Tag Archive for google

Hyperlocal innovation: Google hangout for council reporting

March 15, 2013 11 comments
parliament

Old style: Cameras keeping an eye on proceedings. Picture: UK Parliament on Flickr.

Google hangout – the video conference style service available on the Google + platform – may well have changed the way you do team meetings if you work in a distributed way as we do here at Talk About Local.

But how about for broadcasting your local council meeting? In an ambitious initiative, three bloggers at Lightmoor Life have recently done just that. Using multiple laptops they were able to stream the council chamber from different angles – even managing to hurriedly apply live captions to helpfully point out who’s who and their political allegiances etc.

Read more

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Google Reader to retire

March 14, 2013 2 comments

The internet search giant Google has announced that it is to retire Google Reader on July 1 this year. Google announced in September 2011 that they would be having a ‘Fall Spring Clean‘ and shutting down some of their products.

Yesterdays announcement that Google Reader along with 7 other products were to be closed sees a continuation of the review of the Google Product estate. Since 2011 Google have closed 70 products, which is more products than some businesses ever have. Read more

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Are you in Google News yet? Help us track it

April 20, 2012 2 comments

As we reported earlier in the week, lots of hyperlocal news sites have found their way into Google News.

Presumably some changes have taken place in the giant algorithm and now it seems people searching for local news and information in some areas are as likley to be presented with a hyperlocal blog as they are a local newspaper.

But how extensive is this? And is it all, or just some, content that’s being displayed?

If you run a hyperlocal site, would you spare a moment to help us carry out a quick survey?

I’ve set up this shared Google document to record responses and started it off with a couple we already know about.

If you’ve got a minute over the weekend, please could you carry out a search within Google News for something you’ve recently published and see what you get back in the search result.

This move, coupled with news of hopeful moves by the BBC to include links to hyperlocal sites in their local pages adds up to another good week for hyperlocal – greater visibility and, hopefully, even more connectivity.

Have a great weekend!

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New feature for WordPress.com sites – add Google docs and calendars

May 30, 2011 4 comments

The announcement from WordPress that users can embed Google calendars and docs is great news.

We often get asked whether we can add calendars to blogs and there hasn’t been a very simple way until now. Google calendars can be a bit clunky and fiddly, but is still better than nothing. The rest of the Google Docs suite is incredibly useful for things like collaborative spreadsheets and documents if you need a quick and simple way to pull together information.

Read the announcement and tutorials for more details and we’d be keen to hear about any creative or inspiring ways that you could use this new feature.

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Use Google Reader Play to knock up a very quick slideshow

January 14, 2011 One comment
Some talkaboutlocal websites as seen on Google Reader

Some talkaboutlocal websites as seen on Google Reader

I’m a huge fan of Google Reader (Google account needed for access) because it helps me to graze hundreds of web feeds without having to visit them all. I can also access it via my mobile phone which means I can be sucking in new ideas if I’m standing in a queue. And, from that queue, I can share links just as easily.

This video is a useful explanation of RSS which refers to Google Reader. You can see more up-to-date advice on adding subscriptions to Google Reader here.

Play is a new feature on Google Reader to turn feeds into slideshows and make your RSS browsing a little more luxurious. In a UK Online or other computer centre, Play could also be used to help people navigate themed web content just by using the arrow keys, or it can play itself in a window-display.

Lolcats as seen in Google Reader Play

One handy use of this I noticed is that you can create very quick slideshows using the Star button.

This assumes you have a lot of RSS feeds already loaded up in Reader. If you wanted to do a showcase of local stories, or a slideshow of kittens, just go through your reader items and star everything you would like to include. The star is at the left of the headline. Then go to http://www.google.com/reader/play/#item/starred and everything you just starred is right there, with images and videos all nice and big. You can do exactly the same thing with the Like and Share feature, meaning you could run three different completely different presentations for the WI, the parish council and the primary school, all at very short notice.

I can’t see a way of embedding these slideshows anywhere else and you will need to be online to show them, but if you’ve been asked to demonstrate a number of different web pages or the archives of your own site this is a great way of preparing an up-to-date, content-rich presentation without having to faff about with slide designs.

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