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.