Led by CEO Jason Goldberg, the site’s opening offers are on the sorts of things one might find at a design museum gift shop — fancy plastic chairs, fancy energy-saving light bulbs and fancy signed posters.

With future deals appearing to include personal electronics and apparel, Fab.com is entering a space currently dominated by Gilt Groupe, which offers deals on luxury goods in several categories through its Web site and apps.

In an email, Goldberg said the launch was made possible by a new round of seed funding that included the likes of Ashton Kutcher’s A-Grade fund, SoftTechVC and First Round Capital, the Washington Post Company, and Baroda Ventures.

While the amount of the round was not disclosed, Goldberg added that Kutcher will advise the company.

Companies as large and widely known as Foursquare and as small and unknown as CampgroundManager.com all turned to Twitter to advise their customers that service would be down for awhile, apologizing and asking for patience. It’s because of this that Amazon will have to work extra hard to win back the unquestioning confidence it has so long enjoyed. Meanwhile, competitors like Microsoft Azure, IBM and others will do their best to capitalize on this and lure customers away from Amazon.

Amazon wasn’t helped as the day went on and the list of affected customers grew longer and included ever more prominent names: The New York Times lost service on its Projects subdomain at projects.nytimes.com, a section where the Times publishes special projects like this one on the Census (link goes to Google Cache for now).

Another victim was ProPublica. Three days after winning its second Pulitzer Prize in as many years, the section of ProPublica’s site where it hosts its data-heavy news applications, such as this one which displays federal stimulus funding by county, was out of commission. (Again, the link goes to a Google Cache.)

Everyblock, a hyper-local news site that became part of MSNBC in 2009 is still down as of this writing. Foreign Policy, the Washington Post-owned journal, saw its Web site fail too, but as noted by Jim Romenesko today, it quickly switched to publishing its content on Facebook, and made light of the situation on Twitter.

One victim which surprised me was Heroku, the Cloud-based Web development concern that Salesforce.com acquired last year. Heroku kept its users apprised of the situation throughout the day without mentioning Amazon by name. Interestingly, Salesforce’s infrastructure showed no sign of trouble all day.

To its credit, Amazon did its best to communicate about the situation all day, but the incident couldn’t help but give its Web services division–which is relatively small as a percentage of revenue but obviously punches above its weight in terms of influence–a black eye. Late in the day it had isolated the trouble to a single “availability zone,” or group of machines running together in its Northern Virginia data center, and was trying to shift services away from the affected zone.

As of 4:20 PM PT its latest messages indicate it seems to be getting closer to resolving the issue, though many services were still reporting on Twitter that the outage was keeping them offline.

At 1:48 PM PT, the status dashboard for EC2, its compute cloud service, said:

A single Availability Zone in the US-EAST-1 Region continues to experience problems launching EBS backed instances or creating volumes. All other Availability Zones are operating normally. Customers with snapshots of their affected volumes can re-launch their volumes and instances in another zone. We recommend customers do not target a specific Availability Zone when launching instances. We have updated our service to avoid placing any instances in the impaired zone for untargeted requests.

Another message concerning its Elastic Beanstalk service came at 2:16 PM PT:

We have observed several successful launches of new and updated environments over the last hour. A single Availability Zone in US-EAST-1 is still experiencing problems. We recommend customers do not target a specific Availability Zone when launching instances. We have updated our service to avoid placing any instances in the impaired zone for untargeted requests.

The outage also affected Amazon’s CloudFormation and CloudWatch.

2:40 PM PT We are continuing to see delays and failures creating and deleting stacks containing EC2, EBS and RDS resources in a single Availability Zone in the US-EAST-1 region. We are working towards a resolution. Please see the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (N. Virginia) and Amazon Relational Database Service (N. Virginia) status for more details.

This message went out to Amazon MapReduce customers at 3:12 PM:

Customers can now start job flows with CC1 instances in the US-EAST-1 region by not targeting a specific Availability Zone.

Not that a big and nasty outage isn’t serious business. It certainly is, and I feel for the people at Amazon and all their customers. But having sat through more on-the-job system outages in my career than I care to count, I know that at the end of the day you have to laugh a bit at the head-slapping frustration of it all, and play a little loud music. In that spirit of sympathy and understanding I offer Freddie King’s “Going Down.” Sorry, Amazon. Here’s hoping tomorrow’s a better day.

(Image and headline obviously inspired by the Judith Viorst book I so loved as a kid.)

Unlike News.me, which will charge $0.99 a week, Trove is free. And while News.me is designed to be consumed on the iPad, Trove is starting out as a Web-based service that also works on Google’s Android and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry. WaPo says iPhone and iPad editions are coming.

The biggest difference: News.me is based entirely on shared Twitter links, but Trove is part personalized search engine–it says it sorts through more than 10,000 sources on the Web–and part traditional publisher, with a four-person team highlighting interesting stories.

Trove also uses Facebook data to set up initial “channels” for users based on their behavior on the social network.

I haven’t played with Trove on the go yet, and my gut is that it’s going to work best in mobile settings, where limited screen real estate makes news curation services more useful. On the Web, though, it seems like a modest evolution from the personalized home pages many of you have already used–interesting, but not crucial.

But take it for a spin yourself, and let me know what you think in comments below. Meanwhile, if you like those cartoons from the Taiwanese Next Media Animation shop, here’s a treat for you.

Yesterday, AOL’s Huffington Post Media Group got into hot water after the top editor at its Moviefone unit sent a memo to freelancers it was in the midst of firing, offering them an opportunity to “contribute as part of our non-paid blogger system.”

Today, that exec–Moviefone Editor-in-Chief Patricia Chui–was fired by the company, which is in the midst of drastically rejiggering its stable of writers.

Many of those were freelance bloggers under contract to AOL, who are now getting the boot in favor of reallocating staff back to largely paid journalists.

Thus came the controversial email from Chui, which read, in part:

“We will, indeed, be moving away from a freelancer model and toward one relying on full-time staffers. Sometime soon-–this week, I believe–-many of you will be receiving an email informing you that your services as a freelancer will no longer be required. You will be invited to contribute as part of our non-paid blogger system; and though I know that for many of you this will not be an option financially, I strongly encourage you to consider it if you/d like to keep writing for us, because we value all of your voices and input.”

Oh dear. Really, oh dear, especially since the Huffington Post has had its own share of controversies over not paying some bloggers (although it never quite ever offered up a doozie that this letter was).

Sources said Chui was terminated by John Montorio, the HuffPo Media Group’s culture, entertainment and lifestyle editor. Arianna Huffiington is head of all content at AOL, which recently paid $315 million to buy the Huffington Post.

Since she took over, Huffington has tried to stress a return to journalism over more algorithmic content creation. The unloading of its freelance writers was part of that effort.

Thus, Chui’s missteps did not help matters.

