“The adrenaline was running by now. So I turned [the flash] on and took five pictures. I realised they were important and I saw another guy shooting video on his phone.
“So I got him into a taxi and we went back to AP’s offices in Camden.”
To see recommendations from some of my clients, which include regional and national newspapers, magazines and broadcasters in the UK and internationally, see my LinkedIn profile.
Please contact me on paulonhismobile(at)gmail.com for quotes and dates.
I’ve been fiddling with the mobile location-based social networking game Foursquare for a few months now. The concept is simple: as you move around a city you ‘check in’ to locations. You can see where your friends last checked in, and you can add comments as you go. But does it have journalistic uses? I think it does. Here are just 4:
1. Finding contacts
Until recently I refrained from pressing the ‘Tell Twitter’ or ‘Tell Facebook’ buttons when I checked into a location. However, that changed when I realised what happens when you do.
In one example, David Nikel, a political candidate in Birmingham, ‘checked in’ at Birmingham New Street train station 5 minutes after I had. Although I hadn’t ‘shared’ my check in via Twitter, because Nikel did, his automatically generated tweet said that I was there too. This alerted me and led to us meeting.
2. Social capital
Foursquare plugs into your existing social networks but adds an extra layer of information. If you know that John spends a lot of time at Urban Coffee Co you can make a point to go there yourself more often, or at least have it as a potential conversation-opener.
3. Tips
Users can add ‘tips’ to locations – a feature which is currently underused but has potential for leads as well as…
4. Distribution
Foursquare has already signed deals with Metro in Canada, Bravo TV and the FT. The potential is obvious: content directly relevant to your location. The big issue for Foursquare is whether it can achieve the scale that most publishers need.
How about you? Are using Foursquare or one of the other location based social networks, such as Brightkite or Gowalla – and how has it been useful?
We’re all being told that mobile is the next big thing for news, but what does it mean to have a good mobile news application?
Just as an online news site is a lot more than a newspaper online, a mobile news application is a lot more than news stories on a small screen. The better iPhone news apps integrate multimedia, social features, personalization, and push notifications.
Not all apps get even the basics right. But a few are pushing the boundaries of what mobile news can be, with innovative new features such as info-graphic displays of hot stories, or integrated playlists for multimedia.
Here is my roundup of 14 iPhone news offerings. I’ve included many of the major publishers, some lesser known applications, and a few duds for comparison.
NYTimes
The New York Times Company
Free
The New York Times iPhone application
The Times doesn’t do anything new with this application, but they do everything fairly well.
The app is designed around a vertical list stories, with a headline, lede, and photo thumbnail for each. Stories are organized into standard news sections, plus the alway interesting “Most Popular.” Banner ads sometimes appear at the bottom, plus occasional interstitial ads when appear when you select a story.
The focus of the news is of course American. There’s no personalization of news content based either on interest or location, which may well prove to be a standard feature for mobile news applications. Fortunately, the app includes a search function, though it only seems to go a few days back.
Downloaded articles are available when the device is offline, which is a useful feature. Favorites stories can be saved, or shared via email, text message, Twitter, and Facebook.
The UI has a few quirks. The “downloading news” progress bar is expected, but the sometimes equally long “processing news” phase makes me wonder what the app is doing. The photos in a story very sensibly download after the text, but the scroll position jumps when the photo appears,which is hugely annoying.
There’s little innovation or differentiation here, but the experience is smooth.
Next Thursday is the news:rewired event at City University London, which is being put on by the good people at journalism.co.uk. I’ll be on hand as a delegate.
All of the bases will be covered, it seems: Multimedia, social media, hyperlocal, crowdsourcing, datamashups, and news business models.
For the last month or so I’ve been playing around with a review copy of Novatel’s MiFi, a portable wifi hotspot that allows you to connect to the web with multiple devices.
It’s a cute bit of kit – slightly shorter than an iPhone, and ideal for journalists because it bridges the need for a wifi hotspot while addressing the limitations of a 3G smartphone.
The technology is pretty straightforward: inside the MiFi is a SIM card which pulls a 3G signal that is converted into that wifi hotspot.
