App of the week: 360 Panorama, for ‘multilayered storytelling’

App of the week: 360 Panorama

Phones: iPhone, iPad, Android

Cost: £0.69

What is it? An app to take panorama photos

How is it of use to journalists? Speaking at the Guardian Activate Summit last week, Wall Street Journal social media editor Neal Mann (@fieldproducer on Twitter) spoke about the potential for the role of “multilayered storytelling” in journalism.

He used the example of how long-form journalism could be accompanied by an additional “layer” of a map showing the location where tweets were posted and photos were taken, as Mann did when sharing updates on a recent trip to Burkina Faso. He also said how journalists are starting to share “background” to the story such as 360 degree panoramas.

If you want to try this out there’s a fantastic app for that. Using the 360 app, simply point the camera and your phone will automatically take a series of pictures and stitch them together in real-time.

The app also allows you to add comments and show the location where the panorama picture was taken.

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.

Similar posts:

• #Activateldn: Four innovations and ideas in ‘multilayered storytelling’
• App of the week for journalists – Glympse, for sharing your location
• App of the week for journalists – Teleportd, location-based Twitter and Facebook image search
• Watch again: BBC Panorama – ‘The Death of Kiss and Tell’
• App of the week for journalists – OS Grid Converter

App of the week for journalists – TinyVox, for recording and sharing audio notes

App of the week: TinyVox

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

Cost: £0.69 / £1.27

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? TinyVox allows you to record audio, add text and share the mp3 recording via email, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and SoundCloud.

Designed to look like a dictaphone, the app is a handy way for journalists to record interviews or memos and add associated written notes.

It is worth clicking the settings button and making recordings “high quality”, if you want broadcast-quality audio.

Audio is also posted online to a unique URL (the app should not be used for confidential recordings), which includes additional sharing options and the ability to embed the player within a post.

Ratings: Apple has not yet received enough reviews to rate the app.

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 – DropVox, for saving audio to Dropbox
• App of the week for journalists – Voddio, for slideshows and video
• App of the week for journalists – iRig Recorder, for recording, trimming and sharing audio
• App of the week for journalists – VC Audio Pro, a must-have for radio journalists
• App of the week for journalists – Showcase, for creating audio slideshows

App of the week for journalists – Photoshop Express, for photo editing on the fly

App of the week: Adobe Photoshop Express

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

Cost: Free

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? Photoshop Express on your Android, iPhone or iPad will allow you to edit photos on the fly. As a journalist you may find you need to crop an image, sharpen it up or correct the exposure before posting to a blog or news site.

There are various apps out there that allow you to do this, including Camera Plus.

It is worth having this free app on your phone in case you find yourself in a situation where you have photograph that needs cropping before it can be shared.

Reviews: Adobe Photoshop Express gets 3.5 stars in iTunes App Store and 4 stars in the Android Market.

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.

Similar posts:

• App of the week for journalists – Pro HDR, for better photos (without an iPhone 4S)
• App of the week for journalists – Glympse, for sharing your location
• App of the week for journalists – Flud, an RSS and news reader
• App of the week for journalists: PressReader
• App of the week for Journalists: DropSync for Android – syncs with DropBox

App of the week for journalists – Pro HDR, for better photos (without an iPhone 4S)

App of the week: Pro HDR

Operating systems: Apple (compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod touch, and iPad 2) and Android

Cost: £1.49 in the App Store, £1.24 in the Android Market

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? If you followed the unveiling of the iPhone 4S yesterday you will have learned that it has a better camera than current models, a feature that is no doubt of benefit to journalists.

This week’s app of the week is one for anyone who has struggled with the limitations of their current iPhone or Android camera, and taken a picture on their phone and found the result has either washed out sky or dark foreground.

Pro HDR works by taking two photos, each picture focusing on a different part of the the subject, and the app then blends the two together.

For example, the below photo, which was taken on an iPhone 4 using Pro HDR, is two pictures: one exposed for the sky, the other with the focus on the foreground.

Reviews: Pro HDR gets 4.5 stars in the Apps Store and3.5 stars in the Android Market.

