Apps for iPhone 3G and other mobile users

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Permalink Reply by Joe Ruiz on July 22, 2008 at 10:41pm

Not specifically, but we've used text messaging and photos to get information from our people in the field to the desk. We'll take that info and write it into the story or post photos on our site.

What I've done on my phone (and it can be done on all others) is use specific sites e-mail access for photos (granted, I haven't had the chance to use it for a breaking news situation yet, the ability to do so would be there). I have Flickr, TwitPic (on my personal and our current and upcoming KSAT.com Twitters), Facebook Mobile, Wired Journalists and Brightkite.

Some obviously won't be used for work stuff, but a Flickr or TwitPic post could be used for breaking news updates. I can also see giving that address out to the public to submit pics from their news.

There are no doubt other tools for doing the same, but that's how I can see using those free services for breaking news coverage, especially via phones.

EDIT: Something I've wanted to do, but haven't been able to so far (and it may just be my wonky phone) is upload video clips from my Treo 755 with Sprint. I always get file size errors, but those clips could work well with some of the various video services available. I honestly haven't played with them much because of my phone's limitations, but I'm sure the community can help.

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Permalink Reply by Meg Thilmony on July 24, 2008 at 6:56am

That's a great idea, to allow the public to submit photos on a site where they could immediately see their contribution. I've also got my editors thinking about Twitter and how we could use it as a headline updater and then, a step further, for text alerts. Is there any way to target who you alert by geography, though, other than having separate accounts and users for each area?

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Permalink Reply by Joe Ruiz on December 15, 2008 at 10:05pm

I was digging through the site again, came across this post and wanted to update.

We've got two photogs and (soon-to-be) one reporter using their iPhones for livestreaming with Qik. We haven't had a breaking news story to cover yet, but we did a live test with a perp walk on Sunday afternoon.

Lerma's gonna love all the love, but here's what he did yesterday. http://qik.com/samlerma#v=696640

I was able to embed his Qik profile into our site and pushed it to the livestream video page. Did a little Twitter promotion and that was that. I just want our people to be prepared for the next big story, so it's nice to have three people ready and willing, it just sucks that they're all on my shift, so if something happens during the day, we might be in trouble.

Anyway, that's another iPhone use. The only problem we've really had is while using 3G in the police station, it buffered a lot. So much so that we had a 8-minute delay near the end of that linked video as far as when it was recorded to when I could see it on our site.

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