Want to get up to speed on all the iPhone 4 hype?

Here are 7 articles that should do the trick.

1. iPhone 4: Pros & Cons After a Weekend of Tinkering
2. Apple may have iOS 4 update to fix reception issue
3. Apple Not Too Sorry It Sold 1.7 Million iPhones, But Apologizes For Delays
4. AT&T May Suck, But It’s a Huge Reason Apple Sold 1.7M iPhone 4s
5. Apple: iPhone 4 “Most Successful” Product Launch, Defying the Antenna Critics
6. Despite issues, iPhone 4 is Apple’s best product launch ever
7. Review: Apple’s iMovie app on iPhone 4

Hilary Fosdal is the associate new media editor at the Law Bulletin Publishing Company located in Chicago, Illinois. You can follow her tweets @hilaryfosdal.

This is the third and final post in a series of mini-tutorials on the basics of shooting video. If you know how to turn on a video camera and press record, this series is intended to help you take it to the next level for better news video results.

When it comes to video, there are three basic areas worth focusing on that will bring the quality of your final product up a notch to look and sound much more professional than Uncle Bob’s 2008 Christmas footage. Technique, planning, & publishing. This post deals with the topic of publishing. Publishing video is all about delivering your video to a “potential” audience of millions. Sure, you can slap the video up on your news organization’s website and cross your fingers for pageviews to go through the roof. The better alternative is to consider a variety of “platforms” for publishing your video in order to reach viewers where they are. These days, video publishing is about more than just posting your video. It’s about making it embeddable, subscribable and mobile. Here are some tips for maximizing news video publishing:

• Understand that the current trends in digital video distribution now include 1) the web; 2) internet-enabled TVs and; 3) mobile devices (Smart phones, iPods/mp3 players, iPads, etc.)
• Know which distribution tools will help you reach audiences through web, TV and mobile channels. I recommend the free platforms YouTube.com or Blip.tv. (Paid platforms such as Brightcove.com or Episodic.com offer a bounty of features and publishing capabilities worth checking out if you have a budget).
• YouTube by far has the most traffic and is the most popular video hosting and sharing site on the planet. It is worth having a presence on YouTube even if you use another video hosting service. Benefits of YouTube, beyond the visibility, include detailed analytics, customizable players, and near universal portability and integration on other websites and mobile devices such as the iPhone. Drawbacks include video uploads limited to 10 min. which rules out longer form newscasts, shows and interviews. Blip.tv is free and designed specifically for regular programming including newscasts, shows, and feature videos. There is no time limit on videos and the Blip.tv player is even more customizable than YouTube’s. Blip.tv is also designed with the modern video distribution landscape in mind. Through your Blip.tv account, you can have one click access to publish your video to iTunes, most WordPress, TypePad, Movable Type, Blogger and Tumblr blogs, TiVo, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Blip.tv is also working to bring its videos to internet enabled televisions.
• Make sure your news videos are portable. This means making the hyperlink to your video a part of the news story. Don’t just post the video on some obscure page on your site. Make sure you use hyperlinks to “point” visitors to your video from the story page and home page of your site. It’s also beneficial to make your news videos embeddable. This means allowing visitors access to the embed code so they can put the video on their own blogs and websites. Some newsroom leaders worry this is giving their content away, but I believe that strong branding in the video itself works for your organization when you allow others to embed the video on their sites. If there is a logo, watermark or “bug” on the lower righthand corner of your  video, then your brand is being represented where ever viewers come across your video. Lastly, make your videos downloadable (syndicate them). This means enabling sites like YouTube and Blip.tv so that visitors can download or subscribe to videos. Blip.tv syndicates to iTunes, an online music and video store where people can subscribe and download audio and video for use on their iPods and other portable devices. We are entering the era when people are demanding this kind of portability. If your content is professional and relevant, folks will want to put it on their iPods.
• You can also “livestream” your video content. This means using services like Ustream.tv or Livestream.com to cover events or broadcast live to the web. With the right advertising and promotion, it’s possible to get a high number of viewers for live events on the web. Especially panel discussions, prominent speeches and political debates and events.

Jeff Achen is an interactive media strategist for the Minnesota Community Foundation, The Saint Paul Foundation and GiveMN.org, nonprofit organizatons in Minnesota. He is also a consultant, freelance photographer/videographer, and blogger at www.mnvideopro.wordpress.com. You can follow him on Twitter.com/jeffachen or email jeffachen@mac.com.

