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It’s now very easy for us to bring really engaging visual storytelling techniques to our reporting

A number of great apps and tools let us use the full range of media

They let us geotag what we are creating – which means we can put it on a map

And some of them let us broadcast these great visual stories direct from our smartphones.

We’re going to look at a range of the latest apps here.

They don’t all do everything I’ve mentioned.

Some are great for live reporting, others are best at other things

At building mapped, multimedia travel features, for example

Or creating timelines

So here’s a quick introduction to the apps and tools we’ll be working with

We’ll look at:

• Meporter – for live, multimedia, geotgagged reports filed direct from the scene of a story
• At Intersect – for multimedia, mapped stories rooted in place and time, and which can intersect with other stories in the same place. (It’s actually a lot more straightforward than it may sound)
• At iMapFlickr –which turns Flickr pictures into a journey told on a map
• At Gowalla – a check-in site which has just reinvented itself with a focus on travel and storytelling
• At Foursquare – another check-in site which is also developing its capacity as a storytelling paltform
• At Dipity, which is great for creating embeddable timelines fast
• And at Vuvox, which lets you create really professional timeline visualisaitons without having to learn Flash or Photoshop.

Those last two items have been picked up from a session we did in the MMJ summer school a couple of months ago. They’re added here to give an added dimension to our discussion and demonstrations of visual storytelling.

Some of the other tools we’ve looked at before, either in masterclasses or in the MMJ textbook. We’re returning to them now because there’s new stuff to be said – and new functionality to explore.

The whole subject of visual storytelling is a big, and fast moving one. There’s a good deal of other information on it elsewhere in the MMJ website and in the paper or ebook textbook. So we’ll finish up with a screen of links to other relevant tuition.

Next: Meporter; live, multimedia, geotagged reporting from your smartphone

OK, you could learn Flash and Photoshop

But life's too short

So what multimedia journalists need are simple, free software applications that take all the technical stuff out of creating timelines and visualisations.

We need to be able to combine text,  images, video and audio, and root all that information into a timeline that is easily embedded in our websites or blogs.

We'll take a look here at two applications that give us everything we need: Dipity and Vuvox

I've trialled them both, seeing how easy they are to use, and how much they can do for us.

They're both great. But they aren't the same.

So I created a timeline on the Murdoch crisis in each for comparison.

If you want to build  timeline fast, Dipity is perfect:

If you want a higher level of design, Vuvox is the answer:

Next: how to use Dipity to create a multimedia timeline fast