iPhone eats Broadcaster eggs

iPhone is again about to change our world. This time it is about how it can facilitate mobile journalism.

It's not a bad camera but the weight of the thing makes it difficult to get steady shots and with a lens the size of a rat's testicle it does extremely well but not near broadcast quality.

And then along comes some interesting stuff.

First is the Owle Bubo. This is a device that holds an adapter lens in front of the iPhones to increase the amount of light and thus enhance the quality. The Owle is heavier and so reduces the camera shake and it has many fittings to allow accessories to be fitted; lights, microphones, tripods and so on.



On its own the Owle Bubo significantly increases the capabilities of the iPhone but that is not the really clever bit. If you install Vericorder's 1st Video app then something quite special happens. The iPhone becomes a complete edit capable OB truck for audio and video. It allows you to shoot stills, video and audio and to edit them together.



There are a number of other apps you can add. Timelapse, iMovie, Reel Director and a Photoshop cutdown but they aren't optimised for news and upload to a media company's servers or to YouTube.

Then there is Vericorder's FindStringers site for matching mobile journalists with media companies. One of a growing number of monetization opportunities.

There are other sites too; CNN has its iReport facility for citizen journalism and my first experiment is there. Increasing public participation in news is fascinating.

For ease of viewing it's here too:


Not the greatest contribution to News and Current Affairs but shot, edited and uploaded in a very short while from my phone. I found an open WiFi network with another app and uploaded the piece over a coffee.

I think that the implications of this are truly extraordinary. With a fraction of the kit I would have needed only a couple of years ago I can provide very timely reports for events, news, product launches, PR and so much more.

In fact Ustream has a live broadcast capability which I have tested with the iPhone:



It was a slow connection and long before I got the Bubo.

So, eating dinosaur eggs?

Well the speed with which smartphones are able to acquire and disseminate audio, still and video packages means that traditional news operations are going to face some interesting changes.

I fully realise that there's a lot of difference between an untutored observation and the skills of the journalist in finding the truth in a story. And journalism, via the great news gathering and disseminating organisations, has been a great answer to keeping society informed and speaking truth to power. But Wikileaks serves to illustrate that there are good reasons for suspecting the editorial integrity of these organisations and certainly the Internet is a peerless means of distribution.

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