How to create an iPad magazine with Glossi

by Andy Bull

Up until now it's been pretty difficult for the non-coder to create a magazine for the iPad and other tablets

What simple platforms there were for building mobile phone and tablet apps often charged a hefty fee to host

But now there's a platform that lets you create and publish digital magazines for free.
It's called Glossi, and it makes publishing for tablets, smartphones and computer easy.
It’s a very simple interface to get used to, and you can create a professional-looking magazine without any formal website-building, app-creating or other technical ability.
It's currently in public beta, so you need to apply to join here.

What Glossi teaches

Glossi may be simple to use but that's not to say its magazines design themselves, or that anyone can create something that looks great on the platform.
What it does do is enable those with magazine skills, or who are learning them, to create online publications that demonstrate what they can do.
Because you don’t have to worry about learning InDesign or whatever, you can concentrate on presenting good content effectively.
Glossi enables you to practise and demonstrate the full range of magazine editing skills:

• commissioning copy,
• editing it and presenting it,
• headline writing,
• picture selection and presentation,
• planning the book,
• front page image selection and
• cover-line writing.

It’s such a simple platform that it has great potential for journalism courses.
It also has a very comprehensive series of tutorials on the site.
So, rather than go over what Glossi's team have already done, I’ll curate some of Glossi's key tutorials here, and then show you a simple magazine I made as I got used to working on the Glossi platform.

Next: Introduction to Glossi, and some magazine examples

Journalists: how to build your personal brand

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Your brand is who you are, what you are known for, what you specialise in.

If you don’t like the idea of brand, substitute reputation.

In Masterclass 55 at Multimedia Journalism we are looking at how to build your brand - or reputation - online.

First, a bit of context.

In old print media, the closest a reporter or writer could get to personal branding was their byline on a story. A broadcast journalist got their name superimposed at the start of their report.

Journalists who were employed to do something other than write or appear on-screen – sub-edit, run a department, edit the title, edit the programme – often got little opportunity to get their name out.

On a magazine, if they were lucky, they got included in a flannel panel, where all staff names were listed. In TV, their name might whizz past in the closing credits.

Of course, some reporters and writers became big names. Some columnists, TV reporters and others had the power to bring large numbers of readers to a publication, or viewers to a news programme.

Their names might become as well known as the title or programme they worked for. They were stars.

But, for most journalists, that never happened. They remained more or less anonymous. A specialist reporter would gain the respect of those in the profession or area they covered, and be known to them, but that was about as much branding as the average journalist got.

Today, any journalist can build their personal brand online.

Now there are many ways in which a reporter can build their reputation – their brand – often independently of the title or programme they work on.

Many journalists are now as well known – or even better known – that the titles or programmes they work for. They often have a greater reputation - at least among the specialist audience that is most interested in what they do -  than that of the place their work appears.

How has that happened?

Social media is one hugely valuable tool. So are blogs and personal websites. All offer great opportunities to show what you can do, and get your name known.

Now, any journalist can build their own brand.

So can student journalists or those who are struggling to establish themselves in their craft.

So here's what we'll look at in the masterclass. Follow the link at the bottom of this post to go to the first of them:

• Why good branding must start with good journalism
• The goals of your branding, and how to measure your success
• The places to build your brand: websites, blogs, on social media and on cv/resume/portfolio sites
• Why you need a Google profile and to be recognised by Google as an author
• Building your personal brand on Twitter
• Building you brand on Facebook
• Branding on LinkedIn
• And where else you should consider brand-building

Next: Good Branding starts with good journalism

How The Times created the first augmented reality magazine, and how any print journalist can make one too

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Print has a problem. Print is static.
With digital news platforms you can combine video and audio, interaction of all kinds, and links to all sorts of other content.
With print, what you see on the page is all you get.
Or it was.
Augmented reality changes that. It removes print’s disadvantage by making it possible to create links within printed images that open up from them into an entire digital world. It turns a static medium into a dynamic one.
OK, we know how easy it is to embed multimedia content into a website or blog.
With augmented reality you can, effectively, embed it into print.
Pointing your smartphone camera at a still image that has been turned into a trigger image for a piece of augmented reality makes that media play.
You make this possible through the use of an augmented reality app or, less sci-fi-sounding, via a digital browser.
Last Saturday (November 18) The Saturday Times Magazine (paywalled) declared it was publishing the first augmented reality supplement:

You need the right app on your phone for the trigger image to be activated and for the secondary media to be loaded.
In the case of The Times, you needed to download an app called Aurasma, which claims to be the world's first visual browser to your iPhone, iPad or Android device.
The Times used Aurasma to link still images, in adverts and editorial, to videos on the same topic, so the magazine cover, for example (pictured above), featured a figure which, when viewed through Aurasma, sprang into life via a short video loop.
What’s great about Aruasma is that anyone can use it for free, provided your application is approved. Mine was within a few minutes, so hopefully yours will be too.
In this masterclass we’ll run through the processes involved in using Aurasma to create augmented reality content of your own. We’ll cover:

• Subscribing to Aurasma
• Loading the app into your Android or iPhone
• Creating augmented reality content – or what Aurasma calls Auras
• Publishing those Auras and making them findable

Next: Essential preliminaries to making augmented reality content

Infographics for everyone: how to create great infographics using free tools, and with no design skills

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You don't have to be a whizz at graphic design to create infographics anymore
A number of free tools now let onyone turn dense information into an attractive, easily-read and absorbed visual story.
So in Masterclass 53 at Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide we show how to do that.
But before we get to the free tools to use, we need to decide when, and why, infographics might be important to us as news reporters or storytellers.
So we'll look first at why infographics work, and what they are.
Then we'll map out some ground rules on how to tell a story via an infographic.
We'll look at the source material, the mix of stats and facts that will form the content of your infographic.
And we'll present a range of effective infographics to show what is achievable.
Then we'll build some infographics, using Piktochart, which I judge to be the best free tool.
Finally we'll look at some alternative infographic-building platforms including Infogr.am and Easel.ly.

