The service makes it remarkably easy to collect and post video at breaking news or scheduled events. The Qik app uses a phone’s built-in still camera so you don’t need a phone with video capability.

Qik is free (though the app comes at a price with some service providers), works on more than 140 types of phone and provides easy upload to Facebook, Youtube and Twitter. Videos are automatically stored to the Qik site where you can also generate an embed code that can be dropped into blog or webpage for live-streaming.  Cover it Live, a top-notch live-blogging service (see the DNJ post), can broadcast Qik streams.

Online video is making huge gains, posting double-digit growth in the last year, according to recent research. Some 80 percent of online news users regularly watch video and the expansion in video viewers on web-only sites is up a whopping 300 percent since 2008.  Qik offers online journalists a low-budget and easy-to-produce way to get at this market.

To date, Qik does not offer editing capability. However, the Qik Video Pro app allows users to zoom and apply assorted filters to videos. It also offers enhanced audio and a selection of different upload options.

Qik is not without competition, Kyte and Flixwagon being the two closest contenders.  A comparison in mid 2008 gave Kyte the edge on video and audio quality, but rated Qik highly for usability.  Both rated better than Flixwagon.

Qik, a Silicon Valley start-up that went live in 2008, aims to be the go-to social networking site for video. It offers all the social networking standard features for  video: Storage, tagging (and geo-tagging), groups, privacy controls and integration with an address book.

In 2009 Katalyst Media, an online production company co-founded by Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg, hosted 24 Hours @ Sundance, an online reality show-style competition, broadcast live from the Sundance Film Festival via Qik. To see Qik in action, check it out.

The seven-part video – an hour in total – along with the rich assortment of examples, resources and tutorials is as compelling as it is complete a road map of the way forward.  Journalists ranging from the indie blogger to those working in large corporate outlets need to learn how to present stories extracted from the unprecedented amount of  data now available. That data may be collected independently with free and easy-to-use polling tools like Polldaddy or gathered  through sites like Data.gov and Google Public Data Explorer.

Here are two examples of data visualization presented in the documentary:

The Jobless Rate for People Like You, developed by The New York Times, allows viewers to drill down and personalize unemployment data.

The Stimulus Tracker, by MSNBC.Com, allows viewers to see where stimulus package money has been spent down to the county level and weigh its effectiveness. Viewers can also track where the money was spent relative to the voting records of politicians.

The idea that information presented visually and interactively on the web is a powerful way to draw in readers isn’t all that new. Infographics and interactive illustrations of events ranging from the trajectory of a plane crash to a winning Superbowl play have been around for years.  But growth in data visualization specifically has been hampered by the prohibitive  time and cost of parsing the data, developing the code and producing the final product.

The documentary does an excellent job of addressing these issues and the many other practical realities of producing and presenting visualization in a journalistic context.

In ‘Part IV: A New Era in Infographics’ Hannah Fairfield,  Graphics Director  for the Washington Post,  points out the importance of simplicity and the need to clearly present to viewers how to navigate the visualization. It’s also important to present the information in a way that is meaningful to those represented in the data.

In ‘Part VII: Technologies and Tools’ an assortment of heavy hitters in the field discuss the variety of tools now out there or in development that allow news organizations large and small to reduce the coding involved in producing interactive data visualizations. Many Eyes,  Protovis, and Flare are examples of software that offer templates to present timetables, charts and maps among other things.

In addition to their value as news content data visualizations have a lot of design appeal. IBM researcher Marten Wattenberg acknowledges that while stream graphs like ‘The Ebb and Flow of Movies: Box Office Receipts 1986-2008‘ are beautiful and effectively draw readers in, in reality they may not provide much depth of information. In the news world there is often a trade-off between design, approachability, deadlines and the actual information contained in a graphic.

In ‘Part VI: Exploring Data’ the documentary hones in on a topic that comes up throughout: the need to contextualize data and to give it narrative structure — the need to tell compelling stories with the data. Award-winning New York Times designer Amanda Cox along with others acknowledge the difficulty in striking a balance between allowing users to personalize data and draw their own conclusions while also providing the kind of narrative context that makes the information valuable journalism in the first place.

This may endure as data visualizations most vexing challenge.

WordPress, once considered mainly a tool for bloggers, has become a standby for quick-to-launch, easy-to-operate news web sites. One of the strengths of WordPress has been the ability to use story tags and categories to group similar content, such as local business coverage or cultural happenings. But now a new toolkit has been developed that allows producers to get around the key limitation of that automated aggregation — the lack of creative control over the resulting “topical” news page.

