Software to Help You Build Your Final Explanatory Projects

Can’t recall what pro­grams we used to build our online sto­ries this semes­ter? Here is a handy list of online sto­ry­telling resources for JOUR3005.

And you’d bet­ter know how to code a hyper­link from scratch, or else.

<a href=“URL”>Link Text</a>

• AP Images Data­base — Images you are allowed to use, with credit
• Audac­i­ty — Free audio edit­ing pro­gram. (We used Audi­tion in class.)
• Bit.ly — Short­en your URLs
• Google Dri­ve — For spread­sheets of data
• Google Fusion — What we used to cre­ate a map from a spreadsheet
• Google Maps — Cre­ate a cus­tomized loca­tor map
• Infogr.am — Make an inter­ac­tive chart or graphic
• Face­book — Pro­mote your work, embed posts from pages
• Pho­topin — Cre­ative Com­mons licensed pho­tos you can use, with credit.
• Pixlr Advanced — Free online pho­to edit­ing tool
• Poll­dad­dy — to cre­ate polls
• Prezi — zoom­ing presentations
• Scribd — To embed PDF doc­u­ments in your post
• Slideshare — Embed Pow­er­point Presentations
• Sound­Cloud — Upload, share and embed audio files
• Stori­fy — Social media aggregator
• Tagxe­do — To make word clouds
• Time­line­JS — To cre­ate a time­line, soft­ware by Knight Lab.
• Twit­ter — Cre­ate a widget/feed based on @username or #hash­tag
• Vimeo — Hi-res video hosting/sharing
• Wiki­me­dia - Cre­ative Com­mons licensed pho­tos you can use, with credit
• Wor­dle — To make word clouds
• YouTube — Video hosting/sharing

If all else fails, check wordpress.org/support. A big part of being a suc­cess­ful online jour­nal­ist is PROBLEM SOLVING and DETERMINATION.