Two siblings and two perspectives on one digital era

         By Jessica Vitullo

I recently had an epiphany: my intelligent, web-savvy 13-year-old sister has never lived in a world without Google. She doesn’t remember having to use the phone line to connect to the internet, has never used the once-popular search engine AskJeeves.com and grew up using USB sticks instead of floppy disks. Remember when we thought these technological inventions were actually good?

The extent that technology has changed over the years got me thinking about how people today have the capability to do much more and it wouldn’t have happened without the internet. With Skype and emailing, we can remain in touch with family and friends from around the world; we can buy clothes, vacations and even groceries online! Forget the weekly trip to the bank; you can pay your household bills online.

Not only has the internet made our daily lives much easier, but it’s also changed the way we get our information. With social media websites and web browsing on our cell phones, information is literally in our hands in any given second. People used to wait for the daily newspaper or wait for the nightly news broadcast. So why wouldn’t the way we hear about news change?

Online newspapers and magazines allow readers to browse stories, skim headlines and read up on everything going on around the world without waiting for breaking news stories to be - well - old news. We can access news, videos and documents about anything with the click on a mouse or a tap on a cell phone. People can be made aware of news the moment it happens, giving journalists an edge in providing readers with the most up-to-date information. This way, you will be in the know about whatever it is you should know about.

The Telegraph published an interesting article in February explaining exactly how much information we are exposed to on any given day. Check out these stats:

- We receive five times as much information every day than people in 1986.
- Between emails, text message and other methods of digital communicating, one person produces an average of six newspapers worth of information in comparison to two and a half pages in 1986.
- The equivalent of 600,000 books is the amount of information that can be stored in computers and microchips.

This is a huge feat. What’s fascinating is this is the digital era that my younger sister, along with millions of other kids, are growing up in. The nine-year age gap between the two of us illustrates how people today will be very used to this constant access of information, something I only began to learn about when the .com boom first happened. It hasn’t always been like this, yet it feels like we’ve been living in this era forever.

Jessica Vitullo is an intern at the Toronto Star. She works in the radio room. You can follow her on twitter.

What you need to learn from Social Media Week Toronto 2011

 By Marina Arnaout
 
“We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it.” – Erik Qualman

So how well do you do it?
This week, social media experts from all over the world gathered in nine cities connecting people, content, and conversation around emerging trends in social and mobile media. It was a fantastic event and definitely worthy of attendance. However, if your schedule didn’t allow you to sneak out of the office, don’t worry – this is why we’re here.  

Here are some of the summary points and what you need to know to stay ahead in 2011.

1. Online video

Online video is not a new phenomenon; however, what’s new about this avenue is that it is increasingly everywhere. The bar has been set high for the level of consumer interaction and this must include valuable interactive video. Video engagement is continuously increasing and in October alone, 5.4 billion videos were viewed - 2 billion of which were on Facebook. Brands and consumers rely on video to provide information that is not present elsewhere in social media, making it a critical component in shaping people’s perception about companies and each other.

2. Mobile Marketing

In 2010 infrastructure, technology and design finally intersected in the mobile world and for the first time smartphone sales overpowered the sales of desktops and laptops. Companies need an iphone application to keep up with their consumers and to be available when consumers need them. In 2010, iPhone and iPad applications were downloaded more than 7 billion times and that serves as a great indicator that consumers are willing to engage.  In 2011, mobile users will interact with content, companies and the Web more on their phones and iPads than on their computers. From shopping on the go, to paperless transactions, to watching (and creating) videos – mobile media is instant, portable and personalized.
 
3. Location

Although location falls into the mobile marketing avenue, it deserves its own mention. Advertisers are able to take advantage of mobile platforms that let them reach consumers at critical points (eg. moments just before they make an in-store purchase). Being able to reach a customer on the go or near the point of sale can be a very powerful mechanism for brands looking to connect with potential audience. Location will increase in popularity as people get more comfortable checking in to a business and when brands offer more enticing offers. Again, you must offer value to your consumers so that they feel comfortable enough to associate themselves with your brand through their social media profiles. This includes in depth analysis of market trends, monitoring behavior and coming up with creative ways in establishing that connection. This “mobile meets loyalty” approach enhances the social experiences, and inspires new audiences.

