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Posted 3:55 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
More E-mail Zaniness
Norbert Specker on Yahoo!'s bizarre tactics
In a twist to the story about the impending end of the killer app "e-mail" from Wednesday, Danny O'Brian reports in his Need To Know today that Yahoo! changes the wording of e-mails sent to recipients with a @yahoo.com address. "Mocha" will be switched into "espresso," "expression" invariably becomes a "statement," and there are a few other words. (As Danny says, "Try not to send it to your friends.")
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Posted 2:58 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
USAToday.com Hacked
Steve Outing on Internet pranks
I'd kind of forgotten about Matt Drudge, but he's still around — reporting that USAToday.com was hacked Thursday night. Bogus stories were inserted that blasted George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and Christianity. Read some of the spoofs/hacks on Drudge's site (which of course have been removed from USAToday.com by now).
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Posted 2:41 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Those Darn Spam Filters
Steve Outing on impact on e-mail publishers
Fellow E-Media Tidbits contributor Vin Crosbie (who's an e-mail publishing expert) has noticed some odd behavior on mail he receives from his ISP, The Well. On newsletters from The Economist and the South China Morning Post, and messages from Poynter's Online-News discussion list and the NAA New Media Federation list, The Well's mail server is inserting "SPAM?" in the subject lines of Crosbie's mail. This is because The Well recently began using Spam Assassin server-level filtering to ease Well users' spam woes. But the trouble with nearly all spam filters is that they unfairly tag legitimate, opt-in e-mail as possible spam. Sometimes mail is just tagged as in this case, sometimes it's deleted before it reaches the subscriber.I wonder when legitimate (non-spamming) e-mail publishers will rise up and do something about this awful trend. Ridding the e-world of spam is a noble effort, but many of the spam filters employed by ISPs and corporations are nowhere near sophisticated enough to determine what's spam and what's asked-for e-mail (such as newsletters and discussion list messages). This is badly hurting e-mail publishers, who have a right to deliver their mail to customers who ASKED for it. Is it time to think about doing something about this? To demand that spam filter makers stop blocking opt-in mail? (CNET News.com also has a good story today on this same topic.)
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Posted 2:20 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
nw hEr's a gud srvic
Rich Gordon on translating SMS lingo
While, at 44, I am moving inexorably into "middle age," I still like to think of myself as young. But "kids these days" communicate differently than I do. If you doubt it, check out their IM communications. They're filled with abbreviations and lingo, some of it (but not all) borrowed from the world of chat and discussion boards. (For instance: emoticons ("smileys"), LOL (laughing out loud), :X (secret).) Now comes transl8it! to the rescue. Use it to convert IM (or SMS) messages to normal English; or the other way around so you don't come off like an "old fogey" (that's what my generation called our parents). Or convert from English to IM/SMS lingo to save money (if you're doing SMS over a cellphone, you usually pay by the byte).
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Posted 2:12 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Cyber-Crackdown Intensifies
Andrew Stroehlein on the Internet in China
The past week has been pretty grim for the Internet in China, on both the supply and the demand sides. First, important Chinese sites and ISPs signed an agreement pledging to self-censor their online content, eliminating anything that might "harm national security and social stability." Then, the authorities shut down more than 500 Internet cafes in the northern province of Hebei. Citing "safety concerns" after a June fire in a Beijing Internet cafe, the authorities have unleashed a wave of Internet cafe closures throughout China over the past few weeks. Reporters Without Borders' "Chronicle of Repression" documents the last few years of China's heavy-handed approach and lists some of the online journalists and Internet users still imprisoned for their Web activity.
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Posted 3:38 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A New Online News Resource
Steve Outing on a weblog
Here's a site to add to your bookmark list: Holovaty.com, a new weblog by Adrian Holovaty, assistant database editor and product developer at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The blog focuses on the technical side of news websites — design, accessibility, usability, etc. It's for people who care about the nuts and bolts of the business: HTML, style sheets, fonts, etc. Holovaty describes it as "kind of an E-Media Tidbits meets evolt.org." (Cool feature: note the "Open links in new window" checkbox on the left of the page. It's a great idea to give users the option of same-window or new-window links.)
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Posted 2:09 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Solving the Transaction Problem
Rich Gordon on the latest from Microsoft
If paid online content is ever going to be a big business, it's going to have to be easier for consumers to buy it. Right now, every site that sells things has a different registration process and a separate credit-card entry form. As you might expect, Microsoft is trying to solve this problem — to its own benefit, of course. The company announced this week that it is partnering with a security-software company to connect its Passport identification system with credit-card authorization services.I don't really like the idea of having Microsoft sit between information consumers and paid-content sites, but the company is uniquely positioned to create a near-universal user-registration system, and adding credit-card authorization is a logical next step. If a Passport ID could be entered instead of a credit card, online purchases would become much easier — and the long-talked-about "micropayment" system could become a possibility.
