In many ways these newer techs, apps, widgets and practices can add another dimension to your coverage. Folks say a photo is worth a thousand words. Fortunately, you no longer have to invest in thousands of dollars of equipment or lug around a 5lb. DSLR to cover the basics.

Here’s a few tips and tricks I’ve picked up along the way. Hopefully they are helpful, but I’d love to see, hear, watch or read what you’ve been using and how it’s worked out.

Of course there are a ton of other options out there, depending on exactly what you’re working on. I picked these few because they have to potential to add value to pretty much any assignment with a minimal amount of effort.

Ironically, none of these services (with the exception of the Qik livestream) work on this WordPress.com site. It’s not any of the services or apps fault. WordPress.com just sucks. That’s about all there is to it.

1. Qik Video Pro – $1.99

available on: iPhone and hundreds of other devices

Dude, Qik really is quick. The app lets you do a number of cool things like, well, record video, apply effects, video chat and even zoom in and out WHILE you’re recording. But the the thing that makes it worth the $1.99 price tag is the ability to stream live video straight to the web.

A few months ago I wrote a step-by-step how-to on recording video using Qik, if you care to check it out, but all and all it’s kind of beyond simple for all the functionality the service offers.

After you get everything setup and ready to go, zip on over to your Qik user page and grab your ‘live channel’ snippet of code. Now you can embed your live video player on pretty much ANY website. Think breaking-news live feed on your front page.

Tip: You never know when you’ll need to hit record and get things to the web. Consider setting up a post or page with your ‘live channel’ code and saving it as a draft on the backend of your website. That way, it’s as simple as a click of ‘publish’ to start live-streaming breaking events.

Another cool feature, Qik uploads your video automatically after you’re finished recording. And if you’re not live the embedded player shows your most recent video. It’s worth noting, however, that it can take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes to upload your video once you stop live-streaming. It’s convenient it does this automatically, but BE AWARE before you try to stop and start recording in the thick of it.

Tip: If you plan to be recording anything over 30 seconds PLEASE invest in a tripod for your cellphone or mobile device. You can snag a stand for an iPhone on eBay for well less than $20, in some cases less than $5. DO IT! You’ll thank me later.

2. Panorama360 – $0.99

available on: iPhone and Android

This is my new toy, for journalism work and beyond, but I’ll be the first to tell you that it’s rather glitchy and tends to crash all the damn time. With that said, it’s actually so cool it’s worth the hassle.

The app does exactly what it says. Creates (seemless?) 360 degree views from you cellphone’s camera. You click, spin in a circle and viola, a panorama appears. The big thing is, as you’ll notice in my title photo, it’s kind of hard to get the ground and sky in there without the app wigging out and misprinting a thing or two – or completely crashing and deleting your dizzying work.

In defense of 360Panorama, however, I will say I have a rather old and beat-up iPhone 3gs which may compound the problems. The technology in and of itself is pretty amazing though. The brilliant minds over at Occipital, the company that produced the app, have developed a program that uses pieces of image recognition technology (from what I can gather) to help stitch together your panoramas.

The coolest feature has to be the interactive, 360 degree interface. It’s tweetable, sharable and even embeddable, so what’s not to like?

Tip: Play with this bad boy for a few days before rushing out into the field. If you’re in a tight spot and only have one shot at grabbing the moment aire on the side of caution. Go for a simple, less robust shot so you don’t overload the app and loss the whole scene. In fact, if it’s a one shot situation don’t even you the damn thing. 

Pro-ish Tip: There are other options out there, of course. For about $80 you can buy an actual 360 degree lens to stick on your iPhone. The Dot app/attachment put out by Kogeto comes with a similar 360 interface. The best part though? You can record video and sound. After uploading, the viewer can spin around in the scene while the video plays. Pretty awesome, but for $80 it kind of has to be.

3. Twitter – FREE

available on: any phone via SMS or app

Yes, I actually put Twitter on the list. Pretty much everyone gets the idea of live-tweeting an event, but few do it in an effective way that works beyond the Twitter stream.

