A picture is worth a thousand words and if you like to take notes for stories by snapping pics, then you should check out VoxPixl. The new iPhone app lets you record audio tracks to go along with your iPhone photos, so it is a great way to take down your ideas as you are recording stills.

The app uses a ”Siri-like” technology from Nuance Communications to process the audio clips. Each photo can hold up to 30 seconds in audio. Once you create a voice caption, you can email or text it as well as share it across social networks.

The app also has a pretty cool feature that lets you search these files by keyword or location, which is great for when you get back to your desk to write that story after making lots of recordings on-the-go.

Online writing community Wattpad is testing a new program that would let fans help fund projects. The pilot focuses on the work of six writers. Readers can sponsor their favorite writers in the group to help them fund a story, an eBook, or professional services for a work such as editing, design or distribution, in exchange for rewards. Rewards for books include such things as having a character in a story named after the donor or getting a signed copy of a book once it is published.

Here is more from the press release:

The first wave of Wattpad fan funding includes campaigns by Brittany Geragotelis, author of Life’s a Witch which started as a story on Wattpad and was published by Simon and Schuster last year. Writer Tara Sampson aka writer MercyRose had a campaign to continue writing on Wattpad which has already been successfully funded and Jordan aka XxSkater2Girl16xX is on track to reach her goals in a thirty day period.

Follow this link for more details.

NBC News, a unit of Comcast’s NBCUniversal, has acquired Stringwire a service that will allow its news stations to live stream video content from the phones of verified citizen journalists. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Stringwire platform will the news station to recruit and direct contributors based on their location through Twitter to share videos which can be sifted through in order to share live on television. NBC has also hired on Phil Groman, the founder of Stringwire, to serve as the Product Lead for the division. He will be based in the San Francisco NBC office.

“Stringwire is at the leading edge of user-generated video products, with immediate value to our on-air and digital businesses. Long-term, we think there is great commercial potential,” said Vivian Schiller, SVP & Chief Digital Officer at NBC News, in a statement.

The service has yet to launch yet, but if you’d like to sign up to be a contributor, you can share your email address at this link.

Diet and exercise app MyFitnessPal has raised $18 million in venture capital funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Accel Partners, according to reports.

The app is designed to help people keep track of their calorie consumption and exercise and connect with friends for support in order to meet weight loss goals. It features a food diary to give users an awareness of their nutritional intake. The app also has a tool that lets users search for the calorie counts of items on chain restaurant menus. According to the site, the app already has 40 million users.

The Wall Street Journal has the story about the funding.

The venture capitalists backing MyFitnessPal think there is a lot more business to win. “There hasn’t been as much disruption yet in the health, wellness and fitness space,” said Andrew Braccia of Accel Partners, who is joining MyFitnessPal’s board, along with John Doerr from Kleiner Perkins.

Twitter has updated its music discovery app Twitter #music, adding new discovery tools. Version 1.2 of the app gives Twitter the ability to scan your iPhone’s music library in order to suggest artists that you might be interested in. In addition, if you have tweeted about an artist, Twitter will also suggest their work to you. The update also lets you listen to an artist’s top tracks, similar artists, as well as artists that your favorite artist follows on Twitter.

The app is also now available in a number of different languages including French, Danish, Finnish, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portugese, Spanish, Swedish and Dutch.

Twitter launched the app back in April. The app identifies artists and tracks based on how often they are tweeted about to help music fans discover new tracks. Tapping into Spotify and Rdio, the app lets you play

Amateur Surgeon 3 the adult swim game from Turner Broadcasting joins the top free iPhone apps list this week at No. 2, according to research from AppData. The iPhone game challenges players to operate on mutant animals with a chainsaw.

Below, we’ve listed the top free iPhone apps of the week. The list links to Inside Network’s research about the individual apps, including historical charts, developer information and download information.

To support Mediabistro’s Media App Summit, we spotlight the top free apps every week–helping our readers discover, enjoy and analyze successful content. Read more

Cupcake Kitty by Mary Matthews is today’s Free eBook of the Day.

This is a short mystery novel about cat detectives. Check it out: “When a singer at an engagement party dies, romantic 1920s detectives, Grace and Jack, and their magical cats, Tatania and Zeus, jump on the trail of a killer that leads to Tijuana and a bootlegger’s doll: Cupcake Kitty.”

Amazon has the free download through August 12th.

For more free eBooks, check out our 10 Websites to Download Free eBooks list, as well as our Free eBook of the Day archive.

Global tablet sales will pass 381 million units in 2017, according to a new report by Forrester. Tablets will become so mainstream that one in eight humans on earth will own one, representing 29% of online consumers worldwide, according to the Global Business And Consumer Tablet Forecast Update, 2013 to 2017 report.

eBay Deals created an infographic called, “The Great Tablet Debate,” which explores consumer preference in tablets.

According to the graphic, Android tablets have the most market share, but the iPad is still the most popular device. Check it out: “Google’s Android system accounted for 56.5% of the tablet market in the first quarter of 2013, whereas Apple’s iOS achieved 39.6%. iPads still dominated though: Apple sold 19.5 million units in Q1 2013, while Samsung sat in second place, having sold 8.8 million of its Android based tablets.”

We’ve embedded the entire graphic after the jump. Read more

Most smartphone owners have dropped their phone once or twice, but a new Android app game from Norwegian developer Carrot Pop may lead to an increase in phone accidents. The app is called Send Me to Heaven (S.M.T.H.). It encourages players to throw their  phone as high as they can and then catch it in order to score points. Users can save their scores to the Carrot Pop server and compare them against the scores of other players.

Using the phone’s accelerometer, the app measures the height that the phone reaches as it goes up in the air. The higher its thrown, the higher the points. Hopefully players will actually catch their phones and they won’t end up smashed on the street beneath players. The company’s disclaimer  says that they aren’t liable for any damage to phones hurt in game play.

It may be an app worth downloading, the week before you upgrade to a new phone.