Roanoke.com was listed as a finalist in two categories for the Online Journalism Awards, presented by the Online News Association and the USC Annenberg School for Communication. The categories were for General Excellence in Online Journalism and Outstanding Use of Multiple Media for "The Crooked Road."

Both awards put us in elite company. As the blog Online News Squared points out, the dual entries put the site among 10 others to appear in multiple categories.

This is fantastic news and follows recognition by the Newspaper Association of America (Digital Edge award for multimedia), the National Journalism Award from the Scripps Howard Foundation (Web Reporting for "The Crooked Road") and the "EPpy" from Editor and Publisher (Best Overall Newspaper-Affiliated Internet Service for under 1 million unique monthly visitors), not to mention several nods from the Virginia Press Association and the Associated Press.

It's a small but dedicated and passionate online team that makes the site worthy of such recognition. It also helps to have strong support from the company leadership who push all of us to do better.

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• Posted by john jackson in Web development ::
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The Homestand project enabled us to do some interesting Flash 8 alpha video work.

Using the chromakey cyc wall in our studio, we were able to do video cutouts with a drop shadow applied to the ballplayers using Adobe Premiere, Quicktime and Canopus Edius 3.0. Special thanks to a great tutorial found at Community MX and a Flash Pro 8 book by Tom Green.

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• Posted by Seth Gitner in Web development ::
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If you missed the debut of The Roanoke Times' latest special package Homestand, you're in luck -- the Web doesn't strike out.

Here's a summary:

From the crack of dawn until the last light pole at Salem Memorial Baseball Stadium is shut off later that night, there's rarely a slow moment for those involved in running an Avalanche homestand. The Roanoke Times spent some extra time during the team's four-game series with the Kinston Indians in an attempt to spotlight those who prepare the field, prepare the food and entertain the masses who are looking forward to -- and even expecting -- a special experience at the ballpark every night.

Aside from the wonderful story by Katrina Waugh, this package features a host of multimedia items including an innovative use of video courtesy the new(ish) studio. This can be seen on the interactive link.

Also new are several new uses of the scriptaculous JavaScript library, and Prototype framework. Click the "about" and "contact" links located at the bottom of the Homestand page, and watch the effect. You can see a variation on this when viewing page two of the story -- no more links to multiple pages!

For the multimedia "pop-ups," we used the Lightbox Gone Wild script from the good folks at Particle Tree. This is a modified version of the Lightbox script we are already using to display photos and graphics throughout roanoke.com.

For the Homestand, this script allows us (via the beauty of AJAX) to pull in the Flash objects overlaid on the primary page. In this way, control is never taken out of the users' hands. There are also links to the individual multimedia items as well.

One of my favorite parts of this project is the contact form, revealed when you click the "contact" link at the bottom of your screen. Using this form is much easier than opening your e-mail client, and allows you to send your thoughts on the project to both the dot.com and sports sections.

Of course, you're always welcome to post your thoughts on the Homestand here on this blog.

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• Posted by Patrick Beeson in Web development ::
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Well, maybe this isn't an incredibly "new feature," as the category suggests, but the Hispanic immigration series, Land of Opportunity debuted a few weeks ago. It's built on the Roanoke.com blog server using Movable Type.

Movable Type's comment functionality is easier to use than a message board and integrates the comments into the story. Notice how the most recent comments are displayed in the upper right area of the page.

Because this series will continue to be updated with more comments and articles, using Movable Type made sense. Also, the subheadlines are divided into individual "entries," while each story is its own "category."

Along with great stories about immigrants in the Roanoke Valley are soundslides, photo galleries and video. This project was made easier by a tech-savvy photographer and reporter along with careful planning and editing.

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• Posted by Amanda Hicks in New online features ::
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