This camera was originally created, as the name suggests, for making time-lapse videos of your growing garden. It even comes with a stake to mount the camera into the ground (it also can be threaded onto a tripod). But it has value well beyond your garden.

The camera runs on four AA batteries and records to an included 2GB flash drive. As something meant to be used in a garden, it’s of course weather-proof. You can take photos at intervals of 1 minute, 5 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 4 hours or 24 hours. Or use the custom setting to create your own interval (from 5 seconds to 12 hours).

And it couldn’t be easier to use. Just set it for either a close-up or a far-away shot, then press the button until you hear a couple beeps. A light will indicate each time a new photo is taken. The camera retails for a bargain price of $140, although you can likely find it for close to $110.

There are a couple drawbacks. The camera is bigger than I expected – roughly twice the size of a Flip camera. And the fact there is no LCD screen means you can’t easily frame your shots (you need to set it up, record, then remove the flash drive to see if you got it correct). But a future version appears to have added an LCD screen.

Here are a couple test videos. I’ll continue to share future videos as well. The first video was show in 5-minute increments over the course of five days. The second was shot in 30-second intervals over the course of a few hours.

Need a little time-lapse inspiration? Read this post from 10,000 Words.

Wildfire’s Monitor lets you track up to 10 Facebook pages and 10 Twitter accounts on one page.

It shows a graph and a list comparing growth for each account. You can also sign up for weekly email updates of how your feeds are performing.

Once you’ve set up a search, you can bookmark that page and return as often as you like.

See it in action here.

A QR code looks a lot like a barcode. Users scan the code using their smartphone camera, and it in turn redirects them to a web page or a video (YouTube videos work great). QR codes are a great tool for connecting print readers with your mobile content – whether you are trying to grow awareness of your mobile site or trying to show off great mobile content.

With that in mind, I brainstormed 39 ways that newspapers (or other media companies) could use QR codes to drive engagement and readership. (Make your own QR codes here.)

1. Ask a “question of the day” in print (a lot of sports sections do this already), and let readers see the answer by scanning the QR code.
2. Link to the correct answers to today’s crossword puzzle.
3. Link to expanded box scores in your sports agate.
4. Does your newspaper do a weekly video program? Run a QR code that links to the video.
5. Trying to cutback on newsprint cost? Run shorter stories and link to longer versions of your stories.
6. Allow readers to enter a contest.
7. Simply run a QR code in print that links to your mobile home page. That crazy-looking QR code will get their attention
8. Add QR codes to your staffers’ business cards.
9. Put a QR code on your website rotating into an ad position. It’s gotta be better than most of the filler ads you’re running already.
10. Print out a giant QR code and place it in a window or on your building where the public can see.
11. Put one on the side of a bus. Or on an ad inside a bus (or subway).
12. Next time you’re printing t-shirts for a company event, add a QR code.
13. Put them on  your newspaper racks – on street corners and in stores.
14. Have a local coffee shop put them on their coffee cups 0 or place one on their counter.
15. Put them on all of your marketing material – posters, pamphlets, etc.
16. Run a poll in print, and let users scan in the QR code that goes with their answer. Example: Ask who will win the Super Bowl, and offer a QR code for each team.
17. Put QR codes in advertisements.
18. Run a QR code that links to movie times.
19. Newspapers have ads all over local sports arenas, use a QR code there to link to your coverage of that team.
20. Create a scavenger hunt in the paper using QR codes – with new segments every day (to encourage daily readership).
21. Create a scavenger hunt in your town using QR codes placed at your advertisers locations all around town.
22. Ask readers to scan in code to review the same restaurant your critic reviewed…
23. Or to see the menu…
24. Or go to a page that shows recent reviews near you (using location-based services).
25. Link to a how-to video with a cooking story.
26. Use QR codes with listings in your real estate section to see more photos of a house.
27. Put QR codes at historic/important places around town. Link them to articles where your local experts give info on each place.
28. Have a QR code that users can scan in to send breaking news to the newsroom.
29. Do you have a booth at the state fair or other events? Give out QR code temporary tattoos.
30. Do your reporters or editors give presentations to the public? Put a QR code on one of your slides.
31. Put one next to your garage sales listings to see a map of sales.
32. Run one with a photo that links to a full photo gallery online.
33. People want weather news on their mobile. Link one to your mobile weather page.
34. Link to election results on your mobile site.
35. Allow readers to sign up for breaking news text alerts.
36. Get local cell phone stores to put up a QR code in-store. Potential phone-buyers can test them out while testing out phones.
37. Do some guerrilla marketing and put them on bulletin boards around town.
38. Put one with a story so readers can easily share the story with friends.
39. Do you have a story that will drive a lot of discussion online? Use a QR code to link to where that discussion takes place.

