Let's take a virtual reality hike around Louisa Pond at Shaupeneak Ridge

One of my favorite hikes around the area is located at Shaupeneak Ridge in the town of Esopus, an amazing park kept by Scenic Hudson. The tour you see below is the park's easy blue trail, a 1.18-mile trek around the pond.


The Street View map below constitutes more than 30 360-degree images from May 14, all connected, so that you can 'walk' around the pond.

How to create a virtual reality 3-D panorama with your phone for Google Cardboard, for free

I'm sharing this 'tutorial' in the hopes of improving it with your input and because I googled this very thing and I couldn't quite find what I needed, so I'm trying to figure it out.

The concept is simple. Panorama and 3-D apps have been around for a while. With the advent of Google Cardboard, a lot of these images can now be seen in virtual reality. The idea then is to construct an image and making it available for others to see as panoramas, but mostly in virtual reality. The challenge is to do it for free. Sure, it'd be nice to have a 3-D rig with 16 GoPro cameras for 3-D video, but lol newsroom budgets.

On that note, the New York Times, The Washington Post, Vice and others are exploring virtual reality photo and video storytelling and their efforts are worth watching.  The Times is even giving away cardboard to support their upcoming VR app.  It's very early, still and everyone is still trying to figure things out.

So let's jump in and do it ourselves.

I've been selected to try Google's Project Glass

How to make a live blog with a Google Doc

Before doing this. Check out Digital First media colleague Mandy Jenkins' compendium of alternatives to CoverItLive and Elana Zak's 3 alternatives via 10,000 Words.
This is but one method.

New Google Plus explained in images

April Fools Day 2012 on the web

JRC Chat on Google for journalism

Good morning! Members of the Journal Register Company's Idealab - and everyone else who wants to - are going to be taking part on the (kind-of) weekly Twitter chat at noon.

Today we're talking about Google tools and how they can be used in the pursuit of journalism excellence.

The live feed is posted below. But you can also follow the chat here or here or also here. And you can also check out past chats over here.

If you want to chime in, just post a tweet with the hashtag "#jrcchat" so it can automatically appear below, or post a comment in the field at the bottom of the chat box.

Since this is about Google, I figured we could also try livestreaming a Hangout of the chat, if anyone wants in as well.

Halloween on the web

Google Maps now acknowledges the existence of Kingston-Rhinecliff bridge

Remember the Before Time, when Google didn't map anything using the Kingston-Rhinecliff bridge?
After contacting them, the services has update their mapping. Now it's like this:


View Larger Map

But the memories, they will live on:

Yay!

Let's celebrate by watching a 1980s Pepsi commercial shot in Kingston!

JRC Chat on Social Media Wire - and Google+!

It's Wednesday! And that means that members of the Journal Register Company's Idealab - and anyone who wants to - are going to be taking part on the weekly Twitter chat at noon, which you didn't join last week.

So we are going to be talking about the Social Media Wire.
What is it? I still don't know!
So we'll talk about its meaning, how to do it and how to use it in journalism.

BONUS! GOOGLE+ BABY!

The live feed is posted below. But you can also follow the chat here or here or also here. And you can also check out past chats over here.

If you want to chime in, just post a tweet with the hashtag "#jrcchat" so it can automatically appear below, or post a comment in the field at the bottom of the chat box.

As always, you are welcome to participate at anytime you want.

OH BOY! I forgot to share the Google+ Cheat Sheet during #JRCChat - http://on.mash.to/nvFQGYless than a minute ago via TweetDeck Favorite Retweet ReplyIvan Lajara
ivanlajara

New Paltz student was a Doodle 4 Google finalist

400 State Finalists in the Doogle 4 Google constest were chosen from a total of more than 107,000 entries from across the country. In each state, two doodles were selected in each grade group, so that each grade group and each state were represented equally. Among them was "Limits Of Time," by Grace Park of New Paltz High School. Congratulations

Hat tip to Paul Rakov for the find.

