This, the first of our regional blogs, is authored by the technology and financial journalist Dominic Basulto. Dominic is a New York native, has been a senior editor at Corante since day one and has written for a number of online and offline media companies. Send tips or story ideas to: basulto@gmail.com.
About this weblog
Here we'll report daily on the latest tech and business developments in New York City. Impossible we concede: comprehensive coverage of the city's every story. What we hope you'll find: tips, tidbits and perspectives you won't find elsewhere. As well as unique insights, original interviews and more that should be of interest to New York's vibrant community of technologists and those who track, invest in and report on them.
The NanoBusiness 2005 event, held last week at the New York Marriott Financial Center, attracted little or no attention from the MSM (mainstream media). In fact, a search at Google News didn't turn up any MSM links to New York nanotech news, only a short preview of the conference from a site called Monsters & Critics:
"While applications for the technology are wide open and venture capital dollars are readily available - many of the companies assembled at the NanoBusiness Conference 2005, a trade show held here wherein nanotechnologists are rubbing elbows with each other and Wall Street types - the challenges are great for the industry, which is still in its infancy."
A few tech sector publications, however, did provide coverage of the nanotech conference keynote speech from Bell Labs president Jeffrey Jaffe: Information Week, PC Magazine and Red Herring.
JupiterResearch recently launched a podcasting service, called JupiterResearch Conversations, that will feature regular podcasts from the company's technology analysts:
"JupiterResearch's podcasts feature conversations with JupiterResearch analysts about key topics relating to the Internet and emerging consumer technologies. The first podcast, moderated by David Schatsky, senior vice president of JupiterResearch, is a conversation between senior analyst Gary Stein and research director David Daniels, on direct marketing online, and explores the best practices of paid search and e-mail marketing."
Jupiter's podcasting experiment owes at least a small debt to the efforts at IT Conversations, which was one of the first sites to offer high-quality audio content from technology Big Thinkers.
Viacom's stock price is down 18% over the past 12 months, but Sumner Redstone's paycheck is bigger than ever, and that's got shareholders rankled, says the New York Daily News. The news of Redstone's "mega payday" was especially irksome to CBS employees, who labor in the part of Viacom's media empire that is experiencing the most turmoil.
For those keeping track, the 82-year-old Redstone pulled in $56 million last year, a hefty 58% increase from the previous year. His left-hand and right-hand men, too, had nice paydays, with each of them pulling in $52 million last year.
MIT Technology Review has been sponsoring Innovation Futures, a "predictive marketplace" focused on technological innovation as it relates to economic growth. It's similar in nature to the futures markets for political elections, which claim to predict the outcomes of elections with uncanny precision. If enough people believe it's true -- and are willing to put their money where their mouth is, it must be true... Or something like that. Anyway, it's worth checking in now and then to see how popular sentiment is shifting:
64% predict that more than 7.0 million satellite radio receivers will ship in 2005
53% think that approximately 15% of US households will have an HDTV by the end of 3Q05
44% think that SIRIUS will have between 2.5 million and 3.0 million subscribers by the end of 2005
36% of those polled believe that there will be 2.51 million to 2.75 million VoIP US subscribers by the end of 2005
By now, stories of iPod subway muggings are nothing new. The New York Daily News, though, has apparently found a new twist on the same ol' story: three urban teenagers tried to steal a subway commuter's iPod only to be busted a few minutes later by a Manhattan cop who happened to be sitting a few feet away.
On Memorial Day, the New York Post splashed a "Big Brother" story about the NYPD across the front page:
"Big Brother really will be watching. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has told top police brass that he wants to put up about 400 surveillance cameras on high-crime and high-traffic streets to catch crooks in the act, even if cops are not there. In the next few weeks, police officials are expected to give Kelly a list of roughly 50 areas where they think cameras should be placed."
Over at the Village Voice site, we almost did a double-take.. Looks like the Village Voice has outsourced its online real estate coverage to top-flight NYC real estate blog Curbed. It may not be a lucrative deal, but surely is an example of how a niche content Web site can make some money without counting on online advertising dollars to pay the bills.
