A new new year’s song: I don’t know about you. I’m tired of there being only one song associated with New Years Eve. It’s not great, but here’s a new one, Next Year Baby, by Jamie Cullum. I give it an 85. It has a good beat and you can dance to it. Happy New Year!

“I am a drunk lawmaker”: Starting tomorrow, in Tennessee when one is convicted of drunk driving for the first time, he or she will be required to do 24 hours of roadside cleanup while wearing an orange vest emblazoned with the phrase “I am a Drunk Driver.”

Technorati Tags: nashville

Happy Hogmanay: I don’t know about you, but I think Hogmanay needs to become more commercialized. Perhaps something to do with using gift cards received during the previous year. We could all start saying: Happy Hogmanay, what’d you get with that Target gift card I gave you? And how come there aren’t more Hogmanay songs (ITMS link)?

Technorati Tags: humor

Stephen Baker asks: If a magazine is cutting staffers, can it afford to increase blogging? Great question that, no doubt, will be one of 2006′ most asked questions around magazine publishing companies.
Quote:

“I hear threads of this debate at BusinessWeek: Just three weeks ago we had layoffs, and yet our blogging contingent continues to grow. One line of thinking asks, Why does a magazine need more than one blog?

Technorati Tags: blogging, magazines

It’s a big world, afterall: The U.S. Census Bureau today projected that on Sunday, the nation’s population will be 297,821,175 up 2,713,518 or 0.9 percent from New Year’s Day 2005. In January, the U.S. is expected to register one birth every eight seconds and one death every 12 seconds. Meanwhile, net international migration is expected to add one person every 31 seconds. The result is an increase in the total population of one person every 14 seconds.

(via: ResourceShelf)

There is nothing new about a website launching a print magazine: For some reason, whenever a web-based media company launches a print magazine, reporters feel the need to make it into a trend story, implying that there is something “new” about it. Today it’s Business Week reporting the launch of a print version of a “webzine.” (Gee, and how cute the use of that 1996ish term, webzine.)

Quote:

So it comes as quite a surprise that eight years later, at a time when the magazine industry is falling over itself to boost its presence online, that BabyCenter has launched a version of its popular Web site on — gasp — paper.

A surprise? Gasp! To whom? As a former associate of mine wrote a couple of years ago, popular websites have been trying to become successful magazine publishers for as long as there have been successful websites.

Here’s a partial list of some web-to-print magazines that launched and later ceased publication: eBay Magazine, Yahoo! Internet Life, Garden.com’s Garden Escape Magazine, Motley Fool Monthly and Buy.com Magazine (which was actually a catalogue in all but name). Even Pets.com had a magazine.

And — gasp — there have also been “success stories” in web-to-print arena, for example TheKnot.com’s regional magazines.

Update: Oh, and how could I forget JPG Magazine, the first “blog-to-print” magazine about which I’ve blogged on numerous occasions.

Update II: Trend story, trend story.

Technorati Tags: magazines

Fine Advice: Business Week’s media writer Jon Fine has advice for newspapers; advice that works for other traditional media, as well. (I’m thinking B-to-B).

Quote:

STEAL FROM GOOGLE. Make your ads hyper-accountable. Identify the top advertisers in your local market and figure out what it would take to grab 100% of their ad budgets. Give them unlimited pages, on paper and online, until they reach their goals. You’re the biggest guy in town. Your per-page cost of newsprint is cheap — and your per-impression cost online is even cheaper. Leverage that to cut off your rivals’ oxygen….

USE YOUR READERS. Building communities and businesses around community-created content was not invented by MySpace.com. One bright spot for the Reader’s Digest Assn. (RDA ) is Reiman Publications, which runs a host of homey, ad-free titles that lean heavily on reader-written contributions. Is there a sufficient subcultural pulse in your city to pull off a mini-myspace? Are locals writing hobbyist blogs that you can build about.coms around? There have always been more talented content creators than full-time jobs for them; the platform of the Net makes them visible. Do you want them inside your tent as partners or outside it as competitors?

Technorati Tags: B2B, blogging, magazines

Khoi going to the Times: Designer Khoi Vinh is leaving the firm he co-founded to become the design director for NYTimes.com.

