Circulation numbers for print publications are generally down, and the monthly audiences at websites such as the gossip blog Gawker are broadly up. But don't write the obituary for long-attention-span journalism quite yet. Go to instapaper.com and download the plug-in for your Web browser. Then install the accompanying Instapaper application to your iPhone, iPad, Kindle, or (soon) Android device. The next time the boss steps away and your midafternoon Web excavation unearths a well researched, brilliantly written article—such as the feature stories in this magazine, if we may be so bold—click "read later" in the browser toolbar. The service acts like a TiVo (TIVO) for words. It will save the story to your e-reader or your tablet so it can be read later. Marco Arment charges $5 for a premium version of the app that lets users store up to 250 articles and share them with other users.
Instapaper, which has more than a million users and is growing rapidly, has competition. The biggest is Read It Later, with more than 3 million users. Longreads, a site that shares recommendations for in-depth articles, has a lively Twitter feed with more than 15,000 followers.
Nate Weiner, the 26-year-old Web designer in San Francisco who created Read It Later, thinks these services hold promise for old-school journalism. Most of his users read saved stories between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. If they're on mobile devices, reading time spikes during the commuting hours and again from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.
There may be one snag for traditional publishers. Services such as Instapaper and Read It Later let users view their saved stories in an uncluttered format stripped of the ads and other marginalia of the Web browser. That could cost media companies some advertising revenue.
Read more at Business Week
Monday, March 7
Public media puts millions into investigative work
NPR, PBS and local public broadcast stations around the country are hiring more journalists and pumping millions of dollars into investigative news to make up for what they see as a lack of deep-digging coverage by their for-profit counterparts. Public radio and TV stations have seen the need for reporting that holds government and business accountable increase as newspapers and TV networks cut their staffs and cable television stations have filled their schedules with more opinion journalism.
In the past three years, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has invested more than $90 million in federal funds on new journalism initiatives. That includes a $10 million local journalism initiative that is paying for the creation of five regional centers that will help local PBS and NPR stations cover news that affects wider geographic areas. Also, a $6 million grant from the group expanded the PBS investigative series "Frontline" from a seasonal series with a summer break to a year-round program.
Meanwhile, NPR has started an investigative reporting unit supported by philanthropic funds – including $3.2 million donated in the last year.
Read more here.
In the past three years, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has invested more than $90 million in federal funds on new journalism initiatives. That includes a $10 million local journalism initiative that is paying for the creation of five regional centers that will help local PBS and NPR stations cover news that affects wider geographic areas. Also, a $6 million grant from the group expanded the PBS investigative series "Frontline" from a seasonal series with a summer break to a year-round program.
Meanwhile, NPR has started an investigative reporting unit supported by philanthropic funds – including $3.2 million donated in the last year.
Read more here.
What's the Difference Between Curation and Journalism?
They're both perfectly valid and useful activities but they perform different roles: curation compiles and collates; journalism adds a layer of narrative, context and analysis.
However, I don't want to get into a semantic debate about definitions, rather to argue that this discussion missed a bigger point: that journalism, be it social media, citizen or mainstream, is changing as a result of social media.
On Friday, 'mainstream' media made a bad mistake when it ran images of fighting in the Libyan town of Zawiyah - Reuters picked up the video from social media, which claimed/believed it was legitimate 'today' footage. Other news organisations then picked up the material and rebroadcast it until they discovered it was from fighting in exactly the same location but from the previous week.
Was that a failure of mainstream media or social media? It was certainly a failure of journalism - and that's the point: the differing strands of journalism and/or media are converging.
'Old media' journalists are being forced to engage with the rumour, gossip, facts and factoids being circulated in places like Twitter and Facebook; to look at them and work out whether they are 'true' or not before running with them.
Read more at the BBC
However, I don't want to get into a semantic debate about definitions, rather to argue that this discussion missed a bigger point: that journalism, be it social media, citizen or mainstream, is changing as a result of social media.
On Friday, 'mainstream' media made a bad mistake when it ran images of fighting in the Libyan town of Zawiyah - Reuters picked up the video from social media, which claimed/believed it was legitimate 'today' footage. Other news organisations then picked up the material and rebroadcast it until they discovered it was from fighting in exactly the same location but from the previous week.
