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Posted 5:35 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
What's New with WebCams
According to a Nov. 28 article in InternetContent.net ("Online Visual Content: The World Through a Web Cam," by David Nicholson), 360-degree VR Webcams are the latest and greatest in terms of content for travel or tourism sites. MaxVR.com and MGI have teamed up to offer what appears to be a stock agency for this type of interactive content. Sounds cool – but when it comes to Webcams, I still love the NY Taxi Cab-Cam! — Amy
Posted 5:10 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
First Online Journalism Awards Announced
Today, the Online News Association announced the winners of the first-ever Online Journalism Awards. Predictably, Salon and MSNBC took top honors. Actually, I was more intrigued by the list of finalists. For example, also up for the "General Excellence in Online Journalism: Original to the Web" award (which Salon won) were Central Europe Review (a weekly Web journal of Central and East European politics and society) and Insure.com (an independent site covering all aspects of insurance). Similarly, one finalist in the "Breaking News: Original to the Web" category was Rediff.com (a portal focusing on India and the global Indian community) for their coverage of the 1999 airline hijacking in India.
It just goes to show – a lot of the best online content (especially journalism) is coming from surprising venues. I'm not saying Salon and MSNBC aren't great venues – but I really like all the odd places where their serious competition is turning up. —Amy
Posted 3:58 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
In E-publishing, Bigger Isn't Always Better
Clickz's Andy Bourland has a nice column today about why content is perceived as a failure. Sure, there are plenty of content-related Internet companies that have tanked, or are still bleeding money. But the press is focusing on the high fliers — those companies that attracted tons of VC funding or floated IPOs, and are burning through cash quickly on a path toward hoped-for (but doubtful) success. What's being missed, Bourland says, are the many smaller online content enterprises that don't have buckets of investor money and are proceedingly slowly and methodically in building audience and profitability. They may not make headlines due to their modest size, but the ultimate slow-path success of many online publishers in the end may beat out those trying to grow too fast on too much investor capital, operating on unrealistic expectations of ROI by investors. —Steve
Posted 12:45 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Internet Movies on Demand?
The film industry, spooked by Napster, is making progress toward offering a way to get feature movies over the Internet, as the Industry Standard reports. That's good news, and got me thinking about how we'll view movies in the future. If you have a big enough hard disk on your laptop, you might be watching a movie on it on your next plane trip — or the kids can watch it on a long car trip. (No trip necessary to the video store to pick up a DVD.) One other option relates to my item about the new Kima device that I mentioned in an item yesterday.
The Kima takes Internet radio stations and sends their programming to a stereo receiver or radio via wireless connection. That device is limited to radio now, but a modified device would be an interesting way to get movies from the Internet onto a conventional TV set. This is the movies-on-demand concept that interactive TV has promised for so long (but it never really took off). I'm still eager to end my drives back and forth to the video rental store. Perhaps that'll happen soon. —Steve
Posted 12:30 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Academy: Can You Spell 'Clueless'?
Inside.com reports that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the organization responsible for the Oscars) is truly clueless when it comes to the Internet. The Academy has published guidelines concerning the promotion of films for Oscar consideration, which place many limits about what studios and film promoters can do to get the attention of the Academy's 5,000-plus members. They can't tell members in letters about other awards that a film has won, for example. But the Academy's written rules make no mention of the Internet — so there's a big loophole that film promoters can climb through. There's no technical prohibition from approaching members by e-mail or setting up Web sites that Academy members will see, and saying anything.
This is strike 2 against the Academy. It also came under fire recently for prohibiting online journalists from receiving credentials to the Oscar awards next year. It would appear that the Academy's leadership needs some remedial Internet education. —Steve
Posted 6:08 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A New Kind of Radio
For the most part, commercial radio sucks. (I can opine only about U.S. broadcast radio.) So I've been eagerly watching the growth of Internet radio, and on rare occasion listen to Web radio stations on my PC. But when I really want to listen to radio programming is when I'm away from my computer, elsewhere in my house. Now there's an interesting new product from Akoo that pipes Internet radio stations to any stereo or radio receiver. The Kima, priced at $99.95, consists of two small units: One is plugged into your computer (which must be on the Internet, of course), the other is placed near any radio or stereo. The first unit wirelessly transmits the Internet radio signal to the second unit, which broadcasts it the short distance to the radio or stereo. The two units have a range of 1,000 feet, so you can listen to Web radio in the yard, too.
