AllThingsD » USA Today

Smile: People Like Your Picture More Than Your Words

Chas Edwards — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 21:41:34 +0000

On March 7, Facebook announced a major overhaul to its News Feed, the scrolling page of friend-news where we spend the bulk of our Facebook time. The central change: Facebook is making room for bigger pictures.

It’s a logical move when you look at the data. In November 2011, one-fifth of posts uploaded to newsfeeds were photos. Today, every other status update is a photo. My math friends tell me it that it’s hard to meaningfully show percentage gains when you start with a really big number. Even with my quantitative limitations, I have to believe Facebook qualifies. Last year it told investors (as part of its IPO roadshow) that users were uploading more than 300 million photos every single day, and from that very large starting point photo activity just jumped 150 percent in 15 months. So much for the law of large numbers.

If you’re a brand, though, it’s not the fact that photo-enabled devices will soon outnumber humans on the planet, or that we’re piping all those pictures into social media. The important trend is that consumers are looking at them. In other words, your art-directed fashion spreads have a lot more competition these days.

There was a time when professional photography had a monopoly on our attention. When mass media meant national magazines, TV networks and big-city newspapers, only deep-pocketed corporations could afford access to large audiences. Back then it made economic sense to build your story around professional-grade photography: A single print ad would reach millions of readers, so a few tens of thousands of dollars spent on art and photography chewed up only a negligible percentage of a campaign’s costs. And for a few generations, this approach worked great.

It turns out, though, that cost-to-produce and magnitude-of-consumer-delight don’t plot analogous curves in an Excel graph. In fact, it’s hard to find a direct correlation between the two. A photo that captures something important or interesting or timely wins our attention — regardless of who took it or how much it cost to make. It also turns out the spans of our attention are shrinking. Google economist Hal Varian observed as far back as 2010 — before SnapChat, and back when we uploaded a mere 30 million photos to Facebook every day — that we pay less attention to stuff when we consume it online. “The average amount of time looking at online news is about 70 seconds, while the average amount of time spent reading the physical newspaper is about 25 minutes a day.”

So corporate storytellers need to master a new narrative technique. It’s as if they need to shed those florid sentences that played so well in Victorian novels and dial it down to the Hemingway-esque. The good news: This new approach to storytelling still employs a language in which brands are fluent: Photos. There are three ways that brands should modify their visual storytelling.

One, feeds move faster than print magazines, so you need to tell your story in a series of frequent episodes, anecdotes and updates — not the grand gestures of Ogilvy or Draper. Photos are the currency of social media, but it’s a currency doled out in nickels, not twenty-dollar bills.

Two, let photos do more of the talking for you. Humans process visual information much faster than we process text. And when we’re online (remember those stats from Hal Varian), we navigate more quickly from story to story. If you’re going to capture attention in a digital landscape, you have to do it fast. So steal a page from the playbooks used by Pinterest, Flipboard, USA Today’s new design or the NYT’s TimesCast: Use visual content instead of words to invite consumers into the story.

Three — need I say it? — let them interact with your story, let them re-mix your assets and choose their own adventures. Let them steal your photos so they can more easily share them with friends. Let them explore inside your images to find links to products, deals and related links. And let them contribute their own. If the Web conversation is going visual, encourage them to talk to you in the local dialect — images snapped on their phones looking for a place to be uploaded.

Chas Edwards joined Luminate, the worldwide leader in interactive images, in 2010 as chief revenue officer and head of publisher development. Prior to Luminate, Chas served as publisher and CRO at Digg, and before that he was the co-founder (with John Battelle), publisher and chief revenue officer at Federated Media Publishing (FM), a next-generation media and publishing company that develops content marketing strategies for leading brand marketers. He blogs at http://ChasNote.com and @chasnote.

Day Two at D: Dive Into Media 2013, in Pictures and Tweets

Eric Johnson — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 11:30:45 +0000

After Monday’s kickoff with Nancy Tellem, Yusuf Mehdi, Anomaly Productions, David Eun and Charlie Ergen, D: Dive Into Media 2013 already had plenty of star power and great moments in the bank.

Tuesday was a parade of still more great guests — 19 in all — and the discussion online was vibrant. Here’s a sampling of what our attendees saw at Day Two of #DMedia:

You can also get the overview of the day’s events via Storify.

Old Media Is the New Hotness for Chris Hughes and Larry Kramer

Liz Gannes — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 00:13:56 +0000

The business of news is a hard one, but at least two people running publishing institutions say they’re optimistic.

For the moment, printed publications are valuable because they’re an established way to make money, said Chris Hughes, publisher and editor in chief of the New Republic, and Larry Kramer, president and publisher of USA Today, speaking today at D: Dive Into Media.

“I think we still belive that print has some future,” said Kramer, whose paper has a staff of 200 to 300 reporters and a circulation of 1.6 million. “Can I tell you how long? No.”

Meanwhile, the leading criticism of Hughes, who co-founded Facebook with his Harvard classmates and left in 2007, is that he bought the New Republic as a sort of feel-good personal project.

Hughes, whose publication has a circulation of 44,000, admitted that he’s not expecting to get rich (again). “I think we can be profitable. Certainly not this year, and not next year. But I think there’s a route to it.”

But he added, “We have a double-bottom-line business. I’m not here to make a lot of money for myself. But I also have to prove to ourselves and to the world that we can find a model of journalism that is sustainable.”

Both men described ways they are modernizing old media to make sure it provides value.

Kramer said he believes news is best when it’s timely and delivered to users wherever they are, and then later made relevant with things like unique angles and graphics.

For instance, the announcement that the pope was resigning broke at 7 am yesterday, and drove strong Web traffic to USA Today for about three hours, but then dropped off. So, by the time the paper came out the next morning, it led with the story, but took a a “second-day lede” rather than treating the story as straight news.

“Handing them a newspaper the following day that acts as if this is the first time you’re hearing it isn’t relevant,” Kramer said.

Meanwhile, Hughes described an approach to long-form journalism that treats stories as the beginning of a conversation, which is then later “curated” through conversation and further marginalia that “give it the dimension it deserves.”

He said that the New Republic receives more than a quarter of its traffic from social media. But the Facebook co-founder was more positive on Twitter as a driver of traffic, because it’s hard to stand out on Facebook. “We spend probably more time thinking about Twitter and the environment where people are passing around links than we do Facebook,” Hughes said.

[ See post to watch video ]

Timehop Hooks Up With USA Today to Deliver Stories From the Past

Mike Isaac — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 16:04:11 +0000

Ask any marketer — nostalgia sells. It’s longing paired with the passage of time, a sense of how things were once “better,” or at least different, than they are today. Bottle that feeling, and you’ve got a potential customer in the bag.

It’s why Timehop — the mobile app that serves up a daily summary of your past social activity on Facebook and Twitter from years ago — is so powerful. And it’s also likely why USA Today has partnered up with Timehop, and is now delivering users relevant news from the past in their daily Timehop updates.

It works like so: Anyone familiar with Timehop knows that the service will send you a little notification each morning, letting you know that your trip back in time to view your old status updates and tweets is ready. With the new partnership, users will see a significant, newsy item from the past, and the contemporary story matched to that day. So, for example, you may see what the state of the Mars rover mission was six years ago, and a story about where the program is today.

“What Timehop is doing is trying to work with the long tail of content and resurface it,” USA Today social marketing director Mark Smith told me. “Here, USA Today is trying to do the same thing with news content, and the ability to bring back old, iconic headlines to people on a daily basis.”

