Link: Best apps for the new retina iPad

To augment the Register tech reporter’s coverage, I wrote two posts about the new iPad.

The first was about if someone should buy the new iPad. While discussing the new iPad ahead of the announcement, most people talked about it within the scope of if they didn’t have an iPad or if they already have the 1 or 2. I thought that writing to each person could help make the new iPad features more relevant (rather than just writing to one general audience).

I also collected the best apps for the new iPad – for proud new owners looking to play and show off. Before the new iPad was available I collected apps that should sparkle in retina and make full use of the camera. Then, after my new iPad arrived, I updated with new information from a user’s perspective.

Most tech blogs like to write about every single rumor as it stumbles across the web. As CNet and a few others did, I rounded up the rumors for anxious tech readers.

The round-up was also a good way for potential iPad buyers and sellers to think about what is most likely to be included – in case they wanted to buy or sell ahead of the Apple announcement. Also, the links throughout help readers to find out more about each specific rumor.

Link: Katherine Darmer remembered fondly

Link: Law professor’s death probed as suicide

Link: Vigil honors Chapman Law’s Katherine Darmer

I was working a weekend reporting shift when I was forwarded an email announcing the death of a beloved Chapman law school professor. I wrote an obituary about her, her work and the impact she had on others’ lives. Then, I started and continued updating a collection of memory’s about Darmer that streamed in after people read my story. Due to high reader interest in the story, I continued reporting on Darmer during the week and posted that it was probed, and later confirmed, a suicide and I posted that a vigil was planned and then followed up with photos from the vigil.

Link: Think Different

I remember it like it was yesterday. I had just gotten home from work and was walking my beagle. I got a text from my husband who asked if I knew. “Know what?” I asked. And then he told me that Steve Jobs had died. I still couldn’t believe the news. I read through all the text messages and push notifications and emails I’d received as news alerts. I was in disbelief.

As our tech reporter worked up the main story, I worked on two Storifys as sidebars. The first one was on Orange County people reacting on Twitter to the news. The other I published the next day – a Storify of the exact words of the famous “Think Different” campaign by Apple that also speaks to Jobs’ thinking that shaped Apple and everyone who uses the company’s products.

Link: Storify wrap-up of #OCFair tweets

In a regular story, wrapping up the last day of the Orange County Fair, I was able to use social media to add valuable information to my story.

The first big help was in finding a person to talk to about this year’s fair. Rather than going to the fair and wandering around aimlessly looking for an interesting person, I looked up the OC Fair Foursquare mayor. I asked her via Twitter if I could interview her for my story and she agreed. She turned out to be a fair employee, a bartender, who attended all but one day of this year’s fair. She’s also been to the fair every year since she was a small girl. One hour later, I had a story with great insight provided by the fair’s “mayor.”

I also used Storify to bring in some interesting details from the fair’s last two days. The tweet quotes show the human side of the fair’s final weekend – as told by its attendees.

A description of the panel: ” Learn how to design mobile experiences for maximum impact and how to leverage new or existing tools and technologies efficiently as you enter the mobile space. Panelists will offer advice and examples of how to create mobile products with impact and what newsroom changes are needed to create successful mobile content.”

“Mobile share” is a figure I use to explain how much of our content is accessed by people using a mobile device (smartphone or tablet). The number compares total mobile page views to total digital page views (mobile + desktop website).

Notes about the Register’s mobile share:

• OCRegister mobile share crossed the 15% mark for the first time with 15.92% in June 2011.
• The Register crossed the 10% mark in October 2010 and the 5% mark in May 2010.

“Sonya Quick has done a fantastic job helping us move forward with social and mobile strategies and exploring new opportunities to engage with readers via ShareOC. Our mobile audience is growing at such a phenomenal rate – and has such great potential – that Sonya will focus her talents on our mobile site and mobile apps, while continuing to share her insights on social networks and user-generated content. The ShareOC work will migrate to the crowd sourcing team leader once that role is filled.”

In the next phase of building a user-generated content environment, I launched a new version of ShareOC.com last week.

ShareOC is built using Posterous and I feed content to the site manually by email and directly uploading on the web (for Flickr posts). So far, the website has 78 posts for 2011 shared by more than 20 people on topics including sunrises, Praying Mantis, flooding and Jacaranda trees.

The Posterous temporary solution gives us a free web tool for aggregating all user submissions and it makes it easy for staff to see and download content for use in our products.

The OCRegister newsroom is about to get a whole lot more mobile.

Since the Freedom Communications mobile strategy was approved in February 2010 the company has, among other things, launched countless apps, built its own mobile websites, started adapting the content we produce so it is accessible and optimized for more devices, launched a whole series of niche news alerts, deployed a news alert system making it simple and fast to send news alerts, launched an iPad app in September (with the new version of the app launching this week) and starting to guide advertisers in how to reach these mobile audiences.

And now the newsroom is going full mobile.

About half of the newsroom employees have bought their own smartphones. But now, the other half who still use company phones will ditch their Razors for myTouch 3Gs and G2s. (Read about how we chose those specific phones.)