Is there an easy way to add instory ads with DFP for Flex?

Hi there, Google is officially launching its Accelerated Mobile Pages project today (to read more: https://backchannel.com/google-is-going-to-speed-up-the-web-is-this-good-a92a6043598b#.5wr1t0kdr ). Regardless of how we feel about the technology, newsroom executives are going to want us to start coding in that way, or feed pages into a code generator. Does TownNews have any plans regarding AMP that you can share with us?

I've tried this on both Zen and Flex. Selecting the Facebook (share) button on an asset launches Facebook in my browser on my iPhone.

Is it possible the Facebook button can recognize my Facebook mobile app instead? The Twitter (share) button does. I think on Android a user is given the option to continue in the browser or launch their Facebook app. Or is this just me and I'm late to the party? Is it up to the individual user?

I would think this would improve the mobile experience for many users--making it fast and efficient to share content. On mobile--I hit the login option to Facebook and abandoned my attempt to share.

The BLOX calendar needs more details for events with multiple times/mini events that make up a bigger event. For instance the Elvis tribute artists are coming to our town this weekend. They have a bunch of events throughout the weekend. Here's what the back-end looks like...

Each one of those times has a "Schedule name" with it because I assumed the schedule name would differentiate it on the front-end. Not so. Notice how it looks on the front-end.

And the calendar widget block doesn't even display the times but I have no idea why. The ESL event and the conversational Spanish class show their times. And it isn't because Elvis doesn't have times. Just look at all of those times I filled in!

I don't want to have to go in and create new mini-events when there's a big event like the Elvis Festival but as the system is now it seems like I would have to in order to get the front-end look I'm wanting.

So....

1. Is there any way TownNews can have "Schedule name" or a similar field display on the front-end?

2. Can we get the calendar widget block to show time details on ALL events?

All of that complaining aside I feel the need to sing the praises of TownNews for a minute. Y'all have an outstanding product and we love using BLOX. So in all of these posts that we flood community.townnews with I don't want your hard work and accomplishments to go unappreciated. What is SO great about TN is that I know y'all listen to our input and there's never a "We've arrived!" mentality. There's always work to be done and improvements to be made. So thanks guys! You make our jobs fun!

In Flex (or even Zen) it would be great if the "asset author display" was enhanced and recognized the "byline" as it does the "author."

I had to change the page customization setting for "asset author display" on our Flex build to just "byline." We have admins (editors) that are set as the author for assets -- but the content they are managing is not their byline. The byline is for the reporter. Now a reader no longer has the option to directly email the reporter by clicking the name in the byline. Nor can they now choose to "follow" the reporter in the byline.

Having admins identified as authors is most useful within the database for search and tracking content. But the frontend recognizing the byline would be more useful in our situation.

I'm curious how other newspaper clients are using the byline and author fields?

See notes in red:

I wonder how many newsrooms are using Periscope. Hutch News has started a bit. Any chance we could get Periscope added to the Utility: Social links Flex block template?

Thanks!

Greg

I have CSS access but there are several places where font is being called within the CSS. Does Zen or Flex allow the default font to be changed somewhere in the site customizations, url customizations or page customizations?

1)What problem(s) does this idea solve?

The current Flex template of the e-Edition does not support Kindles or Nooks.

2) Why do you need this idea implemented? We have had multiple calls from customers who used to be able to read the e-Edition on their devices who now cannot. Kindle and Nook makes up about 2% of our users. Which is about 300 users per day.

3) How often would you use this feature?

Our customers would use this feature everyday.

4) How many people in your organization would use this feature? 300 customers , minimum, per day.

It would be nice to tell our customers that we care about them and that we value them as customers, rather than telling them that since they're a minority we don't care and they should buy a different device. At which point I'm sure they'd tell us they'll save their money and just stop subscribing. 300 customers unsubscribing is not a small issue for us, we do value them and would prefer not to alienate people in our small community.

Thanks.

Jason Heupel

Online Producer

Bismarck Tribune

jason.heupel@bismarcktribune.com

701-250-8291

This is a feature request made by a newsroom editor for the display of events from the calendar component. She refers to the Summer Camp Fair item at the bottom of the screenshot below:

"AP Style specifies months and states of five or fewer letters should be spelled out. So in the calendar it should be March, June and July, NOT Mar, Jun and Jul.

Like the subject suggests, we're interested in push notifications. Do any of y'all use them with BLOX and are you pleased with the functionality? Is the service through a 3rd party?

This doesn’t appear to be possible with the current BLOX setup, but I’d love it if there was a way to allow certain employees to send a breaking news email alert without giving them access to the entire Email Reach area of BLOX.

I like to operate on the principle of least privilege whenever possible. So while I’m not worried about an editor purposefully messing with our other email lists, preventing them from having the access means they can’t accidentally break something either. They also don’t need to be messing with the Contacts list or anything else, simply sending the email.

In our specific case with breaking news, we have a list setup and always trigger it using the Single Run function. To make things even simpler, it is always the exact same URL we enter every single time.

As such all we really need is a “Send Email” button that an authenticated editor could press to fire it off.

Like I said I don’t think anything like this is possible, since the only option for granting someone Email Reach privileges is Full Access. But I wanted to get everyone’s thoughts.

Thanks.

Just wanted to open this topic up for discussion:

Facebook will open Instant Articles to all publishers on April 12

I'm skeptical on the value of this to publishers. What do y'all think?

This is a nice feature! Thanks for adding it.

it would be great to have a couple of setting options:

- the option to move it to the right of the headline

- the option to use a custom icon (like an image used as a favicon)