It’s not always the “obvious” moment, either. While an item may have been a huge deal say, three years ago, perhaps the lasting news value of it was nil. “We’re looking for those small moments that turn into something bigger,” Smith said.

There’s an obvious draw for USA Today to be included here: All of the past stories inside the app will link out to a USA Today piece hosted on the publication’s site. It’s a small way of driving an extra bit of traffic out to the paper’s daily site. (USA Today wouldn’t tell me what the terms of the deal were with Timehop, or what the app got in return; my guess would be some sort of affiliate fee.)

To be honest, I was a little shocked to hear of the partnership between the two organizations. Timehop is a small startup run by only a handful of entrepreneurs, while USA Today is an institution. I don’t often see major publications take chances on small tech-centric startups.

But I’d imagine that’s part of the attraction here. As Timehop is still fairly under the radar of the mainstream, it’s a way for USA Today to toe the waters of what social affiliate marketing can do, without going “whole hog,” as it were. And the paper has proved experimental in the past, as one of the first major news publications to partner with social magazine Flipboard.

Smith is bullish on Timehop’s sharing prospects, as users can push out their past statuses and moments to Facebook and Twitter from inside the app. And, like Timehop’s makers, Smith and his paper are banking on more users being charmed as time goes on.

On a personal note: It really is a charming app, popular within the tech circles for surfacing all the old, stupid stuff we’ve updated our statuses with over the years. We’ll see if the newsy touch can add the same feeling.

Listen Up! Beats Boss Jimmy Iovine Comes to Dive Into Media.

Peter Kafka — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 18:56:22 +0000

We’re just a couple weeks away from our D: Dive into Media conference, but there’s always time to add an icon to the lineup: We’re very pleased to announce that music kingpin Jimmy Iovine will be joining us onstage.

Iovine is the studio engineer turned producer turned label executive turned headphone impressario, and he’s worked with everyone from Bruce Springsteen to U2 to Eminem to Lady Gaga. Current titles: Chairman, Interscope Records, and co-founder, Beats By Dre.

Those credentials alone would make him a fascinating interview, but now he has added another line to his resume: He’s trying to create a digital music subscription service with mass market appeal.

Lots of folks have tried this, but only Spotify seems to have had some success so far. Iovine thinks he can do much better, with a secret sauce that has something to do with a lot of curation and hand-holding.

That kind of confidence in your own taste-making ability runs counter to a lot of today’s digital ethos, which holds that people will figure out what they want to hear (or watch, or whatever) on their own, or with the help of friends, or with code. And Iovine thinks that’s bunk. So this should be a fun conversation!

And we’ll have a bunch of them next month. Here’s the lineup of speakers for Dive, which we’re holding Feb. 11 and 12 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines president David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-President Eric Kessler, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen, Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith, Intel media head Erik Huggers and Samsung media head David Eun, Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos (and guests), New Republic owner Chris Hughes, USA Today publisher Larry Kramer, Dish Network founder Charlie Ergen, and Microsoft Xbox executives Yusuf Mehdi and Nancy Tellem.

Want to join them? Head here, and we’ll see you soon.

Game On! Xbox Bosses Mehdi, Tellem Come to Dive Into Media.

Peter Kafka — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 13:41:39 +0000

You can spend lots of time speculating about what happens when the TV and the Web finally converge. But if you want to speed things up, just ask Microsoft, which is already watching it happen.

Redmond is facing all sorts of challenges, but its Xbox is a clear success, not only as a gaming console, but as an Internet-connected entertainment device, which gives users access to video services like Netflx and HBO Go, and, increasingly, cable programming from the likes of ESPN. Microsoft says Xbox users now spend more time consuming media than playing games.

Which is why we’re very excited to bring two key Xbox executives onstage next month at D: Dive into Media: Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, and Nancy Tellem, the former CBS executive who is building a new production studio for the device.

Mehdi is the man running marketing, strategy and corporate development for Xbox, and he’s the guy who links the console up with all the studios, networks and publishers who are creating content for the device. Prior to this job, he oversaw Microsoft’s media presence on the Web.

Tellem, a veteran TV executive, is the former CBS president now tasked with creating new programming for the device. She’s building out a Hollywood presence for Steve Ballmer, and her hire last fall was Microsoft’s most aggressive move into the content business so far.

They’re joining a stellar lineup of speakers Feb. 11 and 12 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Here’s who we’ve told you about so far: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines president David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-president Eric Kessler, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen, Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith, Intel media head Erik Huggers and Samsung media head David Eun, Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos (and guest), New Republic owner Chris Hughes, USA Today publisher Larry Kramer, and Dish Network founder Charlie Ergen.

And, yes, we’ll have yet more names to announce in the coming weeks. But if you want to see these folks in person, register now, and we’ll see you soon.

Meet the Man Who Wants to Blow Up the TV Business: Dish Network's Charlie Ergen Comes to Dive Into Media

Peter Kafka — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 16:44:54 +0000

Charlie Ergen brings TV into 14 million houses, which means he’s got a very nice business that has made him a billionaire.

But while lots of pay-TV operators are happy to keep things the way they are, Ergen keeps trying to blow them up: The Dish Network co-founder and chairman is constantly fighting with the rest of the TV Industrial Complex, in disputes that often end up in court.

His most recent and prominent battle is also the most important one: Dish’s new “Auto Hop” technology lets satellite TV subscribers automatically skip commercials, and that has both advertisers and TV networks in fits, for obvious reasons.

But that’s just one of Ergen’s recent adventures. He has also bought Blockbuster out of bankruptcy in an attempt to take on Netflix, engaged in bruising battles with Cablevision and its AMC Networks spinoff, and rattled his saber against ESPN and its ever-increasing sports fees.

Oh. He’s also talking to Google, and everyone else, about getting into the wireless business.

All of which means the former blackjack and poker player is someone everyone in the media world watches very, very closely, even though he doesn’t say much in public. Which means we’re very excited to interview him at our D: Dive Into Media conference in February.

Ergen will be joining an all-star cast on Feb. 11 and 12 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Here’s who we’ve told you about so far: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines president David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-president Eric Kessler, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen, Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith, Intel media head Erik Huggers and Samsung media head David Eun, Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos (and guest), New Republic owner Chris Hughes, and USA Today publisher Larry Kramer.

And there’s more to come! Stay tuned. Meanwhile, we’re getting close to showtime, so make your reservations now.

Old Media, New Tricks: The New Republic's Chris Hughes and USA Today's Larry Kramer Join Dive Into Media

Peter Kafka — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 13:00:03 +0000

How do you take a print publication with a famous name and a fraught business outlook, and transform it for the digital age?

Ask Chris Hughes and Larry Kramer.

Hughes, one of the original Facebook friends, used a bit of his newfound wealth to buy the storied New Republic earlier this year. A few months after that, Gannett put Kramer, a longtime digital media pro, in charge of its iconic USA Today.

Those are two very disparate publications, but they share a similar challenge: It’s very easy to find the stuff they’re best at — political opinion and general news — for free, all over the Internet. So how do you get readers and advertisers to pay attention, and/or money?

There’s a very good chance Hughes and Kramer won’t solve that one by February, when they appear at our D: Dive into Media conference in Laguna Niguel, California. But we’ll get a very interesting progress report. And since they’ll be onstage at the same time, we should get a very entertaining conversation, too.

Kramer is a former reporter and editor who ended up building and running big Web businesses — most notably MarketWatch, which he sold to CBS in 2005. He then stuck around long enough to help the TV giant embrace digital, via deals like the ones that put March Madness on the Web and CBS TV shows on iTunes. For a smart overview of his challenges at USA Today, see Ken Doctor’s take from earlier this year.

