512 Pixels

Journalism Online, a new LLC focused on (obviously) online journalism. Here’s a bit from their homepage:

“We have formed Journalism Online because we think this is a special moment in time when there is an urgent need for a business model that allows quality journalism to be the beneficiary of the Internet’s efficient delivery mechanism rather than its victim,” said co-founder Steven Brill. “We believe we have developed a strategy and a set of services that will establish that model by restoring a stream of circulation revenue to supplement advertising revenue, while taking advantage of the savings to be gained from producing and delivering content electronically.”

They’re right: newspapers have to figure out how to survive - and thrive - in an online world.

Here’s the problem: TV and cable news aren’t in the same predicament that newspapers are. Newspapers are in a position where they have to make their sites profitable to survive. TV and cable news don’t have that problem.

The biggest problem with charging for content - no matter how detailed the group’s plan may be - is that the reading public is used to online news being free. Thus, if newspaper are charging and TV and cable news sites aren’t, newspapers still lose.

As a Memphis native, I found this quite interesting:

Today’s weird Apple rumor has the turtle-neck exec moving to Memphis, Tennessee, of all places. The idea is that Jobs is going south to help treat his pancreatic cancer–Memphis, it turns out, is the home of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Private equity blog PEHub is citing a “well-connected business person in Memphis” as the source of the odd rumor.

Odd, indeed… but just weird enough to be almost believable.

Yesterday, I discussed the work of BJ Fogg, a social media guy at Stanford, and I said I could not find the pricing for his 6-week Facebook course. Turns outs there was a reason I couldn’t find that information. Here’s an email I received from him this morning:

FYI – To date. I’ve not received a dime for teaching parents about Facebook at Stanford.

This was a public service. And the parents were grateful.

While I still get annoyed by social media gurus and the hype surrounding social media, the fact that Fogg doesn’t charge for his class makes the whole thing a lot more tolerable.

Over the last few months, I’ve grown increasingly annoyed by social media - and those trying to make a buck off of it as “social media gurus.”

So what does CNN do? Give me someone else to dislike:

Many of these older folks use social networks to keep tabs on younger family members and they often find fruitful connections with their peers after they’ve friended all of their kids and grandkids, according to an informal survey by Stanford University professor BJ Fogg.

[…]

Parents who are interested in their kids’ online activities contribute to the sharp increase in older users on Facebook, said Linda Fogg-Phillips, a 49-year-old who, with her brother, co-taught a six-week class at Stanford called “Facebook for Parents.”

I found “Stanford Facebook for Parents” class website, which boasts (among other things) artwork with two Facebook logos - one with a halo, the other with horns. I kid you not.

Here’s a sample from their webpage:

In this class we emphasize “how to think” about Facebook more than “what to do” on Facebook. Our “how to think” approach empowers parents. When you can think clearly about Facebook, you are then better prepared for whatever comes next. In contrast, if we simply dictate “what to do” on Facebook, those steps may not be appropriate as your child gets older or as Facebook evolves.

Here’s the list of topics. My favorite? “Friend Lists & life skills for the future.”

Life skills for the future? Holy crap. It’s a website people - not grad school. Sure, things like staying safe online are important, but a 6-week course on the ins and outs of Facebook? Really?

What about teaching parents how to be involved in their kids’ lives? We didn’t grow up with Facebook, and my brother and I turned out okay. What happened to dinners around tables?

I guess if we still did stuff like that, BJ Fogg and others would have to find work as gurus in something else, as long as it pays well. I couldn’t find any pricing info on their website, nor on Fogg’s other sites I found. ———- **To be fully transparent, I do have a Facebook page (and am on Twitter). I closed my Facebook account for almost a year, but rejoined after being nagged to death by my friends. Granted, they had to nag me in real life, not from across the Internet.

Wired:

“We have invented this idea of retail 2.0,” says Gilbert Fiorentino, chief executive of the Technology Products Group at Systemax, now parent company of CompUSA. Fiorentino is also the founder of Tiger Direct, a web only electronics retailer and another subsidiary of Systemax. “Every screen in every CompUSA store is now connected to the internet and making buying a richer experience for customers,” he says.

It’s that kind of under-developed thought process that killed CompUSA the first time around. Why drive to a store to order something with a computer? Sure, the CompUSA store may have it in stock and be able to help you load it in your car, but if it they can’t compete with online stores like Newegg, the instant gratification factor may not be big enough, no matter how shiny the store is.

