Fin O'Reilly

How they took that 360-gigapixel panoramic shot of London

finoreilly — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 14:49:13 +0000

There’s a nice video piece on the BBC website on how they took that record-breaking panoramic shot from the top of the BT tower. I quite like the bit which says the top of the tower “only” moves 12 inches in 100mph winds. The company behind the shot, 360Cities.net, has panoramas from around the world on [...]

UV been framed: science photographs that are literally out of this world

finoreilly — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 12:36:23 +0000

Awful puns aside, there are two photos this week that absolutely blew me away. The first is from the amazing Curiosity rover, beaming back high-res images from the surface of Mars. This week it took one at night: It may not seem like much, but this is a picture taken in the absence of sunlight [...]

Tougher copyright laws could finish Irish newspapers off

finoreilly — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 16:17:09 +0000

Once upon a time, people paid to have their businesses listed in the Golden Pages. Once upon a time, it was against the law to give somebody information about where to get a perfectly legal abortion in a foreign country. One day, I will have to tell my incredulous children these stories about things made [...]

Newspapers may not admit print is dying, but the guys who make the paper will

finoreilly — Thu, 24 May 2012 08:43:45 +0000

The commercial director of London’s Evening Standard, Jon O’Donnell, was widely quoted this week when he said that newspapers, especially his own, had a healthy future: ”The printed version has a healthy life ahead of it. The digital world is immense. But people still like the tangible asset of a newspaper. They like to tear them [...]

Can someone at the Irish Independent get Ian O’Doherty a history book?

finoreilly — Tue, 22 May 2012 08:19:34 +0000

The Irish Independent has clearly spotted a gap in the market – incitement to racist violence. As the Irish Daily Mail doesn’t carry the execrable Richard Littlejohn column so beloved of English bigots, the Indo has decided to use his non-union Mexican equivalent, Ian O’Doherty, to offer Irish readers some old-fashioned race hate. The irony [...]

Everybody complains about Twitter, but nobody does anything about it

finoreilly — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 14:39:02 +0000

Apologies to Mark Twain* for bowdlerising his quote, but it has happened again – somebody has made something up on the internet, without a thought for fact-checking or journalistic integrity. What’s worse is they then used the unregulated media of Twitter and Facebook to spread these lies. Worse still, this latest fabrication sullies the name [...]

Making money from your newspaper’s archives

finoreilly — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 13:53:28 +0000

The Chicago Reader, a free alternative weekly, has put online its archive of long-form film reviews. It’s the latest in a line of print publications (such as Vogue and The New York Times) trying to figure out a way to add to the value or extend the reach of older content they own and have already paid for. [...]

Irish journalism is living in interesting times

finoreilly — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 12:23:12 +0000

Lisa Simpson: Cheer up, Dad. Did you know the Chinese use the same word for ‘crisis’ as they do for ‘opportunity’? Homer: Yes. Crisitunity. I can’t remember when Irish journalism last looked so interesting. I may be paying closer attention with a view to returning home from Britain but I also can’t help noticing many [...]

Comment isn’t free, Declan – but it is cheap

finoreilly — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 16:00:26 +0000

Declan Lynch has form when it comes to spouting nonsense about online journalism. While his column has clearly shown he knows next to nothing about the web (Twitter is little more than “a bunch of people talking about what they had for breakfast”), as a long-time columnist for the Sunday Independent, shouldn’t he know a [...]

What’s in David Carr’s backpack?

finoreilly — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 01:09:09 +0000

http://vimeo.com/37696454

I am a sucker for these things. CJR asks New York Times media columnist David Carr to go through his bag.