#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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#Tip: Become a Google Analytics Real-Time addict

If you use Google Analytics to track traffic to your news site, make sure you use Google Analytics Real-Time, which tells you the number of people on your site right now.

It shows referrals (such as those coming via Twitter) and you can also see how many people are reading on a desktop, tablet or smartphone device.

You can access ‘real-time’ via the main dashboard in Google Analytics.

The content breakdown, which shows the percentage of visitors reading on desktop, tablet and mobile, is accessed by clicking on the ‘content’ tab (below ‘real-time’). It is a relatively new feature which was announced at the end of March.

Have a go – but be aware that it is rather addictive…

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#Tip: Watch video of social video panel from Social Media Summit

Image by petesimon on Flickr. Some rights reserved

The BBC College of Journalism has posted video on YouTube of a panel on creating social video, which was held at the Social Media Summit in New York last month.

The panel featured Roy Sekoff, president and co-creator of HuffPost Live, Katherine Zaleski, managing editor of NowThis News and Olivia Ma, head of news and media partnerships at Google+. Watch the video below to hear more about some of the different approaches being taken in making video a more social experience for news consumers, across platforms.

And here’s more on HuffPost Live as well as NowThisNews, on their approaches to social video,

Hat tip: Paul Bradshaw, who also posted the video on his Tumblr

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#Tip: Video of data visualisation tools tutorial at #ijf13

By Jorge Franganillo on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

At the International Journalism Festival in Perugia late last month, a tutorial was delivered by freelance information visualiser Gregor Aisch, on three key tools for building data visualisations “on a shoestring”.

Video of the workshop has been uploaded to YouTube by the festival and is also embedded below. The tutorial covered three platforms: Datawrapper, QGis and Tableau.

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#Tip: Sign up to Journalism.co.uk’s weekly podcasts

Image by M. Keefe on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

A bit of self promotion here, but each week at Journalism.co.uk we produce a podcast looking at topical issues in journalism, often focused on digital innovations, tools and techniques.

Recent podcasts have included:

• Snow Fall and beyond: A look at long-form online storytelling
• How journalists can gather news from diverse communities
• Managing user-generated content in breaking news
• Getting started in data journalism
• How magazine publishers are innovating in online video
• Then and now: Two years of the New York Times paywall

The podcasts are published every Friday on the Journalism.co.uk homepage and our blog. All Journalism.co.uk podcasts are also published on our SoundCloud account, and you can sign up to Journalism.co.uk podcasts on iTunes.

The subjects covered in the podcasts should provide journalists with inspiration and practical tips, as well as give the opportunity to listen to what colleagues at news outlets across the world have to say on a range of subjects.

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: Use YouTube Time to quickly link to a specific point in a video

If you have ever wanted to link to a particular point in a YouTube video, you might be aware that you can add the time to the YouTube URL.

For example, add ‘#t=10m03s’ to the URL if you want the video to start at 10 minutes and 3 seconds.

If you find you cannot remember the code, there is a quicker way. You can simply enter the link in YouTube Time and the online tool will do the rest.

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#Tip: Take a look at this flow-chart guide to Leveson

The DCMS has released a flow-chart guide to help bloggers and publishers understand the regulation criteria following Leveson.

Image by the Department for Culture Media and Sport on Flickr. Some rights reserved

You might also enjoy Martin Belam’s alternative flow-chart to help understand how Leveson works for bloggers.

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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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#Tip: Videonotes can streamline online research

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Keeping track of notes when researching a story can sometimes be a struggle, especially when they refer to online resources. Videonotes (not to be confused with VideoNote) can help to ease the process by letting you tag notes to any video from around the internet, as this article from The Next Web explains.

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: Social media mistakes journalists make in a crisis

Thinkstock

In light of the recent events in Boston and issues that regularly arise when covering crises and breaking news stories on social media, Slate magazine’s social media editor, Jeremy Stahl, has drawn up some advice on what a journalist should or should not tweet during a crisis situation.

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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