Wednesday, April 15, 2009

A high-tech look at Sleepy Beauty


At the features staff meeting today (April 15, Tax Day!), Buffy got everyone's creative juices flowing with a writing exercise about the different ways we communicate.
She challenged everyone to take an excerpt from the classic fairytale "Sleeping Beauty" and rework it with more high-tech forms of communication.
Here's a segment of the original tale:

At last, however, to her own and her husband's inexpressible joy, she gave birth to a daughter.
As soon as the palace guns announced this event, the whole nation went wild with delight.
Flags waved everywhere, bells were set pealing until the steeples rocked, crowds tossed up their hats and cheered, while the soldiers presented arms, and even strangers meeting in the street fell upon each other's neck, exclaiming: "Our Queen has a daughter! Yes, yes -- Our Queen has a daughter! Long live the little Princess!"


Here's how Kara rewrote the segment with a modern twist:
As soon as the Queen's Facebook status changed to "I have a daughter!" an RSS feed alerted the YDR newsroom to the news.
An update was posted on the YDR Web site, an e-mail alert was sent out and all the commentors in the land left well-wishes for the royal family.
Later in the day, the queen tweeted about how well the baby princess was sleeping. And a poll was posted on the YDR Web site:What should be the child's name?
* Aurora
* Princess Me No Wanna
* Sleeping Beauty
* Mara
Aurora was chosen by the online voters, and so began the story of Princess Aurora...
Take a crack at it yourself and then share your own high-tech fairytale!



3 comments:

  1. The queen gave birth to a girl after the deadline of the newspaper's late edition, so the delivery was streamed live via vodcast at inyork.com/ydr, showing the royal couple's delight as palace guns exploded in the background (ShotSpotter sensors recorded 186 celebratory shots during the early hours of the night.). A news alert was e-mailed to all the people of the land. Subjects of the queen Twittered about their new princess -- what she would wear, whom she would marry, what her blog would be called. "Long live the little princess!" Facebook's newsfeed read. For updates, they checked FlipSide's blog at www.yorkblog.com/flipside.

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  2. KingdomsQueen I have a daughter. Let the cannons sound! Rejoice!
    (15 minutes ago from tweetdeck)

    peasantwoman @KingdomsQueen Huzzah! Huzzah!
    (14 minutes ago from twitterfeed)

    gruelforbreakfast @KingdomsQueen Long live the little princess!
    (13 minutes ago from TwitterFox)

    meagerfarmer @KingdomsQueen Soldiers at arms, bells ringing, crowd in the square celebrating.
    (12 minutes ago from twitterfall)

    notroyalty @KingdomsQueen
    I can't believe I just kissed a total stranger! I don't even like royalty! But everyone has lost their heads!
    (11 minutes ago from tweetdeck)

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  3. gruelforbreakfast? very creative!

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