Nieman Journalism Lab's New Free App

Harvard University's Nieman Journalism Lab released a new app this week (for iPhone/iPod/iPad) that it touts as "the best way to keep up with what's happening with the future of journalism. It brings you all the latest news from the Lab along with the best from around the web: new startups, innovation at established news organizations, and new ways to do great journalism online."

Here's what it features:

— In the Lab: The full text of all our stories here at the Lab, in mobile-friendly form. Scroll through what we’ve been writing, click through on our links — and when you’ve read a piece worth sharing, it’s easy to post it on Twitter, email it to a friend, or open it in Safari.

— On Twitter: Our Twitter feed, updated throughout the day, is an essential guide to the most interesting links on the traditional journalism world, new startups, advertising, marketing, and social media.

— Hot Links: We’re excited about this one. We’ve curated a list of the most influential corners of the future-of-news Twitterverse and, using the web service Hourly Press, scan through them for the links they’re talking about most. This list of 10 links, updated hourly, is the purest jolt of future-of-news talk online.

— Friends of the Lab: Here you’ll find the latest from our sister projects — Nieman Storyboard, Nieman Watchdog, and Nieman Reports — plus some of our other friends from Harvard. Plus, we give you quick and easy access to the public RSS feeds of some of the best sources of journalism news: The New York Times’ media coverage, paidContent, Poynter, MediaShift, Romenesko, Columbia Journalism Review, and Mashable. As always, tap on the headline to get the full story.

— Search: Curious what we’ve written about The Guardian, aggregation, Bill Keller, or MinnPost? We’ve got full-text search of the Lab’s archives, so you’re just a few taps away from finding out.

Download the free app here. And here's a video demo:

Nieman Journalism Lab iPhone app from Nieman Journalism Lab.

Digital Future: More Bad News for Newspapers

The news for newspapers is getting worse, according to the Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School.

In its ninth annual "Digital Future Project" report, the Center continues to track reading and viewing trends, "watching as people move on-line and then move from modems to broadband. The project also carefully tracks those who drop off the net each year and whether they return and, if so, when and what brings them back. At the end of nine years, we also have an unparalleled view of the non-users who do not go on-line. We carefully examine why they are not users and whether they are likely to ever go on-line."

Among many other findings, its data illustrates the Web's contribution to the continuing free-fall decline of American daily print newspapers:

* The study found that as sources of information – their primary function – newspapers rank below the Internet or television. Only 56 percent of Internet users ranked newspapers as important or very important sources of information for them – a decrease from 60 percent in 2008 and below the Internet (78 percent), and television (68 percent).

* Even lower are the percentages of users who consider newspapers important as sources of entertainment for them, now considered important by 29 percent of Internet users, and down from 32 percent in 2008 – also last among principal media.

* Eighteen percent of Internet users said they stopped a subscription to a newspaper or magazine because they now get the same or related content online – down slightly from 22 percent in 2008, but nevertheless a strong indication that print newspapers can be sacrificed by a significant percentage of Internet users.

* Internet users were asked where they would go for information provided by their newspaper if the print edition ceased, 59 percent said they would read the online edition of the publication; only 37 percent said they would instead read the print edition of another newspaper.

* Twenty-two percent of users who read newspapers said they would not miss the print edition of their newspaper.

As they become more practical and affordable, e-readers and other handheld electronic devices (Kindles, iPads, etc.) are also spelling tragedy for print newspaper circulation.

Here's what Editor and Publisher has to say about it: "Newspapers Sink Below Internet and TV as Information Sources."

View highlights of the Digital Future report here (PDF).

The full Digital Future report is available for purchase here.

The Wrap Reviews Print Apps for iPad

As predicted, more print magazines and newspapers are releasing iPad apps. How good are they?

Lew Harris, managing editor of The Wrap, has tested a batch of them, in a roundup review: Print Apps for iPad: What Works, What Doesn't. He says the results so far are "pretty encouraging."

Harris brings to the task the eyes and sensibility of a guy who's been a veteran of both print magazines (Los Angeles, People, Us) and Web-only publications (E! Online, Movies.com).

"The monthlies are doing a far better job of it than the dailies, for obvious reasons – they have the time to invest. And for the most part, they not only look damn good, but some are taking full advantage of the interactive possibilities.

