6 ways media professionals can make the most of LinkedIn

Note: This post also appears on the Thomson Foundation blog.

A new member joins LinkedIn’s fast-growing professional network every second.

Impressive. But even though more than half its 70 million users are reported to be outside the US, the profile of LinkedIn among media professionals in countries like Africa, the Middle East and eastern Europe remains relatively low.

Language has a lot to do with it – LinkedIn is currently only available in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian and Portuguese. So has culture and country-specific attitudes to online networks.

But it seems the picture is changing. The country with the fastest-growing LinkedIn membership is now India, with over three million users, and the network boasts members across 200 countries. (more…)

Review: Getting started with Audacity 1.3

Audacity is my favourite audio editing tool. Why? Because it’s good, works a treat on PC or Mac, it’s open source, supported by a global community, has a fast learning curve … and it’s free.

Anything that promotes Audacity is fine by me. So I was pleased to be invited to review Bethany Hiitola’s new book Getting Started with Audacity 1.3.

To hear my comments (edited with Audacity, naturally) on this first-rate beginner’s guide, just click on the audio player below.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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How Demotix aims to become the stringer’s Associated Press

This interview with Turi Munthe also appears on the Thomson Foundation blog.

As a regular cyclist around London, Turi Munthe knows a thing or two about getting from A to B without wasting time or money. And the risks involved.

So add some real entrepreneurial passion to a sound business sense and you have the former foreign correspondent behind one of the most promising media start-ups of the last couple of years: Demotix.

On one hand, Demotix (from the Greek for ‘of the people’; strapline: News by You) has built a fast-growing network of over 3,000 professional, seni-pro and amateur photographers around the world. It’s probably the most extensive photojournalism resource on the planet. (more…)

5 more great free multimedia tools for journalists & non-profits

I recently wrote about 40-ish free multimedia tools for the backpack journalist … (or charities with the passion to connect, but not the cash).

Thanks. I enjoyed your responses as much as I did writing it. Especially the email from Francisco Javier Garcia (who, incidentally, is leading an interesting WordPress-based education project in his native Spain), laden with “more tools for my Swiss knife.”

Here are a few of the (free) gems from his list: (more…)

Fast, free and easy podcasting with Podbean & PodOmatic

This week, I was speaking about podcasting to a group of social enterprise entrepreneurs. These are the heroes and heroines of our communities, in my opinion, yet even those who knew what a podcast was were nervous that the technology might be beyond them.

So for those I met at the UnLtd/Media Trust event (and maybe a few others), here’s a way to connect your passion with some of the most committed online communities using two simple, free platforms: PodOmatic and Podbean.

First, though, what’s it all about? Podcasts can be audio or video – anything you can imagine on your iPod, really. But let’s keep it simple for now and focus on audio.

OK, so why not just plonk your latest rant, recipe or review on your website as an audio file. You can. And that’s fine. But wouldn’t it be nice if people could listen to your latest masterpiece anywhere, anytime? And how neat would it be if your podcast popped up in iTunes, where people could download it and become regular subscribers?
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Podcasting on iTunes: How to test your feed

• This post follows an introduction to podcasting using Podbean and PodOmatic.

When you’ve created your first podcast it’s a good idea to test the feed before submitting it to iTunes. To do this:

1. VALIDATE YOUR FEED: Copy your RSS feed (Podbean: Go to Upload/Media Manager and click on the file. PodOmatic: Click on the My Podcast tab and find the feed URL under the Promotional Tools header). Then paste your feed URL into FeedValidator. Hopefully, you’ll win a Congratulations! message a couple of moments later.

2. TEST YOUR FEED IN iTUNES: Launch iTunes and navigate to Advanced/’Subscribe to Podcast’. A dialogue box will appear. Insert your feed URL into the window and click OK. If all’s well, after a few seconds you will be able to play your podcast in iTunes. (more…)

Want to get into inbound marketing? Start with a massage

Last night was the first meet-up of the London Inbound Marketing Group, at the Piano and Pitcher in Holborn. Great bunch of people who ventured from Ipswich, Cambridge, Dublin and just round the corner to chat about blogging, social media and the business of getting found online.

I also enjoyed the personal attention of a rather dishy masseuse. Stictly in the interests of inbound marketing, you understand.

One of several interesting conversations I had was with Noel Shannon, CEO of Silicon Cloud – the company doing a great job of bringing Hubspot’s inbound marketing techniques to Europe. He mentioned that he never used the term ‘outbound marketing’ until he heard of ‘inbound marketing’. Same here. But then, a couple of years ago, neither of us knew that the media and marketing world was about to be turned on its head. (more…)

UMapper: The easy mapping tool for all seasons

I re-visited user-friendly mapping tool UMapper this week, after an email from them announcing the official launch of their whizz-bang weather maps.

Creating a UMapper live weather map really is a piece of cake. Just log into UMapper, choose the weather template, zoom in on the area you want to display, save, and copy the resulting code to your blog. Done.

Clickable temperature markers show the five-day forecast and US maps have live radar feed too.

Besides weather mapping, UMapper has a few other gizmos that really impress me (especially from an education perspective), such as the ability to upload custom maps and create ‘geo-games’. (more…)

The missing link in video editing: iMovie for PC

If you’re interested in journalism education, or video editing, I recommend to you the conversation going on over at Mindy McAdams’ excellent blog.

She’s comparing video editing platforms available for educators and learners. And that’s the point. There just isn’t ONE that does the job. It’s plain bonkers.

As every educator and editor I know has been asking for years: Why on earth isn’t there a decent quality, affordable video editor that works on both PC and Mac?

If that isn’t a gap in the market, I don’t know what is. (more…)