Charles Apple

Tracy Boyer, a grad student at the University of North Carolina, posted a critique in her Innovative Interactivity blog today of several interactive March Madness brackets.

Tracy writes:

I started with the men’s bracket of The New York Times since it is my homepage.

They get bonus points for offering mobile updates and for providing capabilities to recruit friends and make your own group. Once each person fills out his/her bracket, it will track each person’s score and rank. It will also save my selection as a member instead of displaying an empty bracket upon return visits. Very nicely done.

I followed the link she provided and discovered the same thing: That page you see above, labeled “Charles Apple’s picks.” Does life get any easier than this? Very impressive.

My only quibble: The NYT page is just a little too wide for my laptop monitor.

Tracy’s second critique:

Tim Meko of The Columbus Dispatch gave me a heads-up about their interactive bracket, and they deserve kudos because they were the only ones who added extra interactivity above the bracket to provide more information about each team. A key player for each team was nicely silhouetted in the header when the user rolled over a team in the bracket, along with a variety of other pertinent information about their record, coach, etc.

The ranking numbers were on the small size and I found myself squinting when making my selection, but I enjoyed watching the header swap out according to my movements. You could also interact with just the header with their nice subtle navigation on the left.

Agreed here, too. My only quibble: I dislike having to sit through a video advertisement before being directed to the brackets. You can click to skip the ad, but still…

Tracy goes on to analyze three more interactive brackets and to link with each. Check it out here.

—

For what it’s worth, I’m really impressed with Tracy’s blog. I’m adding it to the blogroll here and I’ll be blowing hours upon hours spending a lot of quality time reading her stuff.

There are a lot of bloggers out there who critique and comment on multimedia design. Tracy is one of the first I’ve seen who seems focused on values that matter the most to me: really good content and clear design.

I had begun to wonder if I was just too damned old to get my mind around multimedia design. I feel better now.

I found her this afternoon when, out of curiosity, I backtracked to find out who had just retweeted an item from my own blog.

For all my Twitterhead pals out there, following — and laughing at — my learning curve: Yeah, I see, now, how Twitter can even be a networking tool. Very interesting…

Today, Darren Sanefski and I wrap up a three-day workshop at the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association in Harrisburg, Pa.

Darren teaches how NOT  to design a web page.
—

The previous two days have been wonderful. Today got off to a great start with a session on typography by Darren and a critique of work by our participants. As I type this, Darren is knocking them dead with a presentation on web design. He showed us a collection of truly rancid web pages. My favorite so far: This one.

We finished yesterday with a hands-on session in which our folks tried their hand at sketching out ideas for a page we ran last week in Sporting News Today using fun facts and demographics on NFL players.

Daniel Hunt of the Wilmington News Journal
explains his NFL page concept. It didn’t suck at all.
—

VizEds creator Robb Montgomery was in town yesterday and sat in with us for a while. Last night, he shot a video over dinner. See the results here.

Find more videos like this on Visual Editors

This afternoon, I’ll give a session on resources for visual journalists.

Things are slowly settling down for me in my new job as art director of Sporting News Today.

I’m still working some pretty long hours, which is eating into time I’d normally spend on silly things like e-mailing, blogging and sleeping. But as I adapt to my new routine — and as we phase out of start-up mode and feel our way into normal operations — things will eventually settle down.

Until then, I’m way behind. On vital things. Like e-mailing, blogging, and sleeping.

Compounding matters somewhat: This summer has been a tremendous time for news in the news design field. Redesigns, layoffs, changes galore in the industry. I think we’ve been able to stay on top of most of them for you.

A few programming notes:

—
BIRTHDAY NOTICES

You may have noticed I stopped posting birthday notices. I simply ran out of time to write them. And August was a particularly heavy month for birthdays.

