The end of 2010 is upon us, and what do news photographers have to show for it?

Well, a lot.

This past month, newspapers and news agencies have been publishing their staffs’ best photos, as well as pictures that summarize the events of 2010. Here are a few of those galleries in case you missed them or need some inspiration. Happy New Year!

1. The San Jose Mercury News

The San Jose Mercury News produced a video presentation of its staff’s best work of the year.

2. The Boston Globe‘s “The Big Picture”

In three parts, The Boston Globe‘s “Big Picture” shares the year in pictures. Be sure to check out the second and third parts as well.

3. Reuters

Reuters’ “Full Focus” blog published 55 of their photographers’ best pictures, complete with photographers’ commentary.

4. The St. Petersburg Times

The St. Pete Times‘ staff photographers picked their favorite photos of the year for this gallery.

4. The New York Times

The New York Times shares a timeline of photos that represent 2010.

5. The Dallas Morning News

The Dallas Morning News photography staff published three different “Best of 2010″ galleries: news, features and sports.

6. The Orlando Sentinel

The Orlando Sentinel‘s “Year in Review” feature also includes a sampling of 75 photos by Sentinel photographers.

7. The San Antonio Express-News

Each San Antonio Express-News photographer picked his/her best images of the year for individual slideshows.

8. The Washington Post

The Washington Post published its seventh annual “Best of the Post” to showcase its staff’s photography, multimedia and video content.

9. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Also, be sure to check out “best of” galleries by each of the AJC staff photographers.

10. Luceo Images

Each member of Luceo, a highly-regarded photo collective, picked his/her five images that represented a year of work.

11. Sports Illustrated

Here’s a collection of — you guessed it — Sports Illustrated‘s pick of the year’s best sports photos.

12. The Seattle Times

The Seattle Times published a gallery of its photo staff’s picks for the year.

13. The Austin American Statesman

The Austin American-Statesman photographers created a video production of their best work of 2010.

What year-end photo collections did we miss? What was your favorite photographic coverage this year? Share in the comments!

And, of course — Happy New Year, everyone!

At the beginning of 2010, I was working as a multimedia producer and living life day by day, mostly confined to my small apartment in Berkeley.

By the end of the year, I had published my first book, sold my blog of three years for a nice sum, and became the National Innovations Editor for the Washington Post.

How did a guy who, until a fateful meeting with an English professor several years ago never had any intention of being a journalist, end up doing in one year what takes some a lifetime to accomplish? The answer is simple: nobody told me I couldn’t do it.

I often say I’m a “see a need, fill a need” kind of guy. If I see a void that needs to be filled — for example a straightforward book about “new media” journalism — I work until I see it done. We’re all fortunate to come of age at a time in journalism when all the tools for doing it yourself are readily available. Creating a blog with WordPress takes just a few minutes, publishing a book is as easy as uploading a PDF to a site like CreateSpace. But behind the scenes is a lot of sweat, hard work, and perseverance — all in the name of furthering journalism.

My accomplishments are the product of lots of long hours and hard work, but more importantly the support of thousands of people — some of whom are immediately close to me and some who I will never meet. For the past several years I have been fueled by helping other journalists learn what I have learned — the power technology has to further our work as reporters and to communicate the news to the world.

That same ethic has fueled my work at the Washington Post. I and others work to incorporate web technologies into our offerings and elevate everything from daily stories to big picture projects. So far this has included using DocumentCloud to explain “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, using Storify to chronicle 2010 election night, mapping astrological phenomena with Google Sky, following bad behavior in Congress with a timeline, and tracking Transformers as they made their way through D.C., plus many more behind the scenes efforts.

So what’s next for me? As you can imagine, topping all that’s happened in this past year won’t be easy. But the thing about me is that I rarely set goals for myself (as in “In 5 years, I will accomplish X”) because I never know where life or my career will take me. Instead I’m focusing my energy on the task at hand — revolutionizing the Washington Post along with an amazing team of journalists, editors, and technologists. Of course, with my track record I always have something up my sleeve and a few things happening on the side.