Anyway, Curbed fans (and we're one of 'em) should check out the 'Hoodwinked contest that the site is sponsoring over the Memorial Day Weekend:
"Here's How it Works: You email us the specific boundaries, name, and a detailed description of a New York City (all boros welcome) neighborhood of your creation... You may rename an existing 'hood, but you are encouraged to create your own. The more detailed the description, the better."
The Web is starting to look a lot more like TV, according to The New York Times, and that's great news for marketers who once were afraid to venture online. There will soon be all-video Web sites, a greater concentration of traditional "offline" brands appearing online, and more cases of consumers staying glued to the monitor for 20 minutes, even 1 hour, at a time, as they watch video clips over high-speed broadband connections.
There are finally some signs of life in New York's early-stage VC market! Early stage investment group New York Angels recently announced two new angel financing deals: MediaTile and Spotlight Data. In addition, New York Angels made follow-on investments in three portfolio companies -- Content Directions (CDI), Zero-G and BioScale.
Over the past 18 months, membership in New York Angels has increased from 20 to 54 -- a sign that either the tech sector has bounced back, or that well-heeled private investors are tired of speculating in real estate deals.
Tom Foremski, a blogger journalist with SiliconValleyWatcher, fresh off a week of events and meetings in New York City (including the Syndicate Conference), discusses some topics that should be front-of-mind for any "successful micro-media mogul." There's talk of the "furious pace of M&A activities in the media sector" -- as well as other topics of lesser importance (how to avoid being mistaken for a humble blogger during a midtown power lunch).
Crain's New York reports that About.com has signed a two-year deal with comparison shopping site Kayak.com to offer readers online travel information:
"In a first-of-its-kind deal for Manhattan-based About.com, an online consumer information network that was bought in March by the New York Times, Kayak.com will serve as its 'premier booking partner.' Visitors to About’s travel pages will find a box where they can enter basic information on a planned trip; they will then be connected to Kayak’s site. Links to Kayak will also be embedded in articles about destinations."
Eugene Hernandez, editor-in-chief of indieWIRE, draws a link between the world of independent blogs and the world of independent films. Hernandez, who will be teaching a class at The New School on American independent films, hints at the impact of blogs on the future success of underground NYC films:
"A peculiar hallmark of New York's cinematic counterculture is the role that the city's intense, sophisticated audience has played in pushing once-fragile films like ''Open Water'' and ''Garden State'' into prominence. Often, small movies that break out have taken root on a single screen at the Angelika Film Center, Film Forum or Lincoln Center, where an enthusiastic reception has opened the door to a wider audience in other cities and on DVD. That audience seems to renew itself each generation, with fans of newer styles and genres (like Asian horror or Dogme, the Danish-based film movement) joining the aging cinéastes who devour sophisticated European fare. And the tribe has grown through the Web, which is alive with blogs and enthusiast sites like indiewire.com that create viral marketing and lead fans elsewhere to order up DVD's of lesser-known films."
The old journalism is broken, now it's time to fix it: The Carnegie Corporation and the Knight Foundation are contributing a total of $6 million over a three-year period to five top U.S. schools (Columbia, Cal-Berkeley, Northwestern, USC and Harvard) to "try to elevate the standing of journalism in academia and find ways to prepare journalists better."
The dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Cal-Berkeley explains what's at stake:
"Journalism as a whole is clearly in something of a crisis. Those of us who run journalism schools are confronted with the prospect of ever fewer distinguished media outlets - especially in broadcast - to which we can aspire to send our students to work. So this is a time not only to try and make journalism schools as relevant as possible to the evolving profession, but also to have universities begin to weigh in on the debate about what happens in the media."
No word yet on whether blogs and podcasting will become part of the new training in journalism.
Long Island-based Allion Healthcare priced its IPO yesterday. The company plans to sell 4 million shares at an estimated price range of $12 to $14 per share, for a total of up to $56 million. The lead underwriter for the deal will be Thomas Weisel Partners. Allion provides specialty pharmacy and disease management services to patients with HIV and AIDS.