4. Deal Hunting

As consumer expectations rise, you must be able to offer them something different while still making a profit. Services like Groupon provide an instant ability to share deals. Expect this to continue over the next couple of years with copy cat services and the big players rolling in to more territories and rolling out better and more extensive deals. This yet again serves as an opportunity to both reward your most loyal customers as well as attract new clientele who may discover you through a daily deal. Expect to see special sales, tickets, and discounts as well as combinations of promotions with similar services (dinner and a movie anyone?). However, if you do decide to go down the deal hunting avenue, make sure you don’t over exhaust the consumer. 
 

5. Monitoring conversations

The internet breaks barriers between brands and people, as well as people and people. It is a fact that 78% of consumers trust peer reviews and only 14% trust advertisements this is why it’s crucial to be involved in your community and have a good reputation. What are people saying about your brand? About 25% of search results for the top 20 brands linked to user generated content – the control you have over what people say saying is limited so it is up to you to nourish these relationships. The number one way to get people saying positive things is through over delivering on your product or service. However, you must also encourage the conversation through social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums, industry publications and media. Monitor the conversation, join in on the conversation, help and show your customers that you care. In return, this will only increase loyalty.
 
The social media trends that arise are unlimited and we as people influence their success and failures. So while everyone is waiting for Twitter to monetize, Google to fail with another platform, or for an explanation of what augmented reality really does – we need to ask ourselves what enables our success, jeopardizes our performance and how we want to shape the years to come.
 
 
Marina Arnaout comes from a marketing communications background with expertise in variety of mediums ranging from TV to out-of-home advertising. Finding her niche in the digital realm, she is a frequent contributor to industry publications often covering social marketing and media trends. For more, follow Marina on Twitter @marinarn.

Does this make me the worst web editor in the world?

 

Last week at a journalist outing, a colleague relayed how it wasn't too long ago that journalism students and interns were hesitant to do online-only work.

As far as they were concerned, it wasn't "really" published if it didn't appear in the paper.

That's when I got a twinge in my stomach.

As a web editor, I pride myself on working online. Live-blogging, tweeting, Googling, I can do it all and bring it together in a nice package. I love working in the digital world and think I'd find print a very different place to navigate now — even though I've just been working online for four months.

But when a story I've written gets published in the paper, I get really excited.

I don't want to say it's because my stories are "really" published when they're in the paper, because I know they're "really" published once they appear on thestar.com. But having them in the paper means I can bring them to show my nana, who doesn't have the Internet.

It's just a small minority of the stories I've written so far that have appeared in print, which is likely a good thing. After all, my hope chest is only so big, and it already contains dozens of newspapers from over the years that I've had some small part in creating — whether it be an article I wrote, a picture I took, a headline I crafted or a page I designed.

After I came home with my second article published in the newspaper, my boyfriend looked at me and then to the two copies of the entire Toronto Star from that day I held in my hand.

"Are you going to do that everytime this happens?" he asked.

"What if I just keep the section?" I bargained.

He agreed and hasn't brought it up since. (Though, truth be told, I haven't shown him what I've brought home since.)

When I saw my latest story published in the paper this week, before doing a little happy dance inside, I wondered if getting excited really did make the worst web editor in the world.

But here's the thing: I don't think it does.

If anything, I think my reaction to getting published in the paper illustrates why newspapers won't vanish completely, no matter what the Internet throws their way.

Not only because of people like me that like to read them, but because newspapers offer something the Internet can't. Keeping hold of a moment in time.

For example, I have the a copy of the Ottawa Citizen from the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 — before the World Trade Center was hit. I bought the paper that day because I happened to have an article in it. Now, I have a piece of time of what the world was like pre-9/11. It's really neat to leaf through and see what was "news" before the tragedy. (Remember Chandra Levy? The shark attacks?)

