Friday Fast Five – Your Guide To New Media

By Ameena Rasheed, NABJ Digital Journalism Task Force intern

1. Amanda Mogul – 10 PowerPoint alternatives that make meetings fun

2. Mashable – 5 Ways Startups Are Using Vine

3. Entrepreneur – Building You Brand on Twitter

4. Mashable - 10 Instagram Companion Apps for Power Users

5. Nieman Journalism Lab - Pop in translation: A new tool to see what non-English news orgs are writing about the conclave 

A New Brydge For MyiPad

By Benét J. Wilson, chair, NABJ Digital Journalism Task Force & social media/eNewsletters editor, Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association

I’ve been using my iPad for more and more work-related tasks, thanks to some great apps and the device’s portability.  The one negative factor is trying to type stories using the glass keyboard.  I’m just no good at it.

I went on eBay and bought a cheap keyboard that connected to the iPad via Bluetooth.  It worked for a while, then became quite buggy and unreliable.  That left me with lugging my MacBook Pro or taking my Gateway Netbook.

But after attending several journalism-related events where I saw folks with cool keyboards attached to their iPads, I decided it was time to take another look at what’s out there — and spend some money.

So I did what I usually do — I crowdsourced my question about what folks thought were the best iPad keyboards on the market.  I considered the Logitech Ultrathin, ZAGGFolio, ClamCase Pro and the Belkin Folio.

But all bets were off once  I saw the Brydge, which was born from a Kickstarter campaign.  As a MacBook Pro user, I love the way this keyboard simulates that experience.  the clips allow you to adjust your iPad by 180 degrees.

The Brydge has a built-in speaker that really enhances the sound from your iPad.  It comes in Mac silver, but I bought the black polycarbonate version because I thought it looked cooler.

The speakerless aluminum Brydge costs $169.99; with speakers, it’s $199.99. My black version, with speakers, is $129.99 — and worth every penny.

Friday Fast Five – Your Guide To New Media

By Ameena Rasheed, NABJ Digital Journalism Task Force intern

1. Read Write Enterprise – Top 7 Most In-Demand Tech Skills For 2013 

2. The Daily Muse – 10 Apps That Will Ramp Up Your Job Search

3.  International Journalists’ Network – Four TED Talks Worth Watching 

4.  PBS Media Shift – 5 Tips for Transmedia Storytelling 

5.  HubSpot InBound Marketing Blog – Evaluate Your Facebook Page With This Simple Checklist [INFOGRAPHIC]

10 iPad Apps I’d Recommend To Dori Maynard Of The Maynard Institute

Yesterday I did a post on iPhone apps I’d recommend for NABJ President Greg Lee.  I posted a link on Facebook, and one of the responders was Dori Maynard of the Maynard Institute. Dori got an iPad for Christmas, so here’s the apps I’d recommend for her.

1. AppStart (free) – for the iPad newbie, this is a must-have app that offers great advice on the best apps to download as you begin your tablet journey.
2. Flipboard (free) – I’ve all but abandoned my Google Reader for this app. You can use it to do great magazine-style feeds of your favorite publications.  You can share story links via Twitter, email links or read them later.  I’d also download Pocket (free), which is an app that stores Flipboard stories for offline reading later.
3. CNN (free) – the news junkie in me loves this app.  I can read stories, see breaking news videos, get updates on important stories and even watch live programming (thanks to my DirecTV subscription).
4. Prezi (free) – step away from the boring, predictable PowerPoint presentation with this animated app.
5. Apps Gone Free (free) - every day, this app suggests between eight and 20 paid apps that are being given away for a limited time.  I’ve gotten some great photo/video and travel apps through this app.
6. SoundNote ($4.99) – I learned about this app via a post on best journalist gifts over at the 10000 Words blog. While you are typing your notes on your iPad, it also records.  When you want to play something back, tap the word and the recording takes you there.
7. Google Drive (free) – if you’re like me and have moved many documents to the cloud, having this app makes it simple to access all those files.
8. JoinMe (free) – let’s say you want to have an online meeting with the ability to share your screen.  This app does that, and works great on the iPad.
9. Storify (free) – Dori and former NABJ President Herb Lowe know I’m a HUGE fan of this multimedia storytelling program, and you can create the same magic on your iPad with this app.
10. Find iPhone/iPad (free) – this app will help you recover a lost iPhone or iPad even if the volume is off.  Combine this with a pass code to open your items, and you’re good to go in the security area.