But it was not the first time recently that she had made an ill-advised editorial judgment.

Sources said the firing is also due to an incident several weeks ago, in which Chui appeared to defend a marketing employee who sent an email to TechCrunch writer Alexia Tsotsis, asking her to soften a review of “Source Code” due to studio relationship considerations.

AOL bought TechCrunch, a well-known tech news site, last fall. At the time, its CEO Tim Armstrong promised editorial independence and no meddling over advertising concerns.

Instead of taking this minion to task, on Moviefone’s own blog Chui said, in part:

“The reality of our situation is that, as a movies site, we work with movie studios every day, and it is in our best interests to stay on good terms with them. Staying on good terms with studios means that we will relay information if asked. It does not mean that we would ever force a writer or an editor to edit their work for the sake of a studio–or anyone else.”

Even with the last line, it is not exactly a profile in courage, because it was clear violation of the traditional separation of church and state in force at most media organizations.

Typically, editors are supposed to come down on any such communication. That has certainly been my experience in journalism over the years at the Washington Post and Dow Jones–including during its News Corp. ownership. In fact, I have often been shielded from such requests to pass such complaints onto me and only found out much later of advertiser discomfort about my reporting.

At the time, TechCrunch quite clearly called for Chui’s firing and that happened today.

Here is Chui’s full memo to freelancers, as well as the one about TechCrunch, neither of which were apparently cleared with higher-ups:

From: Chui, Patricia
Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2011 11:26 AM
To: MoviefoneWriters
Subject: Moviefone/Cinematical–Status of Writers

Dear Moviefone/Cinematical Writers,

I know there’s been a lot of uncertainty regarding the future of freelancers and your status as a writer for the site. I personally apologize for the lack of communication, but I’ll tell you what I can.

We will, indeed, be moving away from a freelancer model and toward one relying on full-time staffers. Sometime soon–this week, I believe–many of you will be receiving an email informing you that your services as a freelancer will no longer be required. You will be invited to contribute as part of our non-paid blogger system; and though I know that for many of you this will not be an option financially, I strongly encourage you to consider it if you’d like to keep writing for us, because we value all of your voices and input.

Some of you have indicated interest in applying for full-time writer and editor positions, and the status of those positions are also part of discussions that are ongoing right now. I cannot at this point, however, tell you how many positions there are, or what the exact nature of those positions will be.

Despite the move toward a full-time staff vs. freelancer model, I’m told that there will be room for “exceptions”–for example, in the cases of writers who specialize in certain subjects. Again, what these exceptions are for Moviefone, and what the budget for them would be, is still being discussed.

As for Cinematical, the resignation of Erik Davis is certainly a loss. But I am continuing to have conversations with the editorial leadership here, and I am hopeful that we will still be able to maintain the Cinematical brand and voice going forward. Again, I will share with you any pertinent information as I have it.

In the meantime, those of you who already have assignments, please do continue to work on them unless you hear otherwise. If you’re uncertain of the status of your assignment, check with me. It may take me a while to get back to you, so please be patient–but I will respond.

I am sorry that I don’t have more specific details to give you, but I promise that I’ll keep you as well-informed as I possibly can. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have questions or concerns.

Best,

patricia

By now you may have read the recent post in TechCrunch regarding that site’s SXSW coverage of the film “Source Code.” A representative from Moviefone, who set up the interview with Summit Entertainment, received some feedback from the studio and passed it along to TechCrunch (our sister site here at AOL). That email has now caused something of a Internet kerfuffle.

Here is the email–reprinted in the post–that was sent to the TechCrunch writer.

Hey Alexia,

Hope you’re having a good time at SxSW and that it’s not been too crazy busy for you!

First wanted to thank you for covering Source Code/attending the party, etc. But also wanted to raise a concern that Summit had about the piece that ran. They felt it was a little snarky and wondered if any of the snark can be toned down? I wasn’t able to view the video interviews but I think their issue is just with some of the text. Let me know if you’re able to take another look at it and make any edits. I know of course that TechCrunch has its own voice and editorial standards, so if you have good reasons not to change anything that’s fine, I just need to get back to Summit with some sort of information. Let me know.

Thanks!

TechCrunch’s issue with Moviefone is that by sending this email, we, in their words, “asked us to change our post. It’s not just sad, it’s wrong.”

I wanted to take this opportunity to clarify a few things.

1) The person who wrote that email was not acting in an editorial capacity. That person’s job is to act as an intermediary between the studios and editorial–not to dictate content, nor to weigh in on the content of Moviefone or any other AOL site. In fact, the presence of a person with that role is just one means we have of ensuring editorial integrity on Moviefone.

2) This is important: We never told TechCrunch to change the post in any way. A publicist at Summit reached out asking if we could convey the studio’s feedback to TechCrunch. We did so. If the editors had responded that they declined to edit the post–which, naturally, is entirely their call–we simply would have conveyed that information back to Summit.

The reality of our situation is that, as a movies site, we work with movie studios every day, and it is in our best interests to stay on good terms with them. Staying on good terms with studios means that we will relay information if asked. It does not mean that we would ever force a writer or an editor to edit their work for the sake of a studio–or anyone else.

We take editorial integrity seriously at Moviefone, and it’s painful to be depicted as a pawn of the studios when that is emphatically not the case. You may think it unseemly for a studio to request changes in an article; that’s certainly your right. But the accusation of pandering on our part or crossing an editorial line is, to my mind, completely unfair, and I would hope that a reasonable reader would be able to recognize the situation for what it is–overblown and unwarranted.

Patricia Chui
Editor-in-Chief, Moviefone

A panoply of big media giants sent a cease-and-desist letter today to Zite, the Apple iPad news reader app.

The Washington Post, AP, Gannett, Getty Images, Time, Dow Jones and many other media organizations were part of the action, which you can read all about below.

Zite bills itself as a “personalized iPad magazine that gets smarter as you use it.”

Not smart enough, it seems, to avoid copyright complaints from the content creators the app sucks in.

“The Zite application is plainly unlawful,” said the letter to Zite CEO Ali Davar, noting all kinds of copyright violations.

In a phone interview with BoomTown this afternoon, Davar said Zite would comply with the letter by shifting the content from its “reading” mode to a Web one, which points to publisher sites.

“It’s a bummer that they did this, but we expected it,” he said.

In a comment he posted below, Davar also wrote:

“Zite’s goal is to work with publishers, not to be antagonistic. The few publishers that have contacted us regarding the reading mode view we have complied with their requests and simply switched over to web view. We’re talking to publishers right now to find a win-win for them monetarily and to at the same time preserve the great user experience.”

For now, it’s lose-lose, and the letter is a dramatic shot across the bow of all the many news readers now hitting the market in the wake of the popularity of the Apple iPad tablet.

The social media-focused Flipboard and the news-oriented Pulse are two others, both of which have claimed they are working with publishers.