Then the world changed. When the afternoon extra edition of the Citizen came out, I grabbed one of those. I still have that copy, too. I also have the Star from the one-year anniversary of the attacks.

I just can't see keeping a website favourited or in my bookmarks to remember an event that happened in the world that I lived through. It's not the same as keeping a copy of a newspaper, seeing it age and remembering how you felt the first time you heard about what happened, or read the words in the paper.

The web may be able to allow me to do almost whatever I want it to, but it can't do that. And I don't think it ever will.

Thinking that doesn't make me a bad web editor, it makes me a hopeful journalist.

Sarah Millar is a web editor in the one-year intern program at the Star. You can usually find her tweeting up a storm.

How not to break news: Lessons from Giffords' momentary death

I had just sat down at the lone computer in a busy hostel in Zagreb, Croatia when a young man in the lobby got a shocking text from a friend. "Michael Jackson is dead," he announced to the room full of fellow travelers, staring in disbelief at his phone.

United in our curiosity, a group of strangers gathered around me as I hurriedly typed the singer's name into Google. Together, we pored over each detail as I clicked on story after story, constantly refreshing the search page. We wanted every single bit of information, and we wanted it instantly.

I can't help but recall this scene every time there's major breaking news, like Saturday's shooting of U.S. congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. After such an event, people rush to computers, scroll through Twitter and news sites on smartphones, and crank up TVs and radios, eager for the very latest.

We're in an age where it's not only possible to know breaking news moments after it occurred, it's expected. But as technology and social media change how people get news, the journalist's ever-present balancing act between accuracy and speed has become increasingly difficult.

This is far from a new observation, yet we continue to see grave errors made by supposedly reliable media. Erroneous reports of Giffords' death are just the latest examples of media jumping on a story without verifying the facts: CNN, Reuters and NPR were all claiming the congresswoman had been killed, when in fact she is expected to recover.

To its credit, NPR issued a swift and earnest explanation. "Already all of us at NPR News have been reminded of the challenges and professional responsibilities of reporting on fast-breaking news at a time and in an environment where information and misinformation move at light speed," wrote Dick Meyer, executive editor of NPR News. "We learn, we redouble our efforts and dedication and move forward with our best efforts for the millions who rely on us every day."

Here Meyer speaks to the irony of mainstream media trying to keep up with instant communication the Internet allows. Social media like Twitter can be fantastic sources of news, but they can also be echo chambers of misinformation. It is precisely these scenarios that allow outlets like CNN and NPR to prove their true worth as verifiers of information, and capitalize on the fact that many people still won't believe it until they hear from a trusted news source.

Instead, news outlets are trying to win the speed game, even though they don't stand a chance against everyone on scene taking photos, tweeting and updating statuses - then everyone circulating this information. The sooner journalists and editors understand that their currency has become truth and analysis - not necessarily being first on the story - the sooner talk of the death of traditional media will itself die. There will always be a demand for verified information, not in spite of advancements in technology and social media, but increasingly, because of them.

Media should always aim to get news out in a timely manner. But if it comes at the expense of accuracy, everyone huddled around computers from Arizona to Zagreb won't soon forget it.

Wendy Gillis is in her final year of study in the master of journalism program at Ryerson University. Follow her (hopefully truthful tweets) on Twitter.

The secret life of a 21st century journalist

By Sarah Millar

A blog post by former Star radio roomer Alex Posadzki got me thinking about what it means to be a journalist in the digital age.

In her post, Posadzki muses about her so-called "double life" — her professional one and her personal. She's so concerned about the two that she has two separate Facebook accounts, two email addresses, two different circles of friends.

And never the twain shall meet.

It got me thinking about how different being a journalist is today than it was even just 10 years ago.

While the Internet has made our jobs infinitely easier (for better or for worse), it also has made our lives a lot harder.

