About Scot Hacker

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Until late 2011, Scot Hacker was the webmaster for the Knight Digital Media Center and was also involved with web operations for the Graduate School of Journalism. He provided technical assistance in multimedia training courses, ran the webcast operation, and taught classes in web development.

Hacker is currently a Senior Software Developer for CalCentral at ETS (UC Berkeley), where he's helping to build a next-generation portal system for students, faculty and staff.

Hacker is the author of O'Reilly's "MP3: The Definitive Guide," Peachpit's "The BeOS Bible," and dozens of articles for print- and web-based technology publications including PC Magazine, Byte.com, Windows Sources, MacWorld, and ZDNet, as well as television appearances and trade show gigs.

On the side, Scot runs a web hosting company for independent journalists and artists, as well as the life goal-tracking site bucketlist.org.

 

Stories

Digital media stories published elsewhere by Scot Hacker:

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Writing

Content on this site written by Scot Hacker (includes contributory writing):

  • Projects

    • Demo Project
    • Demonstration project for the KDMC "Shell Generation" system.
    • Topic Shell Demo
    • Test project for new shell system. Test project for new shell system. Test project for new shell system. Test project for new shell system. Test project for new shell system. ...
    • Children’s Fairyland
    • Children’s Fairyland gives little ones an opportunity to have a play date with classic children’s literature. Since 1950 the 40 storybook sets have brought the most beloved stories to life. ...
    • July 2011 Slideshow
    • Soundslides slideshow featuring images of fellows from July 2011 Multimedia workshop doing their thing, both in the classroom and in the field. Images by Lanita Pace, Jake Schoeneker and others. ...

  • Tutorials

    • CSS Layout with HTML5
      Published Oct 5, 2011
    • If you've got basic HTML and CSS skills and are ready to learn how to structure a web design with CSS layout techniques, this tutorial will help you take your ...
    • WordPress: Modifying Themes
      Published Jun 2, 2011
    • Learn how themes are constructed and how to get your chosen theme to work exactly the way you want it to.
    • WordPress: Managing Settings
      Published May 25, 2011
    • This is a companion to the WordPress: Beyond the Basics tutorial. It takes a deep dive into all the options found in the Settings section of the WordPress Dashboard.
    • WordPress: Beyond the Basics
      Published May 25, 2011
    • Now that you've found your footing with WordPress, it's time to roll up your sleeves and dig deeper. In this tutorial we cover building menus and sidebar widgets, installing and ...
    • Twitter for Journalists
      Published May 4, 2011
    • Twitter is a powerful tool for journalists, who use it for everything from finding sources to engaging the public in communities drawn across lines of interest. This tutorial offers an ...
    • Installing WordPress
      Published Apr 4, 2011
    • Depending on your existing web experience, the most complex aspect of running a WordPress site may be the installation process. In this tutorial, we demystify the process of using WordPress ...
    • Building an Ad Platform with DFP
      Published Mar 22, 2011
    • Serving ads isn't as easy as it sounds, but Google's Double-Click for Publishers goes a long way toward streamlining the process, maximizing revenue, and keeping performance high. This tutorial explains ...
    • PHP 101
      Published Aug 12, 2010
    • PHP has emerged as the most widely used server-side web programming language in use today. PHP makes it easy for web pages to interact with databases, present different kinds of ...
    • WordPress: Building a "Topics" Site
      Published Feb 12, 2010
    • A news site often publishes many related articles on the same topic, such as "Healthcare Reform." While these disparate articles may be linked to one another through a tagging or ...
    • Data Visualization for Non-Programmers
      Published Dec 4, 2009
    • Data visualization is the process of transforming dry, difficult to comprehend collections of data and transforming them into attractive graphics, illustrations, and videos that can be comprehended quickly by readers. ...
    • Search Engine Optimization — Basics
      Published Sep 20, 2009
    • Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of making the content you publish appear near the top of the Search Engine Result Page (SERP). Your SEO skills make it easier ...
    • FTP Made Simple
      Published Jun 9, 2009
    • Once you've created a web site, you'll need to upload it to a public web server, where the rest of the world can enjoy it. If you're not working with ...
    • Canon Rebel XT Series Camera
      Published Mar 19, 2009
    • The Canon Rebel family of cameras is the first level of SLRs the company makes. They generally run between $600 to $1,000 depending on the kit options and accessories. The ...
    • CSS 101
      Published Feb 6, 2009
    • HTML is for setting the logical markup of documents on the web, but has nothing to do with how those documents appear - that's a job for Cascading Style Sheets, ...
    • Embedding Map Mashups
      Published Jan 29, 2009
    • Now that you've learned how to create map mashups, adding them to your site should be a simple matter of copy-and-paste, right? Not so fast - there are a number ...
    • Photoshop
      Published Nov 13, 2008
    • Adobe Photoshop is the industry standard for working with digital images of any kind. This tutorial will take you through the entry-level steps of using the program to open, crop, ...
    • WordPress: Getting Started
      Published Jun 23, 2008
    • New to WordPress? This tutorial will guide you through the basic steps of publishing with the world's most popular content management system. Learn how to post and mange your content, ...
    • Using Free Web Designs
      Published May 21, 2008
    • Multimedia web sites often take the form of mini sites that don't utilize your publication's design templates. Coming up with fresh, professional-looking web designs for multimedia projects can be tedious ...
    • Embedding Multimedia
      Published May 16, 2007
    • This is where your skills come together - Web page creation skills, interview skills, audio and video editing skills, and storytelling skills all converge at this point. Inserting media into ...
    • Dreamweaver
      Published May 16, 2007
    • Dreamweaver is a Web page design program that lets you type text and add media elements directly into a page, much as you would with a word processing program like ...
    • HTML 101
      Published May 16, 2007
    • Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is simple document markup languaged used for creating Web pages and other information viewable in a Web browser. This tutorial is a crash course in basic ...
    • Digital Still Cameras
      Published May 16, 2007
    • There are two basic kinds of digital cameras: Digital SLR (single lens reflex) and non-SLR. Digital SLRs are generally more expensive and more accurate than non-SLR cameras, and include more ...
    • Pro Tools
      Published May 16, 2007
    • ProTools is a professional audio engineering software program made by Digidesign. Although it's used by top-notch pros in the radio industry, ProTools has a fairly easy learning curve, making it ...
    • Video on the Web
      Published May 16, 2007
    • Once you've finished editing your video (or audio), you'll need to greatly reduce its filesize so that it can be transferred over the Web effectively. Compressing audio and video can ...