The team at Knight Digital Media Center has created a straightforward toolkit that lets producers and editors make topic-focused news pages, but with distinct, original and easy-to-maintain page elements, while still grouping content automatically around a news subject or theme.

One of the most notable advances is that editors can now lead the topic page with an ever-evolving news summary that can lay out the basics of a “topic” but be easily updated to reflect new stories as they’re added to the mix. In addition, the topic page toolkit allows the site to display a unique masthead image for each topic page, as well as a unique blogroll. And, as a nice bonus, that unique masthead and blogroll show up not just in the main topic index page, but also on any story that’s associated with the topic.

This kind of approach could be great for hyperlocal sites that are looking to create topic verticals for their community. Here’s a recent example of a topic page on California’s education budget crisis by Oakland North, a hyperlocal news project managed by the journalism school at the University of California, Berkeley, where KDMC folks are based. The page combines news stories with background time lines, maps, multimedia and charts.

KDMC developed the topic tool kit in late 2009 to help spread the word to its multimedia trainees about the benefits of the topic sections. I was able to test out the tools during a recent Web 2.0 training at the center, so I can attest to its ease of use and functionality — it took me just a few minutes to build a simple demo topics page.

Here’s an online tutorial to help create a topic site based on the Cutline theme, although it can be used with other WordPress themes. The tutorial, “Building a Topics System,” covers required plugins, and, if you’re familiar with PHP, there’s an additional tutorial on “Theme Modifications.”

KDMC is continuing to refine its topics tools — for instance it’s looking into integrating an ad system into the toolkit and is already thinking about how it might be adapted to publishing platforms like the iPad — so keep an eye out for improvements.

Note: A version of this post appeared previously on the Poynter.org web site’s E-Media Tidbits column, where Glenn is a contributor.

Monitor News and Events

Monitor in real time, what people are saying about specific news topics or events. Limit your search using the advanced search operators, or the advanced search form to focus in on a specific location, date, user, attitude, etc. For example, use the following search strategy to find out what people in New York City have been tweeting about the health care reform bill since March 21, 2010:

“healthcare reform” near:NYC since:2010-03-21

Tip: You can search and view tweets without having to have a Twitter account, or being logged in by going to http://search.twitter.com.

Monitor Organizations

Find out what people are saying about a particular organization or business. Think of it as monitoring the “buzz”.  In doing so it may also be helpful to limit your resulting tweets to those that include external links, to also see what Web sites they are sharing to help you come up with a story idea. For example, take a look at what people are saying about Toyota and what sites are they sharing:

Example: #Toyota filter:links

Tip: The hashtag (#) before a word in a post, designates that the word is to be recognized as a category (think keyword). Therefore when you search tweets placing a hashtag in front of a search term refines your search and increases the likelihood of relevant search results.

Find Experts

ExpertTweet is a new Twitter application developed by the folks at Journalististics that enables users to tweet requests for expert suggestions to the ExpertTweet community. This free service offers a faster way to find experts on Twitter without having to use a keyword search, or scanning #followfriday shout-outs. The intended audience includes:

* Event organizers looking for speakers or panelists
* Reporters or bloggers looking for quick source suggestions, comments on a
topic, or other quick feedback
* Entrepreneurs and business owners looking for expert advice
* Employers looking for suggestions on candidates
* Authors looking for sources for a book
* Consumers looking for expert advice on purchases

ExpertTweet is simple to use. Login into ExpertTweet using your Twitter credentials and submit an ExpertTweet request by typing it in the text box. Your handle is automatically included as part of the message, so be aware that you will have less characters than usual to type your message. Your post is then shared with those Twitter community members following ExpertTweet. If your topic isn’t too esoteric, you should start receiving suggestions and recommendations within minutes.

These are just a few ways of using Twitter to enhance your reporting, but there is much more to learn. As with any product or application, to learn how to use Twitter more effectively, start with reading the instructions or the help screens.

I was recently helping some students identify the best day for an event they were planning, and suggested they use some kind of “preferential voting system,” one that allowed users to “rank” their answers, rather than just submitting a single “best” response. The idea was to allow voters to create a list –from most preferred to least preferred — in order to find the group’s “least worst” option.

Why bother? Let me illustrate. Let’s say you and your colleagues want to go to lunch, but can’t decide between Chinese, Italian or Thai. Half the group loves Chinese but hates Italian, the other half loves Italian but hates Chinese, and everyone is just fine with Thai. A standard poll that forced a single response would show a tie between Chinese and Italian, with Thai in third, leaving you as hungry as when you started. On the other hand, a ranking poll would show Thai as the top choice, i.e. the least undesirable option. Spring rolls, anyone?

