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Kat Downs Mulder

Tag Archive: articles

Moving away from Flash: A look at JavaScript drawing libraries

Excerpts from a new post for WP’s @innovations blog:
[Go to the blog to read the whole thing]

When Apple announced early last year that it would not support Flash on the iPhone and iPad, a passionate conversation erupted in the world of web development: Was Flash dead? If not, how would it survive? When should it be used? News developers asked these questions as well, and, at least in our newsroom, the conversation inspired some thinking about how to approach interactive development. Over the past year and a half, there has been steady movement toward more interactivity based on JavaScript and fewer Flash-only experiences.

Sorting out the budget proposals

Last week we published a graphic that compared four federal budget proposals through a series of charts. We used the jQuery library Flot to draw simple, interactive line charts that showed how the debt and deficit would change under the different plans. Flot is very easy to use, flexible and customizable, and is one of many free-to-use JavaScript graphing libraries out there (Dracula, Highcharts and RGraph are a few others). We also built a customized chart with CSS and JavaScript at the bottom of the page to show how different categories of spending would be affected.

Read the rest of the article…

June 2, 2011 Programming, , , , , , , , , , Read more >

Darfur & FFI

Two fun items on the agenda: Darfur: Who Will Survive Now? and FFI

The Holocaust Memorial Museum had a special display of photographs on the outside of their building last week to raise awareness about the situation in Darfur. They projected enormous photographs onto the three walls on the outside of the building, which were accompanied by music. The images, which were taken by several photojournalists, were hauntingly beautiful. The multimedia presentation was incredibly effective. If you check out the links above, you can see a simulation of the presentation.

NPR had a story last week about a new book coming out, The Family That Couldn’t Sleep, by D.T. Max, which focuses on a family with Fatal Familial Insomnia, a rare hereditary disease related to Mad Cow that kicks in in a person’s late 50s, and makes it impossible to sleep. After about 9 months, the patient dies, basically from having been awake for nine months. There are only 2 families in the U.S. with this disorder, and 20 that are known in the world.

November 28, 2006 Multimedia, , , , Read more >

Human Trafficking

Another good article:The Vatican on the Human Slave Trade.

There is a Russian film called Lilja 4-ever, about a Russian girl who gets tricked into going to Sweden, only to become a sex slave. It’s a poignant introduction to the widespread practice of abducting girls and selling them, which happens to thousands of women a year all over the world-specifically from Eastern Europe. Protection Project said in 2001 that more than 2 million women and children were sold into the sex trade every year.

Last year, Lifetime did a special on the topic called Human Trafficking. You can visit the website to see clips from the movie, which raised a lot of awareness about the subject.

Last month, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced almost $8 million in additional funding to create 10 new anti-trafficking task forces. The Trafficking in Persons Report by the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons said:

“In the 2004 Report, we used U.S. Government data that disaggregated transnational trafficking in persons by age and gender for the first time. This data shows that, of the estimated 600,000 to 800,000 men, women, and children trafficked across international borders each year, approximately 80 percent are women and girls, and up to 50 percent are minors. The data also demonstrated that the majority of transnational victims were trafficked into commercial sexual exploitation.”

November 21, 2006 Random Thoughts, , , Read more >

Telling Stories - Interactive Edition

Go to this feature and watch the Congo story. The photographs are wonderful. Props to Gabe.

It’s interesting to think about the different ways that audio is integrated with photographs to make slideshows. Sometimes the effect is great (see above), and other times it seems like someone just said, “Let’s make a slideshow!”

When there are no ambient sounds or subject voices, figuring out the best way to tell an audio story can be tough. Should the photographer talk about her/his images? Should the reporter tell the story? Both of these present problems, primarily that neither are voice trained and so often the story ends up without a whole lot of emotion, even if the subject is very emotional. Really, you just wonder why the subjects aren’t the ones talking.

I think that slideshows with audio can be overused, and often are. When there aren’t enough engaging photographs to make a slideshow, don’t do a slideshow-or shorten the show to an appropriate length. Stories need to be done with audio in mind from the get-go. It’s not something you just tack on to add effect (although you can, and it can work out well)- it’s sort of like a basket. The audio and the photos blend together, leaning on each other to tell a story that ends up doing more than either could alone.

November 16, 2006 Multimedia, Photography and multimedia, Read more >

Click -n- Kill

There is a guy who used to work in my office (before my time) who would spend his slow days hunting online.

YES.. you heard me right. Hunting. Online. This revelation called for some investigating into this so-called sport.

A guy named John Lockwood started an online hunting service so that disabled people could hunt. He hooked up a gun and a computer and all you needed was a mouse to get a big kill.

That’s right folks, you can (or could) kill an actual warm-blooded animal with the click of a mouse and a Texas hunting license.

Wow.

November 15, 2006 Random Thoughts, , Read more >

Wal-Mart, Moving, and Skillz

Here’s an interesting article about Walmart moving more people to part-time.