Tired of following expired links that have disappeared behind paid subscription walls, Tom Coates of Plastic Bag is finally cutting the cord with the New York Times:
"Eurgh. I am so bored of following other people's links to something on the New York Times and finding it all login-required and password-protected. I cannot be bothered any more. I. can. not. be. both. ered. So as of now I'm not going to link to them any more. And I'm not going to follow any link that goes to them. And I'm not going to engage in any debates they allegedly start behind their blanket of white."
Mark Glaser of Online Journalism Review interviews a few big-name media pundits (including A-list bloggers Jeff Jarvis and Jay Rosen) about the future of magazines in the digital age.
In response to a question by Glaser, Jay Rosen puts the future of the magazine business into perspective:
"At NYU, I have colleagues who share my fascination with the future possibilities of long-form journalism, and social criticism in periodical form; and if you start where we do, the natural question is not 'how can magazines prosper economically in the digital age?' (your perfectly valid industry query) but 'how can a Republic-enhancing form of journalism -- long-form journalism, narrative journalism, the journalism of ideas, of criticism in tune with the news -- thrive in the years ahead, whether or not the market values it at such and such a rate, whether or not people call it a magazine.'
Profit, non-profit, semi-profit, patron model, public radio model, new model, old -- we'll take anything that works -- even bake sales -- because we care about continuation of a form, and the chance to be great in it, guaranteed for future authors."
Jason Gooljar of Daily Gotham provides a public service reminder on good cellphone etiquette:
"I hate those Motorola two-way radio cell phones! It is one of the worst inventions ever! Well actually it's a good invention it's just being used in a horrible way.
Just like how there is talk about possible legislation geared towards cell phone camera users, who use them for voyeurism. There needs to be talk about these little annoying two-way radios. Matter of fact I’ll throw in those new phones that play snippets of songs when the phone rings! Sitting on a bus or a train that can really be annoying too. Not to mention these little phones can pack a wallop with that little speaker. It's enough to jar you out of whatever you were thinking or reading!"
If you're flabby, you've got to slim down: MarketWatch has the details on the impending layoffs at the New York Times Co. About two-thirds of the 190 job cuts will come from The New York Times, with the remainder of the cuts coming from publications in the NYT's New England Media Group.
Worried that many of your favorite op-ed columnists at the New York Times will soon be disappearing behind a paid subscription wall? Susan Mernit uncovers a comprehensive plan by Peter Levinson to replace the New York Times op-ed columnists with bloggers. Paul Krugman? Replace him with blogger Brad DeLong. David Brooks? Try Andrew Sullivan. Tom Friedman? How about Juan Cole?
Jason Calacanis points out that Andrew Rasiej, candidate for New York City Public Advocate, recently added a campaign videoblog to his growing arsenal of online tools. As a preview of things to come, the Advocates for Rasiej site has posted a short two-and-a-half minute campaign video that was shot using a handheld mini-DV camera.
Another sign that podcasting is entering the mainstream: both ABC News and NBC News are experimenting with podcasting initiatives. Paid Content compares and contrasts the two rival efforts, calling them "far too reminiscent of a round of Spy vs. Spy." Looks like both networks will offer a mix of short clips as well as hour-long podcast specials and news updates.
This came across my desk recently: on Thursday, there will be a news briefing in midtown in which the Carnegie Corporation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation -- together with Columbia, Harvard, Northwestern, UC Berkeley and USC -- will announce a new multi-year, multi-million dollar initiative to "revitalize and reform journalism education in the U.S." Among those scheduled to speak at the event: Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation and Hodding Carter, president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Just browsing the Knight Foundation Web site, I stumbled across a pretty cool resource: News University, "an innovative Web site designed to help journalists improve their work." Looks like a number of e-learning modules and courses are available now.
Unions are picketing IBM's headquarters in Armonk in an attempt to get the company to curtail - or even abandon - its workforce downsizing plans. For now, though, "there have been no signs Big Blue is about to blink," according to the Poughkeepsie Journal. Union pressure in New York is having less of an impact than one might suppose because most of the job cuts are planned for Europe; thus, most of the efforts within the U.S. are aimed at showing solidarity with their European co-workers.
