The INN Labs team spent a few days in Chicago for the NICAR conference earlier this month. We came back with plenty of inspiration and a long list of tools for journalism on the web. (Many more links can be found in Chrys Wu's annual NICAR roundup.)
Colors
- Coolors: a fun generator to help build color schemes
- ColorBrewer: find accessible color schemes for maps and other data visualizations.
- Colorsafe: another color and accessibility tool, this time focused on proper contrast.
Interactives
- Timeline 3D: a Mac program for animated timelines.
- TimelineJS: interactive, embeddable timelines synced with a variety of platforms for content.
- StoryMapJS: integrate multimedia content with interactive maps.
- Flourish: data visualization from spreadsheets, no coding needed.
- Landline and Stateline: a JavaScript library for making responsive SVG maps.
- A quick, three-part crash course in JavaScript, D3 and maps.
Transcription
- Otter.ai: notes for voice conversations.
- Temi: fast speech to text transcription.
- Cassette: more transcription and search.
Music
- Amper: an AI composer for soundtrack music.
- Take: an iOS app for recording and collaborating on musical ideas.
- Figure: make beats and music on iOS.
Social Video and Images
- This by Tinrocket: annotate images for social media use.
- Legend: create text-based animations on iOS.
- Spark Post: fast graphics for social media from Adobe.
- Quik: create quick and simple videos on mobile devices.
Collaboration
- Styleguides.io: publicly available style guides for code, design and content with plenty of ideas to crib from.
- Dropmark: visual organization for links and files, like Pinterest meets Google Drive meets Delicious.
- Mural: digital, virtual whiteboarding tool.