Now, the only problem with my suggestion was that while I knew I’d encountered a web-based survey tool like this a couple of years ago while visiting MIT Media Lab, I couldn’t remember what it was called or where to find it. And a quick check of other survey-building tools I’d successfully used before didn’t unearth similar functionality, so I was momentarily stuck.

No problem! A quick query to my professional online network on LinkedIn pointed me to that MIT tool within a few hours. Called Selectricity, it was created by MIT Media Lab‘s Computing Culture group as a Knight Foundation-funded Future of Civic Media project. Selectricity has a very easy-to-use “QuickVotes” function that allows you to create polls with amazing speed, and with a nifty sorting tool that has users dragging their preferences around the list before submitting their vote.

But the even nicer thing about my LinkedIn pals is that they also pointed me to a slew of other preferential polling tools and techniques. I haven’t been able to check these all out, but would love to hear about it if you do. Here’s what they suggested:

• Lots of folks pointed out that Google Forms can be used to record responses on a 1-5 scale (Thanks Len De Groot of the Knight Digital Media Center at Berkeley J School, Mathilde Piard of the Palm Beach Post, Dorian Benkoil of Teeming Media, Sree Sreenivasan of Columbia J School and Sandeep Junnarkar of CUNY J School)
• SurveyMonkey offers ranking functionality, emailed Joseph Maser, a senior business analyst and process engineer consultant at Autodesk, who says he’s used it and that it works great (although it may be a feature only available to paid accounts).
• Surveygizmo does allow respondents to rank choices, says former colleague TereLyn Hepple, a web content developer and technical writer at ECi Software Solutions. And it can be free depending on your response rates. Plus, she added, Micropoll does ranking by entering numerals and it’s free too.
• Cvent’s web surveys can do ranking as well, according to Sherrie Mersdorf, a database marketing analyst there. Cvent has a “Rank Order” survey, a vertical list of categories with a numeric text box next to each that respondents rank in numerical order

So a big thank you to all those folks that pointed me to Selectricity (Lisa Williams of Placeblogger.com, Jose Zamora of Knight Foundation, Jody Brannon of News21, Michele McLellan and Chrys Wu), and to the other folks who offered suggestions and responses (Rob Duncan of Biritah Columbia Institute of Technology, Paul Grabowicz of UC Berkeley J School, Joe Filippazzo of CUNY J  School and producer/programmer Wallace Jackson).

If you know of other survey tools, by all means suggest them below. We’ll be adding a page with links on our J School wiki page, which can be updated anytime, and will post it here when it’s live.

With digital photography, especially when building slideshows and audio slideshows, the importance of good work flow can be woefully underestimated and the effects of bad work flow can be disastrous – inconsistent color reproduction, insufficient image resolution, lost work and hours and hours of lost time.  A bulletproof system for capturing, processing and archiving images is essential.

So what are the specifics of good digital photo work flow?  With the help of Congress and through the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program, the good folks at the American Society of Media Photographers have developed an answer, if a somewhat exhaustive one:  The Digital Photography Best Practices and Workflow (dpBestflow™).

The site is a comprehensive repository of resources, skills, and systems for managing the entire “life cycle” of a digital image.

The irony of  dpbestflow.org is that it is so far-reaching in scope that it requires good work flow just to navigate the material.  The team addresses the problem with a ‘start here’ tab and the intro video embedded below:

StartHere from ASMP dpBestflow on Vimeo.

In truth, much of the material is beyond the needs of most news photographers; managing CYMK output for glossy print publications or the relative merit of bilinear or bicubic interpolation when resizing images, for example.

The well-designed quick reference guide may be as deep as many photojournalists or photojournalism educators need to go.  Or, it may work as a more surgical point of entry into specific topics of interest.

In addtion to the site dpworkflow site, there is also the Digital Photography Best Practices and Workflow Handbook (Focal Press, 2009) by Richard Anderson and Patti Russotti (dpBestflow™ Project Director and Contributing Author, respectively), as well as a schedule of nationwide seminars and a host of online forums. More information is available at dbBestflow.

1) Formatting Can Be Frustrating. If you’re design-minded – or just eager to keep your Word documents looking a particular way – Docs’ formatting glitches can occasionally be annoying. Docs can import Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, but so far, still doesn’t do well enough at preserving complex formatting. The original document’s words, numbers and information are all imported, but sometimes the tabs, spacing and other formatting isn’t fully maintained from the original Word doc. Google Docs has been improving its formatting capabilities, though, (Docx documents can now be imported) and has added new features. You can now add images, tables, and drawings to spruce up your documents. Formatting options are less robust but easier to use than those offered by Microsoft Word. And Google Docs now has a template library which lets you use pre-made document styles created by other users.