According to the New York Times, the Starr Foundation is planning to donate $50 million to three Upper East Side medical institutions (Weill Medical College of Cornell University, Rockefeller University and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center) in order to conduct stem cell research. Details on how the $50 million will be allocated has not yet been determined, but officials say that "the foundation favors projects that cross institutional boundaries." Interestingly, the foundation also said that it was not attempting to make a political statement about stem cell research -- the broader goal was simply to keep New York City as a world leader in medical science.
Peter Rojas of Engadget interviews Jeffrey Citron, chairman and CEO of Vonage. In a wide-ranging interview, Citron discusses the big picture view of VoIP, the emergence of Skype as a potential rival, the new generation of Wi-Fi phones, and E911 calling.
Heather Green of Business Week's new Blogspotting blog interviews Buzz Machine's Jeff Jarvis about his decision to quit his full-time job and devote himself full-time to the blogosphere and citizen's media.
Jarvis, who will be a consultant for About.com and the New York Times, explains part of his vision for distributed media at About.com:
"The world of centralized marketplace is yielding to distributed news. Our new role is finding new ways to aggregate. I am hoping there are ways to set up ad hoc networks. I want to enable good things to happen and allow people to be supported, with training, content sharing, etc. About starts with this incredible army of people putting out 500 guides. It's my hope that they can become a platform for distributed media. A locus and starting point for new and great things."
The New York Daily News has the details on Trump University, which won't award grades or degrees, but will charge $300 per course for a business education approved by The Donald:
"Don’t expect ivy-covered walls or a football team. Trump University will consist of online courses, CD-ROMS, consulting services and Learning Annex-type seminars."
(We will expect, however, a cool coat of arms that looks like something from Oxford or Cambridge as a logo for the school)
At a press conference, The Donald explained how the learning mission of Trump University differs from that of traditional schools:
"The problem with school is that school is a little academic, a little theoretical, not necessarily practical. It doesn’t necessarily serve the general public, who may just want to know how to do something. [Trump University] is going to be a tremendous venture. It’s going to really help a lot of people, which is what we really want to do."
If nothing else, the project is an interesting way to take advantage of unleased space at 40 Wall Street, one of Trump's properties that will serve as the HQ for the new "university." We speculate also that Donald Trump may need to create a third category for the next edition of "The Apprentice" -- E-learning Smarts. (The most recent season of "The Apprentice" featured a team of "Book Smarts" versus "Street Smarts.")
The New York Daily News takes a futuristic look at RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology for retail consumers. In one scenario, small computer tags would be embedded right into clothing and other store items. Consumers would then scan the products that they want to buy, and the items would be automatically billed to your debit or credit card. It sounds kinda cool, but as the article points out, there are a number of privacy issues to resolve before RFID technology really takes off.
Looks like more people have stopped drinking the Blog Kool-Aid... Ad Rants explains why blogging is no longer cool (was it ever?):
"Following the recent whirlwind of blog hype including Nick Denton's love affair with the New York Times, his pie to the face at the Radar Magazine party, the launch of Blogebrity, Jason Calacanis' three million micro-blogs, a sudden explosion of branded character blogs and "all marketers should blog" blog conferences, it's now official. Rick Bruner and I, today, declare blogging to have gone the way of the trucker hat. In celebration of this sacred event, May 20, 2005, you can pick up your memorial, Nick Denton Trucker Hat over at Cafe Press."
What's going on behind that gleaming facade at Time Warner Center overlooking Central Park? Fortune goes behind the scenes with Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons to see if there are any interesting new initiatives afoot at the company. Somewhat surprisingly (depending on how you look at it), the answer is basically "business as usual." The company is paring down debt, stabilizing operations, settling federal investigations, and trying out a few ideas to boost the stock price. The only problem is that Wall Street isn't paying much attention -- the company's stock price hasn't budged in nearly 12 months.
The takeaway lesson? A few new projects are in the works, but not "some newfangled thing that people can't understand." When asked about some kind of grand strategy at Time Warner, Dick Parsons doesn't seem to have much in mind: "It's not terribly different from what you see today." If you own shares of Time Warner, that has to be disappointing.