After all, journalists tend to be held to a higher accord than other people — they're supposed to appear unbiased, report the facts, keep their opinions in check. Sure, that was easy before the Internet — and social media — reared its ugly head, but now journalists are in trouble.

They're being disciplined or fired for things they say on Twitter. They're trying to decide murky, ethical issues (like should a source be friended on Facebook?). And on top of all of this, they're trying to create a personal brand in order to better market themselves in these tough economic times.

So what's a 21st century journalist to do?

There are no concrete answers. News organizations and employers have yet to figure all this stuff out for themselves — social media policies are almost non-existent or incredibly vague.

Is Posadzki right? Do we need two accounts everywhere in order to keep the personal, personal and the professional, professional? I'd wager no.

All these social media platforms come with privacy settings — Facebook can be customized any way a user wants. My advice is to get to know them and use them however you see fit. Personally, I keep my Facebook private, but my Twitter is open to all.

Is being a journalist harder in the digital age? It may just be, but that doesn't mean you should ever feel you have to hide who you really are for fear of being found out. It's who we really are deep down inside that makes us great journalists.

Sarah Millar is a web editor in the one-year intern program at the Star. While she won't friend you on Facebook, her Twitter account is open to the public.

All a-Twitter over We Day

 
Free The Children's Craig Kielburger kept in touch via both iPhone and BlackBerry. (CP photo)

By Chloé Fedio

They came with energy for dancing, healthy lungs for screaming - and smartphones to stay connected.

Between performances by Down With Webster and K’naan, and inspirational speeches by Alexandre Bilodeau and Deepak Chopra, the 18,000 Toronto-area students who attended We Day Thursday were Tweeting, Facebooking and sending texts that scrolled along the bottom of the giant screen in the Air Canada Centre.

Thousands whipped out their phones when emcee Ben Mulroney announced a social media break. Free The Children co-founder Craig Kielburger, included. He sent nearly 40 Tweets during the event – via iPhone and BlackBerry.

Social networking is a big part of Free The Children, the organization that runs We Day. For every person who “likes” We Day on Facebook, the organization will receive $1 from their sponsor.

The steady #weday Twitter feed was also a way for those streaming the event at home or in their classrooms to join the conversation.

“So wish I could have gone to #WeDay. I feel so left out...next year I'm definitely volunteering!” ElleOhLa wrote.

“Man I wish I had gone to #weday.  I went like two years ago and it was the most influencial (sic) and motivating experience,” wrote _Special T.

“#WEDAY. was the best day of my life!! WE ARE THE GENERATION THE WORLD HAS BEEN WAITING FOR!!” wrote GaBiSaNdLeR.

Spencer West, who spoke at We Day about how he moved forward after losing his legs when he was five, described the crowd in social networking terms.

“It’s like Facebook in 3D,” West said.

Indeed.

Chloé Fedio is in the yearlong internship program. She has previously worked at Global Edmonton, CBC Newsworld, the Ottawa Citizen and the Montreal Gazette.

Looking for a job?

The Star seeks candidates for several positions to assist in the generation and
production of content online and in print, and on mobile platforms, working on
various desks, possibly in rotation.

Skills and competencies required:

Work well under deadline pressure
superior news judgment, sense of fairness, identification of best angles
ability to find and generate top content for all media and platforms
superior judgment on photo selection, cropping, presentation
sound use of photoshop and other image enhancement software
ability to source and capture material online
superior copy editing, headline writing, understanding of SEO for online and print needs
ability to work visually, i.e. lay out pages, select photos, understand how to present
information in print and online
work well in teams, with strong communication skills and the ability to negotiate
with and organize others

    Staff would be assigned to various shifts including early morning and nights.


    Apply through Linda Carter, lcarter@thestar.ca

A prayer in pixels

Dear Internet,

I don't have a "religion", per se.

I was born into a Roman-Catholic family but like many of those born in the 1980s and beyond, I left the proverbial flock in high school when I was introduced to dystopian fiction by a bass-playing atheist boy at a university party I had sneaked into behind my mother's back. (sorry mom.)

