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Posted 5:09 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Picasso Online, for the Blind!
Amy Gahran on an art site for the visually impaired
A friend of mine, a visually impaired writer and artist, has repeatedly voiced her disgust for the dearth of tactile exhibits and programs at most art museums. "We're capable of recognizing beauty, skill, and grace — just through other senses," I've heard her say.Well, here's an interesting development: According to Wired News, London's Tate Modern Gallery has just launched a new online art site for the visually impaired called i-MAP, featuring text and animation for visitors with some useful sight, and raised images for people who can't really see at all. The site focuses on the work of Matisse and Picasso, concurrent with a Tate exhibit of these masters' works, but it will remain online after the exhibit closes at the Tate.
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Posted 11:29 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
'Devil's Advocate' on Free Music Downloads
Norbert Specker on file sharing
Janis Ian is a recording artist. She offers an excellent and fresh inside-out look at the realities of the music lobby's stand on file sharing. Many of her arguments would have provided additional fuel for a debate on Poynter.org's Online-News discussion list this summer. The discussion centered around "deep-linking," which, after all, is not so different from "Napstering." (By way of Dan Gillmor)
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Posted 8:13 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Afghanistan Still Waiting to Go Online
Andrew Stroehlein in Kabul
Here in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, non-governmental organizations, aid workers, and Web-literate Afghans returning from exile are all still waiting for Internet access. There are two Internet cafes and there's always the satellite phone, but costs are prohibitive for locals and budget-conscious charities. Even the country's state information service, the Bakhtar Information Agency, hasn't got access yet. Let's hope it happens soon.
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Posted 7:54 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The End of Free, The Start of Fee
Steve Outing on online publishing resources
It's time to add another bookmark to your Web browser. The End of Free weblog, which documents the trend of free Internet content and services becoming paid, has launched a companion weblog, The Start of Fee. The new blog focuses on online payments, electronic bill payment and presentment (EBPP), online fraud and how to prevent it, subscription management software, etc. The Start of Fee is being written and edited by Tara Calishain and Olivier Travers, who both write for The End of Free along with several other contributors.
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Posted 4:48 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Online Learning Video That Doesn't Suck
Amy Gahran on learning with video
Video is a popular tool in online learning — and often, it's horribly misused. In the current issue of Online Learning Magazine, Mike Flanagan describes the three basic pitfalls of video in e-learning (talking heads, lack of interactivity, and lack of control), and the innovative ways e-learning provider Playback Media avoids these problems.I checked out Playback Media's online demo lesson, "Ethical Decision Making." Flanagan's right — the video techniques used here are impressive compared to most of what I see in online learning, although the content is a bit shallow and hokey. (By the way, this lesson is geared toward employees — maybe nowadays it might be more useful to repackage this lesson for CEOs of credibility-challenged companies.)
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Posted 2:30 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Web Is Losing Designers
Steve Outing on online vs. print
In the latest issue of his Sensible Internet Design newsletter, Jay Small (a print designer/journalist who moved to online work) laments the loss of design talent from the Web back to print. While only a few years ago, designers were flocking to the "exciting new world" of the Web away from print jobs, today the flow is back in the opposite direction. While some of this has to do with the popping of the Internet bubble, there's also the issue of online work not seeming as creatively rewarding as print work. Small explains: "Some print designers say the Web is simply a homogeneous, small-canvas, low-resolution playground for database administrators and Perl jockeys. Others hate the idea of designing for the least common denominator of browser capabilities, operating environments, and portable device interfaces. Still others say the Web usability movement forces harsh standards that kill creativity." Still, "It's too soon for digital creatives to give up on the Internet."
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Posted 12:52 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Spam Filters = Fewer Online Publishers?
