The block you see below contains some pretty generic text in a test of a live blogging system. Since I’ve live-blogged from the county commissioner meetings before, I thought I’d try it. I also thought it might have some interesting applications in the future.
Assuming I take a laptop to the commissioners’ meeting Monday, I’ll try to live blog there. The improvement of the Cover It Live program is that it allows you to ask questions while I’m working. Those can be posted. Also, it automatically puts on a time stamp.
In the future, say when two presidential candidates are debating, we might want to employ it there. I can see the sports reporters doing it too.
I don’t know about live blogging a county commissioner meeting. I would rather read a good synopsis with commentary later on that night.
I tried covering a Microsoft press conference by blogging it live and it was very tough to actually be coherent and keep up with the events ( http://www.8bitjoystick.com/archives/jake_microsoft_e3_2007_keynote_live_blogging.php ).
I could see a live blog being used for a televised debate or speech but for a commissioner meeting a write up with some digital pictures would be fine.
Tonight at 10 is the final episode of Project Runway 4 and so the final Stranger Project Runway live slog for the season will happen then. My girlfriend is fanatical about that show.
Oh it works great on Firefox on Linux
Steve,
You could get a head start by cutting/pasting the meeting agenda topics from another window. That would also give the blog some structure (is that heretical?).
Next you need to bring a digital camera and get some snapshots of the more interesting characters and tie those into your text.
Too often have I seen you SUN guys kicking back in your chair at those meetings. This is work man! Start multitasking!
I think that when journalists write a blog it give them a perfect opportunity to include material and content that might not fit in the space allotted in the printed page version but is interesting none the less. Having more nuanced content of political coverage is more of a draw for me than Live coverage of political event. Same thing goes for photo content.
However I do think Cover it Live would be awesome for Presidential Debates and for when President Obama gives his first State of the Union address in January 09.