2 apps that can turn your smartphone into a broadcast studio

Karl Hodge at the Content Strategist reports:

Tools like Vyclone, a social video editing and publishing platform for crowdsourced video. Up to four streams can be used as the raw material for automatically assembled coverage of a chosen event. The applications for journalism are clear — enabling a small team armed with iPhones to capture multiple angles of a story as it unfolds. 

Then there’s Bambuser, available for iOS, Android and Windows phones. It’s an app that enables you to stream video live, direct from your mobile device. Outside broadcasting has never been easier.

Why the writer is the star of content marketing

Bryan Clark at Copyblogger says the future of content marketing belongs to the writer:

Google made talented writers more important with the Panda and Penguin updates. Instead of weak content and “unnatural” link building, now sites need strong content that attracts links organically. 

But it hasn’t stopped there. Now who creates the content, and who does the linking out matters – which is why Google wants to know who you are via your Google+ authorship profile. What’s been dubbed Author Rank has the potential to be the biggest algorithmic signal for SEO since the hyperlink itself. 

The days of lame anonymous content are over. Even better, rock star writers with demonstrated success and strong social followings will command the highest compensation and equity positions. 

Think about that.

First rule of content: Be the show

James O'Brien at Mashable writes about the Red Bull content strategy:

The idea central to content marketing is that a brand must give something valuable to get something valuable in return. Instead of the commercial, be the show. Instead of the banner ad, be the feature story. The value returned is often that people associate good things with — and return to engage with — the brand.

4 ways you can succeed with a mobile landing page

Greg Hickman at Copyblogger says:

Landing pages are critical in your marketing funnel. That means they need to work well in a mobile environment. 

If your customers can get to your landing page from an email, your mobile responsive website, or an SMS (as mentioned earlier), you’ll want to take a few steps to make your mobile landing pages a success.

• Create a clear call to action. You thought a clear call to action was critical on a normal landing page? It’s a must on a mobile device. Screen real estate is limited, and people navigate with one eye and one thumb. Make it clear and un-missable.

• Be thumb-friendly. For most devices, the ideal clickable area is 44×44 pixels. You’ll want to add padding to your links, and make sure you have some negative space between those links to avoid mis-clicks. (All the more reason to follow the best practice of having no irrelevant links on landing pages.)

• Use simple forms. Keep your forms to as few fields as possible. Simple is sexy. Long forms equal lower conversion, and that’s even more true on mobile devices.

• Test, test, test. What works on desktop won’t always work on mobile, so be sure to test your landing pages with your end goal always in mind.

The MoPR Manifesto

Let's start with a basic truth: Most journalists have total contempt for publicists, and publicists are sick of pitching stories.

Here's the good news: There's an unprecedented opportunity to make both sides happy.

Publicists no longer need journalists to tell their clients' stories to the public. We can bypass them entirely and talk directly to the stakeholders who matter most to our clients.

Behind this opportunity are three significant developments.

One is the emergence of social media. Another is the near ubiquity of smartphones and tablets. The final is the development of personal communication technology that allow just about anyone to write a story, snap a photo, shoot and edit a video, or make an audio recording -- on the fly and with very little training.

All of this is readily available to any publicist. But access is just the first step.

To exploit this opportunity, we must master a wide range of media. We must write well. We must learn to take great photos. We must shoot great video and edit it in compelling ways.

Above all, we must master the art of storytelling. We must combine text, audio and images into stories that our clients' audiences will embrace and share.

The press release is dead. Long live the mobile publicist.

12 virtues that can make your content more shareable

Monica Romeri at Social Media Today identifies 12 characteristics of content that folks are likely to share:

1.  It covers real-time, relevant issues or news. 

2.  It includes captivating images. 

3.  Highly shared titles are actionable, concise, clear, descriptive, authoritative and intriguing. 

4.  It includes compelling and illustrative infographics. 

5.  Highly shared content has breadth and depth.  

6.  It shares fresh, original thinking. 

7.  It covers topics blowing up in the news a la newsjacking. 

8.  Highly shared content is not solely focused on pushing products or services. 

9.  It is free of spelling errors, typos and grammatical and editing flaws. 

10.  It is visually interesting and presented in an organized fashion. 

11.  It showcases industry-relevant thought leadership. 

12.  Highly shared content may come from a trusted and credible source.

Simple tip to improve your writing: Use more periods.

Writers love commas.

They allow us to start in one place, meander freely through a series of connected concepts, wrap our prose around a metaphor or two, and arrive safely at a conclusion.

Unfortunately, they also allow us to abuse our readers, stumbling from one unrelated idea to another, ignoring the need for transitions, droning on and on, and utterly losing and confusing our audiences.

There is a simple solution to improve your writing. Use more periods.

Embrace the concise. Next time you are thinking about one more comma, go with a period.

4 ways to create URLs that attract Google to your online content

If you want Google to find your content, it helps to create a URL that is easy for the search engine to recognize and catalogue.

That means you should:

1. Use words in the URL that tell the search engine about the content.
2. Keep your URLs brief and to the point; trim any extraneous information.
3. Avoid including generic information like page numbers or session IDs.
4. Avoid using too much keyword information in the URL; one keyword or phrase is probably enough.

Think of it this way: If you can recite the URL from memory a day after you created it, then it's a cinch for Google to find it. If you can't, then you are making it too hard for Google to find your content.

Is brand journalism 'real' journalism?

When properly executed, you bet your ass. And I say that with 20 years in the "real" news biz.

There are a lot of doubters. Most of them are hard-core journalists who are still slaving in a dying industry. (OK, it's not really dying, per se. But it's definitely changing from a corporate model to an entrepreneurial model, and few journalists are making the transition comfortably.)

I've got news for the news snobs: For the last 70 years or so, you've been doing exactly what brand journalists are doing. That is, making a living generating timely, useful, interesting stories in the service of a corporate client.

Newspapers, radio stations and TV stations are owned by corporations, not collectives. It's time to stop pretending you are on higher ground.

To be successful, brand journalists must tell stories that engage, entertain and inform their audiences. How is covering the news generated by a brand any different than covering any other beat?

"But brand journalists must submit their stories for corporate approval," the doubters say. 

OK, so how many reporters don't have to submit their stories for editing from a higher-up who works (gasp) for a corporation?

Stories are stories. Journalism is journalism. Get over it.

KitCam: It's a lot of camera for just $1.99

Here's a new camera app I'm playing with. It's called KitCam, and it offers some interesting advantages over Hipstamatic, Instragram, Magic Hour and other such apps. The app comes with a wide range of lens and film choices. It handles video and time-lapse and tilt shift and even multi-exposure. It connects you to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, Dropbox, Instagram and more. And almost all of it comes with the basic $1.99 package.

Here's a video introduction:



Give it a try and let me know what you think.

5 ways to use Pinterest to make your content better

Mallory Jean Tenore at Poynter says reporters and editors are using Pinterest to:

1. Highlight feature content by connecting it to topical Pinterest boards.
2. Resurface old but quality content to give it a new life.
3. Respond to news events by posting in-house and crowd-sourced content.
4. Showcase images from local attractions and events.
5. Reach new audiences by creating a visual index of their content.

For detailed examples, read her post.