And I hope that’s the lesson for every journalist…you are more than just the job you have now. You are more than the company you work for, or the people you hang around, or the city you live in. Follow whatever your passion is and don’t let your ideas just nag at you and never get realized. The tools are available for you to change your life and hopefully in the process change the lives of others.

Thinking about creating an iPad app for your newsroom? Want to see what other news media have come up with? Below are screengrabs of several news apps from newspapers, magazines radio, television, and online-only news websites. Click the thumbnails to view the full-sized images.

ABC News

BBC News

CNN

Elle US

Entertainment Weekly

Forbes

Financial Times

Huffington Post

MTV News

New York Post

New York Times

NPR

USA Today

The Washington Post

Esquire

If you’re looking for an example of what’s possible on the iPad platform, check out Esquire’s iPad app. The app has an intuitive interface and seamlessly blends video content alongside print offerings — something unique for a traditionally print publication. The app also features interactive features and graphics that respond to the reader’s touch.

Eighty-two percent of American adults have cell phones, though just 4 percent of adults used their phones to monitor election results during this past midterm election cycle, according to a study released Thursday by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

The number of adults with mobile devices has fluctuated between 73 percent in April 2006 and 85 percent in April 2009 and September 2010, according to the survey.

The study found that of the 82 percent of adults with cell phones, 71 percent use their phone for texting, while a much smaller 39 percent use their phones to access the Internet.

The most popular election-related activity on mobile devices? Telling others they had voted, which 14 percent of respondents with phones said they did.

Interestingly, just 10 percent of respondents used their phones to inform others about voting conditions, delays, long lines and voter turnout at their polling place.

News organizations which attempted to crowdsource voting problems — The Washington Post’s vote monitor a notable example — seemed to get relatively small responses. This study provides hard numbers as to why there was such low response.

A total of 2,257 adults participated in the survey, which was conducted between Nov. 3 and Nov. 24 and has a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points.

Traveling just got a bit more awesome thanks to new technology and tools.

Foursquare and Gowalla have made a big splash when it comes to location-based information and Yelp has revolutionized real-life travel with its online and mobile offerings, but there is even more innovation on the horizon when it comes to travel and journalism. Here are some of the latest offerings that are making the world just a bit smaller.

When it comes to travel do you have Italian tastes but a Branson budget? Thanks to interactive panoramas you can visit exotic locales around the world without leaving your home or office. For example, check out this 360° view of London or this immersive interactive of the Sistine Chapel.

Creating interactive panoramas used to mean trotting out pricey equipment, but now you can create with them with the internal controls built into newer DSLR cameras or using photo stitching software. You can also use mobile apps like the recently released 360 Panorama, available from the iTunes store for 99 cents.

If you’re more interested in fine art than the locales that contain them, you can view artwork up close and personal via similar technology. Halta Definizione allows you to view famous works like DaVinci’s The Last Supper or Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus in an interactive environment that allows you to zoom in to the tiniest detail.

A similar effect can be created using tools like Zoom.it which lets anybody embed high-resolution images that have similar zoom and pan controls.

Reinventing the travel experience isn’t limited to fine art: a new crop of apps and websites let you view the history all around you. The Museum of London’s Streetmuseum app pins historic photos onto the real life locations where they were taken. The app uses augmented reality to layer the photos on top of the image seen through the iPhone camera.

Historypin is taking a similar approach by inviting users to add historic photos to an interactive Google map. The result is almost 30,000 photos and stories that can be browsed by anyone.

Slate proved back in 2005 that podcasts could be much more than audio news stories with its Unauthorized Audio Tours of New York City museums. Instead of listening to the prepackaged audio tour provided by many museums, you can instead listen to culture critic Lee Siegel describe and comment on the museum’s offerings. The idea is still relatively untapped among newsrooms, despite its incredible simplicity.

A more recent trend among museums, tour guides, and other non-journalism outfits is to produce their own mobile apps that act as an official guide to a single or various points of interest. The Museum of Natural History in New York, for example, offers an app that includes GPS tracking, detailed information on exhibits, and bookmarking features.

If the various predictions are correct (and they are), we will not only see a growth in mobile applied to journalism, but also travel journalism in particular.

If you’re looking for additional ways to make your travel plans fun, easier, or more interesting, check out this list of ten smartphone travel apps.