We are working hard to do more video storytelling on the site. Our first video effort premiered in 2000. Staff photojournalist Josh Meltzer did a video story on professional wrestler Tony Atlas -- I've kept it on the site just to show where we started from.

Most recently I did a story on the Cooper family, who water ski on Smith Mountain Lake. (It was also great to get out on the lake for a day, and get away from Web development -- how I miss the days back when I was a photojournalist.)

Last month, I also did a video story on Clay Johnson a local martial arts teacher.

We are trying to do more video as we learn the tools and software to do so.

Of course, if you want some really cool video produced daily check out the TimesCast.

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• Posted by Seth M. Gitner in Multimedia ::
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This past year has been a groundbreaking year for our multimedia efforts. We are almost done with a 800-square foot multimedia studio that features a Chromakey wall, broadcast-style lighting grid and a control room.

This new facility will enable us to do more podcasts and video offerings than we are doing now.

Our in-house maintenance crew headed by David Trivette with help from video systems integrator Tom Atkins have done a great job of getting us to this point.

We are hoping to move into our new digs next week.

For a current sampling of our primary multimedia efforts, visit the multimedia section of roanoke.com or watch the TimesCast.

Look for good things and new products from The Roanoke Times' multimedia crew in the future.

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• Posted by Seth M. Gitner in Multimedia ::
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Since The Roanoke Times has recently expanded its blog ranks during the past few weeks, it might be a good time to explain the backend of our blogging system.

After all, blogging can be pretty technical without all that writing and stuff.

All of our blogs are run through a CMS called Movable Type (v3.2). This is a powerful system produced by the folks at Six Apart, who also distribute the equally popular TypePad and LiveJournal publishing platforms.

But MT and its siblings aren't the only kids on the block. And as luck would have it, USC Annenberg's Online Journalism Review recently (May 18) updated its "Blog software comparison chart," which shows a rundown of the most popular systems.

We chose MT based on its excellent ability to manage many blogs at once, while still remaining simple enough for someone with minimal training to use. In fact, some bloggers in our newsroom even say that it's learning curve is more shallow than our print publishing system!

And the blogs aren't just for text and photos. The TimesCast is also published using MT (and a specially designed Flash video player).

MT isn't entirely perfect, and it faces steep competition from open-source blogging systems such as WordPress. But for our purposes, it allows for an effective entrance into the blogosphere.

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• Posted by patrick beeson in Web development ::
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Multimedia producer Seth Gitner is in Las Vegas this weekend to attend the Editor and Publisher annual "Eppy" awards, and it's a good thing we sent him. Seth called my cell phone (I'm in Tampa coming back from a session at the Poynter Institute) to report that roanoke.com won top honors for Best Overall Newspaper-Affiliated Internet Service for under 1 million unique monthly visitors. Pretty good news and a great way to end the week. Lots of kudos go out to the online team and the overall news team, who work hard every day to produce great content for the site.

UPDATE: Here's the list of winners as posted on Editor & Publishers Web site.

In the category of Best Overall Newspaper-Affiliated Internet Service under 1 million unique monthly visitors, the Roanoke.com was the winner.

UPDATE: Another mention of Roanoke.com's EPpy win popped up on Poynter's Romenesko this morning.

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• Posted by john jackson in Web development ::
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Looking for a way to keep daily tabs on specific sections or even all of Roanoke.com without typing in that familiar URI? RSS will feed the need.

Puns aside, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) offers a way to pull content (stories, podcasts, the TimesCast) from a given Web site to a news aggregator. This can be either in the form of software, or a Web-based service such as Bloglines or Google.

We also use RSS feeds to pull content from part of our site to another. This can be seen whenever you see blog entries displayed on the site, such as in the blog index section (lastest entries).

Visit our RSS index page to find an RSS feed for a given section or podcast.

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• Posted by patrick beeson in Technical issues ::
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One issue the dot-com staff of The Roanoke Times deals with on a constant basis is ensuring roanoke.com looks and performs well across multiple browsers.

To see what I mean, open up our home page in the current version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. Then open up the same URI in the latest version of the FireFox browser.

Right away you'll see subtle visual differences. The tabs on the main content box are shifted ever-so-slightly to the right in IE, while in FireFox they're flush left. A more major difference is evident on this blog -- you won't see the "share this post" function in IE.

The reasons for these small variances are in how each browser interprets the style rules listed in the cascading style sheet, or CSS, file driving the design (how the code looks in your browser) of a given page. In fact, if you do a view source (CTRL + U in FireFox) you'll see the critical information listed at the top of the code.

Notice the [if lte IE 7] mention? That's where the IE-only style rules are stored.

And that's also one of the hard parts about building and maintaining a Web site -- having to adjust and create additional design for different browsers. Fortunately, this might get better soon as Microsoft is planning the next release of the long-awaited version 7 of IE very soon.

In fact, the second beta version of the browser is available now.

