Jeff Sonderman finds too many apps behaving as modern day shovelware. And that should not be. Apps should solve a problem.

News organizations whose mobile apps only provide users with their articles or videos are missing a big opportunity.

An application, by definition, should be applied to perform a task, to solve a problem. Most news doesn’t do that.

Rather than just feed readers recent stories you wrote about their problems, apps can provide tools and data that enable users to actually solve their problems. When you solve problems, you get more loyal users and a chance to make more money.

I love this because it will become one of those points that is so obvious we’ll wonder why we overlooked it. Consider your favorite, most frequently used apps.

Flipping through my phone I clearly have many problems to solve as Sonderman puts it. There’s:

an alarm clock to wake me up;
weather apps (I have many radars) to keep me informed;
camera to document things;
photo/video editing apps which process what I record;
a QR reader, for when those things finally get popular here;
voice recorders, vital for interviews;
my indispensable RSS reader educates and entertains me;
social media apps to listen and talk;
reference apps like Wikipedia and Dictionary to help me learn;
What Was There gives me a sense of history in a specific place;
audio and video apps make sure I’m never bored;
food apps give me reviews and ideas;
shopping apps to buy things and
local apps to keep me in the know.

The things I use the most are apps that serve a function, beyond just saying “Here you go.”

No app should work without a social media component, and it should be more than “Tweet that you’re using this app” or “I’m here” or “I’m listening to…” all of which are appropriately pointless.

Apps should dream up ways to allow someone to upload something to contribute, which is my only complaint of the otherwise lovely What Was There mentioned above. I love that one, but you have to go to the site to upload things into the cloud, and into their conversation and others’ knowledge base.

Look, the simple truth is mobile is rapidly arriving, immediate future. Whatever tool the end user chooses — something in your pocket, purse or backpack or some fantastic thing not yet invented — apps, for as long as they exist as movers and shakers, are going to need to be a dynamic multi-lane stream of information.

If your app should help me solve my problem, wouldn’t it be nifty if another user of that app could too?

Things you heard on the playground that turn out to be true:

Research at Nanjing University has found that strands of RNA from vegetables make it into our bloodstream after we eat them, and can regulate the expression of our genes once they’re inside us.

MicroRNAs, or miRNAs, are little strands of RNA that selectively bind to matching sequences of messenger RNA, resulting in repression of those genes. Their role has only been understood in the last decade or so, but miRNAs are currently believed to take part in a vast number of processes in both plants and animals.

Turns out you are what you eat. Keep that in mind at the dinner table.

I don’t try to add to what Frank LoMonte writes at SPLC, because it is great, thorough and an even handed analysis by a First Amendment expert. I do commend you his piece on the unfunny joke of the disappearing rights of student journalists. One of these cases stems from a university in Alabama:

In Case 1, graduate student Judith Heenan complained on multiple occasions about the unfairness of the grading and disciplinary systems in her nursing program. In response, she alleged, college officials retaliated by issuing her unwarranted disciplinary “strikes” and then ultimately expelling her from the school.

[…]

Judge Myron H. Thompson of the Middle District of Alabama was uninterested in letting Heenan’s case go as far as a trial, and summarily dismissed all of the student’s claims. The judge simply assumed that Heenan was lying, under oath, about her disciplinary strikes being undeserved and retaliatory.

Read the whole article.

The newest brain tickler, via ONA:

”’What Matters Now? Proposals for a New Front Page‘ is a 10-day collaborative effort not only to fill the walls with the Web sites, photos, videos, multimedia pieces, drawings and articles that our guests and visitors recommend, but also to explain why this material is important.

Ten years after the attacks of Sept. 11, we thought we would propose newer ways of knowing, relying on insider perspectives as well as the foreign eyewitnesses who make up much of the conventional press.

Follow the links. You can participate in this panel discussion, thought project from the comfort of your computer.

Tips on investigative reporting, follow the trail says Drew Sullivan:

And, finally, an easy visualization of the series of recent Texas wildfires.

Find the size, draw a radius and drop it over a Google Map. You’ll be amazed at how this changes your reader’s (and your) perspective on the story.