Check out the terrific roundup of multimedia iPhone apps, over on Richard Koci Hernandez's Multimedia Shooter blog. (Most are also available on iPod Touch and iPad. Some are free!)
He gives you full descriptions, recommendations and links. Here's a sampler, with digested info:
Easy Release: Replaces inconvenient paper release forms for pros.
AutoStitch Panorama: Combines multiple images to produce wide-angle panoramas with no visible seams.
ReelDirector: Full-blown video editing suite.
Monle: Records, edits and manages WAV files.
ShowCase: Records and edits multimedia slideshows
Tcoder: Enables you to take notes during press conferences, presentations and speeches, perfectly synchronized with the time code of your recorder, miniDisc or TV camera.
CoverItLive: Publish photos, video, audio in real time -- integrated with moderated comments, email and Twitter.
AudioBoo: Records and shares annotated audio on social media.
Eye-Fi: Uploads/downloads and organizes photos from your Flickr account.
Photogene: Crops, rotates, and enhances photos with filters and multiple color adjustments (levels, exposure, contrast, saturation and RGB manipulation).
Qik and Ustream: Records audio files and streams them to the Web.
Gorillacam: Enables photo features such as anti-shake, self-timer, time-lapse, continuous rapid-fire, 3-shot burst, and more.
iTimeLapse Pro: Creates stunning time-lapse and stop-motion videos.
Want more info, and the direct links to each app? Visit Multimedia Shooter.
We're relieved to be in good company when we called the iPad a "game changer" for print journalism.
We've been among those forecasting that the addition of touchscreen visual journalism -- especially video -- is going to compel people to fork over a few bucks, either for each issue or for an extended subscription. That's partly because audiences are already in the habit of buying apps with the push of a button, even as they've lost their desire to purchase publications on newsstands and magazine racks.
As we've been predicting all along, iTunes will do for print what it did for music. Smart publishers will get on board early.
One such publisher that has vindicated our vision is Conde Nast, whose upscale titles include Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and GQ (which already publishes iPhone/iPod Touch app versions of its issues).
First out of the chute for iPad conversion is, appropriately, their premiere tech title, Wired. Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson announced at the Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) conference on Friday that the publication would be releasing its content for the iPad by summer.
Anderson said the iPad allows periodicals for the first time to do digital content with all of the same values and artistic range that are the hallmark of print magazines. Wired Creative Director Scott Dadich worked with Jeremy Clark from Adobe (pictured) over the last six months to design the Wired iPad Magazine. [Ed. note: Couldn't they have displayed a more optimistic headline?]
Readers can sift through the contents horizontally and when they find an article they want to read, touch and drag their finger on the first page vertically to browse through the pages up and down. They can also turn the device horizontally to take advantage of the automatically-rotating display to view two pages side by side like a magazine and zoom out to see thumbnails of the content all at once.
Naturally, the best part, from our perspective, will be the inclusion of video. Touch a photo of a product being reviewed, and you'll get a video report about it -- a feature that will be especially enticing to advertisers.
And of course another big advantage over print is that the portable digital version can be offered for a fraction of the subscription price, which runs as high as $70/year for overseas addresses.
Mark your calendars. The Web is rife with rumors that Jan. 26, 2010 is the big day that Apple will at long last unveil its Tablet, which we wrote about yesterday.
Tablet Tuesday, they're calling it.
No sooner had the New York Times' Bits blog expressed cynicism that real-world technology could ever match that seemingly pie-in-the-sky Sports Illustrated demo video (or the one below from Sweden's Bonnier Group), than somebody let the cat out of the bag -- Apple had scheduled a big media event in San Francisco. On January 26. Just Google that date with the word Apple and you'll get a sense of the pent-up excitement among Mac fans, and techies in general.
All signs seem to point to an official announcement that an oversized iPod Touch device is on its way, for a Spring debut.
How big is it?
Again, it's all speculation -- with some saying a 7" screen, others saying a 10" screen, and others saying both.
Would a 7" provide sufficiently more viewing pleasure than an iPod Touch to warrant upgrading? Would a 10" be too big to shlep around? Each size is notably a trifle larger than Amazon's corresponding 6" and 9.7" Kindle e-book reader.
Somebody who did better at high school geometry than we did performed some calculations and concluded that a 7-inch screen will provide a viewing area roughly four times the iPhone's; a 10-inch screen will provide a viewing area about eight times the iPhone's.
