Media Monday Edmonton: Update #48

Here is my latest update on local media stuff:

CTV Edmonton’s story on Thursday about a photo tweeted by EPS Constable Brendan Power caused quite a stir on Twitter. Gord Lacey’s post does a good job of summarizing the issues that most people had with it (so does this tweet). On the other side, Gary McCallum questions what all the fuss is about. I really appreciate the glimpse Constable Power and others have given us into the daily lives of EPS officers, and I’m saddened to hear that he may not be tweeting any longer as a result of this story (he explained in subsequent tweets that even one bad story can really impact an officer’s career). The Edmonton Sun wrote about the “story” here. I think the CTV story was poorly done. It really did seem like Amanda (the reporter) had made up her mind that it was a bad photo and worked to make the story support that notion despite very little evidence to back it up. There was no attempt to clarify that the photo was tweeted many hours after the incident took place, not while it was in progress. Here’s the original tweet in question. UPDATE: I totally missed this follow-up from CTV, which highlights the support Constable Power received in response to the story.
Alberta Street News is working on a new website and has a new Facebook page! You can also follow them on Twitter at @abstnews.
Local media legend Bruce Hogle has been named the honorary chair for the Operation Friendship Seniors Society’s $225,000 fundraising campaign.
Vue Weekly is still looking for a news editor!
Sona Chavda makes fun of Ryan Jespersen’s socks. Love it!
An update on Edmonton’s PSR Media Mob Day: it’ll be held at Schanks Sports Lounge, and there are now a bunch of confirmed attendees. Marty Forbes has more on that here.
This week Relinked looks at festival video projects.
This competition is going to find “Canada’s best blogger”? Really? Sheri Landry of Edmonton has made it to the final round of the contest, with the winner slated to be announced this week.
This has got to be one of the most bizarre posts I have ever seen at Gizmodo. It tells the complete story of New York Times technology writer David Pogue losing his phone and getting it back.
There has been a lot of talk about social media in relation the London Olympics, or the “Socialympics” as they have been dubbed. I love seeing what the athletes tweet!
Check out what Edmonton bloggers have been up to over the last week.
Tickets for the 31st Annual Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival go on sale at noon tomorrow (August 7). The media launch kicks off at 11am at the TransAlta Arts Barns.
As I sometimes do on long weekends, I neglected to post my Edmonton notes yesterday. I really have no excuse – Linda posts her clicks of the day pretty much every single day!
CBC was recording a podcast at the Heritage Festival today:

You can follow Edmonton media news on Twitter using the hashtag #yegmedia. For a great overview of the global media landscape, check out Mediagazer.

So, what have I missed? What’s new and interesting in the world of Edmonton media? Let me know!

You can see past Media Monday Edmonton entries here.

What’s happening in the Edmonton blogosphere?

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a one-stop-shop for Edmonton blogs? Where you could see a list of all the blogs and maybe even see all of the latest posts too?

It was a little over five years ago that I posted about this notion of a directory of Edmonton blogs. Here’s what I wrote at the time:

“I have started tagging blogs at del.icio.us with the tag edmontonblogs. This is really more of an “in the meantime” kind of activity, because as Pete points out, an actual directory website would be much more useful. Maybe I’ll build it one of these days.”

I finally built it.

A couple weeks ago I launched the latest release of ShareEdmonton. With the new version you can browse local blogs, see an always-updated collection of new blog posts, and you can search more than 10,000 posts written by local bloggers.

While my tagging of local blogs at delicious didn’t last long, my desire for a directory of Edmonton blogs never diminished. Over the years I collected local blogs and subscribed to them in Google Reader. That worked fairly well for me, but it didn’t help anyone else. A couple of years ago the idea of a directory came up again, and Reg, myself, and few others started looking at the problem. That project eventually fizzled, but I think it helped the Edmonton Journal launch its community blogs page, an idea championed by Karen Unland. While that page was a step in the right direction, it included a very limited number of blogs and was often broken (the latest update seems to have fixed the issues with broken or incorrect links).

