A new iPad app brings multimedia news creation and management to mobile users of EidosMedia's Méthode digital publishing platform.
Building on the facilities of the browser-based Swing, the new SwingApp puts powerful media creation and management tools in the hands of iPad users, enabling them to create and edit news stories and blogposts in full real-time interaction with the newsroom workflow.
Photos, galleries and videos can be inserted from the local device or newsroom sources such as wire services, and then zoomed, panned and cropped in place. Basic text styles can be applied and hyperlinks inserted before the story is released for approval and publication.
"SwingApp is a fantastic platform for mobile content gathering and authoring," says chief marketing officer Massimo Barsotti. "Importantly, it's also fully integrated with Méthode's news planning environment."
Remote authors receive tasks and assets from coordinators in SwingApp's 'incoming' panel. As they complete their assignments, their progress is visible in Méthode's shared planning space.
Coordinators outside the newsroom can use the app to keep track of work being done in the areas they are responsible for, including task completions and previews of stories in progress.
Like Swing, the interface is modular, using widgets swapped in and out to tailor the workspace to the user's specific needs: editing and search spaces for authors, monitoring and messaging functions for coordinators.
SwingApp is a hybrid app, consisting of a native iOS framework hosting web components. "This gives us the best of both worlds," says digital solutions architect Maurizio Merli. "The web components allow us to update the app at any time without the user having to download and install anything."
The app complements Méthode's Memo - a no-frills tool for journalists who want to create and file content quickly as possible - but is a fully-featured workspace. "It represents another step forward in bringing freedom and flexibility to digital publishing operations," says Barsotti. "In particular it gives supervisory and executive users a hands-on interface for the management and monitoring of complex workflows."