Ron Lin works at the Los Angeles Times. In many ways, he’s your typical mild-mannered reporter. He covers the county government beat for the Metro desk. He pounds copy. He hits deadlines. He has crusty editors who think print first. He has no known aspirations of becoming a full-time computer programmer.
He is a hero, and he blogs among us.
He also develops web applications that generate millions of page views, serve the public interest and lap the competition.
Ron is the man behind the paper’s wildly popular fire maps. When a fire breaks out in Southern California, Ron works to keep maps like this one up to date, and readers return repeatedly to see his latest updates.
The beauty is that he does it all with his web browser. He uses Google’s My Maps tool to quickly sketch up a map, and a little HTML know-how to embed it on latimes.com. He taught himself. The tools are free.
In this class, you’ll see three browser tricks just like Ron’s. They can improve any blog post. They can impress your readers. They require only a web browser, and a little wherewithal. They include:
- How to publish a locater map from Google.
- How to publish a simple chart with Google Charts.
- How to publish a word cloud from Wordle.
The examples I’ll be working through are all already documented below. So, if you’re bored with me already, feel free to cruise them at your leisure. I’ll leave them up here, so you can feel free to bookmark the page and go grab a smoke. The substance is all here, you’ll only be missing out on my charming presentation.
– Ben Welsh
April 16, 2009 at 8:18 pm |
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April 17, 2009 at 7:59 am |
Wow, Ben. You are both smart and glib. This is interesting stuff. Remind me to hit you up for some pro bono stuff once I get my “project” going on.