Sree Sreenivasan is dean of student affairs at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, a social networking whiz, and an all-around cool guy. He recently stopped by The Boston Globe to talk to reporters and editors about the joys of Twitter and how to tweet efficiently and effectively. He showed us some handy Twitter-related tools that journos can use to locate sources, find story ideas, and get more people to check out your work. Here’s a quick sampling:

1.) HootSuite – web-based service allows you to track tweets, manage several Twitter accounts at the same time, and schedule when your tweets will be posted (so you can tweet into the future)

2.) Twiangulate – Find out who the people you follow are following. Great way to discover new sources.

3.) FriendorFollow – Find out who’s following you back (and who isn’t)

4.) Twitcam – Live video streaming. Looking forward to trying this – sounds really cool.

5.) Twitpic – I use this service. Easy way to share photos and images.

6.) Search.twitter.com – Find trending topics.

7.) Monitter.com – Search tweets by location. Another site worth checking out is Trendsmap, which lets you view trending topics in any location, in real-time.

For more tools and tips, check out Sree’s Social Media Tipsheet and his Twitter Guide for Newbies & Skeptics.

…and YO – a word to the wise!  As you probably know, there are zillions of Twitter apps, tools and services floating around out there, and new ones are being created every day. Many of them require that you type in your Twitter username and password to use them. So be careful! Don’t hand over your Twitter housekeys without doing some due diligence first.  Before you type in your Twitter account information and password into any website, make sure it has a solid rep and has been reviewed by some reliable media experts (like Sree, or the good folks here on SPJ’s Digital Media Committee

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Emily “Spikey Em” Sweeney is a staff reporter at The Boston Globe. You can follow her on Twitter (@emilysweeney) and find her on LinkedIn, among other places.

Quill isn’t just SPJ’s print magazine – it’s a multimedia resource for all journalists. To accompany his Digital Media Toolbox column in the January/February issue, videographer Jeff Achen made this brief training video on getting better video from a digital SLR camera. Enjoy.

Follow Jeff on Twitter, @jeffachen, or e-mail him at jeffachen@mac.com. And please feel free to share.

Argentine journalist, Sandra Crucianelli knew something was missing when she attended the IRE conference in Miami in 2008. She couldn’t find a book on digital media tools for journalists in Spanish.

Crucianelli has now written the book in Spanish called “Herramientas Digitales Para Periodistas.”  It’s been published by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, and is available for free in a PDF that can be downloaded. Here’s the link: http://knightcenter.utexas.edu/hdpp.php

I looked over this online book and strongly feel it’s a great resource for reporters who work in Spanish language newspapers or online news sites.  It’s also handy for reporters who are learning Spanish in hopes of someday working in Mexico, Spain, and South or Central America.

The book includes chapters on accessing databases and official documents, using social networks, video conferencing, photo galleries and blogs.

Rebecca Aguilar is an Emmy Award winning freelance multimedia reporter in Dallas. She produces videos, digital slideshows along with her reports. She is currently working on an Associate’s Degree in Multimedia Development.  She can be reached at aguilar.thereporter@yahoo.com

Steve Jobs may have unveiled the highly anticipated Apple tablet yesterday, dubiously named the iPad (how many jokes did you see on Twitter and Facebook after the morning release?), but true tech/geek/news nerds know the idea is not exactly 21st century.

Let’s take a stroll down memory lane. To 1994. When Knight Ridder’s Information Design Lab — notice they avoided calling it the News Design Lab — was experimenting with digital ways to present the news. Something tells me the R&D people over at Apple examined a few of these as they brainstormed an iPrototype.

File under #dontsaynewspapersdidnttry

Tablet Newspaper (1994)

SPJ Digital Media Committee member Jessica Durkin is the founder and editor of InOtherNews.us, a directory of online, independent news start-ups. Jessica is a former daily newspaper reporter based in Scranton, PA.

Think you know all you need to know about Google? I thought I did — but last night I learned I only knew about a fraction of the cool things Google can do.

Jake Parillo, Google’s Midwest Global Communications and Public Affairs Manager, walked us through dozens — if not hundreds — of ways to use Google. Here are some of my notes:

- Google results are ranked by an algorithm, which take a number of factors into account.

- On a search results page, click “+ Show Options” to specify your search results.

