#Tip: Become a better smartphone photographer

By derekGavey on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Here are 12 tips on becoming a better smartphone photographer, as shared by CNN iReport.

The tips are from an interview with multimedia journalist and iPhone street photographer Richard Koci Hernandez.

Advice includes never to use the zoom on a phone camera, and to lock the exposure and focus.

The full list of tips is here.

(The post was published in September but the advice is obviously all still relevant.)

Update: And here are a further 10 tips on mobile phone photography, these from the Best Buy Mobile site. And five tips from Yanik’s Photo School site.

Hat tip: Marc Settle, who tweeted about all three posts.

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#Podcast: The rise of microvideo in online news

By derekGavey on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

The rising tide of microvideo apps for smartphones is an increasing feature in online and mobile news reporting. This podcast looks at what is driving this change, some of the different platforms being used and what this could potentially mean for how news is received and reported in online and mobile forms in the future.

We speak to:

• Michael Downing, founder and CEO, Tout
• Jim Brady, editor-in-chief, Digital First Media
• Neha Manaktala, chief operations officer, Vizibee
• Marc Settle, trainer in mobile journalism, BBC College of Journalism
• Michael Anastasi, vice president and executive editor, Los Angeles Newspaper Group

Podcast: Download

You can hear future podcasts by signing up to the Journalism.co.uk iTunes podcast feed.

We will have more on Journalism.co.uk next week from the podcast interviewees on this subject.

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#Tip: Know where the video mic is on your iPhone

Image by renatomitra on Flickr. Some rights reserved

If you are an iPhone user and shoot video, do you know where the microphone is that records sound for video?

If you have an iPhone, 4, 4S or 5 and you think it is at the ‘bottom’ of your mobile, close to where your mouth would be when speaking on the phone, you are wrong.

The video mic on the 4 and 4S is the small dot next to the headphone socket (see image above). On the iPhone 5 the video mic is close to the camera lens.

The three models have a separate microphone for video, Marc Settle, who trains BBC reporters in using iPhones to shoot video, has pointed out.

As Glen Mulcahy, innovation lead at Irish broadcaster RTE, explains in this helpful post, Settle demonstrated to him that the video mic is not where many people think it is.

The advice comes after Mulcahy led a session on mobile journalism at Friday’s news:rewired, a conference run by Journalism.co.uk.

Read Glen Mulcahy’s blog post for more and for pictures of the mic locations.

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Journalism.co.uk is ‘pick of the week’ on Google Currents

The team behind Google Currents has selected Journalism.co.uk as ‘pick of the week’. And you can now listen to our podcasts from within the Currents app.

Our weekly podcasts have been available via the Currents app since last month, when Google officially launched the new audio feature.

If you are not familiar with Currents it is a social magazine app, similar Flipboard and Zite, that lets you read your favourite news sites on your tablet or smartphone.

The app is available for Android, iPad and iPhone. If you do not already follow Journalism.co.uk on Currents, you will see a recommendation to subscribe to us when you open the app. That will show while we are ‘pick of the week’. You can also find a link to Journalism.co.uk on Currents here.

To find out how to get your news outlet’s content on Google Currents see this link or sign up for next week’s news:rewired journalism conference. Madhav Chinnappa from Google will be talking about Currents in the Google tools masterclass.

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#Podcast: Lessons in mobile-first news from Metro, Breaking News and Circa

This podcast hears from three news outlets that have adopted a mobile-first approach.

It focuses on Circa, a mobile news application which you can read more about here; Breaking News, a mobile-first startup owned by NBC Digital which started out as the @BreakingNews Twitter feed; and Metro, which announced its mobile-first strategy in November. 

Journalism.co.uk technology editor Sarah Marshall speaks to:

• David Cohn, director of news, Circa
  
• Cory Bergman, general manager, Breaking News
  
• Jamie Walters, product development director, Metro
  

Podcast: Download

You can hear future podcasts by signing up to the Journalism.co.uk iTunes podcast feed.