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Posted 12:54 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Making Money From Deep Linkers
Steve Outing on a creative solution
I hope that you regularly check the "Discuss This" links that accompany E-Media Tidbits items. Often, you'll find stuff that's as interesting and creative (or more so) as what's written by this weblog's writers. Case in point: Rick Brown's comment yesterday about how to deal with deep linkers if you are a publisher who objects to the practice. Brown suggests a (devious?) approach that doesn't involve lawyers: Instead of redirecting a user coming in via a third-party deep linker to your home page (a dubious practice), put up a fee page; make those who don't come in through your home page pay to see the content they seek. The price for those getting to a page from elsewhere in your site is free. Now, I don't recommend this practice — but I applaud Brown for his creative thinking.
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Posted 12:21 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Evil Done by E-mail Filters
Norbert Specker on troubles with the "killer app"
Geoff Duncan is responsible for running a widespread serious mailing list for Macintosh users that is a namesake of our effort here: Tidbits. (Cool feature: send mail to tidbits@tidbits.com to receive the current issue.) His report in the current issue is about thousands of bounces of legitimate e-mail (like newsletters) by mail server filters at companies and institutions. He illustrates how completely unpredictable they are and details the words and expressions that triggered them. Hair-raising. The commercially oriented question he asks: can e-mail be saved as a valuable tool. Politically the question is: how are the accidental censors on the server level kept in check? Is there anything more decisive to your online reading habits than the church or party your server administrator belongs to? This is a good read with loads of examples.
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Posted 7:14 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A Feisty Australian News Blog
Steve Outing on weblogs
Having written recently about news weblogs, I've been asked by a bunch of folks for examples of good blogs produced by newspaper journalists. Here's one: Margo Kingston's Web Diary on the website of the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia). Kingston recently focused her weblog on news of an affair between two prominent former politicians — intertwining her own commentary with comments from Web readers. Margaret Ruwoldt of the University of Melbourne, who tipped me off to Web Diary, describes it: "Obviously the SMH knows it's onto a good thing: Kingston's gonzo ethic, strong writing, and determination to be accessible to her (loyal, yet feisty) audience find a natural outlet in weblogging."
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Posted 6:09 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Teachers Are Online
Juan C. Camus on Chilean Internet demographics
Teachers are the most Internet networked professionals in Chile, according a study released by Ministerio de Educación (Chilean Department of Education). As La Tercera informs us, 64% have a PC at home and 41% have Internet access. To compare, within the wealthiest group of Chileans, 60% have a PC at home and 38% have an Internet connection.
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Posted 1:08 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Shove the Lawyers in the Closet
Steve Outing on "deep linking"
The deep linking controversy shows no signs of going away, unfortunately. We had a bad ruling in Denmark (that's my belief, anyway), and there seems to be momentum for publishers to consider how to prevent some deep linking. If you're hell-bent on adopting a no-deep-links strategy, then please keep the lawyers out of the picture; they'll screw it up. The answer is a technical one: simply block deep linkers that you don't like. (For the record, while I think that in most cases deep linking is benign and not something Web publishers should worry about, I do realize that there are occasional legitimate reasons for blocking deep links — such as when linkers create so much traffic as to increase bandwidth costs, or when a linker is making money from linking to your content and you object.)Writing in SearchDay today, Eric Ward sums up the situation wisely: "Deep linking is not a problem that needs a legal solution. If you don't want someone deep linking to your site, you write a two-line script that checks the referring URL, and then redirects anybody coming in from any page that is not on your site already. It's so easy it's silly. End of problem. I've been doing linking related consulting for eight years, and I would be thrilled to speak in court to the legal establishment as to why lawsuits are 100% unnecessary for ALL linking related issues." It's so simple. Only getting lawyers involved makes it difficult.
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Posted 12:37 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Newspaper Sites Grow Fast – Some of Them
Steve Outing on city guides vs. news sites
A report was released yesterday indicating that 7 of 10 major-market U.S. newspaper websites have seen their usage grow much faster than the Internet as a whole. (Read about the report at CBSMarketwatch.com.) That's great, except for the three that didn't do as well: Boston.com (NY Times Co.), Philly.com and DFW.com (both Knight Ridder). Each of those sites is currently operating with a "city guide" emphasis, rather than portraying themselves foremost as news sites. Those sites did not surpass the overall Internet growth rate. Interesting, eh?
