Reporter suggests ways to use iPhone
A major goal of mine for this blog is that it be useful to people with a variety of tech knowledge and backgrounds.
So I will be on the hunt for tips from any journalist willing to offer them.
Today I give you a very good list of apps and tips from a solid reporter who happens to work with me. Casey is on our political team, which means he has to be mobile and quick on his feet.
Our political team is good that way.
Feel free to offer up your own suggestions. Let me know in the comments if you would like to contribute your own post.
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By Casey Newton
I find my iPhone indispensable for reporting. Using mostly free services, I’ve been able to get a handle on my e-mail inbox, keep my to-do list in order, access important files on the go, and scan documents for later use. Here are some of my most-used apps.
Gathering information
Recorder ($0.99). I bought this before Apple came out with its own Voice Memos app, but Recorder is still better. It has supplanted my regular voice recorder because of a feature that connects your phone to the Internet over a WiFi network, letting you transfer all your audio recordings onto a desktop computer as AIFF files. That means that I can archive important interviews forever, instead of deleting them when my recorder gets full. A great use of 99 cents.
Google Reader (free). My preferred RSS reader for iPhone; just hit the + button in Safari to add it to your homescreen as a standalone app. Helpful for keeping up with Arizona’s political blogosphere.
Google (free). Google’s dedicated iPhone app gathers lots of useful services into one place, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Reader, News, Translate and the GOOG-411 service.
Scanner Pro ($6.99). For $7, this is a marvelous alternative to a handheld portable scanner. I’m still exploring the features, but one of the great ones is that after you take a bunch of scans, you can save all the pages together into a PDF that you can then e-mail to yourself or share with a number of other programs.
If you download another app, called Print N Share, you can apparently also print the documents from a networked printer directly from the iPhone. There is even an option to fax a document directly from the iPhone, which blows my mind. The other thing I love about the program is that it integrates with the aforementioned Evernote.
One of the many amazing things about Evernote is that it has optical character recognition technology, meaning that after I forwarded the attached picture to Evernote, the entire text of the document became searchable. (I could talk for another hour about how useful Evernote is to reporters, but I will restrain myself.)
Organizing information
Evernote (free). Evernote, which allows you to create and store notes across just about every platform, is so insanely useful that it deserves its own post (or five): This is a reporter’s notebook on steroids.
The company makes a version of the software for Windows, Mac, the Web, iPhone, Droid, Palm Pre and other services, and you can also e-mail or even tweet new notes into the service. No matter where you edit a file, those changes synchronize across every version of the software.
The free version allows you to add JPG, audio and PDF files, so Evernote can also serve as an effective documents library. For $5 a month or $45 a year, you can add any file you want into the system, including PowerPoints and Excel files.
I’m covering several campaigns right now, and whenever I get a campaign-related e-mail, I just forward it into my ‘campaign’ folder in Evernote and tag it with the names of the candidates involved. It has become an essential reference point as I write daily campaign stories and profiles. If you only download one new app based on this post, make it this one.
OmniFocus / AwesomeNote ($19.99 / $3.99). I am slightly obsessed with to-do list software and try out new apps all the time. OmniFocus is incredibly robust and full-featured, but also expensive and kind of tricky to use unless you also have the Mac-only desktop version at home. AwesomeNote is much cheaper, much prettier, and just as effective for all but the nerdiest among us. That said, I’ve recently gone back to storing everything in OmniFocus.
Google Calendar (free). I do all my calendaring in Google, which integrates with the calendar on iPhone 4. I’ve set it to send me reminders 10 minutes before every appointment, which frequently saves me from disaster.
Communication
Google Voice (free). My voicemail at work asks people to call my Google Voice number, which is superior to my work cell phone for two reasons. One, a single Google Voice number rings both my work and my personal cell; two, it transcribes voicemails so I can see what the person wants before I call them back. Huge time saver.
Twitter for iPhone. My favorite of the iPhone Twitter apps is gorgeous, intuitive, and handles multiple accounts.
Other resources
Google Maps (free). Never get lost on your way to an assignment again!
Light Rail (free). The free Phoenix light rail app offers maps, train schedules, and other static information. Other cities have much more robust public-transit apps, but this one works for now.
Town Hall ($0.99). Congress in your pocket. Pick a lawmaker and bring up a bio, Wikipedia link, and links to their campaign finance records.
I'm me. You are you. It's a pretty cool deal. 
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