At a Securities Industry Association conference in Manhattan, "acquisitive-minded" Archipelago CEO Gerald Putnam hinted that additional market consolidation could be on the way for electronic trading networks. While Putnam has not discussed any concrete deals with NYSE CEO John Thain, he conjectured about the possibility of cross-border deals, in which U.S. markets join with foreign ones.
Putnam also shed some light on the details of the merger between Archipelago and the New York Stock Exchange. For now, the two exchanges plan to operate separately after the deal closes, with "no immediate plans to integrate the entities."
Christopher Lawton of the Wall Street Journal Online interviews newspaper exec Gary Pruitt, who explains how traditional newspapers are attempting to attract younger readers and, at the same time, counteract the recent growth trend in online advertising. When Lawton suggests that the traditional print newspaper might be "dead," Pruitt quickly counters:
"I would say that the migration of content and advertising online means we will face new competitors. The barriers to entry are less, and there are many more classified companies that can compete... There are many more competitors online, but it also means that we have opportunities. We now compete in the breaking news space that we once fed to broadcasters. We can deliver targeted advertising to online audiences, measured and identified with greater precision than ever before..."
Not quite as exciting as the news about Saddam Hussein in his undies, but... Jeff Jarvis of Buzz Machine quit his full-time job at Advance.net on Friday to pursue a number of interesting media projects -- including a high-profile consulting assignment with About.com and New York Times Digital:
"I just quit my job at Advance.net to do lots of new things -- a damned career smorgasbord -- all related to changing news and to citizens' media. I'm going to work on content development About.com, on a consulting basis, working with Martin Nisenholtz at The New York Times Company... I will act as editor in chief of a new news start-up founded by Upendra Shardanand (ex Firefly, Microsoft Passport, AOL, and Time Warner) and a sterling team... I got a chance to write the new media curriculum for the new City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism... I am hanging out my consulting shingle to take on a few good projects... I have a book I'm finally ready to start writing and I'm thinking about writing some of it here on this blog. And, of course, I will blog -- blog more, I hope."
Bookmark this for the Christmas shopping season: KidRobot NY in SoHo. The store offers "the best in urban vinyl toys, mini-figures, t-shirts, posters, accessories, action figures & more!" The lil' pink fella is called Fling the Monkey and retails for $59.95.
A number of factors -- including the proliferation of bloggers and other Internet pundits -- has resulted in the demise of the newspaper art critic. Nowadays, when art journalists gather, supposedly all they talk about is their declining influence on the masses. There are perhaps only a few "stern, doctrinaire" critics left who can literally make or break a show:
"What happened? Besides the Internet and its rash of blogs, suspected culprits include the culture of celebrity, anti-intellectual populism, stingy newspaper owners and what some critics say is a loss of vitality or visibility in their art forms."
Oh... and the New York Times says that the Internet also killed the narrative joke of the type "Two guys walked into a bar...":
"Whatever tenuous hold the joke had left by the 1990's may have been broken by the Internet. The torrent of e-mail jokes in the late 1990's and joke Web sites made every joke available at once, essentially diluting the effect of what had been an spoken form. While getting up and telling a joke requires courage, forwarding a joke by e-mail takes hardly any effort at all. So everyone did it, until it wasn't funny anymore."
"Click away without fear, shutterbugs - a controversial proposal to ban photography in the subways is dead. The Police Department recently told transit officials the photo ban is unnecessary."
According to the New York Daily News, though, police officers will "continue to investigate and intercede if necessary, if the activity - photo-related or not - is suspicious."
Bloggers are celebrities, right? With that in mind, A-list blogger Jessica Coen points to Blogebrity:
"Hi, everyone, I'd like to introduce you the load of genius behind Blogebrity since, you know, normally venerable folks like Glenn Reynolds are even linking to this odd site. Blogebrity poses as a "blogger gossip" page, which smartly creates a blogger hierarchy and has everyone all pissy and intrigued."
Andrew Rasiej, candidate for New York City Public Advocate, recently sent out an e-mail announcing a new feature on his campaign blog:
"In the coming days I will be launching a new feature on my website -- IDEAS4NYC. Each week we will post a question on a different issue, and ask you to give us your specific solutions. We'll share the results on our blog. And we'll take the best ideas and add them to the policy agenda we are developing."