Next: What are infographics and why use them?

Latest storytelling platforms for journalists - previewing MMJ Masterclass 52

One of the great challenges journalism faces is to find new ways of storytelling

Why do we need to do that?

Because the new media demand new ways of storytelling that are appropriate for them.

So how should we tell stories in the mutlimeda environments of websites or mobile devices, for example?

That's something we are still working on discovering.

Nobody has the definitive answer.

But we do know what tools we now have to work with. We know, for example, that a mobile's inbuilt GPS and camera create storytelling and reporting opportunities that we've never had before.

So in this masterclass we are looking at two brand new storytelling platforms that enable multimedia story finding and telling on websites, blogs and mobile devices.

We look at Grafetee, which is a location-based app that draws information from all sorts of other apps onto one platform, and which I think may have the potential to let you create a local or hyperlocal news resource that can be consumed on mobiles.

We also explore MyHistro, which lets you build multimedia timelines around a theme or story, apply them to a Google map, and embed them anywhere you like.

I'm not going to pretend that I've fully roadtested these two platforms, but from what I've seen I think they deserve serious consideration by anyone who wants to develop their new media storytelling. So this is very much a first look.

We also consider Conweets, which is more accurately described as a story-gathering device rather than a platform on which to tell those stories.

Conweets lets you track conversations between two Twitter users, or identify and follow any of the conversations a given user is having.

With so much news being made on Twitter, Conweets is a great device for easily following the conversations in which stories can be found.

Next: Grafetee: Create a local news site for mobiles

Analytics for journalists; previewing Masterclass 51 at Multimedia Journalism

The latest masterclass at MMJ is about analytics, or the analysis of web traffic

We'll look at how to use analytics tools to chart the effectiveness of your journalism

Analytics show you not only how you have done, but can help you improve what you produce in the future.

If you work for a publisher or broadcaster, analytics tools will be built into the content management system you use. As a journalist, you may or may not have access to those analytics.

Here we'll concentrate on how you can install your own analytics tool on your websites, blogs and apps, and how to use the analytics tools built in to social media networks.

Google Analytics is a powerful free tool, and we'll look here at:

• How to install Google Analytics
• How to understand the analytics that Google gives you 

We'll also look at analytics tools for:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• YouTube
• Instagram

  Next: How to install Google Analytics

5 new masterclasses to help journalists boost their storytelling skills - from Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide

We’ve clocked up no fewer that 50 masterclasses at MMJ in the past two years, covering everything from data journalism to Wordpress, video storytelling to creating smartphone apps.

All of these practical guides are available to registered users of MMJ, as are all other masterclasses – including our detailed guides to 12 popular journalism beats including sport, politics, fashion and health.

In the 2012-13 academic year we aim to tackle the latest developments in multimedia journalism, including promising new storytelling platforms, a journalist’s guide to analytics, and how to create infographics.

You’ll find the publishing schedule for the first five masterclasses below. But, as ever, nothing is set in stone, We’d love to hear from you with any suggestions you have for areas you’d like to see us cover.

The way we do journalism is changing at a phenomenal rate. Our goal is to help you keep up. So if there are any tools you’ve discovered that you think other journalists will find useful, let us know and we’ll take an in-depth look at them, and how they can be used.

Masterclass 51: Analytics for journalists

How to use analytics to improve your content and the effectiveness of your journalism.

We’ll include a guide to the tools social platforms including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube provide you with, plus a step-by-step user’s guide to Google Analytics.

Going Live: October 13

Masterclass 52: New storytelling and research tools for journalists

The most promising of the latest tools road tested – how to use them and what they may be able to do for your research and storytelling.

We plan to include Graftee, myhistro, Contweets and others. But if you have further suggestions, get in touch.

Going live: October 27

Masterclass 53: Infographics for beginners

How to easily make professional infographics, and when to use them

You don’t have to be a graphic designer to create infographics anymore. We roadtest some of the tools that promise to help you make great infographics.

But when should you use infographics as a storytelling technique? We’ll give a guide.

Going live: November 10

Masterclass 54: Better smartphone photography

Mobile phone cameras get better all the time, and so do photo apps that let you turn an average snap into an impressive piece of photojournalism.

We’ll give a guide to the best cameras, apps and a run down on good photo-technique.

Going live: November 24

Masterclass 55: Boosting your online presence and personal brand

There are many apps that promise to help you look good on line.

Some, such as Vizify, aim to turn your cv/resume into a beautiful interactive graphic. Others, such as Brand Yourself, work to boost your Google ranking.

We’ll take a look at these and others to see which can do the most for you.

Going live: December 8