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Posted 12:25 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Storm Breezes Out of MSNBC.com
Steve Outing on the online news biz
Following out the door on the heels of Merrill Brown is MSNBC.com's director of multimedia, Brian Storm — who has announced that he's leaving to take a job at Corbis, a digital news agency owned by Bill Gates. Storm has been at MSNBC.com since the beginning, and is a star of the online news and digital photojournalism worlds.
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Posted 4:47 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Ego Surfing the Blogs
Steve Outing on tracking your weblog press
My most recent Editor & Publisher column generated more buzz than usual. (I advocated that newspapers give all reporters and photographers weblogs.) I was curious to see what the weblog community was saying about my suggestions, so I did a quick search on Daypop for my name. The results (which can be limited to just weblogs) listed most of the blogs that mentioned my column. (Not surprisingly, most of the bloggers approved of my ideas; I've also received quite a bit of criticism, but most of it seems to be from more "traditional" journalists.) Anyway, I point out Daypop's weblog search function as a useful and entertaining "ego surfing" tool — or for that matter, a great way to view bloggers' thoughts on any topic.
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Posted 4:02 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Denmark Ruling Reconsidered
Rich Gordon on the issues surrounding "deep linking"
As I read the coverage (ZDNet, Wired News, AP) and reaction (Search Engine Watch) to the Danish court decision banning "deep linking" to newspaper websites, it seems to me that an essential element is mostly being missed. Newsbooster is not just deep-linking; it is deep-linking and collecting money from subscribers who receive the headline-aggregation service. Now, I am skeptical that Newsbooster has much of a business (they're charging 199 Euro/year [about US$200]), though I'm sure the publicity about this case isn't hurting them any. But let's just say that this is a real business. Shouldn't they share some revenue (presumably, based on click-throughs) with the sites whose headlines they harvest?Or think about this concept the other way around (a la my item below this one about Corante and The Economist). If a headline aggregation service drives someone to purchase content on a publisher's site, shouldn't the publisher share some revenue with the aggregation service? As a practical matter, I don't see courts in any country getting entangled in linking lawsuits unless there's real money involved. Leaving aside the technological and legal issues for the moment, if the Danish court's decision were to result in linker/linkee revenue sharing, it would be a good thing for all concerned.
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Posted 1:47 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A Glimpse of the Paid-Content Future?
Rich Gordon on Corante and The Economist
I just had an experience that, to me, came close to the way paid content could or should work on the Web. Not perfect, but close. I was reading the Corante e-mail newsletter (highly recommended, if you don't get it — and check out its weblogs on copyright and blogging), and it listed an article in The Economist called "The trees fight back: Should old media embrace blogging?" I went to The Economist's site to check it out. Unfortunately, I discovered it was "premium content" — to read it, I'd have to pay. The Economist offered me a variety of options, including a full subscription to the site ($9.95/week, $19.95/month, $69/year) and per-article credits ($2.95 for one, $7.95 for five). The registration and payment process were smooth (I chose the five-article option) and, at the end of it, a single click took me to the specific article I wanted.What was good about this process: An editor scanning many information sources pointed me to content I was willing to pay for, and I was offered a nice range of payment options. Bad: The Economist site gives you only a headline (no abstract to help you decide if the article is worth buying), and we don't yet have a registration/payment system that's accepted on multiple sites (so I have to register and enter credit card numbers on every site I buy content from). But all in all, this was a satisfying experience for me and made money for The Economist.
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Posted 12:56 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A Pro-active Way to Fight Anti-Deep Linkers
Steve Outing on an interesting idea
In the item below this, it's suggested that Web publishers who ban "deep links" (that is, links to any content other than their home pages) will earn the wrath of the market. Here's another suggestion from James Sisk of Epic Learning: any organization that restricts free linking gets "blackblogged" (Sisk's term). The idea, he says, is that "even the biggest of the big shots need us more than we need them. ... If you don't let everyone link freely to your site, then none of us will link to you at all. Imagine if Google said, due to the restrictive policies of the Church of Scientology, Google does not list links to their sites. Even if the Googles and Yahoos didn't buy in, the risk of damage from losing the links they like would almost certainly force a higher level of tolerance for the ones they don't."
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Posted 12:31 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Deep-linking Decision: A Pyrrhic Victory for Newspapers
Steve Outing on the continuing controversy
I've used strong terms to describe various publishers' attempts to prohibit "deep linking" to their website content, and I'll stick to that. It's a stupid policy, as was the recent Danish deep-linking decision. SearchDay's Chris Sherman weighs in today with some additional worthwhile perspective on the Danish case:"The newspapers celebrating this decision will likely find that the court's agreeing with their idiotic deep linking policies is a Pyrrhic victory. This decision, if upheld, won't destroy the Web — it will Balkanize it. Sites that prohibit deep linking will likely encounter a backlash among the Web community, and find that people don't link to them at all. Search engines will also be wary of these sites. In other words, sites enjoining access by any route other than their home page will find that they are isolated and cut off from the Web community. They may have loyal users, but the Web community as a whole will either ignore or be ignorant of their existence. What a great strategy to attract advertisers!"