  • Blog Posts

    • Is Drupal the Right Tool for the Job?
    • Yesterday, at a campus-wide meeting of web editors and developers, UC Berkeley announced a major new hosting initiative for departmental sites running the Drupal content management system. The service is ...
    • How Journalists Can Start Using Google+ Now
    • The jury's still out on whether Google+ will eventually become a Twitter or Facebook killer. Talk to Facebook users and they'll tell you Google+ is irrelevant - that the audience ...
    • July Webcasts
    • Our July Multimedia workshop featured two fantastic presentations, by Rob Curley of The Las Vegas Sun and Richard Koci-Hernandez of the UCB Graduate School of Journalism. Archived webcasts are now ...
    • Webinar: Extending WordPress
    • In this follow-up to KDMC's March 2011 Independent Journalists workshop, webmaster Scot Hacker introduces three techniques to take your WordPress news site beyond the defaults. Covered topics include: Creating a ...
    • Twitter for Journalists
    • Twitter and Facebook are game-changers for newsrooms around the world. But Twitter can be a mysterious beast, and leaves some journalists scratching their heads. In our new guide Twitter for ...
    • June Web 2.0 Webcasts
    • Our June Web 2.0 workshop was a smashing success, and featured three excellent dinnertime speakers: Grant Barrett on audience engagement, Burt Herman on Storify, Amy Gahran on mobile audiences. Webcast ...
    • WordPress Tutorials Galore
    • Whether you're just getting started with WordPress,  learning your way around plugins and widgets for the first time, creating photo galleries, or need to modify a WordPress theme you've just ...
    • May 2011 Webcasts
    • Our May 2011 Multimedia Workshop has come and gone, and was a smashing success. Our lunch and dinner presentations by multimedia storyteller Kim Komenich, Greenspun Interactive's Rob Curley, and CNN's ...
    • In Search of the Perfect Twitter Client
    • Readers of this post may also want to read KDMC's comprehensive tutorial Twitter for Journalists. In any given software category, there's usually more than one offering. For word processing you ...
    • March 2011 Webcasts, Alumni Video
    • Our March 2011 Independent Journalists Workshop has come and gone, and was a smashing success! Six long days of WordPress, video editing, data visualization, map mashups, and advertising platform training. ...
    • Tutorial: Building an Ad Platform with DFP
    • Traditionally, a "church-state wall" has existed between journalists and advertising departments. But in a world of hyperlocal sites run by small teams of independent journalists who need some way to ...
    • February Webcasts
    • Our February Web 2.0 workshop has come and gone, and webcast archives of our panel discussions are now online, featuring Len de Groot on Data Visualization, Kim Komenich on the ...
    • January Webcasts
    • Our January Multimedia workshop featured a series of excellent speakers. Public presentations from the workshop were webcast live and archives are now available. Sunday, January 9th6:00-7:15 p.m.: “Embracing the Future: ...
    • Census Workshop Webcasts
    • Our Interactive Census workshop featured a great lineup of speakers and presenters, and webcast archives are now online, featuring Dante Chinni of the Christian Science Monitor, William Frey of the ...
    • Behind the Scenes at NPR's Argo Network
    • Is it possible to share stories and data seamlessly between a dozen separate sites without expensive commercial content management systems? Here's how NPR's Argo network uses Django to unify a ...
    • URL Shorteners: Handle with Care
    • Nearly a decade ago, tinyurl.com was an occasionally useful internet curiosity, with its seemingly magical ability to compress arbitrarily long URLs, such as: http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/blog/2010/oct/5/protovis-javascript-charts-vs-google-gadgets/ down to: http://tinyurl.com/2bszunl At the time, ...
    • Is Your CMS a Bottleneck to Innovation?
    • Hundreds of journalists have moved through KDMC's digital media training programs, in which we show them how to produce cutting edge news content in non-traditional formats, from video to map ...
    • MediaShift Recommends KDMC
    • PBS MediaShift has a nice guide to digital training resources for journalists, recommending Poynter's NewsU, Amy Webb's KnowledgeWebb, and the Knight Digital Media Center's training programs. "The KDMC is known ...
    • June Webcasts Now Available
    • Our June Multimedia Training Workshop featured a string of live webcasts, including Laura Sparks of the Wisconsin State Journal, Penelope Carrington of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and Timothy Jordan of Google. ...
