Tech reporter Matt Mar­shall has left the San Jose Merc and struck out on his own with a new blog, Ven­ture Beat. Good luck, Matt!

When I was in New York ear­lier this month I stopped by the non­profit Acord insur­ance association’s offices and sat down for an inter­view with CEO Gre­gory Maciag and fielded a phone call from Lon­don from British author Paul May. Here’s the video of our conversation.

Cross-posted to Darknet.

Medi­aNews: Stu­dent jour­nal­ists granted freedom-of-speech rights. New law pro­hibits before-print cen­sor­ship at state universities.

Col­lege jour­nal­ists in Cal­i­for­nia will soon have the same free speech rights as their pro­fes­sional coun­ter­parts, as leg­is­la­tion pro­hibit­ing the cen­sor­ship of stu­dent pub­li­ca­tions was signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger on Monday.

The Assem­bly bill, AB 2581, grants first-of-its-kind free speech pro­tec­tions for col­lege jour­nal­ists. A recent fed­eral rul­ing put the work of col­lege jour­nal­ists at risk for prior review by col­lege administrators. …

This is great news, and a cause I’ve sup­ported since my high school admin­is­tra­tion con­fis­cated the East Pater­son, NJ, Scar­let Quill dur­ing my tenure as edi­tor in chief.

CNET News.com talks about pol­ish­ing that home video.

Con­sumer elec­tron­ics and visual-effects cre­ators are get­ting the mes­sage: The YouTube gen­er­a­tion is clam­or­ing for tools that can help pol­ish and add a touch of Hol­ly­wood to their home­made videos. They’re demand­ing ease of use, low prices and visual effects that wow audiences.

Most of the mate­r­ial found at Revver, Meta­cafe and YouTube typ­i­cally doesn’t include much in the way of pro­duc­tion val­ues. It’s usu­ally just some guy with a cam­era record­ing his dog, baby or girl­friend. But the num­bers of peo­ple try­ing to infuse their work with a unique look and crafts­man­ship are growing …

The Online News Asso­ci­a­tion has announced the final­ists for its 2006 awards com­pe­ti­tion hon­or­ing dig­i­tal jour­nal­ism. Win­ners will be announced Oct. 6–7.

Here’s a 4-minute video inter­view I con­ducted with Skye Kilaen at the recent BlogHer con­fer­ence about how to make your web­site or weblog more acces­si­ble to the dis­abled.  (Our­me­dia page | watch video)

Cross-posted to Real Peo­ple Net­work.

New at Ourmedia’s Per­sonal Media Learn­ing Cen­ter:

Intro­duc­tion to dig­i­tal storytelling

Seven blog­ging tools reviewed

Blog search: Keep­ing track of con­ver­sa­tions in the blogosphere

Build­ing an audi­ence for your blog or podcast

How can I cap­ture great travel photos?

A guide to mak­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing dig­i­tal movies

How to record Inter­net radio

How can I dis­cover new music by bands I might like?

How to cap­ture a screen­shot of a video

Pod­cast­ing music: what it will cost you to stay on the safe side of the law

RSS tuto­r­ial

Color light on the cheap

Build your own lightbox

Today’s San Jose Mer­cury News: Fab­rik: A YouTube for adults. San Mateo, Calif., start-up lets cus­tomers store data and share within lim­ited group.

Newark Star-Ledger: Warfare’s new the­ater: Graphic online video. Pro­pa­gan­dists and media scram­ble to make use of perception-changing images. Excerpt:

J.D. Lasica sees it dif­fer­ently. He is co-founder of Ourmedia.org, a video site that allows post­ing of grue­some war footage. He thinks teenagers should take a look.

“I won­der if the Viet­nam War would have gone 12 years if the Inter­net had been around,” Lasica said. “It would have been a much more real­is­tic view of what the bat­tle­field feels like.”

NY Times: What-Ifs of a Media Eclipse. Or, the quick unrav­el­ing of the Knight Rid­der news­pa­per empire.