I haven't tried this out, but it sounds great as a temporary solution to getting Internet stations on any radio. Eventually, we should have radios and stereos that can hook into your household Ethernet network (you do have one, don't you?) and thus play Internet radio. The breadth of music (and other types of audio content) available to future radio listeners is going to be impressive. Good riddance, pathetic local radio stations! (Small disclaimer: I actually like one of my local stations, KBCO.) —Steve
Posted 12:41 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Today's Online Content Layoffs
The latest to trim staff in order to get closer to profitability is Quokka Sports, the ambitious sports Internet content company. Yesterday it laid off 20% of its staff, or about 90 employees. Quokka started out covering fringe sports, but has been moving more toward mainstream sports coverage as well. The company also has acquired or bought into several online sports companies, including Total Sports and Golf.com, and was the Internet partner for NBC Sports during the Olympics, producing the site NBCOlympics.com. (Here's an Industry Standard piece about the layoffs.) —Steve
Posted 12:23 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Jakob's WAP On the Side of the Head
Jakob Nielsen, the well-known Web usability pundit, has just published a report about WAP usability. His Nielsen Norman Group sponsored a field study of WAP use in London, where participants were given a WAP telephone that provided mobile access to the Internet for one week, then surveyed on their reactions to the experience. In a nutshell, WAP sucks from a usability standpoint, says Nielsen. "WAP is not ready for prime time yet, nor do users expect it to be usable any time soon. ... Unless the usability of mobile Internet services and devices improves considerably, people will simply not use them and billions of dollars will be wasted," he says. (Here's a New York Times article about the Nielsen findings.)
Interested in reading Nielsen's report? Surprisingly, it's affordable — only US $18. Nielsen says he wants the report to be as widely disseminated as possible, and distributing it via the Internet is cheap enough to allow for setting a low price. Bravo, Jakob! —Steve
Posted 10:05 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Need a Content Consultant?
I get a fair number of inquiries asking if I or Content Exchange (host to this weblog) provide online content consulting services. I do only a very limited amount of consulting (dependent on how busy I am with writing and other projects). Tidbits co-author (and Content Exchange co-founder) Amy Gahran is an active online content consultant, providing services under Gahran.com.
Recently, I've been getting a bunch of requests for consulting help in the area of online content syndication and licensing. When I recently learned about the work of OSKAR Consulting, Elizabeth Karolczak's California-based firm which has specialized in online content syndication since 1992, I established a relationship with her firm. If you need syndication assistance, I suggest you contact Karolczak at CEref@oskar.com.
Take a look at the new Content-Exchange.com Consulting Services page for more information. —Steve
Posted 2:53 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
City Wants Web Ad Money, Local Publishers Cry Foul
The city of Salt Lake in Utah is getting ambitious with its Web site, offering more government information and services to meet increasing public demand for the city to interact with citizens online. But it's heading into new territory by selling advertising on the city Web site, to defray the costs of its online programs. That doesn't sit well with some of the publishers in town, who think that the local government shouldn't be competing with them for ad dollars. It's a sticky issue. By bringing in ad revenue, the city can pay for its Web sites without raising taxes. On the other hand, it's taking money away from local businesses who compete for those same ad revenues. Here's an AP report on the Salt Lake brouhaha. —Steve
Posted 2:03 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Wireless Content Doesn't Have to Be Free
Content on the Web is mostly free, and Web publishers have accordingly had trouble turning a profit from Web content. But on the wireless Internet there is yet no settled business model. It well may be that the majority of wireless content will have a cash price tag. In my Editor & Publisher column this week, I discuss the outlook for wireless content, and suggest that charging for it must become the dominant model. Wireless content is completely different than wired-Web content, so the revenue model should be different, too. Here's the column. —Steve
When Your Phone/PDA Knows Where You Are
An exciting element to wireless communications is the ability of future devices to identify where you are physically located via global positioning system (GPS) technology. This is coming quickly to a mobile phone or PDA near you, and it presents lots of interesting opportunities to target advertising and content based on where you happen to be at a given moment. If you're downtown, your device will know and can direct you to nearby pizza restaurants, and perhaps offer up a discount offer at one two blocks away. Here's an interesting series of articles from U.S. 1 Newspaper that looks at the possibilities. —Steve