Up to 5 devices can then connect to the web through that hotspot – there’s a password which is shown, intelligently, on the back of the battery cover.
Clearly you need a 3G signal for the MiFi to work – it’s great in urban areas but less successful where there’s poor mobile coverage. But even with a relatively low 3G signal the wifi hotspot is surprisingly strong. And even if you already have access to wifi – or a 3G dongle – the MiFi provides a second, often more reliable, connection for uploading material.
In fact, if you’re relying on 3G connections for mobile journalism I would recommend having a MiFi on one mobile operator, a pay as you go 3G dongle with another, and a smartphone on a third.
I managed to stream video very easily from my laptop, connected to the web on the iPod Touch, and had a group of MA Online Journalism students using it to access the web while we conducted a lesson. (aside from journalism it’s perfect for mobile education).
Sadly, I didn’t get to try out the Eye-Fi card alongside it, but now that it’s hit the UK I’m hoping to play with that too. The Eye-Fi sends images and video straight from an SD card to social media via a wifi hotspot, so you could use an SLR camera or mini camcorder with a MiFi to upload your footage as soon as you shoot it without having to mess with laptops or smartphones (or police officers).
The major weakness, however, is battery power: the specifications say that the MiFi should have 4 hours battery life after a charge (which is, to its credit, quick). But this is shorter if you have multiple devices, and after 4 weeks of using it (and yes, it will have been used by other reviewers), the battery no longer held its charge. Given that you have to sign up to a contract to get the MiFi*, this is rather worrying.
UPDATE: The company that sent me the unit tell me “Standard warranty for the Novatel Wireless Intelligent Mobile Hotspot 2352 is 24 months.”
That aside, this is a must-have piece of kit for me.
*Contract details:
T-Mobile:
Pay Monthly Contract (18 months)
Device is free at point of sale, then £20/mth (3GB data according to T-Mobile Fair Usage Policy)
Vodafone:
Pay Monthly Contract (24 months)
Option (1) Device purchase is £69.99, then GBP 15/mth with 3GB data
Option (2) Device is free, then £25/mth with 5GB data
In my MA Online Journalism session this week I’ll be looking at mobile journalism. As part of that, below I’ve compiled 4 lists of things I think a mobile journalist needs: hardware, software, systems, and mindset. I’d welcome anything you can add to this.
In the spirit of mobile journalism, I will also be streamed the session live on Bambuser from 9am UK time on Thursday, for around 45 mins – if you can join us online and chip in, please do. I’ve embedded the player below (skip past it for the lists of things a mojo needs).
A note from the comments
Some comments rightfully point out that this list is potentially terrifying. I’m not suggesting you need all these things – my favourite response said that you needed a Posterous blog, a smartphone, and lots of batteries, and I’d go along with that. But here are a whole lot of potential things to explore when you get itchy…
Mobile journalism – hardware
Smartphone with camera, video, audio, unlimited data plan
Digital camcorder, e.g. Flip, Kodak Zi8
Digital dictaphone or Zoom
Portable mic
Portable mini tripod?
Batteries (including extra mobile phone battery)
Extension lead – and chargers
Portable chargers, e.g. solar
Bluetooth keyboard
Mifi and/or 3G dongle
Eyefi card
Wifi laptop or netbook with webcam
Mobile journalism – the software
Apps for your phone and services you can email or text to. Good ones include…
Shozu
Spinvox – blog via voice
iBlogger
Audioboo
Twitterfone
Twitvid
Twibble – GPS twitter updates
Zyb – synchronise contacts and calendar
Opera Mini; on iPhone use bookmarklets on Safari like ‘Read Later’, ‘Post with Tweetie’, ‘Save to Delicious’, ‘Share on Tumblr’
Qik, Bambuser, 12seconds – streaming video
Posterous – blog via email
ZoneTag – geotag images
JoikuSpot – create wifi hotspot from 3G phone
Google Maps
Mobile journalism – the systems
Email must be set up – more than one account as backup (Google Mail occasionally goes down)
Useful phone no.s, e.g. Twitter, Twitterfone
Useful emails, e.g. Twitpic, YouTube, Twittermail, Facebook, Posterous etc.
Map of wifi hotspots
Map of mobile and 3G coverage
Blog via email or text – Postie plugin/Posterous/app/etc.
Pulling RSS feeds from Twitter/Flickr/YouTube/Posterous/Tumblr/Google Docs
Embedded players for livestreaming/liveblogging
Geotagging information for mapping
Mashups
Preparation: web-based video/audio/image editors
Collaboration – preparing the users, hashtags, tweeting, feedback
Mobile journalism – the mindset
‘Always-on’ approach – tweet on the go; share images; stream quick video. Think humour, art, quirky, as much as ‘news’. Prepare yourself and users for when you need it.
Play with new mobile tools – follow TechCrunch etc.
Try out mobile apps
Find the stories that are not online
Be part of a mobile community – follow people like @documentally @alisongow @ilicco @patphelan @moconews
Be creative with mobile, not formulaic: the rules aren’t written yet
Yesterday Mashable ran an interesting story about how iPhone will soon become the top camera for images uploaded onto Flickr. Previously that spot belonged to the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT, which is basically the DSL-R for beginners.
With each production cycle, mobile phone cameras are getting more sophisticated. Meanwhile it’s incredibly easy to upload a just-taken photo from your sophisticated camera phone onto the web. I recently upgraded my BlackBerry to the 8900, which has a 3.2MP auto-focus camera. Not a lot of megapixels, but the autofocus is what makes it a great camera phone. Taking a photo and uploading it to TwitPic takes less than a minute. The quality of the photos are pretty good, too.
The proliferation of iPhones, BlackBerrys and other camera phone brands has meant more people are photographing the things they do and putting them up on the web. For small and mid-size papers, getting art for a story could be as easy as doing a TwitPic search by keyword and see what pops up. If a user-taken photo of an event pops up, you could contact the author, ask for permission and post it. At worst, they’d ask for a small fee, which when paid would still be a money saver compared to sending a photojournalist to an event.
The same could be said for videos. If a video of an event is uploaded to YouTube or any of the other video hosting sites, a news organisation could contact the person who shot it and ask permission to use it.
As the line between reporter and reader becomes further blurred, technological advances and the will of the people may mean that photojournalists are primarily employed by news organisations who feel they can both print the photos and sell the originals for a nice profit.
If the public is providing printable photos either for free or at a fraction of the cost of employing a photojournalist, that won’t be a terribly difficult decision for any executive editor to make.
The iPhone is overrated. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Yes, it’s got great usability, but for a journalist it just doesn’t compete. And here are 10 reasons why:
A crappy camera. 2 megapixels is terrible – the N95 has 5. Not to mention auto-focus, flash, etc. etc.
No video camera. Inexcusable in the YouTube age. Yes there are workarounds but…
You have to jailbreak the iPhone to use streaming services like Qik. Installing Qik (or Bambuser, or Shozu) on the N95 is pretty straightforward. The fact you have to jailbreak the iPhone at all says a lot about Apple’s attitude. Nokia’s Symbian operating system is open (if not open source yet).
You can’t save webpages. Once again, you can on the N95.
No alternative browser. Opera Mini is great on the N95.
Battery power. You can at least have a spare battery for the N95.
No recording of audio. You can on an N95, and email it to Posterous for instant podcast.
Walled garden for apps. Apps on the N95? Get them anywhere, without the worry that Nokia will lock them out in the future.
Fiddly keyboard. Particularly difficult when there are…
No external keyboards. You can buy a number of cute bluetooth keyboards for the N95 which make it possible to type updates and blog posts very quickly.
And that’s not to mention bloody expensive. If you know of any solutions to these weaknesses, let me know. You see, I do have an iPod Touch…
Elections bring out the best in online journalism. News organisations have plenty of time to plan, there’s a global audience up for grabs, and the material lends itself to interactive treatment (voter opinions; candidates’ stances on various issues; statistics and databases; constant updates; personalisation).
Next Thursday is the 