Four digital tools to turbocharge your storytelling kit

A few new Google gadgets from Irene Jay Liu’s session.

“Journalism has a really strong role to play in terms of fighting the misinformation ecosystem,” said Irene Jay Liu, Asia-Pacific lead for Google News Lab, at Storyology in Brisbane.

Four tools that were new to us, or improved:

Google Docs transcriptions

Yep, good old Docs can be used to transcribe interviews in Chrome. The key to use a feature called Voice Typing — then you can, say, play your audio or video while Google listens and transcribes it for you. How to get started, in six seconds:

Reverse Image Search

When news breaks, verification is essential. And we all know what the internet is like: full of untrustworthy images.

Use Reverse Image Search to identify the source of images.

We Southern Hemisphere people might have liked to see the solar eclipse over the South Pacific, but sadly this image that made the rounds is fake.

Google Earth bells & whistles

Gone are the days when the fan on your laptop starts blowing heat and making noises whenever you open Google Earth: it’s been upgraded. You can now download high-resolution images from Google Earth Pro as well.

Exif Viewer

This little beauty can give journalists more information on photos, like the photographer’s name, when and where they were shot and other metadata.