Journalism Tech Review: Cowbird

History

Cowbird launched on December 8, 2011 and immediately became a place for people from the Occupy Wall Street movement to share their stories. Last year National Geographic used the website to help residents from Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to tell their stories. It's easy to see why it would appeal to National Geographic as it allows you to tell stories with strong images. A few weeks ago it was announced there is now an embed option, allowing you to place your stories on most websites.

In practice

I uploaded a photo and told a small story. Cowbird has a freemium model so one image is the maximum you can upload without paying $60 to become a "citizen". Other advantages of being a citizen is the ability to link stories and further customise your stories such as adding your own handwriting, adding hyperlinks, changing the colour palate and further interacting with the community. But there's nothing to stop you putting different stories in parallel in one post, but if you wanted to use the platform to collect other people's stories around a subject then you'd have to pay. Although the embed (below) is nice,  on Cowbird the story fills the screen and has a stronger impact.

The share (or "retelling") facilities are pretty easy for Facebook, Pinterest and Tumblr. Although, as with many inbuilt auto post functions they don't embed natively to their platform or tag properly. I found it nicer to just use the embed function on my Tumblr page for example.

How it helps you

The stories that you can create are best accompanied by strong photo stories. You can also embed audio so there's nothing to stop you from telling media-rich stories. If you do decide to opt for citizenship then this could all be built into the platform and the multipage option would allow you to tell longer stories, even comic strips or data stories.

Drawbacks

All the best functions come at a price. The embed function is good but the mobile interface is less appealing. Although this is probably not the central aim of this site, it would be difficult to collate a breaking news story, as this requires citizenship.

Summary

An intriguing way to tell multimedia stories without learning any HTML.

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Journalism Tech Review: Soo Meta

NOTE: Sooo Meta is sooo over.

History

Soo Meta is a browser based editing tool which according to the website blurb allows you to create multimedia stories in minutes.

How it helps you

As well as marketers and educators, this tool was created with journalists in mind "Viewers expect more and more visual content. It’s time to deliver short movies, rich-media stories in your posts! Your audience will love it!" Like with Popcorn Maker the idea is that you enrich your original media by adding more multimedia frills. The video demonstrates how to use the Google bookmarklet to collect words, video and images from around the web, this has the added advantage of allowing you to cite your sources.

In practice

It took longer than "a few minutes" to get to grips with this tool. This is because the demonstration video only shows how to grab material via the bookmarklet, yet it doesn't show you how to install the bookmarklet. Once I'd worked that out I was well into my story. When I attempt to install in Chrome it crashed, I finally installed it in Firefox but was unable to view the video in this browser. I had to complete the edit in Chrome then add the images again (so it carried across the metadata) in Firefox. More than once whilst hopping about I crashed my browser and had to step back.

Drawbacks

Aside from the browser malfunctions, there's very little support for this tool and you are pretty much on your own when it comes to working out what's wrong. Even more unhelpfully if you do try and Google "Soo cut" (the name of the bookmarklet) you get a load of "soo cute" images and chintzy Google apps.

Summary

A great idea which appears simple but can be frustratingly tricky in practice.

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Journalism Tech Review: ipadio

Originally posted on the Newsroom 360 website, I've decided to post the series on my blog starting with the most recent first. NOTE since I published this series on the website many of the apps and software have been degraded and closed. I'm living them on my site for posterity. 

History

The fact that this app's name is pronounced I-pay-dio gives some clue to its origins. Long before the iPad was even a glint in Steve Jobs' retina this tool was originally created to host IP Radio, making it easy for people to broadcast from their mobile phone. Instead of just being designed for the slick multimedia prowess of the iPhone, ipadio was way more utilitarian, enabling people to be able to broadcast on many mobile phones with a reception of 2G or less, and even from satellite phones. At news:rewired they announced the launch of an iOS app which like its Android equivalent also has the ability to livecast across a broad spectrum of social media channels.

How it helps you

According to ipadio's CEO Dr Mark K Smith there are over 200 uses for ipadio but there are plenty of features useful for journalists. It's particularly good for live news stories because of its efficiency in low bandwidth areas. The fact that you're able to phone in your report also means it can get past internet restricted events, which is why it was used during the Egyptian revolution and is currently being used by someone climbing Everest. It also has a mapping function which makes it perfect for travel journalism or filing back reports from a march. Journalism.co.uk have also shown how this phone call function can be used as a conference call to record an interview - which is partially transcribed via Spinvox.

In practice

I installed the new iPhone app onto my phone and did a quick quiet test. The system is straightforward to use and you can attach up to four pictures before uploading.

I also uploaded an old John Paul Jones interview with pictures or "Phlog" to the site. This offered more customisation including the ability to add tags and alter the location.

 

After I'd done this Dr Smith (CEO) got in touch with me in person and said he liked the John Paul Jones interview and allowed me to video stream on my phone. I tested out this function with a video that was broadcast and also uploaded to YouTube almost instantly.

Although this ipadio video Flash embed (which is still in Beta) disturbs my the HTML on this page.

Finally, I tested the audio from both the iPhone recording function:

And by phoning my broadcast in:

As expected, the phone-in audio was more condensed than iPhone but both uploaded very quickly, with the latter actually beating the former despite having to run through Spinvox's transcription.

Further conversations with the very helpful Dr Smith led me to discover the Beta Admin function which allows you to fully customise the privacy settings of each broadcast. This means you can keep your phone interviews private but can still report "as live" if need be. I was very impressed by the support community around this app including the blog and training videos.

Drawbacks

Only a few minor gripes, I'd say that the audio quality is not as good as Audioboo and that the video doesn't allow you to add metadata on-the-hoof as Bambuser does.

Summary

A great tool for filing multimedia stories from the field no matter what device you're on.

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