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In the past we have praised those like Adrian Holovaty who use databases for news reporting.  Holovaty left his job at The Washington Post several months ago to work on a hyperlocal site called EveryBlock. 

It launched several days ago with database driven hyperlocal news and information reporting for Chicago, New York City, and San Francisco.  To report information about specific neighborhoods it culls data from other sources and presents it in a logical manner. 

For instance, it pulls pictures from flickr with geographical tagging and groups them by neighborhood.  Check out photos from Tribeca in New York.  In addition to photos it pulls data from sites like Yelp for restaurant reviews and local government sites for restaurant violation information.  Other information includes: crime reports, graffiti, lost and found listings, and news articles. 

You can see a screen shot below of a business review from Yelp on a map in New York.

Also, for those who use craigslist to find those missed connections (someone whom you saw on the train and are attracted to but didn't have a chance to even talk to), EveryBlock even collects this data and presents it in list or map form. 

The genius of the site is not that it collects this data, but it organizes it in a way that people should find useful.  People can search for multiple items by neighborhood for all this information in one place instead of having to visit multiple sites.  This is much more exciting and user friendly than your typical database.

The Bivings Group was featured on an NPR segment that discussed Presidential candidates use of the Internet this cycle. Following is the teaser for the piece:

Through ring tones, viral videos and social networking sites, presidential candidates are relying more on the Internet than any of their predecessors. We explore the highlights and examine whether cyber-connectivity translates into votes.

In the interview, I talk about Barack Obama’s web program and Ron Paul’s fundraising ticker.

You can listen to the interview here.

My favorite SEO blogger, Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz in Seattle, has an excellent post titled “Choosing the Right CMS Platform for Your Website (from an SEO perspective).” It is about various aspects of SEO to consider when choosing a content management system (CMS) to build a site. 

Instead of doing a comparison and contrast between different systems like Drupal and Wordpress; Rand provides 12 issues to consider. These issues revolve around the ability of a site owner to control various design elements that search engines consider when assessing a site.  These issues range from page title tags to CSS.

It is worth reading.  Other than SEO, what are important issues you consider when selecting a CMS?

I learned about an interesting social network the other day that will interest Bivings Report readers who follow how news is reported on the Internet; it is for tech savvy journalists who want to improve their general reporting skills and better contribute to the field — even if they have few resources.

The network is called Wired Journalists.  Check it out.

After the New York Times abandoned Times select last Fall, making all of the content on its site free, the assumption was that it was just a matter of time before the Wall Street Journal followed suit and went to a free model. Today, the Wall Street Journal rebelled against all those assumptions and confirmed that most of its content will continue to be behind a pay wall. Chairman Rupert Murdoch is quoted as saying:

We are going to greatly expand and improve the free part of the Wall Street Journal online, but there will still be a strong offering for subscribers. The really special things will still be a subscription service, and, sorry to tell you, probably more expensive.

I’m of the opinion that most publications should embrace the free content model online. But I also think the Wall Street Journal probably made the correct business decision here.

While technically a newspaper, the Wall Street Journal’s focus on finance makes it a must read for anyone interested in the topic. It is largely a niche paper providing coverage people perceive that they can’t get elsewhere. In addition, the niche they cover – finance – is one that people have repeatedly proven they will pay for. Bloomberg has made obscene amounts of money covering this sector. I have no idea what the break down is, but I imagine a significant number of WSJ subscribers are companies ordering multiple copies as a business expense. It is one of the two or three newspapers that I’ve gotten at every office I’ve worked at and can buy at any airport.

So it makes sense to me that the WSJ can charge for access to its content. But I think it is very much the exception and not the rule.

The Bivings Group has an opening for a design/production associate. We’re looking for someone willing to come aboard for three months to help us fill some gaps, and then potentially full time after that period assuming both sides are happy with the way things are going. A complete job description is below.

Please email prodjob@bivings.com if you are interested in applying.

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I think the most interesting move a campaign has made this cycle is Ron Paul’s decision to be completely transparent in his fundraising. For the last five or six months the central element of Ron Paul’s homepage has been a counter that tallies how much he has raised during the current quarter. A screen shot of the graphic is below.

In addition to this graphic, the Paul campaign has also published a feed of all its donation data that volunteers can access. This has lead others, such as Ron Paul Graphs, to do mash ups showing donation statistics. If I want to know how much Ron Paul is raising, I can go to any number of sites and get a real time number. This is in stark contrast to most of the other campaigns that, for the most part, keep fundraising information under wraps until they are forced to disclose the information publicly.

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Richard Pérez-Peña of the New York Times reports in today's article "A Venerable Magazine Energizes Its Web Site" that the respected foreign affairs, politics, economics, and culture magazine The Atlantic is revamping its site tomorrow in hopes that it will help the publication turn a profit.

Just over a year ago the magazine's site was, as editor in chief James Bennet explained to Pérez-Peña, "just a marketing arm for the print magazine, rather than publication in its own right."  In 2007, however, it added blogs, video, and increased content from both the magazine and unique to the site, and traffic to the site has grown to several times the amount it had in December 2006.

Tomorrow The Atlantic will continue its campaign to attract more visitors by dropping its firewall that restricts access to most of the articles from the magazine to subscribers.  It hopes that this will boost traffic and will increase advertising revenue to earn the publication something that it hasn't had for a while — a profit.

As print ad revenue drops industry wide, perhaps Internet revenue will make up the difference.  Either way, similar magazines — like The Economist, Harper's, and The New Republic — will likely pay attention to this change.  If The Atlantic fares well, then they may also consider dropping their subscription firewalls.  Further, The New Yorker, which doesn't have a firewall on its site but doesn't publish all of its articles online, may also consider making more of its content available through its site.