But Pulse wrangled with the New York Times over misuse of its RSS feeds and copyright issues, which has since been settled.

Zite showed up earlier this month, a product of a machine-learning technology start-up called Worio, which is based in Vancouver, Canada.

The aggregator of personalized content, which has $4 million in angel funding, gets its cues from a user’s interests.

Zite’s technology originated at research at the University of British Columbia several years ago.

In an interview with NetworkEffect’s Liz Gannes a few weeks ago, Davar seemed sanguine about publishers.

Wrote Gannes:

The free Zite app imports a user’s Twitter tweets, follows and Google Reader subscriptions, offers lists of pre-made categories, and then solicits feedback and refines over time a list of topics and sources the user is interested in. It features articles based on their popularity, number of shares from a user’s network and topic relevance. (Davar said he thinks a person’s Facebook network data is too heterogeneous to reliably recommend articles, so it’s not included as an option.)

Flipboard itself is likely to add more personalization features; the company bought real-time social discovery technology from Ellerdale and has yet to implement much of it.

Vancouver-based Zite is well-funded, with $4 million from angels and Canadian grants, but it doesn’t have business relationships with publishers. The app lays out pictures and articles, stripping out everything else, including ads. Davar said he doubted this would be a problem. “It would be shortsighted for publishers to think of Zite as us versus them,” he said.

Short-sighted maybe, but legally lethal definitely, as you can see by this cease-and-desist letter, as well as a video from Zite on how its app works:

Letter to Zite _03 30 11_ –

Zite: Personalized Magazine for iPad from zite.com on Vimeo.

(Full disclosure: New Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

Sorting out the good from the lousy–or at least the OK from the spam–is an important task Twitter hasn’t figured out how to do on its own yet. So it’s getting some help from outsiders: The service is working with “realtime media” startup Sulia to provide curated Twitterstreams to apps and publishers including Flipboard, the Washington Post and Gannett.

Sulia’s pitch is that while Twitter is a free-for-all where anyone can say anything about anything, most people still want to pay attention to a handful of experts. The service says it can find those experts on thousands of topics, using a combination of algorithms and humans, and it assembles them into curated lists.

If you’re already an expert on a particular topic, you may not want to use  Sulia, because you’ve got your own list of sources. But if you’re a general reader who wants a quick snapshot about something you don’t know much about, it can be useful.

You can get a sense of what Sulia is doing by comparing the Sulia “Libya” stream with the results you get if you type “Libya” into Twitter’s basic search tool.

Sulia’s Twitter deal lets it provide custom streams to app-makers and publishers in exchange for a license fee or a share of ad revenue. Sulia hands some of that money back to Twitter. (Disclosure: Sulia is working with WSJ.com, which like this Web site is owned by News Corp.)

“Curation is one of the top five business opportunities for developers on the Twitter Platform, and Sulia is a great example of the innovation we’re seeing in this emerging space,” Twitter platform head Ryan Sarver says via e-mail. “We made this special agreement with Sulia because publishers are eager for tools like this, that bring the best of Twitter content to their sites and apps.”

Any money Sulia generates for Twitter will be helpful for a service that’s still trying to figure out which business model will work.

More important, if Sulia works as advertised, it will make Twitter that much more useful to mainstream users.

And doing that will also make Twitter much more useful for advertisers. One of the big weaknesses with the ad products Twitter has rolled out so far is that they often require users to look at a string of data that’s confusing or worse.

Take a look, for instance, at the Tweetstream associated with “HTC EVO“, Wednesday’s “promoted trend.” There’s a link to an HTC-sponored Tweet at the top, which arguably has some utility for HTC and for users. But this is what the next four items looked like when I checked in last night:

Twitter isn’t talking about using Sulia within the service itself. But if it works for outsiders, it seems like it’s something Twitter would want to use on Twitter.com and on Twitter-owned apps.

And if that’s the case, then Twitter will either end up buying Sulia, or building its own version of the service. It’s worth noting Twitter has already built an internal “reputation score” system that it hasn’t talked about much. But it’s not a leap to imagine it using that tool to help sort streams on its own.

[Image credit: Library of Congress via Flickr]

“I killed newspapers.”

– Eric Schmidt’s suggested epitaph, via Washington Post legend Bob Woodward. It’s not accurate, of course–real culprits range from an overabundance of commodity news, to the evaporation of classified ads and monopoly ad pricing to an over-reliance on debt markets–but it is pithy.

Here is a video of a segment I did on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” cable television program yesterday morning–in the wee hours in San Francisco, hence the bags under my eyes–about last week’s $315 million acquisition of the Huffington Post by AOL.

(Pictured here is AOL CEO Tim Armstrong and HuffPo flagship Arianna Huffington during my video interview with them last week, which is also embedded below.)

“Someone has to be the Condé Nast of the Internet,” I noted in answer to a question from host Howard Kurtz, since it has not been that famous magazine company which has become the big publishing dog online.

(By the way, Kurtz recently decamped to the Daily Beast from his famous columnist gig at the Washington Post, so he obvi gets the meme going on here.)

Here’s the video, which includes Reuters’ financial blogger Felix Salmon and Mark Potts, a former Washington Post reporter and now Internet strategy consultant:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110214/video-boomtown-talks-aol-huffpo-as-webs-conde-nast-on-cnn/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101224/will-ferrell-john-c-reilly-bing-crosby-and-david-bowie-sing-you-a-holiday-song/ http://allthingsd.com/20101224/will-ferrell-john-c-reilly-bing-crosby-and-david-bowie-sing-you-a-holiday-song/#comments Fri, 24 Dec 2010 18:10:34 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=27479 I’m heading out. Enjoy!

Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy with Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, from Will Ferrell.

Still here? It’s Christmas Eve! But since you’ve got time, check out this interesting Washington Post story on the history of the Bowie-Bing original.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101224/will-ferrell-john-c-reilly-bing-crosby-and-david-bowie-sing-you-a-holiday-song/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101221/the-men-and-no-women-of-web-2-0-boards-boomtowns-talking-to-you-twitter-facebook-zynga-groupon-and-foursquare/ http://allthingsd.com/20101221/the-men-and-no-women-of-web-2-0-boards-boomtowns-talking-to-you-twitter-facebook-zynga-groupon-and-foursquare/#comments Tue, 21 Dec 2010 22:44:05 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=38810

In one memorable episode of the famous old short films “The Little Rascals,” after not getting invited to a party, the Our Gang little dudes decided to form their own group, comically called “The He-Man Woman-Haters Club.”

In other words: No girls allowed!

While it was wink-wink cute when Spanky, Alfalfa and Buckwheat huffed and puffed about keeping out Darla–which they never ever could do–back in the last century, it’s not quite as adorkable when it comes to the boards of all the major Web 2.0 hotshots these days.