How else have you seen QR codes used? Please share your ideas in the comments area.

Flip UltraHD

$199 | More info

The latest Flip camera features image stabilization and can hold up to two hours of high definition video.

But the coolest thing? You can make sure your Flip is completely unique by designing your own cover. Just upload a photo or a design through the Flip website.

Radtech sleeve

$25 | More info

Protect your laptop while on the go with these laptop sleeves from Radtech. They double as a screen cleaner and are machine washable. Or choose from Radtech’s impressive selection of bags, cleaners and screen protectors.

Chumby

$150 | More info

What’s a Chumby? Good question. It’s kind of like a mix of an iPod Touch and an alarm clock. The Chumby lets you run apps – “from sports scores to stock quotes, from video clips to interactive games, from photos to trivia.” Put one  next to your bed or on your desk.

Google TV

$300 | More info

It’s Google TV. How will this not be a success? Or perhaps you would prefer Apple TV or the Roku. Either way you’ll bring the power of the Internet (and Netflix streaming) to your TV.

Glif

$20 | More info

Take your iPhone moviemaking to the next level with this product that makes your phone tripod-friendly. Or use it to prop up your phone for easily viewing movies and e-mails.

Owle Bubo

$170 | More info

Put your iPhone moviemaking on steroids with the Owle Bubo. Your iPhone fits right into this device, giving you an external microphone and a much easier-to-grip camera. It’s also tripod friendly.

Holga camera

$27 | More info

Go back to your photography roots with this plastic camera that leaks light and requires you to manually advance the film (film!). That’s right, complete creative control is yours! Enjoy. Especially enjoy that classic Holga vignetting effect.

Photo paddles

$10 | More info

Everyone looks better with a mustache or a cowboy hat. These photo paddles from Photojojo can help make that happen. Be sure to check out all the fun photo accessories (camera lens bracelets!) available in their store.

What tech toys are at the top of your list?

So what is the next big technology media sites should be using? My vote goes to Tumblr, which is something between Twitter and a blog.

Here’s what they say:

Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos, from your browser, phone, desktop, email, or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors, to your theme‘s HTML.

Why you should start a Tumblr

1. It’s easy to post, and your updates are already pre-formatted depending on what you want to share (a quote, a link, some text, a video, a photo, etc.).

2. It’s already mobile. Go to your page from a desktop site and you’ll see the normal view. Go to it from your smartphone and you’ll see the mobile view. And it’s easy to share from your mobile site using the tumblr app.

3. It’s niche. Readers subscribe to your tumblr, which brings everything you post into their stream. This works well with niche content, because people are more likely to subscribe to content that they are passionate about (a sports team, politics, etc.)

4. It goes into readers’ feed. I mentioned this already, but tumblr uses the same feed style that has worked well for Facebook and Twitter. Once you subscribe, updates go into your main feed so you’re sure not to miss them.

5. Everybody else is doing it. Check out tumblrs from Washington Post Style, Newsweek, The Today Show, The Atlantic, The Detroit News, ABC News Radio and Life Magazine (to name a few).

Some ideas for your first Tumblr

• Post interesting quotes that make their way into your publication (and link to the full stories).
• Follow a great local high school athlete who went on to play college and pro sports elsewhere (using links to stories and videos).
• Have your design desk post an image of the paper’s front page each day, and discuss the story play and challenges that went into the news decisions.
• Your photo desk could post a photo of the day.
• Your features staff could post interesting links they find as they’re researching their next stories.