There was a lot of false starts along the way, and far more challenges to overcome than I would have anticipated, but I’m very happy with the new release of ShareEdmonton. Is it a perfect, 100% complete, one-stop-shop for Edmonton blogs? Of course not. But it will help you keep up-to-date with a large number of Edmonton bloggers, and with your help it’ll get even better over time.

User Stories

For the initial release I wanted to make it easy to see the latest blog posts, and to browse recently updated blogs. Most blogs are updated relatively infrequently, and I didn’t want you to have to sift through those just to see what’s new. That’s a big part of the reason why there’s an emphasis placed on how recent something is in the UI.

Here are some of the scenarios this release addresses, expressed in the form of user stories:

As a user, I want a “home page” for all the blog-related functionality, so that I can remember a single URL (shareedmonton.ca/blogs).
As a user, I want to see the most recently updated blogs, with a title and photo (if one exists) for each blog.
As a user, I want to see the most recently updated blogs by tag or category (such as food).
As a user, I want to see the most recent blog posts, with a title, description, and photo (if one exists) for each post.
As a user, I want to see the most recent blog posts for a specific blog (such as mine).
As a user, I want to see the most recent blog posts for a specific blog tag or category (such as food). This is any post from a blog that has been categorized as a “food” blog. So if Sharon wrote a post about politics, it would show up here.
As a user, I want to see the most recent blog posts for a specific tag or category (such as food). This is any post tagged by the blogger as a “food” post. So if I wrote a post about food and tagged it appropriately, it would show up here.
As a user, I want to search all blog posts (for a query such as food).
As a user, I want to see all blog posts by day for the last week, with a headline and source for each.
As a user, I want to add a new blog to ShareEdmonton.

I come up with new user stories all the time, and I welcome any feedback and/or suggestions that you might have!

Aggregation & Curation

I followed that post back in 2007 with a list of blog posts talking about Edmonton. My aggregation & curation was fairly ad hoc back then, but now I write my Edmonton Notes every Sunday and Media Monday Edmonton every Monday. I try to include blog posts in those, but it definitely takes effort to keep on top of what everyone has written. I keep track of things I find during the week, and I do a quick scan at the end of week to find what I missed. Others post similar entries: Sharon does Food Notes, Karen does her Edmonton New Media Roundup, The Unknown Studio does the Edmonton Blog Watch, etc. These are all really useful and people love them, but they do take work.

There’s a big difference between aggregation (gathering and perhaps indexing) and curation (sorting, categorizing, analyzing, presenting). When the bloggers I mentioned above write their list posts, they’re doing both activities. My hope is that with ShareEdmonton’s new blog functionality they can focus more on the curation part, which is where they really add value. I think “show me all the latest posts from Edmonton bloggers” is a task for software, and “tell me which are important and why” is primarily a task for people. But you need the former before you can do the latter.

(I said “primarily a task for people” above because increasingly we’ll see software doing curation too! I plan to add different ways to browse blog posts to ShareEdmonton, and one example might be a list of the most commented on posts of the week. That’s an algorithmic way of sorting and presenting, which is curation.)

Statistics

You know me, I love statistics. I couldn’t do this post without at least one graph! So here you go, blogs by platform currently indexed at ShareEdmonton:

Blogs by Platform

As expected, most blogs are based on WordPress. It’ll be interesting to see if this changes over time!

Add Your Blog!

There are nearly 150 blogs currently being aggregated and indexed at ShareEdmonton, but I know that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I’ll continue adding blogs myself, but you can help by submitting your own blog or someone else’s here.

Media Monday Edmonton: Update #47

Here is my latest update on local media stuff:

With the Olympics now underway, there are a bunch of programming changes in effect at CTV.
Puget Sound Radio, a very active radio and television message board, is hosting Edmonton’s “PSR Media Mob Day” on August 15. They are inviting “any radio and television people with significant media backgrounds in Edmonton to join us for a simple gathering and fun session.”
Popular Food Network TV show Eat Street is coming to Edmonton next week! They’ll be filming three food trucks during lunch between August 7 and August 9.
Startup Edmonton is looking for volunteers to join its new Social Media Committee. Volunteers would be responsible for all social media activities, “from platform recommendations to managing live-tweeting and on-line story-telling at events.” You have until August 15 to apply.
The second season of HGTV’s Urban Suburban premieres on August 28 at 6pm MST. At least one episode this season was filmed here in Edmonton!
The next Capital Ideas event takes place during the lunch hour on Wednesday at the Edmonton Journal. Stop by for three different local stories on business!
Vue Weekly is looking for a News Editor now that Samantha Power has decided to pursue a Master’s degree in the fall. You’ll be missed Samantha!
The first episode of Edmonton-based Mosaic Entertainment’s Truckstop Bloodsuckers airs tomorrow on BiteTV. For more on the webseries, check out this St. Albert Gazette article.
The latest Relinked column takes a look at weather coverage, specifically the 25th anniversary of the tornado that struck Edmonton. Paula Simons took a different angle on tornado coverage in her latest column. Be sure to check out CTV’s web feature too. See also: Journal staffers recall memories of 1987 tornado.
Congratulations to Global Edmonton’s Carole Anne Guay who got married in Ottawa recently. You’ll now find her on Twitter at @CADevaney.
Happy belated birthday to Linda Hoang!
This definitely seems like the kind of thing that could land Twitter in hot water: they have banned a journalist from The Independent who was actively criticizing NBC’s coverage of the Olympics, citing a rule that doesn’t actually exist. You know, the same NBC that Twitter recently partnered with.
Conrad Black on newspaper investment: “Any good title that’s grossly underpriced could be interesting.”

You can follow Edmonton media news on Twitter using the hashtag #yegmedia. For a great overview of the global media landscape, check out Mediagazer.

So, what have I missed? What’s new and interesting in the world of Edmonton media? Let me know!

You can see past Media Monday Edmonton entries here.

Edmonton Notes for 7/29/2012

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

It’s official: Capital EX will be renamed to K-Days, starting next year. K-Days received 38,762 of the 51,160 votes cast (a little over 75%). Northlands President and CEO Richard Andersen said: “We are looking forward to the opportunities the new name brings to the Fair. We will be working over the next couple of months to build the story for K-Days and that is probably the most exciting part for us!”
It was a big week for local tech companies! Mitre Media announced that it has raised $8.6 million from iNovia Capital and a group of angel investors. The company publishes financial content and tools. Also this week, Upside Software was acquired by SciQuest Inc. for $22 million. Upside is the well-known developer of contract management systems.
EPS Chief Rod Knecht received a nice write-up in the Sun this week. While I agree that his approach seems wise, I think too little time has passed to call it a success. Last year’s homicide was a major anomaly and the violence reduction strategy is going to take time to implement.
A new questionnaire released on Tuesday asks for input on how much the Mayor and City Council should be paid. You can have your say here.
Demolition of the Cromdale Hotel is now underway and is expected to take a month. Construction of the new Shoppers Drug Mart should begin in September with an expected opening in the spring of 2013.
Federal regulators are reviewing Enbridge’s pipeline operations control room here in Edmonton after it was found that staff ignored repeated leak warnings.
The Oilers officially signed Nail Yakupov to a three-year, entry level contract on Monday.
The economic output for our province is as positive as ever. The latest forecast from the Conference Board of Canada shows Alberta leading the country with 3.8% growth.
Want to speak at Pecha Kucha Night Edmonton #14 in the fall? The call for presenters is now open!
Have you made your picks for Vue Weekly’s Best of Edmonton yet?
Great post by Alex on the Edmonton Indy: Does the Indy do anything for Edmonton?
The Muttart Conservatory is running a Shutterbug Photo Contest until September 15. There are great prizes for the winning photos!
Some thoughts from Nadine on the Essence of Edmonton: Invent Your Own Awesome.
Have you been enjoying the Olympics so far? Edmonton Olympians recall the thrills of competing on the world stage.
To check out what local bloggers have been writing over the past week, check out recent Blog Post Headlines at ShareEdmonton.
Edmonton’s newest music festival, Interstellar Rodeo, received rave reviews this weekend.

Check out a few more photos of Interstellar Rodeo here.