3 ways to pique interest with a great title

Roger C. Parker at the Content Marketing Institute says:

• Metaphors make titles easier to understand and remember by giving readers a mental picture or point of comparison for the subject you’re talking about. Jay Conrad Levinson’s “Guerrilla Marketing” communicates its promise of describing unconventional ways to achieve success, by likening the marketing tactics to tactics used in guerrilla warfare. Another metaphor-based series is the “Chicken Soup for the…” series, which communicates a warm, nurturing feeling by referencing the meal that mothers and grandmothers have traditionally served to their family members who need some TLC when they’re under the weather.
• Alliteration, or rhymed consonants, also makes titles easier to remember. Examples include Cliff Atkinson’s “Beyond Bullet Points,” Dr. Frank Luntz’s “Words that Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear,” and Lynne Felder’s “Writing for the Web: Creating Compelling Web Content Using Words, Pictures, and Sound.”
• Curiosity can be aroused by unexpected words or contradictory terms, which can help set your content apart from “duller” treatments of the same topic. An example is David Chilton’s “The Wealthy Barber.” The contradiction between “wealth” and “barber” compels readers to find out “how” and “why” barbers can become wealthy.

Visit CMI to download Parker's 10-point checklist for creating titles that will sell your content to your audiences.

5 ways to use social media to improve your content journalism

From Alice Brennan at Forbes:

1. Develop a voice. You don’t mess around with your logo, so be focused in creating a pitch-perfect social media presence.
2. Embrace the nuances. Consumers are smart, so branded content should be subtle.
3. Be seen at all the right parties. Where your content is published matters. Be sure to research the sites and outlets your customers frequent and respect.
4. Get it out there. This is where social media is your best friend. Get a real distribution plan for your branded content and execute it well— in some cases, you may even want to consider using a content distribution platform.
5. Tailor content to the social media platform. For example, post photos on Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram; promote text on Facebook and news on Twitter.

How to tell a story with one photo and 60 seconds of audio

Jeff Domansky at ThePRCoach.com says Fotobabble may be the Twitter of storytelling:

Fotobabble is a storytelling tool that lets you do just that using your computer or iPhone. It’s got great potential from quick and easy storytelling to curation and content marketing. I can see all kinds of creative possibilities. 

It’s easy to use. Upload a photo and add your story by recording a simple audio track on Fotobabble’s website. It’s free and with a studio quality microphone, the only limit is your imagination.

There is more than one way to be a journalist these days

That's a central theme in this brief video from PBS Off Book:

4 things that decide if your Facebook post shows up in a news feed

Josh Constine at TechCrunch says Facebook now looks at four factors to determine if any given post will show up in any given news feed:

1. If you interacted with an author’s posts before: If you Like every post by a Page that Facebook shows you, it will show you more from that Page.
2. Other people’s reactions to a specific post: If everyone else on Facebook shown a post ignores it or complains, it’s less likely to show you that post.
3. Your interaction with posts of the same type in the past: If you always Like photos, there’s a better chance you’ll see a photo posted by a Page.
4. If that specific post has received complaints by other users who have seen it, or the Page who posted it has received lots complaints in the past, you’ll be less likely to see that post. This factor became a lot more prevalent starting in September 2012,

How to create content by staging a stunt -- and covering it as news

What is Red Bull? Really, nothing more than a can of extremely caffeinated soda. How do you create content about that?

Red Bull brilliantly solves the problem by staging stunts and then covering them as if they were news. This stunt-driven content works for the Red Bull audience because it reflects the brand's soul: extreme, cool, irreverent, and sometimes just fall-down funny.

For example, here is a video based upon a simple idea: What happens if you build a massive Rube Goldberg machine (that is, a very complex contraption designed to accomplish a very simple task), and populate it with athletes from the world of extreme sports?

You get this:




OK, so not every brand has the budget to create something this grand. But stunt-driven content can work on the small scale as well. For example, this video in the "Will It Blend?" series from Blendtec:



Again, this works because it fits into the Blendtec ethos: Our blender can blend just about anything, and here's proof. This is a throwback to the old Timex commercials from the 1960s:



How much could it have cost to make that one?

The point is: You can create entertaining content with a can of soda, a blender or a wristwatch. All you need is to dream up an imaginative stunt that includes a touch of humor.

4 good reasons to buy a pancake lens

From Andrew Gibson at Picture Correct:

1. Simplicity: Pancakes are prime lenses. From an optical design point of view they are pretty simple, much like a 50mm prime lens. The Canon 40mm pancake lens has six elements, whereas zooms usually have ten to twenty elements. This translates to high image quality and lower manufacturing costs.
2. Price. Pancake lenses tend to be inexpensive. You get a lot of bang for your buck in terms of image quality.
3. Aperture. The maximum aperture of my 40mm pancake lens is f2.8. This is not especially impressive for a prime lens, but better than most zooms. If your main lens is a kit lens you will certainly appreciate the improvement.
4. Short minimum focusing distance. The 40mm pancake lens can focus on a subject within 28 centimetres of the camera. This is quite close, and you can get even closer by using extension tubes.

Create a web site in seconds from your smartphone

Here's an idea: How about an app that let's you quickly and easily create a website from your smartphone? In this video, Robert Scoble interviews the founder of a company that has created just that.  It's call Zapd.



The potential applications for the mobile publicist are enormous. Using Zapd, you could create mobile, social web sites that:

• Let you cover an event in real time, curating all the coverage onto a unique site while also pushing the coverage to Facebook.
• Allow your client's employees to collaborate on a public project from their smartphones while still allowing you to manage the results.
• Let your customers crowd-cover an event or collaborate on a specific subject.
• Host a real-time employee blog that allows contributors to post from anywhere in real time.
• Allow your CEO to communicate with stakeholders in real time.
• Establish an instant base of important information for stakeholders and media during a company crisis.

That's just off the top of my head. Going to play with this over the next few weeks and let you know how it performs. If you have any interesting thoughts on this, let me know.

Short on time and need content? Create a round-up story

Allison King at Ragan's explains:

Do you have 10 stories on the same topic? Pull them together in a list or primer that allows readers to access all the resources in a single location.

Write a short introduction, and include brief descriptions of each item with links to the original pieces. You'll drive traffic to a new piece of content and give a second life to older articles readers might have missed. 

Here are four other ways to create content quickly.

Panel discussion: Best practices for creating online video

From Troy Dreier at OnlineVideo.net:

Today’s video workflows are moving to the cloud, but there’s no one-size-fits-all solutions that works best for all companies. Cloud video workflows vary widely in both cost and features.

At a Streaming Media East panel discussion on cloud video workflows, three experts helped attendees understand the different solutions available and choose the right one for their needs.

The panelists also gave out plenty of practical advice on related topics such as attracting an audience to online video.

Workflow: How to create a time-lapse video with a Mac and Final Cut Pro X

Rich Harrington at Adorama demonstrates:

5 basics to shooting great video

From Allison King at Ragan's

When planning and shooting your video, these production basics will help you look like a pro and prevent potential disaster.

• Use the "rules of thirds." Divide the shot into thirds horizontally and thirds vertically (so you have 9 imaginary equal sections). The points of interest should occur at 1/3 or 2/3 of the way up or across the frame.
• Pay attention to lighting; it can make or break your video. Don't, for example, shoot video of someone indoors who is backlit by a window.
• Bad audio is worse than bad video. More people will tolerate a poor quality image in a video. But bad audio, says Wolcott, makes the video unviewable.
• Get a lot of close-ups. Use the 80:20 rule: 80 percent close-ups and 20 percent wide shots. Close-ups is how you are able to convey action and emotion.
• Test across devices, including mobile devices.

Borrowing the perfect strategy for developing content

From Simon Penson at the Content Marketing Institute::

I use reverse engineering a lot, and when it comes to content strategy, there are few better ways of using this little trick than by “borrowing” content flow and content strategy from the guys and girls who know it best.

Magazine planning has been perfected over decades of iteration, and the very best print-based titles leave a footprint that offers the ultimate blueprint from which you can create your perfect content strategy online.

