App of the week for journalists: ExpenseMagic

App of the week: ExpenseMagic

Devices: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch (Blackberry and Android versions will be available soon)

Cost: Free (with options to pay for bookkeeper services)

What is it? An app that allows you to photograph expenses receipts, add details and have a PDF of your accounts emailed to you every month.

How is it of use to journalists? Unlike many of our recommended apps which focus on using your smartphone for reporting, this one helps you manage some of the more mundane necessities that go along with doing any job.

This one is of particular use for freelance journalists, but could be useful for anyone who regularly claims expenses.

The app allows you to photograph a receipt and save it and the related data to the cloud. You have two options: firstly to manually enter the data or, if you want to pay, get a bookkeeper to do it for you.

You can then have a PDF emailed to you (or an accounts person in your news organisation) every month, detailing your expenses.

One handy function is that you can sync with a phone’s diary, allowing you to attach a claim to a specific event or meeting.

For overseas travel, ExpenseMagic uses a phone’s GPS location to automatically select and convert a claim from a list of 159 currencies.

You can submit claims directly into three cloud accountancy software packages – FreeAgent, Freshbooks and Xero.

The makers of the app say that it is “fully compliant with UK tax laws”.

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App of the week for journalists: Kooaba Shortcut

App of the week: Kooaba Shortcut

Phones: iPhone

Cost: Free

What is it? An image recognition app, allowing you to take a photo of a newspaper or magazine page and find the PDF version.

How is it of use to journalists? You will find this app useful if you have ever come across a story in a newspaper or magazine, perhaps at a weekend, and wanted to remember it later.

This app means you don’t have to rip out the page, pocket and potentially lose it.

The image recognition technology recognises 79 different UK titles, including several local newspapers.

Simply take a photo of the page using the app, allow Kooaba Shortcut to recognise the page and then select the + button to save it to the app’s libarary, to Evernote or share it via email, Twitter, Facebook or SMS.

Kooaba Shortcut is the successor of Paperboy, released for UK titles in November. A post on the Kooaba blog explains the name change:

We have two reasons for that. First, not only newspapers are interactive (for which Paperboy was initially designed for), but also many magazines joined the last couple of years. The name paperboy clearly refers to newspapers only and that gives you the wrong impression.

Have you got a favourite app that you use as a journalist? Fill in this form to nominate an app for Journalism.co.uk’s app of the week for journalists.

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App of the week for journalists: News360

App of the week: News360

Phones: iPhone, Android, Playbook, iPad, Win Phone 7. There is also a News360 web app and browser extension.

Cost: Free

What is it? A personalised news app and “periscope” browser extrension.

How is it of use to journalists? News360 is a personalised news app, similar to Zite and Flipboard in that it uses your Twitter, RSS and other feeds as sources and delivers news that you are likely to be interested in.

An added bonus of News360 is the ability to set up specific topics. For example, you can set up “Egypt” as category and add “Hosni Mubarak”, “Egyptian army” and “Gamal Mubarak” and then find news stories that mention one or more of the above.

Another aspect of News360 well worth knowing about is its “periscope web browser”, which allows you to read multiple articles from a variety publications on the same story.

Simply install the browser extension and go to any news story. You will then find a tab along the top that lists and links to other news stories.

Have you got a favourite app that you use as a journalist? Fill in this form to nominate an app for Journalism.co.uk’s app of the week for journalists.

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App of the week for journalists: Banjo, for finding the location of breaking news

App of the week: Banjo

Phones: iPhone, Android

Cost: Free

What is it? A location-based social networking app. The app shows you a map of where Facebook and Twitter users are located.

How is it of use to journalists? The 10,000 Words blog flagged this app up as one that is useful for journalists.

The 10,000 Words blog explains how Andy Stettler from the Lansdale Reporter used Banjo to find out the scene of a breaking news story:

Stettler noticed a bunch of people had checked in at the mall. He was able to tweet questions to some of them and quickly connected with a man on site who clarified that the entire mall was not being evacuated. Stettler got this fact first through social media — before the police or mall officials would even return a reporter’s call. His paper was able to provide crucial information — that only part of the mall was being evacuated — before their competitors were.

Have you got a favourite app that you use as a journalist? Fill in this form to nominate an app for Journalism.co.uk’s app of the week for journalists.

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App of the week for journalists – Google Latitude, for adding locations to stories

App of the week:Google Latitude

Phones: iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, Symbian

Cost: Free

What is it? An app, web app, website and mobile site that allows you to add your location to a Google Map.

How is it of use to journalists? This was tip picked up from Paul Gallagher, head of online content at the Manchester Evening News.

During a session on mobile reporting at news:rewired, a conference about the latest trends in digital journalism, Gallagher explained how the MEN online newsdesk has encouraged reporters to use Google Latitude to add locations two paricular stories.

When Manchester City and Manchester United faced each other at Wembley in the FA Cup final in 2011, MEN sent reporters on the fan buses and created atmosphere by reporters geotagging locations as they travelled, using Google Latitude on a mobile phone.