Hughes, quite famously, was one of Mark Zuckerberg’s roommates at Harvard, and became Facebook’s first marketing and PR head. Then he joined Barack Obama’s first presidential run, where he played a key role in the campaign’s pioneering use of social media. Now he’s trying to revamp a 98-year-old magazine that used to play a key role in Washington politics; for more on that see this excellent New York magazine profile.

They’ll join a pretty great cast at the stunning Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif., on February 11 and 12. Here’s who we’ve told you about so far: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines president David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-president Eric Kessler, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen, Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith, Intel media head Erik Huggers and Samsung media head David Eun, Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos and The Person From “Arrested Development” We’d Like to Name But Can’t (Yet).

More to come! In the meantime, head here to find registration information for the conference. See you soon …

How to Get Your Start-Up Acquired in Six Months or Less

Mark Johnson — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 14:00:05 +0000

Fish image via Ivelin Radkov

The story of Zite has been a whirlwind. We launched on March 9, 2011, and closed our acquisition by CNN on Aug. 30 of the same year — just under six months later.

But acquisition was not our original plan. We never built the company with the intention of getting acquired. When we launched Zite, we were thrilled to get such a great reception from the press and hundreds of thousands of new users. Our goal was to use that influx of users to secure series A funding to build a team and compete effectively in a crowded market. But fate intervened, and we got an attractive acquisition offer from CNN, a company that believed in our vision. In hindsight, I can see that there were a few really smart things that we did that made us an excellent acquisition target.

My goal for this article isn’t to give you a silver bullet for getting your company acquired, but rather to offer some insight into what I think are the key reasons that Zite was able to move from launch to transaction in such a compressed timeline.

Have a huge product launch — It doesn’t matter how good your product is if people don’t know about it. Once we believed we had the right product, we marketed it very hard. We spent much more money on PR surrounding our launch than was fiscally prudent at the time (we were risking future payroll) because we realized that we had one chance to tell the world that Zite was awesome. This paid off in spades: On launch day, we had print articles in The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, plus dozens of other fantastic pieces. This yielded us top billing in the App Store for free applications, and 125,000 downloads in the first week.
Put your best foot forward — We focused much of our product design on the first minutes of the user experience. We knew that if a user never saw our amazing personalization technology, we’d lose them, and they’d think we were just a “me-too” news reader. We put our technology front and center by designing a simple, intuitive set-up experience that yielded immediate delight and serendipity.
Have technology that is incredibly difficult to replicate — You’re not going to get bought if the acquiring company thinks they can build the product themselves. Zite had the advantage of almost six years of R&D (we were formerly called Worio), but until we became Zite, we were a technology company with a product problem. Instead of continuing to use the technology on a failed product, we pivoted to Zite. We also seized the opportunity to launch on the iPad, which is the perfect delivery device for the technology.
Have a clear vision — We had a vision to change the way people consume information. Zite (the product) and personalization are components of that vision, but we proved that we were not a one-trick pony, and we were excited about innovating on news delivery.
Disrupt the market — CNN noticed Zite after we received a cease-and-desist from major media companies, including Time Inc. (which is a cousin of CNN, since both are owned by Time Warner). My boss jokes, “If all of the media companies were able to get their lawyers to send you a letter, then you must be doing something right.” At the time, we weren’t sure how we would work with publishers, and publishers weren’t sure of the value of Zite. We’re now on solid ground with publishers, since they have realized the value of Zite as a discovery engine — but at the time it was a great boost to our visibility among the exact same executives who would later give us an offer for the company.

I want to stress that none of the above points are a guarantee that your company will get acquired — let alone be successful — but they certainly influenced CNN’s decision to buy Zite and, ultimately, our success to date. Look for ways you can integrate these tips into your start-up, and even if you aren’t acquired quickly, you will certainly build a better long-term offering for whatever market you choose to address.

Mark Johnson is CEO of Zite. He was an adviser to the company for almost two years, prior to taking the CEO role. He brings a strong product and technology background, with experience at several successful search start-ups: Powerset (natural-language search, acquired by Microsoft), Kosmix (categorized search, acquired by Walmart), and SideStep (travel search, acquired by Kayak). Most recently, he led product at Bing in San Francisco.

A Sports Aggregator Finds a Home: Gannett Buys Quickish

Peter Kafka — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 12:00:45 +0000

The folks at Gannett, the newspaper publisher best known as the people who bring you USA Today, also want to be known for online sports. Here’s another move in that direction: The company’s USA Today Sports Media Group has acquired Quickish, a one-man sports aggregator run by Dan Shanoff.

This is a variation on your basic “acqhire,” the difference being that Gannett intends to keep Quickish operating once Shanoff starts working for them. Shanoff says he’ll also work on other digital projects for Gannett, as an “audience-development executive” working for USA Today sports-biz guy Dave Morgan.

Quickish is a fairly straightforward aggegrator that offers a summary and a link for sports stories throughout the day. Unlike aggregators like Techmeme, there’s no special algorithm here — just Shanoff or one of his freelancers picking stories to highlight and sources to link to. It’s closer to what Jim Romenesko does on his media news site.

When Shanoff launched last year, he had plans to replicate the formula with other subjects, but never got to it. More likely what happens now is that Gannett uses Quickish for more niche “verticals” — you could have one of these for Nascar, one for the NFL, etc. — and plugs it into various sites.

The deal is one more sign that Gannett wants to bulk up in digital sports. It has made a series of M&A moves in the last few years, the biggest being its purchase of Big Lead Sports in January.

(Image courtesy off Mike Flippo / Shutterstock.com)

But What Does That Make "The Phantom Menace?"

Voices — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 07:59:49 +0000

The reason I’ve invested so much time and money (creating Industrial Light & Magic, a premier special-effects house) is because art is technology.

– George Lucas, in conversation with Marco R. della Cava of USA Today

NewsCred Raises $4 Million for Its Web-Based Newswire

Peter Kafka — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:00:11 +0000

Problem: You own a Web site and would like to fill it up with some nice-looking newsy content, but you don’t want to pay people like me to make it. NewsCred wants to provide the answer: It syndicates news stories from outlets like the Guardian, the Los Angeles Times and Forbes, and places them on sites around the world.

The New York-based start-up has been at this in various incarnations since 2009, but CEO Shafqat Islam says he’s getting some traction, and is able to charge Web publishers $3,000 to $5,000 a month per “vertical” for access to his (borrowed) content. He says he’ll do $1 million in revenue this year; last month, Islam raised a $4 million Series A round led by First Mark, along with Lerer Ventures, AOL Ventures and Shari Redstone’s Advancit Capital.

Content syndicators aren’t a new idea, by any means, and NewsCred’s basic pitch sounds quite similar to Mochilla, which has raised a pile of money. Several folks are trying versions of this in video, including AOL’s 5min and U.K.-based Perform Group’s ePlayer. And Demand Media has tried putting its super-low-cost freelancers to work for publishers including USA Today.

NewsCred’s basic pitch seems to be that it has a better selection of blue-chip content makers, all of which are getting guaranteed payments for their stuff. Islam pitches his product as a disruptor out to take on the likes of the Associated Press, but he also syndicates content from Reuters and Bloomberg, also giant newswires. So presumably they don’t feel threatened quite yet.

Here’s an interview I conducted with Islam earlier this week, featuring a cameo from Pat the Contractor (NewsCred is in the process of moving into its own place, after graduating from start-up launcher General Assembly).