That would be Twitter, Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and Foursquare, none of which have any women as directors.

As in zero.

What’s most remarkable is that most of these start-ups are run by what I consider enlightened and open-minded entrepreneurs, mostly young enough to be part of a generation more inclined to value equality and diversity in the workplace.

In addition, each of these companies has a massive base of women consumers, in some cases well over 50 percent of its audience.

Thus, it would seem logical that in casting about for those to help guide these companies, one or two women leaders might slip in.

To be fair, it’s not for lack of trying, but of completion, as was the case with Twitter’s recent addition of three new board members.

They were longtime Silicon Valley exec Peter Currie, Flipboard CEO and co-founder Mike McCue and former DoubleClick leader David Rosenblatt.

All are deeply qualified for the Twitter board, which is obviously prepping for its next stage of growth and maturity.

But in its search, the San Francisco microblogging site did not manage to cast the net quite wide enough.

While sources said at least one prominent online woman exec was considered, there were some legitimate issues with her appointment, and it was not completed.

Still, one might imagine Twitter could have tried harder to find other workable choices.

Currently, the Twitter board is made up of the new trio, as well as Benchmark Capital’s Peter Fenton, Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson, Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital, CEO Dick Costolo and co-founders Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey.

Things are not any better over at Facebook, which has several prominent women execs running the show, most especially its high-profile COO Sheryl Sandberg.

But, inexplicably, though she does attend board meetings, she is not yet a director of Facebook, nor is any other woman.

In fact, here is Sandberg on topic at a recent TED event for women, in an eloquent speech titled “Why We Have So Few Women Leaders”:

Instead, the Facebook board is all men, all the time, composed of CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, prominent techie and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, investor Peter Thiel, Accel Partners’ Jim Breyer and Washington Post head Don Graham.

It is no better at three of the most prominent recent Web 2.0 start-ups, which one source attributes to the lack of woman VCs, who are often the first board members after major investment rounds.

At Zynga, the hot social gaming company in San Francisco, it continues, with an all-male board, despite a very heavily female audience for its casual social games.

That would be co-founder and CEO Mark Pincus, COO Owen Van Natta, investor Bing Gordon of Kleiner Perkins, investor Reid Hoffman and Brad Feld of the Foundry Group.

The same is true at woman-targeted–spas, spas and more spas–social buying site Groupon, which has an unusually large board for a start-up and made up of–as per usual–all men.

The list: Co-founder and CEO Andrew Mason, Accel Partners’ Kevin Efrusy, former AT&T President and COO John Walter, New Enterprise Associates’ Harry Weller and Peter Barris, former AOL exec Ted Leonsis, 37Signals co-founder Jason Fried and early investors Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell.

And, much smaller, is Foursquare’s board, which is the trio of co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley, co-founder Naveen Selvadurai and Union Square Ventures’ Albert Wenger.

New investors–Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures’ Bryce Roberts–have observer status and both are, needless to say, dudes.

There is no question it is tough to make sure there is a good balance of qualified women leaders to men in tech–it is an issue we wrestle with every single year for the program of speakers at our own All Things Digital conference, although we are most excellent on this issue on our Web site and conference staff.

But it can be done, especially at public tech companies. Google has two women on its board of nine directors; Yahoo has three of 10; even Oracle has two of a dozen.

But a grand total of zero at the leading companies of Web 2.0 is not just a coincidence.

It’s a shame.

Tomorrow, BoomTown will post a list of great women who would be superb directors for any of these companies, but until then, let’s not follow in Spanky’s steps:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101221/the-men-and-no-women-of-web-2-0-boards-boomtowns-talking-to-you-twitter-facebook-zynga-groupon-and-foursquare/feed/ 60 http://allthingsd.com/20101112/qotd-the-old-media-new-media-old-media-round-trip/ http://allthingsd.com/20101112/qotd-the-old-media-new-media-old-media-round-trip/#comments Fri, 12 Nov 2010 13:23:29 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=25797

Well, I managed to leave print journalism for all of four weeks.

Daily Beast media columnist Howard Kurtz, whose work used to appear in the Washington Post, and will now appear in Newsweek, now that the magazine is merging with his new employer.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101112/qotd-the-old-media-new-media-old-media-round-trip/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20101111/newsweek-daily-beast-to-merge/ http://allthingsd.com/20101111/newsweek-daily-beast-to-merge/#comments Fri, 12 Nov 2010 01:56:18 +0000 Russell Adams http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=32420 Newsweek magazine and news Web site The Daily Beast have agreed to a deal that will make Daily Beast co-founder Tina Brown the editor-in-chief of the combined operation, according to people familiar with the situation, three weeks after they abandoned talks of a merger over a disagreement about control.

Under the proposed agreement, expected to be disclosed on Friday, the two news organizations will be combined in a 50-50 joint venture called the Newsweek Daily Beast Company, the people said.

The two parties began exploring a merger late in the summer after Sidney Harman, the 92-year-old stereo-equipment tycoon, acquired Newsweek from the Washington Post Co. Initially, Mr. Harman sought to hire Ms. Brown as editor. The courtship sparked talks about combining the two news organizations under the editorial direction of Ms. Brown, who would report to an independent board.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101111/newsweek-daily-beast-to-merge/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101101/on-twitter-the-elections-are-almost-as-big-as-iphone-4/ http://allthingsd.com/20101101/on-twitter-the-elections-are-almost-as-big-as-iphone-4/#comments Mon, 01 Nov 2010 23:06:47 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=25351 Not surprisingly, there’s lots of chatter about tomorrow’s U.S. elections on Twitter. But it’s not the only thing Twitterers are Twittering about*.

Here’s the list of Twitter’s top “Trending Topics” for the U.S., via a screenshot I took after 6 pm New York time. Unless I’m missing something (Lily Allen didn’t join the Tea Party, right?) there’s nary a political term there:

The folks over at Trendrr, who make a living sifting through social media for interesting data, definitely do show a big surge in political Tweets**. These three charts show the spike in usage for Republican candidates’ names, Democratic candidates and election-related terms in general (click to enlarge):

Roll all that up together, and you’re at perhaps 23,000 mentions per hour. Which is a lot–but it’s no iPhone 4: On the day that Apple rolled out its latest phone last spring, it was generating a peak of 55,000 mentions per hour, says Trendrr.

Still, this data comes from the mid-afternoon on the day before elections, and we can assume it will increase throughout the next 24 hours. The Washington Post certainly thinks it’s worth paying attention to Twitter during the election: The paper is buying the word “election” as a Promoted Trend tomorrow. We’ll check back in with Trendrr on Tuesday for an update….

*Hope I got that right. **That’s right, right?