Do you have other ideas for news tumblrs? Or know of news orgs using them well? Please share in the comments area below.

Here’s what they say in their FAQ:

Storify is a way to tell stories using social media such as Tweets, photos and videos. You search multiple social networks from one place, and then drag individual elements into your story. You can re-order the elements and also add text to give context to your readers.

It has several uses for news sites, including organizing public reaction to events or news in your coverage area. To test it out, I put together some info related to Tony Romo’s injury on Monday Night Football last night.

Here’s the result:

First, the bad news: Lesson one was to make sure you are perfectly comfortable with the tools you will be using. I recorded audio of the coach’s press conference using the application Monle. As I left the presser and started to listen to the audio, I couldn’t find the audio. My best guess is that I hit the wrong button when going to save the audio, and it never was saved.

Video: I recorded two videos, both interviews with players. For the first video, I used the built-in microphone. For the second, I used an external microphone.

The audio seems about the same with both, although the external mic seemed to help cut down on background noise. The second video is a little shaky, likely because I was holding the mic with one hand, leaving just one hand to steady the camera.

Photos: I also shot a few photos. These aren’t worthy-of-the-front-page shots, but I certainly wouldn’t be embarrassed to post them to a website or blog post.

The results

Negatives: Clearly losing the audio from the coach press conference was a big one. And the shakiness on video No. 2 was less than ideal.

Positives: The big positive here is speed. Even as most reporters are just leaving media day (it started 90 minutes before I am hitting publish on this), I already have edited and posted two videos and four photos. The quality is good considering I was shooting indoors with no external flash or light.

I’ll look for a chance soon to truly test the audio to make up for my error there.

Today, the Des Moines Register showed us that sometimes you get what you pay for when using free tools. Their use of a pop-up ad, side-of-the-page ads, live video and a live chat on the home page created a tsunami of advertisements that likely turned off even the most dedicated of readers.

[Note: As a former web editor at the Register, I complete understand why this happened (using two free tools, both of which include their own ads). But as a reader, it was frustrating to deal with.]

What happened: President Obama was in Des Moines today, and the Register pulled out all the stops with live video and a live chat related to the event. The problem: They use Livestream for live video and CoverItLive for live chats, and both of those services insert their own advertising.

Combine that with the Register’s own high-impact ads, and this is what readers saw:

1. A pop-up ad for the Fireplace & Stone Center.

2. Side-of-the-page pillar ads for the Fireplace and Stone Center.

3. A 15-second pre-roll video add before the live video started.

4. A 30-second pre-roll video before you could enter the live chat.

But wait, there’s more. Once you make it past these four ads, you’re not home free. Two more ads pop up as the video plays (5) and live chat continues (6):

So what is the lesson here?

Should we avoid free services? Absolutely not.

But we have to understand how these services affect the user experience, especially when we start to combine them.

The Register was doing a good thing here: giving readers live coverage of an important event. And to some readers, it might have been worth wading through all of the advertising to get to the content. But I’m guessing that wasn’t worth the time for many readers.

That third one, for the journalism world, is a winner. With the addition of a camera, the iPod touch now becomes the do-it-all device no journalist should leave the office without (at least those who don’t already own an iPhone).

When I was at the Des Moines Register, we debated whether reporters should all have iPhones. While the easy answer was yes, the monthly cost was a bit steep. The new iPod Touch gives you almost all of the tools of the iPhone without that pesky monthly cost (Of course, you’ll need a wifi connection to actually publish using these tools).

Video: Users can record HD video from the built-in camera, then edit their footage in the iMovie app ($4.99).

Audio: The free Voice Memos app allows you to record and e-mail audio. For more audio recording features, step up to FiRe – Field Reporter for $5.99. When you’re done, you can edit your story together using Monle ($9.99).

Photos: It’s a little disappointing that the iPod Touch has a .7 megapixel camera and not the 5 megapixel camera available on the iPhone. So don’t expect to get stellar photos – but do expect to get good enough photos for the web and to run small in print.

Applications: If you use WordPress for your site or blog, you can use the WordPress app to file your stories/blog posts directly from your iPod touch.

Do you use CoverItLive for live chats? Us the CoverItLive app to run your chats directly from your iPod Touch.