Google introduces Comic Sans for everyone

Says the company:
We’ll therefore be rolling out Comic Sans as our default font across all Google products on April 4, 2011.

This is great and an amazing compliment to last year's Google AdSense Windings:

Google Docs also has a Motion function

Over 10,000 supported gestures!

Easy charts!

Being a Google Autocompleter

That's right! Google is hiring autocompleters!

Introducing Gmail motion

Try it!

How to make a Google map with weather info without trying

So the weather has been terrible, as always and now everthing is flooded and or full of potholes. But where?

The National Weather Service provides tons of information in a format that can be imported into a Google Map.

All you have to do is this:

* Visit the National Weather Service page that has the maps and download the set you want.

Go to http://maps.google.com, click on 'My Maps' and then 'Import' and upload the file you just downloaded.

DONE! Then you just have to embed the map with your story or blog post. Chris March of the New Haven Register shows you how.


View Flooding warnings, March 7, 2011 in a larger map

You can also combine two sets of information:


View Flooding warnings in a larger map


Granted. They're not as cool as the Register Citizen's crowdsourced flooding map, but, hey, I just did this with two clicks:

Google's Instant Search ad features Bob Dylan, and no Justin Bieber

Unfortunately, if you type "J" in Google, this is what you'll get:

That's right: Jersey shore AND Justin Bieber. I don't know which one is worse.

Don't vote for Kingston (because you can't)

Remember the Kingston Digital Corridor's attempt to bring Google Fiber to the city?

Well, apparently, Kingstonians didn't either, as the city didn't make the final list for voting at GoogleFiber.com, the unofficial page for all things Google Fiber." The public poll (Round II started May 7, you guys!) by the site doesn't include the first capital of New York. Or Woodstock. Or Saugerties.

I won't tell the Kingston Digital Corridor if you don't.
UPDATE: They were told. The folks from the Kingston Digital Corridor have been aware of the site for weeks, I'm told - and "it's solely about traffic and not legit," so I stand corrected.

So the city is not officially out. But given the interest kept by other communities, I sense that Kingston needs to pump up its efforts.

The Kingston Digital Corridor is meeting at Keegan Ales, 20 Saint James St., Kingston, at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday.

...

Troy made it to the next round. The city's efforts were commendable. So send them some love. They don't have Joe Bruno for freebies anymore.

There, there. At least Google has given us Pac-Man today.

Blog bits around the valley

* Freeman publisher Ira Fusfeld laments that news organizations peppered their tables at the White House Correspondents Dinner (aka #nerdprom) with celebrities. Not mentioned in the post is that one of those celebrities was Saugerties High School grad Jimmy Fallon.

* Ulster County Legislator Michael Madsen bravely doesn't comment on the controversy over organ donations by posting a news video about presumed consent for organ donations.

* Kingston Alderman Bill Reynolds has found the Kingston Waterfront. Spoiler alert: There's water.

* KingstonCitizens.org excitingly reads the Freeman's classified section and finds a legal notice.

* Porn?

* Food.

* Say cheese!

* Ulster County Comptroller Elliott Auerbach posts something someone else wrote.

* The Kingston Digital Corridor unveils its awesome map of Hot Spots in Kingston, showcasing only two sites with Wi-Fi. Off the top of my head I know at least 10. Not to worry, the corridor folks say, "Have one to add? Let us know, and we’ll get ‘em a HotSpot sticker!" What they don't say is how to let them know.

* Over at DragonSearch, Google sucks.

* Like, the folks at 90MilesNorth like to talk about Facebook changes like the 'like' button. Like, because Facebook sucks.

* Which reminds me, I have 100 fans who like me on Facebook.

Google Chrome gets loud

Google Chrome has unveiled a new extension, and there's only one thing we can say to that:

"Your browser does not support the audio element."

Also, Google adds:

Now that we’ve nailed sight and sound, we’ll look at bringing olfactory magic to the browsing experience. We hope to deliver that by next year at this time.