[Image credit: Library of Congress via Flickr]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101101/on-twitter-the-elections-are-almost-as-big-as-iphone-4/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101012/announcing-google-windsense/ http://allthingsd.com/20101012/announcing-google-windsense/#comments Tue, 12 Oct 2010 15:45:10 +0000 Beth Callaghan http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=30961 Google has announced plans to invest in the Atlantic Wind Connection, a project that will connect 6,000 megawatts of offshore wind turbines to the Mid-Atlantic power grid. In the blog post announcing the initiative, Rick Needham, Google’s green-business operations director, described it as a “superhighway for clean energy.” According to the Washington Post, the tech giant is part of a consortium of tech and investment firms involved in the project, the first phase of which is valued at $1.8 billion.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101012/announcing-google-windsense/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101006/daily-beasts-tina-brown-brags-about-interesting-discussions-with-newsweek/ http://allthingsd.com/20101006/daily-beasts-tina-brown-brags-about-interesting-discussions-with-newsweek/#comments Wed, 06 Oct 2010 14:13:26 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=24193 How are things at the Daily Beast, the news + commentary site Tina Brown is running for Barry Diller?

Awesome! So says Tina Brown, in an “interview” her site is running with her today, to mark the Beast’s two-year anniversary: five million uniques, “ahead of projections” on advertising, etc. “A romping, vibrant, 2-year-old animal bursting with rude health.” (No mention of Howard Kurtz, though.)

In fact, it’s doing so great, Brown says, that Diller may end up pawning the thing off to Newsweek and new owner Sidney Harman.

Well, she doesn’t say that exactly. But she does acknowledge, out loud, for the first time, that the two sides are chatting:

We hear something is going on with Newsweek.

How clever of you to notice! Yes, there have been some interesting discussions going on, as we have with potential partners large and small all the time.

Cheeky!

Here’s a more fleshed-out version of that discussion, via the NYT:

Mr. Harman and Ms. Brown met as recently as last week and are keen on working together. But whether The Daily Beast, which is financed by the billionaire investor Barry Diller, and Mr. Harman can reach a deal that is agreeable to all parties is still unknown, this person said, speaking anonymously to reveal privileged information.

Ms. Brown has gone as far as submitting a memorandum to Mr. Harman outlining how she would run Newsweek, but Mr. Harman was also interviewing other people for the job, this person added.

A few things:

• It’s astonishing, and also true, that Harman bought Newsweek from the Washington Post (WPO) without knowing who he would hire to run the operation.
• This also means that no one is really running things there now.
• Brown would be a pretty good choice, all things considered.
• And picking up the Beast wouldn’t be a terrible idea for Harman, assuming Diller can do it at the right price: Newsweek’s Web operations are okay, but not nearly as good as they look on paper. That’s because the site is largely dependent on MSNBC.com for its traffic, and that’s not a healthy affair. Say what you will about Brown’s start-up, but it hasn’t had the crutch of a big distribution partner.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101006/daily-beasts-tina-brown-brags-about-interesting-discussions-with-newsweek/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20100803/video-new-newsweek-owner-sidney-harman-im-not-here-to-make-money/ http://allthingsd.com/20100803/video-new-newsweek-owner-sidney-harman-im-not-here-to-make-money/#comments Tue, 03 Aug 2010 22:38:41 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=22161 Sidney Harman took Newsweek off the Washington Post’s hands yesterday, and this is how he greeted the troops in a late-afternoon meeting.

The video is pretty self-explanatory, but if you don’t want to put in the 13 minutes, here are some takeaways:

• He looks and sounds pretty good! I know many people who aren’t close to 91 years old, and they’d be very happy to have Harman’s vigor.
• “I’m not here to make money,” Harman says, but he would like the magazine to break even someday.
• How might that happen? He’s vague, but does say, “I believe that there is a new equilibrium developing…among mobile, print, and digital. This is very close, in my conviction, to a significant inflection point in the history of journalism.”
• Harman is a big fan of 20th century American writer Maxwell Anderson, who is new to me but whom Wikipedia describes as an accomplished playwright. Harman spends the last couple of minutes reciting an excerpt from the Anderson essay “Our Best Hope.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100803/video-new-newsweek-owner-sidney-harman-im-not-here-to-make-money/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100802/newsweeks-deal-is-done-employees-gather-to-hear-their-fate/ http://allthingsd.com/20100802/newsweeks-deal-is-done-employees-gather-to-hear-their-fate/#comments Mon, 02 Aug 2010 20:17:17 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=22098 And now it’s really official: The Washington Post has handed over Newsweek to speaker magnate Sidney Harman, finishing a fire sale that began in early May. The paper hasn’t disclosed a sale price, but the New York Times pegs it $1, plus an agreement to take on all or most of Newsweek’s “considerable financial liabilities”–i.e. many millions of dollars.

Make that some of the liabilities. Here’s the Post’s official description of the price: “The Washington Post Company retains the pension assets and liabilities and certain employee obligations arising prior to the sale. The resulting gain or loss at closing is not expected to be material…”

The official release is at the bottom of this post.

As Ad Age’s Michael Learmonth reminds us, the $1 + debt price point is the new standard for dying print pubs: That’s what the current owner of TV Guide paid for that pub, while Bloomberg paid a comparatively rich $5 million plus liabilities for BusinessWeek. (Sorry about lowballing the Bizweek price in a previous edit.) Serious question: What does Allen & Co. get for brokering the Newsweek deal?

The magazine’s employees have an all-hands meeting at 4:30 Eastern to hear about their fate. But here’s the quick and dirty version:

The good news: Their new owner apparently impressed Washington Post (WPO) Chairman Donald Graham with his pledge not to carve up the magazine, as most buyers would have done. So many of them are likely not to lose their jobs in the near-term–or even undergo the kind of wrenching overhaul that Bloomberg has put BusinessWeek through.

The bad news: It’s hard to see how Harman or his heirs (he’s 91 years old) will be able to avoid doing that, eventually. The reason that Graham gave away Newsweek is that he couldn’t figure out how to make it stop bleeding red ink. And Graham ran a big media company that could, theoretically, offer lots of assistance to a struggling magazine. Harman is just going to own Newsweek, which has lost lots of money for many years.

Good luck to everyone there.

WASHINGTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The Washington Post Company (NYSE: WPO – News) announced today that it has signed a contract to sell Newsweek to Dr. Sidney Harman.

“In seeking a buyer for Newsweek, we wanted someone who feels as strongly as we do about the importance of quality journalism. We found that person in Sidney Harman,” said Donald E. Graham, chairman and chief executive officer of The Washington Post Company. “He has pledged not only to continue to produce a lively, compelling and first-rate news magazine, but also an equally dynamic Newsweek.com – and he intends to keep a majority of Newsweek’s very talented staff.”

Dr. Harman said, “Newsweek is a national treasure. I am enormously pleased to be succeeding The Washington Post Company and the Graham family and look forward to this great journalistic, business and technological challenge.”