Here are some upcoming events you should know about:

Tuesdays on the Terrace continues at the Art Gallery of Alberta. I took a large group of colleagues last week and we had a great time!
Latitude 53’s Summer Rooftop Patio Series continues on Thursday evening.
Join us on Friday evening along the lovely Victoria Promenade in Oliver for What the Truck?!, Edmonton’s food truck extravaganza! Check out the lineup and menu here. You can RSVP to the event on Facebook here.
One of my favorite festivals of the year is back for the long weekend: Servus Heritage Festival runs Saturday through Monday at Hawrelak Park.
FC Edmonton is back in action at Clarke Stadium on Saturday evening!
For more upcoming events, check out ShareEdmonton.

I just hope they keep the corn dogs

If you haven’t made it down to Capital EX yet, you’d better hurry – Sunday is the final day for this year’s edition of the ex! Sharon and I made our annual visit last weekend, and ate way too much, enabled by a media package that gave us free food. It was fun, with some hits and some misses, but for the most part I found the experience similar to previous years.

One of the new features this year was Ribfest. Its location was a little odd, but the ribs and pulled pork were both delicious. I’d like to see the competition aspect expanded in future years, especially as the vendors themselves seemed to enjoy showcasing their many trophies from around North America!

While walking the midway we happened upon the Canadian Beef Bacon wagon from Calgary. We decided to order the sliders, which gave us a nice sampler. To me it tasted a little like breakfast, with the beef bacon, an egg, and maple syrup-flavored bun. I really enjoyed it!

Of course, no trip to Capital EX is complete without a corn dog and Those Little Donuts! Both were delicious.

Forgive the picture, it’s all I’ve got!

Tomorrow is also the last day to Name Your Fair. Northlands is looking to rename the event next year, and after crowdsourcing suggestions from the public, narrowed the list of options down to six (with the help of partners Global Edmonton and the Edmonton Journal):

EdFest
The Edmonton Exhibition
Edmonton Summer Exhibition
K-Days
River City Festival
River City Summer Fair

Amazingly, that uninspired list is what they came up with after considering the following criteria:

Relevance to the 21st century ahead.
Consideration of the incredible historic growth and continued diversification of Edmonton’s multi-cultural fabric.
Defining of the community spirit and outwardly fun characteristics that make Edmontonians who they are.
Embracing of all demographics from new 21st century babies through to our shining senior citizens.
Creative platforms enabling commercial partners to activate and deliver diverse and intriguing experiences.
Agility that will allow a fresh and exciting new theme to be incorporated every year.

K-Days barely has any relevance to our past let alone our future. River City, while often used in Edmonton, could describe most cities in the world. And while the event is an exhibition, that’s not exactly the most exciting name.

Why rename the event? Probably because attendance peaked in 2005, right before Klondike Days was renamed Capital EX. Maybe this is a case of garbage-in, garbage-out, but I find it hard to believe that those six names were the best suggestions the committee received. I don’t think crowdsourcing was the way to go this year. I think that no matter what the next name is, Edmontonians will like it better than Capital EX, simply because it will not have been the unlucky name to replace the beloved Klondike Days. For that reason, I think hiring an agency to do a complete rebrand would have been a better decision.

According to a news release sent out this morning, more than 40,000 votes have been cast in the Name Your Fair contest. It’ll be very interesting to see how many of them are for K-Days. You have until 6pm tomorrow evening to vote.

If those six names are the only options, I don’t really care which one wins. I just hope they still have corn dogs!

You can see more photos from our visit to Capital EX here.

Media Monday Edmonton: Update #46

Here is my latest update on local media stuff:

Councillor Dave Loken and Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk were both in the news last week for comments they made using social media. Premier Redford had to “have a talk” with Lukaszuk because of an inappropriate joke he made on Facebook. Loken, on the other hand, got into a pissing match with some followers on Twitter about the arena. This is news?! I don’t care that the summer news cycle is slow, this is just lazy. It’s not like this was the first time a politician had gotten into trouble for something they said online. I’m being serious here. Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, and most of all Global Edmonton (who ran swiftly into the open arms of “social media expert” Karl Kovacs): were you inundated with requests for coverage of these stories? How about the rest of you? Does making a big deal out of them somehow make us better informed citizens? No! Instead, Loken will go back to saying nothing at all, and Lukaszuk will take his slap on the wrist and forget it ever happened. I’m sure nothing would make the mainstream media happier than to once again become the intermediary between politicians and citizens but that ship has sailed, no matter how dangerous you make social media look. Get over it.
Lots of Edmontonians were sad to see that Cam Tait was one of the latest victims of the Postmedia cuts. Except he wasn’t? After lots of tweets all morning on Friday, Journal editor-in-chief Lucinda Chodan said that Tait will in fact continue to write a column for the Journal. Weird.
The modern reporter, surrounded by laptops! That’s Metro’s Heather McIntyre, kicking it new school.
Vue Weekly’s Best of Edmonton is now accepting your votes. Our online community gets just three categories, while the mainstream media gets fifteen. Plus lawyers get three categories, you can vote for your favorite RV dealer, and also your favorite fetish ware store. Time to rebalance the categories, perhaps?
Paula Simons ran into the Twitter limits while live-tweeting the arena debate last week. “Apparently mistaking my witty real-time analysis for Spambot droppings, Twitter shut me down and shut me out.” Not exactly. Everyone is subject to the same limits: the most you can post in a day is 1000 tweets, but Twitter will further restrict that to about 100 an hour. “We’ve found great new ways to reach and respond to readers – but we’ve slowly, perhaps unwittingly, surrendered some of our independence and autonomy into the bargain.” Yup.
The Art Gallery of Alberta is hiring a Digital Media Coordinator.
Erin Isfeld is “back in the saddle” at CTV Edmonton!
I love these behind-the-scenes photos of Global Edmonton’s “Our Summer” digital billboard campaign.
Uh oh, Bob Stauffer has angered some Ducks fans with comments he made about Justin Schultz.
This year, the Edmonton Corn Maze celebrates 30 years of CISN Country in Edmonton. Looks good! (larger version here)
Sounds like the Journal is bullish on video.
Want to be Western Living magazine’s new City Editor for Edmonton? The deadline to apply is July 31.
I heard a lot of great things about Alex Tagliani this weekend, even though he easily beat the local media in a promotional go-kart race. “The Montreal-born driver wiped the floor with eight local news personalities…”
Great to see some coverage of local blogger Jennifer Banks in Metro. #makejensday is a great idea!
A lot has been written this week about the tragedy in Aurora, Colorado. Here’s my favorite so far, from Mathew Ingram. “As journalism professor Jay Rosen likes to say, journalism gets better when there are more people doing it.”
Here’s a great shot of Ziyah Karmali and her cameraman in action at the Capital Ex Parade!
I think every mainstream media organization has a presence at Capital Ex right now, but especially the radio stations. I won a mug by playing Lite 95.7’s plinko game!
Want to be a speaker at WordCamp Edmonton 2012? Let us know! And stay tuned for registration to go live in the next few weeks.
Below, Brittney Le Blanc speaks with business owners Nate Box, owner of Elm Cafe, and Lea Alcantara, owner of Lealea Design. The panel discussed how business owners should be working with their competition at the Edmonton Journal on July 18, 2012. Check out the recap here.

You can follow Edmonton media news on Twitter using the hashtag #yegmedia. For a great overview of the global media landscape, check out Mediagazer.

So, what have I missed? What’s new and interesting in the world of Edmonton media? Let me know!

You can see past Media Monday Edmonton entries here.

