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.

New iPhone App Makes You a CNN iReporter

You can already get iPhone apps that deliver the New York Times, USA Today and NPR. Now CNN has joined the mobile news fraternity, with a $1.99 app that delivers not just text but also live streaming video and video on demand.

Most signficantly, the CNN app makes potential "citizen videojournalists" out of the 50 million users of Apple's iPhone 3Gs and iPod Touch, which are already equipped with vidcams.

Now all that amateur video can be instantly uploaded with a touch of a button to CNN's iReport site, which has already received a half-million photos and video in its first two years of operation. (Only clips used on TV are verified by CNN staffers.)

Right now the site is awash in footage of the American Samoa tsunami.

The San Francisco Chronicle's "Tech Chronicles" is impressed. Mashable loves it. Grab the app here.

New iPod Nano: World's Smallest Camcorder

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.

As the illustrious New York Times tech columnist David Pogue reports:

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.

Can Kindle Rescue Newspapers & Magazines?

Will Kindle be able to rescue the newspaper and magazine industries, the way that iPod rescued the music industry?

We'll get an inkling this week when Amazon introduces a larger format version of its book-reader gadget that's designed to enable users to see their favorite publications exactly as they would have appeared on the printed page -- but without the print or the (paper) page.

(A number of periodical publishers, including Hearst magazines and the News Corporation, have announced that they've got their own proprietary e-reader devices in the works.)

Kindle's current six-inch black-and-white model offers paid subscriptions to about five dozen newspapers and magazines, but functionality is limited -- and certainly less than what you can get for free on each publication's own Website. (The Kindle itself cost a whopping $359.)

So we eagerly await this next-generation version to find out how Amazon plans to lure that endangered species known as "subscribers" to actually pay for what they've gotten used to receiving for free.

Still to be determined is whether Amazon's newest Kindle will enable viewers to enjoy the high quality videojournalism that print publications are increasingly producing -- and just about the only truly unique content that a publication can reasonably expect viewers to pay for.

What do you think? Can you imagine perusing your favorite newspapers and magazines on a 10-oz. wireless electronic screen that's the same size as a magazine page? Remember -- that one portable page can potentially "contain" all your favorite subscriptions, updated daily! What would it take for you to convert? Would video capability make a difference for you?