Download the Twitter app or setup your phone to tweet via SMS. Next, grab one of Twitter’s nifty widgets and embed it on your website, in a post, page or whatever fits the bill. Presto! Now you’ve got a nice sidebar, running story that’ll garner some page views and a thread of ongoing updates even after the event.

I would paste an example in this post, but my WordPress.com cheapness won’t allow it. The code should work with any self-hosted site, however, and the company even gives an option to post straight to Blogger. Still, no WordPress.com love.

Tip: Create a hashtag for whatever event your covering and use the corresponding search widget. This helps keep the embedded feed on your site on topic and free of your other, non-related tweets. Plus, other people can chime in and add to the conversation. It’s a win-win.

The twits at Twitter even allow you to change color schemes, size, number of tweets shown and other tidbits to help out with branding and site consistency. You pick and choose, then click ‘grab code.’ Three cheers for simplicity.

I’ve got to admit, I was really impressed. Anybody that can take a hunk of metal – or any material, for that matter – and turn it into something functional, elegant and unique earns my respect right off the bat.

And the January meet up of the Alex Bealer Blacksmith Association (ABBA) in Atlanta, Ga. was full of people exactly like that. The ABBA is a non-profit based in Atlanta who’s goal is to “increase the knowledge and appreciation of the Craft of Blacksmithing, promote the study of its many technologies, and to continue it as an active Craft.” Full disclosure here, my step-dad Kevin Daniell has been a member for a number of years.

Each month, they meet and work on a project, or “challenge.” For january, the challenge was a pair of shutter locks (something like this). And each month there’s a different host.

The January host was notable sculpter and metal worker Andrew T. Crawford of Atlanta. At his workshop in West Midtown, Andrew employs 4 full-time metalworkers, churning out everything from light fixtures to gates to works of art. In many respects, he blurs the line between art and functionality.

Even with the family connection, it’s sad to say, this was the first meet-up I’d ever made. One thing’s for sure, though. I can’t wait to catch the next one.

The best part? It’s free and open to the public.

Check out all the photos of the blacksmithing meet-up, if you’d like. Here’s some of my favorites:

More photos at: http://www.claydudaphotography.com/Hobbies/Alex-Bealer-Jan-2012/

It depends on how you measure it, but I think I failed my 2011 New Year’s Resolution. It was, if you recall, to Love Thy Blog. I promised to blog regularly, weekly even, but if you check the record you’ll see I only managed a meager 17 posts last year.

Still, it’s all about perspective. My site traffic increased nearly 10 fold. Not too shabby for monthly content of varying degrees of interest and importance. Not surprisingly, most of my traffic came from the U.S., but it’s interesting too see how many outsiders – mainly the Canadians and the Brits – took a gander at my humble assortment of syllables.

Feel free to check out WordPress’s wrap-up of my 2011 stats, if you care or dare.

Of course, the blame only rests on my shoulders. My first mistake was having a resolution at all. Nobody ever sticks to them. I was doomed to fail. Still, a huge contributing factor is that I constantly write journalism-focused posts for the Center for Sustainable Journalism. After 40 hours each week pouring over the latest theories about the future of the media I find myself a little burnt out…

This year I’ve warded off any inkling of a resolution. One thing is for sure, though. This blog is going to take on a bit of a new direction. What that is exactly I’m still not sure, but I won’t be spouting off about the media near as much. There’s already a ton of assholes way more prolific than myself taking up the task.

Besides, in this day and age we’re all part of the media.

Having a bit of fun with the dog and thought I’d share. That’s about all there is to it.

Ode to the broken New Year’s resolution, which (if I recall correctly) was for me to ‘love thy blog.’

But, perhaps, the hipsters of the web can offer a bit of redemption. For the true hipster would not settle on an app that merely mimics old photographic methods. Nay. They would seek out the vintage products on eBay and the like, piece together the necessary dust-covered, antiquated optics and shill out mommy and daddy’s hard earned money to have it processed over at E-6 on the westside of town.