As far as traditional deities go, I can't say I really believe in any. But I do believe in you, Internet.

I can't see you with my eyes, but I know you're all around me.

Omnipresent, all-knowing, mysterious - capable of feats incomprehensible to most human minds. 

Not even Superman himself can simultaneously throw 40 million gigabytes of information in billions of directions around the globe at the speed of light. Though, given that said data in its simplest form would weigh approximately fifty-six millionths of a gram, it wouldn't exactly be too heavy for him... but I digress.

Superman is not a traditional god, and neither are you, Internet. You are simply of the most powerful positive forces I have ever known. Negative, too.

Theoretically, you occupy less space than a single grain of sand - yet your physical contribution to the ecology of our planet is equal to that of a small country.You exist in time and place, transcending these boundaries at the same time to become timeless and aspatial.

A sprawling geographical entity contained within an atomic whisper. A mystery wrapped in a riddle wrapped in a Twinkie.

Some might argue that in a (arguably) post-religious Western society, you're bigger than God. Than all of the gods.

With 4.2 billion unique worshipers housed on more than 44 million servers, they might be right. 

We pray to you in ones and zeros at the altars of our own choosing, in temples as varied as they are the same. University computer lab church. Wi-fi enabled coffee shop church. Parents' basement gaming station church. iPhone on the streetcar church. Church church.

Until blood is shed in the Mac vs. PC debate, I can safely say that we don't wage wars over your holy lands, because there are none.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if you went away. A technological apocalypse. An iPocalypse? No. Despite what Flash developers say, Steve Jobs is not the Devil.

I love you dear Internet, but I'm not afraid to lose you, for I know that if you ever went away, civil society would evaporate too - and a post-digital world would probably have to involve Brad Pitt or Mark Wahlberg or (dare I dream?) Leonardo DiCaprio restoring world order with an epic series of high octane adventures.

As much as I do worship you, dear Internet, I am but a mere mortal. And I love me some Leo :)

Sincerely,

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Lauren O’Neil is a Star intern and recent graduate of the Master of Arts - Journalism program at the University of Western Ontario. She is rarely, if ever, spotted without a pink Blackberry in her hand and is fluent in both HTML and English. Please follow her on Twitter so that she can continue to build up her mad social media cred @laurenonizzle.

Digital Natives = Digital Experts? Not exactly . . .

By Lauren O’Neil

Here's a question for our under-30 readers: Have you ever been asked by an older relative to install computer software, "delete a virus", or "look something up" online under the assumption that, because you're one of those "kids with their internet", you're also an expert when it comes to digital technology? 

RT @LLRX: So-Called "Digital Natives" Not Media Savvy, New Study Shows - http://tinyurl.com/36qo6wh

I immediately rolled my eyes at the article's title and then clicked through to see who was hating on us damn entitled millennial hooligans now.

"In Google we trust." That may very well be the motto of today's young online users...

That's how the article begins. Fair enough. I have likened Google to an omnipresent, all-knowing God on numerous occasions. No beef there.

there has been (a perhaps misguided) perception that the young are more digitally in-tune with the ways of the Web than others.

Yup. Based on the number of friends I have who still get confused by the "RT"s, "@"s and hashtags in my Twitter-Synced Facebook feed, I'd say that's pretty accurate.

What got me riled up was the article author's assertion that our demographic group has been dubbed "digital natives" due to our apparent tech-savvy.

"NO! We're called digital natives because we were born into a world where digital technology has always existed - we don't know any other way of life! It has nothing to do with how SAVVY we are!" I yelled at the screen - or something along those lines but probably less eloquent.

When Marc Prensky coined the term in 2001, he made the distinction between Digital Natives (Gen Y, Z and X-ers who are "native speakers" of the digital language of computers, video games and the internet) and Digital Immigrants (Our hip parents and grandparents - those who were not born into the digital world but have adopted many or most aspects of the new technology). He contends that Digital Immigrants are perfectly capable of learning this digital language, but that like a person who learns a spoken language later in life, they will always retain an accent.