Was that a failure of mainstream media or social media? It was certainly a failure of journalism - and that's the point: the differing strands of journalism and/or media are converging.
'Old media' journalists are being forced to engage with the rumour, gossip, facts and factoids being circulated in places like Twitter and Facebook; to look at them and work out whether they are 'true' or not before running with them.
Read more at the BBC
Using Phones, but Not to Talk or Surf
The average smartphone owner spends 667 minutes a month using apps. That is more time spent with apps than spent talking on a smartphone or using it to browse the Web.
Read more at the New York Times
Read more at the New York Times
Tuesday, March 1
Display Ad Revs
Companies will spend more than one in five U.S. ad dollars this year to purchase display ads in Facebook, displacing Yahoo for the first time as the No. 1 revenue generating site. David Hallerman, eMarketer principal analyst, estimates display ad revenue for the social network will rise 80.9% to $2.19 billion this year. Although Bing is gaining revenue, Google's share is still rising as the combined revenue at Microsoft and Yahoo continue to fall," he says.
Read more here
Read more here
Game on, here, there and everywhere
The popularity of games on Facebook and other social-networking sites coupled with the proliferation of games on smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices is powering a mini-explosion in the video game industry.
More people are playing video games on more platforms than ever, even as hardware sales of traditional game consoles such as the Nintendo Wii — not to mention the games for many of those systems — have declined from $21.4 billion in 2008 to $18.7 billion in 2010.
"The business model is changing," says Ray Muzyka, co-founder of game developer BioWare.
Video games are played by as many as two-thirds of Americans, says The NPD group, a market researcher. As many as half of U.S. homes have a console video game system. Meanwhile, one in five Americans age 6 and up have played games on social networks such as Facebook, according to NPD. Then there are the 21 million-plus Americans who research firm ComScore says play video games on smartphones.
Read more at USA Today
More people are playing video games on more platforms than ever, even as hardware sales of traditional game consoles such as the Nintendo Wii — not to mention the games for many of those systems — have declined from $21.4 billion in 2008 to $18.7 billion in 2010.
"The business model is changing," says Ray Muzyka, co-founder of game developer BioWare.
Video games are played by as many as two-thirds of Americans, says The NPD group, a market researcher. As many as half of U.S. homes have a console video game system. Meanwhile, one in five Americans age 6 and up have played games on social networks such as Facebook, according to NPD. Then there are the 21 million-plus Americans who research firm ComScore says play video games on smartphones.
Read more at USA Today
Monday, February 28
How to Get Started with Usenet
Usenet is a wonderful service for finding and downloading digital media, giving you speed and reliability you won't find with other file-sharing options.
Usenet was originally designed as a bulletin-board service, and so there's a ton of text content available on Usenet, but once binary newsgroups made their way into Usenet, it quickly became a popular place to find any sort of files that interest you. A site called Newzbin started indexing the binaries available on Usenet and creating the NZB file format. When you download an NZB, you're simply downloading a file that points to files available on Usenet. Applications supporting the NZB format can use them to make downloading Usenet binaries a piece of cake.
There are two controversial issues attached to writing about Usenet: 1) the first rule of Usenet is that you don't talk about Usenet, and 2) it's commonly used to download copyrighted material.
Unlike most file-sharing services nowadays, Usenet is not peer-to-peer. While in rare cases you might get some poor level of access through your Internet service provider, you're going to want to pay for Usenet access that will actually prove useful. Currently I use Newshosting, several more (and potentially better) choices exist, such as GigaNews and Astraweb.
Read more here
Usenet was originally designed as a bulletin-board service, and so there's a ton of text content available on Usenet, but once binary newsgroups made their way into Usenet, it quickly became a popular place to find any sort of files that interest you. A site called Newzbin started indexing the binaries available on Usenet and creating the NZB file format. When you download an NZB, you're simply downloading a file that points to files available on Usenet. Applications supporting the NZB format can use them to make downloading Usenet binaries a piece of cake.
There are two controversial issues attached to writing about Usenet: 1) the first rule of Usenet is that you don't talk about Usenet, and 2) it's commonly used to download copyrighted material.