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Posted 12:04 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Some New Resources
Norbert Specker on Web news search
Find out which sites Google has newly indexed regarding "September 11" today, yesterday, in the last 7 days, and the last 30 days. (Smart search courtesy of Tara Calishain, proprietor of Researchbuzz. Go there if you want to use the tool for looking up other newly indexed topics.)
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Posted 4:11 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Lessons from Netflix
Rich Gordon on online DVD rentals and other forms of content
The San Jose Mercury News has an interesting story on Netflix, a real success in today's depressed Internet economy. Of course, one might argue that it isn't an Internet firm at all, since customers order DVDs online but get them delivered by mail. But I think the Netflix story is relevant to the online content world for (at least) the following reasons:
It has applied technology effectively (collaborative filtering) to recommend movies that users might not otherwise have thought of. These kinds of tools are used widely on the Internet (for instance, Amazon's recommender engine) but not much in the world of editorial content.
It's not really emphasized in the article, but Netflix has done something that Blockbuster hasn't — turned video rental from an a la carte service (rent when you want, don't pay if you don't rent) into a subscription service (fixed $19.95 per month fee for three movies at a time). What makes a service so valuable to someone that they're willing to sign up for service with a monthly charge? I'd love to have a better understanding of this.
People will pay to be entertained. If you want to charge for your content, is it entertaining enough?
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Posted 2:00 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
WSJ.com Price Goes Up
Peter M. Zollman on online news business models
In the annals of subscription websites, very few have had the success of the Wall Street Journal's. WSJ.com has built an audience of more than 640,000 paying subscribers (including me, even though I'm generally loathe to pay for online content), paying $59 per year or $29 per year if they are also print subscribers. The site has been growing steadily, and the Journal recently reported that it spent $26 million on an overhaul.That growth may be tested soon. Last week WSJ.com announced new prices: $79 (an increase of more than 25%), or $39 for print subscribers (an increase of more than 33%). I don't remember when my subscription runs out, but I'll think harder about a renewal at 80 bucks a year than I would have at 60. I'm not sure I get more than $5 a month in value out of WSJ.com — perhaps because I don't use many of the personalization features that are at its core. (And I sure wish they would have sent me a "The price is going up — renew now to get the old rate" e-mail announcement before jacking it up.)
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Posted 1:04 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Catching Up on the World, Via E-mail
Steve Outing on online news
I just returned from a camping vacation, so obviously I was off-line. I also didn't read newspapers or listen to radio news — so it was a stress-free week of no news is good news. When I returned to my e-mail in-box, however, I was glad that I subscribe to several e-mail news alert services. Scanning through my in-box, I quickly got a read on the major headlines of the last week. I highly recommend this approach to catching up when you've turned off the news spigot for a while.
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Posted 12:46 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Price for Live Sports Results Online
Norbert Specker on real-time content
The Financial Times Germany reports on negotiations between T-Online and Kirch (in receivership) for the right to live reporting from the German national soccer league via the Internet (fixed and mobile). According to the article, the estimated price tags for the Internet rights are 30-35 million Euro, and another 25-40 million Euro for the mobile rights (starting in 2003). If that is an indication of the anticipated ad and subscription revenue by T-Online, the Internet future does not look so gloomy.
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Posted 12:36 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
'Deep Linking' Illegal (at Least in Denmark)
Katja Riefler on a Danish Court decision
The Danish Newspaper Association (DDF) can claim the first victory in "The War on Links." A Danish court decided on July 5th to issue a preliminary injunction against the news search engine and personalized clipping service Newsbooster.com for the use of direct "hyperlinking." Newsbooster covers more than 4,500 mainstream and specialized news sources and presents sorted headlines and sometimes abstracts that are linked to the original sources. Paying clients can get customized versions delivered to their websites or intranets. This decision will give new life to the discussion of whether news search engines like that are legal or not. If it prevails, quite a lot of Internet companies will have to rethink their business models. You'll find more details and background information on the Newsbooster home page.
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Posted 11:47 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
8 out of 17 Awards to the BBC
Andrew Stroehlein on the EOJAs
BBC News Online was this year's big winner at the European Online Journalism Awards, taking 8 of the 17 awards on offer. This was the fourth annual NetMedia competition, and the judging saw 875 entries from 24 countries across Europe. The full list of winners was revealed at a ceremony in London on July 5.
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