Andriod Incredible + Chrome “push to phone” extension = Incredible

I got my hands on, or should I say I watched my son put his hands on, the Android Incredible this weekend at the local Verizon store. I am NOT a cell phone aficionado. I use a pay-as-you-go phone from Virgin Mobile. I do understand that mobile devices are becoming the center of the information universe.

I’m still not sold on the iPad for a lot of reasons. But after seeing the Incredible I can definitely seeing the cell-phone format devices being able to compete with iPad and other soon to be seen tablet format devices for media consumption where size does matter. And that means portability. I personally don’t see the iPad replacing laptops where content authoring is a serious part of your device usage.

The Incredible’s processor, at 1ghz, combined with a 4g connection…..WOW.

Now add in a Chrome and Firefox extension that lets you push to the phone and there become some interesting possibilities. Although the initial description of this functionality shows a URL being sent to the Android, an article on TechCruch describes the capabilities as being much broader. The functionality is described as an “intent” being sent to the Android. The intent can be nearly any action – open an app, go to a URL, etc.

For publishing I can see content pushes taking on an entirely new meaning.

I guess it all depends on your “intent.”

Cloud computing at a major metro

The Chicago Sun-Times has inked a deal to use Atex’s cloud computing environment for its new advertising system, reported at Editor & Publisher. Cloud computing options are becoming something many companies are demanding of their vendors.

We’ve all seen the pros and cons to this environment. I personally see the pros outweighing the cons in most scenarios, certainly for a publishing organization.

The economics of providing a hardened IT environment have changed over the years. Increased storage requirements, remote compute capabilities and an ever increasing list of technical skills required all add to the expense of operating a data center.

Another major issue is the speed that publishing technology continues to accelerate. Every time I think the pace is about to slow or settle down another “must have” technology is launched that drives publishers crazy.

We used to purchase systems with up front licensing and hardware expense with the knowledge that when that expense was written off there would only be support costs into the future. The pace of change pretty much dictates that there is no such thing as writing off publishing technology expenses as there are new investments to be made every year.

Because of that a subscription licensing model makes a lot of sense, for both the publisher and vendor. Reliance on maintenance cash flows has restricted vendors from making investments in future technologies at the pace they would like to or make them reliant on other sources of investment.

Consistent revenues for the publisher and consistent technology updates for the publisher is a win-win situation.

If the publishing vendors use well established third party data centers to host their cloud environments publishers will have little reason to be suspect of the viability of this environment.

This does put an additional burden on the system vendor to staff up on the technical services & support they must provide. They used to get calls when their software didn’t work. Now they will get calls when the environment doesn’t work as well.

Hopefully the cloud you enter will not be a rain filled one!

It’s not all in the numbers

Talking to one of our ad salespeople today the conversation gravitated to how advertisers view metrics in determining their ROI on ad expenses. And more importantly, how we as publishers have let them control the value conversation.

In the pre-digital world all the advertiser had were a few tools such as circulation and pass-along numbers, dedicated phone numbers linked to ads, reader service numbers, etc.

In a print world there were assumptions about how many eyeballs actually saw an ad and it was difficult to track ads to results, certainly not in a one-to-one method. There was also a concept of brand recognition that was being built through the ad campaign.

What has happened to the brand recognition portion of ad campaigns now that advertisers expect exact numerical results from their ad insertions? Has the value of branding been diminished by the need and accessibility of impressions and click-throughs? Is brand recognition still a long term payback more difficult to measure so it has been put into the background in lieu of the easier metrics available today?

For a small circ niche publisher the dramatic difference in rates charged for print versus online will never support a complete migration to digital publishing unless the value equation is changed for digital advertising rates.

The value of brand recognition needs to be reinforced, especially as something more than impressions and click-throughs. Yes, those statistics are certainly important but there is also in delayed action due to brand recognition that will not be recorded in a log file.

It seems to me that our advertising staff needs to re-engage with our advertisers, change the value story and bring the true value of our publication’s brand to the advertiser’s attention as a lever for them to increase the value of their brand.

Have we simply forgotten our side of the story? It’s time for the small publisher to do a better job of brining their story to the advertiser.

Access to information drives democracy

Great read at PoynterOnline describing an extremely high correlation between wireless coverage and democratic regions in Africa. The use of SMS and social networks by small newspapers is mentioned.

SMS is not typically thought of as a high volume transmission method. But apparently it is sufficient enough.

The correlation of free information with democratic trends is a good example of why tyrannical governments have always sought to control the flow of information as a first priority in their takeovers and ongoing suppression.

How often do we read of dictators shutting down or taking over the newspapers, radios and television stations to control all information?

This is why programs like “Radio Free Europe” were so important in breaking through the Iron Curtain.

The free flow of information is essential to freedom and liberty.

Apple, the censor?

As of this writing there have been two apps rejected by Apple because they have been deemed to ridicule public figures. (Maybe ridiculing private figures is ok???)

Articles on Editor & Publisher and Columbia Journalism Review describe the two situations along with some interesting commentary.

Has Apple become a media “channel” with its iTunes store where it can determine by its own rules what it will “sell” or make available to its sole media consumption device?

Essentially I think the answer is that Apple can do what it wants and be prepared to pay the consequences when media generators decide they don’t want to play by Apple’s rules. Although there isn’t much competition to the iPad now that will most certainly change.

The media owners need to decide who’s the boss. If they want control they will have to stay away from Apple. If they want to cede control to apple in pursuit of additional revenues, they will need to be prepared to suffer at Apple’s whim.

I do have to wonder what Apple is thinking. Are they worried about lawsuits? This seems to be a particularly poor test case for them. Editorial cartoons are an accepted method of commentary. I doubt the cartoons in question are pornographic. So why the line in the sand on this??

Obits – ads or news?

Read an interesting blog on how newspapers have changed the way they view and charge for obits. The author’s position is that some newspapers, he mentions one in particular, are gouging their customers in a time of stress. Any transaction that takes place in the period surrounding a personally stressful event can be viewed as taking advantage of that person. And as the blog’s author points out the newspaper is in a unique position with their monopoly as the local newspaper.

But one of the commenters to the post makes a good point that I agree with. When an obit is written by the newspaper as a news item, let it be treated as a news item and appear for free. When a family wants to publish a novella about their deceased relative why not charge for the privilege? I can’t comment on the amount charged mentioned by the author as I don’t a sense of history or propriety in that area. But it has become so inexpensive to “publish” information on the web nobody can argue that there is no other forum to tell the life story that obits sometimes become.

Sure, newspapers don’t need to take advantage of a situation but I believe the newspaper is within their rights to charge for expansive obituaries.

iPad……yawn…

Interesting post title, eh?? OK, I actually had an iPad in my very own hands today. My apologies to the true believers but……what’s all the noise about???

As the owner of the iPad was gushing over each “cool” aspect of the device I was instantly brought back to the first time I saw a Mac and the enthusiastic demo person dragged the CD icon to the trash and the CD drawer magically opened!!! Wow, there’s a reason to over pay for a computer!!

And so again I pressed to see what is truly innovative with the device. Or see something that I don’t currently have on my iPod Touch. I can’t say I saw anything I consider truly breakthrough.

Maybe as app developers and publishers build more impressive content presentations I will become more impressed but for now, I’ll wait for the competition to be launched and then make a decision whether or not to buy.

For now, I’m just going to upgrade my digital camera. I think I’ll get more use out of it than the iPad.

But I do have a suggestion to Apple and AT&T. If they rolled out a 3G version of the iPod Touch with a $15/month no-contract data plan I’d be there in a heartbeat! I’m a casual user and don’t need an unlimited plan nor do I want to get locked into long term contracts for something I might very well decide to put away at some point because something better has arrived.

I’m also very happy with the recent court ruling that puts the FCC in its place regarding net neutrality, for now anyway.

So for now I’ll just keep using my iPod Touch, thank you very much!! And thank God for free wi-fi!!

Tag clouds for conveying content importance

I’m working on a project to bring life to some bland numbers in a spreadsheet. Most people find it easier to learn or understand information that is presented visually than in simple grids of numbers. There are some cool data visualization tools available (for free) from Google that are innovative and helpful.

As I was thinking about this today the tag cloud concept came to mind. We see these nearly every day on web sites. They easily and quickly convey either relative frequency or “importance” with a simple glance. You can obviously sort columns of numbers in ascending or descending order but that does little to help indicate the relative difference between values.

Doesn’t a word that is 3 times larger than another quite easily convey its relative importance to the other word?

Here is a sample from a site that helps you build tag clouds, Wordle.

I think there are many uses for tag clouds to help convey the relative importance of information. I’m sure I’ll be experimenting more with this. And there are a LOT of other sites that help you build tag clouds from either lists of words you supply or RSS feeds or sites. Just Google “tag cloud generator.”

Bringing life to a site

Here is a great example of how a web site can be brought to life. The New York Times, as reported in an article on 10000words.net, has used interactive maps to engage their readers.

Note the little icon at the bottom of some of these graphics – “powered by Google”. Google has a great set of freely available data visualization tools. I’ve looking into them somewhat in relation to a project at work and they seem to provide a broad wealth of functionality. And you can’t beat the price – free.

These tools and approaches to presenting information are great at reader engagement which is what every site is in search of. They add to the “stickiness” of a page by letting the reader wander across an interesting presentation of what might otherwise simply be boring charts of information.

Here is a suggestion for the NYT – create an interactive chart that shows how their interactive pages increase their reader time on their site.

Newspapers or TV for news?

A recent article in Editor & Publisher reveals the results of a survey about which information outlet is used most for various types of information.

Local TV station web sites appear to have as much credibility from a news standpoint as the local newspaper. This is somewhat incredible. I don’t know about your particular location but most of the TV stations in Chicago aren’t out there doing a lot of original news coverage beyond sending the TV truck for an on-site report. Yes, there is some investigative journalism by the TV stations, but they also are pooling some resources to save money. And they have for a long time gotten the news the anchors “read” from other sources. The disbanded City News Bureau was one of those sources.

Maybe if the TV news programs had to display a disclaimer about where they get their news the result of this survey would have been different!