Unlike most file-sharing services nowadays, Usenet is not peer-to-peer. While in rare cases you might get some poor level of access through your Internet service provider, you're going to want to pay for Usenet access that will actually prove useful. Currently I use Newshosting, several more (and potentially better) choices exist, such as GigaNews and Astraweb.
Read more here
Double-Digit Growth Ahead For Online Retail
Research firm Forrester estimates that both US and European online retail (representing 17 Western European nations) will grow at a 10 percent compound annual growth rate from 2010 to 2015, reaching $279 billion and €134 billion, respectively, in 2015.
Read more here
Read more here
Sunday, February 27
DAR.fm
Michael Robertson is a longtime provocateur of the music business. A decade ago, the music labels successfully sued his landmark startup, Mp3.com, over a feature that gave users a digital copy of any song they could prove they owned on CD. In 2007, Robertson walked into another nest of litigation with Mp3Tunes.com, which allows consumers to upload their songs into cloud-based digital music lockers and then stream their tracks to any smartphone or computer.
Now the San Diego entrepreneur is lobbing another sonic grenade. Robertson is taking the wraps off his newest startup, DAR.fm—short for digital audio recorder—that he planned to launch on Feb. 23. It'll be a centralized Web-based TiVo (TIVO) for radio. Users can go to DAR.fm to search through the programming schedules of about 600 music and talk-radio stations around the country and schedule the site to record up to four hours of any broadcast. The recordings, complete with ads and DJ chatter that users can fast-forward through, are then deposited into a user's password-protected account that can be accessed from any PC, smartphone, or Internet-connected radio. "Radio is dying because it's inconvenient and limiting," says Robertson. "The content is not interactive, and it's available on only a limited number of devices."
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_10/b4218035568306.htm
Now the San Diego entrepreneur is lobbing another sonic grenade. Robertson is taking the wraps off his newest startup, DAR.fm—short for digital audio recorder—that he planned to launch on Feb. 23. It'll be a centralized Web-based TiVo (TIVO) for radio. Users can go to DAR.fm to search through the programming schedules of about 600 music and talk-radio stations around the country and schedule the site to record up to four hours of any broadcast. The recordings, complete with ads and DJ chatter that users can fast-forward through, are then deposited into a user's password-protected account that can be accessed from any PC, smartphone, or Internet-connected radio. "Radio is dying because it's inconvenient and limiting," says Robertson. "The content is not interactive, and it's available on only a limited number of devices."
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_10/b4218035568306.htm
The Leaky Corporation
The WikiLeaks threat and the persistent leaking of other supposedly confidential corporate information have brought an important issue to the fore. Companies are creating an ever-growing pile of digital information, from product designs to employees’ e-mails. Keeping tabs on it all is increasingly hard, not only because there is so much of it but also because of the ease of storing and sending it. Much of this information would do little damage if it seeped into the outside world; some of it, indeed, might well do some good. But some could also be valuable to competitors—or simply embarrassing—and needs to be protected. Companies therefore have to decide what they should try to keep to themselves and how best to secure it.
Firms are increasingly investing in “systems of engagement”.
“Technology can’t solve the problem, just lower the probability of accidents,” explains John Stewart, the chief security officer of Cisco, a maker of networking equipment.
Read more at The Economist
Firms are increasingly investing in “systems of engagement”.
“Technology can’t solve the problem, just lower the probability of accidents,” explains John Stewart, the chief security officer of Cisco, a maker of networking equipment.
Read more at The Economist
Wednesday, February 23
The Weatherman
Technology and the recession are threatening the cultural hegemony—and job security—of the TV weathercaster
The economy and the Internet are conspiring to diminish the position. The National Weather Assn., an organization of professional meteorologists, has seen a downturn in membership renewals over the past few years, from approximately 3,000 in 2006 to about 2,700 in 2010, according to NWA Executive Director Stephen W. Harned. Says Harned: "Anywhere from a third to half of people who graduate with degrees in meteorology this year won't be able to find a job."