The terms of the asset purchase agreement were not announced; however, The Washington Post Company retains the pension assets and liabilities and certain employee obligations arising prior to the sale. The resulting gain or loss at closing is not expected to be material to the financial position of The Washington Post Company.

Allen & Company advised The Washington Post Company on the transaction. Dr. Harman was advised by Guggenheim Securities, LLC. Covington & Burling LLP served as lead counsel for The Washington Post Company, and Williams & Connolly LLP represented Dr. Harman.

Dr. Harman’s biography is attached.

Dr. Sidney Harman

Sidney Harman, one of the pioneers who began the audio industry, is Founder and Chairman Emeritus of Harman International. He served as the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Commerce from 1977-78; founded the Program on Technology, Public Policy and Human Development at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government; and was President of Friends World College, a worldwide experimental Quaker college, from 1970-73. He is the author of Mind Your Own Business (2003) and, with Daniel Yankelovich, co-author of Starting With The People (1988).

Dr. Harman holds a Presidential Chair at the University of Southern California and is the first Isaiah W. Hellman Professor of Polymathy. The Chair is named for one of the three founders of the university. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; a member of the Executive, Program Strategy and Trustee Affairs Committees of The Aspen Institute; Trustee Emeritus of the Board of Trustees of the Carter Center of Emory University; and a member of the Board of Trustees of Freedom House. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; President of the Harman Family Foundation; a member of the Board of the Leadership Institute of USC; and former Chair, Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of Public Agenda. He is the founder of The Harman Center for the Arts and of Sidney Harman Hall in Washington, DC, and a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of The Shakespeare Theatre Company. For many years he served as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Board of Business Executives for National Security and on the Corporate Fund Board of The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100802/newsweeks-deal-is-done-employees-gather-to-hear-their-fate/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20100730/the-big-money-isnt-enough-slate-shuts-down-business-site-after-two-years/ http://allthingsd.com/20100730/the-big-money-isnt-enough-slate-shuts-down-business-site-after-two-years/#comments Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:20:43 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=22020 Fortune magazine launched during the Great Depression, and it’s still with us today.* But The Big Money, a business site launched by Slate during the dark days of September 2008, is going away.

The Slate Group, the Washington Post Co.’s (WPO) online unit, is shutting down the site, the company announced today. The Big Money was a smart but modest site with a smart but modest staff of five people, so this isn’t earth-shaking news.

And two of the site’s employees–publisher Brendan Monaghan and editor Jim Ledbetter–will stay with Slate in new roles. So it’s hard to argue that this is reflective of larger issues at Slate or its parent company.

The memo announcing the move, signed by Slate Group Chairman Jacob Weisberg and General Manager John Alderman, is straightforward: The Big Money is getting shuttered because it didn’t make enough money:

The problem, in a nutshell, is that the site is not pointed toward profitability on a fast enough timetable….Part of being a quasi start-up means being unsentimental about sites we like that aren’t working as businesses and quickly evolving our model in response to a fast-moving marketplace. We are experimenters. This was a great experiment, but not every experiment results in a breakthrough.

Fair enough. The Big Money did some good work, and it did have an audience–comScore (SCOR) says it was getting between 300,000 and 400,000 unique visitors a month, which isn’t terrible. But it’s hard to sell advertisers on any individual site with less than a million uniques these days, so you can see why Slate would pull the plug after less than two years.

I do have one question, though. See the chart above (click to enlarge), and you’ll note that Slate’s main site is humming along quite well, with a mix of New Republic-style highbrow commentary and some clicky-clicky click here! now! slideshows. Why didn’t that success boost The Big Money?

My outsider’s perception is that the main site gave its business spin off very little editorial real estate. And that it seldom pointed a traffic firehose toward its little brother. And folks who know about this stuff tell me that people inside the company had the same perception.

I wouldn’t expect Slate to prop up The Big Money with money and links indefinitely. Ultimately, if the thing didn’t work on its own, it didn’t work on its own. But I’m a pretty regular Slate reader, and I frequently found that I learned about something The Big Money was running from someplace other than Slate.

I ran that theory by Weisberg, who says I’m wrong. TBM got as much promotion and help from Slate as its other sub-brands, Foreign Policy and The Root, he says. And he’s says he’s surprised to hear that anyone feels otherwise: “All of the small sites always want all the placement they can get on Slate, and there’s always competition for the finite resource of home page promotion. But I think that in general people think it’s been fair.”

And Weisberg spends a lot more time looking at these sites than I do, so I’ll defer to him here. One other quick question–since Fortune famously thrived after starting in a miserable economy, why couldn’t TBM do the same?

Because we’re not living in 1933, Weisberg says. “Our model is that you can enter into these things more easily. It’s not as big an upfront investment. But it also means you don’t have as long a time frame to prove these things out,” he says. Ultimately, TBM’s business wasn’t growing fast enough because its traffic wasn’t growing fast enough. Time to try something else.

*Hey! Another new iPad app from Time Warner’s (TWX) Time Inc. . No subscriptions, via Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes, though.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100730/the-big-money-isnt-enough-slate-shuts-down-business-site-after-two-years/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20100701/amazons-big-expensive-kindle-dx-you-didnt-buy-now-cheaper-blacker/ http://allthingsd.com/20100701/amazons-big-expensive-kindle-dx-you-didnt-buy-now-cheaper-blacker/#comments Thu, 01 Jul 2010 12:18:19 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=21229 A year ago, the Kindle DX seemed like it might be a big deal.

Amazon’s first attempt to expand its e-reader product line was supposed to appeal to a whole new set of markets, like schools and businesses, who might appreciate a bigger screen. Oh! And it was supposed to be a boon to newspapers and magazines, as well–publishers like the Washington Post (WPO) and the New York Times (NYT) were going to subsidize the device as an incentive for digital subscribers.

And then we never heard about it again.

Amazon still sells them, but the DX doesn’t seem to have caught on in academic markets, and the newspaper pilot program hasn’t gone anywhere either. And it has never cracked my thoroughly unscientific “have I ever seen one on the subway, airplane or anywhere else” test.

Still, Amazon (AMZN) wants to remind you that it’s available. It has cut the device’s price from $489 to $379 and says it now boasts a better screen. And a new color case–”graphite”–if that matters to you.

This is where we’re supposed to assess the updated DX’s chances to compete with the iPad, but I don’t think that’s relevant here: The DX was announced in May 2009 and came onto the market later that summer, some six months before Apple (AAPL) even announced its device. If there was a race for a large format e-reader, Amazon had a long head start, yet never got a lead. Hard to see this changing things.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100701/amazons-big-expensive-kindle-dx-you-didnt-buy-now-cheaper-blacker/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100701/amazons-big-expensive-kindle-dx-you-didnt-buy-now-cheaper-blacker-2/ http://allthingsd.com/20100701/amazons-big-expensive-kindle-dx-you-didnt-buy-now-cheaper-blacker-2/#comments Thu, 01 Jul 2010 12:18:19 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=21229 A year ago, the Kindle DX seemed like it might be a big deal.