Capturing the story with time-lapse photography: Sandy slams into NYC

Here's a time-lapse sequence from photographer Silas Maniatis that demonstrates the power of the form to tell a story simply but effectively. Here, he captures Hurricane Sandy as it passes through New York City.



Interested in learning how to shoot time-lapse? There are plenty of resources online. Here are a few:

• Timelapse Photography: A Complete Guide for Beginners
• Timelapse Photography Tutorial: An Overview of Shooting, Processing and Rendering Timelapse Movies
• The Ultimate Guide to Time-Lapse Photography

Stop talking about 'social media' and start talking about 'real-time media'

David Meerman Scott says:

When I speak with executives around the world about social media and business, many think of their kids' (or grandkids') Facebook or the Twitter silliness they hear about on television. ... When I ask the same executives about "real-time communications with customers" they lean forward and want to know more. These are the same people who dismiss Twitter. When I talk about "real-time media" they understand that it is important for their business.

Makes sense to me.

Stuck on a story? Make a list

Lydia Howard at Ragan's explains why the list format is so popular and durable:

Resources at print publications are continuing to dwindle, which means that editors today often turn to industry thought leaders to develop content. They're much more likely to accept something brief and to the point, like a numbered tip article, than a lengthy essay about a topic—and readers are much more likely to read it.

The master of the "list as story" format is Guy Kawasaki.  You can learn a lot just by studying his posts.

Just learning to shoot photos? Go manual, not auto

Beginning photographers often make the mistake of depending way too much on the automatic features in DSLR cameras, Peter Phun at PhotoCorrect says. He suggests learning in manual mode:

When you’re learning, the best you can do is to learn to adjust the settings on manual. That way you can figure out what you did wrong. Shooting on auto will not tell you much when you’re trying to troubleshoot. Programs that can read exif information which record shutter speed, ISO, aperture, White Balance are revealed when a picture is taken on Manual Mode but not so in Auto.

In this post, Phun lists nine more common mistakes that that beginners make.

3 simple steps to buying (and using) your first DSLR camera

For many folks, the hardest step in learning to shoot photos is deciding on a camera. Here's some
great advice from Chaz Curry at PhotographyBlogger:

1. Buy the cheapest Canon or Nikon DSLR (body only).
2. Buy a 50mm 1.8 lens.
3. Start shooting immediately.

For details, follow the link.

A pocket-sized tripod for iPhoneography

From blogger Glyn Evans:

The portable and flexible tripod makers Joby, have just released their latest creation, the GripTight Micro Stand. Designed for any smartphone with or without a case, the GripTight Micro Stand grips your smartphone safely and securely via a spring loaded mount/grip, allows multi positioning via a machined aluminium mini ball head, that lets you tilt your smartphone 36 degrees in any direction, and can be quickly unfolded when you need it and folds up compactly to about the size of a car key when you don't.

4 tips for more effective storytelling

From Kathy Oneto at Fast Company:

Some tips on storytelling can be found from research consultancy Latitude, which recently released part one of its study, “The Future of Storytelling,” which identifies trends and audience attitudes about content. The tips Latitude provides on telling stories are the following:

1. IMMERSION--Create an immersive experience through content that is delivered in multi-media and that is multi-sensory;
2. INTERACTIVITY--Allow the consumer to become a part of it;
3. INTEGRATION--Ensure there is coherence across the many touchpoints; and
4. IMPACT--Make it lead to action

Meograph lets you package your client's story in terms of time and space

From Rachel McAthy at journalism.co.uk:

Multimedia storytelling tool Meograph has announced a number of new updates to the platform, including making the geographical pinpointing of a 'moment' within a story optional.

The tool, which enables journalists to plot the times and places of a story on a map and timeline, was launched in July this year. Users can also add multimedia content to each 'moment', such as images, YouTube videos and links to outside articles, as well as audio narration.

The end result is an embeddable Meograph, a playable multimedia package that documents a story.

What can a publicist learn from Circa?

While much of the journalism/PR world recoils in semi-horror, I'm finding Circa to be pretty damn intriguing.  And is it really that far away from other innovations. In many ways, Circa reminds me of at least three other innovations in news gathering:

• Storify, the curating tool that allows users to grab the essentials from all over the web and to rearrange them into a curated story.
• The social media news release, the somewhat quixotic attempt to redesign the boring news release into a format that reporters would find actually useful.
• USA Today, which "broke" the newspaper back in the 1980s much the same way that Circa is attempting to redefine news for an online generation -- to much of the same howls of derision. (It now vies with the Wall Street Journal for the largest national circulation in the U.S.)

Mobile publicists (and content journalists in general) should pay careful attention to Circa. It may be showing us a better way to package our content and to attract a 21st century audience.

How to create a video-editing station with an iPad

From Adam Dachis at Lifehacker:

Tablets are so popular that we've supposedly entered a "post-PC era," signifying the death of the personal computer. While we don't think that's happening quite yet, many people are actually getting things done on tablets. Well, at least Flickr user Matthew Pearce is, and he's got a tiny little workspace to prove it.

7 ways to make it easy to scan your content

People don't read -- they scan.

That's the point of this useful post from designer Roger C. Parker. He offers seven tips for improving scan-ability, as well as a link to a free 14-page, best-practices guide to designing white papers that are more readable.

• Readability Design: 7 Tips for Engaging Content

Tip: How to use Instagram as a publicity tool

A tip from Camella Mendez at the Content Marketing Institute:

Use Instagram to share unique, behind-the-scenes content that not only gives your audience a good reason to want to follow you there, but also helps you solidify a personal relationship and build loyalty with your customers new and old. Instagram is a perfect place to get even more personal with your biggest fans.

How to choose the right microphone for videography

Once you start working with video, you learn something early. While the quality of the video is important, the quality of the audio is absolutely vital.

An audience will put up with crappy video, but not crappy audio. It's just too annoying. Folks will just skip your video for the next one.

That's why you don't want to depend on your camera's built-in mic to capture audio. Instead, you will want to work with lapel mics, handheld wireless mics and shotgun mics. That can get expensive, but it's worth it.

I think it's fair to say that, if you have to choose between a top-of-the-line camera or first-rate audio equipment, you should put your money into the audio. (Unless you plan to never conduct an on-camera interview or to capture ambient sound.) It's that important.

With that in mind, here's a solid guide to selecting microphone from Videomaker.com

How to control your GoPro Hero camera from your smartphone

Here's the tutorial from GoPro. You will need a smartphone, the GoPro app, and a GoPro Hero camera armed with a GoPro wifi backpack.

It's all about the light: A short guide to getting the most out of aperture

Mobile publicists must master a wide range of media. It's no longer enough to understand just writing copy. We have to learn (among many other things) how to shoot our own photos.

Even if you are shooting with a smartphone, it's a smart idea to understand what photographers call the exposure triangle: shutter speed, ISO and aperture.

Shutter speed is simply how long the shutter allows light into the camera. If you want to stop a runner in mid-stride, you want to use a short speed. If you want to capture the moon at night, you need a long speed.

The ISO is a concept from the analog days of photography. It is the "speed of the film." A low ISO is good on a sunny day. A mid-ISO is good for indoor work. A high-ISO is good for darkness. But beware: The higher the ISO, the more "noise" you are likely to capture on your image. Generally, an ISO of 200 to 800 is considered all-purpose, except for the most extreme situations like night photography.

Then there's aperture, which controls how much light reaches the shutter. The smaller the aperture, the deeper the focus. So if you want everything in the shot to be in focus (think "Citizen Kane"), you want the smaller aperture you can reasonably use in your situation. If you want to blow out the background or the foreground, and focus entirely upon the main subject, then you want to open up the lens to the widest aperture that is reasonable for the situation.

It's all a matter of balancing how much light goes to through the aperture to the shutter, and how much light your camera registers on the image.