The average annual salary of a weatherman, according to the Radio Television Digital News Assn., is $62,300. And they don't come to work with their own interactive maps. "We grew revenue by 56 percent last year," says Paul Douglas, co-founded WeatherNation, which he describes as an "outsourcing weather company" expects to turn a profit in 2011 and expand his staff of eight full-time anchors. Douglas is positioning his business to cash in on what he sees as the future of the industry: personalized weather. Soon, he claims, people will want weather information "tailored for our GPS locations, lifestyles, calendars, anticipating our needs in advance"—all without ever turning on the TV.
Read more at Business Week
The economy and the Internet are conspiring to diminish the position. The National Weather Assn., an organization of professional meteorologists, has seen a downturn in membership renewals over the past few years, from approximately 3,000 in 2006 to about 2,700 in 2010, according to NWA Executive Director Stephen W. Harned. Says Harned: "Anywhere from a third to half of people who graduate with degrees in meteorology this year won't be able to find a job."
The average annual salary of a weatherman, according to the Radio Television Digital News Assn., is $62,300. And they don't come to work with their own interactive maps. "We grew revenue by 56 percent last year," says Paul Douglas, co-founded WeatherNation, which he describes as an "outsourcing weather company" expects to turn a profit in 2011 and expand his staff of eight full-time anchors. Douglas is positioning his business to cash in on what he sees as the future of the industry: personalized weather. Soon, he claims, people will want weather information "tailored for our GPS locations, lifestyles, calendars, anticipating our needs in advance"—all without ever turning on the TV.
Read more at Business Week
Who You Calling a Data Hog?
Wireless data is a finite resource. Data moves from a tower to a cell phone over electromagnetic spectrum, which carriers buy at auction from the federal government. Each carrier has a limited amount of spectrum, yet that limited amount renews itself, moment after moment. Think of electricity: The power plant runs all the time, but on hot days everyone turns on an air conditioner, straining the plant's capacity. Utilities are experimenting with smart meters that encourage customers to move their power use off-peak.
Wireless carriers, responding to a similar challenge, have chosen not to treat data like a commodity. Rather, they've carved off 5 percent of their heaviest users and stigmatized them. This is a business choice, not a natural economic consequence. Imagine that a power company, to prevent blackouts, has informed its customers that its heaviest users will be penalized with unpredictable brownouts two months running. Why do wireless customers tolerate this from carriers?
Some people do use a lot of data. This month, Cisco Systems (CSCO) reported that the top 1 percent of wireless data customers account for 20 percent of traffic.
Read more at Business Week
Wireless carriers, responding to a similar challenge, have chosen not to treat data like a commodity. Rather, they've carved off 5 percent of their heaviest users and stigmatized them. This is a business choice, not a natural economic consequence. Imagine that a power company, to prevent blackouts, has informed its customers that its heaviest users will be penalized with unpredictable brownouts two months running. Why do wireless customers tolerate this from carriers?
Some people do use a lot of data. This month, Cisco Systems (CSCO) reported that the top 1 percent of wireless data customers account for 20 percent of traffic.
Read more at Business Week
Google Donates $2.7 Million
Google has awarded $2.7 million to the International Press Institute to foster innovation in journalism. The Institute will use the grant for its IPI News Innovation Contest, which will fund both non-profit and for-profit projects related to the development of digital news platforms, new business models for journalism and training in digital reporting throughout Africa, Europe and the Middle East.
At the time, Google awarded $2 million to the Knight Foundation in the U.S. and pledged to spend the remaining $3 million in international news efforts.
Read more at Mashable
At the time, Google awarded $2 million to the Knight Foundation in the U.S. and pledged to spend the remaining $3 million in international news efforts.
Read more at Mashable
Russia On Warpath Against Google
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's deputy blamed Google Inc in an interview published on Tuesday for stirring up trouble in the revolution that ousted Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak. Google executive, Wael Ghonim, became an unlikely hero of the uprising in Egypt which led to Mubarak's deposition.
In contrast to state television, Russia's Internet is remarkably free and the home to often scathing criticism of Putin, President Dmitry Medvedev and the entire Russian elite. Analysts say there are a group of hardliners close to Putin who would like to impose controls similar to China's.
