tools

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Imagine then an image tagged with YouTube videos, audio from SoundCloud, tweets, photos from Flickr, songs from iTunes, Wikipedia pages and even links to e-commerce sites like Amazon and eBay.

In just a few, painless clicks, ThingLink lets users do just that. After creating an account and logging in, the site lets you easily upload images from Facebook, Flickr, a website or your computer and then tag the pictures with rich media content. You don’t have to leave the page you’re on — all the content is embedded within the photo.

See how news organizations could have used ThingLink with this well-known photograph. (Just hover your mouse over the dots.)

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Author and journalist Susan Orlean (left) has written two nonfiction pieces that have been turned into films. She’ll discuss her new book, Rin Tin Tin, in Mediabistro’s first online Literary Festival & Workshops starting July 16. Other speakers include Rebecca Skloot, Jason Boog, and Jason Allen Ashlock. Register now.

Whether you’re a soon-to-be J-school graduate or a journalist looking for a new gig, one thing you will most certainly need is a good portfolio. And not just any portfolio — it has to be online.

When a potential employer Googles your name, you want your website — complete with all your best articles, social media profiles, videos and other work — to be the first thing that shows up.

An online portfolio is the new first impression and you want yours to be a strong one.

This doesn’t mean you have to b a web designer or someone who can code in their sleep. Luckily, more and more sites are popping up that make collecting your clips in one place and creating an online portfolio as easy as 1-2-3.

Here are five sites to visit if you are in the market to create your own online portfolio. They all offer the ability to create a customizable URL, are free (unless you choose the paid version), and don’t require you to know any code. The most work you’ll have to do is click the mouse or trackpad. Read more

If you’re in the news business, it’s important to stay informed about what your fellow reporters (sometimes known as competitors) are writing and publishing. This can be hard to do if you aren’t scanning different websites constantly or glued to Twitter and Facebook.

Newsle, a relatively new web app, now lets you easily follow specific journalists and filter stories they write into a “Journalist” feed.

Move over, the AP Stylebook. A new handbook is in town and there’s a good chance it will become a newsroom must-have.

The Data Journalism Handbook launched this past weekend at the School of Data Journalism, based at the 2012 International Journalism Festival in Perugia. It is a one stop shop for reporters interested in learning about data journalism and includes a free, open sourced web version so anyone can access it.

“The book’s contributors are a who’s who of data journalism,” wrote Simon Rogers, a contributor to the handbook, in a post on the Guardian’s Datablog. “There are pieces by data journalists from the BBC, the Chicago Tribune, the Financial Times, Propublica and the New York Times. And that’s besides contributions from three of us at the Guardian.” Read more

For those who have avoided tools like Google Latitude or FourSquare because you don’t like telling people where you are at all times, Glympse might be the tool for you.

The app allows you to share your exact, realtime location with the people you specify for the amount of time you specify. This means people won’t be able stalk you all the time — only when you want them to. You don’t have to worry about checking in or keeping the app open; it updates automatically.

For the newsroom, there are a few practical uses I can think of:

1. Tracking groups of reporters/sources for real-time events. If you want to provide a way for readers to follow along while a reporter travels about, this kind of tool would enable that.  There’s social media integration, so you can share travels via Facebook or Twitter.

2. Internal planning for collaborative reporting. This idea comes to me from The Seattle Times’ social media editor, Sona Patel. I often forget about using these flashy new tools for internal purposes, rather than the forward-facing consumer product. When a newsroom is planning coverage for big events — say, a protest downtown, or another breaking-news situation — reporters and photographers can share their location with each other to ensure they don’t duplicate work.

3. Letting your editor know where you are. When will that reporter be back from assignment? Instead of making extra phone calls or sending an email, you can use the one-click functionality to send a Glympse that shows where you are and how long until you’ll get where you need to be.

The best part? This app works on many smartphones: iPhone, Android, Windows phones and Blackberries.

Hat tip to Sona Patel for letting me know about this tool. Let us know in the comments if you’re using location-sharing tools for reporting.