OK, that's the executive summary. Here's short guide to walk you through getting the most out of your aperture settings from blogger Ashley Beolens:

• Aperture – PictureCorrect

Mobile devices are maturing as news outlets, Pew study says

From the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ):

Half of all U.S. adults now have a mobile connection to the web through either a smartphone or tablet, significantly more than a year ago, and this has major implications for how news will be consumed and paid for, according to a detailed new survey of news use on mobile devices by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) in collaboration with The Economist Group. ...

News remains an important part of what people do on their mobile devices-64% of tablet owners and 62% of smartphone owners say they use the devices for news at least weekly, tying news statistically with other popular activities such email and playing games on tablets and behind only email on smartphones (not including talking on the phone). This means fully a third of all U.S. adults now get news on a mobile device at least once a week.

Mobile users, moreover, are not just checking headlines on their devices, although nearly all use the devices for the latest new updates. Many also are reading longer news stories - 73% of adults who consume news on their tablet read in-depth articles at least sometimes, including 19% who do so daily. Fully 61% of smartphone news consumers at least sometimes read longer stories, 11% regularly.

Why brand journalism works, from a former CBS News reporter

From former CBS News reporter David Henderson:

Brand journalism works to engage audiences. Why? Because it delivers stories audience want to hear. People have heard more than enough PR-type promotions, and therein is the rub. The big stumbling block is acceptance of new concepts by the PR and communications industry. They won’t budge from decades-old habits and tactics.

The way I see it, sharing a story that audiences care about is a whole lot more effective to get someone’s attention than falling into the predictable rut of traditional PR … which has not changed much in decades. While technology has changed, PR has remained in the mode of announcements, promotions, publicity and pushing stuff at audiences that by and large no longer are listening.

The Flip Cam gets new life as an iPhone app (what else?)

Don't know about you, but I really loved the FlipCam. It was elegantly designed, easy to use, and produced amazing HD video. The audio was lacking, but the next generation would have improved on that. Then Cisco bought it up, hyped it, then dumped it. But what can you expect from short-sighted greedy SOBs?

But now the Flip is reborn as an app for iPhone. All I can say is ... cool!

Baffled by all the new cameras coming out these days?

 Me, too. But I'm finding this online guide to be pretty damn useful:

• Photokina: An Easy-to-Follow Guide on the Latest in Cameras! (And then some) | Photojojo

The science of brand journalism

Brand journalism tells stories. And that, Fast Company reports on its blog, is a powerful strategy:

Stories affect us on both on an incredibly deep intellectual and emotional level that we are just beginning to understand.

That quest began when scientists discovered that fictional stories affected the same region of the brain that reacts when we ourselves are engaged in real-life drama. Stories create a bonding empathy which causes us to strongly identify with the made-up protagonist, as if we were, in fact, that person. In other words, stories have such impact because our brains actually get a little mixed up as to what’s real and what’s not. ...

Scientists have also determined why stories are so important to our intellectual activity: Our brains use them to process different strands of information and make sense of it all. It’s no secret that our early ancestors created elaborate stories about various mythological gods to explain various natural phenomena they couldn’t understand. Frankly, all of us are always after an explanation for why things are the way they are.

Video: How to build a swivel adaptor for the GoPro Hero 2

From Randy Werner's YouTube channel:

Three things you can do now to make your site more mobile friendly

From David Meerman Scott at Web Ink Now:

1. Make sure your site is mobile compliant. You need the pages to load properly in mobile devices.
2. Create a mobile sitemap so the search engines can index your pages for mobile browsers.
3. Use few words and small graphics. People don't read much on mobiles and they want the data to come quickly.

Journalists are using Instagram; so can publicists

From John Paul Titlow at Read Write Web:

Instagram is more about branding and engagement than eyeballs and dollars. After some campaign trail experimentation, the Associated Press is encouraging its staff photographers to use their personal Instagram feeds in a professional capacity. Meanwhile, well known media outlets like NPR and the Wall Street Journal maintain official accounts that share photos highlighting major news events.

The better choice for driving video? Facebook or Twitter?

Chris Johnson at Brightcove has a strong opinion. He says the winner is Facebook, largely due to its built-in video player and its ability to embed the video into a newsfeed when shared. See what you think. Does his argument hold water? Is there a choice better than Facebook ... perhaps YouTube, Google+ or Vimeo?

• Beet.TV: Facebook Beats Twitter in Driving Video Views, Brightcove's Chris Johnston

Apps: You may build one, but will anyone notice?

Apps can offer an exciting opportunity to publicize your client with highly targeted audiences. Unfortunately, they can be very expensive to create. And, as many companies are finding out, just publishing an app is not guarantee that anyone will notice. In this post,  Ouriel Ohayon from Appsfire explains why the app market is tougher than you may imagine and how you can succeed against the odds.:

•  So you’ve created an app; now why hasn’t anyone discovered it? — Tech News and Analysis

What's possible with just an iPhone camera? Here's work by 10 of the best iPhotographers

From Misho Baranovic at Digital Photography School:

The iPhone has revolutionised the ability to shoot, edit and share your photographs on one device. For many photographers, both amateur and professional, this integrated process has given them the freedom to experiment both within and across photographic styles.

To show you what’s possible with the iPhone, we’ve put together a showcase of talented photographers who use the iPhone as part of their photographic process. The photographers are from all corners of the world and span different styles including: landscape, portraiture (self and street), nature and wildlife, architecture, travel, street photography (colour and black and white), conceptual and documentary.

By the way: If you haven't read Misho's new "iPhone Photography eBook," get it now. Worth every dime, and more.

Storytelling: How 1 and 1 makes 3 -- a lesson from Ken Burns

From video journalist Adam Westbrook: 

(Documentary filmmaker Ken) Burns has a difficult job: make stories from the past compelling on screen. It’s tough because your characters are dead and the action you want to film has long since happened. You are left with interviews with historians, still photographs and empty buildings. As a former historian myself it’s a genre I’ve long thought needs a fresh approach – but I’ve been looking at it in the wrong way.

Watch this short film (itself superbly produced by Tom Mason and Sarah Klein) and you’ll see the Ken Burns approach isn’t so concerned with what we see. For him it’s all about crafting a compelling story.

The Mobile Publicist is now on Facebook

Find me at Facebook.com/MobilePublicist .

A down-and-dirty approach to time-lapse photography

Time-lapse photography can provide a very cool change of pace for your videos. In this presentation, Chris Jarvis demonstrates four time-lapse set-ups featuring a Nikon D3S, a Nikon D7000, and two GoPro Hero2s. The results are intriguing:



Instead of shooting a landscape, imagine using the same technique to capture time-lapse of a demonstration, or a process, or even an office in motion. There's a lot you can do with this technique.

Of course, there's more to this technique than just capturing the images. If you are working with a DSLR, here's a good place to start: http://www.lightstalking.com/timelapse

If you are working with a GoPro, start here: http://www.all-things-photography.com/gopro-hd-hero-time-lapse.html

There are plenty of other sources online, some for free, some for pay.

7 secrets of street photography -- and why you should learn them

For the mobile publicist, practicing the art of street photography offers at least two advantages. One, it's endlessly fascinating. Two, the techniques you hone are useful when shooting photos at corporate events. It helps you get beyond the grip and grin, and allows you to produce photos that are far more engaging.

From Selena Walker at PictureCorrect:

The secret to taking great street photography is a combination of technique, emotion and a little bit of patience. If you follow the secrets below you’ll be on your way to creating inspirational images:

• Street Photography: 7 Steps to Success

3 ways to create a YouTube page that grabs attention

From the Content Strategist blog:

According to company statistics, there are more than 800 million unique visits to YouTube with 4 billions hours of video are watched each month. A whopping 72 hours of video are uploaded onto the site every minute — that’s a lot of competition.