Friday Fast Five – Your Guide To New Media

By Benét J. Wilson, chair, NABJ Digital Journalism Task Force & social media/newsletters editor, Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association

It seems as if every day, there is some new hardware, software, tool, technology or trick designed to help us do our jobs smarter and faster.  This column was created to help you cut through the clutter. So enjoy these tips — and pass them along!

1. GigaOm – What newspapers and other media could learn from Reddit.
2. SocialMedia Biz – Memolane: Helping tell our stories through social media
3. Mashable – 11 Free Services for Scheduling Social Media Updates
4. Blogging Tips – How to Find Professional Web Designers for Your Online Business?
5. Knight Digital Media Center – Review: RCFP “first aid” app for journalists

From Journalism.co.uk: 22 Tools And Apps Every Journalism Student Should Know About

By Benét J. Wilson, DJTF chair & freelance aviation/travel journalist and blogger

The Journalism.co.uk is among the websites that are on my must-read list.  I’m a big fan of journalism tool lists, because they not only let me know if I’m keeping up, but they almost always teach this old dog some new tricks.

They’ve done it again with this list. I looked at the list, and discovered I’m using 15 of the 22 tools with varying degrees of success.  And below are another five you can add to your own toolbox.

1. Camera+ — this iPhone camera app takes it to the next level, allowing you to zoom in and out, adjust picture quality, use a timer, add a stabilizer, save to your camera roll and instantly share on social media platforms.
2. Video+ — This takes the video camera to the next level, allowing you to do cool stuff like add special effects and lighting.
3. iPromptPro — turn your iPhone or iPad into an instant teleprompter with this app.
4. AP Stylebook – yes, it’s pricey at $24.99, but it’s great to have this journalists bible right on your iPhone. Plus you can save things you look up regularly (like datelines for me).
5. Hours Keeper — this is a great app for all my freelancers to keep track of projects, including time spent and invoicing.

My Top 10 List Of Must-Have iPhone Apps For Journalists

By Benét J. Wilson, DJTF chair & freelance aviation/travel journalist and blogger

As chair of NABJ’s Digital Journalism Task Force and certified digital media geek, I get asked all the time what are the best apps journalists should have on their iPhones. There’s a lot of great stuff out there, and 10 different journalists would give you 10 different apps.  Below are my picks, but I have many more apps I love to use.

1. AP Stylebook: OK, this puppy costs $24.99, but I shelled out the bucks for this journalists’ bible.  The app offers searchable listings for the main, sports, business, punctuation and social media sections, and it allows users to make custom entries and notes. It also lets you bookmark things — like datelines — that you tend to seek over and over.
   
