Update: The link to Churnalism and Mailbox is no longer active.
Alright guys, it’s the 4th of July, and I don’t want to give you anything huge to play with this week. We’ll save that for after the holiday.
In the meantime, three very different little tools I want to share:
1. Churnalism is a tool from the Sunlight Foundation that scans articles and figures out whether or not the reporter has just copied and pasted from a press release or Wikipedia. You can take a chunk of text and paste it into the Churnalism engine, and it’ll tell you if the story is original reporting or a rip off. My hope is that this is the kind of tool that keeps reporters honest in the future.
Go give Churnalism a test run here!
2. Two mobile email apps that you should test out if you’ve got an iPhone. One is Mailbox, and one is Triage. Both have a simple goal: To help get you through your inbox faster and sort out what’s important and what can be easily archived.
Both are excellent — give both a test run, and see which one you prefer. (The main difference is in the type of gestures you use within the app.) You can download Mailbox here, and Triage here.
3. Lastly: MuteTab. I’ve always got a tab blasting music somewhere, and I can never find it. No more. MuteTab is a Chrome extension that finds that tab and helps you close it. I think it’s actually magic. Download it immediately.
Now get out there and tell some great stories today!