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Posted 11:44 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Copyright Thugs
Norbert Specker on lawyer madness
"Copyright Thugs" is what Lawrence Lessig, a professor of law at Stanford Law School, calls the SDMI, the RIAA, and industry lawyers in an Industry Standard opinion piece. He recounts the story of Professor Felton who, invited by the SDMI, takes up the challenge to break a code that is supposed to secure copyright. As he and his fellow researchers discover strategies to break the code and expose the weaknesses, they consequently are hindered to publicize the research under the U.S. Congress' 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Lessig says it is a case of lawyers telling scientists what they are allowed to research and what not. And he is right, of course; that won't do.
Posted 7:28 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
No Ticket Exchange Necessary
Steve Klein on online sports content
The on-again-off-again business relationship between the Salt Lake Olympic Committee and Tickets.com is on again thanks to a $15 million financing package that should carry the struggling company "through and beyond its achievement of cash flow profitability in late 2001," according to a story in the Salt Lake Tribune. Tickets.com is the official 2002 Winter Olympics ticket services supplier. "Obviously, it simplifies our life enormously," says Mitt Romney, president of the SLOC. "For us to reinvent or re-create what they perfected would be costly and distracting." The SLOC is still considering options to replace Quokka.com as the official site of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. (The Tribune is providing excellent daily coverage of the 2002 games, which are just 279 days away.)
Posted 5:55 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Enemy Becomes Partner
Steve Outing on eBay deal with newspapers
Online auction giant eBay has inked deals with the St. Petersburg Times (Florida) and Star Tribune (Minneapolis) which will put local-market eBay listings in those newspapers. The idea is that eBay users who place items for sale on eBay also will be given the chance to place the same items in the classifieds section of the newspapers, for an extra fee. Times Web director Ronald Dupont says the local eBay ads will have their own special co-branded print-edition pages. Ads on those pages will offer item numbers that readers will use on TampaBay.com to find the item auctions. The Times will earn money when its TampaBay.com users register with eBay in order to bid on or sell items. He also thinks that the eBay ads may increase print readership. What eBay gets out of this is exposure to a print audience, many of whom do not use computers or aren't yet eBay customers.As Dupont told me today, times have changed — and now it's in newspapers' best interest to get friendly with companies like eBay that not long ago were considered enemies.
Posted 5:40 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
NITF, XML, and Googolplex
Norbert Specker on XML
Tim Berners-Lee speaks of the Semantic Web. A Web, like today's World Wide Web, that will consist of a googolplex of data. However, its fundamental ingredient will not be HTML but XML. Do you belong to the group of people — as I do — that has grasped the importance of XML as a meta-language for any kind of content but would have a hard time to explain how it really works to somebody else? Check this recent tutorial (part 1) on Online Journalism Review before you try it. The NITF standard is mentioned in the title because it is the most widely accepted standard for text formats in the news industry (there were different contenders). I'll let you figure out what the abbreviation stands for...
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Posted 5:04 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Web Ads Are Getting More Interesting
Steve Outing on innovations in advertising
Check out the Ford Explorer animated ad that's currently on Yahoo! It's pretty darn cool — and way more compelling than the standard Web banner or even the new mega-size Flash Web ads popping up everywhere. (Wait for the birds to peck at the bird seed, then click on the link to see the rest of the animation.)
Posted 10:33 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Whither the Writer's Strike – And the Net?
Amy Gahran on Hollywood and the Net
The Writers Guild of America is still at work even though entertainment writers' contracts with Hollywood studios have expired. While the threat of a strike still hangs in the air, neither side has quite figured out how the Internet factors into current negotiations. From an article in The Standard earlier this week: "Since the Net's revenue potential remains an X factor in online entertainment, neither side wants to get locked into a deal that could mean lost income in the future." Another concern: "Whether studios view the Net as a test medium or a full-fledged stand-alone channel. The guild wants writers to be able to test their material on the Web without it being considered 'exploited' and unoriginal as it moves to television or film."My bet: Net issues won't be resolved in these current negotiations — but watch for this issue to become a big deal in Hollywood in the next few years.
