I produced this visual analysis of Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention using Tagcrowd.
Tagcrowd is a free Web site that allows you to provide a useful analysis and filtering out of common words.
This tool allows us see how many times a word is mentioned so that we can learn, at a glance, the content theme of a Web site or document.
To get this result, I used the on-screen controls that let me specify how many top words to show as well as set a minimum threshold for them to appear. After some trial and error I setteld on the top 50 words that had been mentioned at least four times in his speech.
I also applied what Tagcrowd calls a “Stop list” to filter out common words out of the image.
These are the words that were on my stoplist for this analysis: eight, once, seen, talk
It is not a perfect tool, but I think it can produce reports of value. As an adjunct to other analysis and reaction reporting techniques.
To see what Wordle.net can produce from the same materials, check out 10,000 words blog to see how Mark has assembled graphics from more of the speeches from the convention. President Bill Clinton, Senator Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and Michelle Obama.
And this is a wordle graphic produced from the transcript of Barack Obama’s 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention.
To compare and contrast, below is the analysis of the same transcript using tagcrowd.
There is a new group on Facebook called Newspaper Escape Plan and with all the layoffs and notices of layoffs it has mushroomed in less than two weeks. My Aussie and UK Facebook pals are also worried now that layoff fever has infected their environs.
Here is how the growth has been charted
8/16/08: Start. 2 members
8/17/08: 1 pm: Wow. Less than 24 hours old. 83 members.
8/18/08: 1 pm: 194 members
8/19/08: 5 pm: Holy cow. 393 members
8/20/08: 7 pm: 555 members
8/22/08: 1:30 am: 761 members
8/23/08: 1:30 pm: 838 members
8/24/08: 3:30 pm: 918 members
8/25/08: 10 pm: 1,005 members
8/26/08: 9:30 pm: 1,108 members
8/28/08: 12:30 pm: 1,125 memners
The brilliant Martin Gee (himself recently departed from the San Jose Mercury News) created the group and asks
Did you leave on your own terms? Or did someone else make that decision for you? Were you “involuntarily separated?” Let’s help each other get through this!
Members include many still-employed journalists who are invited to
Post job listings, tips, resources and personal experiences. Rework that resume and cover letter. Get the skills you need.
I did my part by posting the media jobs app I created for Facebook last year.
MEDIA JOBS
– http://apps.facebook.com/journalism/
Not surprising in this age of turnover that it has attracted hundreds of subscribers already.
If just want the RSS feed that drives the widget, please subscribe to this link:
The Camp Video Journalism workshops I produce for Visual Editors will be serving a new class at the end of September at the Chicago Sun-Times and one of the questions that always comes up is “what software should I edit with?”
A lot of video journalists I know like Avid, Adobe Premiere, and Final Cut Studio, but those are complicated and expensive programs. Nice, but often too complex for people who are first and foremost trying to learn the techniques of video storytelling.
I always encourage people to bring whatever gear they are comfortable with. On the Mac - iMovie wins hands down. It is dead simple to use and is a video instructor’s best classroom friend.
On the PC side, you can certainly use Windows Media maker but here are some other free video editing tools to try out.
This is a free program and is more limited in terms of editing.
If you have time to experiment (always a good idea!) I would suggest that you start with Video Spin and then graduate to Sony’s Movie Studio. Having software that supports multiple video timelines really simplifies editing sequences. (In the picture at the top you see my video editor (Final Cut) with multiple video timelines - it is a very handy editing feature! )
If you are on the Mac and ready to graduate from iMovie - first try Final Cut Express - the $199 version of Final Cut Studio. It is a huge upgrade in terms of editing flexibility and the projects you create in Express will prepare you for almost any pro editing app.
After you download these free versions, test them with footage from your camera. Make sure it works with your gear. If it does, I hope to see you at Camp VJ Chicago, or, perhaps, at Camp VJ San Francisco or CampVJ Orlando in the future.
