My Favorite Mobile Apps

Editor’s note: This is the final installment of a multi-part series on useful mobile apps for journalists.

Over the past nine months, Dr. Amara Aguilar and I have created more than a dozen short training videos on various mobile apps we think are useful for journalists. Recording them has been great fun, and we dropped them into the Journalist’s Toolbox site and compiled them into a YouTube playlist (see below).

Here’s a quick list of my favorite apps that Aguilar and I shared. They’re either free or low-cost (though be mindful of upsell, the case with any app). Search your app stores and download them.

An example of how to use the This! app. (Photo courtesy @WrigleyAerials

• This! app: Made by Tinrocket, This! lets you layer text and directional arrows over the top of a photo. It works well with aerial shots or with foodie photos/recipes to point out ingredients. Another app, called Point Out, offers some different designs, but I like the slick look of This!

• Hokusai: Aguilar does a wonderful job of demonstrating the app in this video. It’s an intuitive audio editor and makes life sooo much easier for producing audio clips on the fly.

• VN video editor: Add text, location, music and edit clips easily in this intuitive interface. It’s useful for creating social videos on the fly.

• Anchor: Audio can be visual with a little help from this app. Take an audio clip and turn it into an audiogram you can attach to a social media post or post to YouTube (pro tip: A LOT of podcast audio is heard on YouTube.)

Watch: The playlist starts with a Prezi slideshow of useful apps, then moves to demonstrations of other useful apps. Watch it and you’ll be a mobile ninja in no time.

In Quotes …

"We should not and cannot change all our differences. Each of us brings from our own background things which we should share. There is good in diversity."

--Georgie Ann Geyer

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