While your Moleskine may never go out fashion, technology changes at a rapid pace. These five apps get you to work more effectively and can give you a head start in your writing career.
1. App for jotting down journalism ideas
We all know that story ideas can pop up by just about anywhere. And the worst is not having a pen and paper when this happens. Not a problem, make a note of it on your Evernote app. The app stores everything in one place including notes, pictures, and recorded voice reminders. You can categorise your different notes and pictures into titled notebooks for easy reference. This application is available across all platforms.
2. App for journalism research
To be the best in this industry, you need to be constantly reading and researching. At times, this would mean reading through countless websites. Hectic schedules do not always allow us to read everything on a web page. Not a problem. Just put it in Pocket for offline viewing later. It saves web pages as well as videos. If it’s in Pocket it’s accessible from all your devices and no Internet is required to view your content. Researching just got easier.
3. How to keep track of your articles
Never miss another deadline. Story Tracker is a nifty spreadsheet app designed for writers. It helps keep track of all the stories you have written, rejection, sales, deadlines and income earned. Magazines don’t allow simultaneous submissions and when you juggling a few stories at a time, it’s easy to make a mistake. Not with the Story Tracker. A few minutes a day is all that is needed to keep your admin up to date. The rest can be spent on what you really good at, writing. Files can easily be imported to all your platforms.
4. Keeping bookmarks tidy: surfing on your flipboard
Your saved bookmarks on your browser are a mile long and growing daily. As a magazine journalist you have to monitor trends and what is trending locally and overseas. Flipboard makes this easy. Keep all your favourite bookmarks in one place. Love Huffington Post and Slate? What about Oprah mag and News 24 website? They are all there and it has a fun magazine layout featuring your personalised content. Flip through all your bookmarks without visiting another site. If you are a social media junkie, Facebook and Twitter are available as well.
5. Apps to make interviewing easy
Skype has 31 million users worldwide and still the fastest growing VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) service. At some point you might have to conduct an interview over Skype. It’s not always easy to concentrate on an interview while making notes. Callnote is a nifty application that allows you to record your video and voice calls over Skype. You can fully concentrate on conducting your interview, and later at your leisure, listen or view your files while you make notes.
These apps are there to make you more productive as a writer. Nothing should take you away from that. Technology is just there to help, not take over. So start writing!
About the Author
Fatima Bheekoo-Shah lives in South Africa and is a writer for the UK magazine Sisters. An avid reader and news junkie with a special interest in pregnancy and childbirth, when she is not trawling websites for the latest news, she is raising two spirited children.
