Miscellaneous Apps and Gear

Mobile Journalism Reporting Tools Guide

Miscellaneous Apps and Gear

Zillow

Review by: Jennifer Elston

Zillow provides free real estate information for those interested in renting or purchasing a new home.

Zillow is a free real estate service that provides information on home values (price, square footage, number of bathrooms). You can also search for homes that are for sale, recently sold homes and apartment rentals. The application is very simple to use and makes home shopping infinitely easier and allows you to save on gas.

On the home screen, you can look at a map powered by Google in street or hybrid view. If maps aren't your thing, you can view a list of homes near you. To update your current location, simply push the circle with the four lines on it in the upper left corner. If you don't even want to bother with homes out of your price range, click the filter button in the right corner where you can sort listings by price, number of beds, lot size, etc...

To find homes that recently sold in your area, click on the yellow arrows. To find homes for sale, click on the red arrow, which symbolizes a home. Under the arrow, as you can see in the photo (left), the price of the home is displayed. Once you have clicked on a red arrow, you can find the details of the home in question. There, you can find the address, the number of bed / bath, the square footage, etc... There are usually photos of the home on the detail page.

There is a lot of valuable information on the detail page besides square footage. You can email an agent, save this house as a favorite, and my personal favorite - check out a Zestimate of the home, which is Zillow's estimate for the home in a range, with a 30-day change. On this chart, you can find out the property value over the last 1, 5 and 10 years. Under the graph, you can find the last sale and tax information, as well as a property description.

If you see something you like, you can email the listing or call a listing agent featured at the bottom of the page.

All of these features make shopping for a new home so easy. This will make my future home shopping infinitely easier. I also feel like this application has an untapped potential for journalism - I'm just not sure what it is yet. Stay tuned...

Key:

Red - For Sale
Yellow - Recently Sold
Purple - For Rent
Blue - Make Me Move (a price you put on your home before putting it on the market)

ScannerPro

Review by: Andrew Dumas

The streamlined process makes it easy to bundle files, which can then be very easily exported.

Scanner Pro is one of my favorite applications for the iPhone. It's pretty cheap, and it has one job that it performs admirably, which is to combine files into one PDF document.

The best way I discovered for using this application is to use the camera on your phone. You can either take new pictures while in the application, or you can import them from your camera roll. You can choose to have these load up in Black and White, Grayscale or Color. Holding your camera over the document you want to scan and snapping your picture works wonderfully.

Once you have your picture, you have to select either a portion of it, or the full picture. I typically just hit select all, because I normally want the full image. You also need to make sure you select the correct processing type. The application automatically selects text first processing, but if you're sending an image, you want photo. You also need to choose your page size. After that, you can bundle it with other images to make a larger PDF document. When you’re finished, you can hit the actions page to enable password protection. I haven't needed to do that yet, but I could see where password protection could come in handy.

Lastly, you have to get it off your phone. I really like how the application accomplishes this. You can hit the actions button to print or fax the PDF (although you have to have print n share to print things). You can email the PDF by touching the mail button. Or you can upload your file to Evernote (another application we have reviewed), Google Docs, Dropbox (again, this is reviewed elsewhere) or iDisk/WebDAV.

In all, I feel like this application is very simple, and very tight in its design. There aren't many ways to get lost in it because it's so straightforward. It works well, it gives you plenty of protection, and it has several ways to get your files off your phone to a variety of sources.

OtterBox

Review by: Jennifer Elston

The OtterBox comes with a belt-clip that multi-tasks as a stand for hands-free viewing.

I have tried many different cases for iPod and iPhone, but theiPhone 4 Defender Series OtterBox is my favorite. It is a little pricey ($49.95) compared to some cases, but in my opinion it is worth it! There are sleeker sleeves and fabric cases if you are looking to be stylish, but if you are looking for protection, OtterBox is the best bet. Reviews say that the Defender Series can supposedly be dropped into a puddle and still protect your device, but the company's website says the case is not waterproof.

If you are looking to be stylish, this case comes in several different colors (blue, red, black, black/white and black/pink). It has a nice felt lining inside of the case, which just seems to cushion the back. My favorite part of the case is the front membrane. It helps to keep your screen clean and it is very receptive. This membrane is made in a way that it doesn't cut down on sensitivity and it doesn't get 'bubbles' under it like a lot of other cases do. The case also comes with a holster to clip on to your pocket (right) or you can use the holster for hands-free viewing.