Edmonton Notes for 7/22/2012

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

The downtown arena was discussed at Council this week, and once again the project took a small step forward. The $450 million budget was reaffirmed and the project team will now be moving to the detailed design phase. In other words, not much has changed. If this is “all part of the process” as officials from both the Katz Group and the City like to say, then can we maybe have the steps in that process published upfront from now on? I mean, it would make this whole charade a lot less entertaining, but then at least we could focus on the issues instead of getting ourselves into a tizzy because Council is talking once again about the arena. It would probably help the Councillors too, and might save them from asking questions that they have already asked. Two years ago. Oh yes, it was that kind of a day at Council on Tuesday.
Speaking of Council, here’s the latest Council Roundup from the City. Of note is the new image and reputation task force which will be co-led by Maureen McCaw and Chris LaBossiere.
Congratulations to Brad Ferguson, the new President and CEO of EEDC effective August 1, 2012. I think he’s going to do great things in the role.
Here’s a great feature on the City Centre Redevelopment in the Globe and Mail. “Faced with the prospect of an empty site in the middle of the city, with 300 acres of land ready to be developed, a lot of municipal governments would have seen nothing but dollar signs. Edmonton pictured families.”
Answer the question “Why Edmonton?” and then tell Adam about it with a video, post, or something else. It’s an effort to “get down to the essence of Edmonton.”
Edmonton Transit has released ETS to Go, a new mobile website for the Trip Planner, Bus Stop Schedule, Saved Locations, and alerts.
I feel like I have already written about this, but a new press release from the Government of Alberta says that construction on the final leg of Anthony Henday Drive is underway with a scheduled opening in the fall of 2016.
Edmonton’s NextGen is working with EEDC to search for an EEDC/NextGen Youth Intern. Unfortunately the deadline to apply has already passed, just three days after that post.
The market for downtown office space is heating up, as the vacancy rate dropped to 7.8% from 8.5% last quarter.
The annual Capital Ex Parade took place on Thursday, with the City of Edmonton unveiling its entry titled “Us” on Wednesday. What did you think? I saw a lot of mixed reaction online!
EPS rolled out its new Specialized Traffic Apprehension Teams (STAT) this week and announced that their first target will be Edmonton’s 100 Worst Drivers.
It was pretty much down to the wire, but the Oilers and Sam Gagner have agreed to terms on a one-year contract worth $3.2 million.
Your next visit to Commonwealth Stadium to watch the Eskimos will probably be a little more comfortable – new seat installation is underway!
Which community garden is your favorite? Vote in Sustainable Food Edmonton’s 2012 Community Garden Awards.
The third and final task in the Edmonton Community Challenge is a photo scavenger hunt!

I love this shot by Cam Braaten.

Here are some upcoming events to check out:

We announced the next What the Truck?! on Friday. Join us on August 3 in Oliver along the beautiful Victoria Promenade!
Taste of Edmonton and Capital Ex continue all week. Don’t forget that Saturday is the last day to cast your vote in the Name Your Fair contest.
This week is the final one for Fork Fest Summer 2012.
The annual Premier’s Capital EX breakfast takes place on Tuesday morning at the Legislature grounds.
Looking for something to do Tuesday night? Check out the AGA’s Tuesdays on the Terrace.
Head over to Latitude 53 on Thursday evening for the next edition of the Summer Rooftop Patio Series.
The next Social Media Breakfast Edmonton takes place on Friday morning at the Startup Edmonton space.
All weekend long, enjoy Edmonton’s newest music festival in Hawrelak Park: Interstellar Rodeo.
Get into the Olympic spirit on Sunday with the Edmonton Valley Zoo Summer Animal Olympics.
Want to take in some baseball this week? The Edmonton Prospects are in action at Telus Field on Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday.
For more upcoming events, check out ShareEdmonton.

Congratulations to Helio Castroneves, winner of the 2012 Edmonton Indy.

ShareEdmonton updated with support for blogs & news releases

Today I am very excited to share with you the latest release of ShareEdmonton, my ongoing effort to build a platform for finding, filtering, and sharing Edmonton-related content and information. When I launched the site back in 2009, I said: “I want to redefine local media and improve Edmonton by embracing the fact that communication is increasingly taking place online.” While I still haven’t achieved my complete vision for ShareEdmonton, today’s release is another big step in the right direction.

The first thing you’ll notice if you have been using ShareEdmonton for any length of time is the new design. I decided to embrace Twitter Bootstrap as the foundation for the website’s layout and styling, a decision I am extremely happy about. With Bootstrap, the site is responsive and mobile-friendly, lightweight, and standards-compliant. It should look great on an HD screen, a mobile phone, and everything in-between. Another UI-related change is that Google Maps has been replaced with Leaflet and Open Street Maps.

The majority of the work in this release was done behind-the-scenes. For instance, I completely revamped the the way ShareEdmonton imports data so that it is more automatic and much more reliable. Another big change is the underlying infrastructure – ShareEdmonton now runs completely on Windows Azure. This is the kind of thing that is transparent to the end user but means that I can spend far less time worrying about servers and much more time adding new features!