Game Center: You can’t work all the time. When your shift ends, go play some games.

Are there applications you use for journalism? Please share in the comments area below.

Have you ever come across a great tweet and wanted to share it with your blog readers? I have. And until today I had to take a screengrab of said tweet to post to my blog.

Not anymore. Twitters Blackbird Pie allows me to embed someone’s tweet, with all of the links intact.

I see a few good uses for media companies related to this:

• In sports coverage, if you want to show what athletes on your beat are tweeting about.
• If you cover a concert or event, and you want to show what others who attended were saying.
• In breaking news situations, you can show what others (especially eye witnesses) are sharing about the news.

Here’s what the embedded tweets look like:

The Sunday paper is still a money-maker. With all those circulars and real estate ads, it’s clear why newspapers are putting most of their promotional efforts into increasing circulation of the Sunday product.

More and more, papers are now using their web sites to promote the Sunday print product. Some (see the Indianapolis Star image above) are going so far as to withhold stories from the online edition of the paper in an effort to get people to go buy a copy of the Sunday paper.

I’m not a fan of withholding information from digital readers for a few reasons: (1) Not all of our readers live in an area where they can go buy a copy of the paper. (2) You lose the ability for your content to go viral. (3) You give someone else the opportunity to own discussion around that topic online. (4) You lose out on online ad revenue by having less content online.

But I do think there is merit in better digital promotion of the Sunday paper. So I’ve created a worksheet/checklist to help you better promote your Sunday products to your digital readers. The worksheet is intended to help you promote your best Sunday work during the week (Friday) and again on Sunday. I hope you find it to have value.

You may also like:

• Online breaking news checklist.
• Covering breaking weather news online.

While I don’t see the Des Moines Register springing for the 3-D camera anytime soon, I did find some equipment that would suit us just fine. Here’s a list of the items that caught my eye:

I’m even more excited about who will be joining me for the workshop. Nathan Wright will be teaching and answering your questions about how journalists can use social media. And Pete Jones will talk about how he built a strong following for his blog, desmoinesisnotboring.com.

If you attend, I promise you’ll learn these things:

• How to create your own blog.
• How twitter, facebook and linkedin can make you a better journalist (or to find a job).
• 20+ tools to make you a more efficient journalist.
• Hands-on with using RSS feeds.
• Hands-on with live chats using CoverItLive.
• How to find and edit photos for your blog.
• How to broadcast live video from your computer.

Cost is $100. To register: Contact Shari Tenney in the Drake School of Journalism and Mass communication, shari.tenney@drake.edu or 271-3194.

For more information: Contact Patricia Prijatel, E.T. Meredith Distinguished Professor Emeritus, patricia.prijatel@drake.edu

More info about the workshop here.

2. Chris Brogan shares his advice for businesses getting started on social media. Read more about what he’s saying here.

Chris Brogan Shares Social Media Tips from Michael A. Stelzner on Vimeo.

3. If your blog needs a redesign (I’m starting to think that mine does), here are some great WordPress themes via Smashing Magazine.

4. Like new tools but hate spending money? Check out these free alternatives to some common multimedia tools.

We don’t do everything on the list in every situation, but it’s a good reminder of the many tools that are available, both to promote the news and to enhance the reader experience around the news.

Here’s a list to help you start your own breaking news checklist Download as PDF.:

Promote the news

• Post to Twitter (and have staffers post to their Twitter accounts)
• Post to Facebook
• Send breaking news text alert
• Send breaking news e-mail alert
• Send a message to MySpace friends
• Create a widget so others can add news to their site
• Buy keywords on Google/Yahoo/Facebook
• Send to Drudge, Reddit, Digg, Fark
• Send info to bloggers/sites who cover that topic
• Post info in forums related to that topic
• Put together a print promotion plan

