The document discusses various mobile apps that are useful for journalists. It provides details on apps for social media engagement like Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. It also covers apps for multimedia like Instagram, iMovie and SoundCloud. Additional apps mentioned are for tasks like notetaking, translation, navigation and more. The document aims to outline essential tools that journalists can utilize on mobile.

1. The mobile journalist
Robert Quigley and Christian McDonald
May 11, 2012

2. Getting social

3. Getting social
✤ How many of you use Twitter?

4. Getting social
✤ How many of you use Twitter?
✤ To drive traffic?

5. Getting social
✤ How many of you use Twitter?
✤ To drive traffic?
✤ To engage followers?

6. Getting social
✤ How many of you use Twitter?
✤ To drive traffic?
✤ To engage followers?
✤ To market yourself? To market your news organization?

7. Getting social
✤ How many of you use Twitter?
✤ To drive traffic?
✤ To engage followers?
✤ To market yourself? To market your news organization?
✤ How many use Facebook for more than dog/baby pics?

8. Getting social
✤ How many of you use Twitter?
✤ To drive traffic?
✤ To engage followers?
✤ To market yourself? To market your news organization?
✤ How many use Facebook for more than dog/baby pics?
✤ What applications do you use?

9. Getting social
✤ How many of you use Twitter?
✤ To drive traffic?
✤ To engage followers?
✤ To market yourself? To market your news organization?
✤ How many use Facebook for more than dog/baby pics?
✤ What applications do you use?
✤ My three reasons for using social: Traffic, marketing & journalism

17. Storify

18. The essential apps
Tools every journalist can use

19. Hootsuite
✤ More intuitive than Twitter’s
official app
✤ Easily switch between columns
- favorites, mentions, dms, etc.
✤ Easy to monitor hashtags from
live news events

20. Pinterest
✤ Up-and-comer with a decent
mobile presence
✤ Great for your features writers
✤ Would also work well for a
photographer

22. Caspio
✤ Relatively cheaply build your
own data-centric mobile app
✤ Little coding knowledge
required
✤ Caspio also has decent desktop
offerings for making databases
and maps
✤ Starts at $40 a month

23. Facebook
✤ Not really a very good app,
considering who makes it
✤ Great for updating on a fan
page from the field
✤ Reporters could open their
profiles to subscriptions to
reach more in the public

24. GroupMe
✤ Text multiple users at once
✤ Great for organizing reporters
in the field
✤ See a map of their last location

25. Google Plus
✤ Best feature is Hangouts -
KOMU-TV using it to converse
with audience during
broadcasts
✤ Few people active now
(relative to Facebook), but has
Google’s muscle
✤ Easy to share photos - as you
shoot, they go to your account

26. Audioboo
✤ Easy to create, share audio clips
✤ 3 minutes for free, 30 minutes
for premium version
✤ Al Jazeera used it in the field
during Arab spring

28. DropBox
✤ Seamlessly share information
with anyone
✤ Virtual storage space (2 gigs for
free)
✤ Google Drive is competition -
just launched with Docs
integration and 5 gigs of space

29. 5-0 Radio
✤ No longer need to carry
scanner with you
✤ Has many frequencies, but not
all of them
✤ Free version has fewer
channels

30. Instagram
✤ Social photos
✤ Multiple filters
✤ Easy to share on Facebook or
Twitter - Washington Post does
Instagram contests

31. iMovie
✤ It’s a watered-down version of
the Apple movie editing
software
✤ Quite a few features, still
(transitions, audio, etc)
✤ Easy to share videos when
finished with it

32. Dragon
Dictation
✤ Easy-to-use dictation software
that does a decent job of
getting it right
✤ You must say the punctuation,
so it slows you down some.
✤ Siri does this, too

33. Photogene
✤ Rich-featured photo editing
software
✤ Crop, filter, sharpen, rotate, etc.
✤ Easy to share finished work
✤ Works from the photos already
on your phone

34. Genius Scan
✤ Scan documents, crop them
and save them as PDF files or
jpegs
✤ Quick and easy
✤ Great for everything from court
documents to expense report
receipts

35. Wolfram Alpha
✤ The brains behind Siri
✤ Want to know how many cups
are in a gallon? How old the
Earth is? How many stars are
in the Milky Way galaxy?
✤ Has photo analysis software,
too

36. SoundCloud
✤ Create and post audio in
podcast format
✤ Free for the first 120 minutes of
uploaded audio, after that, it’ll
cost you
✤ Has a nice player for the end
user experience.

37. Evernote
✤ It’s a reporter’s notebook
✤ Save and share anything -
syncs with several devices
✤ Nice organization - search for
words even within
handwritten notes

38. Google’s apps
✤ Much more than search,
Google has a suite of apps that
should be useful to any
journalist
✤ Search is pretty great, too, with
voice recognition

39. Translator apps
✤ Type in text to be translated,
and then see it and listen to
how it sounds
✤ This is a paid app called
iSpeak, but there are free ones
as well

40. Waze
✤ Free turn-by-turn navigation
✤ Social component to avoid
slowdowns
✤ Burns battery fast, so plug in
your phone while using

41. Blogsy for the iPad

42. Thank you!
✤ Christian McDonald: @crit, cmcdonald@statesman.com
✤ Robert Quigley: @robquig, robert.quigley@austin.utexas.edu