Steve Outing on the high price of junk e-mail
I received another poignant message from the editor of a small (opt-in) e-mail newsletter, in reaction to my recent Editor & Publisher column about the problem of ISP spam filters blocking requested newsletters. She told me that she was experiencing some of the problems I wrote about, with AOL and other ISPs blocking what she estimates is upward of 20% of her subscriber base from receiving her publication. "I'm ready to chunk the whole thing after all these years," she wrote. "Missing 20%+ of my subscribers HURTS!!" She's researched the problem with her newsletter, and determined that ISP spam filters are to blame.What I found disturbing about covering this issue is the push-back I've received from people who support the spam-filter solution. I've been accused of being a "corporate lackey" for suggesting that filters have a bad side, and a common refrain is that we "just have to accept" some collateral damage in the good fight to rid the Internet of spam. (I've also received a lot of support for pointing out the problem.) What my critics perhaps don't comprehend is the impact this is having on ethical online publishers. If the problem isn't fixed, it could drive some out of business.
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Posted 12:24 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Best Multimedia News? Look to Spain
Steve Outing on finalists for the SNDies
Earlier this week, judges for the Society of News Design's new-media competition, the "SNDies," met in Denver to decide on the finalists for the first annual awards. SNDies are awarded monthly (with judges working remotely), but once a year judges meet in person to decide on the annual awards. (Fellow E-Media Tidbits contributor Martha Stone is one of the judges.) Yesterday they announced their finalists, and a couple sites were dominant: ElMundo.es, website of the Spanish newspaper, with 13 finalist spots, and MSNBC.com with 10. The only other finalists were Sun-Sentinel.com (5), NYTimes.com (2), Reuters (2), and CP.org (1). (Here's a full list of the finalists. Winners will be announced at SND's annual conference in November.)The SNDies are important because they identify and honor the best new multimedia storytelling being done by news organizations on the Web. Judging by the limited number of finalists, I have to conclude that it's still a select few organizations that are "pushing the envelope" in online news presentation. My hope is that next year, the finalists will include a broader range of news entities. Online news can and should be much more than text and static images — as sites like ElMundo.es and MSNBC.com demonstrate. (The SNDies, by the way, are organized by SND and the Estlow Center for Journalism and New Media.)
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Posted 3:53 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Spam Filters Even Block Anti-Spammers
Steve Outing on the junk e-mail problem
My recent Editor & Publisher column about spam filters that block asked-for e-mail newsletters and even private e-mail continues to generate some interesting responses. Here's a fascinating one. The CEO of the Spamex Disposable Email Address Service, an anti-spam solution that gives people disposable e-mail addresses that they can use when they are asked to submit an address on a website, tells me that his company's own validation e-mails were getting filtered when they went through Internet service providers using SpamAssassin to identify junk e-mail. SpamAssassin analyzes e-mail and assigns a score based on its hundreds of filter rules. Often, a score above 5.0 means a message gets tagged as spam (and sometimes summarily deleted).Says Spamex's Justin Greene: "At Spamex we are not proponents of filters for all the reasons that you cite in your article. We even found out recently that our own validation e-mail, sent to people that register for our service, was scoring a 5.9 in Spam Assassin and not reaching many of our users. Ironic, isn't it? I resented the thought of having to rewrite our messages to work around their filters. I can only imagine how a journalist must feel.
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Posted 3:30 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Name and Rank, Please
Steve Klein on online registration
As a seven-day-a-week print subscriber to the Washington Post as opposed to a Sunday-only print subscriber to the New York Times (explainer: I live in Fairfax, Virginia), I am a six-day-a-week user of the Times online and only an occasional user of the Post online. (There's a little lesson there for my friends at WashingtonPost.com to consider.) A story in the Wall Street Journal by Stephanie Miles reports that WashingtonPost.com is to begin asking users to volunteer their gender, year of birth, and zip code, beginning August 7, but so far today, that has not been the case. As of August 14, however, the survey will be mandatory. Fess up or no entry.Although Chris Schroeder, CEO of WashingtonPost.Newsweek Interactive, says the site has no plans to start charging for access, and despite the relative harmlessness of the information requested, I wonder if everyone will go along. My first test: I teach news writing at George Mason University and I like to use the Post's excellent Metro Briefs online to help my students understand inverted pyramid form. Now, the students will have to register first. We'll have to wait and see if they do.