Amazon’s first attempt to expand its e-reader product line was supposed to appeal to a whole new set of markets, like schools and businesses, who might appreciate a bigger screen. Oh! And it was supposed to be a boon to newspapers and magazines, as well–publishers like the Washington Post (WPO) and the New York Times (NYT) were going to subsidize the device as an incentive for digital subscribers.

And then we never heard about it again.

Amazon still sells them, but the DX doesn’t seem to have caught on in academic markets, and the newspaper pilot program hasn’t gone anywhere either. And it has never cracked my thoroughly unscientific “have I ever seen one on the subway, airplane or anywhere else” test.

Still, Amazon (AMZN) wants to remind you that it’s available. It has cut the device’s price from $489 to $379 and says it now boasts a better screen. And a new color case–”graphite”–if that matters to you.

This is where we’re supposed to assess the updated DX’s chances to compete with the iPad, but I don’t think that’s relevant here: The DX was announced in May 2009 and came onto the market later that summer, some six months before Apple (AAPL) even announced its device. If there was a race for a large format e-reader, Amazon had a long head start, yet never got a lead. Hard to see this changing things.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100701/amazons-big-expensive-kindle-dx-you-didnt-buy-now-cheaper-blacker-2/feed/ 12 http://allthingsd.com/20100622/apple-iphone4-review/ http://allthingsd.com/20100622/apple-iphone4-review/#comments Tue, 22 Jun 2010 23:02:18 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/?p=1354 Just three years ago, Apple wasn’t in the mobile-phone business at all. Since then, its game-changing iPhone has become the most influential smartphone in the world. Now, on June 24, the company will roll out the fourth generation of the device, called the iPhone 4.

While attractive, capable new smartphones emerge regularly from competitors, a new iPhone deserves special attention for two reasons. First, the device lies at the center of a huge ecosystem of 225,000 apps, plus popular related gadgets like Apple’s iPod Touch connected media player and iPad tablet, which collectively are approaching 100 million units sold. Second, the iPhone’s multitouch, gesture-based interface; elegant Web browser; sophisticated music and video playback; and other features have been emulated on many competing devices, so what Apple does affects the whole industry.

I’ve been testing the iPhone 4 for more than a week. In both hardware and software, it 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. I’ll get into that below. But, overall, Apple (AAPL) has delivered a big, well-designed update that, in my view, keeps it in the lead in the smartphone wars.

The iPhone 4 is a dramatic redesign. It manages to pack a radically sharper screen; a second, front-facing camera; a larger battery; a better rear camera with flash; and a faster processor into a body that is 24% thinner, a bit narrower, and retains the same length and weight as its predecessor’s. In fact, Apple claims that the iPhone 4 is the world’s thinnest smartphone and sports the world’s highest-resolution smartphone screen.

With the front-facing camera, and clever new software called FaceTime, Apple has brought simple, high-quality video calling to mobile phones, albeit, for now, only over Wi-Fi and only among iPhone 4 owners. In multiple tests, this feature worked very well for me and is a classic example of the value of having one company do integrated hardware and software.

In addition, the iPhone now includes an updated operating system—which also can be installed free on the prior model—that introduces catch-up software features such as limited multitasking (the ability to run apps simultaneously); folders for grouping related apps; and, for email, a unified inbox for multiple accounts and the ability to present messages as threaded conversations. This software is called iOS4.

The iPhone 4 will cost the same as the iPhone 3GS: $199 for a model with 16 gigabytes of memory and $299 for 32 gigabytes, with a two-year contract from AT&T (T). The 3GS model will drop to $99 with a two-year contract and 8 gigabytes of memory.

Design

Physically, the iPhone 4 is attractive and feels great in the hand. Even the back is now clad in glass, which Apple claims is a superstrong variety 30 times tougher than plastic. I dropped it several times from a few feet onto a hard surface with no problem, and it acquired no scratches at all in my testing, even though I didn’t use a case or coddle it.

Although it is the same weight as its predecessor, the iPhone 4 feels denser and tighter—more like a fine possession than a disposable gadget. It still looks like an iPhone, but it manages to make the 3GS appear bulbous by comparison.

While its 3.5-inch screen, once considered huge, is now smaller than those on some other smartphones, the high resolution packs in a lot of material and makes text appear almost like ink on fine paper. The software is simply richer looking and smoother to use than on competing phones I’ve tested, with fewer confusing menus and settings, and far more apps.

Screen, Voice, Battery and Camera

Always brilliant at marketing, Apple has dubbed its new screen the “Retina display.” At a resolution of 960×640, it has four times the pixels of its predecessor and displays a whopping 326 pixels per inch. I don’t know how it compares with the human retina, but I do know that, just as Apple claims, text on the screen shows no jagged lines, even when expanded to giant size.

Voice quality was quite good, even on long speaker-phone calls, and data performance over Wi-Fi was excellent. Video and audio streamed from the Web played smoothly.

Apple claims longer battery life for most functions—seven hours of talk time, for instance, versus five hours on the earlier model. I didn’t perform a precise battery test, but, even in heavy use, the iPhone 4′s battery never reached the red zone on a single day of my tests.

The new rear camera is another big plus. My test pictures came out sharp and clear, even in low light and close-up situations. It isn’t the best cellphone camera I’ve tested, but it is a big improvement.

The iPhone 4 records video in high definition and, in my tests, these videos came out very well in most conditions. Apple also is selling for $5 an iPhone version of its Macintosh video-editing program, iMovie, for editing the videos.

FaceTime

Video calling is one of this device’s best features. As noted, it currently requires an iPhone 4 and Wi-Fi connection on both ends, though Apple says it is making the technology free to others and hopes to have millions of compatible devices. There is no setup and nothing to learn. You just press a FaceTime button, and if the other person accepts the invitation to talk face to face, his or her image appears, with your own image showing in a small corner window.

You can tap an icon on the screen to swap the front camera for the rear one, so you can show your caller around the room, or include other people near you who are behind the phone.

You can even begin a video call as an audio cellular call, push a button, and switch it to a Wi-Fi FaceTime call. It worked great for me, except for a couple of brief freeze-ups.

Multitasking

After years of complaints, Apple finally has brought multitasking to the iPhone. But it has done so in a limited way that won’t please everyone. On the iPhone 4, multitasking doesn’t mean every app can work fully in the background. To prevent a disastrous drain on battery life, Apple has allowed only certain apps to fully multitask. These include streaming audio services like Pandora, which keep playing music from the Web while you do other things, and voice-prompted navigation apps, which keep working while you’re on a call. Others that fully work in the background include Internet calling apps, and those that perform long downloads.