Posted 10:19 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Fall of a Cybersquatter
Andrew Stroehlein on domain name disputes
One overlooked loser in the current dot-com slump is the cybersquatter. An interesting anecdote from a friend highlights the present troubles of this most scorned type of individual. My friend has a Web publication with a well-recognized name, but they never managed to snag their actual publication's brand name as brandname.com because a cybersquatter beat them to it and demanded an outrageous price to release it. My friend and his firm went through everything to get the URL: from informal negotiation with the cybersquatter to formal domain-name dispute resolution through ICANN. They even sent around an undercover buyer to see if they could work a deal on the sly. But all efforts only benefitted the lawyers; the cybersquatter refused to lower his ransom fee. Well, my friend had the last laugh, in a sense. His company just hit a rough patch, and the brand is being discontinued. A few months ago, the cybersquatter could have had tens of thousands of dollars; now, no one's interested, and he's out the legal fees for his defense.
Posted 5:57 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Not Your Father's The Sporting News
Steve Klein on sports media
Back in the days when you could count on seeing Frank Deford's or Dan Jenkins' byline regularly, Sports Illustrated was without peer as a sports magazine. I've been a subscriber since 1959, as well as a charter subscriber of ESPN The Magazine (which debuted in 1998). But given the Web-screen presentation of both magazines, I have to admit that the reinvented The Sporting News, under the astute direction of John Rawlings, is easily my favorite sports magazine these days. Part of Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures, TSN has integrated its weekly magazine, sports specialty magazines, Web site, and Sporting News Radio into an effective and entertaining multimedia sports company.For fans of The Sporting News, it will relaunch on July 9 with heavier paper stock and a trimmer size closer to standard weeklies, according to an article in MediaWeek. "We like being viewed as a throwback in some ways, but we don't want people thinking of us as (Boston's) Fenway Park, which has outlived its usefulness," says Francis Farrell, general manager and publisher of TSN. "We want them to think of us as (Baltimore's) Camden Yards, where we've got a classic, contemporary positioning with the modern amenities of a modern magazine."
Posted 4:09 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
How Online Newspapers are Protecting Their Content
Amy Gahran on preventing content theft
The May edition of The Digital Edge includes an excellent overview by J.D. Lasica of various techniques and technologies that some newspapers are using to prevent theft of the online editions of their content. Solutions include easy automated issuance of permissions for republication or reprints, encrypting content, and more. See: "Preventing Content from Being Napsterized."
Posted 12:41 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Old Media Joins New in Begging for Cash
Steve Outing on asking readers for money
It's not just online media that are begging for money. As San Francisco Chronicle media writer Dan Fost reports today (third item), the San Francisco Independent, a free neighborhood paper owned by Ted Fang (who also owns the San Francisco Examiner), has asked its readers to donate money to ensure its survival. Delivered along with the most recent print edition was an envelope reading "HELP!" and asking for voluntary contributions. As an enticement for sending in $20, Independent readers will get a free 6-month subscription to the Examiner.
Posted 10:49 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
No Pay Czech
Andrew Stroehlein on the search for profitability
While some are claiming that the European online industry is in better shape than the American, those in the biz here are thinking otherwise and resorting to desperate measures. Ivo Lukacovic, chief of the first and most successful Czech Web portal and search engine, Seznam, has announced that he will forgo his salary and bonuses until the company returns to the black. As the Prague Post reports, Seznam's competitors are calling it a PR stunt, but whatever the case, Seznam certainly needs the money. More importantly, the move is highly symbolic in the Czech Republic, where Lukacovic is "Mr. Internet." Frequently interviewed in the media (including once by this author), Lukacovic is the public face of the Czech Web, and the fact that he is openly airing his troubles is a signal to the whole country that Web-based business in the Czech Republic is facing hard times.
Posted 10:40 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A New Book Catches Up with Convergence
Steve Klein on convergence
If convergence still sounds like some kind of new-fangled media concept to you, consider that the book publishing industry has caught up with it. Washington Post book editor Jonathan Yardley reviews "Going Live: Getting the News Right in a Real-Time, Online World," by Philip Seib, which contends in a taut 197 pages that covering news as it happens "is exciting and dramatic, but is it good journalism?"This issue hasn't exactly escaped those of us who have worked in New Media environments. Timeliness has always been a cornerstone of good journalism, but the impact of velocity, or the speed with which we both present and at the same time examine the news deserves constant and thoughtful re-examination. Examples are many, but you only have to think back to last December, when confused correspondents stood on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court late at night trying to make instant sense of a decision that ultimately determined the next American president.