Fortunate for me and my busy schedule, I’m not hip enough to be a hipster. Rather I’ll provide fuel to the fire and offer up a rather simplistic – yet helpful for the task ahead – infographic.

Lastly, it’s worth noting this is a rip-off from the brillant blogger minds over at 1000memories, and to a lesser extent the KEH Camera Blog where I originally stumbled the piece. At any rate, give credit where credit is do and enjoy the visual.

Here’s a few do’s and don’ts for entry-level journos I learned in year one:

This is an exert from a post on SustainableJournalism.org. Click the link for the full scoop.

Do’s:

1. Dig ditches, but not your own - If you’re not willing to work a part-time journalism job and hold it down at a BBQ restaurant at the same time then you might as well call it quits now. Ok, odds are your story isn’t going to be exactly like mine, but odds are also it’ll take a similar caliber sacrifice to get where you want to go. With such a large pool of applicants and a small number of available jobs it’s up to you to go the extra mile and stand above the heap.
2. Shake hands, kiss babies - I hate to say it, but the journalism industry is all about who you know. It’s a challenge for anyone, but for someone like me with a blue collar background it’s especially challenging. I didn’t have high-placed family friends or someone to make an introduction for me. I basically started from square one when I graduated (see #5 below).
3. Tweet like you’ve never tweeted before – This doesn’t mean you’re doomed to the life of an Online Community Manager. As our Executive Director Leonard Witt pointed out last year, you have a better chance of landing a job with 300 contacts than you do with 30 contacts. Social media is the easiest, fastest and cheapest way to make that happen. I owe a lot to social media platforms, and Twitter in particular. I landed this job on Twitter, a few photo and other freelance gigs and met a long list of high-ranking editors, reporters and just about every other job title on earth. Where else can you talk with the head of domestic news gathering at CNN at the click of a button?
4. Use words like ‘pro bono’ – Now-a-days journalists have to be their own PR specialist in a way. In reality this hasn’t changed much over the years, but today there are just fewer barriers between the reporter and the public. For as long as I can remember ethics codes held the line “avoid bias, real or perceived.’ If avoiding the perception of bias isn’t PR I don’t know what is. Using words like pro bono and just being conscious of the fact that people actually read what you write – whether it be in print, on Twitter, Facebook or wherever – can help you save a little face and look better in front of perspective employers at the same time.
5. Like them on Facebook – So how do you stand out in a stack of 100 resumes? A good place to start would be the website of the place you’re applying. Don’t send the same resume and cover letter to every office. Research. Find the publication’s voice and what kind of stories they gravitate toward. Submit your clippings based on what you know about the company. Find the editor’s e-mail and drop them a line after a few days. Don’t hear back? Try again. Be nice, respect their time and don’t get annoying, but let them know you’re ambitious and serious about hitting the ground running. Find the editor and every other staff member you can on LinkedIn. Send them an invite saying you want to connect and you submitted your resume for the position.

Dont’s: …

This is an exert from a post on SustainableJournalism.org. Click the link for the full scoop.

Photo credit: Clay Duda, CSJ staff

Did you miss me? If you haven’t been following a long you may not realize that there hasn’t been a real blog post in the site in, oh, about two months. Granted there was the whole inforesume thing and my little bit about screwing the ‘likes’ I pulled from Facebook, but quite frankly I’ve been neglectful.

Sorry, but honestly if it bothers you that bad just don’t read..

And one last confession.. this is kind of a cheap blog post in itself. Why? Because I kind of repurposed it too. And if you thought I was actually cool enough to hop a train you’re going to be sadly disappointed.

[edit: technically I did hop a train. It just wasn't moving.]

To top things off you’re probably wondering what the hell train hopping has to do with city living, journalism or photography, right? Well not much.

I went on this assignment a few weeks ago to seek out these “train kids” and tell their story, whatever that may be. I found what I was looking for and in large part what I expected.

