Editor, revised

Ever wonder what goes on below the hood when you generate a Google Map?

White Rock Solutions wants to give you a clue and teach you to do it within your text editor.

I first noted White Rock’s tutorials last month. The early tutorials I reviewed were ideal for people just starting out. In the meantime, White Rock has uploaded several advanced Google API how-tos that will teach you to:

1. Sign up for a Google Maps API
2. Create a custom template
3. Add map controls
4. Add placemarks to a map
5. Add standard info windows
6. Add tabbed info windows

By the fourth volume, you’ll have started from scratch and written code to create this:

If you’re interested simply in creating a custom map on the fly with a WYSIWYG interface, go to Google Maps and dive in or follow the basic tutorials at White Rock or any of the resources Mark Luckie notes at this useful 10,000 Words post.

But if you want to know what all those JavaScript commands in the source code mean, then White Rock’s tutorials will spell it out in plain English. Unless you’d rather dissect the code yourself.

Where will I be working next month? Where will I be working next year? What’s the best platform for this story? How do I learn video storytelling?

These questions speak to one of the biggest challenges facing young journalists today: the need to be agile.

A quick bit of context: I’m writing this to participate in a blog ring of young journalists. This month’s topic relates to the challenges facing young journalists. I’ve been a working journalist for just about three years. And in that time I’ve observed that staying in this field for very long will require flexibility.

As someone else noted, a good attitude will give you a foundation. I want this post to be constructive, not discouraging, so I’m linking to resources that can help you become agile in terms of…

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I’m copping an idea from Mark Luckie at 10,000 Words (hat tip also to Palewire, who’s done a lot with word clouds).

I used Wordle to create a word cloud of stuff I’ve written about here (it’s above).

It was super simple.

1. Go to Wordle.
2. Type in the url for any blog or site that generates a feed (e.g. atom, rss)
3. Use the Wordle menu bar to customize the appearance.



4. Export it as you wish. I chose to use the Grab function in Preview to save a jpeg.

I didn’t realize I was using the word “posts” so often. How boring.

I recently stumbled upon the forums at twentysomethingjournalist and joined the party.

Realizing that as of mid-September I’ll only have a year of eligibility left, I took the occasion to check out what other forums for journalists are out there. Below is a rundown.

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White Rock Solutions has some accessible tutorials for getting started with Google Maps, which I discovered from a comment on an earlier post.

I like what I see here. Most of this covers areas I’m already comfortable with, such as creating a custom map, adding placemarks or lines and sharing maps.

But I appreciate White Rock’s step-by-step thoroughness, the effective use of screen grabs and the easy, tabbed interface.

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