    • Web Design Principles Slideshow
    • As part of the May Multimedia Workshop, KDMC webmaster Scot Hacker presented a talk on web design principles. His slides from the talk are available below. This presentation is an ...
    • May Webcasts Available
    • Our May 2010 Multimedia Workshop featured live webcasts of noon and evening speakers, including Denver Post photographer Tim Rasmussen, multimedia journalist Demorris Lee, and YouTube's  news manager Olivia Ma. Video ...
    • Spring Training Resources
    • On April 24th, the KDMC training crew joined California Media Workers Guild, the SF City College Journalism Department, and the Bay Area Media Training Consortium to participate in a daylong ...
    • March Webcasts
    • Our first workshop for Independent Journalists this March was a success and we've posted webcasts of our noon and evening speakers, including Barry Parr on advertising, Joe Grimm on brand ...
    • January Webcasts
    • Our January Multimedia Training Workshop featured live webcasts from the Spokesman-Review's Colin Mulvany and Kevin Graman, and the Seattle Times' Sona Patel and Joe Ruiz. Archived video is now available.
    • Two Takes on Minimalist Content
    • Readability Bad for ads and monetization, great for readers? arc90's "Readability" browser bookmarklet is a potential game-changer. Drag it to your browser's Bookmarks bar, visit any web page, and watch ...
    • December Webcasts
    • Our December Web 2.0 Skills workshop featured visits from Salon CEO Richard Gingras, USA Today's Josh Hatch, and Yahoo!'s Andrew Golis. We've posted video archives of all three talks .
    • Surfing KDMC Projects
    • Over the past five years, fellows passing through our training program have created dozens of excellent multimedia projects. We've just revamped the way these projects are organized and displayed. So ...
    • Turkey Farm in Metro Detroit
    • Happy Thanksgiving! KDMC workshop fellow Eric Seals created an excellent video essay about a Turkey Farm in Metro Detroit.
    • KDMC Wins DataSF Hack-a-Thon
    • KDMC was recently invited to participate in the California Data Camp and DataSF App Contest hosted by California Watch and spot.us. The unconference featured open discussions related to making use ...
    • KDMC Adds Presentations Index
    • KDMC has been running multimedia and internet technology training workshops for years now, with each workshop consisting of many individual presentations. In fact, there are now more than 358 separate ...
    • KDMC Launches Bloggers' Directory
    • The Knight Digital Media Center is pleased to announce the launch of a sister site, the Bay News Network. BNN is a directory of Bay Area blogs and news sites ...
    • Blogging with the Experts
    • The typical blog post involves an author holding forth, followed by responses to that post from the public. But UC Berkeley's Office of Public Affairs turned this model on its ...
    • Bee Story on 45s Generates Big Traffic
    • Knight Fellow Manny Cristomo of the Sacramento Bee produced an excellent video piece about a collection of 45 RPM records that found its way back to the original owner's son, ...
    • June Multimedia Webcasts
    • Another week of multimedia workshops has passed, and we've beeen webcasting featured panelists and speakers live.  Video archives are now online.
    • Twitter Dividends
    • An interesting question came up amongst alumni of our training programs recently: Are journalistic organizations seeing an up-tick in traffic to their sites as a result of regular Twitter usage? ...
    • Webcasting with Django
    • The KDMC webcast system handles week-long events which consist of multiple presentations, which in turn may or may not include a webcast. Meanwhile, webcasts have to be handled both live ...
    • May 2009 Workshop Webcasts
    • The May 2009 Multimedia workshop is complete, and featured an excellent collection of live public speakers, including:From Here to There: Cultivating the Seeds of Transformation Speakers: Laura Varon Brown, Craig ...
    • P.I. Reed School of Journalism
    • Fellow John Temple, who is associate dean of P.I. Reed School of Journalism implemented a program whereby students of the school will produce multimedia projects for local papers, and in ...
    • Shreveport Times Mashup
    • Fellow Scott Anderson, video and technology editor for The Times in Shreveport, Louisiana shares with us a Google Map he produced offering locations of hurricane shelters to the public and ...
    • Detroit Free Press Video
    • Fellow Eric Seals, photographer and multimedia producer for the Detroit Free Press produced this fantastic video on local coach Courtney Hawkins of Flint (MI) Beecher High School.