Tools to use on your site

• Use an alternative home page design
• Create a poll
• Start a breaking news blog
• Should any of your staff bloggers promote on their blog?
• Are there community members who can blog about this topic?
• Link to blogs outside your site
• Start a discussion forum
• Ask readers to submit photos
• Create a live chat
• Create a hastag for Twitter/Flickr/etc.
• Ask readers for YouTube videos
• Ask readers what questions they have/what info they know
• Add a Google locator map
• Create a Google map that allows readers to add content
• Create a searchable database
• Q&A with reporter or editor or source
• Ask Twitter followers for feedback or help
• Add links to more coverage elsewhere on the web
• Create a site that captures social media conversation on the topic
• Aggregate content from other sites onto our site
• Create an RSS feed for continuing content
• Allow readers to subscribe to that RSS via e-mail
• Post large photos online (in a blog or story)
• Offer print pages for sale
• Highlight the best comments from readers

Don’t forget

• Take screengrabs
• Alert advertising department so they can sell ads around the news/content

Download this list as a PDF document.

What other tools should be on this list? Please share them in the comments area.

Photo credit: hyperscholar on Flickr

1. Read Chris Brogan’s blog.

2. Read this one post by Rob Curley.

3. Read Mashable. You don’t have to read every post, but skim the headlines and see if anything catches your eye.

4. Stop talking about why you’re not going to join Twitter. And join Twitter.

5. Go to WordPress or Blogger and start a blog. About anything – your family, your love of puppies, how much you hate blogs (just make sure you are passionate about the topic).

6. Start using an RSS reader. Here are feeds from Chris Brogan, Rob Curley and Mashable to get you started.

7. Start clicking around the SND toolkit page. Any of those seem useful?

8. Buy a URL (try GoDaddy or FatCow). Use the free sitebuilding tools to get your site up and running. Or better yet, use a program such as Dreamweaver or iWeb to create your site.

9. Start doing these tutorials.

10. Shoot a movie with your digital camera, edit it in whatever free movie editing program came with your computer (iMovie or Movie Maker, perhaps), and post to YouTube.

11. Go through this HTML tutorial.

12. Start following these new media blogs:

• Old Media New Tricks
• BeatBlogging
• Poynter E-media tidbits
• Journalistopia
• OJR

13. Set up a Google alert so that you are e-mailed anytime someone posts your name (or your companys name) online.

14. Create a Google map of everywhere you ever lived (click on “My Maps” and “Create new map.”)

15. Create a delicious account and start saving interesting stories you find online. Start following other feeds as well. (Here’s mine.)

Photo by the_tahoe_guy on Flickr.

First of all, I love the concept: “The mission of #journchat is to keep an ongoing, open dialogue between journalists, bloggers and public relations professionals.”

If anything, it might even be a little too broad. I’d love to have a similar chat for journalists to talk about how we can use social media tools in our everyday jobs.

I also enjoyed the format of hosting a chat on Twitter. I never really considered Twitter a great live chat tool until I saw what you can do using Twitter and Tweetgrid (just type in #journchat on Tweetgrid to see what I mean). You can follow multiple conversations and monitor multiple keywords at a time.

See what #journchat is all about 7-10 p.m (central time) tonight.

Follow @journchat or @PRsarahevans on Twitter for more information.

1. Google Reader
Don’t waste your time going to dozens (or hundreds) of web sites every day. Use the RSS feeds from those sites and just check one web site for all the latest information.

2. Google alerts
Want to know anytime someone posts a video, news story or blog about your beat? Sign up for Google Alerts or Yahoo Alerts and you’ll get an email with all the latest info.

3. Jott
Need to send a quick note to yourself from the road? Call Jott. Speak your message. And Jott will email you the text of what you said. (You get unlimited 15-second calls for free).

4. Mezzoman
Need to meet a source somewhere between your location and their location? Mezzoman suggests a halfway point.

5. Wikirage
Shows the pages on Wikipedia that are receiving the most edits over various periods in time – which roughly translates to what’s popular in that given timespan.

6. Google trends
Similar to Wikirage, this shows topics that are suddenly being searched an unusual amount of times on Google.

7. Alerts.com
Do you forget things, like meetings? Or birthdays? Get a text alert to remind you. Or set up a wake-up call. Or just check out all of their alert options.

8. Simplynoise.com
Does it get loud in your newsroom? A little white noise will drain that out.

9. iGoogle or Pageflakes
Create a custom home page and get all the info you need in one place (photos, weather, news, twitter, e-mail, calendar, facebook, music).

