DRM for news media- March 12, 2004 There's a good discussion going on at the Media Center blog right now about DRM for news sites. I can understand why publications like Technology Review, The Wall Street Journal, and Business 2.0, don't let people read their stories for free, but I've noticed that these high profile publications aren't in the blogosphere as much as Wired or the New York Times. I'm wondering if the webophobic publications tried experimenting with the model. Maybe the attention they'd gain from bloggers would...http://www.thestandard.com/movabletype/markfrauenfelder/archives/003376.php RSS is taking over- March 10, 2004 Sign of the times: Infoworld's Chad Dickerson reports that more people are reading Infoworld's "Top News" through RSS than through web browsers. I'm not surprised. I've been using an RSS reader called NetNewsWire Lite for a year or so now and find it useful in two ways. First, it's an efficient way to skim through a lot of blogs. It's much faster than loading all the sites in a browser, even as a collection of tabs. Second, it's a great way to find out when something has been posted to an...http://www.thestandard.com/movabletype/markfrauenfelder/archives/003375.php Git yer red-hot registration passwords right here!- March 9, 2004 Why do some web sites, most notably newspaper sites, require you to register before accessing their articles "To better serve our readers," of course. But what if you don't want to be better served, especially when it entails filling out a long form filled with personal information What if you just want to click on the link in the email your friend sent you and get to the damn article Then go to BugMeNot.com and help yourself to a fresh username and password. How's that for service Linkhttp://www.thestandard.com/movabletype/markfrauenfelder/archives/003374.php Magazine ad sales down for ninth month in a row- March 9, 2004 Today's NYT reports that magazine ad sales have declined for the last nine months. As a freelance journalist, this is bad news. The semi-good news is that for the last several months I've been getting more work than I can handle. There are a lot of new magazines launching, especially men's "gear &38; girls" titles. Back to bad news: word rates for freelancers are low. My editors complain that their budgets are low, so they can't pay as much as they used to for articles. So, I'm working more...http://www.thestandard.com/movabletype/markfrauenfelder/archives/003373.php David Brin on the future of news- March 8, 2004 Science fiction author David Brin (who did a good job of predicting the Web about five or six years before it took off, in his novel Earth) has written a gem of a speculative piece for the Online Journalism Review about the way we'll get our news in the future. Out of habit, she tooth-clicked commands that tapped into other eyes, other cams. First a satellite view of this area, with the Spirit standing out most prominently, bobbing gently but hugely against her mooring mast at the nearby...http://www.thestandard.com/movabletype/markfrauenfelder/archives/003372.php Deja Vecu- March 8, 2004 It feels strange to be writing for the Industry Standard again. In one way, I feel like I'm writing for a pod version of the original, but I guess it would feel even stranger if I were writing for a reanimated Standard with all the former machinery in place.Interestingly, around the same time I heard from Matt McAlister inviting me to be a guest blogger here, I got a call from The Standard's founder, John Battelle, inviting me to edit a magazine prototype for O'Reilly Books, called Make.John...http://www.thestandard.com/movabletype/markfrauenfelder/archives/003371.php |