June 2009
28 posts
Anchoring Free in Reality, Where it Belongs →
Source Link: The New Yorker I tend to side with Chris Anderson, Mike Masnick and other free proponents, but Malcolm Gladwell makes salient observations in his review/counter-point of…
"And the Winner of the $1 Million Netflix Prize... →
Source Link: New York Times Never underestimate financial motivation: The Netflix Prize contest has been hailed as prime example of “prize economics” and the crowdsourcing of innovation….
"Story of Neda's Death Reveals 7 Elements of... →
Source Link: Poynter In a refreshing break from the wailing and moaning from the business side of content, Bill Mitchell offers an in-depth look at a dynamic storytelling form he calls “Next Step…
"AP Issues Strict Facebook, Twitter Guidelines to... →
Source Link: Wired The Associated Press is the gawky teen of the digital content world: it just can’t get its act together. The organization’s latest bit of nonsense comes from its Draconian…
"AOL's PoliticsDaily Quickly Surpasses Rival... →
Source Link: TechCrunch TechCrunch reports on positive early signs from AOL’s Politics Daily, which features long-form original political content: In the grand scheme of things, AOL’s…
"Metamorphosis for the Globe?" →
Source Link: Nieman Journalism Lab Martin Langeveld lays out a 10-point plan for resurrecting the Boston Globe … and it actually might work. The interesting part — and something I’ve …
Jammie Thomas-Rasset Case: When a Win is a Setback →
A federal jury in Minnesota ruled that Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the downloading-consumer poster child, must pay $80,000 per song for the 24 music files stored on her computer. That’s $1.92 million,…
"The Tweet Smell of Success" →
Source Link: The New York Times The New York Times’ most recent piece on Twitter touches upon a favorite topic of mine: the vast difference between the built-in network effects of Web content and…
"Surprise! J-school grads are finding jobs" →
Source Link: DailyFinance Jeff Bercovici ponders the surprising job-finding success of recent journalism grads: My guess is at least some of it is a direct result of the massive staff…
"Kim Jong Il's CafePress Shop" →
Source Link: WebNewser Today’s subversive communist schwag is brought to you by the North Korean Trinket Bureau and CafePress: North Korea’s CafePress shop is promoted on the country’s …
"12 Ways To Doom Your Community Before You Launch" →
Source Link: FeverBee Richard Millington offers an excellent primer for current and prospective community managers. Point No. 9 should be tattooed on every moderator’s forearm:
9. … Don’t…
"Announcing the June 2009 State of the... →
Source Link: HubSpot Recent Twitter reports from HubSpot and HarvardBusiness.org illustrate, again, that most social media patrons are passive readers, not active users. The passive…
"Metacafe Adds a Hub for TV" →
Source Link: The Wall Street Journal Metacafe knows it isn’t YouTube … and it can’t take on Hulu … so it’s best option is to collect and showcase TV detritus? Metacafe’s TV clips…
Boston.com: "Globe's largest union rejects cuts" →
Didn’t think it was possible, but the NYT vs. Globe battle just got worse:
Both the Guild and the Times Co. would embark on a risky path by
moving from the bargaining table to the legal process,…
Silicon Alley Insider: "TechCrunch Now Number Two... →
Regardless of the No. 1 vs. No. 2 debates, it’s heartening to see TechCrunch and Mashable mature into robust and valuable news sources. They’re both excellent. Story link: TechCrunch Now…
Mashable: "Everything I Need to Know About Twitter... →
Picking up the thread from Ann Handley’s excellent piece: The more I encounter folks who don’t have a journalism background — and the accompanying struggles they sometimes have in adapting to…
BitTorrent users spend money, too →
From the LA Times: “BitTorrent users spend money, too” Findings from the Vuze study noted in this article should be taken with a grain of salt. Pro-BitTorrent conclusions support Vuze’s…
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Everything I Need to Know About Twitter I Learned... →
Picking up the thread from Ann Handley’s excellent piece: The more I encounter folks who don’t have a journalism background — and the accompanying struggles they sometimes have in adapting to Web community, conversation and content — the more I realize all those journalism classes and years of training have given me a leg up in the Web world. Strong headlines, copy editing,...
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BitTorrent users spend money, too | Technology |... →
Findings from the Vuze study noted in this article should be taken with a grain of salt. Pro-BitTorrent conclusions support Vuze’s business model.
That said, the article poses an unanswered question I think I can shed a little light on:
What it doesn’t reveal, at least not explicitly, is why those users buy DVDs but not the downloadable movies sold or rented by authorized outlets...
3 tags
“Name another online business which places “deserves” and “command” in the first...”
– The Long, Hot Summer of Paid Content « Insomniactive
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Michael Kinsley - Ownership Models for the Future... →
The inefficiencies and mistakes we’re seeing in content industries were always present, but they were hidden behind massive revenue and hubris. Michael Kinsley touches on this point far more eloquently than I ever could:
One trouble with placing your hopes in a grandee restoration is that earlier grandees made money from newspapers. Pouring money acquired elsewhere into a money-losing...
4 tags
Microsoft’s Plan to Unveil Bing on TV and Online -... →
I doubt Microsoft’s massive Bing campaign will ever show adequate ROI, but I fully support any effort that reduces Finder-Spyder references:
On “The Philanthropist,” in which James Purefoy portrays a globetrotting do-gooder, the Bing Maps feature will establish where in the world the character is; other characters will use bing.com to seek information.
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CrunchPad: The Launch Prototype →
I’ll take two, please.
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Google Wave: Our First Hands-On Impressions →
ReadWriteWeb offers an introductory look at Google Wave. My initial excitement seems justified:
It should also be noted that the real-time chat is really only one aspect of Wave. There is no reason why the chat couldn’t be used as an internal micro-blogging tool, for example. As Jens Rasmussen pointed out to us, it is this mix of uses in different scenarios that may be the most exciting...
5 tags
BEA and everything after →
Brian O’Leary hits the nail on the head: “Wouldn’t that be really cool?” is the mantra of everyone who sees amazing things amidst the disruptive change in the content industries:
It would be more than nice, more than fun, more than illuminating, if we as an industry could use events like BEA as less an opportunity to predict the future and more a forum in which to examine the...
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Adobe service puts browsers side by side | Beyond... →
I’ve been waiting a long time for something like Adobe’s BrowserLab:
Designers can compare a site in two browsers side by side as well as use an “onion skin” mode that shows a site in multiple browsers overlaid one on top of the other.
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“With Hulu’s release of Hulu Desktop earlier this week, and today’s release of...”
– YouTube XL Brings The World’s Most Popular Video Portal To Your TV
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How Steve Brill pitched newspaper executives on... →
Details from Steve Brill’s Journalism Online pitch don’t give me hope for this initiative:
Brill’s firm, which he launched in April with media magnates Gordon Crovitz and Leo Hindrey, is pushing a “common platform” for news websites to charge annual, monthly, and per-article fees. They believe publishers, by offering a mix of paid and free content, can wring subscription revenue out...