It looks like Rasiej is having some initial success with the online campaign blog -- according to papers filed with the Campaign Finance Board, he's already raised $72,000 in just two weeks. All the more impressive, since Rasiej is not taking any donations over $100.
Podcast NYC has a wrap-up of Thursday night's NYC Podcasting Association meeting. If you want to know who's who in the New York podcasting world -- including the first podcaster from the NYC area to get a play on KYOU (the West Coast all-podcast station) -- here's a chance to find out.
Daily Gotham applauds grassroots efforts already underway in Queens to save the NY State Pavilion in Flushing Meadow Park (built for the 1964-65 World's Fair) by turning it an Air and Space museum. Create, an architectural and planning firm, has already come up with the sketches and vision to save the decaying New York State Pavilion, which is at risk of "collapsing into a pile of rubble" if steps are not taken soon.
Jeff Jarvis of Buzz Machine explains why editors and politicians are customer-service representatives. Not literally, of course, but in the way that they respond to the needs of a community. To support his claim, he points to Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, who frequently refers to himself as a customer service representative. In snippets from a Q&A at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York, Craig explains why trust and goodwill are important factors in providing any customer-focused service and why customer service is actually "a high expression of moral values."
"Our management team has set the bar very high... I don't think anyone's going to offer a price that can beat what we can do ourselves."
Of course, things could change if family patriarch Charles Dolan, the chairman of Cablevision, decides to start meddling again. (Charles didn't attend the meeting -- he was vacationing in Russia this week, of all places.)
In Wired Magazine, Adam Penenberg describes how a 24-year-old NYU grad is creating a Chinese Weblog empire along the lines of Nick Denton's Gawker Media:
"The 24-year-old Chan, who has a business degree from New York University, is hoping to build a blog empire in China. His model? None other than Nick Denton, the Rupert Murdoch (without the money) of the weblog set, who started the Gawker Network, operator of meanie gossip rag Gawker; Gizmodo, which feeds gadget lust; and Wonkette, the Dorothy Parker of the web set."
Chan's blog network consists of three blogs: Dianziren (consumer electronics); Shuanga (humor); and Jiaexp (gaming). Two more are on the way: a blog for women about beauty and cosmetics, and a gossip blog about celebrities.
"Under the agreement announced Thursday, Wal-Mart will offer its existing online DVD rental customers the chance to continue their subscriptions with Los Gatos-based Netflix at their current price for the next year. Wal-Mart also will begin promoting the Netflix service on its Web site. In return, Netflix's Web site will remind its subscribers that they can buy DVDs from Walmart.com."
Wall Street loves the news -- Netflix's shares are already up 28% in pre-market trading. Someone taking on Wal-Mart and winning? That's impressive. Next up for Netflix: the destruction of Blockbuster's DVD rental business.
Susan Mernit points to the launch of Daily Gotham:
"Blogdiva Liza Sabater's just launched Daily Gotham, a community journalism site for NYC. This local site uses CivicSpaces' Community Network tool set and comes equipped with wikispace, plus message boards, polls, surveys, blogs and other features that can be turned on as the site evolves."
The "The Long Tail" thesis, first proposed by Wired Magazine's Chris Anderson last year, continues to draw its fair share of proponents, adherents and supporters. At the Syndicate conference in New York earlier this week, for example, Martin Nisenholtz of New York Times Digital mentioned the theory at least twice in his keynote address.
Now, there's a complementary (competing?) theory known as the "Variety Revolution" thesis that is being developed by Virginia Postrel. At her Dynamist site, Postrel explains what it all means:
"The variety revolution is one of the biggest business stories of the past decade. Thanks to production and distribution innovations, consumers now have access to far more choices for all kinds of goods and services, from fresh vegetables in the supermarket to DVDs from Netflix... The variety revolution is an economic story, but it has much broader implications for how we think about pluralism and individual differences."
Postrel's most recent book (The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, & Consciousness), published last September, started to explore many of the concepts that form the basis for the Variety Revolution thesis.
