BBC World Service’s commentator Bill Thompson muses about why online advertising is so unmemorable. “I suspect nobody reading this will be able to recall a single web advert or campaign. They just don’t seem to stick in the mind.”
The U.S. federal government’s and states’ new ‘Do Not Call’ anti-telemarketing registries might be disastrous for the American newspaper industry, which Editor & Publisher magazines says uses telemarketing to generate 39 percent of all new subscriptions. When you consider that the average…
After Editor & Publisher Magazine’s Steve Outing wrote a Web site column today about how newspapers need to do more to attract college-aged readers, 22 year-old online newspaper whiz-kid Adrian Holovaty replied in his own blog that what newspapers really need to…
Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper has motived than a million subscribers to pay about US$1 per month to access its wireless Web site via cell phone, Japan Media Journal reports.
The number of paid subscriptions to The Wall Street Journal Online rose 3.9% when measured June-to-June, to 671,000. However, it’s actually shrunk since its all-time high of 679,000 at the end of last year.
Samsung is marketing a celluar phone that also receives regular VHF and UHF TV broadcasts.
Nielsen/Netratings reports that Hong Kong, with more than one million of its 2.4 million Internet users on broadband connections, is the city with the highest per capital broadband use, according to a story (paid-access web site) in the South China Morning Post.…
Only two of the 10 British national dailies gained circulation during the past 12 months. The Times dropped by over 10% to 631,653. The Daily Telegraph‘s circulation fell 8.8% to 915,206. The Guardian dropped 2.94% to 387,188. And the Financial Times lost…
Folks who think that video mobile phones are a thing of the future should read this month’s story in Japan Media Review about the Miura family of Tokyo. The ‘killer app’ of video telephony might just be family time.
“Leading figures from the world’s online journalism community gathered in Barcelona this week for the ninth annual NetMedia conference on digital journalism,” Journalism.co.uk reported about last week’s NetMedia 2003 Conference in Barcelona. Around 200 journalists, students and publishing professionals from across Europe…
BBC News Online won eight of 21 awards presented at the NetMedia 2003 Online Journalism Awards in Barcelona last week. Among the BBC’s awards was Lifetime Achievement to Mike Smartt, editor-in-chief of BCC News Online. Vincent Landon, science correspondent for Swiss Radio…
One of the oldest vendors of digital edition technologies hasn’t strongly penetrated the American market, but hopes a reorganization announced earlier this week will change that. PEPC Worldwide of The Hague, which earlier this month changed its name to Satellite Newspapers, manufactures…
Broadsheet newspapers are large, much larger than handheld electronic devices such as Tablets PCs. So, won’t broadsheets be unreadable when shrunk onto those devices’ displays? No, what makes you assume that broadsheets will stay broad in the future? “I wouldn’t be surprised…
The South Pacific island of Niue on Monday become the world’s first nation to provide free wireless Internet access to its entire population. Located east of Tonga in the Cook Island archipelago and formerly known as Savage Island, Niue is approximately 1.5-times…
b>Adrian Holovaty shows how to receive the BBC’s RSS feeds.
The ability to block pop-up and pop-under ads, integrate with Blogger, and automatically fill out frequently used forms are three new features that Google released today in a new beta version of its popular toolbar for Internet Explorer. Users who download the…
GMTV — which promotes itself as ‘Britain’s Biggest Breakfast Show’ — has launched what NewMediaAge describes as the UK’s first commercial Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS) that circumvent UK mobile network carriers’ ‘walled gardens’ business models and delivers content directly to mobile phone…
Boston Webcaster RadioStorm has begun streaming its music to mobile phone users. The Radio and Internet Newsletter reports that 20,000 to 30,000 mobile phone users are “dialing in” each month. Because that streaming costs users the same as voice calls, most users…
Newspaper Web sites are beginning to cause some cannibalization of print editions, according to Belden Associates‘ Spring 2003 survey of newspaper Web site users. Although Belden’s earlier quarterly surveys had reported that newspaper sites had no net affect on print subscriptions and…
Adrian Holovaty shows the security holes in the paid-access firewall at The Wall Street Journal and Salon sites and at The New York Times‘ archives.
Three of the best collections of QuickTime panoramas we’ve ever seen are at Panoramas.dk, z360.com and Virtual Guidebooks (the latter by Don Bain, a pioneer of Internet virtual panoramas). Panoramas.dk’s images are full-screen, many with audio.
Patent gadfly Paul C. Heckel has dropped his lawsuits against many small U.S. newspapers that operate Web sites. Heckel claims to own the a U.S. patent for displaying an abstract of a story online with a link to the full story, a…
For several years, the Associated Press and the Newspaper Association of America have each pondered whether or not to develop a standard registration scheme for American newspaper Web sites. A standard registration scheme would allow a consumer who registers to use one…
Channel Seven’s Wireless Ad Watch reports on advertising successes that AvantGo and Vindigo have had using Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) as advertising mediums.
The authoritative Andreas Pfeiffer reports on last week’s Seybold PDF Summit in Amsterdam (which roughly coincided with Adobe’s release of Acrobat 6.0). Among Pfeiffer’s conclusions is that as Acrobat becomes more extensive and complex, “The one thing PDF is less and less,…
Planet PDF has a story about Seybold’s comparison of North American and European publishers’ PDF practices.