BuisnessWeek on the new iPod Shuffle:

All told, the cost of the shuffle’s components, the headphones, and the packaging it ships in comes to $21.77, according to iSuppli’s estimates. That’s about 28% of the device’s retail price. The smaller the component cost as a percentage of price, the higher the potential profit. This suggests the per-unit profit margin on the shuffle is higher than on other iPod models. The component cost for the first iPod touch released in 2007, for instance, amounted to about $147, or about 49% of its $299 retail price. The component cost of the third-generation iPod nano, also released in 2007, amounted to about 40% of its retail price.

That’s one sweet profit margin.

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TechCrunch has a great piece up about online news. Here’s a taste:

So how powerful is Google when it comes to parceling out traffic to news sites? If you are talking about Google News, the answer is that it is not quite as powerful as you might think. In the U.S., Google News is overshadowed by both Yahoo News and even the sites controlled by the New York Times (which includes NYTimes.com, Boston.com, HeraldTribune.com, and several other newspaper sites). According to comScore, Google News attracted 16.2 million unique visitors in the U.S. in February, compared to 42.3 million for Yahoo News and 46.2 million for the sites operated by New York Times Digital.

Here’s the kicker:

Google does not control the news, it exposes it.

The whole thing is a fascinating read. As newspapers fold, they have to learn to survive online. At this point, very few are getting it right. Hopefully they figure it out - and quickly. I think people who study journalism are scrambling for an excuse to explain why news organizations - primarily newspapers - have utterly failed at building a good, profitable Internet presence. If anything, services Google News and yahoo News is helping newspapers by sending traffic to their websites.

Several years ago, Apple’s retail stores transitioned away from “classic” registers (iMacs hooked to cash drawers) to hand-held, credit/debit-only systems called “EasyPay.” The system runs on Windows Mobile on Symbol-built devices. When it was first released it was buggy as hell, but over the last two years, it has become more stable as Apple has pushed the technology harder and harder, but the platform leaves a lot to be desired, especially in older and busier stores.

When the iPhone was first released, all of us who were Apple retail employees at the time joked that an iPhone would make a much better point of sale system than the EasyPay system. Of course, we thought an iPhone would be less embarrassing then pulling a Windows Mobile-based system out to ring out a customer. As Apple Insider points out, this may be coming true soon:

While Apple could build its own point of sale (POS) system from scratch based on the iPhone’s technology, doing so would be an expensive undertaking just for the couple dozen devices needed by each of the 225 retail stores. It would also result in a completely proprietary system that the company probably couldn’t successfully sell outside of a narrow niche of retail stores with similar needs. Devices like the EasyPay are open enough to allow for a wide variety of customization using Microsoft’s Windows Mobile software, even if the tools and the underlying software aren’t that reliable or desirable. That specialized market isn’t enormous, so it would be difficult for Apple to justify trying to compete with its own iPhone-based POS device.

Instead of introducing a dedicated POS sibling to the iPhone and iPod touch family, Apple instead worked to expand the iPhone platform to suit the needs of developers. With iPhone 3.0, that includes new support for working with peripheral devices over USB through the Dock Connector and wirelessly using Bluetooth.

I bet iPhones (or more likely iPod Touches) show up in the hands of Apple Store employees sometime in the next year for POS systems.

iFixit has done it again. This time, they took apart the new Dell Adamo, and holy cow, I want to open one.

Due to ongoing issues with my RSS feed, I’ve switched to using FeedBurner. Here’s the link: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/forkbombr/rss2

At work, we came into possession of a dead 800Mhz eMac G4, so we did what all good technicians would do - we took it apart and then rebuilt it with only the structural components.

Yesterday, Apple sent an email to all MobileMe customers:

On July 7, 2009, the .Mac HomePage web application will be discontinued. As of this date, you will no longer be able to create new pages or edit existing pages using HomePage. Any pages you’ve already published will remain live at their current web address for as long as you like. If you need to make changes to your existing pages, please do so before July 7.

The email then linked to this FAQ about the transition.

Homepage was sweet for its day - it gave the average consumer power to create all sorts of cool pages from within what I consider to be one of the first “web apps” - the Homepage editor. But it wasn’t updated much, and by 2006*, the service (and the pages it created) were looking dated. And while I have reservations about iWeb, there is no doubt it’s far more powerful.

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*I do have to say, the service has lasted longer than I thought it would- if you’ll remember, the iCard service was killed off during the .Mac to MobileMe transition last summer.