Flows, Money Follows, from which comes:

"... Free is always a fine way to win a flow of attention. As Chris Anderson's clever parsing of the four types of free shows, whenever a free product or service is given, the free is exchanged for attention. Without the flow of attention back to the producer, the free is meaningless. A producer might as well dump the free things in the woods if attention from customers did not count...."

--Dennis

NPR's Open Content Strategy

I'm very proud of NPR's Open API effort, a sample of which you can see on the left column of this blog.  I believe it will prove to be the single most important web distribution initiative in public media.  One of the architects of this effort, Daniel Jacobson, writes about this in a post at NPR.org, which also has a link to a pdf of his recent presentation on the topic at the recent Business of APIs Conference.  Link:  NPR.org.  For links to other information on the API, click here.  --Dennis

NPR to acquire Public Interactive

I'm about a week late in doing so, but no less enthusiastic, in noting in my own blog that we (I'm interim CEO of National Public Radio) have reached an agreement to acquire Public Interactive, an innovative ASP serving both public radio and public television, from Public Radio International.  PI will continue to be based in Boston and headed by Debra May Hughes.  I will have a lot more to say about this, how we got here, where we hope to go with it, and who the key players have been in this multi-year effort to extend public media's impact in a future post.  PI will continue its current range of services, but it would also be useful to think of it as the beginnings of a new digital division within NPR which will operate with the same culture of neutrality as has characterized public broadcasting's satellite distribution systems for decades.

Link:  NPR.  Related articles in paidcontent.org, current.org, et al.  --Dennis

Key Differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0

Graham Cormode and Balachander Krishnamurthy, who are both with AT&T Labs have written an article in one of my favorite online publications taking a detailed look at what makes a web effort "2.0."  Given how long the term has been around, we should be at least to 3.0 by now, right?  Here's the abstract:

Web 2.0 is a buzzword introduced in 2003–04 which is commonly used to encompass various novel phenomena on the World Wide Web. Although largely a marketing term, some of the key attributes associated with Web 2.0 include the growth of social networks, bi–directional communication, various ‘glue’ technologies, and significant diversity in content types. We are not aware of a technical comparison between Web 1.0 and 2.0. While most of Web 2.0 runs on the same substrate as 1.0, there are some key differences. We capture those differences and their implications for technical work in this paper. Our goal is to identify the primary differences leading to the properties of interest in 2.0 to be characterized. We identify novel challenges due to the different structures of Web 2.0 sites, richer methods of user interaction, new technologies, and fundamentally different philosophy. Although a significant amount of past work can be reapplied, some critical thinking is needed for the networking community to analyze the challenges of this new and rapidly evolving environment.

Link:  First Monday.  --Dennis

NPR API: The GillmorGang interview

Steve Gillmor interviewed NPR digital media directors Zach Brand, Daniel Jacobson and me July 17th on NPR's release of its Application Programming Interface for his GillmorGang podcast.  Although it's a little technical, it should give you a good overview of what it's doing.  It's now been posted.  Link: GillmorGang.

What can come of NPR's release of an API giving access to its story database?

...asks Steve Behrens in DirectCurrent.  Check out his thoughtful post and Stephen Hill's reply there.

Also see Todd Mundt's, This NPR API is a BIG deal in Converge.  I think this observation of Todd's is especially important:

NPR content (and our content, when we join the API) begins appearing all over the web, and yes, this doesn’t diminish the value of our work or our web sites; it INCREASES its value as more people encounter and discover it, and click on the links to read more.

--Dennis

NPR API is Live on NPR.org

Blog posts here have been scarce of late since my interim CEO job at NPR, that began in March, has been so consuming.  However, as a long-time bit-head, I'm very proud of the work Daniel Jacobson, Zach Brand and others [see below] have done in the very progressive step of opening up NPR's API to wide usage.  To see what it can do, scroll down the left side of this page below the Files section to access NPR stories in three categories that I've chosen as relevant to the topic of this blog.  There are dozens of other categories.  Quoted below is Daniel's description on the NPR.org weblog:

... we launched our new API today. To find the API, you can either go directly to http://www.npr.org/api/ or you can follow the new link called "Tools / API" on the NPR.org left nav under the Services section.

In order to use the API, you will need to register using our new registration engine that Zach mentioned in a previous post. Once registered, you will need to generate an apiKey by clicking the Generate Key button on the API tab of your account profile. The apiKey is used to authenticate all requests to the API. After you get your apiKey, you can read our documentation or just go straight to the Query Generator, which is a comprehensive tool that allows you to easily create your API requests and see what your results would look like.

There were quite a few questions that we addressed when developing the API, but one thing that was not really in question was the need to open as much of our content as possible. As a result, almost everything that you can find on NPR.org that we have the rights to redistribute is available through the API. This includes audio, images, full text, etc. That said, there are elements, series and programs that we could not offer due to rights restrictions.

We also discussed in depth which output formats we would support. For launch, we are supporting RSS, MediaRSS, Atom, JSON, JavaScript Widgets, HTML Widgets and our custom tagging structure called NPRML. We would like feedback on what other formats we should support, although as of now we are planning to extend it to include NewsML. Which of the existing formats are you most likely to use from our API?

There were a ton of contributors to this new API with the primary technical architect being Harold Neal. Other major contributors include Joanne Garlow, Jason Grosman, Tony Yan, Ivan Lazarte, Stephanie Oura, Ben Hands, Shain Miley, Lindsay Mangum, Sugirtha Solai, Todd Welstein and Vida Logan, and others.

Finally, we would really like to get as much feedback from the community on the API, particularly on what you think you will use and what is missing from the offering. We will continue to post here with more thoughts and questions.

--Dennis

P.S.: Zach, Daniel and I want you to know the following:

Key contributors included members from [NPR] News, Strategy & Partnerships, Legal, and Business Development.  Technical work was done by Harold Neal, Joanne Garlow, Jason Grosman, Tony Yan, Ivan Lazarte, Stephanie Oura, Ben Hands, Shain Miley, Lindsay Mangum, Todd Welstein and Vida Logan and a host of others. 

What's Next for Open Source and Public Media?

I've been consumed with commuting from Idaho to Washington, DC for the past couple of weeks and the run-up to that, so I've been remiss in blogging.  And frankly, I'm even wondering if I can write about radio at all in the next year or so, since some people will try to find meaning and direction for NPR in all that.  So I missed Doc Searls' excellent post in Linux Journal with this title.  At about the time he wrote this, Doc joined Diane Mermigas (below) and Rafat Ali on a panel I moderated at the Public Media 2008 conference in Los Angeles.  Thanks to Todd Mundt, who quotes much of it here, but I'd recommend reading the full text.  Link:  Linux Journal.  Don't miss this one. --Dennis