Team Blog

Published by NPR Training (training.npr.org)

A beginner's guide to spatial audio in 360-degree video

We've experimented with bringing 360-degree video and spatial audio together. This guide captures some of our early findings and includes a sample rig as well as tips on recording, editing and publishing. (external link)
Published At Source (source.opennews.org)

Subverting the story model

How we broke the story model and remade it to suit the new pace of news — and how you can, too (external link)

Simplifying map production

We're experimenting with making simple locator maps in D3 (bypassing ArcMap), with geo data processed through a new command line utility called mapturner.

Creating And Deploying Small-Scale Projects

Our dailygraphics rig offers a fairly lightweight system for developing and deploying small chunks of code-based content, with some useful extras like support for Google Spreadsheets and responsive iframes.

Responsive Charts With D3 And Pym.js

One strategy: Destroy and redraw the graphic based on its container's dimensions every time the page resizes. Also, learn how to make this work in a responsive iframe with Pym.js.

Making Data Tables Responsive

One strategy: Shift from columns of data to rows at small screens. Also, learn how to make this work in a responsive iframe with Pym.js and pull data from a Google Spreadsheet using copytext.py.
Published At Source (source.opennews.org)

Introducing Pym.js

NPR’s Visuals team breaks down Pym, a new responsive-iframe library and the first project launched from the OpenNews Code Convening. (external link)
Published At Source (source.opennews.org)

Collaborating On The T-Shirt Project

Interview: Brian Boyer talks with Source about the Planet Money / NPR Visuals project 'Planet Money Makes A T-Shirt.' (external link)
Published At Source (source.opennews.org)

Network Diagrams Are Hard

It's a challenge to make legible, useful, responsive network diagrams. (external link)

Election 2012: Electoral combinations

Early in the development of the Swing State Scorecard we determined that we wanted to tell a story about how many combinations (2-state, 3-state) of tossup states there are which would win the election for Obama or Romney.

Hello world: Nerd blogging with Jekyll

We're a new team, and we're trying something new (at least for us) as a blog publishing platform: Jekyll, a generator that creates simple, static websites.

We're not breaking any ground with this choice, of course, but we liked the idea of launching a blog that's open source — both its code and also its content.

This initial post is an introduction to Jekyll for the members of our team -- and anyone else who wants to get started with the tool and/or steal our simple code for their own site.