Sirius Satellite Radio has inked a deal with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum to become its official satellite radio partner. Under the terms of the deal, Sirius will be able to broadcast daily from the Hall of Fame’s Alan Freed Radio Studio in Cleveland. The Cleveland Plain Dealer has more details about the types of exclusive rock 'n roll programming that Sirius is planning.
All over Wall Street, analysts who cover Sirius must be thinking, "It's only rock 'n roll, but I like it, like it, yes I do."
With the announcement earlier this week that the New York Times is planning to put the commentary of its esteemed op-ed columnists behind a paid subscription wall, it was only natural that Krugman, Friedman, Dowd, Brooks & Co. would have something to say about it... Once bloggers have to pay to read them, will these op-ed columnists remain a vital part of the blogosphere?
The Yellow Line has an amusing parody of how these op-ed columnists might have reacted when informed by Times management. Here's Maureen Dowd, for example:
"It really is true. I work for plutocrats. I used to think those Bush bumper stickers and Cheney shirts owned by our illustrious editorial board were just wry winks at the nature of power. But I see now I was wrong, we all were. The leadership here has no interest in running a paper. They’re much happier heading out to their Vermont lodges, sipping their Pinot Noirs and plotting their next money grab."
Tom Coates of Plastic Bag points to Blogpoly, a Monopoly board influenced by the blogosphere.
According to the creator of Blogpoly, "It is just a game. It is fun to use the board to lay out the Blogosphere Ecosystem. It helps me to think and learn about blogging culture by transforming the original game into this version. I had to think about which company and enterprise to choose and set up first on the board. The space is limited, so I picked well known names in blogging industry..."
In this week's New York magazine, Huffington Post blogger Walter Cronkite inadvertently confuses "boggle" with "blog": "I admit that the boggling [sic] is fascinating, or so I gather. But I don't who the people are who are boggling. There's no editorial judgment. Although the marvelous thing about Arianna's is that I can write anything I want." That's the definition of mindboggling.
According to Jay Greene of Business Week Online, Microsoft founder Bill Gates is in the preliminary stages of writing a new book that will look at the future of technology, especially as it relates to world health and education. In 1996, of course, Gates penned a bestseller (The Road Ahead) that "predicted technical wonders we take for granted now." Expect more of the same this time around. (Thanks, Craig)
Aren't there enough ways to play the ponies in NYC, without the need for online horse wagering? It seems like there's an OTB facility within a fifteen-minute walk anywhere in the city. Plus, hasn't telephone betting been legal for years? But, no, that's not convenient enough, according to proponents of online betting:
"Horse racing experts on Tuesday touted online betting as a way to increase revenue and pump life into an industry that has seen better days in New York. They testified at an Albany hearing on the future of racing, saying the state should revamp its laws to allow people to point, click and bet."
According to one horse owner, the move to online betting is essential in order to "attract younger people to the game." (Just what we need, a younger generation weaned on online poker and online horse betting) OTB execs in New York are also griping that online betting is legal in New Jersey, ultimately draining jobs and taxes out of New York state.
Newsday says that the city is studying the effect of UV light on drinking water:
"The city's Department of Environmental Protection is studying the use of ultraviolet light to disinfect most of the 1.3 billion gallons of water that residents of the five boroughs and Westchester County use each day. It will take at least four years before New Yorkers could actually drink the UV-treated water, provided DEP can get all the necessary approvals."
Ultraviolet light, of course, is also used by tanning salons to give patrons that healthy, all-over orange glow. Hmmm, this could be an interesting marketing hook for New York's indoor tanning salons: 10 tans and 10 jugs of water for the same low price.
Based largely on the city's dramatic economic recovery since 2001, S&P raised New York City's credit rating by one level to A+ -- the highest rating ever given to the city by the rating agency. (The A+ rating is the fifth-highest of 10 investment grades). The credit upgrade follows a similar move by Moody's, which recently upgraded its rating on New York City municipal debt to A1. Bloomberg.com has more on the economic outlook for the city as well as a sophisticated look at municipal debt yields.
