LiveNewsCameras Blog

Thanks to Virginia Heffernan at the New York Times for the kind mention of LiveNewsCameras.com!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/magazine/07wwln-medium-t.html

Thanks for all your support on Election Day and Night!  This was great!

We’ve got something new for you avid LiveNewsCameras.com users to try out;  its very much a work-in-progress but we think it’s a cool new way to visualize live news.

Here’s the deal - we took many (but not all) of the existing LiveNewsCameras stations, and added in a whole bunch of new ones - dropped the whole thing on a Google Map, and made it clickable.

Unlike the live news grid - there are no thumbnails here - but at the same time - there are MANY new stations added - since we can now link out directly to URLs where live streaming video is happening.

And we’re asking for your help to find more - if you know of a page with live streaming video - drop us a note at streams@livenewscameras.com

(To be clear - we’re looking for website URLs - not ASX files or embedded players)

In other words, if your local station in say, Seattle - has live newscasts streaming on their website- please send use the URL to the live streaming page at the address above!

So - without rambling any longer - we present…

THE LIVE NEWS CAMERAS MAP

Please understand this is an experimental product and still in development - it may act strange in your browser, video may not play properly, your computer may catch fire (ok, not really…) or other strange things may happen - but please, check it out, and enjoy.

Thanks,

The LiveNewsCameras team.

Just a quick update; we’ve had quite a bit of feedback from many users lately and are taking it into consideration for the future of the site, so thanks!

We did want to ask and remind everyone of the importance of keeping the live chat appropriate for an audience of all ages.  

Just as a reminder, the policy regarding chat is simple – all chats are logged, and if we see something inappropriate, we will block access to chat and the user account of the person in question.

There is no appeal process and decisions are final, so please think before you write anything you may regret.

Please keep the chat civil, friendly, and be tolerant of new users, and help keep the news flowing.

Just a quick update regarding moderators.

Everything is fine - we’re all here - however for a few reasons, you’re going to see a decrease in the amount of time moderators spend on-camera.

We’ll still be here to manage the site, register and administer live chat, and add new streams - so don’t worry about that.

And by no means is this site closing down or going away - in fact, part of the reason for reducing the amount of time moderators are on-camera is to allow us to work on some new features for the site that we’re hoping to roll out soon.

We are also about to begin renovations of our newsroom in Chicago which will require relocating the LiveNewsCameras on-camera position so that complicates things a bit.

One reason we’re able to make this change is because of the great job chatters are doing monitoring news as it happens around the world - so if you’re one of the 3-thousand people registered for live chat, thanks for your help!

Bottom line - you’ll see less of Kat, Jeff, Julia, Christine and the other moderators, but rest assured LiveNewsCameras will be here, and we should have some great new features to make the site even better in the coming days/weeks/months.

It’s been about a week since we made the big switch to our new format, and we’ve gotten some great feedback from users.  Rest assured we’re not done with the site by any means - there are more big changes coming, along with widgets, more RSS feeds, email alerts, and a few other things.

Here’s what a few of our friends are saying:

Be your own TV news editor

Checking in on LiveNewsCameras 

Common Sense Journalism 

We’re happy to say that we’re now able to give streams a new way of being featured on LiveNewsCameras – with the addition of a moderator-powered, “scroll bar” area at the top of the site.

This is a feature we have been working on for quite a while, and it schowcases breaking news in a way we have not been able to do before – and it puts content right in front of you!

 We’d like to thank our tech master, Ali, for working so hard on developing this brand new feature.  If you have any comments or suggestions on our latest additions to the site, please email us at info@livenewscameras.com

Here at LNC we’re very excited with the latest international additions to our site.   
We’ve recently added two 24-hour-live-streaming news stations in French:   
BFM TV, from France and LCN, from Quebec.  

BFM TV features continuous national, international and business news.  
 
And LCN provides non-stop regional, national and international news. 
 
And those of you who wanted even more international stations… 
We now have stations in German and Spanish! 
The two Taggesschau.de channels feature news from Germany.  

The first, EinsExtra, streams live news  Monday through Friday between 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Central European Time.  

Whereas the second, livestream highlights the following news reports: 
Tagesschau, Tagesthemen, and Nachtmagazin at different times. 

 The Taggesschau news report airs at 8 p.m. CET and is one the most popular in Germany.   
And by the way, taggesschau means “a look at the day.”   
 A3 Noticias 24 is a live streaming news station from Spain that belongs to Antena 3 

 — the second-ranking tv station in market share.  

As their name says, they’re also a 24-hour news channel.   
 
Be sure and check back next week!
 
We’ll be adding more exciting stations to LiveNewsCameras!



Rebecca Sanchez
 

Here’s some advice that may make our site work better on your PC:

Why Is a Video Feed “Black” Or Not Working?

The individual locations making up this site control their video feeds locally – and provide news updates to the moderator when significant events happen.

Not all sites stream 24/7, and sometimes equipment failure, connectivity issues, or other problems mean a stream won’t be working at any one time.

Do I Need Special Software To Use LiveNewsCameras.com?

You don’t need “special” software, but you do need to have some specific software installed on your computer to make this site work best.

• The moderator video window and Twitter feed are powered by Flash – you can get the free Flash plug-in here:  Download Flash plug-in

• The main media player window is powered by Windows Media Player.

• You can download the latest Windows Media Player here: Download Windows Media Player

• If you are using FireFox, you’ll want to get the newest FireFox Windows Media plug-in: Download FireFox Windows Media plug-in

• If you are on a Mac - chances are you’ll need a free program called Flip4Mac: Download Flip4Mac

Our friends over at G4 (get a live stream, guys!) did a great feature story on LiveNewsCameras which aired on Thursday night, 5/1/2008.

Click the link below to go to G4TV.com and see it:

http://www.g4tv.com/attackoftheshow/videos/21561/Web_Tools_Live_News_Camerascom.html 

On a personal note - I’ve got to tell you how cool it is to have this end up on AOTS -  its a great show - I mostly catch segments on Hulu - but there’s another good one where our friend-of-LNC Doug Delony ended up on it - check it out here.

Steve