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.

Similar posts:

• App of the week for journalists – Photoshop Express, for photo editing on the fly
• App of the week for journalists – Glympse, for sharing your location
• App of the week for journalists: Evernote – A must-have app ‘like having a second brain’
• App of the week for journalists – Flud, an RSS and news reader
• App of the week for journalists – Wunderlist

App of the week for journalists – Astrid Tasks, a task manager for Android

App of the week: Astrid Tasks

Operating systems: Android

Cost: Free

What is it and how is it of use to journalists?

According to @germanbureau, who recommends this app:

Astrid is a task manager app that allows you to set new tasks with due dates, reminders, notes, tags and four colour-coded levels of importance. It offers additional settings such as quiet hours (during which reminders are deactivated regardless of individual task settings), and the app can also be extended using various plug-ins.

Astrid provides an array of useful functions without going overboard. It is lightweight and intuitive in my experience, and it integrates well into the Google Calendar and related apps, such as the Pure Calendar widget, another one of my all-time favourites. Astrid runs exceedingly well on my old Cupcake 1.5 OS, and I’m told that it also works great on newer models; recent updates have also optimized the app for tab devices.

As a freelance journalist, Astrid allows me to keep track of my stories and deadlines by setting reminders for various tasks. In combination with Google Calendar, it is a highly useful tool for managing my day-to-day professional activities.

(Images taken from Android Marketplace)

Reviews: It gets 4.4 stars in the Android Marketplace

Recommended by: @germanbureau

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: PressReader

App of the week: PressReader

Operating systems: Apple (iPhone and iPad), Android, HoneyComb BlackBerry and Windows

Cost: Free (but you pay $0.99 per download after you’ve used seven free credits)

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? An app that allows you to read newspapers. PressReader is the app from digital newspaper edition provider PressDisplay which enables you to read newspapers in their original format. The PressReader iPhone app has been around since 2009 and there are now over 1,900 newspapers in various languages to choose from. You can read the paper page-by-page and zoom in, click the headlines to take you to a particular article and share by Twitter and Facebook.

Sam Coates from the Times, who nominated the app, described it as “invaluable”.

It’s particularly useful for reading newspapers that can be hard to get hold of, like the print editions of local newspapers. For example, I’ve just downloaded read the latest edition of the Kentish Express, a paper I used to work on, for free.

Reviews: It gets four stars in the iTunes App Store and in the Android Marketplace

Recommended by: @SamCoatesTimes

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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• Guardian iPad app downloaded nearly 150,000 times in first week
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• More details on Spectator’s iPad app

App of the week for journalists: Evernote – A must-have app ‘like having a second brain’

Evernote is already a favourite app of many journalists – indeed there are now 11 million Everenote users. If you haven’t yet downloaded it you should definitely give the note-taking platform a go.

App of the week: Evernote

Available for mobile: iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Android, Android Tablet, Windows Phone 7,  BlackBerry, Palm Pre/Palm Pixi
For computers: Mac, Windows and web

Cost: free

What is it and how is it of use to journalists?

Evernote allows you to save photos, audio files, web links and notes and share them across all your devices. It is like “having a second brain”, journalist Kim Townsend said when we discussing its advantages.

What does it allow you to do?

If you are at a press conference you can make notes, grab an audio quote, take a photo which can be later accessed from your computer.

What it is perhaps most useful for is keeping a note of ideas as you have them and storing related photos, web content and audio notes all in one place. You can tag your content so that it is easy to find.

Multiple people can feed into the same notebook, making collaboration easy, particularly for newsrooms.

Evernote has an open API allowing developers to create new apps. For example, there are various apps allowing you to turn your phone into a scanner enabling you to save further documents to Evernote.

Reviews: Evernote gets 4.5 stars in both the iTunes Store and the Android Market and 3 stars in the BlackBerry App World.

Accordng to Mashable, there are six finalists competing for a $100,000 prize in a competition for developers who have used the Evernote API to create new apps. The winner will be announced on 18 August.