10. Technorati
Find out what the blogosphere is talking about – either in general, or in a particular area.

11. People finders
Trying to find out more about a person, but only know their name or e-mail address? Try Pipl, Wink and YoName.

12. Qipit
E-mail a photo to copy@qipit.com (even from your phone) and it sends back a PDF. Great for sharing notes written on a white board.

13. ask500people
Got a question that you need others’ opinions on? Ask 500 people.

14. Google docs
Do you work on multiple computers? Create and write all of your documents and spreadsheets online – so you can always access them from any computer.

15. Tweet Grid
Want to know what people on Twitter are saying about any given topic at any given time? Tweet Grid lets you follow multiple Twitter searches at once.

1. Coveritlive.com
CoverItLive allows you to blog live from an event (you can even do it from your iPhone). It’s also a great tool for hosting live chats on your site.

2. Blip.tv
There are a lot of tools that can embed video on your site (YouTube.com Vimeo.com, qik.com), but I’m starting to be a big fan of blip.tv. It create a nice-looking index of your videos and make it easy to offer your videos as an iTunes podcast.

3. Mogulus.com
With just a video camera and an internet connection, Mogulus lets you broadcast live video. Also try justin.tv and ustream.tv.

4. Animoto.com
Don’t just post photo galleries. Turn your best photos into a music video.

5. Vuvox.com
Create slideshows, timelines and more that include photos, music and videos. See an example here (below the scroll).

6. Soundslides.com
Easy-to-use tool for adding slideshows with audio to your site.

7. Slideshowpro.net
Another great tool for creating slideshows and embedding on your site. Indystar.com uses this to let reader embed slideshows on their sites.

8. Google maps
We all understand the value of maps and map mash-ups. That doesn’t mean we all have the skills to create them. Fortunately there are some tools that help. Such as umapper.com, mapalist.com, mapbuilder.net, quikmaps.com and fmatlas.com.

9. Polldaddy.com
Creates polls that you embed on your site. I also just discovered Polls Boutique.

10. Response-o-matic
Creates a quick online contact form, or use it to make surveys and multiple-question polls. Also check out surveymonkey.com.

11. Mypodcast.com and gabcast.com
Think podcasting is hard? Think again. Mypodcast records your podcast directly to the web. Gabcast turns a phone call into a podcast.

12. Flickr.com groups
Your readers are already posting photos to Flickr. Why not start a group and embed those photos on your site?

13. YouTube reader videos
Your readers are already uploading videos to YouTube. Create a custom player to put those videos on your site.

14. Slideshare.net
You’re a wiz with Powerpoint and/or Keynote. Don’t you wish you could add those presentations to your site? You can.

15. Wordle.net
Text can be boring. Turn speeches into word clouds.

16. Issuu.com
Want to replicate the “print experience” online? Issuu helps your put your publications actual pages online so readers can flip through them.

17. DocStoc.com
Don’t make your readers download documents and PDFs. Let them read them directly from your site with embed codes from docstoc.

18. 4info.net
Send text alerts to your readers’ phones – and make money for doing it.

19. Feedburner.com
Sure, you’ve got RSS feeds. But can you track how often they are used? Or allow readers to subscribe via e-mail? Or put ads on your feeds? Feedburner can.

20. Widgetbox.com
Create a widget from your RSS feeds and encourage others to add your content to their sites.

21. Sproutbuilder.com
Creates even cooler widgets than widgetbox. Cool enough that you will want to put them on your site, too.

22. Sharethis.com
Make it easy for readers to share your content across social media platforms (see example at the bottom of this post).

23. Mofuse.com
Create a mobile version and an iPhone version of your web site in minutes using RSS feeds. See previous post on mofuse here. Also check out wirenode.com and mippin.com.

24. Odiogo.com
Reading is hard. Listening is easy. Odiogo turns your text into audio.

Skitch, which is a program you download, allows you to make a screen grab from anything on your desktop, add text or draw on the image, and then easily share your creation online or via email.

Here’s my first one:

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

And here’s a video that explains Skitch: