British Journal of Photography
Photojournalist John D McHugh said battling against people sharing your photos on social media is a fight that "can’t be fought." So he designed Marksta, an iOS app that lets photographers add their name, logo or other information to a photo.

One of my favourite photographs from 2012 in Afghanistan watermarked with #Marksta in 10 seconds. #photojournalism twitter.com/johndphoto/sta… — John D McHugh (@johndphoto) January 3, 2013

In an email interview, McHugh said other watermarking apps he tried "were very basic, and looked like they were either designed for kids, or by kids!" (You can decide that for yourself.) Marksta, he notes, lets photographers position a templated watermark anywhere they'd like on their photos, which frees them from worrying about whether their photos are being used without credit. (more...)

WTOP radio's mobile-journalism pioneer Neal Augenstein covers D.C.-area news using only his iPhone. Today, Augenstein and WTOP are donating his iPhone 4S to the Newseum, which welcomes it as an artifact of the new era of mobile-empowered reporting.

"I'm delighted the Newseum is recognizing that mobile journalism is taking its place along legacy reporting tools," Augenstein told me via email. "Being able to record and edit audio and video, take and edit pictures, write Web stories, and do social networking on a single device has revolutionized my job." (more...)

Reynolds Journalism Institute
Although a greater percentage of people own Android smartphones, those who own Apple iPhones are the most attractive audience for news publishers, according to new research from Roger Fidler at the Reynolds Journalism Institute.

In fact, iPhone owners bested Android phone owners in every news-related category.

IPhone owners are more likely to subscribe to a local newspaper: (more...)

Instapaper | News.me | Apple
A trendy new feature is starting to spread in iPhone news apps: Automatic downloading of the latest content based on a user's location.

News.me's Paperboy feature lets a user designate his home location, and updates the content automatically whenever he leaves home.

News.me pioneered the approach last month with a feature nicknamed "Paperboy," which lets a user set her home location so the app can download the latest stories whenever she heads out. Now Instapaper has incorporated a similar feature that lets readers set up to 10 locations (home, work, gym, etc.) that should trigger the app to download any newly saved articles.

Why is that useful? It ensures a user has the latest content on her device before she gets on a subway, airplane or other places with no connectivity. It also gets around Apple's once-a-day limit on how often apps can download new content "in the background" on a device. With this approach, background downloading can happen multiple times as a user travels.

Location-based downloading takes advantage of "geofencing" technology built into iOS since version 4.0. With a user's permission, an iPhone or iPad app can define a virtual fence around certain geographic regions (a central point plus a given radius). iOS automatically monitors the device's location, and whenever one of the boundaries is crossed, it triggers a desired action, such as downloading content or reminding a user to pick up his dry cleaning nearby.

Related: Developer documentation on using iOS geofencing (Apple) | How location-based social network Foursquare is about to reinvent itself (TechCrunch) || Earlier: iPhone 4 could accelerate "geofencing" (Poynter) | News orgs should build apps that solve problems, not just republish content (Poynter)

The Associated Press | USA Today
The AP released a rebuilt version of its AP Mobile news app for iPhone and iPad today. In addition to a new look (especially on the iPad, which formerly had an awkward timeline-browsing interface), the app adds a “Big Stories” section with multimedia coverage of major stories, and now includes select local stories from partner news orgs. It also sports the new AP logo in the wild for the first time. USA Today also released version 2.0 of its iPhone app, including photo and video enhancements among many tweaks. || Earlier: News.me and Readability each launched their first iPhone apps; soon, so will Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

Gannett Blog
Gannett is buying thousands of new iPhones, iPads, netbooks, portable wireless hotspots and A/V accessories for its journalists at U.S. newspapers. Jim Hopkins has the memo from Gannett U.S. newspapers division President Bob Dickey. Equipment arrives in January, followed by training, then editors will be told how to distribute it. || Earlier: JRC gives iPhones, iPads and netbooks to ideaLab members (Digital First) | BBC develops iPhone app for its reporters (Poynter.org)

Nieman Lab | NYTimes.com

Most news stories in the app collect related links from multiple sources.

A new iPhone app and mobile website from the New York Times combines news from the Times and at least a dozen other competing news outlets. The Times has an editor curate the best reports from major newspapers, cable news, and even the Huffington Post -- aiming to tell readers "you literally don’t have to go anywhere else for your political news."

Joshua Benton says the fact that aggregated links are just as prominent as the Times headlines "feels noteworthy to me — I can’t think of anything else as linkbloggy that the Times has ever done."

The top six news stories in the iPhone app are available to anyone; the sections for opinion, election guide and multimedia are limited to digital subscribers whose package includes mobile access. Interestingly, the mobile Web version offers unlimited access to all the top stories, opinion columns and some of the election guide features you have to pay for in the iPhone app.