2) Passwords Aren’t Perfect. If someone intent on getting into your documents gains access to your Google password, they could view and potentially alter your documents, much as they could view or misuse your e-mail account. The same holds true for your computer, of course, but with online documents, the damage can be done knowing only your user name and password, whereas hacking into your computer – or stealing it – might entail more effort. Google offers tips on picking one carefully. Additionally, for those who have experienced the frustration of a forgotten user name or password, you could find yourself locked out of your documents if you forget those key details.

3) Storage Limits. You can store up to 5,000 documents and up to 1,000 spreadsheets. (Click here for Google’s detailed explanation on file size limits). That’s plenty of space for most of us, and just as GMail storage has kept growing, it’s possible Google will eventually boost the free space it offers for Docs. If you bump up against the limit, you can always open a new account. And as noted above, you can now purchase more space for Docs – $5 a year gets you 20GB, enough for hundreds of videos and many thousands of documents. Individual documents have size caps, though the limits are large enough that they rarely create a problem.

Alternatives to Google Docs?

• If you want to check out other free online Word processing options, start with Zoho Writer.
• If you like minimalism, try DarkCopy.com.
• If you just can’t leave Microsoft Word behind, try Microsoft’s Officelive.com.
• Mac writers can try Ommwriter for a Zen approach to words.

11 Multimedia Sites for Journalists

I hope these 33 sites (collected on a Delicious.com bookmarks page) prove useful for those transitioning to digital journalism as well as those keeping ahead of the curve. It’s not enough for today’s journalists to understand AP style, principles of fairness, and other such basics. We now have to master the new tools of the trade if we want to keep up with our craft. We benefit from mastering Web tools that help us A) gather information and stories, B) make sense of what we find, and C) share the information and stories we produce with our audiences in creative ways. That’s what these 33 sites are about. I’d love your feedback about sites on this list, or those that should have been included instead. Add comments below, or e-mail me directly at the following URL:

http://scr.im/caplan

[P.S. I guess that's site #34: Scr.im is a cool tool that lets you post your e-mail address without attracting spam robots.]

23. Flavors.me
Create a personalized Web page drawing from your blogs, feeds, etc
ALSO TRY: card.ly, gizapage.com

24. Carbonmade
Publish a portfolio of images or flash files to share your work
ALSO TRY: issuu.com, krop.com

25. Vimeo
High-quality, well-designed video publishing service with useful groups and projects to inspire new ideas
ALSO TRY: tubemogul.com, blip.tv

26. Animoto
Create instant, impressive video/slideshows out of your photos and video clips
ALSO TRY: vuvox.com

27. Google Voice
Streamline your multiple phone numbers; add features to your phone
ALSO TRY: skype.com, recordmycalls.com, tokbox.com

28. Prezi
Publish and present ideas with this post-Powerpoint, innovative interface
ALSO TRY: slidesix.com, 280slides.com

29. uStream
Shoot and broadcast live video from a mobile device
ALSO TRY: qik.com, twitvid.com

30. Weebly
Create a simple site quickly and easily
ALSO TRY: wix.com, jimdo.com, wordpress.org, Squarespace.com

31. Doodle.com
Schedule meetings and group projects
ALSO TRY: meetomatic.com, timetomeet.info

32. Bubbl.us
Mind mapping for idea generation
ALSO TRY: mindmeister.com, cacoo.com

33. Picnik
Online photo-editing tool; great features, sleek, easy-to-use interface
ALSO TRY: photoshop.com, picasaweb.google.com

The key is understanding the available tools. My previous post listed the first 11 sites in a three-part workshop (held recently as part of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism’s January Academy) about essential sites for journalists. All 33 sites are bookmarked on this Delicious.com bookmarks page.

The first group of sites focused on finding, managing and organizing info. This second group of sites, below, is all about blogging, publishing, storing and sharing information. Below each site’s description, I’ve noted a couple of related sites you might also find useful.

