UF's Online Journalism teacher extraordinaire Mindy McAdams noticed the link to my old Nutcracker multimedia project produced while at the Gainesville Sun no longer had a functioning address. Had it and the others posted during my time there been moved or just re-moved? Knowing some of the inner working of the paper's attempt to keep up with producing multimedia, especially video, I'm kind of surprised the projects seem to be lost. But so be it. Files are hard to keep in place especially as a newspaper is updating their hosting.
So I will be digging out my old files and hosting them on another free server that seems to work quite well as a personal archive of my multimedia projects since I currently do not have an official Web site besides this blog. And I will be fixing the old links.
Will anyone care about my old projects? I don't know. But as a lesson learned I advise others who rely on the newspaper they work for to host their projects to look into another hosting method as a personal back-up. For all the hours zoned out listening to your audio, screams at a frozen Audacity file and times moving those little thumbnails in Soundslides around to create your masterpiece only to someday have the link you have been relying on to play your project vanish without a trace would only create more heart break. And even though we should all be burning a disk with our final project on it as an archive as well, it isn't live. And as our multimedia programs evolve they may not be able to read the old files we once created if we forgot to hit that little "export" button.
I hope this helps someone else forgo the sadness imposed on a journalist when finding their links have been discarded by a former publication. I feel in the event this does happen to a person it should not be interpreted as a slap in the face but instead as a kick to yourself for not taking into account the evolution of online journalism.
And if anyone is wondering, I have been using Webng.com to host my multimedia projects for free until I have my own paid for, and hopefully permanent, Web site.
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Multimedia Housekeeping
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1 comment:
once again, my dearest wifey, you make a great point. luckily enough, i have worked at papers with sites that are worse than that of the sun's so i was for sure not about to rely on them to save my shit. didn't the sun recently have a redesign? maybe that's why your stuff disappeared into a black hole. anyway, thanks for the top on the free server. thats good to know.
also, i'm scraping and saving short-term and long-term to reunite with you. short-term, i've got to get the money to ship your xmas present to you. its still sitting here. long-term, i'm going to buy a plane ticket to come see you and the hairy love of my life sometime soon. i miss you so!
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