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Posted 2:03 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Some Hope in the Fight Against Spam
Rich Gordon on a peer-to-peer solution
Maybe there's a solution to unsolicited e-mail that doesn't also block mail you want to receive. A start-up company called Cloudmark is offering a "peer-to-peer" solution called SpamNet. It's a Microsoft Outlook plug-in that allows you to designate e-mail messages as spam, then collects this information from all SpamNet users. The result: a list of spam-mailers based on "votes" from SpamNet users. E-mail senders that get enough "spam" votes have their messages automatically routed to a spam folder within your Outlook directory. They're still available for you to review — and, if you choose, to "unblock" future e-mails from the source. This is a great concept, and users are claiming a spam reduction of 75% or more, according to the Dallas Morning News. The software is still in beta, but I will definitely have to give it a try.
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Posted 1:50 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Update: 'Banjo Jones' Gets Fired
Steve Outing on anonymous journalist weblogs
Last week I mentioned Houston Chronicle reporter Steve Olafson's weblog, in which he wrote anonymously as "Banjo Jones" — then was outed in a competing newspaper, and told by his Chronicle editors to cease writing the blog. "Banjo" regularly skewered local politicians — who Olafson covered on his day job — and opined on coverage by the Chronicle and competing local publications. The story ended up with Olafson, a 22-year veteran of the now-defunct Houston Post and the Chronicle, getting fired. The Houston Press has the story.
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Posted 12:04 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
An Issue of Life and Death
Peter M. Zollman on online obituaries
Steve Outing's item yesterday about multimedia obits is a reminder not of a new idea, but of the fact that some companies and newspapers may have been "ahead of their time" when they launched features and services a while ago. The Sun Herald in Port Charlotte, Florida, has offered multimedia obituaries for years. At one point, the paper even offered people the option of placing a video clip in storage before their deaths, to be posted on their demise. It sounds ghoulish, but it's yet another way of reaching out to people about things that really matter in life (and death).It's instructive to read the Sun Herald's "In Memory" page, because it is a simple example of how to handle such things sensitively. Two other quick points: While this has revenue potential, it's worth considering instead whether to offer it as a content enhancement and service to readers — countering the appalling trend of newspapers eliminating editorial obituaries for "family paid obituaries." And wouldn't it be logical to line up three or four sponsors for the page — a funeral home, florist, trust attorney, funeral monument company, etc.?
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Posted 7:32 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Newsletter of Note
Steve Outing on the latest from Jay Small
Over the Internet years I've met lots of smart folks in the online news business. One of them, Jay Small, just started a free e-newsletter that looks to be worth your time (and mine): The Sensible Internet Design Letter, published by his Small Initiatives consultancy. (Subscribe here.)
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Posted 6:20 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Unraveling Dot-Com Accounting
Rich Gordon on the implications of a recent lawsuit
The California State Teachers' Retirement System is suing Homestore.com Inc. (operator of the Realtor.com site) over the way it accounted for online advertising. The transactions at issue are complicated, but in essence the allegation is that Homestore booked as ad revenue the results of barter transactions. Based on my experience as new media director at the Miami Herald (from 1995-1999), this was not an unusual practice during the "Internet bubble." In negotiating content and promotional partnerships, we discovered that some "dot-coms" intended to book banner ad exchanges (a trade of ad impressions on each other's sites) as revenue. Companies like ours didn't go in for that kind of stuff (like most newspapers, the Herald had extensive rules for measuring and accounting for "trade" advertising). But it's not hard to imagine scenarios where two sites traded ad impressions, exchanging no money but booking revenue at both companies. I'm not an accountant or a lawyer, so I don't know for sure what the rules are for these kinds of transactions. But if this were common practice, it might help explain the quick collapse of the online advertising business — since some revenue wasn't real in the first place.
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Posted 3:42 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Not Your Grandfather's Obit
Steve Outing on multimedia news
Perhaps the obituary is finally coming of (Internet) age. Ken Sands, the creative interactive editor at the Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Washington), alerted me to a new multimedia feature being added for some obituaries at his paper's website. (See this text obituary, and click on the "multimedia" link.) This is a 25-second slide show playing audio (of a family member) as family photos are shown. "This is going to be extremely popular," Sands predicts. Adding this sort of thing to other interactive components like a remembrances forum (where friends and family can post memories or tributes to the deceased) turns the lowly obit into something exciting. And there's some interesting revenue potential for newspapers and their websites with this concept.
