Finance Matters

Archive for April 12th, 2010

It’s always interesting to hear what people who don’t eat, sleep, and breathe technology think of technology products.  Especially because, if the products are ever to really sell, it’s those folks who are going to be buying them.

And thus we turn to Kos’s review of the iPad over at Daily Kos).  One non-techie friend says it’s the best review he’s read:

Tech geeks love numbers. When discussing computers, they speak of gigabits and gigahertz, of RAM and ports. The more tech adept among them will even swap out the internals or write their own code. They are tinkerers extraordinaire, and are just as happy customizing their rigs as they are in using their machines for their intended purposes, be it work or pleasure.

Then there’s everyone else.

Keep reading at Daily Kos >

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See Also:

• The Truth About The iPad
• More Truth About The iPad
• Google Working On An iPad Clone

Fact: In 1994 I thought Apple was going to own it all. By 1999 most magazines thought it was dead.

Fact: In 1992 Pointcast shipped. By 1999 it was dead.

Fact: In 1994 Microsoft was beta testing a system called “Blackbird.” They killed it before shipping it. It was designed to compete with Pointcast and AOL, both walled garden approaches.

What changed the course of all these technologies?

Developers and content producers…

[W]hat killed Pointcast was its lack of openness…

It was beautiful. Just like Time Magazine is on the iPad.

Keep reading (really) at Scobleizer >

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See Also:

• Robert Scoble In "Standoff" With Police Outside Palo Alto Apple Store At 3AM
• No, The iPad Won’t Save Media — But It Will Change The World
• For The Media Business, The iPad In 2010 Is The Same As The CD-ROM In 1994

Microsoft held a huge shindig today to introduce two new phones (called “Kin“).

The new phones:

• Are not based on Microsoft’s new Windows Mobile software
• Do not allow third-party apps to be built on them
• Are aimed at “young people” (who, as far as we can tell, have phones coming out of their ears)
• Emphasize “social networking” (which was cool circa 2004).

We don’t mean to rude, but what on earth is Microsoft thinking here? 

Has Microsoft not watched Palm introduce a wildly critically acclaimed phone (which these aren’t) and then just flame out because the world doesn’t need yet another smartphone? 

Doesn’t Microsoft want to give itself some semblance of a chance in the smartphone market by putting all its weight behind ONE kind of phone (the kind that runs the new Windows mobile it’s releasing at the end of the year)? 

Doesn’t Microsoft understand how confusing all these phone and software announcements are to people who might want to buy phones or phone software from Microsoft?

We really just don’t get it.

We don’t want to pre-judge, though!  And we’re weren’t at today’s presentation.

So if someone from Microsoft wants to explain it to us, we’re all ears.

See Also: Check Out Microsoft’s New Kin Phones

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See Also:

• Meet Microsoft’s Social Networking Phones, Kin One, Kin Two
• Microsoft Smartly Changes Awkward ‘Windows Phone 7 Series’ Name
• That Secret Microsoft Announcement Next Week Is For — Get This — New Mobile Phones

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Even as The Wall Street Journal prepares a New York edition aimed squarely at New York Times readers and advertisers, The Times is trying to win Journal readers and advertisers with expanded coverage of The Journal’s core beat: business.

A new section front for Times business coverage on the web is the latest attempt to win those readers and advertisers. The online section front has been rebuilt to more closely resemble a home page, complete with the top-left and top-right “rabbit ear” ad units traditionally limited to the paper’s standard home page; an automated “latest news” box on the top-right with stories from The Times and other sources such as Reuters and the Associated Press; a frequently updated river of news down the left column; a center column highlighting analysis; and Times blog posts wherever they may fit in the news or insight columns.

The Times is also promoting the business section’s web presence with ads on sites such as Bloomberg, USA Today, Yahoo, MSN and Reuters that urge consumers to see “The new Business Day.”

But the paper’s business coverage has already benefited from a series of hires bringing the number of reporters and editors to 85 from 78 a couple years ago, despite some buyouts along the way, according to Larry Ingrassia, business editor at The Times. Those figures exclude copy editors, whose numbers have been reduced by one or two, Mr. Ingrassia said. The paper’s overall newsroom headcount, meanwhile, has fallen to about 1,170 from 1,300 in January 2008, he said.

The Journal declined to say how many business reporters and editors it employs, only saying that the paper benefits from Dow Jones’ nearly 2,000 journalists worldwide, including those employed by The Journal, Dow Jones Newswires and MarketWatch. Editors from the three entities coordinate coverage.

Competition
The Times has put growing emphasis on its business coverage for a number of reasons, including the economy’s increased prominence and advertisers’ interest in the influential and affluent readers most attracted to business news. But that’s not all.

“Let’s face it, our biggest competitor has always been The Wall Street Journal,” Mr. Ingrassia said. “That’s even more so now since Rupert Murdoch acquired the company. We recognized that we had to be extra sharp and redouble our efforts at competing.”

The expansion hasn’t come without occasional hiccups. DealBook, Bits, Media Decoder and other blogs have attracted big followings, but they’re also constantly hungry for content.

When The Journal spotted “apparent plagiarism” on DealBook last February, the reporter that soon resigned said his “inadvertent” reuse of language from other sources — not just in blog posts but also news articles — stemmed in part from working too quickly. “I write essentially 7,000 words every week for the blog and for the paper and all that stuff,” he told The New York Observer.

“We think it was a true aberration and not an indication of a lack of editing in general in what we do,” Mr. Ingrassia said. “Do some errors get in because of speed and fact checking? Yeah. Do we often find them quickly and fix them online before they get in the paper? Yeah. There’s a little bit of a tradeoff. Anybody who thinks differently is not recognizing the difference in the medium. But I think the quality of the stuff we put on the web is something we’re proud of.”

The Times business section has been trying to compete with The Journal on more fronts in recent years, said Leslie Wayne, a longtime reporter on the Times business desk until she took a buyout in December. Earlier on, Times business editors believed they had to carefully pick their priorities. “At that time the idea was that The New York Times might be the second read for business,” said Ms. Wayne, now visiting business journalism professor at the Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University. “They just had many more resources than we did. We had to be a second read that was competitive and that would break news, but we knew we couldn’t do that in every category. I think that sort of ‘pick your shots’ thing has changed with the additional resources.”

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See Also:

• Rupert Murdoch Slashes Ad Prices For New York Times Brawl
• Starbucks Newspaper Wars: The Wall Street Journal vs. New York Times
• Check Out How Obsessed Rupert Murdoch Is With Killing The New York Times

From Media Memo: Is Apple, which just launched its own ad network, crippling competitors who want to sell ads on its iPhones and iPads?

That’s how some competitors are interpreting a clause in the developer agreement that Apple released last week, when it announced the new operating system that will power its mobile devices.

Continue reading on Media Memo >

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