The OtterBox makes the iPhone a little bulkier, so if you are looking for a sleek case, this isn't your best bet. OtterBox makes other cases such as the Commuter Series, for three levels of protection ($34.95), and the Impact series, for a slimmer protection ($19.95).

I think having a case like the OtterBox is very necessary. If you are willing to spend hundreds on a phone and data plan, then you should be willing to protect it. It is a small price to pay for the confidence in knowing that you phone is protected.

Shazam

Review by: Jennifer Elston

Shazam allows you to discover and re-discover music.

Shazam is a music discover application for those interested in mainstream, popular music. There are several cool features of this application, but I cannot find any journalistic functions of this app.

Here is the rundown - If you listening to a song on the radio and cannot for the life of you think what the name of the song or the artist is, simply push the blue button in the upper right-hand corner. It will use its recognition technology and tell you about the song in question. The only problem is the song has to be very VERY clear. No static. No talking. Not too loud, not too soft. It is very particular and half the time I have tried this application it doesn't work. This function is the opening screen.

There are other options for this application, too. On the bottom row there are four buttons: Tagging, My Tags, Discover and Settings. Tagging is the mode I already spoke of. My tags is the section where you can find identified music. You can buy tagged tracks, or related items. There is a wealth of information when it finds a track. It will give you reviews, release history and more.

The final fun tab is the the Discover option. Discover lets you look at the top songs on different popular charts, or you can search. By clicking on the album, you can listen to the song.

This application is very good for personal use, but I cannot find a good journalistic function for this application. I do, however, recommend this application.

Bump

Review by: Andrew Dumas

Bump allows you to share contact information, photos, music files and more.

Bump is an application with a simple sounding name and purpose, undermined by a fairly complicated operational system. You'll need to bump several times before you get the hang of using it.

The first thing you'll need to do is make a contact in your phonebook that is you. Make it detailed, so that the people you bump with will have all your information. Think of it like a business card, you'll need you're name, position, email and website URL. Once you've done that, go into Bump, select contacts, and select your contact as you. This way, when you bump with people, they will be able to see that it’s you.

From here, you have to have the person you're bumping with get their bump application running, then the two of you literally pump funs. A simple touch works, but we felt it necessary to put a little more oomph in our bumping. You can choose your own bumping style.

The first thing you'll notice after bumping is that there is nothing to take form the other person's phone. This is because you have to select files to send to their phone. If you exit the linked screen and go back to Bump's homepage, you'll see there are several choices of buttons on the bottom. You can select photos, music (only 100 at a time), contacts and social networks. Once you've chosen what you want to share, and they have as well, bump again. Now you can select the different options presented, skim through your choices, and download all the things you want to download.

Once you've done it enough, Bump runs pretty smoothly. And it's free, which always helps. But choosing your files to share isn't exactly intuitive, and there is usually at least a little confusion after bumping as to what is available for the taking, where it is, and whether it has actually been downloaded. Still, Bump is a fast way to share a lot of information, like contacts and pictures, and the fact that it's free means it is definitely worth putting it onto your phone.

Eye-Fi

Review by: Jennifer Elston

Eye-Fi automatically shares your files, directly from your camera.

The Eye-Fi is a device that automatically backs up your camera for you. It is a SD card that comes together with Wi-Fi. We have a 4GB+Wi-Fi card, which is $69.99 For a complete list of products, visit their website here.

To use the Eye-Fi, simply leave on your camera when you get home, or to any Wi-Fi spot that you have preset as an accepted spot on your card. It will do the uploading for you. If you choose, it will also upload your photos to Facebook, flickr, YouTube or a variety of other hosts.

It is really easy to set up - just plug the Wi-Fi card into the USB port that comes with the device and it will do the rest. It has prompts and guides to help you set up your wireless networks and other sites you may wish to publish your photos.

Some of the features of the Geo card we have are:

• Geotags your photos
• The photos come in via date-based folders for easy-to-find files
• Compatible with a wide variety of cameras
• You can select certain photos to upload instead of waiting for the whole set to upload
• You can also set up Twitter, Facebook or email alerts to notify you when your photos are uploading online

I wouldn't recommend this tool for the serious photojournalist. It is not as quick as you might think. It takes a while because the device works through Wi-Fi. It definitely doesn't save any time, and I don't really see the purpose for a journalist. It is not that much of an inconvenience to use a card reader or connect your camera to your computer via a USB port. I could see how it would be handy for a parent or someone on the go who doesn't have time to sit there and babysit your uploading photos.