Google product manager Shuman Ghosemajumder, one of the guest speakers on a panel about RSS and advertising, explains Google AdSense for Feeds:
"We really want to nurture this market. As we're getting the business model right for media on the Web in general, it's imperative that advertising be integrated into feeds properly."
The cover story in this week's New York Magazine asks a provocative question: Is Your Apartment Like a Dot-Com Stock? It's a timely question to ask, we suppose, but consider that the author of the story is none other than disgraced Wall Street analyst/stock shill Henry Blodget.
Real estate blog Curbed comments: "The mere experience of reading Henry Blodget's take on the real estate bubble nearly made our head explode. Blodget, the deposed king of the Amazons, makes two salient points: 1) the Internet collapse was not his fault and 2) the collapse of the real-estate market will not be his fault."
Rafat Ali of Paid Content has excellent coverage of the keynote speech given by New York Times Digital's Martin Nisenholtz at the Syndicate conference in Times Square.
Two points from the speech especially stood out:
(1) Nisenholtz's plan for a New York Times affiliate program based loosely on Amazon.com's affiliate program. It's still a work in progress, but it looks like the New York Times is thinking about ways to provide revenue to small blog publishers. Bloggers willing and able to direct readers to premium content offerings from the New York Times would get a cut of any revenue. (The day before, the Times announced a $50 per year all-you-can-eat subscription plan)
(2) Nisenholtz's analysis of the forces at work in the world of media (e.g. the unbundling of content from central organizing principles, the need to balance serendipity and technology-driven personalization). In the old days, of course, everyone got their news from print newspapers, and there was a generally accepted way of organizing the information. With RSS readers and other innovations, content has become "unbundled" and stripped of context. People no longer access content through the "front door" either. The New York Times online is trying to find a middle between two extremes.
Overall, I was impressed with what Nisenholtz had to say. He didn't have all the answers, but who does? According to Robert Scoble, the New York Times is "preparing for the death of print." That may be a bit extreme, but it is clear that the Times is taking steps to avoid becoming a media dinosaur. Companies like Google and About.com have been instrumental in changing the company's thinking. Google has altered the way that traditional media think about advertising, while About.com has shown that it is possible to monetize micro-niche content that users find through non-traditional means (i.e. search engines).
Monday's Personal Democracy Forum at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York featured a number of high-profile bloggers, political activists, and other supporters of citizen participation in the democratic process.
"As has been reported on a variety of blogs around the net, IBM today is publishing an announcement on its Intranet site encouraging all 320,000+ employees world wide to consider engaging actively in the practice of blogging."
In just the past 18 months, behind-the-scenes efforts to interest IBM employees in blogging has resulted in 9,000 registered users in 65 different countries, 3,097 individual blogs (1,358 of them active) and a total of 26,203 blog entries and comments.
Now that the blogging effort has gone official, the IBM Blogging Community has drafted a number of Corporate Blogging Guidelines that are "designed to guide IBMers as they figure out what they're going to blog about so they don't end up like certain notable ex-employees of certain notable other companies."
"For a modest fee, TimesSelect will provide exclusive access to Op-Ed and news columnists on NYTimes.com, easy and in-depth access to The Times's online archives, early access to select articles on the site, as well as other exciting features."
According to the company's press release, TimesSelect goes live sometime in early September.
Working off a rich selection of reference material that included videotapes, photos and historical essays, the new DreamWorks film "Madagascar" (opening May 27) was able to recreate a virtual Grand Central Terminal that is a near-identical replica of the original:
"It's almost as if someone who was doing a live-action shoot decided to replicate a set of Grand Central, built it to scale and lit it. That's kind of what ours is except it's done virtually, in the computer."
The film also features other New York landmarks, such as the Central Park Zoo, Fifth Avenue, Rockefeller Center and Times Square -- as well as famous human stars like Chris Rock and Ben Stiller.
The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 decision, ruled that consumers in New York state can buy their favorite bottles of wine from out-of-state vineyards. The ruling overturned laws that barred out-of-state wineries from selling directly to consumers within a state. As might be expected, New York winemakers (now free to ship across the country), together with Internet and mail-order wine companies, celebrated the decision.
