From the Charleston Daily Mail, comes this news: “Newspaper bundles jammed into a pickup truck probably saved the life of a carrier involved in a head-on collision that proved fatal for the other driver, authorities said.” My observant friend, Jimmy Guterman, suggests this means print newspapers are, indeed, good for something we perhaps haven’t considered. My response, Jimmy: if the physical newspapers are to be credited with saving the driver’s life, then can one also argue that the need to deliver those physical newspapers at 3:15 a.m. contributed to the death of the other driver?

Is Justin.tv brilliant? Or is it just weird? I think I’m voting for the last one. I’m all for clever marketing gimmicks and new media experimentation, but Justin.tv is reminding me of some advice I saw recently about how to come up with an idea for a Web 2.0 company: Just dust off a business plan from 1999. As Nick Gonzalez describes on TechCrunch, “Justin.TV is a website entirely devoted to chronicling the life of one of the company’s founders, Justin Kan, around day and night via web cam.” Rather than the 1999 versions of this “live cam” thing, Justin is wearing a “head cam” and is using some cool mobile technology to stream whatever he’s doing in real-time. He’s wandering around interviewing startup founders — like as I watch now, he’s at a chinese restaurant talking to some guys about something that I can’t hear because everyone else at the table is laughing. The production quality is so bad that by comparison, the ScobleShow looks like a Steven Spielberg film. Sorry, not for me.

However, if it were more videogame-like and we could (sorta Lora Croft-like) tell him what to ask, or, better yet, program Justin to run into walls and walk out into traffic, perhaps it would be more entertaining.

[Video: A :30 second video screen-grab of Justin.tv & the site's interface that I posted on YouTube.]

Somehow, all the following relate. I just don’t have the time now to connect the dots:

Paul Conley quotes IDG’s Colin Crawford, long a champion of “online-centered” publishing, who said recently, “”the absolute dollar growth of (IDG’s) online revenues now exceeds the decline in our print revenues.”

In yesterday’s International Herald Tribune, the following headline appeared: “Magazine publishers see future, but no profit, in shift to Internet.” (Reading the story, however, indicates the “research” for that headline came from the very scientific approach of getting people attending a conference to “raise they hands.”)

The Monday NY Times has a story about online video advertising generating $410 million last year — and that’s just online “video” advertising, which represents less than 5% of online advertising.

At the end of January, in their most recently reported quarter, Google said it had paid the non-Google web publishers participating in its Adsense program $976 million. While they call those fees “traffic acquisition costs,” that was nearly $1 billion (in one quarter) of revenues Google generated for online publishers. (Google keeps a commission of approximately 25-30% (estimated).) I don’t know what percentage of those online publishing partners are traditional media companies, but I assume there are some bigger-than-a-bread box media companies represented along with all the splogs.

To be continued…

This morning, someone asked me if I’d seen the Hillary video. It was sort of asked in the manner of, “of course, you’ve seen the Hillary video, haven’t you?” I confess. I must be living under a rock. It’s been on YouTube for a couple of weeks. Forget the politics, it’s one of the most incredible mashups I’ve ever seen: a hack of Apple’s famous 1984 ad. I can’t believe Apple hasn’t ordered it down, as it probably violates all sorts of copyright laws. However, the “parody” and “satire” and “fair use” protection issues may be providing some cover. I can say this: if the Clinton campaign seeks its removal, it will backfire, as it will appear in a thousand other places and the “big brother” message will be reinforced. Whoever did this produced an amazing piece of mashup art…and some impressive guerrilla campaign marketing.

Technorati Tags: mashup, politics, yout

Over the past week or so, Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends has asked me lots of great questions about SmallBusiness.com. She has just posted the interview. If you are interested in the creation of a giant wiki-model community, you may find some helpful things there. Or, if you just want to know what the heck SmallBusiness.com is, it will be insightful. Thanks, Anita. And thanks to all others who will help me spread some SmallBusiness.com linkage, viralish love. (Yes, that was link-begging. While I’m at it, please register and fill out a User Profile. Here’s mine.)

Technorati Tags: small business, smallbusiness.com, wiki

• Time Magazine gets a major redesign | pentagram.com
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  (tags: magazines, design)
• Magazine expert blames terrorists for why there are so many new magazines | StarNewsOnline.com
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  (tags: magazines)
• Is a ’show of hands’ scientific research? | International Herald Tribune
  Quote: “(After) buying digital media companies, online advertising firms and search engines, only a few of the 350 magazine and newspaper companies represented at the conference said, in a show of hands, that they were making more than
  (tags: magazines)