With so much content available, owners of YouTube pages need to make sure that they give people a reason to visit.

Here are some tips on how to make a YouTube page attractive and worthy of people’s attention.

How to tell a story like a photojournalist

From the Phoblographer:

Photojournalism is the process of documenting the happenings of life on camera through photography. These days, it tends to extend into videography but the main elements of the practice still hold their roots in still image capture. Photojournalism can still be a tough job as far as getting work and images that are different than other photojournalists but that is still a story that would hold an audience captive.

There are many factors that go into photojournalism. Many of them are ethically related and others are just how the industry works. But to tell a good story there are certain shots that are essential.

Simple tip: Make it easier edit images on your iPhone

From the Life In LoFi blog:

When using your iPhone everyday, many of us have the device’s Auto-Brightness turned on to help the screen compensate for optimal viewing under the varied lighting situations we find ourselves in all the time. This works great for most uses but the variances in iPhone screen brightness can really mess with image editing.

Here’s a tip I’ve been using for years to help get better results when trying to do more precise photo edits on my iPhone: Try editing your images with the Auto-Brightness turned off.

How to make your own panning time-lapse iPhone movies -- on the cheap

Stephen Sande at The Unofficial Apple Weblog explains:

So, you've always wanted to be able to take one of those cool time-lapse iPhone movies that slowly pans from one direction to another? Now you can do it easily and inexpensively with the Camalapse, a US$25 accessory that works with a Glif ($20) or other iPhone tripod mount to give your iPhone a spin as it's taking a movie.

New ebook on iPhone photography by mobile photographer Misho Baranovic

New from Darren Rowse's Digital Photography School:

We hunted down a world renowned Mobile Photographer – Misho Baranovic – and convinced him (not that it took too much arm twisting) to write the ultimate guide to iPhone Photography. To help people like my wife… and me… to lift our iPhone snapshots up to be the kind of shots that not help us to truly remember the those important moments in our lives.

Misho has created an information packed yet highly practical eBook that we guarantee will help you improve your iPhone Photography (and if it doesn’t – we’ll refund your money).

Inside you’ll discover:

• How the iPhone Camera works and how to use it to take great photos
• How to take more Control of your iPhone using Camera Replacement Apps (with a rundown of the best ones)
• Advanced Shooting Techniques with the ProCamera App to gain maximum control over focusing and exposure
• How to find compelling subjects to shoot on the street, with the family, in nature, travelling and at night
• How to develop your own editing style
• A rundown of native iPhone editing functions
• An overview of the best editing apps including one touch apps, filter based editing apps and professional editing apps and techniques.
• How to add text and graphic elements to your photos
• How to share your images with family, friends and the wider mobile photography community
• How to Get Your images ready to print

Read more: http://digital-photography-school.com/iphone-photography-ebook#ixzz24sgJfqDw

An Instagram for the real world?

PetaPixel reports that Instagram is developing a Wi-Fi enabled camera that will allow you to share instant photos in both the virtual and physical worlds -- nearly simultaneously. So why didn't Polaroid think of this?

The right way to focus a DSLR camera (times five)

A digital camera can give you fits during the focusing process, especially if you leave it in autofocus mode. This brief video by Phil Steele gives a good introduction to five different focusing techniques.

How to build a room for recording voicovers and other audio

Until you try to record voiceover for one of your videos, you have no idea how noisy even an ordinary room can get. Plus a room's acoustics can wreak havoc with the ambient sound your microphone picks up. Here's a guide from the folks at the magazine Videomaker:

• Building an Audio Recording Room

A time-lapse device for mobile phones for $25

The Phoblographer writes:

The Camalapse is a device that is made for smaller point and shoot cameras as well as mobile phones. Smartphones are loaded with great timelapse apps so there’s no need for complicated electronics inside of the Camalapse.

A new approach to the online broadcast

A new mobile app from Ustream called BFF (which stands for Broadcast for Friends) lets you broadcast live straight into your friends' Facebook news feeds: www.creativeplanetnetwork.com\

How to build a perfect Facebook post

Katy Ryan Schamberger at Ragan's writes:

If you manage a Facebook page (or several), experimentation is fun—but you need a more consistent content strategy. The perfect Facebook post includes a number of elements, including:

• A call to action that points to another Facebook element, a website, or a blog.
• Targeting to a specific country, language, or other parameters.
• An image.
• Mobile-friendly language and visuals (photos or video).

Be sure to check out her cheat sheet: The perfect Facebook post: A blueprint.

Looks like Android is losing to IOS among apps developers

Jill Asher explains:

First, there's the growing strength of iOS in the enterprise, which is not accidental. Not surprisingly, the massive popularity of the iPad (which outsells all Android tablets 3 to 1) has given Apple a boost in the business app space. But the company has made a concerted effort as well. Once known primarily as a maker of machines for consumers and schools, Apple has focused heavily on the enterprise of late: with its website focused on marketing to enterprises and case studies to support those efforts.

Let's not forget to mention the enterprise-oriented sales reps and how-to staff focusing on iPhones and iPads for business in each Apple Store (they are the reps wearing black polo shirts).

Conversely, the case for Android has suffered from frequent reports of malware and from widespread Android fragmentation. In addition, Android support for mobile device management (MDM) has been very spotty, resulting in bad publicity for the platform and very low adoption among enterprises.

Video: What the next iPhone looks like

Anthony Wing Kosner at Forbes.com has posted a video that presents a side-by-side comparison between the next iPhone and the current one. The new one is taller with a much bigger screen. I'd post the video here, but Forbes offers no embed. But you can view it here:

• Would You Flip For The iPhone 5 If It Looked Like This? - Forbes

Take a good look. If you are a mobile journalist, this will become your primary tool. (Until the next one, anyway.)

At last! A Yahoo CEO who opens a Flickr account

Yahoo! bought Flickr in 2005, but has never embraced the site nor realized its full potential. In this post, photo blogger and Flickr champion Thomas Hawk welcomes Yahoo's new CEO to the fold:

Pretty much ever since the day Marissa Mayer joined Yahoo as CEO I’ve been doing a search for her name as a member of Flickr. I’ve been heavily invested both in terms of personal energy and emotion in Flickr as a place to showcase my photography on the web and have been critical over the years of how Yahoo executive leadership has handled the site.

More recently I watched as Mayer posted her personal photography on Instagram as Yahoo’s new CEO and felt that as the new leader of Flickr that she should post her work to Flickr instead. It’s not that you shouldn’t be trying outside products as a CEO, but it’s also important for perception that you support your own products as well — dogfooding and all that. Mayer’s new Flickr account sends a powerful and positive message both to Flickr’s staff as well as to Flickr’s users.

Flickr is a powerful tool for the mobile publicist -- if it can just survive Yahoo's inexplicable apathy.

It's semi-official: New data confirms that London 2012 was the first Mobile Games | #MoPR

From Robert Andrews at paidContent:

We have already reported strong mobile figures from the BBC (a third of web visits, a tenth of video streams) and NBC (16 percent of web users, 45 percent of video requests).

But (newly released) stats show even higher mobile engagement - 60 percent of visits to the official London2012.com site and apps came from mobile devices.

Michael Rosenblum's new book 'iPhone Milllionaire' is now available on Amazon | #MoPR

Michael was working on this book when I attended his New York Video School's video boot camp in Manhattan last fall. The concept is both straightforward and astonishing: If you own an iPhone, you have the only tool you need to produce powerful video for paying markets. (That would include public relations.) My copy is on its way and I'm looking forward to spending the weekend reading it.