    • The Richmond Times-Dispatch Videos
    • Fellow Penelope Carrington, multimedia reporter for the The Richmond Times-Dispatch, shared with us some videos she produced for her paper during the recent inauguration ceremonies. Check out her videos  (She ...
    • March 2009 Workshop Projects
    • It's amazing what a group of determined journalists can create in one week of intensive multimedia training. Multimedia projects created by our March 2009 fellows are now available for public ...
    • March 2009 Workshop Webcasts
    • Our March 22-27 Multimedia Training Workshop for journalists has just wrapped up.  If you weren't able to attend, we've posted most of our noon and evening speakers as live webcasts. ...
    • Announcing the KDMC Newsletter
    • Want to stay abreast of KDMC news, events, announcements and useful links? We've launched a brand new newsletter, which we'll be sending out monthly. Newsletter subscriptions are open to the ...
    • February Webcasts Now Available
    • We've just finished up the February 2009 Technology Tools Training Workshop, which included a lineup of excellent panels and talks by industry experts. In case you weren't able to join ...
    • Introduction to Cascading Style Sheets
    • HTML is for setting the logical markup of documents on the web, but has nothing to do with how those documents appear - that's a job for Cascading Style Sheets, ...
    • GateHouse vs. The New York Times
    • In a case with far-reaching implications for the widespread practice of automated aggregation of headlines and ledes via RSS, GateHouse Media has, for the most part, won its case against ...
    • January 2009 Lecture Series Webcasts
    • Our January 11-16 Multimedia Training Workshop for journalists is under way For those not able to attend, we've been presenting most of our noon and evening speakers as live webcasts. ...
    • December 2008 Lecture Series Webcasts
    • Our Dec. 16-19 Internet Technology Training Workshop for journalists has come and gone. If you were not able to attend, or you were here but would like a refresher course ...
    • Webcast Listings Updated
    • We've rebuilt our webcast and presentation system from scratch, providing more detailed information for both archived and future webcasts, and gathering webcast/workshop information together on combined pages. We're now displaying ...
    • HTML 101
    • Time to start learning HTML? We've re-written our HTML 101 tutorial from scratch, with just enough code to get you started on the road to self-sufficiency.
    • Is Twitter Killing Blogs?
    • It's a common refrain in the Twitterverse: "My blog is dying!" When users can cut to the 140-character chase so quickly and so easily, they may start to wonder whether ...
    • Online Participation Rates Are Up
    • The ratio of "lurkers" to "participators" in online forums and social networks is changing over time. According to data recently gathered by Forrester Research, 21% of adults online consider themselves ...
    • Giving Away the Farm
    • Hosting large amounts of video used to be expensive, in terms of bandwidth and disk space. Compressing and hosting video is tricky business. But YouTube solves all of that for ...
    • May Projects, Webcast Archives
    • Our May workshop was a great success, with a rousing round of speakers and an impressive collection of final projects by the fellows. Our live webcasts are now available as ...
    • Working With Free Web Designs
    • Creating professional-looking designs for multimedia sites can be tedious and time-consuming. But there are thousands of free web templates out there, yours for the download. Our new Free Web Designs  ...
    • May 2008 Lecture Series Webcasts
    • The New Media Lecture Series is part of a week-long multimedia training workshop for mid-career journalists sponsored by the Knight Digital Media Center. Industry experts speak throughout the week on ...
    • Tutorials Available in PDF Format
    • We've added a new feature to our multimedia and digital media tutorials -- Save as PDF. While we've always offered a "Print" view from our tutorials, from which Mac users ...
    • Design Notes from the NY Times
    • The NY Times has posted an interesting interview with Design Director Khoi Vinh, who discusses some of the more  obscure/hidden aspects of the Gray Lady's online presence.  One of the ...
    • First Tech Training Workshop a Success
    • The Knight Digital Media Center's first-ever Tech Training for Editors workshop has come and gone. Judging by comments and reviews by the participants, our first effort at teaching map mashups, ...

  • Presentations

    (only presentations with slides or webcasts are listed)