Uganda may be struggling to set up its own matchbox factories, fighting to provide essential drugs at all government hospitals and securing quality education for her children, but at least the 3G phone revolution is really and truly here.
Ironic, no?
A significantly large percentage of Ugandan journalists now own their own smart phones. By and large these phones are just status symbols -“I have arrived. Check out my new phone that is like my own phone, but is new and I like it, but I don’t know what to do with it, but check it! It’s new. It’s modern. I have arrived … haven’t I?”
Eish, who am I to speak? I was gifted a smart phone recently. No, it wasn’t a freebie from a mobile phone company- although I’m not sure I would turn one down if MTNOrangeUTLAirtel offered me one 🙁 Now, what to do with this new piece of equipment? What to do?
Here are some essential journalist apps for iPhone, androids or smart phones according to a blogger at Mediactive.com.
For photo, audio and video recording:
- Instagram is a crowd favorite for taking photos and publishing them quickly. (iPhone)
- Picplz offers some of the same functionality as Instagram, but is available on Android. (iPhone, Android)
- For audio, both CinchCast and AudioBoo are worth checking out. Each allow for quickly capturing and then publishing audio, integrating with many social sites. (Both on iPhone and Android)
- Soundcloud allows other users to comment on the timeline of published audio files. This is a great feature for discussing long files of breaking news that haven’t yet been edited as users can quickly see the places creating the most discussion and jump right to that point. (iPhone, Android)
Publishing tools:
- WordPress, Posterous and Tumblr all have mobile applications that allow you to publish to your blog from your phone. (All on iPhone and Android)
- Disqus offers an application that allows you to curate and respond to comments on your blog as well as comment elsewhere. It integrates with WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger and other publishing platforms. (iPhone, Android)
For news consumption:
- Reeder is an iPhone RSS app that connects with a user’s Google Reader Account.
- Google’s own Reader app for Android.
- NetNewsWire is an RSS reader with a solid version for the iPhone. It also syncs with Google Reader.
- Twitter lists are an efficient route for consuming news via mobile device. Make or borrow lists of both individual journalists and publications where you get news.
For more essential journalism phone apps, visit Mediactive.