• Amazon.com: iPhone Millionaire: How to Create and Sell Cutting-Edge Video (9780071800174): Michael Rosenblum: Books

How to tell a better story in video | #MoPR

Here's a solid introduction from Casey Frechette at Poynter on using shot sequencing to improve storytelling in videos. It includes an outline of Michael Rosenblum's five-shot method.

What do media want from PR? More video, more photos | #MoPR

A new survey of journalists and publicists suggests there is a substantial gap between what reporters expect from and what they get from online newsrooms:

Bulldog Reporter:

The fact is, 86% of media websites use images and video with a story, and 80% of journalists and bloggers regard images with news as very important and say it significantly improves the chance of them using that content in a story. They expect to find images readily available in a company newsroom. Yet when asked what features journalists and bloggers think are important, only 4% of PR people said they thought images were very important, 22% said they were important and just over half (56%) of the respondents routinely add images to their press releases. When asked why they don't add images, 39% said they thought it was not necessary, 7% said they don't know how and 54% said they do not have the resources to produce visual content.

How to spread your photos across the web via Flickr | #MoPR

Blogger Ann Smarty:

The Web is full of blogs and sharing sites. Many people are always on the lookout for images they can use royalty-free. Stock photos only go so far, and bloggers may want to use something a bit better. This is why so many choose Flickr, thanks to the Creative Commons section.

These photos are easy to embed with links and author names, and you can find them on multiple sites. For example, Wikimedia Commons has a lot of Flickr images.

If you want your images to gain a wider viewing, offer some of them for fair use. You don't have to offer every photo, but try a select few.

Google data: The London Olympics are the first mobile games | #MoPR

Robert Andrews blogs:

Over the last week, we have reported how almost half of U.S. and UK Olympics video streams served by NBC and the BBC were to smartphones and tablets. Now search data further reinforce how the mobile internet has reached new heights this summer.

Google on Tuesday published data showing the largest share of searches for “Paul McCartney”, as his performance closed out London 2012′s opening ceremony, came from smartphones…

Social media ROI -- for dummies | #MoPR

The next time a boneheaded executive demands to know the return on investment for social media, ask: "What the ROI on an industry convention?" Social media marketer Brad Shorr explains via Ragan's:

At a convention, firms exhibit their wares and talk them up. To a greater degree than what usually occurs on a sales call, prospects and customers at aconvention are invited to look under the hood, to kick the tires. This is like the content syndication and discussion threads that take place on a firm'ssocial media pages. They provide people with a more intimate and critical look "inside the box." And just as we hope at a convention, we hope our socialmedia content differentiates us from the competition.

Few CEOs would question the value of putting on a great show an industry convention or of networking at parties or receptions. Executives consider these tactics to be common sense. Actively participating in social media should fit into the same category. We do it because common sense dictates we should.

The ROI argument is just mumbo jumbo.

Telling a story in images and music | #MoPR

In this 5:50-minute film, Brad Kremer uses images and music to tell the story of landscape photographer Michael Levin's recent tour of Japan. He uses no narration, sound bites, or ambient sound -- and a minimal amount of text. Yet he tells a coherent story anyone can follow. He shot the film with a Canon 5D Mark II, a Canon TS-E 90mm f2.8 Tilt-shift Lens, a dynamic Perception dolly and a steadycam. He edited it on Final Cut Pro.



KI: Michael Levin from Brad Kremer on Vimeo.

 You can learn more about this project at PictureCorrect.com or at Brad Kremer's Vimeo Channel.

A shopping list for the mobile publicist: video gear

Glen Mulcahy at the VJ Technology Blog offers The MoJo Gear Guide, which includes all sorts of gadgets to add power, utility and efficiency to your mobile devices. Remember: Any tool that works for a mobile journalist will work just as well for a mobile publicist.

Using a smartphone as your ONLY reporting tool

Multimedia journalist Matt Augstine also offers a step-by-step look at what he does when he arrives on a breaking news scene.

1. Pull out my phone and snap a few pictures.  I’ll then touch them up a bit real quick in one of my photo editing apps before I tweet and post to Facebook, letting the audience know that I JUST got on scene and telling them what I’m seeing so far.
2. I’ll start looking for folks to interview and video/NAT sound opportunities, which I generally keep between 30 and 60 seconds and usually voice over with a bit of background info.
3. I’ll continue to tweet and Facebook updates as often as possible and when new information breaks.  I generally try to include photos with my posts and tweets to add even more context.

Covering the Olympics ... with just an iPhone

Jessica Lum at PetaPixel says:

Guardian photojournalist Dan Chung is traveling light: he’s covering the games with a simple iPhone setup. 

Using different combinations of an iPhone 4s, a clip-on Schneider lens and a pair of Canon binoculars, Chung has been live-blogging all aspects of the games. His photos yield surprisingly crisp results, indoors, outdoors and even underwater through a viewing window — which again reinforces the old photographer’s adage that the best camera is the one that’s with you.

The future belongs to ... the dumb phone? | #MoPr

Developers are working on a concept called the data locker, which would give consumers far greater control over their personal data online. This would create higher quality data, they say, and thus make the data more valuable. All of which could eventually kill the smartphone. Fortune Tech explains:

Azigo's Paul Trevithick offers a nuanced position, reasoning that advertisers will adjust their relationship with consumers because it's in their best interest to do so. If customers become a source of quality data, the need for dodgy data mining is minimized.  ... The great migration of personal data to the cloud has reached a critical phase. What will seal the transition? "When smartphones become…dumb," he says. "When a company like LG, or Samsung, or HTC makes a phone that has no local storage and gets everything from the web then the era of the dumb phone will begin." At that point, so goes the argument, a personal locker will become the center of the experience of using any device.

5 reasons why short videos are the future of marketing

Filmmaker Kerrin Sheldon blogs for FastCompany:

Here are 5 reasons why online video will soon dominate your time spent on the web, and why if you're a marketer, you can use video to propel your business forward.

• More and more users are consuming their video entertainment online.
• Marketers are using video to engage social media audiences.
• Barriers to entry are low.
• Quality is expanding quickly.
• There are plenty of avenues for dissemination.

The top four iPhone apps for mobile journalists

From SS Digital Media

Two camera apps, a video app and a field recorder. If you plan to be a mobile publicist, you have to be ready to master more than one medium.

New: The Mobile Reporting Field Guide from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism

From the Daily Californian:

The “Mobile Reporting Field Guide” is a 44-page guidebook, complete with pictures, video and audio samples, that gives a brief review, pros and cons and a final rating of each app. The guidebook presents several categories of apps ranging from photography to video editing applications as well as reviews of different external gear attachable to smart phones, such as microphones and lenses.

The guidebook is free from the Apple iBookstore and can be viewed on an iPad or iPhone, but it can also be downloaded as a PDF file without the example video and audio recordings.

Tips from 5 photographers for recording the best on-camera interview possible

From PDN

“Interviews are inherently contrived situations and it’s the photographer’s job to make them feel organic,” says portrait photographer Michael Lavine. Doing so requires a mix of skills—some technical, some emotional and intuitive—that may not always come easy to photographers accustomed to letting their images do the talking. 

“It can be a real challenge, because in your mind, you’re worried about your stills too,” observes shooter Ben Baker. “I had an editor tell me, ‘We don’t hire you for two average things, but for one great thing.’ That really stuck with me.”

Nevertheless, it’s increasingly common for photographers to be hired to deliver two great things. And while every interview is as unique as the subject being interviewed, there are some general lessons that can be distilled from experience. Interviewing is equal parts science and art.

Is Hipstamatic a legitimate tool for photojournalism?