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#Tip of the day for journalists: Consider getting interviewees to press record

Image by John.Karakatsanis on Flickr. Some rights reserved

If you have ever tried to find a way of recording a phonecall from your iPhone, you will know that there is no easy solution.

One way is to record the call to voicemail, an option that only allows for short recordings and does not enable you to ask for permission before hitting record. Another possibility is iPadio (for a guide see this link), but this makes the raw interview publicly accessible, gives a phoneline-quality recording, and again does not allow you to ask for permission before recording. The last time I tested there were no apps that solved the problem satisfactorily (do leave a comment below if you know of a solution or email me).

Update: See the comment from Mark from iPadio below

Here is a simple solution for getting a quality recording as tried and tested by US radio journalist Neal Augenstein, who we have reported on previously as he ditched other recording kit in favour of his iPad and iPhone.

In this post Augenstein explains that he now gets interviewees to record themselves on their own phone (while speaking to him from a second mobile phone or landline) and then asks them to email over the audio.

Interviewees could also record using QuickTime (file / ‘new audio recording’) on a Mac or Microsoft’s Sound Recorder.

Read Augenstein’s post to find out how interviewees can record on their phone and email you the file.

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link.

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#Tip of the day for journalists: mobile reporting pointers

Copyright: By Das Fotoimaginariumn on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

The 10,000 Words blog has a post which offers some tips for getting video footage with a smartphone. See the post here.

At Journalism.co.uk’s recent news:rewired event speakers on a mobile reporting session also shared tips on using mobile devices to report. Here is a liveblog of the session which featured lots of practical tips and apps for journalists.

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link.

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BBC reports ‘new record’ for mobile during US election coverage

The BBC has reported a “record” number of mobile devices being used to access its web content in a day with “nearly 5 million” devices visiting BBC News Online on Wednesday (7 November), as results of the US election continued to be announced.

The broadcaster began measuring access via mobile devices at the beginning of the year. The record of almost 5 million beats a previous record from the week before of 4 million, recorded during Hurricane Sandy.

In a blog post BBC News website editor Steve Herrmann said the broadcaster’s election coverage also “brought the highest traffic to BBC News Online so far this year”.

On Wednesday (7 November) the news website recorded 16.4 million unique browsers.

Herrmann said this “makes it the highest traffic day of 2012 so far and rivals our two biggest previous days during the August riots and the March Tsunami, in 2011. During the England riots, on 9 August 2011 there were there were 18.2 million unique browsers”.

This comes just weeks after BBC News started to roll out as default its new responsive site on mobile phones to improve the experience for its growing mobile audience.

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#Tip of the day for journalists: Five iPad interview apps

Image by C. Regina on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

On the 10,000 Words blog Ryan Lytle lists five iPad apps that he cites as being “great for handling interviews”. The apps include one for transcribing recordings, another for recording, storing and sharing, and one which places a timestap notes to help you quickly find specific audio.

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link.

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#Podcast – Adapting to change: How and why news sites are moving to responsive design

With regular launches of new mobile devices only adding to the different platforms people are consuming news from, a number of media outlets have recently announced moves towards responsive designs to offer users an experience which suits the device on which they are accessing content.

In this week’s podcast we speak to four news outlets about their approaches to responsive design and the long-term impact that they see development today having in the future for the news site. We also look at other responsive matters beyond the resizing of text, such as the opportunities for advertising experience and enhanced visual storytelling.

The podcast features:

• William Beavis, head of digital, Midland News Association
• Andy Hume, front-end architect, Guardian News & Media
• Chris Russell, head of product for news, BBC Future Media
• Cathy Sharick, managing editor, Time.com

Podcast: Download

Here is more on the responsive designs recently announced by the above media outlets:

• Why the Express and Star went ‘mobile-first’ and responsive
• Guardian unveils ‘work-in-progress’ responsive beta site
• BBC News rolls out responsive site to mobile
• The new Time.com: A responsive global news site

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• #AOPsummit: How ZDNet approaches mobile reporting with a responsive design CMS
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