In conjunction with its Tablet announcement, Apple is expected to reveal plans to partner with major TV networks to launch a subscription service for TV shows distributed via iTunes for a recurring monthly fee (a la cable TV subscriptions). CBS and Disney are said to be aboard, though Turner Broadcasting System and Viacom are reportedly standoffish. (Prediction, based on Apple's track record with the music industry: they'll come around. Ditto for book publishers.)
But it's obviously the implications for the newspaper and magazine world that fascinate us, especially considering that Time Inc. and Conde Nast have already developed prototypes of digital magazine issues. And then there's this slick new one from Sweden's Bonnier Group:
How much will the Apple Tablet cost? Good question. Estimates range from $600 to $1000 or more. So start saving your pennies. You know you want one. We do -- not to watch TV shows, but to see the revolutionary improvement it's going to bring to online videojournalism.
The journalism world eagerly awaits the now mythic Spring arrival of Apple's game-changing Tablet, or whatever they're going to call it. It's been a big hush-hush secret for so long, that sometimes it seems like maybe the whole notion was just a dream.
That hasn't stopped graphic artists -- with no inside knowledge of the tight-lipped Apple kingdom -- from imagining what this unwrapped dream toy might look like.
Ron Callari gathered no less than 20 possible designs on Inventor Spot, and frankly they all look pretty cool. We'll be happy to play with any of them -- just hurry up and get one on the market already!
Will it look like an oversized iPhone? A souped-up Kindle? A touchscreen MacBook? A Mac Pro with app-like navigation buttons? A lidless laptop? A big docked PDA with keyboard?
And what will it be called? iPad? iTab? iTablet? MacTab? MacPad? MacTablet? TouchPad? TouchTab? TouchTablet? TouchBook?
Bets, anyone?
To see what this mystery Mac might do to transform print journalism into a total multimedia experience, check out this video of a hypothetical issue of Sports Illustrated. It's like the magazine literally comes to life. Tell us you wouldn't spend a couple bucks for an app that sings and dances like this:
The smarter print publications (e.g. Conde Nast's Wired) are prepping for this day, since they know that a customer who won't spend a nickel for a print issue, or for Web content, will happily fork over a few bucks for iPhone apps -- and this will seem like an extension of that.
Steve Jobs is conditioning us the same way he got all the music freeloaders to pony up a buck a song via iTunes -- thus revolutionizing the music industry. True, the record companies and record stores still took a lethal hit, but he proved that there's a viable market for music; it was just a matter of upending the financial model by altering attitudes and behaviors. We suspect he'll do the same for journalism.
So news organizations would be wise to to learn from the mistakes of the entrenched music industry that bemoaned its fate (and hastened its demise) by cursing its customers. It fell into extinction while a savvy outsider came along and drank its milkshake. What can you do today to prepare yourself or your company for a multimedia future, so that there will be no more blood?
Here's our recommendation. Invest heavily in the best videojournalism talent, training and equipment. Make sure you and your staff recognize the value of video that is professionally produced, and represents excellent journalism standards and storytelling qualities. Newspaper- and magazine-produced online video is coming of age, in fits and starts. Because publishers didn't experience an immediate return on their (minimal) financial investment, and those pre-roll ads didn't materialize as quickly as they had hoped, a lot of them got nervous and withdrew from that arena. Or, worse, they stayed in the game with orphaned third-rate product, which nobody watched, and so they buried it deep on their Websites so nobody could even find it, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that "nobody watches serious video."
But with the new Mac whatchamathing on the horizon, now is the time to re-think video strategies. Apple will succeed where nearly every journalism Website has failed. Why? Because it will successfully integrate words and moving images, in a new and exciting way that has mysteriously eluded print publishers and broadcasters. The device's portability and touch-screen capability will help catapult the online visual experience to the next level.
But ultimately, it's just a platform -- a fancy bucket waiting to be filled. iTunes is pure genius, but it would be worthless without talented composers, instrumentalists, singers, arrangers, producers. Similarly, for multimedia journalism to succeed, we'll need talented reporters, writers, shooters, editors and producers.
Trust us, video is where the future lies. At KobreGuide, we're betting the farm on it.
Savvy UK journalist Adam Westbrook predicts 10 trends for the profession for 2010.