Speaking of new features, there are a bunch in the latest release:

Blogs! You can now use ShareEdmonton to keep up-to-date with local bloggers. More than 100 blogs and 10,000 posts have been indexed so far. I have focused on blogs that update fairly regularly, but I know there are many, many more that should be included. You can add blogs here. There are two primary views for blog posts: the visual view and the headline view (which shows posts from the last week).
News Releases! Similar to blogs, ShareEdmonton is now indexing news releases. There’s a lot of room to improve, but so far about 20 sources and a few thousand releases have been indexed, including every City of Edmonton news release since January 2009.
Event pages have been updated with the new visual view, similar to blogs and news releases. I think it’s a much more enjoyable way to browse what’s coming up. Also, you can now add your own calendars for ShareEdmonton to import automatically.
The weather page now supports watches and warnings. If Environment Canada has issued a watch or warning, you’ll see it across the top of the weather page, but you’ll also now see a notification icon on the toolbar across the top of the site, no matter what page you’re on.

There are also dozens and dozens of bug fixes, data updates, and other small improvements.

I’ll be writing more about some of these new features over the next week, but for now, take a look and let me know what you think!

Media Monday Edmonton: Update #45

Here is my latest update on local media stuff:

From David J. Climenhaga: “The newspaper industry was officially pronounced a dead man walking on Sunday, July 8, 2012.” I think it may have happened before that, but whatever, the story is that the Journal is going to be eliminating another 25 jobs. (Thanks to Stuart for the first tip.)
I saw a few people ask what happened to Gary James over the last couple weeks. I’m not sure what he is up to now, but Media Mag reports that he was relieved of his duties at JOE FM (replaced by Jonny Sullivan from The Bear in Ottawa) along with Boyd Leader.
The Edmonton Experiment launched Capital Ideas on July 3. Described as a place where “Edmonton’s entrepreneurs help each other by sharing what they know,” the new initiative held its first event at the Edmonton Journal the following day. You can see video of the event here. The next event takes place on Wednesday. Here’s some behind-the-scenes from Karen.
Full Disclosure from Lowetide. Roughly half a million pageviews per month and just under 40,000 uniques – impressive!
The Journal wants to know how you get their product – let them know by filling out this survey. And don’t be surprised when they erect the paywall later this year!
Speaking of the paywall, that’s all I could think about after reading this post from Stuart Thomson. Well, not the only thing that came to mind. In the post, Stuart joins the parade of columnists arguing against Journatic, a company that provides local news outsourcing. He uses that to explain that “award-winning journalism” comes from “working a beat, meeting lots of people and eventually putting it all together into a “hard” story”. Or, you know, from giving yourselves an award. He declares: “We have to be wary about listening to tech geeks with no experience in journalism, who see a lot of micro trends but rarely see the big picture.” Right, because innovation often comes from those with blinders on. Sigh.
Gig City has a profile on K-97’s Melissa Wright: she’s more than just a rock chick!
I missed this last month, so belated congratulations to Inglorious Hipsters on your one year anniversary!
The Journal is running a new ad campaign featuring Journal personalities.
Some sad news: Edmonton writer Darren Zenko died of cancer a couple weeks ago. Early in his career he was at DJ at CJSR and was a staff member at The Gateway. He later wrote for the Journal, Vue Weekly, and See Magazine.
Another blog bites the dust: I Heart Edmonton is calling it quits after three years. Thanks for all the great content Emil!
It was really sparsely populated at launch, so I’m glad to see the EJ Events app has more data now. It’s great also that the Journal is experimenting with new things like the app, though this is concerning: “Robin Schroffel, the Journal staffer who works eight hours a day behind the scenes of the events app uploading and moderating content…” Really? Eight hours a day?!
Metro Edmonton is looking for a Senior Reporter/Photographer. The deadline to apply is August 5.
Global Edmonton’s Laurel Clark wrote about her trip to work with journalists in Liberia.
Want to work on Alberta Westworld magazine? The AMA is looking to hire a writer for the publication.
Did you miss The Unknown Studio’s live blog from BT Edmonton on Friday? It’s hilarious, and was a great way to cap off Bloggers Week.
Have you seen The Newsroom, the new drama from Aaron Sorkin? I watched the first episode, and thought it was okay. Have been enjoying blog posts about the show more: The Differences Between The Newsroom And An Actual Newsroom and On Bullshit: The Newsroom to name just a couple. But probably my favorite comes from Jeff Jarvis: Can we reimagine TV news (please)?
From Paula Kirman, another item I missed last month: The 7th Annual Astral Caring for Kids Radio Broadcast took place on June 14, raising funds for the Stollery Children’s Hospital Foundation. Radio stations 104-9 Virgin Radio, 100.3 The Bear, and The Team 1260 took part, interviewing children and families who have been impacted by the Stollery and encouraging listeners to donate. A total of $350,000 was raised.