Posted 10:34 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Victims of Our Own Creativity
Andrew Stroehlein on the continuing crash
With site after site belatedly adopting a "pay or else" approach these days, it's pretty obvious we're at the bitter end of the free-and-fun stage of online publishing. Steve Outing's lessons from his attempt to beg for money make it even more clear that we creative journalist types made a critical mistake right at the beginning of our online efforts. We developed excellent, popular, and even award-winning publications, and we thought that excellence, popularity, and awards would eventually translate into a sustainable business. Well, we were wrong. Many of us journalists were just so excited by what we could do with a small Web site that we lost track of business reality. Money doesn't magically gravitate toward excellence; in fact, money very often props up mediocrity — as long as mediocrity has good salespeople and a solid, paying customer base.
Posted 10:29 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Rescue of a Web Site
Jade Walker on saving a dot-bomb
As mentioned in a previous Tidbits item, my Inscriptions Magazine recently switched to a paid subscription format. Although it hasn't received the proposed 75% response rate, I was overwhelmed with encouragement from readers to keep the site up and running.Opengov, the U.K.'s first official government Web site, received a similar reaction from the public and press when it announced plans to close. According to a report at Guardian Unlimited, Opengov was saved due to "lots of e-mails" from users. It had planned to close in June, and would have been replaced by UKonline.
Posted 1:44 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Smile When You Order That Drink!
Amy Gahran on webcams in bars
Apparently, "barcams" are the latest craze in the weird world of webcams. Keep an eye out the next time you visit your local watering hole or secret hangout. Your drunken exploits and failed flirtations may have a global audience! Some people worry that jealous spouses may spy on them through barcams. From what I've seen, the picture quality is too poor to recognize anyone! See "Buy a Shot, Wave to the Camera," Wired News, May 2, by Julia Scheeres. Find barcams in cities around the world via Barstar. Too bad I can't find one listed in Los Angeles, where I'll be celebrating Cinco de Mayo this weekend!
Posted 1:28 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
60,000 Gemstar E-book Devices Sold
Steve Outing on slow adoption of e-readers
According to an article in CNET's News.com, Gemstar has sold only 60,000 of its REB1100 and REB1200 e-book reading devices. That's pretty poor, because the technology does have a promising future. At some point, e-readers (as I prefer to call them) will be commonplace for reading books and periodicals. But it's going to take a while for the devices to become mainstream — even though Gemstar has made a feeble attempt at pushing them to the consumer market with the RCA brand name slapped on the units.Gemstar and Thomson Consumer Electronics (which actually manufactures the units under the RCA brand) are not covering themselves with glory yet. There are several major problems: 1) The price of the books to be read on the devices are not cheap enough; you can buy a printed book for less money at a warehouse club. 2) The software for the units is clunky. (I have an REB1100, and I was sorely disappointed when I started to use it. I'll stick to paper books till Gemstar/RCA comes up with a better user interface.) 3) There are only 4,000 titles (a pittance compared to a physical or online bookstore's offerings), and you can't even get the Harry Potter books in e-book form yet. Gemstar's CEO says, "It is not for this year to make a big splash." Sorry to say, there won't be a big splash until Gemstar starts making smarter decisions regarding its e-book division.
Posted 12:57 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Content Plus Community — In One
Rich Gordon on an interesting new idea
Many online publications, whether news sites or weblogs (including this one), try to weave together editorial content with user feedback. It's a great way to build a community around your content. But usually, the content and the feedback are pretty well separated from one another, making it cumbersome for the user to move back and forth between the two. Until now, the best thing I'd seen was the way ZDNet puts user feedback at the bottom of columns. But even this is less than ideal, because once you click to read a post, you no longer see the content on which the post was based.So here's something pretty cool: a Flash app called "Ghost" that enables you to attach a discussion thread to any part of a page. (Scroll down to the headline, "Leave Your Mark ...") There's at least one bug: it won't take long e-mail addresses. And I'm not thrilled with the idea of using Flash for this purpose. It wouldn't be that hard, methinks, to create something similar (a pop-up window with a context-sensitive message board) using HTML-based software. But I haven't seen anything like that before. Has anyone else? (If so, let me know at richgor@northwestern.edu.)
