- Search is 40%
- Display is 20%
- Classifieds 18%
- Rich Media 8%
- Lead Gen 6%
- Sponsorships 5%
- E-Mail 2%
Tip of the hat to paidcontent.org for the news.
Month: September 2005
CMO – Marketers would read digital mags
CMO – The Resource for Marketing Executives – Home Page – CMO Magazine
"Current Results Would you read a digital magazine–one that replicates each page of the print product and posts it online?
- 58% Yes
- 34% No
- 9% Don’t know"
So maybe I’m alone in my distaste for digital magazine facsimiles.
A sucker for a good gadget …
There are two drawers at home that are clogged with the technical detritus of my life. Misfit electronic toys that are dead, forgotten, and expensive reminders of the insanity that compels me to squander my cash on the latest, smallest, coolest gizmo. Aside from the usual morass of cell phone chargers, docks, spare batteries, and gordian knot of firewire, USB, ethernet, crossover, printer, and optical cables, those drawers contain such relics as the first Logitech digital camera, which had an appalling resolution on the order of an old newspaper photo, at least three Palm Pilots, an HP Portable PC, weird TV graphic convertors, WebTV wireless keyboards, old Sony video camera (analog), and power blocks that have lost their way.
What’s in my pocket these days?
Well, there’s the Treo 650 — which isn’t as good as the Treo 600, but I killed that by profusely sweating into the ear speaker after taking a phone call during a bike ride during a July Heat Wave. Trying to sync the thing with Lotus Notes …. well, let’s just say doing anything with Lotus Notes involved is like trying to put cosmetics on a bad skin disease.
In the audio department, I’ve been playing around with an iRiver 799 for podcast recording. That just went to the crew here at CXO so they can have a device for remote recording. My Sony headphones, my two digital sony microphones, and my Sony minidisc recorder have all been donated to the cause. Then there is the Sony voice recorder which I never use and which, like most Sony products, has its own insanely incompatible memory stick with its very own usb dock for importing into the proprietary Sony voice management software. File that one under: "What was I thinking."
I’ve been listening to podcasts on an iPod mini — nice thing, but earlier this week I once again felt the power of gadgets compel me to piss away $250 on a black Nano, spending $11 for Apple to rush the thing to me to assuage my jones, but alas, the store says the order is still being "processed" which is a leading indicator that it will be backordered until Halloween.
Other than that, my life is remarkably gadget free.
Seeing Both Sides: The Soul of a New Company
Seeing Both Sides: The Soul of a New Company
Jeff Bussgang at IDG Ventures Boston blogs from CMO Perspectives about the importance of brand personification by entrepreneurs in startups. Nice post.
"Keynote speaker Charlotte Beers (who had great stories about her experience in Washington when she was tapped by Colin Powell in October 2001 to run the US PR campaign in Arab countries after a long Madison Avenue career running Oglivy & Mather and J. Walter Thompson) talked about the importance of company executives, particularly CMOs, personifying the brands of their companies. Although the CMOs of Pepsi and WalMart, who were in the room, took her advice as very relevant to their global branding efforts, it struck me as even more critical to the little start-ups we VCs deal with every day in a very different way."
Digital Magazines: WSJ.com – Magazines Further Experiment With Print’s Digital Format
WSJ.com – Magazines Further Experiment With Print’s Digital Format
Sorry, but I’ve got to unload on this current revived infatuation with "digital" editions of magazines. For the past year and half I’ve been subscribing to the MIT Technology Review via Zinio — the technology that delivers a digital rendition of the print product into my PC via yet another content delivery system.
I get to "turn" pages, see the actual ads (my heart be still), search for text, and have fun playing with my very own "glass" copy of the dead-tree version.
It sucks. Let me repeat — it really sucks. It’s either a bone thrown to the Quark jockeys in the design department, a way to justify the big fee paid to the redesign firm, or some inter-generational stop-gap that makes the old farts who go around saying "I can’t read a magazine on the toilet" happy with their honest-to-god brave new world format. This is plain and simple a sop to advertisers and a stop-gap solution.
It’s wrong. It’s a kludge. If we must hang onto to our precious kerning and leading and big glossy ads, then let’s do it within the fricking browser. PDF the damn things and be done with it. Digital editions are so yesterday. Up there with the wonderful CueCat: as yet another desperate life-ring for the 19th century world of print.
I won’t slag Zinio. They keep drumming along. Mike Edelhart — my old boss at PC Week in the 80s used to run it. Now Scott Kauffman, ex-Time Warner and CompuServe is at the helm. I’m looking at Texterity for some custom publishing applications, and expect to get pestered yet again by some digital print stop-gap vendor.
Don’t bother. I’m looking over the hill at a post-pageview world and after a decade of butting my head against the print-online transition am too grumpy to care.
Andy Kessler: WSJ: Philadel-Fi
Andy Kessler: WSJ: Philadel-Fi
Andy Kessler on the fight between the city of Philadelphia and Verizon over free-wi-fi in the city of bro love.
"It is, and its not going to be pretty for Verizon. By rigging the city with wireless hotspots, under the guise of helping the disadvantaged, Philadelphia may completely bypass Verizon. A T-1 line from Verizon, which is 1.5 megabits of data per second, runs anywhere from $400 to $1300 dollars a month. With Municipal Wi-Fi (Mu-Fi), that could drop to $300, heck, maybe even $20 a month. Consumers (read voters) are happy and small businesses will save tons of money. No wonder phone companies are circling the wagons. Think of it as a Telco tax cut. Cheese steak sales are gonna boom."
chicagocrime.org: Chicago crime database
chicagocrime.org: Chicago crime database
This is very cool example of integrating RSS with the Google Maps API to create a truly useful tool. In a nutshell — take crime stats, integrate into a simple interface that permits the user to browse by type (murder, assault, arson, etc.), address, route, date, zip code, etc. And then display the results on a Google map.
The applications are endless — find a safe neighborhood before buying. See if the neighbors are fond of domestic disturbances. Find a better way to walk to and from the subway stop.
404 Not Found – TimesSelect
First day of the NYT putting the op-ed stuff behind the wall and when I went to vote my home subscriber card I see their back-end has falled down.
I’ll forgive them for a first day crushing and try again tomorrow.
Fractals of Change: Self Publish or Perish
Fractals of Change: Self Publish or Perish
Tom Evslin blogs a book online. thanks to Fred Wilson for the pointer.