Posted 7:35 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Striking Seattle Reporters Produce Online Newspaper
The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer have gone out on strike, but those loyal to the strikers are still getting a lot of the news. Following a strategy established during the bitter Detroit newspapers strike, union reporters from Seattle are producing a new online paper: The Seattle Union-Record. The Puget Sound region is pretty wired, so it'll be interesting to see whether this online publishing effort gives the strikers more leverage. And maybe we might get a whole new "paper" out of this – it's happened before! (See "Seattle Strikers Strike Up Online Newspaper," Editor & Publisher Online, Nov. 27.) —Amy
Posted 5:18 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Davenetics Wins Clickz/MessageMedia Award
Winners have been announced for the E-mail Excellence Awards by Clickz and MessageMedia. Among the categories is best e-mail newsletter, and the winner is ... Davenetics, a daily weblog e-mail newsletter. Davenetics is published and written by Dave Pell, an investor and consultant to Internet start-ups. Pell typically puts out about seven short items a day about the Web world, offering his own commentary and links to interesting articles found around the Web. (In other words, it's the same forumula as we use here with E-Media Tidbits.) Pell also writes another weblog column for Clickz, called Clickz Ink. Hmmm. All of the winners are profiled on this Web page. —Steve
Posted 12:41 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
King Makes Good on Threat, Cancels The Plant
Stephen King threatened to stop writing his e-novella, The Plant, if not enough people voluntarily paid him for installments of the work. Now he's making good on that threat, since only 46% of people who downloaded the chapters from the e-serial paid up through the fourth installment. Paying readers who were loyal to King through his e-serial experiment would have paid $7 in total for the first installments — and predictably, many are angry at the author for not offering up an ending. Part 6 of The Plant has already been written and will be released in December, at no charge. (M.J. Rose writes about this development for Wired News.)
This would appear to be a set-back for author self-publishing on the Internet. Then again, King was using a voluntary system for payment — which in hindsight was a mistake. A mandatory payment structure with low per-installment pricing might have succeeded. So don't read too much into this news. —Steve
Posted 11:21 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Am I Hot or Not? The Site's Hot
Am I HOT or NOT is a quirky new Web site that seems to have struck a nerve with lots of Web users. As Wired News reports, the site is doing gang-busters business by letting people post photos of themselves, then site visitors rate their physical appearance on a scale of 1 to 10. It's a good example of user-generated content that's truly compelling. You can argue that the concept is juvenile, but you can't argue with its meteoric success. It just goes to show, you don't always have to spend money creating original content; sometimes the cheapest content — that provided by your users — can be killer content. —Steve
Posted 12:24 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
SportsJones Essay Does Good
Congratulations to SportsJones, the fine sports webzine. It is the first webzine to have a story published in Best American Sports Writing: ex-football player Pat Toomay's "Clotheslined," about working on the film Any Given Sunday. SportsJones is giving away the story as a mini-e-book at Powells.com. (And here's the article as published on SportsJones.) —Steve
Posted 12:13 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Syndication Is Taking Over the World
That's the message in a recent Washington Post article about online content syndication trends. A year ago, many publishers were still wary of allowing Web sites around the world to republish their content. But that's changed, as online publishers have gotten serious about becoming profitable — so most now look to Web syndication as a promising revenue source. As the Post article points out, online syndication is expanding to all sorts of content, not just text articles and photos. Look for eBay auctions to start showing up on other sites, for example, as the auction giant starts to syndicate its auction content.
As further evidence of the growth of online content syndication, just look to Europe, where a bevy of new Web syndication companies are popping up. While key companies like iSyndicate and Screaming Media dominate online syndication in the U.S., Europe is ripe for growth in content syndication. A number of smaller companies (like YourNews and 4Content) are starting to make waves — banking on the power of local brand names to beat out efforts by the U.S. Web syndication companies to expand into the European market. —Steve
Posted 12:50 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Interview With Online Content Syndication Guru
I'm back from vacation and just published a brief off-week edition of the Content Spotlight newsletter. This features an article by me about online content syndication and pricing, based on an interview with a pioneer in the field, Elizabeth Karolczak of OSKAR Consulting. —Steve