Excerpts:
1. Lots of new entrepreneurial startups 2. More journalists working with NGOs 3. Journalists moving into the field of training 4. Increased hyperlocal reporting 5. Paywalls in action
See the full list, and watch his expanded commentary, below. Nothing radically new here, but it's a launching pad for smart discussion. Or maybe it's just his Brit accent?
Imagine if your camera worked like an iPhone and enabled you to download applications that could alter your images while they were being shot?
Currently your camera can tweak your images in numerous ways -- and once an image is shot, you can revamp it endlessly in a program like Photoshop.
But even the world's greatest digital camera is limited by what's in its body. So imagine trying to take a single image in which one side is well lit, but the other side is not. Your camera can currently adjust so that part of the frame will be properly exposed, but the other part will be too dark or too light.
Frankencamera to the rescue! That's the invention of Stanford University computer science professor Marc Levoy (pictured), which will rapidly fire two shots -- one exposed correctly for the dark park, the other exposed correctly for the light park -- and then merge them into one perfectly exposed image, using the best parts of both images.
The Frankencamera could perform the same way for focusing -- taking several shots, each focusing on different parts of the frame, and then instantly merging them into a perfectly focused shot.
The idea is that, by using an open-source digital camera, programmers can create software to teach cameras new tricks -- and that, like your iPhone, your camera will no longer be limited to the manufacturer's software that it came packaged with.
Obviously the Frankencamera, made from a hodgepodge of existing parts, is a monstrous prototype, destined for downsizing and redesign. But rather than compete with manufacturing giants, Levoy intends to convince camera makers to incorporate open-source capabilities into their existing closed-end proprietary products.
Consequently, all the existing controls -- focus, exposure, shutter speed, flash -- will no longer be limited by what comes pre-installed with the camera, but can be commanded and superceded by external programmers. Users can upgrade their capabilities with the touch of a download button.
The innovative algorithms will be generated by a new breed of "computational photography researchers," who will be able to take their experiments out of the lab and bring them to photo studios, and everywhere that cameras go.
In addition to using algorithms to create optimal lighting or focus throughout a single frame -- currently not possible with current commercial cameras -- the Frankencamera can enhance a 30 fps low-res video by periodically capturing a high-res still image, and using the extra data in that image to imbue the entire video with richer detail.
In essence, by opening up your camera to a network or community of developers, your technical possibilities will catapult exponentially beyond today's capabilities.
This will clearly have exciting ramifications for still photographers and videographers. But let's not lose sight of the fact that, ultimately, images will always require human spirit, creativity, and imagination. And there will never be an app that can replace that.
Simon & Schuster today introduces four new online video books -- or "vooks," as they're calling them -- which on the one hand seems like a technological step forward (a novel punctuated by 17 video enactments) and a step backward (you have to read the text on your computer monitor or, worse, your iPhone). Kindles don't support video, a shortcoming that the publisher tries to turn into a virtue: "No special software required."
In short, you can now read and watch a book at the same time -- an endeavour likely to stir debate in itself as to whether that's a cultural advancement or yet another step on the path toward mass illiteracy. For better or worse, social networking will be enabled on each title's Website, so that you can interact with other readers, and even the author.
Of the four new titles, two are fiction and two are "how-to" fitness and beauty books, for which video admittedly seems more practical and pertinent.
The video is supplied by TurnHere, an Internet video production company which claims to have a network of 7,000 professional filmmakers.
According to an AP report, "Video books are unlikely to become standard in the near future if only because of the expense of filming. Executives at Vook and Simon & Schuster would not say how much it cost to shoot video for the four books, although ... the budget for an individual title was less than $100,000."
Factor in the newly complicated logistics of the creative process, which transforms from a solitary enterprise to a collaborative one, and you can imagine publishing execs wondering if vooks are truly a meritorious innovation, or merely another harebrained scheme to prop up a dying industry.
The first four titles sell for $6.99 each, which is $3 less than for most Kindle e-books.
Will people buy vooks? Will they read and watch them? Will video augment or diminish the pleasures of print?
Top editors of print magazines know that the best editorial packages are those in which the text and images are independently powerful, but when combined they do more than complement each other -- they create an impact larger than the sum of the parts.
Too often, videojournalism merely mimics the text story it accompanies (and vice versa). Ideally each should be freestanding, and yet provide information and sensation that the other cannot, so that readers/viewers are delivered an overall experience that they couldn't have received from just one or the other.
We wonder whether a vook can combine text and video as creatively and compelling as, say, our favorite vagazine.