To make Newsstand.com‘s software more compatible with publishers’ pre-press systems and thereby gain competitive advantages, Newsstand.com yesterday announced a deal with Adobe Systems, Inc., to integrate key technologies of Adobe’s PDF technology library into NewsStand consumer software.
Userland Software Founder Dave Winer explains his company’s deal with New York Times Digital, in which people who use Userland’s blogging software will have free-access to The New York Times’ paid-access online archives. We’re previously questioned the Times’ business model for this…
The most convoluted combination of print, digital edition, and paid-content arrangements we’ve ever seen has just been announced by the computer magazine Dr. Dobb’s Journal. The magazine has launched a PDF-based digital edition, but it’s only available to printed edition subscribers and…
Business World of Ireland features a story about the woes of Ireland.com. Entitled Insecurity.com, the story is undated online but appears to have been written since February.
Belgian Conceptual Artist Eric Van Hove has incorporated our Theory of New Media into his Digital Golem project, his entry in the UNESCO/Iamas 2003 international new media contest entitled Digital Pluralism. Van Hove’s project, to be submitted at the 5th World Forum…
The BBC recently reported that SMS has eclipsed voice calls as the most common use of mobile phones among young people in the United Kingdom. A survey by the CCP Group, an company that underwrites personal insurance policies against loss of mobile…
The American Society of Journalists and Authors says that Ziff Davis Media Inc. recently sent a new master contract to its regular freelance writers, demanding that the writers assign, without compensation, all rights (electronic and print) to their previous work for Ziff…
Celebrating its tenth anniversary of publishing on the Web but without profiting from banner advertising during that period, the Polish daily newspaper Rzeczpospolita on its online anniversary began charging for access to its online news archives. To access its archives, a customer…
Editor and Publisher magazine quotes us this week about how publishers are using SMS for delivery of content and also for billing.
While North American governmental bodies lament the rise of spam, the European Parliament is banning it. Effective in October, the Parliament’s Directive 2002/58/EC [(PDF format)] bans unsolicited commercial e-mail within the European Union countries. The directive, which also applies to unsolicited SMS…
At the World Association of Newspaper Annual Congress in Dublin this week, the Albuquerque Journal was presented as an example of a successful paid-access newspaper Web site. Its editor Donn Friedman said that during the past two years the site has grown…
‘Voice over IP‘ is long-distance telephone calls route through the Internet rather than through telelphone companies’ circuits. VoIP calls have little or no cost. Ten percent of all international calls last year used VoIP. Traditional telephone companies fear VoIP. Read Dan Gilmour‘s…
Speaking of flexible items, there’s now a cloth keyboard for the Orange SPV Mobile Digital Assistant (a mobile phone/Personal Digital Assistant). Manufactured by Ora of the United Kingdom, it uses electro-conductive fabrics and can be rolled up and pocketed when not in…
Mark Glaser of Online Journalism Review looks at local Weblogs (such as Gawker) and their city-guide and money making potentials. We’re quoted.
GoConnect of Australia, which already provides streaming videos to Pocket PC mobile phone using GPRS phone networks, is also offering those videos to those users on less expensive WiFi local networks there, too. GoConnect’s m-Vision streaming service currently includes Austrialian business and…
Our latest Publishing: Free to Fee? column examines the arithmetic necessary in making a decision to charge for an online archive or not.
That’s Jeff Jarvis‘ neologism for the bloggers and their media, a term he used yesterday during ClickZ’s Weblog Business Strategies Conference.
ABC News has removed its live feed from Yahoo Platinum and made RealNetworks the only Internet hub with its around-the-clock Webcast, according to The Wall Street Journal [a paid-subscription Web site] yesterday. Yahoo Platinum will continue to offer other streaming television programs…
Wired.com reports on some of the implications that camera-equipped mobile phones are having on media and society.
To encourage consumer use of MMS — Multimedia Messaging Services, the rich graphics successor to plain-text SMS (Short Messaging Services) — software companies are making deals with mobile phone handset and Mobile Digital Assistants (MDAs) manufacturers to embed MMS software into devices.
The Pioneer Corporation of Japan has developed a wearable computer with a display you can wear on your sleeve. A prototype jacket was shown in Tokyo last week. The wearable color display is composed of active-matrix organic-electroluminescent (OEL) film, a material which…
“Vin Crosbie is making perfect sense.” So says cyberguru Doc Searls , who is blogging the ClickZ 2003 Weblog Business Strategies Conference yesterday. Thanks!
Two of the contentious topics throughout the two-day Jupiter Weblog Business Strategies Conference in Boston yesterday and today have been ‘Are bloggers journalists?’ and ‘Are blogs threats or opportunities for media companies?’ Rafat Ali of PaidContent.org calls this event the “Most Live-Blogged…
Two quotes by Christopher Lydon, formerly of WGBH and American Public Radio, now at Harvard University, speaking at the ClickZ Weblog Business Strategies Conference to Boston: “weblogging is the digital equivalent of playing hockey. ‘Oh, sorry, what I just posted about you…