12. Posterous
A brilliantly simple tool for blogging by e-mail. Some journalists use it to streamline their work by sending a single e-mail and having Posterous post the material (text, pictures, video, audio, whatever) simultaneously to a blog and to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, etc. Posterous also enables group blogging and crowdsourcing – some publications have used it to publish moderated e-mail (text and photo) contributions from readers.
ALSO TRY: soup.io, ping.fm

13. Tumblr
An elegant microblogging tool. Accessible to anyone who has never blogged or published before. Numerous available themes so you can present yourself in a professional way without knowing anything about HTML. Easy to use and well-designed.
ALSO TRY: blogger.com, wordpress.com

14. Google Docs
For many wired journalists, Google Docs has replaced Microsoft Word, because it enables you to easily access and edit your documents from anywhere. You can type and then instantly publish your documents as Web pages if you want to, for live coverage. You can also use Docs to organize data and info about sources into neat lists and spreadsheets. Read this post for more about how Docs can be useful for journalists.
ALSO TRY: docs.zoho.com, officelive.com, ommwriter.com, darkcopy.com

15. Google Forms
Create instant surveys and polls. Automate information collection. Create a simple link that you then e-mail to people or post to a Web page or to Twitter or Facebook to invite and tabulate responses automatically. To show you how this works (and how it can be used) here’s a sample 3-question survey you can take that was created in two minutes using Google Forms. [URL: docs.google.com/forms]
ALSO TRY: polldaddy.com, polleverywhere.com, doodle.com

16. ZeeMaps
Build maps to supplement stories or to add geographic info to blog posts. Supplements Google Maps.
ALSO TRY: umapper.com, communitywalk.com

17. drop.io
Create a collaborative workpace to share and publish materials. Read this post for more detail.
ALSO TRY: dropbox.com, skydrive.com, glidedigital.com

18. Google Moderator
Collect ideas and questions. Enable voting and moderation. [URL: google.com/moderator]
ALSO TRY: allourideas.org, Wridea.com, kindlingapp.com

19. SeeClickFix
Track local issues and community complaints. Embed local reports.
ALSO TRY: outside.in, fwix.com

20. bit.ly
Shorten URLs and monitor responses and references to your stories.
ALSO TRY: fur.ly, cl1p.net, snipurl.com

21. Ning
Create and participate in niche social networks about subjects or communities of interest. One group worth joining if you’re interested in keeping up with digital journalism is called Wired Journalists.
ALSO TRY: grou.ps, groups.google.com

22. FriendFeed
Monitor people and subjects you’re interested in, keep track of RSS feeds (blog posts, photos, videos, news, etc), and publish updates to your network. (Recently bought by Facebook).
ALSO TRY: digg.com, linkedin.com, analytics.google.com

Here’s a printable PDF of the handout for this workshop:

11 MORE Sites for Journalists

The first 11 sites, below, are primarily for reading, gathering, organizing and managing information. For each site listed, I also suggest below a few related sites that I’ve found useful.

I put together the list as part of a workshop for the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism’s January Academy. I created a Delicious.com bookmarks page for the sites; for those who prefer old-fashioned paper, here is a free print-ready PDF I used as a handout, listing these first 11 sites. More to follow separately.

1. Google Reader
An inbox for RSS feeds, blog posts, pictures, videos and other materials
Also Try: feedly.com, bloglines.com, igoogle.com

2. Delicious
Save, organize and share links and discover new sites. Search by subject tags to find relevant pages
Also Try: Diigo.com, Publish2.com, Facette for Delicious

3. Evernote
Organize notes and Web research
Also Try: Google Docs, Zoho Notebook, Backpackit.com, MIT’s List.it

4. Instapaper
Save stories to read later
Also Try: Laterloop.com, readitlaterlist.com

5. Readability
Make articles and sites more legible
Also Try: Tidyread.com, printfriendly.com, readable-app.appspot.com

6. Alltop
Create a custom page for subjects you want to research or keep tabs on
Also Try: popurls.com, OriginalSignal.com, EuFeeds.eu, digg.com, stumbleupon.com

7. NY Times Prototypes
Innovative formats: How tomorrow’s journalism may look
Also Try: labs.digg.com, fastflip.googlelabs.com, SI tablet video – and one from Bonnier

8. The Internet Archive
Find open-source material and look back at historical Web pages
Also Try: creativecommons.org, flickr.com/commons, Life Magazine’s photo archive

9. Spezify
Track Your tracks. Monitor social media references to your work or topics you cover
Also Try: socialmention.com, google.com/alerts, viewzi.com, pipl.com

10. Scribd
Find and share documents and presentations on subjects of interest
Also Try: Slideshare.com, Docstoc.com, issuu.com

11. Muck Rack
Journalists on Twitter. Find colleagues and collaborators to track on Twitter. Monitor subjects.
Also Try: monitter.com, tweetdeck.com, wefollow.com

33 Sites Every Journalist Should Know - Part I

Please share your comments about these 11 sites or the alternatives listed.

Part 2: Sites 12-22 – Posterous.com, Tumblr.com etc.

Part 3: Sites 23-33 – Vimeo, Google Voice, Picnik etc.