Category: News

I was saddened to learn of the death of Arts & Letters Daily. This remarkable site was a brilliant example of the power of really simple web page design, and a daily reminder of the amount of quality, free information on the Web.
I’m going to leave them on my bookmark list for a while, in their memory. It’s a reminder of just how ephemeral this medium is. You never know when a valuable resource, or a valued friend, will disappear. Cherish, encourage, and protect the part of Web that means the most to you.
UPDATE: Of course, A&L Daily was saved and was never out of business for long.

Why is it that Congress wants to give the citizens of other countries the technology tools to avoid censorship on the Internet, but insist on censorship in our schools and libraries and government offices. I don’t see how these tools could be really work in, say, China and not in America’s schools.
Wired News missed the deep irony of this story, but CNET got it right away. Wired news used to be the best source on the Net for information on the impact of technology on society and the other way around. Its long decline shows how hard it is for a company like Terry Lycos to manage a news operation well.

William Kennard, former FCC commissioner is admitting it’s a mistake to let content companies control distribution.
As I’ve said, I think it’s a mistake for the content companies as well. The problem is that they can do a lot of smaller content companies before it becomes clear that their strategy was boneheaded. By then, a lot of voices have been lost.

AOL/TW and Disney are considering merging their news operations. AOL/TW has been looking for a broadcast outlet for CNN for some time, and Disney is looking to save a buck or two.
This will no doubt engender some hand-wringing among people who are concerned about media consolidation, but the real problem is that there is so little initiative and diversity of coverage among the existing players that TV news is already dead for all intents and purposes.

Here’s some good news: news is the most frequently used category of web site at work. Now the bad news: perhaps a third of companies that use web filtering software block news sites, and that number may increase.
“Initially we saw the most abuse in pornography and gambling sites, now we are seeing more time spent on shopping and news sites,” said Harold Kester, Chief Technology Officer of Websense, the Web filtering company which conducted the survey. Important findings:

• 23 percent of those workers surveyed said they considered news the most addictive Web content, compared with 18 percent who reported pornography, eight percent for gambling and six percent online auctions.
• Overall news came in a very close second to online shopping, which 24 percent of those surveyed said they considered addictive.
• 67 percent of workers surveyed said they were allowed them to use their office Internet connections to read news.

Already, a third of sites that employ filters are blocking news, and the filtering companies are clearly saying that employees reading news at work is costing companies money. “I think a lot of companies to react to the current vogue, and now a lot of their concerns center on pornography and gambling sites,” said SurfControl Chief Executive Officer Steve Purdham. “But (concern about) news sites is starting to grow, especially sports news and financial news.”
According to Nielsen Net Ratings, the number of Americans accessing the Internet at work grew 17 percent in the last year.
Web filtering at work may be set to wipe out one of the largest and most desireable audiences for news on the Web.

Disney wants to sell subscription services to AT&T mobile customers. According to Reuters:

“Disney’s Magic Kingdom” will offer color graphics and games, “Disney’s Fun for Families” will parenting tips and entertainment services from Disney TV shows, and “City Lounge” will offer movie reviews and showtimes, among other features. Each will cost $3.99 per month.
Disney’s ESPN sports network will also offer its own mMode product, “myESPN,” on AT&T Wireless. The $2.99 per month service will offer live player statistics, team news, injury reports and scoring data for athletic events.
…
Disney said Sprint customers can download ring tones and screen savers, among others, for $1 to $2 each and games for $3 to $4 per game.

That last plan might make some sense. eMarketer says “mCommerce” in the early-adopter Asian market is a decent-sized business, but more than two-thirds of Japanese “mCommerce” is for ringtones and other phone enhancements.
The other Disney offerings (games, parenting tips, movie reviews, and sports stats) look like a classic case of selling what you have, instead of what consumers want. According to the eMarketer report, consumers probably want reservations for entertainment and travel. But that would require a much bigger investment.
Dopey and Goofy were unavailable for comment.

There is an excellent article covering Microsoft’s confusing Tablet PC on my favorite tech news site, The Register. The Register also points to a review of Acer’s Tablet PC and an initial take on the Tablet PC on Pen Computing’s web site.
As I said earlier, unlike The Reg, I don’t believe that this is a separate category. History shows that specialized semi-PC’s don’t sell well and that everyone wants full-power PC’s in more-compact form factors.
It feels like the industry is going to take a long time to work out the details on this product category. Microsoft has never been able to deliver products that people (as opposed to corporate IT departments) want to use. Meanwhile, I’m hopeful that Apple’s Inkwell technology signals they’ll show the industry the way out of its confusion.
Until the industry gets this right, online publishers should focus on getting their sites to work right on the real computers of the future.

The New York Times is having a difficult time selling premium, edited, archival content, according to ContentBiz.
NYTimes.com created two editors’ Picks collections (‘Glory Days of Baseball, 1947-1957’ and ‘Best Pictures: Oscar Winners in the Times’); classic article collections of up to nine archived articles on a particular topic (e.g. column collections and recipes) for $4.95; and recordings of celebrity interviews.
Deputy General Manager & Director of Operations Stephen Newman says, “We’re not convinced – the jury’s still out.” and ContentBiz concludes, “Newman admits Premium Products have not been the easy…”
You have to give them credit for trying, but clearly newspapers still haven’t learned much about how to create ancillary products (online, print, or TV) that consumers are interested in. It’s especially discouraging because it’s the New York Times, with its brand, huge online audience, and outstanding content.

Disney and AOL/Time Warner are not having a good year.
The conventional wisdom is that Disney took its eye off the ball with ABC (and got greedy with “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”), and that AOL is just another screwed-up dot-com.
In fact, both these institutions are suffering from an overdose of synergy. Because their constellations of media properties are generally so excellent and familiar, Disney and AOL/TW have been able to get away with this longer than was probably good for them.
ABC has been run as a shill for their corporate parent’s movies, networks, and theme parks — and a channel for its production companies — ever since Disney bought it. You never got the sense that Disney was trying to make it the best network on TV.
Meanwhile, AOL has been hyping TW’s content propertie for a couple of years now. These properties are very high quality, but for that reason didn’t need AOL’s marginal boost. Meanwhile, AOL has become as compelling as an infomercial.
ABC and AOL are incredibly valuable properties that are being milked dry by their owners in the name of synergy.

Advertising Age has an baffling article about Microsoft’s upcoming Tablet PC. Either Microsoft doesn’t understand the Internet or the reporter doesn’t understand what they were being told. Both are probably true.

“‘With this device you have the opportunity for a whole new presentation of advertising– it’s a print ad, a direct response ad, a full-motion video, a broadband wireless ad” said Mark Stewart, executive vice president and director of strategy and channel planning at Interpublic Group of Cos.’ Universal McCann, New York. ”
…
But the company has held talks with Forbes, Dow Jones & Co.’s Wall Street Journal and Conde Nast’s New Yorker to make content from each of the publications available on the TabletPC.
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The New Yorker will introduce a TabletPC prototype with content from the magazine at its annual festival in New York starting Sept. 27. “We see the use of technology to enhance the reading experience and wanted to get in on the ground floor,” said David Carey, vice president and publisher. “It’s a natural for us.”

(It’s probably significant that the first and most prominent quote is from the advertising agency in charge of the Tablet PC’s “multi-million dollar ad push.”)
So…either this thing uses proprietary protocols and formats (Microsoft doesn’t understand the Internet), or it doesn’t (but Microsoft convinced publishers and advertisers that it’s so different it needs purpose-built content), or the Tablet PC comes bundled with subsidized subscriptions to publications that are either subscription-only or unavailable online (where does that money come from in the long run?).