Expertise About Why Individuated Media are already superseding Mass Media
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…
On Monday and Tuesday, we’ll be at the ClickZ Weblog Business Strategies 2003 Conference & Expo in Boston, where on Tuesday morning we’ll be sitting on a panel entitled Weblogs: New Syndication Models Or Uncontrolled Platforms? Here is its description in the…
What is Moblogging? Well, we’re posting this message by using a Pocket PC Phone from waist-deep in Long Island Sound at Greenwich Point beach in Connecticut. Unwired mobile bogging.
Several large UK banks have scrapped their WAP-banking services this week, following sparse demand by banking customers during the past few years. Halifax and Abbey National have scrap WAP. Many European (and few American) publishers still features WAP as their primary wireless…
An executive of a newspaper Web sites posts: “Mercifully, blogging will join the ranks of mood rings, pet rocks and Rubik’s Cubes in the not-too-distant future.” With all due respect, we doubt that. Consider that in their lifetimes Lewis & Clarke, Henry…
We received nice coverage this week in Online Journalism Review‘s story about newspaper digital editions. The only thing we’d change is to note we haven’t ‘worked with all the major digital-edition vendors’ and hadn’t said that. We work for the publishers, not…
The Recording Industry Association of America and several recording companies are suing file-sharing network Aimster (now known as Madster) for abetting copyright infringements and the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals is being technohip by releasing the case’s oral arguments in MP3…
Katy Johnson won the Miss Vermont beauty pageant in 1999 and 2001 and operates a Web site that promote “character education”, abstinence, and sobriety. Tucker Max operates a Web site that promotes the opposite of character education, and he had an affair…
Sure, you’ve heard about the file-sharing softwares Napster and Grokster. But how about the friend-sharing software Friendster? A hybrid of peer-to-peer distribution and online dating application, Friendster helps you find new friends or become one. You list your interests, hobbies, favourite movies,…
eMarketer reports an In-Stat/MDR study showing the current price per multimedia message service (MMS) is now $0.40 (0.34 Euro) in Europe. That’s too high a price for consumers, effectively limiting MMS to business use. However, the study believes that the price per…
Although the words Bush and Technology seem incompatible in so many ways, members of the illiterate, hunter-gatherer society known as the San Bushmen of Africa’s Kalahari Desert have begun using handheld Personal Digital Assistants equipped with Global Position System cards to map…
Azeem Azhar, entrepeneur and former Internet correspondent for The Economist, wrote in The Guardian last week, “I think that today is the best time in four years to launch a business.” Read why. Now UK managing director of 20six, a blogging company,…
David Winer (Berkman Fellow at Harvard University and Former CEO of Userland Software), David Weinberger (co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto), Doc Searls (of Linux Journal and another co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto), Jason Shellen (of Blogger), Tony Perkins (Creator and Editor In…
Speaking of Dave Winer, his weblog says that the the news archives of The New York Times, which are currently kept behind a paid content firewall, will be opened to webloggers’ hyperlinks. NY Times Digital last year began syndicating its news feed…
Writing in TechCentralStation: Europe, Sandy Starr reminds that, “… October 2003 is the deadline for implementing the European Commission’s Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications, which dictates that ‘member states shall take appropriate measures to ensure that…unsolicited communications for purposes of direct…
If you’re the competitive or betting type and you like to read weblogs, BlogShares is the game for you. It’s a stock market fantasy game in which ‘shares’ of blogs, rather than stocks, are bought & sold. Anyone know how to ‘short’…
Several UK and Scandinavian publishers have allied to set standards for European online classified ads in regional newspapers. Called FinnTech, the alliance includes Schibsted of Norway and the UK publishing groups Associated New Media, Guardian Media, Newsquest Media, Northcliffe Newspapers, and Trinity…