From the British Journal of Photography:

For Ben Khalifa, whether to use Hipstamatic or not remains a personal choice. "I think what's really annoying is that all these debates about the aesthetics and whether it's a good idea to use Hipstamatic don't make sense. The story is at the heart of photojournalism, and if a photographer believes he can tell a better story by using Hipstamatic, that's his choice. Hipstamatic, like a Leica camera or anything else, is just a tool and nothing else." 

He adds: "Photography was never objective and never will, so I think it's not an argument to say that Hipstamatic images are not valid because a filter was used. When we used a darkroom in the past, we did the exact same thing. It wasn't as fast as what Hipstamatic does, but the result is the same. If you look at the trend for radical black-and-white images, it's also a filter - a filter applied by photographers because that's the way they want to show their images and to express their ideas. It's exactly the same thing."

Reality for the web

From Michael Rosenblum at the New York Video School introduces OutwildTV.com:

This week, Filipe Leite, a 25 year old Canadian journalist sets off on the adventure of a lifetime. He is going to ride two horses from Calgary, Canada to Brazil. The trip will take him two years. When we first met Filipe, his dream was only a dream. But it was a dream we believed he could accomplish. So we flew him down to Nashville, gave him the video gear and the training he needed to tell his on-going story to the world, and also gave him (and will give him) the support he will need to make his dream a reality. Now, the rest is up to him. But we’ll be following his adventure all along the way. Filipe will be shooting and editing; posting his videos; blogging and live webcasting (when possible) and talking to people online throughout the entire trip.

4 big trends to watch in social media -- from Richard Edelman

 Janet Tyler at Airfoil Public Relations blogs about a recent Harvard Leadership Program:

I confess, however, that the highlight of the event for me was the opportunity to hear from public relations icon Richard Edelman. In many ways, he is what Niall Horan from the boy band One Direction is to my teenage daughter—a rock star of our industry so-to-speak. In his remarks, Edelman pointed out four “big trends” he is observing in social media:

1. Keep an eye on three impending social giants: BuzzFeed, Pinterest and Tumblr. We need to watch them as closely as we do Facebook and Twitter.
2. Search and social now are more integrated than ever. If you’re doing well in one, you’re likely doing well in the other.
3. Amplification trumps circulation. Appearing in an influential online publication is one thing, but becoming the subject of online communities who begin discussing you represents a whole new level of success. When we can measure this amplification of initial content, we’ll be doing well.
4. Visuals matter more than ever. Think infographics, video, slides and any other way to tell our story beyond words.

Twitter, Reddit and the newsroom of the future

From Matthew Ingram at  Tech News and Analysis:

By now, many people are becoming used to Twitter as a source of breaking news, whether it’s a report about the death of Osama bin Laden or details about the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt.

But it’s still fascinating to come across new examples of how the real-time information network can be used to report on a breaking news story, whether by professional journalists or those committing what Andy Carvin of NPR has called “random acts of journalism.”

In one recent case, a member of Reddit pulled together a news report about a shooting in Toronto, including the tweets of those who attended and later became victims of the incident — another sign of how social media is changing both the way we consume and the way we produce journalism.

Screencast: How to launch a WordPress blog in just 20 minutes

Here's a great way to add value to your work with a client: Create a WordPress blog and get your first post online in less than a half hour.  Michael Hyatt offers a completely non-technical approach to building the blog and doing it on a self-hosted site. Just remember to choose a mobile template.

Is the future online or on TV? Here's what the numbers say

Michael Rosenblum at New York Video School: 

The average viewer watches 22 hours of online video every month and YouTube alone had more than 157 million unique viewers each month. 

To put this in perspective, OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network gets about 300,000 viewers.

Video: How to use Pinterest even if you lack visually appealing products

From Mark Ragan:

Can brands use Pinterest without visually appealing products? Of course, says the team ePrize. Make lawnmowers? Post photos of gorgeous lawns. Ask yourself: What inspires your products? Your designers? Pin those images.

• Watch the video.

An ergonomic approach to shooting with an iPhone

From hipstomp at Core77:

A company called RHP Media reckons there's a better, more ergonomic way to shoot. Their MirrorCase (and attendant app) for iPhone allows you to hold the camera lower and shoot from the top of it, rather like pointing a remote control at the TV. A physical mirror inside the case directs the image towards the camera lens, and the MirrorCase app's software flips the image into the proper orientation.

Welcome to Mobile 3.0, Scobleizer sez

From Robert Scoble::

First mobile was the standard old cell phone. You talked into it. The second mobile era was brought to us by the iPhone. You poked at a screen. The third era will bring us a mobile that saves us from clicking on the screen.

We’ve seen lots of precursors. Heck, Google itself, a couple of weeks ago, shipped something called “Google Now” that tells you stuff based on your context. “Hey, Scoble, you better leave for your next appointment because it takes 53 minutes to get there” my new Nexus 7 tablet tells me. You see the actual screen shot above.

But in the future your mobile device, whether it be something you hold in your hand like a smart phone, or wear on your face, like Google Glasses, will know a hell of a lot about you.

How?

Well, Qualcomm just shipped the developer SDK, called Gimbal.

How to use Ospriet to capture real-time conversations at events | #MoPR

From William Couch at Poynter.:

,,, the most obvious use of Ospriet would be for a Q&A session with an official who may be on air, or featured in an upcoming piece. While Ospriet was built to be used in real-time, it works equally well as a way to gather comments and questions leading up to an event. I could imagine using Ospriet to recreate events like the Town Hall event Twitter hosted last summer with President Obama. 

Journalists could also use the tool later this month while covering the Olympics. They could gather commentary and feedback from viewers/attendees about an event, a particularly controversial finish or medal, etc. And they could encourage attendees at the Olympics to submit questions or comments via text message while the event is happening.

It may be smart, but is it a phone? | #MoPR

Megan Garber blogs for The Atlantic:

The smartphone introduces friction into the concept of a "phone" itself. As a portable calling device, the smartphone is bulky and call-droppy and shattery (who makes a mobile device out of glass?) and, it must be said, noticeably unfriendly to the cheek. As a portable computer, however, the smartphone is elegant and efficient and -- Mr. Jobs was not exaggerating -- revolutionary. It's a computer with phone functionality, rather than the other way around.

A Manifesto for Blogging

From Chad Street at Social Media Today:

Writing a Manifesto for Blogging might seem like a highly-individual blog post – and, to be fair, most of the content in this blog post was written purely for me, by me, a few years ago. To remind me why I’m blogging.

However, I’ve decided to update my personal blogging Manifesto, and having been heavily influenced by the amazing work of Brian Solis, Chris Brogan, and Blair Enns, it felt like sharing my Manifesto might be useful for other bloggers out there.

The 7-inch tablet is about to kick the mobile market into overdrive | #MoPR

From John Sonderman at Poynter:

Cheaper, lighter 7-inch devices have the potential to accelerate the tablet market to critical mass much more quickly than the iPad alone. The introduction of the first 7-inch Kindle Fire late last year contributed to total tablet ownership among U.S. adults nearly doubling in one month.

7 steps to get more Instagram followers | #MoPR

From Brian DiFeo at Ragan's:

After more than a year managing one of the most active Instagram communities and starting a company based on Instagram, I’ve learned some key strategies and best practices for a new brand interested in connecting with people on Instagram.

4 extensions that let you turn Twitter into your social media powerhouse | #MoPR

From Leo Widrich:

Although Twitter.com is a super-clean interface, I wasn’t spending much time there. I had become dependent on other great Twitter apps instead. But now, I have returned to it. Here are four ways you can do this as well.

How do your headlines score in emotional value?

Jeff Bullas at Ragan's reviews an online tool that measures the emotional marketing value of your headlines.

