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First, I hate perpetuating an Apple rumor meme. I’d prefer to just point to my page of “All the Apple Rumors You’ll Ever Need.” However, I can’t help myself from commenting on the newest iteration of what seems to me to be the longest-running rumor in Apple history. Today, Gizmodo and others are rumoring that the iPhone will be announced on Monday. I’ll confess: I’m so sick of hearing these rumors (they’ve been around so long, it seems they started when Jobs and Wozniak were still working in a garage) that I’m beginning to hope the whole thing is a decoy.
Yet part of me looks forward to such an announcement on Monday because, frankly, I’m curious how they’ll explain the decision to announce a highly-anticipated consumer product seven days before Christmas.
Longtime Apple watchers know that January 9, the opening day of Macworld, is the typical day for such an announcement. Usually (and logically) Apple waits until right after Christmas to make consumers have buyer’s remorse for getting a product without the newest feature. If Apple announces a new iPhone on December 18, they’ll be creating an avalanche of, what, something I don’t know what to call (perhaps the Germans have a word for it). Something like: pre-buyers remorse.
As for me, all I want for Christmas is no more Apple rumors.
Technorati Tags: apple, ipod, marketing
Thanks to the neo-pop-culture-icon Eric of MyBlogLog for dropping by the comments of a my post from a few days ago in which I suggested the MyBlogLog folks replace their update-challenged help page with a wiki*. Well, Tah-dah. More background on the new wiki can be found on the MyBlogLog Blog.
*In response to recommendations by the rexblog advisory board**, for a while, I am going to define the word wiki whenever I use it. In this case, I am using the word wiki to refer to a repository of knowledge (sometimes called a “knowledge-base” or, ugh, “knowledge-management system”) of product information created and updated in a collaborative way by the developers and users of the product.
**A highly-inclusive board that includes anyone who e-mails me suggestions.
Technorati Tags: mybloglog, socia media, wiki
The U.S. Census Bureau released the 2007 Statistical Abstract of the United States (PDFs) which has already unleashed a rash of really bad reporting by journalists who likely avoided taking statistics courses in college. Sam Roberts of the New York Times kicked off things by randomly comparing unrelated statistics in the fun, but useless, way reporters do. (Example: “Americans are getting fatter, but now drink more bottled water per person than beer.”)
I can’t blame reporters, however. The PR folks at the Census Bureau encouraged this type of “make up your own findings” game with a misleading statistical mashup they created for the headline on their press release: “Nearly Half of our Lives Spent with TV, Radio, Internet, Newspapers according to Census Bureau Publication.”
Without ever reading the report, just by looking at that headline and reading three paragraphs of the release, I can tell you that it is a mis-leading mashup of statistics that do not conclude what they say it concludes.
Why do I think this? Well, part of the reason is that I remembered that Pew Research study from a few months ago that said we spend about three hours as day with such media — a lot, but not “half” our lives. Also, you can tell from a mile-off that the data does NOT take into account that time in which we are doing two things at once — reading a newspaper and listening to the radio while the TV is on in the background or, as I often do, using the Internet while listening to my XM radio. Without a formula that accounts for the unreduplicated hours we spend with each of of those individual media, there is no way to conclude we spend “half” our lives with those media aggregated.
Yet here’s how the Census Bureau PR folks came up with their headline:
“According to projections from a communications industry forecast, people will spend 65 days in front of the TV, 41 days listening to radio and a little over a week on the Internet in 2007. Adults will spend about a week reading a daily newspaper and teens and adults will spend another week listening to recorded music.
Real statisticians at the Census Bureau should be cringing when they read that press release and the news coverage today.