Birthdays I wanted to tell you about but didn’t:

Aug. 12: Michael Tribble of the Cleveland Plain Dealer
Aug. 13: Juan Antonio Giner, design and management consultant
Aug. 14: Casandra Riddle of the Times of Northwest Indiana and a recent Purdue graduate
Aug. 15: Matt Mansfield, consultant and next year’s SND president
Aug. 16: Michelle “ShellyVal” Valenzuela, formerly of the Raleigh News & Observer
Aug. 16: Brandon Stuck of The Virginian-Pilot
Aug. 17: Patrick Garvin of the Florida Times-Union
Aug. 18: John Earle of The Virginian-Pilot
Aug. 19: Danny Dougherty of Stateline.org
Aug. 20: Bill Bootz of the Oklahoma City Oklahoman
Aug. 20: Mark “NewsDesigner” Friesen of the Portland Oregonian
Aug. 20: Tonia Cowan of the Toronto Globe & Mail
Aug. 20: Niketa Patel of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Aug. 20: Carlos Moreno, student, San Jose State University
Aug. 21: Allisence Chang, Michigan State graduate and intern at the Arizona Republic

Whew! Did I really miss all those?

Yes, you did, schmuck. And shame on you.

I think I’ll try a different — perhaps a somewhat less time-intensive — approach to birthday notes until I get my schedule under control.

—
THE SALE OF THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT

Still not sure when the sale will go through or who will buy it. I’m monitoring the situation and will post the news as soon as I get it.

I’m very glad I’m no longer in that situation. But the pain of watching my friends suffer through it day-to-day is just as bad as suffering through it myself.

Hang in there, folks. I’m hoping for the best.

—
SND/LAS VEGAS

Normally, I’d be all over this with previews and posts and tips.

There’s a very good reason I’ve not done this: I’m not going this year.

It breaks my heart. But due to the cost of our delayed relocation to Rock Hill, S.C. — anyone out there want to buy a beautiful condo in Virginia Beach? — I had to cancel. It was just too expensive.

I will have a preview/tips post coming up shortly. For now, find the Vegas web home here.

I hope you all have fun there.

—
TRAINING IN HARRISBURG, PA.

I’ll be teaching a big, three-day visual journalism seminar next month for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association in Harrisburg, Pa.

This will be my fourth session for PNA. And it’ll be, by far, the most extensive. With me will be Darren Sanefski of the Syracuse newspaper and a professor at Syracuse University.

The dates are Sept. 15, 16 and 17. I’m hoping to have something more extensive up shortly. Watch this spot.

—
SPORTING NEWS TODAY

It’s been wildly successful. We launched a month ago yesterday and passed 100,000 subscribers a while back. The feedback we’re getting from readers has been phenomenal.

My dad even gushes about it during our weekly phone chats. And he’s reading us via a dial-up modem! I’ve had friends tell me it even looks great on iPhones.

The design is a bit formatted. But that’s OK: It ain’t about the design. It’s about the content. And our content has been second to none.

This was the job I was born for. And I’m enjoying hell out of it.

—
PERSONAL NOTE

I had the entire weekend off — my first since I moved here. My wife, Sharon, is still working in Virginia Beach until our place sells. My daughter, Elizabeth, has moved in with me. She started 10th grade last week at Rock Hill High.

The two of us are crammed into a tiny apartment in Rock Hill, the city where we lived for many years and where Elizabeth was born in 1993.

Here’s Elizabeth, chatting with her internet friends via her iMac, in the corner of our tiny living room. She sleeps on that fold-out futon on the right. I have a mattress on the floor of the bedroom, off to the left. Note the framed photo of Tribune Tower above the TV.

Our living room was awfully bare until I put up two pictures into the spot of honor: The tributes my staffs at The Virginian-Pilot (left) and The Des Moines Register (right) bestowed upon me when I left them.

I also brought a few of my autographed pieces, which hang on my bedroom wall.

At upper left are drawings I did as a kid of Miami Dolphins great Bob Griese and Atlanta Braves knuckleballer Phil Niekro. Across the bottom are caricatures of Star Trek actors James “Scotty” Doohan and Marina “Troi” Sirtis. I did those in the late 1980s.

At upper right is an Adobe Illustrator cartoon portrait of Green Bay Packers legend Paul Horning. I did that one back in 1996.

Finally, I must admit, I’m a bit lonely here without Sharon. I’m trying to make do, however. Here is a photo of me with a cute cheerleader I picked up on Saturday:

Thanks for all the kind e-mails, folks. Keep checking the blog. We’ll be here.