Category Archives: Media

48 Hour Magazine Available Now

48-Hour-Magazine-Issue-Zero-cover

I know some wonderfully creative people who really know how to get stuff done. Over the weekend, I volunteered some time to help them produce 48 Hour Magazine, and it’s already available at MagCloud. It was a crazy idea and a wonderful thing to be involved with – and I can’t wait til the next one!

Update: CBS has issued a cease-and-desist letter claiming infringement on “48 Hours.” Mat Honan is collecting information about the process and the coverage.

Update June 15: State of the case, with links to other recent coverage

Eating Apple’s Lunch?

This one feels inevitable, doesn’t it? Apple has one heck of a phone in the iPhone. But that’s all it is — one phone.

Android software is being sprayed across so many handsets that eventually one of the handsets will deliver an experience better than the iPhone. — Apple vs Google: The Next 10 Battles To Watch

When was the last time that “sprayed across so many” devices “eventually” yielded an experience (for regular users) that was substantially better than a carefully controlled and designed UI limited to a few, thoughtfully specified hardware configurations?

Just Want to Get This Out Front

I thought you were worldly

Look at this awesome text message. It is from How Hipsters Date, and it was discussed in a blog entry at the Village Voice. Go read it. It has other, equally rewarding links.

Reminds me of the tempest in a teapot when a Twitter user reported receiving a text after a blind date reading, “I was told you were pretty, and you’re not. I feel badly misled.” (The result was a totally appropriate, immediate, and sustained outpouring of support.)

Memo to would-be brilliant parting-shotters who write this crap: you sound like an ass, and now everyone on the Internet is hearing about it.

Bonus link: the fantastic and wonderful “You Can’t Text-Message Break Up!”

(Also watch the intro scene showing the receipt of the message at dinner with the family.)

Complexity Is Alive and Well

Clay Shirky’s essay, The Collapse of Complex Business Models, has been making the rounds. I was turned off early by a breezy comparison of large companies to sclerotic ancient civilizations, but he really lost me at

The most watched minute of video made in the last five years shows baby Charlie biting his brother’s finger. (Twice!) That minute has been watched by more people than the viewership of American Idol, Dancing With The Stars, and the Superbowl combined. (174 million views and counting.)

But that’s not true, as a 30-second Google search reveals. At the most charitable estimate, it’s neck and neck with a Lady Gaga video. Since Lady Gaga came to prominence about 8 minutes ago, and the Charlie video has been online for 3 years, I don’t find this claim compelling. (Yes, I get the Web-vs-TV point—I’m not even bothering to look up those numbers—but the argument is also about simplicity vs high production values.)

But whatever. Shirky gets lots of attention and consulting gigs and book deals and so on, so obviously he’s reaching audiences very effectively. I have a full-time day job, and I’m trying to stay faithful to my goal of taking at least one good picture of an animal every day this month (doing well!), so I left it at that.

And then a friend shared a link to Wikibollocks: The Shirky Rules, by Tom Slee. It goes into some detail about this recent essay, adds considerable depth to my main loss of connection with it, and compares it to other work by Shirky.

Then again, that Shirky article was posted on April 1. Should I be embarrassed right now?

Update June 2010: Another article critical of Shirky’s methodology

Business Models Are Hard

Look, let’s face it. The iPad is the most exciting opportunity for the media in many years. But if the press is ceding gatekeeper status, even if it’s only nominally, over its speech, then it is making a dangerous mistake. Unless Apple explicitly gives the press complete control over its ability to publish what it sees fit, the news media needs to yank its apps in protest.

Yes, this is that serious. It needs to wrest back control of its speech from Apple Inc.

—It’s Time for the Press to Push Back Against Apple:
Yank iPad apps unless Apple cedes complete control over the right to publish, by Ryan Chittum

In an aside, he includes, “yes, the iPad has a Web browser, but the monetary leverage it could gain with apps is what’s concerning.”

Getting the App Store dropped into its lap is the best thing that’s happened to print media in decades, and arbitrary restrictions are a pretty good deal in exchange for access to hundreds of millions of accounts already set up for more or less one-click purchasing. Yanking apps because you don’t like the restrictions is a perfectly fine recommendation, but I’m not sure what kind of leverage print media really has that would allow it to dictate terms to Apple. Face it, media outlets: building a large base of users that keep active credit cards on file with you is hard work, and Apple—not you—succeeded in doing that work.

(As a matter of fact, no, I don’t think I’m entitled to get news for free. I am a longtime subscriber to quite a few websites.)

Update: Jobs has replied to an inquiry saying that the Fiore app-denial was a mistake that is being fixed. Which is fine—maybe the terms of service were meant to apply to harassment or defamation, or came from an overprotective pen in legal. Maybe Jobs is responding to the “Pulitzer” part of this story. Who knows. The point stands: it’s Apple’s store, not a First Amendment issue.

Savior Apps

save
magazines

Yesterday I saw a 26-second movie being used as a magazine cover described as the kind of thing that will enable the iPad to ‘save’ magazines. But I didn’t like splash screens on websites, and I don’t like pre-roll ads on video, so why would I want this? People are falling all over themselves to tout the “immersive” experience this kind of development allows. It’s cool for some stuff, sure. I’m just getting a little fatigued by how many things people want to turn into a Total Experience.

A blog entry at O’Reilly complains that stand-alone magazine apps are trapping information in silos. For now that has to be an artifact of the iPad debuting without multitasking or fast switching. The smoother the switching, the more insistently the advertisers will demand hooks to their properties, so at least some of this has a built-in shelf life. But it’s still being brought to us by the companies behind the Power of Print (under its oh-so-evocative logo). I can’t wait for this thing to get to version 2, and let some of this hype/handwringing play out already.

Brilliant

… internal marketing. I don’t know how effective it will be at anything other than impressing other people in the industry, though.

This video was prepared by the UK branch of Dorling Kindersley Books. Originally meant solely for a DK sales conference, the video was such a hit internally that it is now being shared externally.

Of course, everything really clever has already been done:

The second-place in AARP “U@50” contest, in 2007, itself explicitly inspired by an award-winning ad made in Argentina for candidate Lopez Murphy.

Back to the Age of Muckraking?

Darren Barefoot talks a little about the difference between citizen journalists and beat or investigative reporters, and suggests a couple of methods that can be used right now to mitigate the risks of losing those supported roles:

We’re covering stories. But how often are we uncovering them? […]

  • There are examples of an emerging kind of citizen statistician, who uses access to open governmental data to uncover political or corporate malfeasance.
  • Another solution is to divide the work of one journalist among 15 citizen journalists, and have each of them attend four town hall meetings a year. Collaborative tools make this approach possible if challenging.

The more I think about it, the investigative citizen journalists of the 21st century are the activists of the 20th. They care enough about a particular topic to dig into it with enough effort and fervor to uncover new truths.

Citizen Journalism: Covering and Uncovering the News