The Flashiest Babe is in Milan
She gets our vote for prettiest use of Macromedia Flash on the Internet. Check out Model Federica Fontana‘s Flash FX Website, created by Arxmedia of Milan.
Blogger Ofter Are More Authoritative Than Journalists
Good essay by Jim Naughton in the Sunday Observer of London, about how bloggers often are more authoritative sources than are journalist, much to the journalists’ consternation.
A Determined but Adrift Industry
Is the newspaper industry determined to convince itself that charging for access to its online content is a good idea? To reach that conclusion, it seems determined to overlook all facts, data, and logic about the subject. For example, here is the…
PEPC WorldWide Becomes Satellite Newspapers
PEPCWorldwide, whose satellite-connected vending boxes can on-demand print any of 119 daily newspapers from 48 countries, is rebranding itself as Satellite Newspapers. Steve Mannen, CEO of the Dutch company, explains, “This new easy-to-remember name reflects our company’s focus on the seamless distribution…
Phone that Recognizes Chinese Text Inputs
Furthering the convergence of mobile phones and PDAs into single devices for multiple purposes, Nokia’s Bejing research laboratory has developed a phone that recognizes inputs in Chinese language pen strokes. The Nokia 6108 apparently recognizes all or most of the 2,000 characters…
Whizzing About On The Subject of Paid Content
There’s an interesting article in American Journalism Review about whether or not newspapers should implement user registration and/or charge for online content. Registration makes sense (hello, did anyone remember why NYtimes.com announced in 1995 why it implementing registration?). But charging for all…
Readers with Camphones Produce City Guide Insert
Community publishing has been taken to a new technical level by Stockholm’s N
What Makes a Weblog a Weblog?
Perhaps no one knows the answer better than Dave Winer, pioneering technologist and manufacturer of one of the first and most popular blogging softwares. Winer is now on sabbatical as a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard…
Few Japanese Online Publications Succeed at Paid Content
According to a story in the bulletin of the Nihon Shinbun Kyokai (The Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association), few Japanese online publications are charging for content or have had success doing that. For instance, Asahi Shimbum on March 3rd began charging…
Lufthansa Adds In-Flight Internet Access
Literally a higher demographic audience, 95% of passengers who tried Internet access aboard a Lufthansa airlines Boeing 747 liked this service. In mid-January, Lufthansa equipped its Boeing 747-400 Sachsen Anhalt, which regularly flies between Frankfurt and Washington, D.C., with Internet access received…
Van Dusseldorp Wins Vosko Award
Congratulations to Monique van Dusseldorp, founder and CEO of Van Dusseldorp & Partners in Amsterdam, and co-founder of Europemedia, who has won a Vosko Award for her long service to the digital media industry in the Netherlands. A veteran Internet consultant and…
We've Always Known It
We categorically agree with this interesting quote from Slate.com Editor-in-Chief Jacob Weisberg in a New York Times‘ story (free registration required) about his site making a quarterly profit: “As it turns out, e-mail was the killer application on the Web.”
Does Editing Make It 'Journalism'?
Last month, the (U.S.) Public Broadcasting Network’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer aired a good, short broadcast [transcript & video available] about blogging. But we do disagree with something that MSNBC.com Executive Producer Joan Connell said in it: “One of the values that…
Another Example of Media Disintermediation
David Astor, syndication columnist for Editor & Publisher Magazine, has written a column [which unfortunately might by now be hidden behind VNU’s paid archive wall] about how My Comics Page gained 10,000 new paid subscribers this spring. MCP now serves 25,000 paid…
Our Theory of New Media is Curriculae
We’re pleasantly surprised to discover that our Theory of New Media has become required reading in the University of Maine‘s Computer Game Design course. Although we wrote that theory to help explain to publishers what the differences are between Traditional and New…
Paid Web Content in Spain and England
Spain and England are where the most interesting experimentation about paid-access Web content business strategies are underway. There is an interesting story in Online Journalism Review about the Spanish market.