2. Camera +: I thought the iPhone camera app was perfectly fine. Wrong!! I hate to pay for apps, but this has been worth every penny of the $1.99 cost.  I can use the camera flash as a continuous light.  I can better control and focus my pictures. I can shoot in different modes.  And I can automatically post to Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. Cool!
3. TIE Photoshop Express and iMovie: You have a cool camera app. Now you need an app to edit and organize your pictures. Photoshop Express is it.  You can crop, change the exposure, add colors and tints and upload to your favorite social media outlets. The MovieCamera app just rocks! You can use your flash to light a scene, it has auto focus, exposure and white balance, you can go hi res and HD AND you can see the sound recording levels.
4. iTalk: The iPhone comes with a perfectly good audio recorder.  But iTalk (the free version) is SO much more!! You get three levels of recording (good, better and best), a huge red record button and it puts your files in alphabetical order.  You can email smaller files, but need to download iTalk Sync to transfer larger files to your computer.  But if you buy iTalk Pro for $1.99, youcan use Dropbox to transfer your files.
5. Audioboo:  this app that lets you record up to five minutes of audio and attach a phot, that is easily posted to Twitter, Facebook, Posterous or Tumblr. Some folks even use it for quick podcasts and radio broadcasts.
6. Evernote: I’m one of those people who is addicted to the Notes function on my iPhone.  But the problem is, Notes is very static and I can’t access it when my phone isn’t around. In comes Evernote.  This app is Notes on steroids.  I can yype a text note. Clip a web page. Snap a photo. Grab a screenshot. I can snap a pic of a business card.  I can store web pages. I can copy notes from Twitter.  I could go on, but you get the point.  The bonus is that I can access my Evernotes from any device — iPhone, iPad or laptop computer!
7. Dragon Go/Dragon Diction: The Dragon Go app lets you speak to find the things you need.  This app links you to everything from local businesses to books to maps to weather — all by voice. Keeping it in the family, I also like Dragon Dictation, which records you speaking and allows you to send an email, a tweet or a status update on Facebook.
8. Ustream: this app allows me to shoot live video from my iPhone. I can also upload the video to my YouTube channel.
9. Town Hall:  For 99 cents, you can track current and past members of Congress, including links to official sites, news, Wikipedia, OpenSecrets, VoteSmart and GovTrack.
10. Merriam-Webster Dictionary:  this app is powered by Dragon Diction, allowing you to do voice searches of words. It will even pronounce the words you look up.

Happy New Year with New Tech Tools

By Sylvia Franklin

 

It’s a new year, and that probably means new demands on your already overscheduled life. Here are a few tech tools that, hopefully, will make things a bit easier.

 

DocScanner iPhone, $4.99 

DocScanner works across iOS, Android and Symbian platforms. Just take a photo of a document, receipt or notebook page and email it as a PDF. Integrate with Mobile.me, Dropbox or Evernote.  Full disclosure, a few bugs were discovered in the previous version.  The fixes were recently released here — docscannerapp.com/2011/04/02/docscanner-iphone-5-0-1-released/

 

CardMunch, Free 

Like you, I get a ton of business cards. Problem is, what to do with them on-the-go? A possible solution — CardMunch. Use this app to scan business cards, then add them as contacts in your phone and connect with them on LinkedIn.

 

EventBrite Attendee App, Free 

Ever get tired of registering for an event, then losing the paper ticket and registration details weeks later? Eventbrite launched its first attendee app a couple of weeks ago. You can use it to buy Eventbrite tickets and then present your ticket barcode for scanning at the door. Finally! Keeps you organized, and greener.

 

Square 

Carrying cash is so 2011. Square works by combining a small, square-shaped card reader with a free app for iPhone and Android. Plug the reader into the microphone jack of your smartphone and open the app. Transactions can be processed either by swiping the card or hand-keying the digits.

Square charges a 2.75% transaction fee but has no other associated costs. It’s great for entrepreneurs and small business in that it eliminates the need for expensive point-of-sale systems.  It’s also portable and can be used with any Android or iOS device.

 

Vlingo

Feeling a little anti-Mac, but loving the iPhone’s personal assistant Siri, and its voice-activated capability? Here’s an alternative – Vlingo. It does more than just take voice commands to make calls, SMS, emails, search the web, or get directions. Vlingo also interfaces with your Twitter and Facebook accounts to let you update with your voice. And it does so without workarounds. For example, if you wanted to tweet, but couldn’t because Twitter only recognizes you by your phone number instead of your user name, and the only way around it is to use your phone number and other Byzantine rules. Complicated? Yes, but not Vlingo.