[ See post to watch video ]

(Side note: To get a sense of how difficult it is to hammer out some of these content deals, or just get a foot in the door, see this email exchange between Islam and an executive at Dow Jones, which, like this Web site, is owned by News Corp.)

From an Early Adopter of the Mini Submarine

Bo Kim — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 07:01:41 +0000

I used to be the first guy who had to have a cellphone. When cellphones first came out, I had the one that was the big base station, it weighed about 14 pounds. Since then, I’ve become less interested in being an early adopter of every gadget that’s out there. I won’t even use a BlackBerry.

— James Cameron, in USA Today

Exclusive: Longtime Yahoo Front Page Editor Liz Lufkin Out

Kara Swisher — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 15:37:53 +0000

According to sources close to the situation, longtime Yahoo front page chief Liz Lufkin has parted ways with the company.

The departure last week appears to be related to a reorg by newish editor-in-chief Jai Singh, who used to run the editorial efforts for the Huffington Post, at the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

Singh appears to be setting up his own team and, thus, Lufkin was out.

Lufkin has been at Yahoo for many years, most recently as VP of front page programming. In that job, according to one bio, she supervised “editors in Sunnyvale, Santa Monica, New York and Dallas and consult[ed] to various international Yahoo! sites. Liz’s group contributed to the successful development of Yahoo’s pioneering content optimization personalization system, improving the relevancy of Front Page for users and providing new insights on audience behavior.”

Previous to Yahoo, she had been deputy managing editor at Gannett’s USATODAY.com and USA Today. She had a similar job at the Hearst-owned San Francisco Chronicle.

Lufkin’s job at Yahoo is a critical one, given how powerful the front page of the site is, with 600 million unique visitors and billions of page views.

While the portal system has been under siege in recent years, it is still a massive driver of traffic to Yahoo’s own Web properties and elsewhere on the Internet.

Yahoo declined to comment (but I am right!).

UPDATE: Yahoo said that it had hired CNET editor-in-chief Scott Ard to take Lufkin’s place. Ard, who worked for the CBS-owned tech news property for 12 years, will report directly to Jai Singh, editor-in-chief of the Yahoo Media Network.

Zynga's FarmVille and CityVille Developer Spills the Beans on What Makes Games Great

Tricia Duryee — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 18:21:16 +0000

Zynga dominants the social gaming charts with three of the top four games on Facebook.

So, it must be doing something right, right?

Hundreds of game developers yesterday showed up to listen to Mark Skaggs, Zynga’s VP of product, who provided pieces of the formula for building FarmVille and CityVille, two of its most popular games.

Skaggs was very informal, down to his slouchy black blazer, and handed out plenty of free advice about the learning process of accumulating one million players on FarmVille and 14 million on CityVille in the first 30 days.

He also mentioned a few little known facts about the games:

The idea for developing FarmVille came from one of Zynga’s investors, Bing Gordon, a partner at Kleiner Perkins. One day, he put his feet up on the desk and asked, “Why don’t make you a farm game?”
Farmville peaked at 32.5 million daily users. If you lined them up holding hands across the U.S., they’d cross 6.36 times from New York to San Francisco.
Production was so quick on FarmVille, the developers stole the avatars from their other game YoVille.
Zynga was going to retire the old servers that were running Mafia Wars, but it opted for Amazon’s cloud services, which easily handed the traffic explosion.
FarmVille was going to launch with only a dozen props, but they missed deadlines and went to market with only nine.
While things have now changed, moms were the killer audience for FarmVille, leading the staff to call Facebook the “matriarch network.”
Seemed like forever, but there were only 18 months between FarmVille and CityVille’s launches.
CityVille missed its launch date. Despite stories in USA Today and other publications, Zynga had to hold it for quality reasons. But after launch, it went smoothly and attracted 14 million daily users in 30 days.

And, other advice:

Learn from success. Play games and look for common threads. If you see someone offering a gifting interstitial, you probably should mimic it. Be cautious about trying to “change the world of social games.” You might get lucky and be really successful, but the reality is you should look at what others are doing and follow their lead.
It’s no longer a mom network. CityVille was operational in four countries at launch, and has since added three more. “The Germans play a lot and pay a lot.”
Speed wins. People are coming to you as a Web experience; make it fast.
Make it fun. You can’t make up for a boring game with volume. At the end of the day, ask yourself, is it fun? If it’s not, who cares that you have a million seeds for a user to pick from.

Web Surfers Troubled by Tracking, Poll Says

Courtney Banks — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 00:19:47 +0000

A new poll suggests most U.S. Internet users are aware they are being tracked online by advertisers, and are troubled by the practice.

According to the poll, 61 percent of Internet users said they’ve noticed that some online ads appear to be targeted at them based on their Web-browsing habits. Curiously, though, 90 percent of respondents said they pay little or no attention to online ads.

Two-third of respondents said advertisers should not be allowed to target ads based on online tracking. And 61 percent said tracking is not justified even to keep websites free.

The poll, of 840 adult Internet users, was conducted Dec. 10-12 by USA Today and Gallup Inc.

The poll suggests users want more control over tracking and behaviorally targeted advertising. Respondents were asked if they’d prefer to allow all advertising networks to target ads, none to target ads or “only those advertising networks you choose.” Nearly half, 47 percent, preferred being able to select networks that could target ads; 37 percent did not want any targeted ads and 14 percent said they would allow all targeted ads.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

News Outlets Circle Tablet

Russell Adams and Jessica E. Vascellaro — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 07:00:42 +0000

Several major news organizations are lining up behind a new tablet device from Samsung Electronics Co. built on Google Inc. (GOOG) software, in order to broaden mobile readership beyond owners of Apple Inc. (AAPL) popular iPad.

New York Times Co. (NYT) and News Corp.’s (NWS) Wall Street Journal will offer software applications for Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, which goes on sale later this year, according to people familiar with the matter. Gannett Co.’s USA Today also is developing a software application, the publisher said.

The device, announced in September, is one of the most highly anticipated tablet launches since the iPad in part because it is built on Google’s Android operating system, which is expected to psprower a wave of new tablets. Publishers are hoping that the applications they are building for the Galaxy can be easily adapted to other forthcoming Android devices, say people familiar with the matter.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

An iPhone 4 Review Roundup

John Paczkowski — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 22:09:48 +0000

“This is really hot,” Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs said of the iPhone 4 when he unveiled it at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month. And the pundits seem to agree. The first reviews of the device began rolling in Tuesday afternoon and they are largely glowing, despite some expected complaints about the device’s performance on AT&T’s (T) network. Below, excerpts from a few of them.

In both hardware and software, [the iPhone4] is a major leap over its already-excellent predecessor, the iPhone 3GS.

It has some downsides and limitations–most important, the overwhelmed AT&T network in the U.S., which, in my tests, the new phone handled sometimes better and, unfortunately, sometimes worse than its predecessor….But, overall, Apple has delivered a big, well-designed update that, in my view, keeps it in the lead in the smartphone wars….

The most important downside of the iPhone 4 is that, in the U.S., it’s shackled to AT&T, which not only still operates a network that has trouble connecting and maintaining calls in many cities, but now has abandoned unlimited, flat-rate data plans. Apple needs a second network.

Both Apple and AT&T told me they worked to make the iPhone 4 do a better job with AT&T’s network. For example, the phone itself is surrounded by a prominent stainless-steel trim piece that acts as a large antenna. And Apple said it also tuned the phone to try to grab whatever band on the network was less congested or less affected by interference–to stress the quality of a signal over its raw strength. AT&T said it, too, made some changes to its network with the new iPhone in mind.