London Times and FT to Launch Digital Editions
The Times of London and the Daily Telegraph, competitors, are the latest UK dailies to begin publishing digital editions. What’s notable about these large (weekday print circulations ranging from 500,000 to 2 million) dailies publishing digital editions is that the Audit Bureau…
News in Any Format from Sdysvenska Daglbadet
Covering the IFRA Online Trend conference earlier this month in Amsterdam, our friend Rafat Ali notes the interesting ‘Instant News’ project by Sweden’s Sdysvenska Daglbadet newspaper. It involves instant delivery of news through whatever electronic media the user wants at any pre-designated…
SMS Increasingly Popular with Broadcasters
Covering the TV meets the Web conference in Amsterdam, theFeature notes how: “The overwhelming success of mobile voting and alert campaigns around popular television programming prove mobile is a natural extension of TV. The numbers speak volumes – literally. In Spain Operacion…
Wins Wars But Still Can't Figure out SMS?
“This is a country who defeated Iraq in three weeks, but still can’t figure out SMS.” That was how Kevin Werbach described the U.S. in his keynote speech to the TV Meets the Web conference in Amsterdam.
Take the 'E-Bore Test'
“Do your friends nod off or walk away when you start talking about ASP, HTML or CPM? Is the local Starbucks still the only place you can properly brainstorm with your colleagues? Are you onto your 4th PDA?” asks E-Consultancy‘s E-Bore Test.…
02 Tries Mobile Video
O2 tries out mobile video. 02 becomes the latest mobile firm to trial video clips via phones, including highlights of Arsenal matches.
'Really Bad PowerPoint'
After all the PowerPoint presentations I’ve lately seen at conferences, I feel compelled to hawk Seth Godin’s US$1.99 masterpiece Really Bad PowerPoint. It’s an electronic pamphlet (PDF) about what not to do with PowerPoint. It would be worth all the conference registration…
SMS Access Revives Chinese Portals Finances
I’ve written elsewhere about the rise of multimedia mobile telephone access to the Internet and how online publications outside the U.S. are using SMS as a micropayment solution. The South China Morning Post now reports (requires paid access) that China’s three biggest…
Mickey Mouse Thoughts on Copyright Extensions
In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Courts decision backing the U.S. Congress’ extension of copyrights from 75 to 95 years, Reason magazine has published an ‘exclusive interview’ with Mickey Mouse. Among the cartoon rodent’s comments: “For almost 70 years, I’ve only…
Delivery & Registration
Today’s
'Forced Migration' of Online Users
In one of the largest ‘forced migration’ in Internet history, Comcast will forcibly migrate the e-mail addresses of the 1.9 million AT&T Broadband cable modem users from the attbi.com to comcast net domain. All because the Comcast company purchased AT&T’s broadband operations…
Judge Rules Kazaa is Liable to U.S. Laws
A U.S. District Court judge yesterday ruled that file-swapping software company Kazaa, which is based in Australia and incorporated in the island republic of Vanuatu, can be sued in U.S. courts for copyright infringement. Federal Judge Stephen Wilson ruled that because Kazaa…
New EU Libel Law Proposal Draws Publishers' Protests
Are you shopping for the best country in which to sue for libel in print? In public hearings in Brussels last week, the European Association of Magazine Publishers and the British Periodical Publishers Association protested a European Commission proposal, known as Rome…
W3C Endorses SVG
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) today recommended Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 and Mobile SVG profiles be anointed standards. Vector Graphics (VG) are how Adobe PostScript and Macromedia Flash work, although those two companies each uses a proprietary version of that…
Blog by Phone
Hey, desk-bound bloggers: Perhaps you didn’t believe my prediction last year that there is a rising Third Wave of Online Journalism utilizing wireless technologies? Then point your mouse towards NewBay. This Irish company’s software lets cellular network customers operate weblogs from mobile…
Some Resources on Privacy Issues
While researching international online privacy issues for a client today, I happened across the Center for Democracy & Technology‘s fairly comprehensive Guide to Online Privacy. I initially came across it while looking for any updates to the U.S. Commerce Department’s ‘Safe Harbor’…
The 'Wireless PDA' Strategy
There is a posting on the Online-News listserv today that asks this question about Sybase’s acquition of AvantGo: Do you foresee this changing your wireless/PDA strategy? (Is that question moot?) I think it’s sad to see American publishers mistake PDAs as having…
Slow Blog due to EBNA demise?