The AP Stylebook, a mainstay of newsrooms everywhere, is now an iPhone app.
Unlike most apps, it's not free or 99 cents. It's a whopping $28.99 (compared to the paper version, which is only $18.95).
Today's Poynter article notes that, though that's in the same price range as popular reference works apps, "given that newsrooms and journalists are being slammed by pay cuts, layoffs and furloughs, there's reason to wonder if they'll pay for such an expensive app."
The app features all of the more than 3,000 A to Z Stylebook entries. Similar to the AP Stylebook Web site, users can create their own customized listings if the AP does not have a particular style on something. In the future, the app will likely be more interactive and better integrated with the AP Stylebook's Web site.
The new iPod Nano is out and, yep, it's really got a videocamera crammed into its 3.6 x 1.5 x 0.2 inch little body -- sharing space with a mike, speaker, FM radio, voice recorder, pedometer... and, oh yeah, music player.
Yes, on the back of the new Nano, there’s a tiny lens and a microphone the size of a pinhole. If this isn’t the smallest camcorder in the world, I don’t know what is.
The video quality turns out to be exactly like the iPhone’s: nowhere near as good as a camcorder’s video, but better than a typical cellphone’s. You can see some sample footage on Apple’s demo page. Keep in mind, of course, that (a) Apple’s samples are all shot in bright sunlight, and (b) they appear on Apple’s page smaller than they really are, which makes them look sharper.
You can record for 8 or 16 hours on this little thing. There are 15 video effects you can add for fun (Black and White, X-Ray, Thermal, Security Cam, Cyborg, and so on). You ache for an image stabilizer—this wisp of metal truly isn’t an ideal shape for holding steady. In fact, filming with it feels awkward in general, at least at first.
The sound is crisp but mono; the video is only standard definition. The Nano does not shoot still photos; Apple says that kind of sensor wouldn’t fit in a case this small.
I want to whine about these things, I really do. But you know what? You’ve got video in a machine that can hide between two fingers, for Pete’s sake. There’s something to be said about having a video recorder in a gadget that’s so small, you always have it with you. What good is hi-def if you didn’t have the camcorder when the moment arose?
Also, don’t be surprised if this thing triggers a whole social wave of spy-filming. It’s totally easy to conceal.
Implications for videojournalists? Flip vidcams, and its burgeoning one-button copycats, are still better quality for on-the-fly HD shooting (if you don't need audio), and none of these hobbyist toys comes close to emulating professional gear. But anybody who bets against them soon becoming serious tools for journalists forgets that it was only 5 minutes ago that Final Cut made its way from Hollywood studios to laptops.
Could the Tablet be the cure-all for the journalism biz?
More specifically, will a thin magazine-sized iPhone-like device give online videojournalism the boost it needs?
Bill Gates and Microsoft gave it their all, but failed. Maybe it was the timing.
Amazon's Kindle has caught on with text readers, but lacks visual spark -- not to mention all those cool 99-cent apps.
According to PC World, TechCrunch just released conceptual drawings of the prototype for its Web tablet project, called the CrunchPad (above). The simplified device is a touch-screen tablet designed specifically for Web surfing, video chat, and light e-mail use. Here's a demo:
Alas, TechCrunch is no Apple ... and now the 800-pound gorilla itself is confirming what has long been rumored. According to the Financial Times, "Apple is racing to offer a portable tablet-sized computer in time for the Christmas shopping season, in what the entertainment industry hopes will be a new revolution."
The device (right) is expected to be launched alongside new content deals, including some aimed at stimulating sales of CD-length music, according to people briefed on the project. The touch-sensitive computer will have a screen that may be up to 10 inches diagonally.
It will connect to the internet like the iPod Touch – probably without phone capability but with access to the web, and to Apple’s online stores for software and entertainment.
The entertainment industry is hoping that Apple, which revolutionised the markets for music players and for phones, can do it again. “It’s a portable entertainment device,” said one entertainment executive. “It’s going to be fabulous for watching movies.”
Book publishers have been in talks with Apple and are optimistic about being included in the computer, which could provide an alternative to Amazon’s Kindle, Sony’s Reader and a forthcoming device from Plastic Logic, recently allied with Barnes & Noble.
“It would be a colour, flat-panel TV to the old-fashioned, black and white TV of the Kindle,” one publishing executive said.
