Shorthand is an incredible, and incredibly EASY to use online platform that lets you create multiple web page stories in one vertically sliding web page (URL), full of pictures, videos, text and other objects capable of being embedded online!

If you look at a sample gallery of what news sites, bloggers and others have created with Shorthand, you’ll see why I’m calling it the new gold standard for online news. You can use it for longer stories, or for developing stories you can add to as time goes by, like live coverage of a hurricane, for example, to show changes over time and/or document “progress”. The BBC and Guardian have recently created some stories I’ve loved using Shorthand, which is why I gave it a try myself!

Below is my first try at Shorthand. They have a “social” platform, Shorthand Social, where it’s free to try out a limited capacity version, with all the work being saved on their server, though you don’t have to make it visible until you’re ready. With its limited, but still very nice, capabilities, I came up with an idea to share what I considered definitive versions of certain songs for which there are many versions. That’s how music used to be. A song comes out and all kinds of people record it so there were lots of “covers”, if you will, but I don’t think they were called that. It was just someone’s take on the song, which seems a bit more prestigious than covering a song. The way people were keen about their singers back then, it was also exciting to hear that Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughn or others had their version out of a song, rather than they were just going to “cover” it.

I enjoy a very wide variety of music, in a wide range of quality levels, from recording to performer quality. I’m usually not too particular about the piece and quality, just enjoying it a bit more or less. However, if someone were to ask me, I DEFINITELY have picky tastes for favourites! I briefly share why with each song chosen in the Shorthand story below. It’s unfortunately it embeds in the posting interface as a video preview, but seems to publish just as a link. Must be WordPress’ JavaScript limitation. Also, on phones, there doesn’t seem to be a way to play the videos that just appear as pictures in the background. I embedded the actual versions of these songs in the story so the viewer could listen to them if on a computer, maybe tablet (haven’t tested it on tablets yet).

https://social.shorthand.com/digitalcitizen/embed/uylpIEM1A3

These were the versions I could think of in a short time span. However, the great thing about this idea is I can continually add to this “never ending” story as time goes by, and change versions if my tastes change, or as I find out about new to me versions of these songs.

Enjoy and leave me some of your definitive versions of songs in the comments! Or, even better, go try it out yourself to create a similar story and share that link!

Thank you.