 

Happy New year, happy tech tools!

 

Equal parts digital storyteller and strategist, Sylvia Franklin prefers a multiplatform approach when telling and sharing stories.

Friday Fast Five

By Benét J. Wilson, DJTF co-chair, Online Managing Editor-Business Aviation, Aviation Week Group

Here are my picks for the week!

1. 10000 Words – 4 Ways Newspapers Can Better Use Facebook To Engage Readers
2. All Twitter – How to use Twitter to Spy on the Competition
3. Journalists’ Toolkit – The best video export options
4. Mashable – 8 Ways to Improve Your Live Event With Social Media
5. MakeUseOf – 10 Ways To Update Facebook & Twitter Simultaneously

Top 10 Apps I Picked Up At NABJ 2011

By Benét J. Wilson, DJTF co-chair, Online Managing Editor-Business Aviation, Aviation Week Group

At last week’s NABJ Convention, Val Hoeppner of the Freedom Forum taught MOBILE STORYTELLING 101 as a half-day Learning Lab. As part of the lab. Hoeppner showed us a bunch of iPhone apps that journalists can use in mobile storytelling, Here are my 10 favorites. All are free unless otherwise noted.

Val Hoeppner – Google+ If you need to take your multimedia skills to the next level check out our Advanced Multimedia Boot Camp in Nashville, Tenn. Oct. 12-16, 2011. Advanced Multimedia Boot Camp Offered Oct. 2011. Workshops and Conferences. Advanced Multimedia Boot Camp is for professional journalists, journalism educators, students and others with some multimedi…

2011 Convention – Tuesday and Wednesday – National Association of Black Journalists NABJ BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING Location: 7:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m. REGISTRATION & WELCOME CENTER Location: Broad Street Foyer Make sure to visit the registration & welcome center for all of your convention materials. Sign up for the special events, including the golf tournament, the 5K Walk/Run, and purchase tickets to the Salute to Excellence Awards Gala and Saturday Gospel Brunch.

“	I have so many #nabj11takeaway moments, it’s hard to choose. I’ll pick @vhoeppner Visual Storytelling & @webbmedia top 10 #techtrends. #NABJ
	NABJDigital August 8, 2011

Let’s face it — even though we are all news gatherers, we are also voracious news consumers.  I’m shocked that I didn’t have the AP Mobile app on my iPhone, considering all the great content available on it.

AP Mobile AP Mobile is an award-winning multimedia news portal developed by The Associated Press that provides anytime access to international, national and local news. In addition to AP’s own worldwide coverage of breaking news, sports, entertainment, politics and business, more than 1,000 AP members and third-party sources provide content for AP Mobile.

I’m one of those people who is addicted to the Notes function on my iPhone.  But the problem is, Notes is very static and I can’t access it when my phone isn’t around. In comes Evernote.  This app is Notes on steroids.  I can “Type a text note. Clip a web page. Snap a photo. Grab a screenshot.” I can snap a pic of a business card.  I can store web pages. I can copy notes from Twitter.  I could go on, but you get the point.  The bonus is that I can access my Evernotes from any device — iPhone, iPad or laptop computer!

Remember Everything | Evernote Corporation Save your ideas, things you like, things you hear, and things you see. Evernote works with nearly every computer, phone and mobile device out there. Search by keyword, tag or even printed and handwritten text inside images. Get Evernote Download Now It’s free.

And here I thought my installed iPhone camera app was perfectly fine. Wrong!! I hate to pay for apps, but this has been worth every penny of the $1.99 cost.  I can use the camera flash as a continuous light.  I can better control and focus my pictures. I can shoot in different modes.  And I can automatically post to Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. Cool!

Camera+ …the ultimate photo app Use the iPhone 4 LED flash as a continuous fill light to improve photo quality, especially for portrait and macro shots. Use the grid to line up your shots and eliminate tilted shots. Up to 6× zoom with advanced digital processing provides you with quality that simply blows away the competition.