But, in my tests, network reception was a mixed bag.

– Walt Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal

[The iPhone 4] is not the first phone with both a front and back camera. It’s not even the first one to make video calls. But the iPhone 4 is the first phone to make good video calls, reliably, with no sign-up or setup, with a single tap. The picture and audio are rock solid, with very little delay, and it works the first time and every time….Now, the iPhone is no longer the undisputed king of app phones. In particular, the technically inclined may find greater flexibility and choice among its Android rivals, like the HTC Incredible and Evo. They’re more complicated, and their app store not as good, but they’re loaded with droolworthy features like turn-by-turn GPS instructions, speech recognition that saves you typing, removable batteries and a choice of cell networks. If what you care about, however, is size and shape, beauty and battery life, polish and pleasure, then the iPhone 4 is calling your name.

– David Pogue, New York Times

The new iPhone 4 I’ve been testing for about a week and a half–along with the major refresh of the mobile operating system software at the core of recent models–demonstrates once again why Apple’s handset is the one to beat, even as it faces fierce competition from phones based on Google’s Android platform, among others….Critics are left with reasons to whine. Apple’s public dissing of Adobe Flash means you’ll still come upon Web video sites that don’t make nice with the iPhone. I had a few dropped calls. The battery still isn’t user-replaceable, and there’s no slot for expanding memory.

– Ed Baig, USA Today

We’re not going to beat around the bush–in our approximation, the iPhone 4 is the best smartphone on the market right now. The combination of gorgeous new hardware, that amazing display, upgraded cameras, and major improvements to the operating system make this an extremely formidable package. Yes, there are still pain points that we want to see Apple fix, and yes, there are some amazing alternatives to the iPhone 4 out there. But when it comes to the total package–fit and finish in both software and hardware, performance, app selection, and all of the little details that make a device like this what it is–we think it’s the cream of the current crop. We won’t argue that a lot of this is a matter of taste–some people will just prefer the way Android or Symbian works to the iPhone, and others will be on the lookout for a hardware keyboard or a particular asset that the iPhone 4 lacks–but in terms of the total picture, it’s tough to deny that Apple has moved one step past the competition with this phone.

– Josh Topolsky, Engadget

The fourth incarnation of Apple’s iPhone is an incrementally improved, familiar device–not a new kind of device, as was the case with the recent introduction of iPad. Yes, the notable features with iPhone 4–both the device and the iOS4, which came out yesterday in advance of the iPhone itself–are mostly tweaks. But what tweaks they are: Apple’s focus on improvement is as much key to the quality of its products as innovation. But there’s one flaw it doesn’t improve: the poor quality of calls placed over AT&T, which remains the iPhone’s only U.S. carrier….AT&T still sucks, and the best engineering out of Cupertino won’t change that.

– Xeni Jardin, BoingBoing

Demand Media's Richard Rosenblatt and ProPublica's Paul Steiger Live at D8

Peter Kafka — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 16:10:32 +0000

What’s the future of the media business? Demand Media, the Google-savvy “content farm” that generates thousands of computer-assigned, low-cost Web items a day? Or ProPublica, a nonprofit that produces deep-dive investigative pieces and publishes them on its own site and in the pages of high-profile partners?

Good guess: Some of both. But let’s allow both parties to make their own case.

Brief background: Demand Media is Richard Rosenblatt’s follow-up to MySpace, which he sold to News Corp. (NWS); Paul Steiger founded ProPublica after a long career at The Wall Street Journal.

Below is the full video of the interview, followed by the liveblog:

[ See post to watch video ]

Liveblog

9:41 am: Kara asks Paul Steiger to explain what he’s up to.

Steiger: Stories are aimed at abuse of power and empowering people to make change. I started there because when I was leaving the Journal in 2007, the traditional news business was collapsing. We had $10 million in funding and that wasn’t something I could turn down in that environment. I didn’t have time to be worried–I had to leave the Journal because of mandatory retirement age, and my wife said I couldn’t wear sweatpants during the weekday.

9:44 am: Kara to Rosenblatt–Please explain the controversy regarding Demand.

[WARNING: Rosenblatt speaks very quickly. It's unlikely that I'll be able to get more than impressionistic stabs at what he's saying.]

“We only write content that people want….We’re not journalists, all right? The only people that call us journalists are journalists.” That said, what we do is “more like service journalism….There’s no piece of content made that we think is good” because we only make content that people tell us they think is good.

9:46 am: Rosenblatt–We do no marketing. All traffic comes from organic search.

I don’t know why people call this “dreck.” When you do something 6,000 times a day, it always looks like it’s of low-quality. We’re okay with that; we’re continually trying to prove to people that we’re doing good stuff.

We have a deal with USA Today and others that we’ll be announcing.

9:47 am: Kara to Steiger–What do you think of all this?

Steiger: I see this as a reordering of the environment that we’re all going to have to live in. You [Demand] make stuff people want; you control costs, and it’s working. Another model is the Politico model, with a combination of tightly controlled print plus a big Web site. We do the most expensive, the most important journalism for democracy.

Kara: Example?

Steiger: A story we did with the Los Angeles Times about nurses getting bogus licenses. A story about police in New Orleans killing people. There are five or six things like that in the past year where we can point to changes that have taken place because of our stories. These things can cost tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands to produce.

In the old days, that could be a loss leader for for-profit newspapers. Can’t do that anymore, so we need philanthropy. “Silicon Valley, come on in!”

9:50 am: Kara to Rosenblatt–Will you do “Top 10 nurses that beat people up”?

Rosenblatt: No

Kara: Wait a minute! People may want it!

Rosenblatt: I think journalism is important, and the problem is trying to pay for it. We can help publications like USA Today, where we generate content and revenue for them, and they can take that money to fund other reporting. We’re not going to save journalism, but we can help it.

Kara to Rosenblatt: You employ a lot of journalists.

Rosenblatt: Not journalists.

Kara: Former journalists?

Rosenblatt: They may have been former journalists, and they may do journalism somewhere else. We call them freelancers, content creators.

9:53 am: Kara asks Rosenblatt to explain editing/oversight.

Rosenblatt: Eleven people touch this stuff before it gets published, etc. Anyway, let’s say we do 7,000 pieces of content a day. That’s 77,000 individual touches per day, with 10,000 freelancers around the Web. That’s amazing. That’s what the Web is made for.

9:54 am: Kara–How do they get paid?

Rosenblatt: They can get paid by piece or by revenue-share. But most of them prefer to get paid by content, because it’s guaranteed.

9:55 am: Kara–at The Wall Street Journal, we had people who worked for months on a single story. Is that done?

Steiger: The Journal, the New York Times and Washington Post are still vertically integrated and have powerful enough brands and talent that I think they can make it into the next generation.

Kara: Two of those are in dicey shape.

Steiger: Remember that there are two things going on right now. There is a secular shift, with the business model being destroyed. But there’s also a recession. So as that eases, we’ll have a better sense of who can survive.

9:58 am: Steiger–I’d love to go back to 10 years ago, or longer, to the golden age of journalism. But not even Silicon Valley can produce a time machine.

Kara: So do you think even the big newspapers that survive will switch to audience-driven content creation? That’s not what journalism is about.

Steiger: No matter what you’re doing, you’re still making stuff with an idea of what the people who are reading you want. It’s a broader way of thinking about it than Demand, but there’s a common thread.