The apps are:

• Touchanote, for digital reminders;
• Colorstache, for tagging by colour;
• MyWorld, which combines Facebook and Evernote to allow you to remember and recommend places such as restaurants and bars which can be viewed in augmented reality;
• Sniptastic, to allow you to save and share snippets of code;
• Noteablemeals, to allow you to review restaurants, including photos and audio notes, share recommendations by email, to Twitter, Facebook, Delicious and other platforms;
• Zendone, a really nifty productivity tool combing Evernote and Google Calendar. It allows you to make to do lists and schedule actions with attached web content, notes and photos.

Similar posts:

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• App of the week for journalists – Glympse, for sharing your location
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• App of the week for journalists – Photoshop Express, for photo editing on the fly
• Livescribe pen now shares notes with Facebook, Evernote, Google Docs and email

App of the week for journalists – TCoder

App of the week: TCoder

Operating systems: Apple. Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad

Cost: £2.49

What is it and how is it of use to journalists?

TCoder is logbook app that is of use to broadcast journalists, particularly those recording video, and reporters recording audio at press conferences.

What does it allow you to do?

Using either ‘time code’ or ‘clock mode’ you can take notes time stamped to a point in a recording. You can then email the notes.

Reviews: It gets 3 1/2 stars in Apple’s iTunes 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 – OS Grid Converter

App of the week: OS Crid Converter

Operating systems: Apple. Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad

Cost: free

Why is it so good?

Simplicity. No requirement to do anything apart from launching the app.

What is it and how is it of use to journalists?

Enables a journalist to give a precise location in a common format (an OS map reference) to their news desk. It is especially useful for a location away from named roads. The app also has ability to cross reference to the Google Maps app.

What does it allow you to do?

Using the data from your phone it will very simply show you your location in:
OS format (the UK Ordnance Survey maps system);
OSGB36 (The reference system used by the above);
WGS84 (The international reference coordination system used by GPS).

Reviews: It gets 4+ stars in Apple’s iTunes store

Tipster: @Dishgimp

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.

Similar posts:

• App of the week: 360 Panorama, for ‘multilayered storytelling’
• App of the week for journalists – Glympse, for sharing your location
• App of the week for journalists: Splice, an easy video editor
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App of the week for journalists – Bambuser

App of the week: Bambuser

Operating systems: Apple (iPhone and iPad), Android, Nokia

Cost: Free

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? An app for live streaming video to your Facebook page, Twitter account or to an embedded player on your news site or blog.

It is similar to Qik, another app for live streaming video.

Reviews: It gets three stars in Apple’s iTunes store

What else should I know?

Bambuser has been around for a couple of years. It attracted media attention at the start of the year due to its wide spread use by protestors during the Arab spring demonstrations.

Over the last six months Bambuser has introduced a new hardware video encoding system. In short, it means Bambuser now has a higher frame rate, sharper video and better audio – while at the same time needing less bandwidth. The improvements are more apparent when using the most up to date smartphones (iPhones as well as numerous Android models) as well as the iPod Touch 4th Gen. The full list of 260 suitable phones is here.

Another advancement is Bambuser now automatically assesses the quality of your connection and then varies the quality of the broadcast accordingly so viewers don’t suffer increased latency.

Ultimately, users are held victim to the quality of the 3G / WiFi signal they receive. If they’re competing with 100,000 others at somewhere like Glastonbury, the end result isn’t ideal. However this is set to change in the near future with the 4G trials in Cornwall that will ultimately give smartphones the same download speed as fixed-line broadband connections.

Examples:

Given that Bambuser comes out of Sweden, many of these examples are from Scandanavia.

• One of Sweden’s best know sports journalists doing a live broadcast on board a yacht;
• NRK doing a Eurovision contest doorstop;
• Nokia and Microsoft announcing their partnership – with live coverage of Steve Ballmer’s speech via a laptop;
• This example from Tahrir square, Egypt and this example from inured protestors in Egypt

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.

Similar posts:

• Bambuser offers free premium accounts to citizen journalists
• #Tip: Follow Sky News reporter in using Bambuser to livestream video
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