- A few cool search tricks: don’t worry about capitalization, put a minus sign in front of terms you want to exclude from results (example: vacations -chicago will show you all vacation results that do not include Chicago), and search for content on a specific site by using site:chicagotribune.com (example: bears site:chicagotribune.com will show you all Bears stories on Chicago Tribune’s Web site). More search tips.

- Google’s search pages will continue to evolve. For example, when you preform certain queries, Facebook and Twitter updates are included in search results.

ADVANCED SEARCH

- Look into Advanced Search when you have time. Here’s where you’ll learn to include certain phrases, exclude others, etc. This is also where you’ll find a list of topic-specific search engines from Google including a U.S. Government search (google.com/unclesam), which will show you results from government sites only. Also check out Google Scholar.

- You can also find sports scores (search a team name during a game for scores), times around the world (“time (city)”), stock quotes (search a stock symbol to get up to get market results), and weather (“weather (city/ZIP)”). Google can also be used as a dictionary (“define (word)”), calculator (1+1), currency converter (“dollar to (currency)”), and a unit converter (“inch to (unit)”). You can also type in your flight (“(airline) (flight #)”) to find out if the flight is on time. Google contains so much data, that you can even search “population of China” and a graph and number will be the first thing to pop up. Click that to enlarge the graph to compare it to another country’s population – or the world’s.

- There are also language tools to translate a Web page. You can find these by using Google’s Chrome browser or downloading the Google toolbar.

HOT TRENDS

- Check out hot trends to find out what people are searching for right now.

- View Hot Topics to check out the larger-picture queries.

GOOGLE INSIGHTS FOR SEARCH

- It’s a tool that allows you to see the interest of a term on the Web over time. You can specify search, location, date range, seasonality and category. You’ll also see where that search term is the most popular. Type in several terms to compare the results against each other. (See: Thanksgiving)

- You have the option to turn on and off news headlines, which help give context to your graph.

ALERTS

- Keep tabs on your beat (or your reputation!) by turning on alerts — from news stories, blogs and more — to get immediate, daily or weekly updates on any search term you’re interested in. (I’d suggest your name and/or your social network handle)

NEWS

- Customize your Google News page by picking and deleting which sections you want — and don’t want to read about. You can specify the news to be just from your location (Detroit, etc.) or you could decide to have the headlines focus on your beat (ex.: health, or more specifically cancer).

- The Google News archive: Google’s constantly working on digitizing offline content; however some of the archived information does come at a price.

READER

- Set up your reader to have all of your favorite blog and site updates sent directly to you in one place.

MAPS

- Jake suggested using maps a number of ways including for before and after photos (referenced the Buffalo plane crash house, Haiti), creating an area map that readers can tag specific locations (ex.: potholes, wildfires, etc.)

- Jake also showed us how you could scroll through a time line of Google Maps satellite images (for example you could go through the building of Chicago’s Trump Tower) — but I forget how he said you can do this. If anyone remembers, please mention it in the comments! He said some of the maps and satellite images available go back to the 1940s.

- Google will soon offer bike directions in Chicago (in addition to walking, driving and public transit)

- If you have GPS on your mobile device you can type in coffee (or anything you’re looking for) and the map will show all of the coffee houses closest to you.

DOCS

- If you’re not a fan of Microsoft products, and don’t use them (like Google), try Google Docs for all of your word-processing, spreadsheet, presentation and form needs. Jake said the Docs are so secure that government agencies rely on them. Another plus is that since you save your documents online, they’re available to you everywhere you log in.

Some last cool tips, tricks:

- Try Google voice and video for free Internet chat

- Call 1-800-GOOG-411 for free search results over the phone

- You can text a query to Google, and it will send you answers

That’s about it! Jake promised to send us materials from the session, so we’ll try to post those too.

In the meantime, check out what folks had to say about the event on Twitter — and flip through photos from the evening.

Did I miss something? Have questions? Leave a comment!

Amanda Maurer is a digital news editor at the Chicago Tribune, who specializes in social media. She blogs at acmaurer.com; you can also follow her on Twitter at @acmaurer.

Here are photos from tonight’s Google 101 for Journalists: Getting the Most from the Web

Google 101 for Journalists in Chicago

Every day, millions of people around the world use Google’s search engine to find what they’re looking for…Tonight, a room full of Chicagoland journalists rediscovered Google. I was among them. Read more…

Most of us have covered more than one trial in our careers.  We go through the same steps–go to the trial, watch the players at work, write what is said and done in the courtroom and meet our deadline. 

