Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Nokia and Reuters develop an N95-based "Mobile Journalism Toolkit"

awesome

The rise of the cameraphone has certainly changed the face of journalism, and old-guard wire service Reuters isn't about to get passed by -- the company has entered into a long-term partnership with Nokia to develop new mobile reporting technologies, and the two companies have recently completed trials of an N95-based "Mobile Journalism Tookit" that takes moblogging to a whole new level. Reporters were given a hardware bundle that consisted of an N95, a Nokia SU-8W portable keyboard, a Sony condenser mic with special N95 adapter, a tripod, and two Power Monkey power stations, including the solar-capable Explorer, all of which linked into a custom mobile CMS that allows stories to be posted almost instantly. Reuters also partnered with Comvu for GPS-linked video streaming, and the N95 also provides a host of other metadata about each piece of content as it's filed. Although the trial is now over, both Reuters and Nokia plan on using the kits to teach journalism students and to promote the cause of citizen journalism. Let's hope that means they start teaching people how to take non-blurry cameraphone spy shots, eh?

Read -- Mobile Journalism Toolkit press release
Read -- Posts from the Reuters mobile journalism trial
Read -- Toolkit contents