But some logical candidates, such as Twitter and Facebook, merely pause in place when you switch away from them. You can get back to them quickly, and they update more rapidly than before, but they don’t constantly update in the background. They only wake up in the background if you have set them to notify you of an update, and then only for a limited time. Apple says constant fetching of hundreds of social-networking updates in the background would kill the battery too quickly.

In fact, for many scenarios, such as games, Apple’s version of multitasking is really just fast switching among open apps that save their place. And, even to achieve this, the apps must be updated. For some users, this limited version of multitasking will be a disappointment.

To use multitasking you just press the iPhone’s home button twice and a row of icons representing running apps appears. Click on the one you want and, if it has been updated for the new operating system, it will appear just as you left it.

Multitasking also will work on updated iPhone 3GS models, but not on models older than that.

Folders

Because iPhone users can easily accumulate hundreds of apps, it can become difficult to organize them. So the new iPhone OS now allows you to group them into folders. For instance, I grabbed the icon for The Wall Street Journal app, dragged it on top of the one for the Washington Post app, and a folder was instantly created called “News,” based on the apps’ built-in categories. You can change the name to anything you like, or alter or disassemble the folders.

The Big Downside

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 (AAPL) and AT&T (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. Compared with the previous model, the new iPhone dropped marginally fewer calls made in my car, both in Washington and in Boston, and was much louder and clearer over my car’s built-in Bluetooth speaker-phone system.

Yet, in some places where the signal was relatively weak, the iPhone 4 showed no bars, or fewer bars than its predecessor. Apple says that this is a bug it plans to fix, and that it has to do with the way the bars are presented, not the actual ability to make a call. And, in fact, in nearly all of these cases, the iPhone 4 was able to place calls despite the lack of bars.

However, on at least six occasions during my tests, the new iPhone was either reporting “no service” or searching for a network while the old one, held in my other hand, was showing at least a couple of bars. Neither Apple nor AT&T could explain this. The iPhone 4 quickly recovered in these situations, showing service after a few seconds, but it was still troubling.

Just as with its predecessors, I can’t recommend this new iPhone for voice calling for people who experience poor AT&T reception, unless they are willing to carry a second phone on a network that works better for them.

For everyone else, however, I’d say that Apple has built a beautiful smartphone that works well, adds impressive new features and is still, overall, the best device in its class.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

More iPhone 4 Coverage »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100622/apple-iphone4-review/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100603/richard-rosenblatt-paul-steiger-session/ http://allthingsd.com/20100603/richard-rosenblatt-paul-steiger-session/#comments Thu, 03 Jun 2010 16:10:32 +0000 Peter Kafka http://d8.allthingsd.com/?p=486

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:

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.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100603/richard-rosenblatt-paul-steiger-session/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100526/facebooks-new-approach-to-privacy/ http://allthingsd.com/20100526/facebooks-new-approach-to-privacy/#comments Wed, 26 May 2010 17:47:07 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=41478 As an apology for betraying the trust of Facebook’s 400 million members, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s equivocating editorial in the Washington Post Monday was as half-assed as it was late. Facebook may have moved “too fast” by revising its privacy policy and tools in a way that makes more of its members’ personal information public, he conceded. “We move quickly to serve [our] community with new ways to connect with the social Web and each other,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Sometimes we move too fast.”

Sometimes we move too fast.

That’s an apology of sorts, I suppose. But it’s not an apology for further loosening Facebook’s privacy safeguards or for the speed with which Facebook loosened them. In other words, it’s a comment on the execution of a policy, not on the policy itself.

By saying “we move too fast,” Zuckerberg isn’t admitting that Facebook was headed in the wrong direction with respect to user privacy; he’s saying Facebook was headed in right direction all along, just a bit too quickly–for those of us with reasonable expectations or privacy, anyway.

Which makes you wonder about Facebook’s claim that its changing privacy policy and tools reflect “shifting social norms around privacy.”

Do they really?

Or is Facebook itself attempting to shift those norms in its quest for revenue? After all, there’s great money to be made in the sort of behavioral advertising that Facebook’s user data makes possible–great money to be made in monetizing our privacy and reputations.

So the unveiling this morning of what Facebook claims are “enhanced, simpler” privacy controls is interesting, to say the least. How does a company so clearly prejudiced against privacy assuage concerns that it might violate privacy?

With a new set of “granular data permissions,” Zuckerberg said this morning (here’s Facebook’s guide explaining them).

“First, we’ve built one simple control to set who can see the content you post,” he explained in a blog post published to coincide with the announcement. “Second we’ve reduced the amount of basic information that must be visible to everyone and we are removing the connections privacy model….Third, we’ve made it simple to control whether applications and Web sites can access any of your information.” (Click image below to enlarge.)

Evidently, there will be a simple control that applies to all content retroactively and to new products going forward. If, for example, you set your preference to friends-of-friends, that will be your historic default as well as your default going forward.

For applications, access to member information has been “dramatically” limited. There will be a single check box to opt out of information-sharing with third-party sites. Said Zuckerberg: “The net effect of this is that all applications are going to have restricted access to your personal information.”

And for Facebook Platform, the company is adding an “easy” opt-out for instant personalization. Finally, Facebook is differentiating between “basic directory” information and the more personal information in its members’ profiles. Directory information must be public so friends can find one another, and “allowing people to find you on Facebook is a very different use case than sharing your information.”

As a privacy tool overhaul, this is fairly substantial. And it does seem to address many complaints about the previous system. But it doesn’t do one thing that many critics have called for: Make the highest privacy settings the default.

Why not? Said Zuckerberg: “We’re trying to make the system simple to use. Facebook has never worked in a way where you sign up and only your friends can see your personal information. The point of the site is to allow you to connect with new friends and friends of friends. And that’s always been a really important part of how Facebook has worked. It’s really important to help people share simply by default.”

With their friends, perhaps. But not with anonymous companies. In that case, you’d think most people would want to limit that “sharing” by default. But that would undermine Facebook’s business model, wouldn’t it?

Evidently, outrage over the company’s privacy missteps hasn’t been sufficient to effect that particular change. “We really think about the trust issues,” Zuckerberg explained. “A lot of people right now are upset with us about these changes, and I take that really seriously…and I don’t mean to diminish privacy concerns….but all these blogs are talking about Delete-Your-Facebook-Pages campaigns and we’ve seen no meaningful change to our usage stats.”

So how does Zuckerberg answer accusations that Facebook doesn’t care about privacy, that his company preys on people who have an expectation of privacy but don’t necessarily understand the implications of putting their personal information on Facebook?

“People perceive that we don’t care about privacy and that’s just not true,” he said. “People want to share information and there’s got to be a balance. They’ve got to have control over how they share their information and that’s where the world is going….We’ve learned time and time again that privacy is a sensitive thing. Now we feel like we have a privacy model that will scale as we add more users….And hopefully, we won’t be messing with it for a long time.”

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