How to speed up your iPhone when it slows down

Nothing slows down a mobile publicist as much as a smartphone that starts acting a little ... dumb. Michael Hyatt offers a three-step process for getting the hitch out of an iPhone's get-along.

Step by step: the Stopmotionista explains her technique for making fascinating video from 2,000 individual photos

Storify as a tool for the brand journalist

From Kevin J. Allen at Ragan's:

Storify lets you curate the best tweets, photos, links, and posts about a particular subject and plug it into an easily consumable “social story.” Think of it simply as telling a story through the useful things you find online (as opposed to the mindless chatter).

The Storify editor enables you to search social media networks and the Web to find all the buzz about the topic you’re addressing. From there, you drag and drop the social elements you want into your Storify story, and connect the social elements with copy. Then you can take the embed code and place your Storify story anywhere on the web.

Still covering news with a pad and pen? WTF?

Katy Culver at Poynter offers at least 8 ways you can cover breaking news with advanced multimedia tools:

1. Map it.
2. Create a timeline.
3. Capture audio.
4. Curate social objects.
5. Blog it live.
6. Hashtag tweets.
7. Shoot video.
8. Narrate a slideshow of photos.

You can do all of this on the fly and in the field with a smartphone or a tablet.

Ireland's national TV is testing a field kit for mobile journalists based on iPhone and iPad

From 4rfv.co.uk:

Ireland’s national television and radio broadcaster, RT, has developed and is about to pilot a new acquisition model for mobile journalism that uses Avid Studio for iPad. By deploying a mobile journalist kit, which includes a microphone, iPhone, iPad and downloadable apps, RTjournalists in the field are able to produce broadcast-quality footage, edit it to a professional standard and then send it straight to air – at a glance making.

7 ways to get the most value from an event video

From Dane Fredriksen at Digital Accomplice:

1. Event Coverage: This is the low-hanging fruit. A video documenting the event may be useful to market future events as well as provide engaging content for your website, blog and social media efforts.
2. Expert Interviews: It’s probably easy to likely take for granted but most industry events are basically a collection of experts! If you are able to extract some of the most relevant info/tips/perspective from them, it will very le of value to your industry’s online community.
3. Client Testimonials: I believe there is no stronger tool than testimonials in building trust in a prospective customer.  The tell-tale, non-verbal signs on the interviewee’s faces will make a powerful impact in the establishment of trust with your  audience and put you one step closer to a sale.
4. Reactions to a Common Question: Ask a bunch of people one question and tell them you are doing so, they’ll probably want to participate! This is a great way to show consensus (or refute it) for the topics that are most relevant to your industry.
5. Have Attendees ask Questions: By having these questions recorded and shared online it helps establish their legitimacy. Your audience will be able to sense that these are real questions that are important to their peers.
6. Topical Trivia: This idea is a bit more fun but it can helpful too. Create a pop quiz or trivia to ask the guests, you’ll probably get some fun stuff. If it’s a game, it’s OK to not have the right answer. It can be really engaging to watch as well.
7. Video Blog Posts: If you planned ahead to ask 10 people to talk about one really relevant topic that they are experts in, you could have 10 weeks of sticky video content for your blog.

How to write for the second and third screens

From writing coach Anne Wylie:

With Web writing, you can literally make your readers sick, resign and forget where they parked their cars.

So how do you write blog posts, Web pages, email messages, status updates and other copy without repelling your readers? Here are some pointers to consider:

• Get to the point faster. Don’t expect readers to read the entire first paragraph to figure out where you’re going.
• Chunk it up. Break your message into several shorter Web pages.
• Write tight. Use the tools that you use to condense copy for print more aggressively online.
• Lift your ideas off the screen. Make your copy easy to scan with microcontent or display copy.
• Cut the fluff. Drop the adjectives, adverbs, hyperbole and other useless words.
• Make it friendly. Engage readers with a conversational, me-to-you voice, not an off-putting, stiff corporate style.

Why Big Media can never win the hyperlocal markets

It's pretty simple. Big Media outlets (like the New York Times) are not designed to exploit the opportunities that hyperlocal presents. They are just too big, too clumsy, too ravenous, and far too impatient. And they aren't meant to manage a portfolio of tiny projects.

That leaves all those opportunities on the ground for entrepreneurs (especially all those veteran reporters that the Big Media keep putting on the street) and for mobile publicists. The NYT may scoff at a revenue stream in the six figures. But for your average solo communicator, that's a nice living.

The NYT officially surrendered this turf when it announced that it will shut down The Local, its experiment with hyperlocal. Here's what Jim Schachter, the Times associate managing editor who oversaw The Local, told Steve Myers at Poynter:

This particular set of experiments was something that the digital leadership at the Times was very hot about when we started, and there’s been many turns of the screw since then. … Clearly, hyperlocal is not what the New York Times’ business is about. … I think the New York Times should not be investing a lot of editorial energy in hyperlocal in New York City.

Schachter: ‘Hyperlocal is not what the New York Times’ business is about’ | Poynter

How video goes online before the speakers leave the stage

From CommPRO.biz:

Through our Syndicaster platform, which is used by a third of U.S. network television affiliates and 200 newspapers, clips from the conference were edited, titled, tagged, published and shared through social networks by our trusty community manager, Robert Cabral, working on his desktop.

“Robert kept an eye on the live stream and jumped into action when speakers shared newsworthy or instructive nuggets,” said Critical Mention President Dave Armon, who spoke at the conference and was in contact with Cabral through live Gmail chat throughout the two days. “Our objective was to demonstrate to attendees that their organizations and clients could generate a steady stream of credible content, in video, without a heavy technical, monetary or personnel investment.”

One feature of Syndicaster is speech-to-text software that converts a speaker’s remarks into a searchable, SEO-friendly text file in real-time. This allowed Cabral to locate relevant content without having to review long segments of video.

Mobile is the bridge over all divides

From the Silicon Prairie News:

... mobile technology is important because it has the furthest reach. Whether it’s an urban/rural divide, old/young divide, rich/poor divide or one country divided from another country, mobile devices are the only tools that can bridge all of them.

“Everybody on both sides of those divides have mobile devices,” (former Nebraska dean of journalism Gary) Kebbel said. “So if you want to create the opportunity for the most people in the world to be in the same conversation, you have to do it with a mobile device.”

Awareness = engagement

From Brian Solis:

To earn customer attention isn’t a switch that toggles on and off. It is a state of perpetual engagement. The blaring noise that customers continually experience has forced them to adapt. Second nature acts as a defense mechanism to tune out the constant barrage of marketing messages and clever campaigns. Awareness at the top of the funnel is elusive but never more important.

How should a publicist measure success?

Frank Strong at Vocus says clips still count. And he's probably right. But it's a mistake for publicists to  remain hostages to the whims of reporters and editors. Social media make every company a news outlet. For the mojo publicist, the priority is on generating news for social distribution to the folks who matter most and care most: stakeholders. If that effort occasionally results in a press clip or two, so much the better. 

9 types of tweets that will engage your audience

Social strategist Lisa Barone says:

I’ve noticed that it’s not the social media sites themselves that clients have a difficult time mastering, it’s figuring out what to say once they get there.

They’re excited to have a new platform to talk to their customers and to be part of this ever-growing social conversation, but they’re lacking those handy conversation starters and the types of tweets they should be sending out to the masses. So they say nothing at all.

To help those who might be stuck, below are nine types of tweets to incorporate into your Twitter strategy.

Here's how two companies are packaging and distributing their brand stories

Angie's List and Neospresso are emphasizing the print magazine distributed by mail.  Very expensive, and questionable in effectiveness. Very old school. Is this really the best choice given the near ubiquity of the smartphone?