Read more at Reuters
In contrast to state television, Russia's Internet is remarkably free and the home to often scathing criticism of Putin, President Dmitry Medvedev and the entire Russian elite. Analysts say there are a group of hardliners close to Putin who would like to impose controls similar to China's.
Read more at Reuters
Tuesday, February 22
Interactive Game Doubles as an Educational Tool
Vanished, an online science-fiction interactive mystery event that starts April 4. Kids can sign up for the event, conducted by the Smithsonian and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at vanished.mit.edu. The mystery, which is unveiled during the course of the eight-week event, involves a fictitious environmental disaster. Each week, participants will get clues online that will allow them to come up with hypotheses about the cause that can be tested, debated and refined. Scientists will have videoconferences online, and participants can send them questions that will be answered in real time.
Read more at USA Today
Read more at USA Today
Monday, February 21
TV Industry Taps Social Media
It’s as if people are gathered around the online water cooler — and the television executives are nervously hovering nearby, hoping viewers keep talking and, by extension, watching their shows. Debra Lee, the chief executive of BET, said “we can now tell when something’s a hit almost immediately — by seeing how many of the trending topics on Twitter belong to us.” It is clear that many people feel they have to watch some shows as they premiere in order to keep up with conversations online.
“We know people are multitasking while they’re watching TV,” said Albert Cheng, the executive vice president for digital media for the Disney/ABC Television Group, which oversees ABC. “The question is, how do we tap into that and create a whole different consumer experience?”
“The key discovery is that we’re not just driving digital growth, we’re driving analog growth,” said Lisa Hsia the executive vice president of Bravo’s digital media arm.
A recent study by Deloitte of 2,000 American consumers ages 14 to 75 found that 42 percent sometimes surfed the Web while watching TV, and 26 percent sometimes sent instant messages or texts.
Read more at the New York Times
“We know people are multitasking while they’re watching TV,” said Albert Cheng, the executive vice president for digital media for the Disney/ABC Television Group, which oversees ABC. “The question is, how do we tap into that and create a whole different consumer experience?”
“The key discovery is that we’re not just driving digital growth, we’re driving analog growth,” said Lisa Hsia the executive vice president of Bravo’s digital media arm.
A recent study by Deloitte of 2,000 American consumers ages 14 to 75 found that 42 percent sometimes surfed the Web while watching TV, and 26 percent sometimes sent instant messages or texts.
Read more at the New York Times
Sunday, February 20
A New Spot Market Makes Cloud Computing a Commodity
February 14th saw the launch of SpotCloud, the world’s first spot market for cloud computing. It works much like other spot markets. Firms with excess computing capacity, such as data centres, put it up for sale. Others, which have a short-term need for some number-crunching, can bid for it. Enomaly, the software firm behind SpotCloud, takes a cut of between 10% and 30%, depending on the size of the deal.
The service works with Google App Engine, another cloud-computing provider, which gives Enomaly access to a decentralised global system.
Read more at The Economist
The service works with Google App Engine, another cloud-computing provider, which gives Enomaly access to a decentralised global system.
Read more at The Economist
Films Need Foreign Viewers
The true worth of a film is... decided by youngsters in countries such as Russia, China and Brazil. Hollywood has always been an international business, but it is becoming dramatically more so. In the past decade total box-office spending has risen by about one-third in North America while more than doubling elsewhere.
Three things are particularly important: a cinema boom in the emerging world, a concerted effort by the major studios to make films that might play well outside America and a global marketing push to make sure they do.
Growing fears of piracy have led studios to release films almost simultaneously in many countries; increasingly, the premiere takes place outside America. Big noisy spectacle travels best. As the market swings away from America, funny films are less likely to find financing or broad distribution anywhere.
Read more at the Economist.
Three things are particularly important: a cinema boom in the emerging world, a concerted effort by the major studios to make films that might play well outside America and a global marketing push to make sure they do.
Growing fears of piracy have led studios to release films almost simultaneously in many countries; increasingly, the premiere takes place outside America. Big noisy spectacle travels best. As the market swings away from America, funny films are less likely to find financing or broad distribution anywhere.
Read more at the Economist.
Protest Tweets
Here is Google Maps/Twitter mashup that allows you to scan Middle East "protest tweets" from the Middle East, as they go live.
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