Quote from Khoi:

In a few weeks, I’ll be starting work at The New York Times as the Design Director for NYTimes.com. I’ll be heading up their staff of Web designers, helping to bring new improvements and features to the Gray Lady’s formidable online presence, and also working to define the role that design will play in the paper’s increasingly digital future.

I met Khoi in Austin last March at SxSW and point to his blog often.

37Signals’ Matt Linderman (with a wink) suggests it was Khoi’s work on the redesign of another newspaper of record, The Onion, that convinced the Times that Khoi was their man.

Congratulations to Khoi and the NYTimes.com

Technorati Tags: design

Big companies & their blogs: Chris Anderson points to a wiki that Wired and SocialText have set up to compile a list of blogs related to Fortune 500 companies.

Quote:

“Once we’ve got this list in pretty good shape, we plan to add share price data to create a Business Blogging Index, comparing the stock performance of companies that blog with those that don’t.”

Note: I’m trying to rack my brain to think of another magazine that has used a wiki for a special feature. I can think of a magazine publishing company that has set up a wiki (okay, here’s the wiki and here’s the company), but I can’t think of another wiki with a magazine brand attached to it. I’m sure there are some, but I haven’t run across them. Also, another side note: I think it’s a first for a magazine owned by one media company (Wired, Condé Nast) to have a feature carrying the brand of another magazine owned by another media company (Fortune, Time Inc.). That’s very Magazine 2.0.

Technorati Tags: magazine2.0, magazines

Rex’s predictions: Rex Sorgatz makes his annual predictions for “Media, Technology, and Pop Culture”.

Quote:

“A new Pew study will reveal something about internet use that will be drastically over-cited by people who are reading this blog post.”

Also, Rex’s List of lists now lists more than 500 lists. I predict that one day, historians, novelists and movie set designers will depend on Rex Sorgatz’s list of lists to provide them with a sense of the era’s zeitgeist based not only on the words we searched but the kitchen utensils we used. Unfortunately, I also predict that when those historians, et al, need them, there will be lots of dead links.

Technorati Tags: blogging, lists, brandrex

Flickr calendar view: I guess I’ve had a little more time to play around with Flickr while on vacation because I’ve noticed some features I’ve never seen before. One of these features that’s new to me (is it just me?) is the Flickr calendar view. It seems like such a simple idea, so obvious. I guess that’s why it seems so brilliant to me.

For example, recently Doc Searls has been posting some incredible sunrise shots from his home. Here are the shots via his “date taken” calendar view. Pretty cool.

I know it will inspire me to post more photos — if for no other reason than to be able to have a quick visual reference of where I was when, and what I was doing while there.

Technorati Tags: flickr

Proof I’m on vacation: It’s taken me four days to hear about the nun bun being stolen on Christmas Day. Is nothing sacred?

Technorati Tags: nashville

Vacation blogging: What Jeremy Hermanns is blogging about is not what you want to be blogging about during a vacation. However, it’s incredible that he survived to do so.

Quote:

“And as the oxygen masks deployed from the ceiling in a familiar, video-esque manner, we all grasped them in fear - trying to figure out how to breathe through the flimsy pieces of plastic. Parents were the most confused – as the masks were too large for their babies’ faces and were not easy to put on in such a panicked situation. The next few minutes passed like seconds – the plane started diving down to a lower level … and fast.”

(via: Jeff Jarvis)

Technorati Tags: blogging

Here’s how I blog during a vacation: Stephen Baker asks about how one should blog during a vacation. Posting photos on Flickr is one way to do it. It’s especially fun to do when you’re able to post photos of people doing bizarre things like swallowing swords.

Technorati Tags: flickr, key west

Key West Flickr set: My father-in-law was in one of the first cars to drive all the way to Key West without having to ferry between any island (in 1938). He’s been coming here since even before then, however. When I come here, it’s usually to fish with him but this week, I’m just hanging out with family. Reading. Riding bikes. Taking pictures. When you look beyond the gritty tourist trap it has become, you can still see the beauty of Key West. It’s warm and sunny here this week and just what I needed before facing January. Here are some photos from today.

Technorati Tags: key west