Storify makes it easy to quickly document local news

The Californian's Louis Amestoy has been experimenting with a cool software tool called Storify to quickly and easily produce local stories in an engaging way. 

You can find a few in our Bakosphere blog, but his latest example is this "Social media look at Bakersfield weather" slideshow documenting the storm that hit Bakersfield overnight. Storify's drag-and-drop tools make it easy to monitor social media and deliver a mix of content from pros and everyday people to document news around our town. 

Thoughts on iPads and e-editions

I shared some thoughts on The Californian's iPad edition on the fine blog of Steve Yelvington, a web visionary whose post on newspaper replica editions prompted a related thread on Twitter that caught my attention. 

I'll share more on in the future on our work with e-editions of The Californian, but Yelvington's post is a good start for people who are in the business of producing replica editions of printed publications. There's life in these editions that many -- including myself -- once considered substandard products. 

Newsweek goes retro but a few slackers ruin the vibe

A retro advertisement for Domtar Paper.Props to Newsweek for its "Mad Men" issue, which took on the magazine's 1965 design as an homage to the hit show's setting in an advertising agency. 

The issue's March 26 & April 2 double issue contained news pages and retro-style ads in a design format straight from that era. The magazine even took steps to give its website a retro flavor for the issue, hosting a reader contest to vote for their favorite ads, a photo gallery of covers and ads from the era, and more specifically, a gallery of sexist ads from the magazine's archives that help illustrate a strong theme of the show. 

For a once-influential magazine struggling to remain relevant (more on that in a future post), I applaud Newsweek for taking a bold risk to win readers and advertisers. As Spam goes psychedelic. Groovy! Tina Brown writes in her editor's note, "The content of this issue is new, and about today, but

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