9:59 am: Kara to Rosenblatt–Where is your actual business? Is it domains?

Rosenblatt: We have two main businesses: Registrar/domains. It’s steady, recurring revenue, and it generates a lot of data. Almost 10 percent of the Web hits our servers via these domains. It’s an exciting source of data.

Then we have the media business. That’s 50 percent bigger, in revenue, than other business and growing fast.

Of that business, less than 10 percent is domain advertising business. Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO) stick ads on tenniselbow.com, etc. We think that’s a great business also.

Kara: Is your media business profitable?

Rosenblatt: Can’t talk about that.

Kara: Does that mean it’s not profitable?

Rosenblatt: Can’t talk about that.

Kara: But you’re going public, right?

Rosenblatt: Can’t talk about that.

10:03 am: Kara–you’re dependent on Google, right?

Rosenblatt: In the way that everyone is dependent on Google. Or that the iPhone is dependent on AT&T (T). But everyone searches on the Web. So some of our sites, like eHow, are getting traffic from Google. But others aren’t.

If Google changes their algorithm, we think about that. But we spend a lot of care on what we do, and we think there’s a move to quality long-tail content that Google values.

10:05 am: Kara to Rosenblatt–AOL is doing what you’re doing. Yahoo just bought Associated Content. It has more distribution than you do. What does that mean for you?

Rosenblatt: We love that AOL (AOL) and Yahoo are validating what we’re doing. “In a market this big, that’s in the first inning, there’s plenty of room for all of us.”

10:05 am: Kara to Steiger–How do you feel about the kind of journalism you do becoming nonprofit work? Does that depress you?

Steiger: “I’m the opposite of disheartened. I’m very excited.” Yes, the business is shrinking and people are losing jobs, and I don’t want to make light of that. But we’re attracting great people; we’ve won a Pulitzer Prize. The work will get done. The work is crucial to our society, and it needs philanthropic support. But so do orchestras and clinics and universities.

10:07 am: Kara–Is there a way to actually make money doing this?

Steiger: “Conceivably, but I can’t think of what it is.” If you’re focused entirely on this, “at this stage, you need philanthropic help.”

Kara to Rosenblatt: Can you think of how to do this?

Rosenblatt: You can hold a conference and charge people $5,000 a head. [Applause in conference room and in D8 cave.]

Q&A

For Rosenblatt: Why won’t you call your people “journalists”? Steve Jobs was full of venom for “bloggers,” too. Why not call people who write for money “journalists”?

Rosenblatt: If our writers want to call themselves journalists, great. But they’re not doing reporting from Afghanistan. We’re content creators, making things that people want.

Steiger: I just think that the labels get in the way.

Q: Who are those 11 people that touch Demand Media’s content? What do they do?

Rosenblatt: Some people are involved in “titling.” For SEO or social media purposes. Three people are involved in checking each title. Then people involved in each property select stories, depending on the voice. Then copy editors, copy chiefs, writers. We’re actually going to be adding more. We can make it so efficient, that we can add more roles, and everyone can keep making the same amount of money.

Q: What about rolling out content on the domains you run?

A: Not yet. Maybe in coming years. It’s not a focus right now. We do think the assets that you own and we own, we think those assets “have great optionality later” to put content on.

Q for Steiger: Do you share Steve Jobs’s distaste for bloggers?

Steiger: I sleep with a blogger! My wife blogs from 11 pm to 2 am. I’m an enthusiastic supporter of blogging. They bring a lot of audience to ProPublica’s Web site. I think what Steve was getting at is that there’s a danger of too many people commenting and not enough people finding out what’s going on. [I don't think that's entirely what Jobs was complaining about, btw.]

This content-creation session is now over.

A note about our coverage: This liveblog is not an official transcript of the conversation that occurred onstage. Rather, it is a compilation of quotes, paraphrased statements and ad-lib observations written and posted to the Web as quickly as possible. It is not intended as a transcript and should not be interpreted as one.

Rupert Murdoch Still Needs Allies for His Digital News Crusade

Peter Kafka — Wed, 19 May 2010 10:00:02 +0000

Within the next two weeks or so, we’re supposed to hear about Rupert Murdoch’s digital news subscription service–the one he has been trying to put together for many months.

One problem: That service is supposed to feature content from publications other than those owned by Murdoch. And sources familiar with News Corp.’s plans tell me Murdoch has yet to sign partners on to the venture.

News Corp. officials do say Murdoch is hopeful about bringing on Gannett (GCI), the publisher behind USA Today and 82 smaller papers. A person familiar with talks between the companies described them as “late stage.” A spokeswoman for News Corp. (NWS), which owns this Web site, declined to comment; Gannett officials didn’t respond to a request for comment.

And it’s possible that Murdoch’s lieutenants, led by digital boss Jon Miller, have other deals in the works that they’re close to closing.

That’s certainly what Murdoch hinted at in the prepared remarks he delivered at the start of his May 4 earnings call:

Today, we are in final discussions with a number of publishers, device makers and technology companies…and we will soon develop an innovative subscription model that will deliver digital content to consumers…wherever and whenever they want it.

Later, in response to a reporter’s question about the subscription plan, Murdoch went further, announcing that his company would be “giving a press conference in about three to four weeks which we hope will have some important announcements in.”

But that would be a more effective press conference if Murdoch could announce that he has convinced other big publishers to embrace his model. Right now, at least, he can’t say that.

This might seem like a classic example of Murdoch going off script during an earnings call, which happens with some frequency. But in this case, News Corp. officials have been working on a similar timetable behind the scenes. For instance, I’m told that they have been casting about for a public relations agency to help promote the plan and have been telling prospective candidates about their proposed schedule.

So it seems that Murdoch may have been intentionally placing his cart pre-horse in hopes that doing so would speed negotiations along. Can’t wait to see if he’s right.

For the iPad, Apps With Their Own Wow Factor

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 23:01:46 +0000

In the days since the launch of Apple’s iPad Saturday, there has been an explosion of apps to run on it—3,000 and counting. They are mostly free and incorporate new ways of navigating one of the largest screens on a mobile device that relies solely on touch technology.

On this large canvas, people work differently and apps can behave differently depending on which way the device is turned. Apps can (and must) incorporate creative ways of navigating—in addition to the usual multi-touch gestures like flicking, two-finger swiping and pinching. Thus, although it runs most of the 150,000 apps already available for the much smaller iPhone and iPod touch, the iPad is spawning a new type of tablet-specific app.

[ See post to watch video ]

This week, I’ve been testing some of these iPad apps that give users novel ways to interact with the device. These are designed to take advantage of a larger touch screen by using things like fly-out menus, multi-panel layouts, 3-D images intermixed with text and newspapers that can be read almost as easily as their paper counterparts.

Since most of us haven’t used apps like these or a device like this before, many apps install with brief tutorials on how to navigate them. It’s obvious that the makers of these iPad apps are still tinkering with what works best for a large touch surface. And ads appear in several digital newspaper and magazine apps. Unless otherwise noted, the apps listed below are free.

News

Multi-tasking isn’t yet possible on the iPad, but the NPR app allows people to do certain things simultaneously. While browsing news stories, a player in the bottom portion of the screen lets you listen to programs, interviews or songs. I played Jakob Dylan’s “Women and Country” song while reading an article about NCAA basketball. Content can be saved to a playlist for future listening.