Technorati Tags: statistics
This blog has about three readers who are probably waiting for me to rip into this MediaLife magazine article about publications that are delivered online as “digital versions”. That’s because, these three readers know I used to be rather hostile (I’m not going to point to all of them, but the rants started in 2002) to the whole notion of digital replications of print publications. However, I’ve mellowed as digital versions have become less like PDFs (which the article insists on calling them) as more things like embedded video of hyperlinks are now included in them. I’ve even found several instances where I’ve recommended they be used to display a printed product online or to distribute a digital replica of a magazine to a special audience. Also, as I’ve noted, they can be delivered via RSS.
However, I don’t believe even their most zealous evangelists (of which, those three readers of this blog I referred to above are among) argue that they’re going to replace newspapers (or magazines) or are a replacement business model for them. They are an additional means to distribute several forms of expression some people lump together and call “content,” however, even their in their most perfect incarnation, they are still (and this has been my long-time beef) a replication of an old media for those who can’t handle new metaphors.
They appeal to people who want to see what the print version of the publication looks like — International readers, for example — but the information and “content” found in a newspaper and magazine can be better distributed and read online using other technologies and interfaces and experiences and metaphors than those provided in a PDF — no matter how souped-up and flash-enhanced it is.
Again, I’m not arguing that digital versions of magazines will not find a place — especially when my predicted 8×10 wireless iPod-like device appears — and the long-heralded ‘e-book’ platforms actually happen — or when that e-paper that’s supposed to fold up and fit in your pocket happens.
In the meantime, the key sentence of that article is this quote (my bolding): “Publishers see real potential as the PDF is highly portable and easy to print on short notice.” This has, primarily (sorry guys) been a technology pushed by publishers, not pulled by readers.
Technorati Tags: ebook, magazines, newspapers, digital magazines
As part of its efforts to bundle services that small businesses (and individuals) can operate using their own domain (insert Seinfeld joke here), Google is now offering the ability to register a domain. (I’ll let the experts on such tea-leaves esoterica at Search Engine Land figure out why Google is using GoDaddy and eNom to power it.) The bundled services work if you have a domain you’ve already registered and control — this is merely a new feature being offered to those who want to register a new domain.
A reminder: As I blogged when they announced it on October 31, a free domain name registration is being offered by Microsoft to entice people to use their similar bundled services being marketed under the brand Office Live.
Another reminder: What you’ll be paying $10 to Google for, you can purchase from GoDaddy for $9. [Later: Commenter 'balzack' (see comments) points out that Google is throwing in the privacy feature GoDaddy charges $9 for, so a better comparison is $9 vs. $18. If that's a feature you want, the Google option seems a bargain.]
Why would people pay Google $10 for what they can find elsewhere for $9 or free? The words convenience and simplicity spring to mind. Also, having a $10 charge in the context of offering something free may seem fair to those setting up such a bundle of services. Also, it takes a very small-amount of geekiness to register a domain on one service and provide Google the means to utilize it for the free services. (Anyone can do it, but it may take a lay-person $10 worth of hassle to figure it out.)
Technorati Tags: google, small business
I am about to become a zealot. If, as the Tennessean reports today, that “legally, there’s not much Metro or other Tennessee communities can do to protect historic stone walls,” I will be spending a portion of my time and energy over the coming months and years to see if that can be changed. I have privately pondered what tragic or perhaps, inspiring stories these slave-built stone walls must hold as I’ve walked and jogged and biked beside them for the past 25 years. After reading this article, I am going to do the following: 1. Learn what I can about their history. 2. Learn who is best organized to protect and preserve them. 3. Get involved with that group. 4. Set up a wiki (a participatory knowledge-base) so those who are concerned can chronicle, photograph, map and discuss them., 5. Do what I can to change the laws so there are ways to protect historic stone walls.
Technorati Tags: nashville, historic preservation
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Anxiety is building within the halls of Time Inc. as employees await the results of the evaluation by McKinsey & Co. as to how the publisher can run its magazine business more efficiently.
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Interview with David Renard who has released a 288-page anthology of selected “boutique” publications with the title “The Last Magazine: Magazines in Transition”
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