As you will no doubt have noticed, our portfolios server is currently offline, meaning that you cannot access your sites.

We are fully aware of this and would like to reassure you that your files are safe, and that the server is expected to be back online the afternoon of Friday, February 19th. » Read the rest of the entry..

Most of you should have had instruction on using Flip cameras and editing your films in Windows Movie Maker. The full instructions are after the jump » Read the rest of the entry..

Since we’ll be unable to offer any further domain setup sessions, I thought I’d put up this brief guide for students who have bought domain names via Gandi.net and would like to use them.

Other domain registrars will vary, but carefully following these steps will ensure that your domain is properly set up. » Read the rest of the entry..

In Lab 4, we’re discussing how people read online content, and effective ways to write for the online audience. Here’s a few resources we’re covering in the labs:

Eye-tracking visualizations: See how online readers read.

More on how people tend to scan online data, from MediaBistro.

25 tips for better online writing, from the Poynter Institute.

A quick run-down on online writing from the online magazine Orato.

Winners of the 2009 Webby Awards for best news websites.

“Engage with your readers,” and other good online writing tips.

» Read the rest of the entry..

The handout for lab 2 on HTML and CSS can be downloaded from here.

By now most of you in my online journalism labs seem to be comfortable with the basic functions of your WordPress blogs, but if you need some additional guidance, these WordPress tutorials might come in handy. » Read the rest of the entry..

Many of you have expressed a desire to use your own domain name with your online portfolios. This is not problem, though if you haven’t already done so, you’ll need to purchase a domain first. Please refer to my earlier post (from last year) about this.

However, due to the popularity of this option we’ve had a lot of individual e-mail requests for the set up at our server. To effectively manage this and be sure that everybody who wants to use their own domain is accomodated, we are going to hold a domain special day.

This will be held on Monday October 26th, 2009 from 12:45pm-1:30pm. The location and any changes or other information will be announced via our Twitter, @cutlines.

If you’re on the Writing and Editing for Electronic Media module that we run for the MA in Electronic Publishing, then please note that we’ve put up a new page dedicated to this module, as it’s not the same as the Online Journalism module.

On that page is a brief course outline and a link to a full, three-page downloadable outline.

Just a few follow-up items regarding the first round of Online Labs that we facilitated in the past two weeks:

For those of you who need an FTP to work on your blogs from home, our “Getting Cozy With FTP” handout suggested FileZilla for PCs or CyberDuck for Macs. Keep in mind that while we trust them, in general you install all freely-downloaded software at your own risk.

If some of you are still searching for that perfect theme for your blog, remember that you can download them, using your FTP, here.

For those of you who had your labs with me (Gary Moskowitz), here are links to some of the online stories we discussed:

We talked about the Torture Playlist as an example of incorporating audio to help tell a print journalism story in different ways online. Most of my labs also discussed Epic 2014, which is an online story about the history and possible future of the Internet.

Here are some instructions and final reminders regarding the hand-in of your online portfolios.

This post is not for Newspaper or Magazine students. If you are in one of these two programs, please contact your respective lab tutor or program head with questions on the handing in/marking of your online portfolio.

To be very clear, the deadline is now Tuesday May 5th, since the original deadline of Monday May 4th is a Bank Holiday.

So, now that this fateful day is almost upon us, after five months of painstaking work it’s nearly time to hand it in.

We are aware that some of you are still not going to be back from some internships on the deadline.

We are also aware that since this is an entirely digital endeavour, it would not make much sense to print anything out as a sole method for handing in this work.

However we are also aware that e-mail is not reliable enough to be used as a means with which to hand work in. Please do e-mail a message (which must contain the following) to portfolios@cutlines.org as your submission:

• Name
• Link to your online portfolio
• Email address
• Theme of your portfolio
• Any parts that you DO NOT want marked – for instance additional articles written by others, or content that you feel does not fit into the guidelines at http://cutlines.org/assessment for deliberate reasons.
• Any other (brief) accompanying comments/statements.

These emails will only be accepted at portfolios@cutlines.org. Please do not e-mail Chris or Marcus personally.

If this e-mail does not arrive safely to us by the deadline, you will be penalised for late work, whatever the reason, and no exceptions.

If your e-mail arrived ok, you will receive a confirmation mail in response.

However, to make doubly sure that hotmail’s problems don’t become yours (ie that you are not penalised), or if you didn’t receive a confirmation message, you can additionally print out the same information that you put in the email and put it in a box at the front desk of the School of Arts, where you handed in your essay for Chris.

This box will be there from Wednesday morning, and is a safeguard. As it will be removed at the end of the day on May 5th, it will prove that you handed in your work on time regardless of whether your e-mail found its way to us or not.

So in other words you must use one or the other of these means to hand in your work, but both is obviously the best idea.

Please don’t leave this until ten minutes before the deadline. It will be hard to be sympathetic.

Good luck. We are really looking forward to seeing what you guys have created!

Marcus