Archive for November, 2006
Skype wants to conference in the whole world.
The next version of Skype will enable people to post a link on a blog or Web site that will take people to a public chat room when clicked on, he said during a question-and-answer session during dinner. The live chats would be “Skypecasts,” which Zennstrom described as public conversations or audio conferences that people can moderate.
Let’s be honest, its basically a conference call, nothing incredibly special here. But it is interesting to think about the real-world social implications of a blogging community. Comments and other interactive principles allow groups to interact textually but letting them all speak at once is a whole other can of worms. What could you do with this anyway? Big virtual conferences, broadcast to hundreds of participants (instead of listeners). Basically extending the sort of huge, anytime gathering power of the web. Flash-mob, VOIP style.
November 9th, 2006
Best videobloggers list from the vloggies. Life is all video and all local all the time.
November 7th, 2006
The BBC has decided that its going to go ultra (nee hyper) local with the help of some regional paper content. Greenslade is on about it and here is an interesting long Press Gazette article from a while ago. Its all part of the growing move towards local, which is my particular baby. Richard talked about one outgrowth of this in his column yesterday: post-code papers. The main thing is the strategy behind how local news will work in practice and we are all thinking about it. Give me some time and I’ll give it the space it deserves. Society of Editors: how the BBC will go ultra local from Greenslade
November 7th, 2006
Everyone’s talking about it but its not that surprising, or at least it shouldn’t be: Google is stepping into the newspaper arena. They are vying hard to become the long-tail vacuum of old media, sucking up all the ad space that newspapers dont sell on their own, selling it for slightly cheaper and keeping a cut (probably about 20% but no one really knows and they won’t get a thing in the initial three month trial that was announced yesterday). That Google has extended their ‘media buyer’ role into traditional media is less than shocking, first of all because they have tried (and failed) before only with magazines; second of all its a pretty logical extension of the web advertising business that is the core cash cow of the Google business as a whole. They will of course try to extend the web metric system, with all its fancy the built in feedback loops, into the newspaper advertising business. Everyone is already braying about the web showing newspapers yet again how to innovate and its a hard thing to refute, in what world are all those huge newspaper businesses in the States not to pick up on this opportunity? Its embarassing.
November 7th, 2006
OhmyNews is struggling to make money out of editorial innovation and the big bad consultants think citizen journalism isn’t really a go-er, at least not on its own. Do we agree?
November 6th, 2006
Don’t know how I missed it before but take a look at Carl Sessions Stepp’s piece on a long tour of online newsrooms up the east coast of the US from the April/May issure of the American Journalism Review. It provides quite a few insights to the process of making a paper online and on print, not least this quote from Houston Chronicle front man Jeff Cohen:
The endgame is to have all our excellent journalists producing content, and air traffic controllers putting it on the various platforms.
November 6th, 2006
Two interesting sites that are pushing local news in innovative ways. Both of them lack the following to be incredibly useful but they are examples of platforms that I can see working. It interesting to note that most of their information still comes from local newspapers (they are built for the states where ‘local’ newspapers still means hundreds of thousands of readers). Topix.net offers search capability on location and keyword, its basically an aggregator with the ability to zoom in on particular places or subjects. Its good and its professional–the best I have seen thus far. Outside.in offers hyperlocal news via Google-map based navigation, its not very well populated and the user interface leaves a lot to be desired but one can see an inkling of genius here, its needs another year to be worthwhile though.
November 6th, 2006
I have been gone for so very long courtesy of a 7 day plague that left me in bed suffering through endless daytime TV (is it just me or have things really gone downhill?) but now I am back and so are the Monday media sections. Its time to be honest here though, the Independent’s latest weekly supplement is hardly worth mentioning all, especially in comparison to the Guardian’s consistently modern section. Let us look at what the Indy has decided is important enough to make it this week (warning: its all boring and all soooo 10 years ago): a straght-forward interview with BBC correspondent Ben Brown, the same for Archer’s dame Vanessa Whitburn, a visually boring centerspread on Vogue, more boringness on comic duos that I can hardly even bother to read plus a huge contingent of useless columns that parrot last week’s headlines almost verbatim, Stephen Glover is useless though Claire Beale warrants special mention for her advertising column that, as far as I can tell, is about ‘effectiveness’. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. I won’t even link to the stories because they all disappear behind a paywall in about 10 hours. The Indy may have the best front pages this side of the Atlantic but good lord what century are they in?
Thank god for the Guardian which is spot on, mixing together well thought new ideas (not old facts), light fluff and a little naughtiness to form the perfect little polenta of a media section. Start with Owen Gibson’s piece on user-generated content which is a little late and a little sparse but is a at least about an modern idea and deserves its place on the front page. Continue on to Richard’s column which, through my slightly less than objective eyes, looks like a well-formed piece filled with ideas to think about and just the right amount of venom to get you churning. Its too bad Emily Bell’s column is so derivative and light, it could have been a masterclass on the meaning of copyright and information protection in the digital arena or even a fun-filled piece about the state of the “free internet” especially with all of the Netscape controversy and Edelman/Wal-Mart and PayPerPost and so much else. Instead it was a fluffed out last minute piece of malarky that mentions Lawrence Lessig and his Creative Commons License and then sits back contentedly as if the world’s problems are solved.
In some way, this week’s sections make me wish I was back in daytime TV hell, maybe Diagnosis Murder isn’t so bad after all…
November 6th, 2006
