AP's youth-focused ASAP service is shutting down in October, E&P reports. As a tool for AP to discover how to tell stories in the 21st century, it made perfect sense. As a business proposition, I could never see a way for it to succeed.
ASAP has two parts. One is content intended for print, delivered to member newspapers. The other is an online hosted service with audio and video components.
Brands just aren't what they used to be. A brand used to be something that stood the test of time. Now a brand is still powerful in terms of defining what a product is all about, but when it comes to loyalty, fuggetaboutit. Brands today are volatile.
There hasn't been much press about it, but many websites (including this one) increasingly are under attack from zombie armies, clusters of Windows PCs that have been infected by viruses that allow them to be commanded and controlled remotely by spammers.
Typically a virus installs a "back door" on an infected PC that allows it to respond to remote commands. These commands are relayed through Internet chat systems in a chain designed to disguise the identity of the spammer.
AJR has an overview of the mess in Minneapolis that manages to omit all the fun parts -- juicy details of the Par Ridder soap opera -- and includes this puzzling paragraph:
"One of the paper's local news editors is signing on as a Web reporter. A former local news editor is now in charge of updating breaking news stories for the site. A staff photographer has become the paper's first video reporter."
Fortune has a piece on the challenges facing the newspaper business that asks: "Can newspaper publishers turn the Internet from a threat into an opportunity ...? It's a long shot, but it's their only hope. Their plight is something not often seen in business: Newspapers remain important institutions, providing a valuable public service, but their business model is slowly, or maybe not so slowly, going away."
The remarkable thing about today's Pew report on U.S. online video usage is not that 57 percent of all online adults have viewed video online, but that 19 percent do so on any typical day.
In a commentary for the Pew Internet & American Life project, Susannah Fox writes that she's "struck by a phrase repeated a few times: 'good enough' technology."
The phrase actually is a key to understanding disruptive innovation as laid out by Harvard prof Clayton Christensen, and embodied in the NewspaperNext Blueprint for Change.
Now that I've flushed out to Microsoft fanboys by complaining about Vista's interface and anti-open-source tricks, I'll irritate the Mac fanboys just to make things even.
I have a dual-core Intel MacBook Pro, a slick silver $2,000-plus laptop with 2 gigabytes of RAM. So, tell me:
Why am I seeing the beachball when trying to open mail, view a photo, whatever?
Why does it take so long to launch a program? Comparable applications launch in half the time on a three-year-old $600 desktop PC.
I already hate Windows Vista, and I'm not even running it.
My mother, who lives in Missouri, has decided to finally plug into the Internet. She bought a laptop, which came with Microsoft's latest operating system, and ordered a DSL line from her local phone company. A relative managed to get the DSL modem and wireless hub configured yesterday after a bit of telephone consultation.
So today she's trying to browse the Internet, and she's having troubles.
E&P reports that the Cincinnati Post will shut down at the end of the year, when its joint operating agreement with the Cincinnati Inquirer expires. The Post's circulation has declined from 188,000 some 30 years ago to 27,000 weekdays today. For whatever reasons, E.W. Scripps Co. won't attempt to keep the brand alive by continuing to operate the newspaper's website.
