The aging readers of newspaper websites

Submitted by yelvington on June 16, 2006 - 10:44am

I'm still catching up on good items that were posted while I was traveling. Vin Crosbie has a detailed look at who's using newspaper websites, based on data from Greg Harmon at Belden Research.

Among the key findings is that newspaper website users are growing older. We all are, of course, but this is collective data. It's not surprising; Web activity by people aged 40 to 65 has noticably surged in the last couple of years.

Gates retiring; Microsoft breaks Windows

Submitted by yelvington on June 16, 2006 - 8:16am

So Bill Gates is retiring from Microsoft.

Well, some sort of change is needed there. Not satisfied with crushing all competition and making it nigh-on impossible to buy a PC that doesn't already come loaded with Windows, Microsoft inserted a bit of "anti-piracy" software on millions of computers this week. Apparently they need to stop the rampant copying of Windows onto machines that already come with Windows.

Here's the thing. Their antipiracy software is broken.

Getting serious about a new kind of journalism

Submitted by yelvington on June 13, 2006 - 6:29pm

Staci Kramer reports that Post-Dispatch investigative reporter Christopher Carey is striking out on his own with a website called Sharesleuth, which will engage stringers and non-journalists in a quest to uncover "stock fraud and executive malfeasance on the national and international level."

Mark Cuban is bankrolling it.

If it works, this is huge. Much bigger than, say, Om Malik or Scoble and all the other stuff that's buzzing the net today.

Discovering the Dunbar number

Submitted by yelvington on June 12, 2006 - 5:22pm

Institute for the Future's Franz Dill discovers the Dunbar number, the theoretical size of the number of "stable relationships" human beings tend to form.

I've referred to the Dunbar number frequently in explaining to journalism and new-media audiences the concept of hyperlocal relevance. It works like this: If I have about 150 people in my inner circle, and I never see them in your newspaper, then your newspaper isn't about me and my kind.

Back from Russia

Submitted by yelvington on June 12, 2006 - 10:02am

I flew back from St. Petersburg, Russia, yesterday -- a long day that began at 5 a.m. Russian time and ended around 5 p.m. EDT.

In my absence my ISP had broken my Internet setup -- Murphy dictates that technology will go haywire when you have no access to fix it. The first order of business today was to get things untangled so that I can resume getting my daily dose of drug, stock and mortgage spam.

It was surprising how few Internet access cafes I found in Moscow and St. Petersburg. By contrast, mobile phone usage (especially SMS text) is extremely high.