"As Digital Immigrants learn – like all immigrants, some better than others – to adapt to their environment, they always retain, to some degree, their "accent," that is, their foot in the past. The “digital immigrant accent” can be seen in such things as turning to the Internet for information second rather than first, or in reading the manual for a program rather than assuming that the program itself will teach us to use it." (page 2)

To run with the metaphor of spoken language, I believe that some immigrants can come to master a language (accent or no accent) and speak it more fluently than one who was born and raised speaking it. It all comes down to education, hard work, natural intelligence and, as someone so poignantly pointed out when I first posted about this on my personal blog, attitude.


 

The same can be said for digital languages.

Millennials may have been able to "speak" technology from an early age, but it doesn't mean we can all speak it particularly well.

I know people twice my age who will run circles around my peers in the tech. department and, conversely, I know people half my age who can run circles around my elders when it comes to grammar and spelling.

But I`m getting off topic... The Northwestern University study that sparked this post isn't about how technologically adept students are in the online space as much as it's about how media literate they are online.

According to the researchers, it's not very.

The main findings of the study showed that digital natives tend to place a lot of blind faith in search engine brands and algorithms they don't even understand, judging the credibility of a source by its place on a results page. If a website ranks high on Google or Yahoo!, it MUST be legit, right? 

My research methods professor would have said that with only 102 subjects from an isolated and relatively homegenous population, this study is hardly credible. However, based on personal observations and some of the scholarly research available on the subject, I’d say the authors findings are dead on.

Young people spend a lot of time online, but they don`t necessarily understand the online space. Most of us can navigate it to an extent, but the ones who can map it and create it are few and far between.

It pains me to say this, but hypersavvy youngsters seem to be the exception, not the rule - at least where I come from. There are lots of internet kids bopping around Toronto, but for every one of us geeksters there are 11 of our peers nearby asking for help with linking an email account to a shiny new smartphone.

Digital Natives are not Digital experts by default, and I don`t think it`s fair to expect them to be.

Had I not been interested in computers as a kid and then schooled in communications and information technology I'd probably be just as lost when it comes to batch resizing images and setting up SQL databases as my friends who went to university for Human Kinetics or English Literature.

It`s time to stop segregating web populations by age - we`re living in a multitechnocultural society here, people! It's 2010 for gawshsakes.

Young or old, male or female, Digital Native or Digital Immigrant, anyone who's got the gumption to go after it can be media literate and technologically fluent with the right education.

And therin lies the rub.

Critical web literacy isn't currently a part of the curriculum in many Canadian schools. There are fabulous resources available for educators who choose to integrate web media literacy lessons into their classrooms, but nothing is mandated beyond some basic media education units in the language program and THAT is problematic.

How will students learn to be web-savvy if they're left to figure out all of this 'new media' stuff on their own?

Methodological discrepancies aside, I wholeheartedly agree with the Northwestern University study researchers when they conclude that `'Further initiatives that help educate people in this domain are needed'.

The Canadian Media Awareness Network agrees. The non-profit organization, which has been pioneering the development of media literacy and digital literacy programs in Canada since in 1996, recently released a "Digital Literacy Paper" that calls for federal leadership in the creation of a "national digital literacy strategy to ensure all Canadians have the necessary skills to use digital technologies to their fullest potential."

A national digital literacy strategy... I love the sound of that.

What are your thoughts?

Lauren O’Neil is a recent graduate of the Master of Arts - Journalism program at the University of Western Ontario. She is rarely, if ever, spotted without a pink Blackberry in her hand and is fluent in both HTML and English. Please follow her on Twitter so that she can continue to build up her mad social media cred @laurenonizzle.

Google Street View: The Boxer’s BFF

   

By Lauren O’Neil

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself bedridden with what was either the worst summer cold in the history of infectious diseases (take THAT Bubonic plague!) or, a more likely scenario, the after effects of eating one gloomy looking sandwich from a truck stop in Michigan. Word to the wise: it’s never safe to assume that a greenish tinge means 'wasabi mustard'.