London Free Press reporter, Kate Dubinski took it one step further.  She recently used Twitter during a high profile case to give readers a play-by-play on what was going on during the trial. Here a few key points from an article she wrote for The Canadian Journalism Project. 

 1. She started with a few dozen followers and in the end had more than 1,000 followers on Twitter.

2. The newspaper had to assign two reporters to the case: One to tweet and the other to report it for the paper.

3.  Dubinski learned quickly how to prioritize information because she could only tweet 140 characters.

4.  She used links to Google images to show readers images of such things as the type of gun used in the crime.

5.  She also used links to direct followers back to the London Free Press website.

6.  Dubinski also says some of the followers became sources who gave her background information.

 Here’s Kate Dubinski’s story Tweeting a Trial which can teach many of us another way to use Twitter and get more readers interested in our news coverage.

 Rebecca Aguilar is a multiple Emmy Award winner.  She’s has spent much of her 28 years in journalism in television, but is now a freelance multimedia/online reporter based in Dallas. She can be contacted at aguilar.thereporter@yahoo.com

If you can access video hosting web sites on your TV, what's to stop non-broadcast news organizations from getting their content on today's TVs. Photo by Jeff Achen.

Web enabled flat screen TVs are here. The technology to bring web videos to those TVs is accelerating and it won’t be long before web show producers will be able to make their programs as accessible from the living room couch as any NBC, ABC or CBS program.

You’ve probably already heard of Internet TV. But, have you considered how technologies are converging in ways that will revolutionize multimedia journalism?

There are some key changes in several critical areas that are leading to this revolution. One is in the affordability and accessability of professional level production equipment and software. Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro video editing programs are becoming standard in many non-broadcast newsrooms. Video cameras capable of producing the highest quality video are more affordable than ever. Journalists, thanks to industry trends, are acquiring multimedia/video skills in droves.

Where video is more generally concerned, dramatic changes have been taking place in terms of the distribution landscape and consumer trends.

Content creators (i.e. journalists) have three distribution networks for video:

1. television
2. mobile devices
3. and the Internet.

Web video hosting service providers such as YouTube, Brightcove.tv, and Blip.tv (to name just a few of the more prominent ones) are mobilizing to help web video producers bring their content to larger audiences. I spoke with the folks at Blip.tv and they’ve already made upgrades to their dashboards that enable anyone who has a free account to upload their video and distribute it automatically to YouTube, TiVo, Twitter,Vimeo, iTunes, Facebook, Yahoo! Video, AOL Video, and in the not too distant future to networks like NBC. Whereas Blip.tv is focusing on show producers, Brightcove.tv has begun to focus on business owners. They are encouraging businesses to develop video strategies that embrace this new video distribution landscape.

It’s about this concept of Total Potential Audience, TPA as Blip.tv calls it. It’s the idea their audience doesn’t all watch video in one place or through one medium. Some people watch at home in front of their television sets, others on Facebook and still others who are getting their videos on iTunes to download and watch on their portable media players.

Individual news organizations must develop a strategy to reach their TPA. At my newspaper, we started by posting videos and our weekly public affairs show online. We also partner with a local public television station to get the show on public access at no cost to us. We are still working on our mobile delivery, but our show is accessible on iTunes, thus making it available to MP3 users and iPhone owners.

All of this squares with what’s happening with our audience. Viewership for online video viewership continue to rise as surprising rates. Technology that brings video to smart phones, hand held devices and portable media players like the iPod is driving a sea change in how people watch their favorite programs and movies. As consumers acclimatize to the new and varied video distribution networks, and develop new viewing habits, the line between broadcast and Internet video will blur and eventually disappear.

As I’m so fond of saying, the implications for journalism are profound.

Individual bloggers are proof that even the smallest operation can tap into the Internet to disseminate content to huge audiences worldwide. News organizations can and should position themselves to create rich, local video content and use the emerging distribution landscape to get those videos out to the potential audience that they just aren’t capturing through their current distribution (i.e. print subscriptions and a static web site).

We have to go TO our audience instead of waiting for them to come to us. Sure, we can tout the merits and traditions of the printed word. We can even pimp out our web sites and obsess over the page views. But, we’ll miss out on so much more if we don’t embrace the changes in technology, integrate video into our media organizational structure and distribute through new and exciting channels.