Recently in Notable Category

Since we talked about broadcast this week I wanted to take a video portion and write about it in terms of what we learned.

I thought it would be good because I already wrote about Iran testing missiles in the World News category. Here is the link for the video on CNN.

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The CNN story is about 1:25 minutes long and the actual footage of the training is only about 10-15 seconds.

The big difference in terms of broadcast is the video and how it's used. For this story the footage of missiles being fired was stunning.

The visual aspect of the story caused a distraction from what the reporter was saying.

The key information in the video was mostly the same in the written story but there were no extra details and no quotes.

The lack of quotes made this story a little shallow but the visuals made it compelling.

KRAKOW - About 150,000 Poles attended the funeral of Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his wife, Maria on Sunday.

Along with the couple, 96 others were buried on Sunday too.

Unfortunately, because of the Icelandic ash cloud, not everyone was able to attend.

USA TODAY reported, "President Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were among those who canceled at the last minute because of the expanding ash cloud, dangerous to airplane engines, that left nearly all of the continent's airports closed since late Thursday."

Not everyone was supportive of the president being buried in Wawel Cathedral.

USA TODAY reported, "The decision to bury Kaczynski at Wawel sparked protests in recent days, with some people saying that despite the national tragedy he still does not belong in the company of some of the nation's most august figures. The hue and cry over the decision even spilled over to Facebook where thousands said the decision was not right."

According to the New York Times, a well-known political scientist in Poland, Jaroslaw Flis, compared this tragedy emotinally to the J.F.K. assassination

George Nissen is heralded as the inventor of the trampoline and has had quite an interesting story.

Nissen was born in Blairstown, Iowa and was inspired by circus aerialists bouncing off of the safety nets.

Wall Street Journal's Stephen Miller wrote, "I said, 'Jeez, if you wanted to, you could keep rebounding into other tricks,' " Mr. Nissen said in a 2006 interview with Acrobatic Sport magazine."

This was a poor choice for a money quote because it was taken from another magazine and because it doesn't support the story at all.

Nissen's very first trampoline prototype was actually made of nothing more than scrap metal, cut-up inner tubes and sheet canvas.

Interestingly enough, Nissen's invention didn't take off for customers initially. Instead, his most loyal customers turned out to the military, which used it for training pilots and soldiers.

Overall, this was a really good piece and did a nice job capturing the life and essence of the trampoline inventor.

Although, he wasn't called the "Trampoline King," Miller was able to give the reader a glimpse of Nissesn's mannerisms and imagination.

In a nice recap, Miller wrote, "Always active, Mr. Nissen performed handstands and trampoline back flips into his 80s. He attended the 2000 Sydney Olympics to watch trampoline become an official Olympic sport."

On Saturday morning early adopters gathered at Apple Stores across the country to get one of the first iPads.

Announced in the Jan. 2010 and according to Steve Jobs, "The revolutionary product," the iPad takes aim at a number of industries as an all-in-one device. It's a device that is built on the same operating system as the iPhone.

It has already garnered attention from many publishers with it's new iBookstore and positioned to compete squarely with Amazon's kindle.

Perhaps the biggest threat is to the fast-growing netbook industry. According to Business Week, Netbook sales in the first quarter of 2009 were estimated at 3.6 million units but are expected slow down as the iPad becomes more popular.

For all it's hype the iPad isn't without it's flaws. The New York Times reports, "The iPad has been generally well reviewed, although there are features noticeably absent: the ability to run more than one application at a time, for instance, and lack of support for Adobe's Flash, which means video on many Web sites will not play."

According to Piper Jaffray analyst at Gene Munster, there were an estimated 600,000 - 700,000 iPads sold on the Saturday.

By contrast, it took Apple 74 days to sell one million of the first generation iPhones. It took 3 days to sell the one million of the latest version of the iPhone.

On Thursday, Google announced that it would no longer support its self-censored search in China.

More than the news itself, the New York Times highlights the implications here, "it was doing more than standing up to a repressive government: it was showing that, with the United States still struggling to develop a foreign policy for the digital age, Internet companies need to articulate their own foreign policies."

USA Today took a different approach to the angle and made the store about the people of China being divided about Google's decision.

USA Today outlined the news by saying, "Google's decision this week to close its self-censored Internet search service in mainland China was provoking diverse reactions here Thursday."

China has a vast firewall that censors what media organizations come up in searches and more specifically, what information comes up at all. Many media organizations abide by these rules except Google.

The New York Times recalled Google's initial foray into China, "The choice was not easy. Since late 2006, when it entered China, Google argued that a censored search service was better than no search service at all."

After many difficulties including disagreements and hacking, Google decided to back out.

I took this obituary from the Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press.

Beatrice Katherine Bell, 89, died on March 22, 2010. These obituaries appear to be written by the same person because there is so little variation. Bell had nine children and 12 grandchildren.

Both the Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press used the phrase, "went to be with the Lord" instead of "died."

They also used the phrase, "preceded in death" and mention her by first name.

Interestingly enough, these obituaries don't include anything about Bell's life, joys, or personal characteristics. They just give the basic who, what, where and when.