Cleverly, most of the apps are free -- but downloading individual issues costs $3-5 (about the same as their newsstand price, but more expensive than a print subscription -- neither of which includes multimedia features such as video).

Harris walks us through all the tapping and swiping, and provides brief reviews of the top ten, which he ranks in order of best to least impressive:

* Men's Health
* Wired
* Vanity Fair
* GQ
* Popular Science
* Time Magazine
* USA Today
* New York Times
* Wall Street Journal
* The Nation

Which iPad apps have you downloaded and used? Please share your experience and thoughts in the comments section below, or on KobreGuide's Facebook Group discussion forum.

What Will HTML5 Video Mean for iPad Users?

While we're hoping that the iPad will give a much needed shot in the arm to videojournalism, we're also nervous that, when the much heralded device debuts this week, most online video won't work on it.

That's because Web video has become almost synonymous with Adobe's ubiquitous Flash, which (for technical and political reasons) Apple's Steve Jobs famously refuses to support. He claims that Flash is a bug-ridden Mac crasher that lacks innovative qualities.

Instead the iPad is relying on more Web developers to use the emerging HTML5 coding, which enables non-Flash formats to play in standard Web browsers, without requiring additional software plug-ins.

If video producers want to reach audiences on their mobile platforms, Jobs is essentially bullying them into taking the HTML5 route.

This week, the mighty Brightcove online video platform climbed aboard the HTML5 wagon, delivering another major blow to Flash's dominance. Brightcove's clout extends to more than 1,000 major media customers around the globe -- including 20th Century Fox, Condé Nast, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony Pictures Television, Discovery Communications, ITV, Turner Broadcasting, Hearst Magazines and Fox International.

Two prominent Brightcove clients -- the New York Times (a Brightcove investor) and Time -- are already adopting the "Brightcove Experience for HTML5" for producing their iPad-ready Websites.

To make things interesting, Apple competitor Google (which owns Flash-based YouTube) fired back by integrating Flash into its Chrome browser, thus fortifying it (and its Android operating system) for mobile phones, tablets and notebooks.

Though Chrome accounts for only 5 percent of Internet use, there can be no denying Google's money and clout. Hedging its bets, YouTube is experimenting with its own HTML5 video player, for Chrome, Safari and MS Internet Explorer (with Google Chrome Frame installed).

So what does this all mean for consumers?

First, it helps to understand a little bit about HTML5. Currently, the Web operates on HTML4, a version of the standard common coding language that hasn't changed since 1999. HTML5 is a work in progress, which won't be completed and officially ratified for many years, but elements of it are starting to come into use -- such as the "VIDEO" tag that enables video to play inside a browser without the need for additional plug-in software. It even dictates the videoplayer "controls." HTML5 is supported by Chrome, Opera, Firefox and Safari. Its video relies on the H.264 compression standard (i.e. .MP4 files or Ogg Theora  format .OGV files) -- as opposed to .FLV Flash files.

For those who've ever done any type of basic HTML coding, here's an oversimplified explanation. When you want an image to appear on a Web page, you just need to create an "IMG" tag that points to the image file (e.g. a JPG or GIF) on your server, along with certain attributes (such as dimensions and placement), and voila! There's your image! However, for video to appear on your Web page, you currently have to write code that activates separate plug-in software (usually Flash) to launch a video player and start the video. With HTML5, you can just insert a "VIDEO" tag that works like an "IMG" tag, by pointing to your uploaded video and adding its own instructions on how it should look and behave.

Furthermore, with additional HTML5 interactive attributes, end users (that is, viewers) will be able to do even more -- rotate and spin the videos, slide them around the page, resize them, overlap them with other videos, draw on them, mark them up with their own text and visual elements, and more... all by clicking or just touching the screen. Coders can even dictate the launch times of videos -- so that a video can start at a specific amount of time after the page is loaded (or several videos can start sequentially at pre-established times).

Bottom line: Media Websites that currently produce video need to hop aboard the HTML5 train, as it's leaving the gate. Otherwise their Flash videos will appear as broken icons on iPads and other mobile devices. Essentially, they need to make the minimal investment in recoding their pages so that they are capable of playing both Flash (.FLV) and non-Flash (.MP4) videos -- and in recruiting programming teams to develop or license code that can maximize the interactive potential of the next generation of HTML5 video players.

Brad Neuberg's helpful video tutorial (below) explains HTML5 video (starting at 20:55).