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.
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.
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