It’s time, reporters! I will share this again after the holidays because I imagine everyone is already on vacation… but here are the most popular tools of the year, sliced in different ways:
- The most shared tool of the year was Genially, which helps you make videos interactive – like how Kloop made a choose-your-own-adventure story. Genially also offers plenty of other options, like for interactive images.
- The most liked was Skitch, an easy, simple tool for pixelating bits of an image. This is the most professional-looking method, IMO, to hide faces or text.
- The most commented tool was my suggestion for moving on from Twitter, which is LinkedIn. LinkedIn’s well-thought-out social features have been surprising me the last few years.
- The most opened issue was ExportComments.com, which lets you export a whole spreadsheet of comments from Facebook, Reddit and other social posts. This is an unusually hard task that may become easier in the next few years, but for now, we can just use this simple one-use site.
- The most subscriber-generating email was Google Pinpoint. Pinpoint finds the people, places and things named in a document, and spreads them out in a toolbar for you. It can also transcribe audio files, making for an interesting addition to DocumentCloud.
And, self-importantly, I’ll share my personal favorites: DocumentCloud add-ons for monitoring websites, RTI Rating for FOIA rules around the world, and Descript for transcribing videos. Happy New Year, reporters!
One more thing...
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