MEN also used Google Latitude when reporting on roadworks, liveblogging a slow journey.

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App of the week for journalists: Blogsy, to blog from your iPad

App of the week: Blogsy

Device: iPad

Cost: £2.99

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? Blogsy is a blogging solution for iPad users.

In this post, Adam Tinworth, a blogger for more than 10 years, points out the problems with writing and posting from his tablet.

iPad blogging landscape has been a horrible, barren mess, with barely any decent blogging apps to be seen. Most blog platforms’ editors didn’t function in mobile Safari in any useful way. Blogging using the iPad was, at best, a challenge and, at worst, an impossibility.

He has tried and tested Blogsy, using it to write and file this post, finding that it “works very well”.

These videos teach the various swipe, drag and drop techniques.

Reviews: Blogsy gets four stars in the iTunes App Store.

Have you got a favourite app that you use as a journalist? Fill in this form to nominate an app for Journalism.co.uk’s app of the week for journalists.

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App of the week for journalists – Flipboard

App of the week: Flipboard

Operating systems: iOS (iPhone or iPad)

Cost: free

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? Flipboard is a social magazine app that can help you follow stories and dig around for leads.

It is similar to Zite (a previous app of the week) and launched for the iPhone at the around the same time, at the end of last year.

Rather than being a case of either/or, journalists with an iPhone or iPad should download both Zite and Flipboard as they have different strengths.

Both apps ask you to add you Twitter, Facebook and Google Reader accounts, but where Zite displays fewer news stories all in one list, Flipboard offers real-time feeds and separates Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr posts.

Flipboard is a great way of following your Twitter feed, offering a more visual way of keeping up-to-date by using the app’s swipe to flip motion.

Reviews: Flipboard gets five stars in the iTunes App Store

Have you got a favourite app that you use as a journalist? Fill in this form to nominate an app for Journalism.co.uk’s app of the week for journalists.

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App of the week for journalists: Tweetbot

App of the week: Tweetbot

Operating systems: iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch)

Cost: £1.99

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? If you are a Twitter-using journalist with an iPhone, this app is a must.

It is a cut above the rest as it has some really handy functionality that is absent in many other Twitter apps.

Tweetbot takes settings from the Twitter app on your phone, making for a quick set up for those with multiple accounts.

One of the really useful things for journalists is the ability to follow various lists as you mine for stories (as shown in the picture on the left). If you have found that your Twitter stream is too busy, lists are the best way of filtering.

You can also see conversations and retweets. By sweeping a tweet to the right you can see the full exchange of tweets.

The app has various customisable buttons and tap actions. For example, you can configure triple tap to reply to, favourite, retweet, or even translate a tweet.

Other gestures worth learning are double tapping on a tweet, link, or avatar which takes you to the respective details, and tapping and holding, which gives you options to share. This includes options to read it later (for example by syncing with Instapaper or another service) and to copy a tweet,  particularly helpful if you are using a timeline from one account and want to tweet from another.

Reviews: It gets 4.5 stars in iTunes App Store.

Have you got a favourite app that you use as a journalist? Fill in this form to nominate an app for Journalism.co.uk’s app of the week for journalists.

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App of the week for journalists: Zite

App of the week: Zite

Operating systems: Apple: iPhone or iPad

Cost: Free

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? If you are feeling overwhelmed by the number of RSS feeds, tweets with links to articles and other social media sources you are tasked with checking, download Zite.

Released first as a personalised magazine for iPad, an iPhone app was launched not long before Christmas and offers a fantastic way of finding stories you may have missed.

Zite mashes together your Twitter, Google Reader and Read It Later feeds and delivers posts around your subject area.

Not only does Zite surface posts you may miss using Twitter and RSS, it is intelligent and allows your to teach it exactly what you like and don’t like via thumbs up, thumbs down buttons displayed on the story.

Zite will automatically work out your niche interests, which appear as categories along the top of the iPhone app and can be swiped through.

You can, of course, share to Twitter, email, Facebook and other services, including Evernote and Pinboard.

Zite’s advantage could also be its downside: it only delivers a handful of stories rather than many every minute as Twitter does (presuming you are following lots of sources). To some this may be a disadvantage, to others they will enjoy reading the manageable amount of interesting posts the app unearths.

Have you got a favourite app that you use as a journalist? Fill in this form to nominate an app for Journalism.co.uk’s app of the week for journalists.

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App of the week for journalists – iSaidWhat?

App of the week: iSaidWhat?

Operating systems: Apple (iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad)

Cost: £0.69

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? iSaidWhat? is a well thought out audio app that allows you to record and edit clips.

It allows you to alter the recording input level, write a script that you can access from the main recording screen and edit by trimming and arranging clips. You can share clips via email (via m4a or wav formats) or over a wireless network.

Reviews: It gets three stars in iTunes App Store.

Recommended by: ABC NSW political reporter @MarkTobinSydney, ABC news reporters @RyanSheales and ABC journalist @Wendycarlisle

Have you got a favourite app that you use as a journalist? Fill in this form to nominate an app for Journalism.co.uk’s app of the week for journalists.

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