Web links on classified ads

El Mercurio has adopted the much-discussed idea of putting cross-references on print classified ads to allow readers to look up richer, more detailed versions of the ads on the paper's website.
(From E-Media Tidbits)

Online presence: help or hindrance?

API profile of online newspaper users (1.2Mb PDF). "Online newspapers are the dominant online source of local news and are second only to printed newspapers as a primary source of local advertising . . . Compared to online audiences in general, online newspaper readers spend more hours and dollars online. But only 40%of all online users have ever visited an online newspaper, half don't use the Web for local news and most say they've never used the Internet to shop for homes or cars."
(From American Press Institute)

How easily is your software accommodated?

Essay by Zach Nies (former chief software architect, Quark; now part of Mark Lemmons's team at Creo) on software design and the principle that good interfaces should use natural metaphors. When designing Six Degrees the team followed the adage that "perfection is achieved when nothing more can be removed".
(From Creo / Six Degrees)

Worldwide web & local laws

Roundup of recent cases where local laws can get international organisations (eg, websites) into trouble, wherever the organisation may be based. Questions over jurisdiction in these matters remain unanswered. Interesting implications for copyright, libel and advertising regulations.
(From CNET news)

Jagwire in August?

Apple's OS X version 10.2, which was widely expected to be out in late September, may be ready for release in early August, according to CNET. Beta testing is apparently being wound up, and the latest builds feature interface tweaks, which suggests that the core work is now locked down.
(From CNET news)

More on Méthode

Editor & Publisher report giving more detail on EidosMedia's solution for the FT. The pagination end of the Méthode CMS will be either XPress, InDesign or EidsMedia's custom pagination system (to be announced shortly) and an XML editor Xsmile, which allows editors "to create and see stories in WYSIWYG mode". The whole lot will be based on cascading stylesheets. "Form and content are separate, and are only brought together when we render or output content, so we can apply different style sheets to the same content," says FT Publishing Editor William Dawkins. "The most important function is the single-copy principle." How to tackle geometry in a system where print appears to have come last in the design process is not explained.
(From Editor & Publisher)

Aggregators preferred to newspapers

Lycos's news-only search engine now indexes 3,000 news sites every minute, making it the most up to date non-wires news seeker on the web. Google's news search, though better presented, clocks in at a paltry 100 sites per hour or better. According to Forrester Research, people prefer the portals to newspaper sites to get news: their search found that 42% of internet users read news online at least once a month - but just one in four visit newspaper sites.
(From Lycos)

Little growth in news consumption

Research by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press suggests that news consumption is not significantly being increased despite the internet. In the past tw o years the number of respondants who said that they go online for news at least three times a week has only gone up by 2% (to 25%). Meanwhile the number who said that they read a newspaper the previous day went down by 6% (to 41%). "It seems that the universe for news consumers is finite and doesn't seem to be growing."
(From Editor & Publisher)

Electronic paper update

Nice little report on what Xerox (aka Gyricon) and E Ink are doing with electronic paper. E Ink has already demonstrated displays that are half the thickness of a credit card. Roll on rollable...
(From Business Week)

Nexpo preview

Editor & Publisher's preview of the main editorial system exhibitors at Nexpo this week. Short summaries of the "cross media solutions" being offered by CCI, Netlinx, Eidos Media, etc.
From (Editor & Publisher)

Figures for US news sites

Nielsen/NetRatings have released figures for the 20 most popular news websites in the United States. CNN, MSNBC and Yahoo! top the list, but several newspapers get a look-in. The New York Times comes fourth with a unique audience of 7.6 million; Gannett group comes sixth (6 million); and the Washington Post seventh (5.4 million).
(From Editor & Publisher)

Irish Times tries background ads

Norbert Specker on E Media Tidbits has spotted that the Irish Times is trying out background sponsor messages on its World Cup coverage. See example. Specker is also taking a snapshot of the world's coverage of the World Cup — a nice example of differing perspectives on a single event.
(From E-Media Tidbits)

Blog, blog, blog...

I know I'm part of the problem and all, but I do find it a little exasperating the way that weblogs seem to err towards the opposite of what they set out to be (individualistic, off-beat, drawing readers' attention to stuff they would otherwise not know about). Just look at blogdex. Obviously an index of the most referred-to stories in weblogs will highlight the lowest common denominator. But it's interesting how the subject matters have changed. When blogdex was launched, the most popular stories on weblogs tended to be amusing or controversial. Nowadays, it's almost always stories about blogging. And the mainstream media's fetishising of the subject doesn't help.
(From American Journalism Review)

Newspapers still Britons' favoured read

Research commissioned by the Orange Fiction Prize found that people spend on average two hours a week reading newspapers. Two hundred couples were surveyed. The daily reading average was: Newspapers: 17 minutes; Fiction, 11 minutes; Internet, 7 minutes; Magazines, 5 minutes, Reference books, 2 minutes.
(From BBC News)

Big screen iMacs in Q3

Quanta Computer, the manufacturers of Apple's LCD screen iMac, is due to start producing 17in and 19in iMacs in the third quarter, according to DigiTimes. No indication yet of how much they will cost.
(From DigiTimes)