Apple does not appear to have briefed film studios, but Hollywood executives said they would be willing to contribute more content than is now available over iTunes.
The machine would reportedly cost around $800.
Surely you can see the implications for newspapers and other media outlets here.
Spokesman-Review multimedia guru Colin Mulvany could, and ruminated at length on his Mastering Multimedia blog:
These touch enabled tablets could seal the deal by forcing print journalism to go mostly digital. [It] makes me wonder if this will be the disruptive technology that sends print newspapers down the black hole for good.
A touch enabled tablet... would allow me to view text, multimedia and video in ways the smart phone struggles with today. I think of the applications of a tablet for photojournalists. Being able to download photos from their cameras to a tablet, then quickly tone, caption and send them back to the newspaper would be great. Having to lug a laptop in the field is true pain. This is a market segment that is only getting started. It has the strong potential to disrupt not only newspapers, but magazines as well.
Consumers, if they embrace these new touch-tablets, will have their news pushed to them at lightning speed. They will be connected to everyone and everything. They will choose how to shape their digital lives by deciding what news feeds and publications to subscribe to.
Where mainstream media outlets have shed their most talented people, those same workers are going to be the ones that will build the new journalism of the future. My guess is that it will be built around these new web tablets and handset devices. Monetizing the content will be foremost on the minds of these new digital publishers. Freed from the cost of presses, ink and newsprint, a new publishing model will develop.
News content is going to change, too. Web tablets are not just text readers, but will be multimedia hubs. Music, video, photos, animation, interactive graphics are going to be what consumers will gravitate to. It will change how journalists tell their stories. For many of today’s journalists, this new paradigm will be the deal breaker. For others, these new opportunities will present unique challenges that will drive the future of digital journalism to new and exciting heights.
Here's a video story about the creation of this week's cover art for New Yorker magazine -- made possible by, implausibly, iPhone technology.
Jorge Colombo drew this week’s cover using Brushes, a $4.99 application for the iPhone, while standing for an hour outside Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in Times Square.
The advantage of the program, says Colombo, is that it enables him to draw in the dark, and also to draw unobtrusively, as passersby presume he's merely checking his email. And, of course, it's portable.
Its companion application, Brushes Viewer, makes a video reconstructing each step of how Colombo composed the picture (below). What you're not seeing, the artist confesses, is his reliance on the "Undo" feature (i.e. the missteps and do-overs) so that the process seems more linear and self-assured than it was in real life.
But watching the video playback has made him aware that how he draws a picture can tell a story, and he’s hoping to build suspense as he builds up layers of color and shape.
As previously noted, RevenueTwoPointZero vowed to identify and propose four specific new strategies for funding journalism. Here are the new revenue models these enterprising newspaper employees have developed for media companies. See what you think:
* Display advertising solutions (Converting homepages from digests to tables of content, and re-imagining story pages with one big bold 480x480 interactive ad, pictured)
* Classified solutions (Beating Craigslist at its own game, and taking back classified ads)
* iPhone solutions (Capturing an emerging audience on mobile platforms)
An ad-hoc group of more than two dozen newspaper journalists are meeting in Washington, D.C. to re-invent online advertising. Though they come from the ranks of the nation's top newspapers, they are embarking on this quest independently -- their efforts are self-subsidized and they are not representing their employers in this endeavour. They've dubbed their mission RevenueTwoPointZero.
Newspapers are in crisis. The old revenue model is no longer viable. If media companies want to produce journalism, they’ll need to find new ways to fund it — even if those ways are not explicitly tied to editorial content.
We have the means and the mission to deliver solutions, rather than merely talking about the challenge of preserving journalism. Our solutions will be based on a proven funding strategy — advertising revenue — rather than failed or unproven strategies like micropayments and philanthropy.
We will begin with these tasks:
Build an effective advertising model for news content delivered on smart phones, such as Apple’s iPhone.
Create a better CraigsList.
Show newspaper-centric companies how they can better meet the advertising needs of small- and medium-sized businesses.
Re-imagine the homepage and display advertising.
Unlike recent confabs of executives, editors and academics, we are hands-on professionals charged with delivering media solutions every day. And because we’re hands-on, we know how build to prototypes to demonstrate our ideas to the newspaper industry.
Despite the fact that most of us come from editorial, we pledge to focus 100 percent of our energy to developing advertising models. We will offer solutions on March 21 based on current technology, so they can be deployed immediately.
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