This blog has lately been quiet because Digital Deliverance is planning to donate the blog to the organization that has been known as the EBook Newsstand Association. That organization, which is dedicate to finding ways for periodical publishers to publish on handheld…
Sledgehammer Superstitials Hit Online Users
The behavioral psychologist Abraham Maslow once noted, “When your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.” Unicast ? a New York online advertising technology firm whose name infers anything but interactivity ? today unveiled what might be…
What are the New Media?
In 1998, we formulated a Philosophy of New Media. This past week, we took time out from this Web log (and other things) to reformat its pages. Not only does this Philosophy point out the misnomers and misperceptions that currently plague most…
Salon's Spins Paid Content
CNET’s News.com recently reported that webzine Salon.com has now generated 35,000 paying subscribers for its Salon Premium services. Indeed, Salon’s press release announcing that level of paying subscribership received favorable play in trade press for online publishing. That’s too bad, because some…
Woe is the Newspaper Industry
Perhaps no story portrays the newspaper industry’s current woes as well as this: On Monday, Kmart Corporation was named the Best Overall in the Newspaper Association of America’s third annual Retailer of the Year awards competition. The following day, Kmart filed for…
Have Online Ad Networks 'Screwed the Pooch'
According to Tom Wolfe‘s book, The Right Stuffto screw the pooch was a slang phrase that test pilots in the California desert used during the 1950s to describe a pilot who died in the wreckage of his plane. News last week that…
Handheld 'Communicators'
We yesterday mentioned the Handspring Treo as an example of a handheld ‘converged device’ that can handle multiple forms of content and communications. Today’s New York Times Technology section reviews (free registration required to read the review) both the Treo and the…
Postrel on Products
We’ve long been a fan of REASON Magazine Editor Virginia Postrel, who also is one of four experts who takes turns writing the Economic Scene column in The New York Times Business Section. Here are two reasons why we like her: In…
Does NY Times Web Site Blur Editorial-Advertising Lines?
“To borrow from the tagline of the new blockbuster film Lord of the Rings, it may be the one Web page that binds them all. But did it united them in darkness?” That’s is how CBS MarketWatch leads a story claiming that…
But Should Harvard Alumni Even Have AOL Accounts?
Dozens of applicants to Harvard University didn’t hear ‘You’ve got mail!’ when American Online rejected the university’s e-mails about their acceptance as Harvard students. According to Boston.com, AOL’s e-mail filtering system mistook Harvard’s mass e-mailing as a spam attack and blocked those…
E-Mail the Major Carrier of Computer Viruses
According to a story in The South China Morning Post , Computer Associates and Kaspersky Labs repor that that 90% of computer viruses were transmitted via e-mails. According to MessageLabs, an average of one message in every 300 contains a virus, compared…
German Traditional Media Unhurt by Internet
Despite rocketing use of the Internet in Germany, consumer use of television, newspaper, magazine, and book use remained constant, and radio use in that country increased slightly. For figures and rankings, see the story in Europemedia.
The Dawning of Converge Devices
We have long preached that consumers will soon carry a single portable electronic device for all content usages, rather than carry multiple devices (mobile phone, Personal Digital Assistant, MP3 player, laptop PC, digital camera, etc.) that each deal with only one form…
Frank and Pessimistic Forecast from NAA
Last month, the UBS Warburg Pincus Media Conference saw a rather frank and bleak slide presentation (9.5-megabytes in size) from the Newspaper Association of America’s Vice President of Market Analysis Jim Conaghan with forecasts for 2002. Online publishers can incidentally take some…
Should Time Warner Divorce AOL?
In mid-December, Forrester Research issued a report entitled Guides Redefine Mass Media that states, “Media companies in every sector face a collapse of their distribution control – and distribution control is what maintains media industry profits. Industry troubles have only begun.” Mass…
Laugh Lab
If the Internet now is universal, jokes are the universal form of content. The British Association for the Advancement of Science created Laugh Lab, a Web site where jokes are posted and rated. The funniest to more than 100,000 people in over…