Posted 11:42 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
More Humiliation for Salon
Steve Outing on webzine's continuing troubles
Salon.com expects to lose its seat on the Nasdaq stock exchange in June, because its stock continues to be at such a low price, according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Posted 11:30 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Demand for Content Boosts Use of Press Releases
Kerry Northrup on what "content" sites do for "news"
An article in the May 2001 edition of Business 2.0 notes that hardest hit by the dot-com collapse have been content sites, which accounted for 30% of new-media shutdowns since 2000. As a result, many content providers are cutting costs by relying more heavily on corporate handouts. Screaming Media, Jay Chiat's content syndication company, estimates that a company with a significant online presence could spend as much as $500,000 per month generating its own content. Or it could publish lots of public relations content such as press releases — for free.Adding to the problem is the need sites have for news that is constantly updated. Almost 42 million users visit the top 10 general news sites, and the competition among sites is fierce. As a result, many sites have automated their news input mechanisms to ensure fresh stories get posted regularly from a variety of news services, and readers often have no way to tell the difference between a press release and a genuine news story. Says Larry Kramer, CEO of CBS MarketWatch.com. "The public's appetite for information seems so insatiable that it swallows words of all flavors equally — the deceptive with the straightforward, the confused with the understood, the false with the accurate."
Posted 3:31 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Today's Victim: Softlock
Steve Outing on dot-bombs
Geez, it seems like there's one of these just about every day. Today's news of a significant online content failure is SoftLock, a digital rights management services company that does business by the name of Digital Goods. The Wall Street Journal reports on SoftLock's demise, in yet another example of how companies serving the e-publishing market haven't been able to survive the downturn — despite the long-term promise of the market. SoftLock had shifted its focus away from DRM somewhat and toward marketing digital content, but it wasn't enough. A handful of employees remain to wind down operations and sell off assets.
Posted 1:45 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Depths to Which We've Sunk
Steve Outing on content sites' survival strategies
InternetContent.net's Nick Torday writes in an editorial this week about the state of online content sites, with many resorting to asking users for money. (Nick uses my recent campaign to drum up voluntary financial support for Content-Exchange.com as one of the examples.) He writes: "It's kind of like the end of a free festival where all the musicians and promoters have been laying out the tunes for the screaming, adulating crowds when suddenly, on the last morning, they realise they are staring bankruptcy in the face and run to the gates begging the muddied hippies to part with a few dollars for the musical delights they have savoured." He continues: "Take, for example, a daily newsletter that has consistently provided you with a few precious nuggets of information each morning. If its producer asks you for a one-time contribution of five or ten bucks to keep it coming, would you rather spend that on a lukewarm beer and a soggy burrito after work? Probably. Well, your loss."
Posted 1:34 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Convergence Confusion
Kerry Northrup on the effect of convergence on news coverage
This week's Ifra Trend Report cites an article in the Online Journalism Review, dated April 20, in which content development consultant Julia Frazier gives a warning to this year's journalism graduates: They couldn't be entering the job market at a more confusing time, and those who dream of providing original content for the Web should resign themselves to merely recycling the newsgathering efforts of traditional print and broadcast media until better technology makes real convergence possible for the average user. Compare this with the view of Gerald Levin, CEO of AOL Time Warner, who waxes rhapsodically about convergence at every opportunity.The difference is in perspective.
For corporations, convergence is a godsend. It means being able to reach more readers, viewers, and listeners with fewer news professionals. But from a news perspective, it may mean that less news gets covered. A report by Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post finds that network television news, for example, is not faring well in the corporate world of convergence. Disney is cutting back at ABC News, with veteran reporters Sheila MacVicar and Morton Dean among the first to go. Confronted by Ted Koppel in a meeting with news staffers, Disney chief Michael Eisner declared that no one can expect immunity from company-wide layoffs, including the Disney animators who feel they are "the heart and soul of the company."
Posted 1:07 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Still Waiting for Broadband
Steve Klein on online sports content
Considering all that has happened on the dot-com landscape in the past year, here's an interesting question: If you had it to do all over again, would you?"If we had known the deployment of high-speed networks was going to be two to three years beyond what the analysts had predicted, we may not have allocated the resources," says Alan Ramadan, co-founder of failed sports site Quokka, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Friday. In a story in the Sydney Morning Herald, Ramadan admitted "we could have done things better as well." Ramadan partnered with Australian America's Cup hero John Bertrand to create the "sports immersion" site, which was so dependent on broadband access, in 1996. Quokka reported a net loss of $149 million for the year ending December 20 and spent more than $100 million developing an infrastructure to deliver real-time coverage of sports events. In the process, Quokka acquired Total Sports and Golf.com in 2000 and partnered with NBC to produce the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics Web site.