The Marvel Comics app

The Wall Street Journal app’s home page displays a horizontal row of newspapers representing the past seven days’ editions and a “Now” edition, with late-breaking news, all of which can be read when the iPad isn’t online. These editions are designed to use the full screen to display easy-to-read newspaper layouts and videos that play right within the articles. A finger swiped from the top down skips to a different section of the paper, while pinching any screen with two fingers returns to the home page. And you can save articles and sections. The WSJ iPad app also can access saved data from a WSJ.com account.

The app is free to download but requires a subscription for full access, which costs $4 a week or is free for a limited time to existing online or print subscribers.

The New York Times (NYT) app is called Editors’ Choice and looks like a roomier version of the newspaper’s iPhone app. Five icons at the bottom of the screen instantly jump to different sections of the paper, or you can flick a finger across these screens to page to more articles. It doesn’t require a subscription.

The USA Today app brings the Gannett Co. (GCI) paper’s color-coded blue, green, red and purple sections to the iPad. Its popular charts of information (called “Snapshots”) pop out from the bottom left of the screen and include polls that can be voted on using the device. The USA Today app looks less like the print edition of the paper and more like a list of news points with color photos beside each. This list can be scrolled with a simple finger flick up or down.

Magazines

Digital magazines on the iPad seem to be experimenting with different payment methods. Rodale Inc.’s Men’s Health, for example, is a free app and includes previews of magazine issues, but then it charges $5 to download the actual issue. Bonnier Corp.’s Popular Science app costs $5 up-front and includes an issue that must be downloaded within the app.

Popular Science really uses the iPad’s larger surface in creative ways. Instead of just letting you page ahead with each finger flick as if reading a regular magazine, you can read articles by flicking a finger down or across a screen. In some articles I read, images appeared to be floating in the background behind text. Two fingers flicking up from the bottom of the screen show shortcuts for a table of contents and previous magazine issues.

Music

Pandora’s iPad app makes good use of the device’s screen real estate by showing artist information, now-playing details, album art and a list of personalized radio stations all on the same screen. I found myself more likely to read about artists on the iPad than on my smaller iPod touch. But like many Pandora users, I like playing music in the background as I work on other tasks, and this isn’t possible on the iPad because it doesn’t allow third-party apps like Pandora to multi-task.

Entertainment

Scrabble app

The Marvel Comics app displays stunning, large illustrations and moves you across the screen to see them as if the comic is one continuous strip and there’s no division between one screen and the next. A finger swipe moves you ahead in a guided view that jumps you from one character’s dialog cloud to the next in the correct order. This app is a free download and a handful of free comic books come with it, but each additional book costs around $2.

Scrabble for iPad costs $10 and includes options for playing with friends by passing the iPad back and forth, and an additional free app enables connecting an iPhone or iPod touch to the iPad to use these smaller screens as tile racks. You can play against your Facebook friends or the computer, and things like “Best Word” and an option to shuffle tiles make the game a little easier to play for some. Scrabble will even play your iTunes music in the background while you’re dragging tiles onto the board using your finger.

With Real Racing HD, you see a 3-D view of racetracks and steer a car by leaning the iPad in the direction you need to turn (a built-in accelerometer senses where you’re moving the iPad). I played this $10 game while sitting in the back seat of a moving car and got a bit dizzy since the race is so realistic.

Education

A great example of how the iPad can be used for education can be seen in an app titled “The Elements: A Visual Exploration,” developed by Touch Press. This costs $14 and displays the periodic table of elements stretched across the screen. Selecting one element brings it forward and spins a dazzling image of it so you can see all sides of it. A link to the Web pulls in real-time information about that element.

iPad apps like The Elements: A Visual Exploration, above, make good use of the larger touch screen.

Others

Apple’s (AAPL) iBooks and Amazon.com’s (AMZN) Kindle are two terrific e-reader apps that bring digital books to the iPad. There’s a strong argument for using the Kindle app, since books bought through it can be accessed on a variety of platforms in addition to the iPad, all in sync right where you left off reading, while iBooks are currently limited to the iPad. But the books in iBooks are displayed in an arresting way, with animation that resembles real pages turning.

Pages, Keynote and Numbers are Apple’s versions of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel and they cost $10 each. When installed, these programs can convert documents from Microsoft’s (MSFT) formats and let you work on them. They present rich, PC-like features controlled by touch. Pages, also lets you convert the documents back to the original Microsoft format.

TruPhone and Skype will make calls over the Internet using the iPad when you’re online, and in one test, this worked relatively well.

The Houzz Inc. app is a digital look book for interior-decorating ideas that’s updated with current images of decorated houses. It displays large images of decorated rooms across the iPad’s screen, allowing you to search and save certain looks for offline access or sharing with others.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

More iPad Coverage »

Some Publishers Are Wary of Sales on iTunes

Shira Ovide and Russell Adams — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 12:00:37 +0000

Newspaper and magazine companies rushed to prep their titles for the debut of Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) iPad last weekend. But while publishers hail how the tablet computer lets them showcase their wares, some are working to develop ways to sell their publications separately from Apple’s iTunes.

Tablet editions of Time and Popular Science magazines–each priced at $4.99–were among the most popular paid downloads for the iPad over the weekend. The thousands of iPad applications available so far also include editions from GQ, Outside magazine, USA Today, the New York Times (NYT) and The Wall Street Journal.

The majority of magazines and newspapers for the iPad are downloaded through iTunes, the channel to purchase music, movies, books and other entertainment for the iPhone and iPad. The more than 125 million iTunes account holders can order iPad periodicals with just a few taps on a screen, instead of pulling out their credit cards and signing into multiple Web accounts.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

An iPad Review Roundup

John Paczkowski — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 01:31:54 +0000

A handful of iPad reviews published online moments ago and they’re largely positive–with some expected caveats about its lack of a camera and support for Flash and multitasking. Consensus seems to be that Apple (AAPL) has a great shot at creating a new category of device with the iPad.

Interestingly, a number of reviews make special mention of its speed (Walt Mossberg describes it as “wicked fast”), a battery life that exceeds Apple’s claims (David Pogue says the battery on his review device lasted 12 hours on a single charge–two hours more than Apple promised), and Apple’s hopes for 1,000 specially designed iPad apps to be available by launch this Saturday.

Below, excerpts from eight of those early reviews.

I believe this beautiful new touch-screen device from Apple has the potential to change portable computing profoundly, and to challenge the primacy of the laptop. It could even help, eventually, to propel the finger-driven, multitouch user interface ahead of the mouse-driven interface that has prevailed for decades. But first, it will have to prove that it really can replace the laptop or netbook for enough common tasks, enough of the time, to make it a viable alternative.

– Walt Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal

The first iPad is a winner. It stacks up as a formidable electronic-reader rival for Amazon’s Kindle. It gives portable game machines from Nintendo and Sony a run for their money. At the very least, the iPad will likely drum up mass-market interest in tablet computing in ways that longtime tablet visionary and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates could only dream of.

– Ed Baig, USA Today

No company can generate as much hype around a product launch as Apple. But that’s perfectly OK because no company is also nearly as successful at producing a new product that can justify almost any level of excitement that precedes it. They don’t do it with every product launch, but bloody hell: they’ve done it with the iPad….The most compelling sign that Apple got this right is the fact that despite the novelty of the iPad, the excitement slips away after about ten seconds and you’re completely focused on the task at hand…whether it’s reading a book, writing a report, or working on clearing your Inbox. Second most compelling: in situation after situation, I find that the iPad is the best computer in my household and office menagerie. It’s not a replacement for my notebook, mind you. It feels more as if the iPad is filling a gap that’s existed for quite some time.

– Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun Times

The techies are right about another thing: the iPad is not a laptop. It’s not nearly as good for creating stuff. On the other hand, it’s infinitely more convenient for consuming it–books, music, video, photos, Web, e-mail and so on. For most people, manipulating these digital materials directly by touching them is a completely new experience–and a deeply satisfying one. The bottom line is that the iPad has been designed and built by a bunch of perfectionists. If you like the concept, you’ll love the machine. The only question is: Do you like the concept?

– David Pogue, New York Times

Is the iPad a perfect product? No. And the omissions will give the anti-Apple crowd plenty of ammo. Why do I need this extra device that’s not a full-fledged laptop? Where’s the camera? What about Flash? Um, how about multitasking? These are all valid complaints, but one thing I can say about most Apple products, and certainly the iPad: There may be things it doesn’t do, but what it does do, it does remarkably well. Aside from the aforementioned limitations, there isn’t a lot else to gripe about. And to my great surprise, you can actually get real work done with the iPad.

– Tim Gideon, PCMag

Manic, nonstop use revealed a number of things: battery life is better than I anticipated. I got a full day of constant internet-connected use (it barely left my hands) on one charge. It fits well in my lap when eating, and it’s easy to wipe off stray noodles and arugula leaves and get right back to Twittering….I like it a lot. But it’s the things I never knew it made possible–to be revealed or not in the coming months–that will determine whether I love it.

– Xeni Jardin, Boing Boing

It turns out the iPad isn’t as much a laptop replacement as I thought (though it could easily be used as one). Instead, it’s an entirely new category of mobile device. For example, now when I want to surf the Web from the couch or back deck, the iPad is the device I choose. Starbucks? Same thing. Think of the iPad as a new arrow in your technology quiver, an arrow that will often be the best tool for a given task. I had high expectations for the iPad, and it has met or exceeded most of them.

– Bob LeVitus, Houston Chronicle

Apple’s engineers know something those other companies don’t: form has trumped function. You can load up a tablet with horsepower and extra features till it can do your taxes and lick the stamp, but if it’s not instantly obvious how to use those features without a manual–and if you don’t look good using them–nobody cares. The iPad isn’t wildly feature-rich. It doesn’t run Flash, and the only browser it runs is Safari. Like the iPhone, it can’t multitask, and it doesn’t appear to have a serious file-handling system. I’ve tried its much ballyhooed full-size virtual keyboard, and it feels like typing with frostbite. It doesn’t even have a damn camera. But you will care about it, because whoever designed its graceful lines and intuitive interface cared about you.

– Lev Grossman, Time

Wanted: Online Ad Sales Heads for Both Yahoo and Microsoft

Kara Swisher — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 19:04:39 +0000

Even though they are two of the Internet’s largest advertising businesses, both Yahoo and Microsoft are without top execs to lead those units.

Worse, both are just entering a complex online ad sales and search partnership together, which will require a lot of management firepower.

Last week, BoomTown reported the departure of Yahoo’s head for the key North American market, Joanne Bradford, for a new job at social media start-up Demand Media. She starts there Monday.

It was a move that sent reverberations throughout the online ad market.

Less known, though, is that Microsoft (MSFT) has also been looking for almost a year for someone to head up its online ad sales force globally.

Yahoo (YHOO) is just starting its search to replace Bradford–with her boss, U.S. head Hilary Schneider, taking over on an interim basis.

In fact, even Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is pitching in, giving Bradford’s staff a talking to earlier this week about the need to press on.

Both Yahoo execs said the company will be looking at both internal and external candidates.

Until then, said a Yahoo spokeswoman, in the boringest quote ever uttered: “Yahoo! has leadership bench strength and we continue to be committed in delivering wow experiences to both users and advertisers.”

Not to worry about obfuscation, as BoomTown has the scoop!

Internally, the key execs being eyeballed include 11-year Yahoo veteran Mitch Spolan, VP of North American sales, and Seth Dallaire, a former Microsoft exec whom Bradford brought to the company last fall as VP of mid-market sales, a newly-created role responsible for all mid-market sales efforts across search and display advertising.

Another former Microsoft exec, Erika Nardini, VP of brand packaging, is also mentioned a lot as a possibility and is well-liked by the sales force at Yahoo.

Still, many feel that with the exodus of such a high-profile exec as Bradford, Yahoo has to attract another big name to replace her.

But externally, the pickings are much slimmer, with only two key names popping up as top choices.

One is a former Yahoo, Jacki Kelley, a longtime online ad exec who is now North American president of Universal McCann, a unit of the Interpublic Group (IPG) agency. Besides Yahoo, Kelley has worked at Gannett’s (GCI) USA Today and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO).

The second is Kathy Kayse, a well-regarded former AOL (AOL) ad exec, who now is in charge of digital ad sales at Discovery Communications (DISCA). Kayse also had a long career at Time Warner (TWX).

(Both are pictured here, Kelley at left and Kayse on the right.)

Microsoft is a dicier proposition, with exactly zero internal candidates considered qualified to lead the online ad sales effort, a job that would report directly into Corporate VP for Consumer & Online Darren Huston.

Microsoft has been searching for a long time now, with feelers all over the industry. A variety of names pops up, from new MySpace ad head Nada Stirratt to Bradford–also a former Microsoftie–herself.

In fact, the paucity of experienced execs to handle these complex jobs–which include the need to understand premium, network and search ad sales, as well as highly technical systems–is clear.

“Neither of these jobs are easy and, in many ways, a giant nightmare,” joked one online ad sales exec.

Technologizer's "The Future of Windows": Scoobs, Foley, Baig, Windex Wisecracks From BoomTown and More!

Kara Swisher — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:15:51 +0000

Check out the interesting observations made by a range of media and tech folks in a post by Technologizer titled, “The Future of Windows: 28 Perspectives and Proposals” on the 25th anniversary of the 1.0 version of the groundbreaking operating system.

The simple question being asked: How can Microsoft keep Windows relevant?

My wisecracking first answer: “Well, a more liberal policy on Windex, I suppose. Wait, you mean the software?”

Actually, I did try to recover, noting that I was not wedded to Apple (AAPL) systems, which I have mostly been using for years now, if Microsoft (MSFT) nailed touchscreen technology and worked better at innovative integration of social networking, software, Web and devices.

No surprise, blogger Robert Scoble had a laundry list of requests, such as these:

“I want everything I touch to be socialized. Why doesn’t Outlook know anything about Facebook? Why don’t my photos automatically get pushed to Flickr? Why don’t I have a news app on my desktop that brings in Tweets from Twitter? Why aren’t notifications built into the system at a deep level?”

ZDNet’s most excellent Microsoft watcher Mary-Jo Foley was more dramatic:

“But what Microsoft really needs to do to insure Windows’ continued relevance is to be unafraid of introducing a whole new operating system at some point. At some point, in the not-too-distant future, Windows is going to need to be supplanted by ‘the next big thing.’”

USA Today’s Ed Baig would not go that far:

“Now, I’m by no means suggesting that Microsoft has to start from scratch when it comes to the traditional Windows OS for computers, much less prescribing specific changes…But what I am saying is that Microsoft shouldn’t be burdened by the shackles of legacy computing as it looks ahead.”

No matter what, of this I am still certain: More Windex!

Or as Toula Portokalos said in the movie comedy, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”: “My dad believed in two things: That Greeks should educate non-Greeks about being Greek and every ailment from psoriasis to poison ivy can be cured with Windex.”

Check out the other 24 ideas and add some of your own below.