How to tweak your iPad for shooting pro-grade video

From Wired.com:

The larger screens, the plethora of apps, and the built-in cellular and Wi-Fi connectivity make iPads ideal for seasoned videographers and newbies alike. But ultimately, tapping into the tablet’s true video-shooting potential means using the right combination of tricks, apps, and hardware.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.