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Posted 12:04 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Warning Signs on 'Pop-Ups'
Rich Gordon on what AOL learned about intrusive ads
Buried deep in a New York Times article outlining plans for the next version of AOL's client software is an interesting nugget about its subscribers and pop-up advertisements. AOL noticed late last year that subscribers' satisfaction with the service was dropping. They discovered that pop-up ads were a big part of the reason — AOL had increased the number of pop-ups to compensate for the decline in ad revenue. When the number of pop-ups was cut in half, user satisfaction improved dramatically. So AOL has decided to sacrifice some ad revenue rather than make users unhappy.I have to believe that this is the right strategy for websites, too, although it's probably more important for AOL (which collects money from subscribers and probably gets blamed by unsophisticated users for pop-up ads on non-AOL websites as well). In fact, I think Web publishers are going to need to take other steps to reduce "ad clutter" — cutting the number of ad positions per page, for instance. Since most sites have no shortage of ad inventory these days, wouldn't it make sense to reduce the number of ads and sell the improved prominence and effectiveness that result?
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Posted 11:57 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Importance of Being Cautious
Eva Domínguez on the choice of a CMS
In the technology field, to postpone the decision of embracing a new tool can have bad consequences in terms of time-to-market strategy. But sometimes not being the first one in doing so is very good. This has happened to CCRTV Interactiva, the company of the Catalan Broadcasting Corporation in charge of the exploration of multiplatform interactive services.CCRTV executives delayed the choice of a new content management system for months because they were not convinced by the products and prices available in the market at that time. Meanwhile, they have been implementing little by little their own tool, based on Oracle technology, according to their specific needs for each moment. The result of this situation is very positive, says Santiago Miralles, head of CCRTV Interactiva. He told me, "Now we know what we want, prices have lowered, and we know better the technology in order to make a right decision." And this is what they are going to to do in the following months.
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Posted 11:21 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
E-mail Marketing Ups and Downs
Paul Grabowicz on online advertising
Click-through rates for e-mail marketing messages are falling rapidly, even for messages where the recipient has been to a website and opted in to receive notes from partners of the site. People increasingly see such messages as nothing more than spam. But in cases where people opted in for messages just from the website itself, and not marketing partners, click-throughs are holding steady or may even be improving. Those are the results of two different e-mail marketing studies that are analyzed in a piece in Knowledge@Wharton, a publication of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
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Posted 7:53 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
What Are You Publishing on Sept. 11 (+1)?
Steve Outing on anniversary coverage
Poynter.org is surveying news organizations about their plans for covering the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. (Take the survey here.) The survey is open to print, broadcast, and online media. So that the results adequately reflect new-media plans and the thinking of online news leaders, and not just those of old media, I encourage my online colleagues to take a few minutes and participate. Thanks!
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Posted 6:32 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Sponsored Premium Content
Rich Gordon on Economist.com
I've written before about The Economist's nicely thought out system for offering a combination of free content, subscriptions, and content a la carte on the Web. Today I found another nice feature. I requested an e-mail alert for stories about "E-commerce, the Internet, and mobile e-business" published in The Economist. When I clicked on the headline link in today's newsletter, I got an interstitial screen that said: "This is a premium content article on Economist.com that is normally available only to subscribers. You have access to this article at no charge because this part of the site is sponsored by Inter-Continental Hotels and Resorts." Essentially, Economist.com is selling a sponsorship for content that would otherwise be behind the registration screen. Readers get free access; Inter-Continental Hotels gets my gratitude — and perhaps, an improvement in my opinion of their brand. Now, if I were Inter-Continental, I think I'd want a little more than the logo and hyperlink Economist.com gave them. But I think this concept has potential.
