Thursday, 17 June 2010
The Magic of a Game 7
Growing up a diehard Pistons fan in Detroit, Michigan, I was taught two things about the sport of basketball. First, always cheer against the Boston Celtics. Second, always cheer against the Los Angeles Lakers. Fortunately, this was an easy thing for me to do: the Pistons beat both teams en route to its first NBA championship in 1989.
Tonight, however, the Lakers and Celtics complete their twelfth championship match-up in Game 7 of the 2010 NBA Finals. This will be just the fifth time that a Lakers-Celtics Finals has reached seven games. And of course I know this by browsing through Google News Archive Search.
I can read about how Celtics coach Red Auerbach was "feeling a bit cocky" in the 1962 NBA Finals. Or about how the Celtics became the first major professional sports team to win eight consecutive championships by dispatching the Lakers in 1966. Or how Wilt Chamberlain wanted to beat Bill Russell's Celtics "in the worst way" in 1969. (He didn’t; the Celtics won again.) Or about how Lakers coach Pat Riley wanted to make history in the 1984 NBA Finals by beating the Celtics in Game 7, on the road, in the old Boston Garden. (Yet again, the Lakers lost.)
While the Celtics have history on their side, this year’s Lakers can boast a better overall record and are the defending champions, having won the 2009 Finals. Then again, they lost in the 2008 NBA Finals to...the Boston Celtics.
So it should be a great game, and well worth following. For that, be sure to check Google News.
As for my prediction, what can I say? I’m still recovering from the fact that the Pistons had their worst record in sixteen years and didn’t even make the playoffs. I guess it’s impossible for both teams to lose, huh?
Tuesday, 15 June 2010
Krishna Bharat discusses the past and future of Google News
Krishna Bharat invented Google News more than eight years ago. His aim: help people easily find multiple perspectives on the news of the day by using computers to group together links to similar stories. Aside from a two-year stint in India to start our research and development operations there, Krishna has been working to improve Google News ever since.
Krishna visited the IJ-7 “innovation journalism” conference at Stanford University last week and held an on-stage conversation with David Nordfors, executive director of Stanford’s Center for Innovation and Communication. Below you can watch video of the conversation and hear from Krishna about why he created Google News, how it works, where it’s headed and why he’s optimistic about the future of professional journalism.
Thursday, 3 June 2010
Cross Country Zones at Last!!
After two postponements, our team of seven senior students, finally got to represent our school at the South West Zone Cross Country. The event was held at a very wet and boggy Halswell quarry. Despite the slippery conditions underfoot and cold nip in the air, our team gave their personal best and did Addington proud. It was a great day. Well done Sharlene, Caleb, Jeremy, Josh, Yasmin, J'leel, and Isobel.
Thursday, 27 May 2010
Addington Netball Shoot Off
Congratulations to the winners of the ANZ Tactix Shoot out last Tuesday.
The winner of the Tactix Netball and goodies was Zania from Room 9.
The Team at the ANZ Sydenham and Addington Branch were on hand to support
us. Plus a special guest Victoria Smith from the Tactix.
If you wish to discuss any of your Banking needs please contact Jenny or
Sandra @ ANZ Sydenham Branch. In particular join your family to Kiwi Saver
and take advantage of the $1000 Government kick start:
jenny.higginson@anz.com ph 3682158
sandra.tait@anz.com ph 3682155
Duffy Theatre
On Tuesday, three actors came to our school to show us why reading is awesome.
They did a show called the Duffy Show. Duffy was on a show called the big OE (Occupation Exploration). They got one person to spin the wheel. Whatever number it landed on Duffy had to learn about that occupation. First Duffy had to use his skills from reading to help understand what doctors do. Then the doctors got someone from the audience to have a brain surgery. Then someone else spun the wheel and Duffy had to do the same with learning things about Chefs. The last one was Sport Stars. The game was ping pong. Ting fon, the best ping pong player in the world vs Ding dong the second best, had one game of ping pong. Then we sung the Duffy Song.
The show was finished and then we got to say hello to the actors.
Summary: On Tuesday 3 actors came to our school and told us why reading is awesome. They played a game called the O.E. Duffy used his 9 skills to help him through the Occupations.
(Reporter Yazmin Miles-Watson)
Monday, 24 May 2010
Making your video news more discoverable: best practices for news publishers
Video has always been a unique storytelling tool, especially useful when reporting the news. From raw, citizen-reported videos from the streets of Tehran, to student documentaries highlighting under-reported issues in local communities, or investigative reporting done by professional news outlets, just about every type of news video can now be found on YouTube. Video is also tightly integrated into the Google News experience, providing users different ways to consume and enjoy news, while giving news publishers the opportunity to reach a greater and more diverse audience.
We are working to make it easier to get your video content indexed in Google News, but ensuring it’s found in a timely fashion is another matter. So we thought we’d share six best practices for how news publishers can increase the discoverability of their news videos.
1. Timely uploads
Videos should be uploaded as quickly as possible -- this will help them reach the news homepage faster and be grouped with the most recent articles.
2. One story per video
Instead of having one video that contains multiple segments covering several different stories of the day, it's a better user experience (and easier for us to index), when there is one story per video, and the video title is specific (not something generic like “Breaking News”). At the very least, the description of the video should match the first story in the video.
3. Categorization
If you are providing general news coverage, select YouTube category “News & Politics” (which is youtube_category_id 25) when uploading your video. If you have multiple channels, clearly identify each category (politics, business, entertainment, sports, etc.).
4. More detailed descriptions
Similar to the first paragraph of a news article, descriptions of the news video should convey the who, what, when, where, and why of the story in a few sentences -- the more detail you can supply, the better.
5. Rich tags
Another way to convey the content of the video is using the keyword tags. Providing keywords that might not be in the description gives us more knowledge of what the video is about. Especially helpful are proper nouns: the names of the people, places, companies, etc. mentioned in the video.
6. Make it Embeddable
Be sure your video is embeddable on other sites since this is currently a technical requirement for being displayed in Google News. Additionally, if your videos are geo-blocked in certain regions, they will not appear in Google News.
If your news organization isn’t already making its video content available on YouTube and Google News, we encourage you to get started. More information on how to submit your news videos to Google News can also be found in the News Publishers Help Center, and you can watch this video for additional tips on news search engine optimization.
Thursday, 6 May 2010
Caught Being a Good Mum
Congratulations to ….Kalesita Afemui
who was the lucky winner drawn out of the box for the Duffy “Caught Being a Good Mum” promotion.
The comments on the form that Caroline Afemui (Room 9) dropped in the box were
“mum is there for me and always helps me”.
The prize was presented to Caroline’s mum at the Full School Assembly today .
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