Adobe licenses Opera

Adobe has licensed Opera's HTML rendering engine for use within Adobe applications. A spokeswoman for Opera focused on Adobe's interest in Opera's small-screen rendering technology, which reformats HTML to fit on multiple devices etc. The most immediately obvious application would be for rendering HTML within web applications such as GoLive, however, the ability to properly render stylesheeted HTML within a creative application suggests all sorts of other possibilities. For example, instead of "Galley View" and "Layout View" in a text editor, how about "Galley View", "Print Layout View", "Webpage Layout View", "Tablet View", etc? Opera's press release is here.
(From MacCentral)

Bruce Chizen interview

Given that Adobe and Apple are the two primary vendors in our editorial system project, we have an interest in their relationship. In this interview with Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen he insists that the relationship is "a great one".
(From CNet)

IDC: tablet PCs will take off

Actually, the article headline indicates that they are taking off, but it's hardly persuasive. What was perhaps noteworthy was that IDC predicts that by 2007 these devices -- which are more obviously suited for digital newspapers than palmtops -- will represent 20 per cent of the portable PC market.
(From Wired)

InCopy CS will be sold direct to customers

As part of today's Creative Suite announcement, Adobe has announced that the text editor InCopy (which includes the CS monicker but isn't part of the CS box set) will henceforth be available for purchase directly from Adobe. Previously it has only been sold through a systems integrator. Estimated street price is $249.
(From Adobe)

OPA's report is misleading - Crosbie

Digital Deliverance's Vin Crosbie reckons the Online Publishers Association's latest report on paid content -- which suggests healthy growth -- is highly misleading due to inappropriate methodology. Crosbie lambasts the OPA for stretching the definition of publishers' paid content -- for example, including B2B reports, subscription directories, help lines, personal growth services, greeting card services, music streaming, games, dating services and centrefold pinups. He feels that the OPA's members are just saying what they want to hear.
(From Digital Deliverance)

Guardian vs Independent OS debate

This is so lame it's almost sweet. Guardian Computer Editor Jack Schofield takes swipe at Apple. His counterpart at Indy, Charles Arthur, retaliates in equally tragic manner. The two then argue about "having a life". Ye gods! Thank you photographer Nick Miners for observing on "the particularly high standard of intellectual debate". Now, answers on a postcard: am I equally rubbish for (a) finding this at all interesting, and (b) feeling that it was worth communicating to anyone with a pulse? Oh, dammit, an ego spat is always worth laughing at.
(From Onlineblog)

Fleet Street no more

Reuters' planned decampment to Canary Wharf marks the last departure of The News from the Street of Adventure...
(From MediaGuardian.co.uk)

E-paper update: electrowetting

Philips reckon that the future of e-paper is totally liquid. The usual model for e-paper "ink" -- as used by E Ink -- is called "electrocphoresis" and involves lifting particles up in a liquid to make them visible. Philips's method -- electrowetting -- has the coloured matter in liquid form: a liquid within a liquid. What this all means is that it's much faster -- fast enough to deal with moving images. And they might even have a 1 inch prototype by the end of the year.
(From BBC News)

Indy officially announces tabloid

Hardly news to anyone, but here's the Indy's official announcement. From September 30 the Independent will run in both tabloid and broadsheet format (initially) in the M25 area. The run will start at 85,000 copies in each format. The smaller version will include "every story, every columnist, every picture, every feature". As expected they will be plugging the "commuter convenience" line, but they are also suggesting that they do not plan to drop the broadsheet format altogether -- instead, they wil offer a choice. MediaGuardian's report here.
(From The Independent)

"Guardian turns magpie"

This has been around for ages, but I've only just read it. It's e-consultancy's take on the new GU paid services and the forthcoming "Digital Edition" (that's Jigsaw, folks). They like the digital edition policy -- saying that as something that is new, unique, and premium if fills many of the principal criteria for introducing chargeable services. They're sanguine about the Wrap, Ad-Free, and Informer changes. And they think that in tandem with the introduction of registration it all looks something like a strategy.
(From e-consultancy.com)

Ending didactic journalism...

More on OhmyNews, the South Korean news site that caught my eye in February. The Japan Media Review notes that the number of "citizen reporters" writing for the site has now grown to nearly 27,000. About a million people visit the site each day. This article is an interview with its founder, Oh Yeon-Ho.
(From Online Journalism Review)

Spam update: opt in vs opt out - MPs to the rescue!

Derek Wyatt, chairman of the House of Commons Associate Party Internet Group, is flying to Washington to try to persuade the US government that the EU's anti-spam directive ("opt in") is better than the US's proposed legislation ("opt out"). The EU position requires a company to get permission from a user to send adverts to them. The US position favours advertisers (i.e. spammers): it requires the user to request that a company cease sending them messages. Here's Derek's website.
(From Washington Post)

Allan Siegal appointed NYT standards editor

Assistant managing editor Allan M Siegal, who fronted the New York Times's investigation into the Jayson Blair debacle, has been appointed to the new position of standards editor following recommendations made by his investigation.
(From Associated Press)

News design: web and print

Phil Nesbitt, formerly of the American Press Institute and Society for News Design, on changes in newspaper's print design compared with corresponding websites. He notes some interesting developments where design features that have been dropped in print have subsequently been adopted online. Not sure I understand what "exquisitely complex in its simplicity" means, but it's a nice overview.
(From API Media Center)

Independent eyes tabloid switch

The Independent is planning to publish its final (M25) edition as a tabloid. There is speculation that the move may take place as soon as the end of the month. If successful the product would go nationwide. The FT report on the same subject observes that INM "had originally hoped to launch a "European-sized" broadsheet, one that was sized between a traditional UK broadsheet and a tabloid. But printing restrictions in the UK made the endeavour too costly".
(From MediaGuardian.co.uk)

Editor and Publisher goes monthly

Billing it as "an exciting new era", E&P has announced that it will move from weekly to monthly. The website will be "significantly enhanced". The print edition will be larger and be more comment and feature based. They argue, reasonably enough, that the monthly print/hourly web format is actually a better way to be more timely than publishing focused on a weekly turnaround.
(From Editor & Publisher)

"QPS on OS X by Q1 2004" - Quark

Quark's published roadmap for "Quark Publishing System Classic" (i.e. the QPS we know and love) now has dates attached: "The QPS Classic development plan includes full support for QuarkXPress 6 and QuarkCopyDesk 3 on Mac OS X, Windows 2000, and Windows XP as well as QuarkDispatch Server on Mac OS X. A version of QPS Classic that is entirely based on Mac OS X and takes advantage of all of the new features of QuarkXPress 6 will be available by Q1 2004."
(From Quark)

Picdar's Media Mogul RNE

Picdar have released a cheaper regional newspaper edition of their Media Mogul asset management system. It's called Media Mogul RNE.
(From Electronic Publishing Magazine)

Emily Bell on OJR

Pretty estensive interview about GU, its relationship with the papers, and The Future. "What happens here is that we do have a very high level of contact between the staff here and the staff on the paper. Increasingly, newspaper journalists are not dismissive of the Web and they want to find out about the Web and are quite interested in what we're doing. We're just another department of the paper in some ways." ... "The Guardian has one opportunity to make inroads into America and this is it. If we don't do it now, then in 10 years time we probably won't be able to afford to, or that opportunity won't be open to us."
(From OJR)