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Posted 6:13 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Digital Replicas: Not a Replacement for Websites
Peter M. Zollman with more on digital editions
Well, the New York Times itself today caught up with the trend of newspapers and magazines making digital editions available online. The Times article, which quotes fellow E-Media Tidbits contributor Vin Crosbie, among others, notes that online distribution substantially reduces costs. There's no ink, paper, postage, or delay in delivery.This still seems to me a specialty application that oughtn't replace newspaper websites — but one with great value in many cases. Examples? Buy the newspaper that covered breaking news; get your exclusively-distributed-by-mail-to-farflung-locations publications like the Christian Science Monitor (which has a link to the "treeless" edition on its home page, and sells single copies for a dollar); and other specialty and archive uses. In some cases, I would think, the smallest-market newspapers could capitalize on this by building their subscription lists with people who've moved away from their hometowns and still want to read the publications, but would like to see it as it appeared in print rather than on a limited-content website. (Repeating my earlier disclaimer: In the past I have done consulting work for companies that develop digital-edition technology.)
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Posted 6:01 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A Musical Fantasy: Why Can't We Have It?
Steve Outing on online music
I loved this article by songwriter/performer Janis Ian, in which she articulates the ideal solution for online music. Music industry executives are behaving stupidly but predictably, she suggests, impeding progress on Internet music by fighting to protect their 1930s business model — instead of acting intelligently to employ Internet technology to get consumers what they want and make money at the same time. Ian's suggestion of music labels all agreeing to create a reasonably priced download site for out-of-distribution music is great. What a wonderful service that would be for consumers — who I'm certain would pay up and demonstrate that the Internet does truly hold the potential for bringing money to the music industry, artists, and songwriters. Are music industry executives smart enough to listen to voices of reason like Ian's? Increasingly, savvy members of the music-buying/listening public are getting tired of the industry's stupid antics.
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Posted 1:07 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Contentious Returns
Steve Outing on online content
Occasional E-Media Tidbits contributor Amy Gahran has resurrected her webzine, Contentious, with a new issue after a several-month hiatus. Contentious covers the topic of online content creation — an area that's obviously seen more prosperous days. But online content remains important and I'm confident it will see a renewal in interest. It's good to see Amy's webzine clinging to life.
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Posted 11:55 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Bad News Is Good News
Carla Passino on the surge in traffic at financial news sites
It would appear that the more the economy goes down, the more online traffic goes up, especially on financial news and investment sites. Nielsen/NetRatings reports that when the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached a five-year low on July 24, traffic across financial sites surged by 22%, as people turned to the Web to read the news and keep an eye on their portfolios. Business Week saw the biggest increase in visitors (up 68%), with Forbes (up 48%) and Bloomberg.com (up 32%) also performing well.Earlier in July, Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore wrote on British magazine The Spectator that "where I work, there are large screens near the lifts showing the stock prices. I find my heart always lifts a little when I see the arrows glowing red and pointing down. As a human being I want prosperity for all. But as a journalist I want trouble." He's cynical, no doubt. But he is absolutely right.
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Posted 11:46 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Washington Post Launches Its Digital Edition
Peter M. Zollman on alternative delivery techniques
For fans of the Washington Post — as opposed to WashingtonPost.com — there's a new way to read the paper. As the New York Times has done, the Post now has a "digital replica" edition, available with a free four-week trial. (After that it's $3.15 a week.) It's worth noting that, as with the Times, the Post's initiative ties back in to the circulation department. The Times' comes from NewsStand, in which the New York Times Company has invested; the Post's comes from Olive Software.NewsStand and Olive use different models, but both operate under the same principle — a full-text-searchable, online replica of the print publication that looks not like a website but the print edition. NewsStand's requires a plug-in and download, but can be read offline; Olive's is read-online-only. This may not be a great subscription model, or just a limited subscription model. But I've often said that I would gladly have paid $10 for the Sept. 12 edition of the New York Times, if I could have accessed it online. I suspect many political junkies who aren't in Washington will feel the same way about election-season editions of the Post. (Disclaimer: I've done consulting work at various times for both NewsStand and Olive, as well as Washington Post/Newsweek Interactive.)
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