You have a cool camera app. Now you need an app to edit and organize your pictures. Photoshop Express is it.  You can crop, change the exposure, add colors and tints and upload to your favorite social media outlets.

Photo Editor, Online Photo Editor, Photoshop Express | Photoshop.com First things first… create an account Create a free Photoshop.com account so you can use Photoshop Express apps to upload photos, store and organize them, and create interactive slideshows-and to quickly post your edited photos to sites like Facebook. Does your photo need a quick fix? Crop, straighten, adjust color, and touch up imperfections.

Staying with the photo theme, Hoeppner told us about the Pano app, which allows you to easily take fantastic panoramic pictures.  I love that this app tells you just where to move the camera to use up to 16 photos for a 360 degree shot.

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftwareSocialPreview?id=293709029&mt=8&s=143441&wdId=32800

I’ve used the iPhone video camera, but the MovieCamera app just rocks! You can use your flash to light a scene, it has auto focus, exposure and white balance, you can go hi res and HD AND you can see the sound recording levels. Sweet!

iPhone – iPod Touch – iPad Apps Finally! A motion picture camera app for the iPod touch, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 that allows your professional skills to shine. Movie Camera is designed for professional cinematographers who want to leverage the small size and portability of the iPod touch or iPhone but still want complete control over the picture settings.

The iPhone comes with a perfectly good audio recorder.  But iTalk (the free version) is SO much more!! You get three levels of recording (good, better and best), a huge red record button and it puts your files in alphabetical order.  You can email smaller files, but need to download iTalk Sync to transfer larger files to your computer.  But if you buy iTalk Pro for $1.99, youcan use Dropbox to transfer your files.

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftwareSocialPreview?id=293673304&mt=8&s=143441&wdId=32800

iTalk Sync Free Download for Mac and Windows | One More Tap Griffin Technology has just released a public beta version of iTalk Sync for Windows computers. iTalk Sync is a companion program to iTalk. iTalk Sync for the Mac is also available and requires Mac OS X v10.4 or greater. iTalk turns your iPhone, iPhone 3G or 2nd generation iPod touch into a high-quality recording device.

Hoeppner had nothing but high praise for Tumblr,a microblogging site that can be used via browser, phone, desktop or email.  Tumblr allows you to post content including ext, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos.  Check out how NPR is using Tumblr, below.

Sign up | Tumblr

When analyzing the black women who are 35 and older, the percent who have never been married drops to 25 percent, indicating that a solid majority of black women get married before they turn 35.

The Dragon Go app lets you speak to find the things you need.I used it in Philadelphia to find a restaurant that had late-night delivery because I was still starving after an evening reception.  I highly recommend the soup dumplings!  This app links you to everything from local businesses to books to maps to weather — all by voice. Keeping it in the family, I also like Dragon Dictation, which records you speaking and allows you to send an email, a tweet or a status update on Facebook.

Dragon Go! Say What You Want and Dragon Go! Delivers Across the Mobile Web Imagine – one app access to everything you want on the mobile web! That’s Dragon Go! You just say what you want and Dragon Go! not only hears what you say – it also understands what you want and gives you direct access to the best sites on the Mobile Web delivering what you want.

Compose message and update Social Networking status – by voice on iPad, iPhone or iPod touch Dragon Dictation, powered by Nuance’s world-renowned Dragon NaturallySpeaking software, allows you to stay connected all the time, even when your hands are busy.

We ended the session with Hoeppner sending us out into the halls to use one of our tools to do a small mobile storytelling project.  I chose to use Audioboo, an app that lets you record up to five minutes of audio and attach a photo, that is easily posted to Twitter, Facebook, Posterous, Tumblr or Friendfeed.  Below is one I did with one of my fellow attendees. Enjoy!

Audioboo

http://boos.audioboo.fm/swf/fullsize_player.swf