Each person’s story was unique. I don’t even feel right calling the “train kids” anymore, although they don’t have much of a problem referring to themselves that way.

Spanning the course of two days my camera and I sat, hobbled and snapped our way up and down that small strip of retail stories that is the the Little 5 Points neighborhood of Atlanta more times than I could count. I came out the other side with a half full reporter’s notebook, an hour plus worth of video and 26.8 gigabytes of photos. In some ways I wish I could have stayed there.

Professionally this was the first assignment I took on where I tackled both the visual and written elements of the piece. I learned some valuable lessons. I’ll do my best to learn from them.

Personally it was fun, eye-opening and I got to meet some great people. I can only hope my journey through life will be half as interesting.

I’m taking a leap of faith here. I’m giving Facebook Pages the boot.

I know it’s sad especially since I have this awesome www.facebook.com/multimediajournalist URL, but sometimes you have to cut your loses and do a little experimenting.

In some ways Facebook’s journalism initiative goes against Zuckerberg’s own philosophies about privacy on the Internet. The push for more journalists to use Facebook as a resource may have been a good one, but I’m still not convinced I actually NEED a Facebook page.

More than ever journalists are becoming public figures. We’re not quite there yet (and hopefully we never will be), but it’s hard to argue the modern journo’s role isn’t more public. Gone are the days of snail mail ‘letters to the editor’ and hiding being behind fancy bylines printed in Old English type.

And Facebook’s pitch to journos has pretty much followed that narrative:

“Hey, you’re a public figure now. People want to follow your journalistic exploits. You should create a PR page…”

The point is – at least for me – it doesn’t make much sense to put up a wall (or page, whatever you want to call it) between me and the ‘hordes of interested readers.’ If anything I should be tearing the walls down, opening my privacy settings, and inviting them into my sphere of influence as opposed to keep them at a distance.

What do I have to loose?  Even within my account Facebook’s privacy options let me control which friends see what utilizing the “Lists” function. People will get more than just industry dribble and RSS feeds of published work. They’ll get a slice of my personality and that’s much more valuable (priceless even).

All jokes aside this isn’t a baseless assumption. In July 2010 Zuckerberg actually pointed out that privacy setting hurt site engagement. [http://www.allfacebook.com/mark-zuckerberg-privacy-settings-hurt-site-engagement-2010-07]

While I pride myself on not thinking of things in terms of “site engagement” I’d be a foul to ignore the trend within the industry. PR has found a home in journalism – or at least in journalists that depend on it for future work.

On that note, if I have to be sucked into the self-satisfying world of personal PR to give it a go in this industry at least I can do my best to adhere to journalistic standards in the process.

For the past year I have had my personal Facebook account locked down. I have never been friends with someone I haven’t met in real life. I guess that’s about to change.

Today I open my Facebook account to the world and invite you to be my friend.www.facebook.com/clay.duda. Hope to see you soon.

(*please note: a good bit of sarcasm was used in this post)

This morning Goergia’s Governor Nathan Deal signed SB 10 – a bill that allow counties to vote on Sunday alcohol sales, something that’s been illegal in the state for, well, pretty much ever – into law.

On Facebook Georgians for Sunday Alcohol Sales has been the go-to spot for up-to-the-minute updates on the bills progress. In the process they’ve managed to accumulatenearly 7,000 ‘Likers’ on the platform.

So, as the bill slid across the governor’s desk this morning many mice (mouses? meece?) hovered above the GSAS Facebook page.

Here’s where the timing comes in.

After relaying the news of the bill’s passage (and about an hour ahead of Atlanta’s biggest newspaper)  the folks behind the GSAS account took a second to refocus the conversation on the tragic aftermath that swept through the South last evening (see image above).

To me it’s just a small example of how to do some good with your social media prowess  and (hopefully) spur some neighborly love.

Since this literally happened a few minutes ago it’s hard to gauge the actual impact. Time permitting I’d like to follow up.

Oh – and welcome to the 21st Century, Georgia.