Shazam

Anyone tried this yet? Lovely idea. "Shazam is a brand new service which tags music over your mobile phone anywhere in the UK. Just hit 2580 on your mobile and hold your mobile phone towards the music for 15 seconds after the tone. We will then end the call and you will receive a txt with the name of the track and artist."
(From Azeem Azhar)

Bye bye happy Mac days

It's true - it's not just the GM release. Jaguar has ended 18 years of happy Macs. Your box will now start up with a grey Apple logo. Sob.
(From New York Times)

Large primes proved conclusively

OK, it's not exactly on the subject at hand, but it's gotta be noteworthy when when of the world's most famous problems is solved.
(From Wired)

Electronic paper update: more on Gyricon

More on electronic paper , focusing here on the Xerox offshoot Gyricon Media, whose "SmartPaper" uses the electromagnetic bead rotation approach. Gyricon have just opened a $10 million dollat plant to manufacture SmartPaper for store signs and suchlike. The Wall Street Journal have engaged in a pilot to show headlines on newsstands, beamed in wirelessly.
(From ePrairie)

NYT reviews Jagwire Registration required

David Pogue, author of "OSX: The Missing Manual", has reviewed MacOS X version 10.2 in the New York Times. He's enthusiastic: "This is a polished, innovative and — if such a term can be applied to something as nerdy as an operating system — exciting upgrade ... as fast as Mac OS 9 was, and often faster ... impressive Windows compatibility features ... plenty of big-ticket features ... the best-looking, least-intrusive and most thoughtfully designed operating system walking the earth today."
(From New York Times)

Paid content update: Outing's review

Good Stop the Presses column from Steve Outing this week reviewing paid content. Quick summary: (1), give people diverse and easy ways to pay to read your content, to allow for the variety of potential entry points; (2) small content providers should seriously consider paid content networks such as Qtik (see "Another attempt..." below); (3) digital editions will get interesting when people start buying tablets; (4) paid wi-fi and paid content don't mix; (5) like paid content networks, shared registration may become increasingly popular.
(From Editor & Publisher)

Knight Ridder to install CCI throughout

The United States' second largest newspaper group, Knight Ridder, announced last week that it has made a deal with CCI Europe to install CCI NewsDesk Release 6 at all of its 32 daily newspapers. KR already runs CCI systems at many of its papers, but also has SII, Atex/Dewar and Unisys sites. For a couple of years KR has been pushing for homogenous environments in both print and web publishing systems across the group.
(From Editor & Publisher)

Newspaper execs stick to mantra

Newspaper industry figures are continuing to talk up the role of newspapers on the web, and are remaining in a holding pattern pending the introduction of a magic cure-all business model. W Dean Singleton, CEO of the MediaNews Group in the US, told attendees at the annual convention of the West Virginia Press Association, "We are well positioned as the cornerstone of media convergence". Singleton reiterated the usual call for "immersion" in new formats and in interactivity. "I'm a believer that the payoff on the web is there; it's just waiting for us to discover the right models."
(From Yahoo News)

Northrup: cross media or crossed out

Kerry Northrup has taken Ifra's obsession with convergence to new levels by declaring that traditional journalists who work to their existing skills and specialisms are "media bigots" who will in time be "phased out". He emphasises also that convergence should be about recognising media consumers' behaviour rather than by seeking out huge mergers. Fair point, but changing content generation and distribution models isn't synonymous with the redudancy of specialisation.
(From EPN World Reporter)

Piece on the Valley

Illuminating potted history of the East Valley Tribune's launch of their Olivesoft-provided Digital Edition. They did a free 60-day trial — which required registration, so made their marketing department happy — and backed it up with extensive promotion. "We have converted about 5 percent of those (6,800) who registered for a trial of the electronic edition. We see a steady handful of signups/payments every day."
(From The Digital Edge)

Technology Review trials Zinio

Another article on digital editions in the New York Times. This one focuses on MIT's Technology Review, which is introducing a digital edition service (provided by Zinio — see earlier blog). It's interesting how papers are using articles on other publisher's introduction of digital editions as a way to attract interest in their own service — promotion by proxy.
(From New York Times)

Europe overtakes North America online

There are now more internet users in Europe (185.8 million) than in North America (182.3 million), according to a study by Nua.com. This is most likely because North America has reached saturation point earlier than elsewhere. Asia/Pacific clocks in at 167.9 million. The total figure approximates to 580 millon, compared with 407 million in December 2000. Most people online per capita: 1, Iceland (69.8%); 2, Sweden (64.68%); 3, Denmark (60.38%); 4, Hong Kong (59.58%); 5, USA (59.1%); 6, Netherlands (58.07%); 7, UK (56.88%); 8, Norway (54.4%); 9, Australia (54.38%); 10, Canada (53.79%).
(From E-Media Tidbits)

Tools to harvest rather than to sow

Nice little Six Degrees weblog entry from Mark Lemmons; an exposition of the philosophy that the interesting tools nowadays are those that exploit work that has been done already. Worth considering in light of the "move it upstream to benefit downstream" philosophy.
(From Creo)

Digital editions becoming popular in Canada

Globe and Mail article on increased interest in digital editions of newspapers in Canada. "It may be an old way of presenting information, but it is one that has proved successful over 300 years of newspaper history, because it organizes material in a logical and consistent way, while giving readers the freedom to flip through pages, picking and choosing what they want, says David Estok, adjunct professor at the University of Western Ontario's School of Journalism."
(From Globe and Mail)

Web doesn't hurt print (again)

Further evidence that newspaper websites don't cannibalise readership from the print products, and may even help single-copy sales. But it's a close-run thing.
(From Editor & Publisher)

More spent on paid content

Americans spent 92% more on online content in 2001 than in 2000, according to an Online Publishers Association study. Eighty-five percent of the $675 million spent went on subscriptions. The top three categories for spending were business content, entertainment, and lonely hearts.
(From Editor & Publisher)

Another attempt at a multi-site pass Article requires logon

Qtik is the latest idea for a flat-fee pass to enter a set of paid content sites. The model is the "cable TV package" variety, where the user gets to choose a bunch of participating sites tand then pays a fee appropriate to their package. In return they get a single logon to access all the sites on their network. One nice thing about Qtik is that there is no requirement separate logons as you switch around between sites.
(From Silicon Alley Reporter)

Publishing industry fears OSX-only Macs

Good article in eWeek following on from recent rumours that the next major Mac releases will not boot in OS9. It focuses on the publishing industry and how newspapers and developers are not yet ready for a pure OSX (or even OSX plus Classic) environment. The main problem is, of course, Quark and Quark XTensions.
(From eWeek)

Trinity Mirror revenues drop

Trinity Mirror has posted a 50% drop in online revenues in the first half of this year. The total revenues for the group's regional and national digital media operations was £300,000. However, the overall loss was only £4.4 million. Last year it was £14.7 million.
(From Revolution)

XPress for OSX expected in Q1 2003

Quark has finally given some signal that it is prepare an upgrade to XPress that will run on OSX. The new release should include support for PostScript Level 3 and will enhance the avenue.quark XML functionality. Meanwhile Quark are starting to warm people up ready for release of the workflow upgrade to DMS; they've found yet another new name for the server version of XPress: "Dynamic Document Server"; and they've announced a further reduction in development staff, this time in the German office.
(From eWeek)