As you can probably tell it's deserted and seems to be begging to be turned into the setting for a horror film.
The web is made possible by open, interoperable standards for content and communication, e.g. http, HTML, hyperlink, SMTP, etc. — will the future of the web be based on closed, proprietary standards for content and communication?
No company can touch Google’s ability to monetize the use of the open web — the more people use the web, the more money Google makes. Can Facebook compete with Google by eschewing the open web and open standards? Or is Facebook betting against the internet?
Hmmmm…..
This is a new ad campaign by French group RSF, which is targeting regimes that restrict freedom of the press.
Yes, print is a burden. It’s expensive to produce for it. It’s expensive to manufacture. It’s expensive to deliver. It limits your space. It limits your timing. It’s stale when it’s fresh. It is one-size-fits-all and can’t be adapted to the needs of each user. It comes with no ability to click for more. It has no search. It can’t be forwarded. It has no archive. It kills trees. It uses energy. It usually brings unions. And you really should recycle it. Wow, when you think about it, print sucks.
Some 86 percent of respondents believed newsrooms should become more integrated with digital services as two in three believe the most common form of news consumption will be via electronic media such as online or mobiles within a decade.
According to 704 senior news executives surveyed, the greatest threat to the industry was the declining number of young people who read newspapers while the increasing emphasis on speed meant only 45 percent of editors thought the quality of journalism would improve over the next 10 years.
Despite the threats from new media to traditional business models, 85 per cent of editors were either somewhat optimistic or very optimistic about the future of their papers – the same figure as last year.
There were nervous months after the switch as the company awaited the reaction from advertisers and readers, but before long InfoWorld’s Web audience was growing and its business improved. Today, I.D.G. says, the InfoWorld Web site is generating ad revenue of $1.6 million a month with operating profit margins of 37 percent. A year earlier, when it had both print and online versions, InfoWorld had a slight operating loss on monthly revenue of $1.5 million.
Across the company, the remaining print publications still typically play a vital role, but a lesser one — physically smaller and financially diminished. In 2002, 86 percent of the revenue from I.D.G.’s publications came from print and 14 percent online. These days, 52 percent of the revenue is from online ads, while 48 percent is from the print side.
. . . the most fundamental difference between print and online was the ability to measure precisely how many readers view a particular article on the Web — and how those results influence editorial decisions on what to write about.The new chief, Eric Knorr, has said that while page views are important, they are not everything - if they were, you'd always be reading about the same handful of topics. This is a good point.The link to the business is direct. When a person views a Web page, ads are automatically presented on the page and the publisher collects a payment.
Without the physical limitations of print, Mr. Knorr said, it becomes easier to explore topics more deeply. InfoWorld presents a stable of bloggers, including 19 freelance writers, who are authorities in niches including data protection, green technology, open source software and cloud computing.The goal, with reporting and blogging, Mr. Knorr said, is to create “thought leadership and depth” in several subject areas online, and also set up InfoWorld conferences around those topics.
The article closes with this pertinent observation from journalist turned venture capitalist Stewart Alsop
“What’s happening at I.D.G. is a fairly accurate map for every other publishing organization. Get over it, it’s going to happen.”
Generativity has brought us the web, instant communication, Skype, e-commerce and other wonderful things. But it has also given us spam, viruses, botnets, cyber-crime and other evils. Zittrain fears a future in which people will access a tightly controlled, over-regulated network using 'tethered' (non-programmable) appliances, such as the iPhone, which can be remotely controlled by their manufacturers.
It's a plausible, though not yet inevitable, scenario which can be avoided if we think and act intelligently. If we don't, then we will have gone from virtual utopianism to real dystopianism in a single generation. Have a good day.
Bertie Wooster elected!
Yep. He’s London’s new Mayor. And all the while he thought he was running for the Wine-Tasting Committee of the Drones Club. Much public entertainment lies ahead.
Bad news for the Supreme Leader, though. The game’s over. And it doesn’t have all that much to do with Gordon Brown’s competence/incompetence. It’s simply that Labour’s time is up. Three reasons for this:
Events, dear boy, events: the long boom is over; house prices are on their way down; negative equity beckons; the feel-good factor has evaporated. All governments run out of steam. I had dinner recently with a senior civil servant. I asked him what the atmosphere is like in Whitehall. He said that it felt like the beginning of the end — that the government had basically run out of ideas, that ministers were exhausted and becoming demoralised. The great British electorate isn’t very interested in politics: Labour has been in power so long that it’s become boring. The man on the Clapham omnibus thinks it’s time for a change. It’s nothing to do with a belief that Cameron & Co are wonderful, or even competent. There’s no evidence yet that they could run a whelk stall. Their main merit is just that they’re not Harriet Harman/Gordon Brown/Jack Straw/Jacqui Smith/Hazel Blears…
