Nature show's eagles still popular in Iowa

An Internet site featuring a Web camera installed in Decorah, Iowa, last summer for the Nature episode "American Eagle" continues to draw visitors from some 70 countries, according to the Decorah Public Opinion newspaper. Bob Anderson, director of the local nonprofit Raptor Resource Project, says its DSL service has been scrambling to keep up with the high viewing demand for the site. Milwaukee Public TV also featured an eagle cam on one of its multicast channels in 2002.

WEDU putting unemployed volunteers to work on creative projects

WEDU in West Central Florida has launched the Blue Sky Project, gathering a "volunteer consortium of creative professionals" to assist the station, according to a statement (PDF). The PBS station is hoping to develop initiatives drawing on the experience of volunteers who are currently without full-time employment. Tasks include advertising, communications, graphic design, public relations, special event planning and Web design. In return for assisting the station, the work will help volunteers hone professional skills, contribute to their resumes and "provide stimulating projects in an invigorating environment," the statement adds.

Eleven Webby, People's Voice Awards for pubcasters

NPR led pubcasters in the 2009 Webby Awards honoring the best of the Internet. It won a total of seven awards, three of which were determined by votes cast in the "People's Voice" competition. NPR Music and NPR.org received Webbys and People's Voice Awards in the categories of music and radio websites, respectively. Awards also went to NPR Mobile, the network's news site optimized for mobile phones (m.npr.org), NPR Podcasts, and Project Song, a video series presented by NPR Music's All Songs Considered. Three of the four awards credited to PBS were for Frontline/World programs nominated in the online film and video division. Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, the PBS series produced by New York's WNET, received the People's Voice Award for religion websites. The full list of winners is posted here. [Corrected from an earlier version.]

Lidia and Lopate win Beard awards

Lidia’s Italy: Sweet Napoli, cooked up by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and distributed by APT, received a James Beard Foundation Media Award among TV food shows (Julia Harrison, e.p; Shelly Burgess Nicotra, supervising producer), and WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show won the award in the radio shows/webcasts category for its three-ingredient challenge (with Rozanne Gold and online producer Sarah English), the foundation announced Friday. Bastianich served as gala chair of the foundation's gala reception celebrating Women in Food last night in New York.

Early sketch shows how NPR HQ could look

Hickok Cole, the architect hired by NPR to design its new headquarters, sketched this look for the tough task of combining a new office tower with the old concrete phone company building that must be preserved at least in part under the city's historic landmark rules. An earlier version of this item mistakenly indicated that this rendering—labeled as a "preliminary" drawing on the DC Metrocentric blog—represents NPR's plan. NPR spokeswoman Dana Davis Rehm says that plan is months away. Rehm has no complaint, however, about last week's Washington Business Journal article naming NPR's HQ land deals (with its big tax incentive to stay in D.C.) as 2008's "best land deal" in Washington real estate. Construction won't begin soon. When the development deal was announced more than a year ago, plans called for NPR to move into the new building in 2012.