Posted 9:56 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Visualizing the Web
Katja Riefler on new models of orientation
Some days ago Norbert Specker told us about a new search engine that provides a preview of the Web sites that could be visited. That might be a small step in getting better orientation and finding what you really want. There are a variety of companies that try to help people with visual information to find their way through the Web. One of the oldest might be The Brain, which just launched its WebBrain-Projekt which is indeed some kind of visual Web catalog. Quite the same idea but a little bit more colorful solution (requires a plug-in from Microsoft) is WebMap. Three-dimensional orientation systems did not work well with news Web sites in the past, if you remember. But perhaps they are a good idea for Web catalogs?
Posted 12:12 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Another Online News Casualty
Steve Outing on dot-bombs
Add another one to the list. The news today was that LocalBusiness.com has been shuttered and all its 60-75 remaining employees sent looking for new work. Established in 1997 (and once known as dBusiness.com), the company operated local-business-news sites serving various large and medium sized U.S. cities. While most of the employees were based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, each city generally had a staff or freelance reporter producing local business stories. The idea was to compete with daily newspapers' business sections and weekly business newspapers. Obviously, the concept wasn't strong enough to survive the current dot-com downturn. Where once such online news ventures looked to pose a threat to local newspapers, the print publishers now look to be sitting pretty again as potential digital competitors drop out of sight.
Posted 6:23 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
More Adventures in Interactive Marketing
Rich Gordon on new forms of online advertising
The "Shoshkele" advertisements (from United Virtualities) that Steve wrote about last week are interesting, though I'm still a little befuddled about how the ads actually work. The site claims they are cross-browser compatible and don't require the user to have a plug-in. But the examples on the company Web site are not "real" — they are Flash-based demos in which the underlying content page is not functional (i.e., the links don't work). Still, a couple of the demos are quite interesting, especially this one for a tropical tourism destination. I'd argue that it's too intrusive and inappropriate for an editorial site, but I have to say I haven't seen anything like it.Meanwhile, here are two other new online advertising ideas from a company called Hyper Concepts:
- HydraLink. A floating ad that appears when a user mouses over a link, giving the user several options, including "go now," add to a personalized list of sites to visit, and "open in new window."
- Banner Console. A small bar that shows up when a user mouses over a banner ad, again giving the user options including "check ad later."
Posted 5:53 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
'Don't Ask Us to Pay, Dammit!'
Steve Outing on paying for content
From a Wayne Robins article in Editor & Publisher comes an indication of the reaction you'll get if you try to take a free Web content service and start charging for it. At the Standard-Times in New Bedford, Massachusetts, the paper's Web site began charging last November. From Robins' article: "'The reaction from our audience was incredibly negative,' (online services manager Mike) Conery said. 'Mean, vile responses, saying, "How dare you charge for online content! You have no right!"' Conery saw the bright side of this reaction. 'It proved our editorial product had value, because if it didn't have value, they wouldn't be so upset at having to pay for it.'"
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Correspondent.com is a dedicated secure environment connecting the worldwide community of independent journalists, editors and publishers.
Apply today at www.correspondent.com.
Posted 2:04 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
You Are Not Alone
Steve Outing on paid vs. free online content
Lots of publishers and entrepreneurs on the Net are contemplating charging for content and services that they have been giving away free. If you're considering that and want to know that you're not alone, check out The End of Free weblog, which chronicles free content and services that have gone over to a paid model. On the other side of the coin, there's Save The Free Web, a site that provides links to articles about free content, and a discussion forum about how to save advertising-supported free-content services.
Posted 10:43 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Online Film Promos Finally Getting Good
Amy Gahran on the "AI" online promo
Normally I loathe the way movies are promoted — cheesy lookalike trailers, endless broadcast commercials. And most of the time, official movie Web sites are pretty predictable and do nothing to spur my interest. However, there's a very intriguing Internet-based promo for the upcoming Steven Spielberg blockbuster, Artificial Intelligence ("AI"). There now exist a group of Web sites related to the film, presented as if they were real, not fictional. I haven't really delved into this yet, but apparently the alternative online world created around the film is pretty interesting, complex, and detailed. Some friends of mine who are "into the AI thing" say some sites ask you to enter your phone number and e-mail address — and if you do, you get calls or e-mails back from fictional characters. Read more about it in Kubrick's strange afterlife, The Guardian, April 30.
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