Whatever it was that was ailing me, it was ailing me something fierce.

I desperately wanted to escape the confines of my bed to go outside and play, but I could barely get up to grab a can of ginger ale from the fridge without feeling dizzy. I was bored, miserable, and growing less fond of the day's epic Golden Girls marathon by the minute.

So I decided to take a walking tour of Hong Kong.

View Larger Map

 

If someone had told me 20 years ago that in 2010 I’d be able to go open up my laptop and drag a little orange pegman around a world map to view real, 360 degree street-level images of neighbourhoods from Stockholm to Saskatoon, I would have… well, I probably would have said “Neato!” because I was a very open-minded 3-year-old.

I’m sure, however, that many other people would have said “Pish Posh Applesauce!”

It’s crazy, when you think about it – it really is. The time, the planning, the technology, the resources … the brilliance of using vehicles mounted with specialized multi-camera GPS systems to photograph so much of the world around us and make it accessible for everyone with an internet connection to experience ...

Crazier still is how rarely I actually do stop to think about it.

It’s easy to take a technology for granted when it’s embedded into your daily routine. On that note, can we please take a moment to honour the hair straightener and the toothbrush?

*moment*

Back to Street View.

Sure, the service is cool – I can virtually walk down the Champs-Elysées without having to shell out for a plane ticket, I can look at my childhood home and creep on the neighbours (if they happened to be outside when the Google cars came along), and heck – it sure came in handy when I was looking for a place to live in Toronto. Being unfamiliar with the city’s many different boroughs, it was nice to be able to look at an apartment from the outside before driving three hours to find a shoebox wedged between a strip club and a fish market.

But for us in the radio room, and for many reporters in all sorts of roles, I’m sure, Google Street View is more than a handy little hood-scouter or sick day diversion – it’s a fabulous tool that allows us to do our jobs well.

Unfortunately, we don’t always have the luxury of teleporting to say, Markham, when a house explodes to get details from witnesses (not yet, anyways… come onnnn scientists! I believe in you!)

One of the many internet-powered things we CAN do to get the scoop is pull up Google Maps and digitally sniff around the area.

This is particularly useful for new Torontonians like yours truly.

When writing a news story, it’s extremely helpful to know if, say, a fire is raging in a tight residential community as opposed to a storage shed in an industrial area.

A little while back, we'd received word in the newsroom that a protest was taking place outside the Israeli Consulate in downtown Toronto.

One of my editors asked me to find out what was going on. How many people had shown up? Were things getting out of control? Why were they protesting?

The what, where, and why were easy to track down - but police officers I spoke with would give me little over the phone as far as "how many people?" and "how long have they been out there?" were concerned.

So, I took to Google Maps.

A little bit of street viewing revealed that the consulate was in direct view of a trendy hair salon with floor to ceiling glass windows across the front of it. I looked up the salon's phone number and moments later was speaking with a receptionist who was so kind as to actually get three separate opinions from her co-workers as to how many people were out protesting (collectively, they estimated that there were approximately 30 people outside).

She filled me in on when the protesting began and even provided us with some colourful details about creative flags and chants from the crowd.

The protest turned out to be little more than a short-lived peaceful demonstration, but it was nice to know that there were 30 people quietly waving flags instead of 300 people throwing eggs before getting ourselves into a tizzy.

Not everybody embraces Google Street View - there have been some issues raised concerning privacy in the past - but so is the nature of this increasingly connected world we live in.

For all of its faults, Street View has given back to society in spades.

Disagree? Check out one of the many websites dedicated specifically to archiving particularly weird, cool or hilarious Street View captures and I'm sure you'll see the electronically modulated light :)

Lauren O’Neil is a recent graduate of the Master of Arts - Journalism program at the University of Western Ontario. She is rarely, if ever, spotted without a pink Blackberry in her hand and is fluent in both HTML and English. Please follow her on Twitter so that she can continue to build up her mad social media cred @laurenonizzle.