Check out more photos from the radiothon here.

You can follow Edmonton media news on Twitter using the hashtag #yegmedia. For a great overview of the global media landscape, check out Mediagazer.

So, what have I missed? What’s new and interesting in the world of Edmonton media? Let me know!

You can see past Media Monday Edmonton entries here.

Edmonton Notes for 7/15/2012

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

The results of the 2012 Municipal Census were released this week and Edmonton’s new official population is 817,498.
After tons of hot weather recently, the last few days have been very wet. The storm on Thursday resulted in more than 40 emergencies, 2 fires started by lightning, and at least 20 rescues of drivers and passengers stranded on a very flooded Whitemud Drive. There was a rainfall warning in effect all day today, though the rain is expected to taper off into Monday morning. All the rain today has meant another round of floods!
Dr. Lorne Babiuk, Lyle Best, Bill Comrie, and Dr. Lorne Tyrrell are among the latest Edmontonians honored with the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubiliee Medal in recognition of their outstanding service and citizenship.
An update on the arena was released this week, with the issue set to be discussed by City Council on Tuesday. Looks like the project is going to cost significantly more than the budgeted $450 million.
Here’s a relatively rare interview with Daryl Katz. “You’ve seen our plans,” he said. “It’s nothing short of miraculous.”
The average price of a detached bungalow in Edmonton increased 5.1% year-over-year to $327,857 in the second quarter according to the latest Royal LePage House Price Survey.
A new interchange at Highway 2 and 41 Avenue SW is expected to cost $205 million and is slated for completion in 2015.
Think the traffic in Edmonton is bad? Think again. We rank 23rd in a new report that looks at the most traffic-clogged cities in Canada or the United States.
The final six names in the Name Your Fair contest were released this week. My guess is that K-Days is going to win, even though that’s probably not the direction we should be going.
A couple of recent posts from Councillor Iveson worth reading: Investing in Neighbourhood Renewal, and Station at 40th Avenue Feasible, But Shelved.
How does Edmonton stack up as a beer town? Vue investigates.
You might have to pay to park downtown after 6pm if Council agrees with the recommendation made by Executive Committee this week.
Looking for a family doctor? The Primary Care Network has a new online tool to find one.
What’s in a name? Gig City says Edmonton doesn’t have a clue.
The City is working on a new Master Plan for Buena Vista/Sir Wilfred Laurier Park, and they want your input. Fill out the survey here before August 3.
Food for thought: Edmonton needs more Graffiti.
Edmonton on Edmonton: some of the city’s finest reflect on their most memorable artistic experiences.
In case you missed it on the weekend: Food, agriculture and the battle over Edmonton’s growth.

I love that people take photos of this all over the place.

Here are some upcoming events:

Check out Zumba on the Square, Mondays and Fridays during the lunch hour.
Fork Fest Summer 2012 runs this week and next at restaurants around the city.
Don’t miss Tuesdays on the Terrace at the AGA!
Head downtown on Thursday for the Capital Ex Parade!
Also Thursday, it’s the start of Taste of Edmonton in Churchill Square.
Looking for something to do Thursday evening? You have a ton of choices – here are three: 124 Grand Market, Highlands Farmers Market, Latitude 53 Summer Rooftop Patio Series.
Racing fans get ready – the Edmonton Indy kicks off on Friday!
For more upcoming events, check out ShareEdmonton.

Edmonton was rather smoky on Friday as smoke from northern forest fires rolled into town.

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