We try not to push folks toward a certain browser to use when viewing roanoke.com, but we do plead everyone use a current version.

More modern browsers like FireFox, Mozilla, Opera and Apple-only browsers Safari and Camino are free, and are updated often. Microsoft has only updated IE 6 (the latest version) to address security concerns, and not how it renders code.

Try experimenting with these different browsers to see what works best for you.

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• Posted by patrick beeson in Web development ::
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For many Roanoke.com visitors, the most important features are up-to-date news and the current weather conditions. To satisfy this craving (and to save much coveted space on the home page), we've recently introduced the weather/breaking-news scroll featured at the top of most roanoke.com pages.

This unique item allows for more than the previously featured local weather conditions by adding the ability to show the latest breaking news item from anywhere on the Web site. Prior to this innovation, the only way to view most breaking news was on the "news" tab on the home page.

The breakingnews/weather scroll works on the same principle as the "online exclusive" section of the home page by using choice bits of JavaScript paired with standard-issue XHTML markup and CSS. That's basically geek talk for the type of code driving everything.

All of it is part of an effort to maximize the often-limited real estate available on our home page.

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• Posted by patrick beeson in New online features ::
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We implemented a new photo overlay feature a few weeks ago and I'm hooked. Check out Sunday's story on the growth of Liberty University in Lynchburg (It's called 'Falwell Country') and click the map links in the "Related" box.

The lightbox feature is similar to a javascript popup window, which is how we used to link new graphics, but I just like this presentation better. You can save one photo file and don't have to build an HTML page to house the image if you want to add a cutline or close window feature. Both are included with Lightbox.

We've hit a few glitches with it, specifically when some ads display over the graphics, but that's a problem easily fixed. Props to producer Patrick Beeson for finding it and trying it out.

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• Posted by John Jackson in New online features ::
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I guess a good way to kick off the “Editorial process” category would be to explain how the site gets updated every night and, why if you’re visiting roanoke.com in the wee hours of the morning, some things may look askew.

The stories, photos, graphics and other elements that put the actual newspaper together reside in a database that uses software called DTI. Every night the editors and designers put the paper together using Adobe products (InDesign, InCopy, etc.) through the DTI interface. As each section is completed, all locally written stories slated for online publishing are given a status of done/publish. This places the story in a queue. At 1:30 a.m. a script goes into that queue and transfers the stories that reside there into the roanoke.com database. Headlines, bylines, body copy and subheads are broken out into their respective fields and stories are placed in a particular section based on the categories they were assigned. An e-mail goes out at 2 a.m. to all who subscribe that contains the day’s headlines broken into a category that they’ve chosen (News, Sports, NRV News, Business, Politics, columnists, etc.).

A dot-com staffer, usually yours truly, gets online around 6 a.m. to update the photos you see on the front of roanoke.com and the various sub-index pages. We also hitch up any links to features such as message boards, polls, multimedia elements and the like; and kill out or change things that should not have come over during the sweep. Hopefully, this process will change soon so updates are made during or right after the sweep occurs. Stay tuned.

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• Posted by John Jackson in Editorial process ::
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The "share this story" has been featured on the story pages of roanoke.com for a number of weeks now, but I feel it deserves a more lenghly explaination about its use and potential.

The thinking behind the feature comes from the social-web concept in recent Web development, commonly referred to as "Web 2.0". Sites such as del.icio.us, Magnolia, Digg, Newsvine and many others are the front-runners of this movement.

So where does The Roanoke Times fit in? In many ways, we're what makes this whole network work.

Newspapers, blogs (maybe even this one) and other information providers drive this social network by providing the content to be shared among users. Person "A" reads a story, likes it, and seeds it to Newsvine (or any number of other social Web sites) for others to enjoy.

By adding the "share this story" function to every story page and blog entry, we've streamlined this process. If you read a story on roanoke.com you think other's would enjoy, simply hover your cursor over the "share..." button and pick the service you prefer to use.

And if you stumble across another service that we should be using with this feature, please let us know.

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• Posted by patrick beeson in New online features ::
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No, you haven't landed on a 404 error page. Rather, you've arrived at The Roanoke Times' newest blog, "404 Not Found," whose name is derived from the infamous Internet error page.

The reason for this odd-titled blog -- I think it’s catchy -- is to both guide users through new and exciting changes for roanoke.com, and to discuss related issues that will better your experience browsing our site.

And we'll even throw in a general Web tip or two via our ToolTips category (seen in the sidebar).

Other categories up for discussion -- these range from editorial decisions about online content, to spotlighting new multimedia pieces -- are listed to the right of this entry. If there's something you want us to address, post a comment and let us know.

Dot-com folks, as we’re affectionately known in the newsroom, will be posting the majority of the entries, with occasional contributions from elsewhere in the newsroom. But we'd like for you, the readers, to drive much of the discussion.

And if you find a real 404 error page, please let us know. Those aren't intentional!

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• Posted by patrick beeson in Editorial process ::
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