Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Call it a truthogy
Craig Burton's post on the passing of Ray Noorda is, I am sure, the least varnished of all the recollections that are sure to pile up on the Web. Also, I am sure, the best qualified.
Newspapers 2.1
Last night Jon Lund told me about something that blew my mind. Newspapers are a Happening Thing here in Denmark. There are very creative "wars" going on between rival papers. Read Danish media revolution: New high-quality print and web-media to give news away this autumn. Some amazing stuff. All the players are being aggressive and creative and involving readers, the Web and cell phones.
New, fully integrated media platform
Nordjyske today totally dominates the northern Jutland region with newspapers, TV stations, radio stations and websites. Nevertheless Nordjyske has felt inclined simultaneously to launch a new free evening-newspaper, a new newsportal for user generated content. And at the same time they remake their present free morning/traffic newspaper.
The result is a fully integrated media platform, spanning print, web and mobile: Centrum Morgen (the free morning newspaper), Centrum Aften (the free evening newspaper) and ditcentrum.dk (yourcentrum.dk)
Read, sms, write and be published
According to Henrik Rewes, who is in charge of the web- and mobile initiative, this is by far the most wholeheartedly and aggressive online-move by Nordjyske ever. Nordjyske hopes that pendlers will read Centrum Morgen in the bus or train going to work, vote by sms while on the run, contribute with their own views on the hot issues on the web when they’re at their office - and then, in the afternoon when they get home, read a brand new evening newspaper, all complete with news updates - including their own stories, results from sms-voting etc.
Is anything like this happening in North America? Or anywhere else?
By the way, Jon has opened a guest blog for New Media Days. But items may be slow getting up. There are some connectivity issues as the conference gets underway. Hope they get worked out soon. I'm posting this next door at the hotel.
Still a lot, I'd think
Forget about pilfered programs from Fox and all the BigCo jive. What would YouTube have been worth to Google if the user-generated stuff wasn't there?
I was there (reporting for Linux Journal) at CES this last January when Larry Page introduced Google Video, which was mostly positioned as a content play with Hollywood (and a VideoStore), complete with a totally wooden Les Moonves of CBS, reading his scripted notes off a teleprompter in the back of the room. I still stand by what I wrote then:
Right now this tide shift isn't a smooth thing. In fact, it's a fight. That fight is between independence and dependence; between liberty and slavery; between free markets and your-choice-of-silo; between what you want to do and what Apple or Microsoft or Intel or Real or Google will let you do.
It's a fight between those who value music, artwork, video and writing, and those who wish to reduce all those goods to the container cargo they call "content".
It's a fight that has the The Net and its founding values on one side. On the other side is an unholy alliance between the "content" industries, Consumer Electronics and the carriers who still think the Internet is about delivering industrial goods in packeted forms to our TVs, desktops and MP3 players.
It's a fight between two overlapping circles in a Venn diagram. The larger circle is The Net: an open noncommercial environment that supports countless commercial markets, including the one for Consumer Electronics goods. The smaller circle is the unholy alliance that thinks its circle is bigger.
The Net will win, because its circle is actually the world on which the smaller circle resides--whether or not the smaller circle likes that fact.
Our job, among many others, is to break up and otherwise thwart that unholy alliance.
Interesting as it is, I don't believe the YouTube deal is part of that job. Though I'm open to hearing otherwise.
Slog owing
The Net connection at the hotel where I'm staying had been kinda flaky anyway, and went down completely yesterday, moments before a scheduled Skype conference call. Techies worked on the problem into the wee hours. That's what it is right now. I'm up, trying to get too much stuff done. Sometimes the Net's up; sometimes it isn't.
Anyway, my apologies to people who have been on dropped IMs, emails or calls with me. I dunno when it's going to get better (at least at the hotel). They have a completely different (and, I am told, much faster, and unrestricted) connection at New Media Days (tag: nmd06), where I'm giving the opening keynote this morning. In addition to enjoying the show, I look forward to pushing out a bunch of other stuff that's in the queue.
One good thing: it turns out that what looked like censorship the other day was an installation glitch. The service company had installed a severe (corporate? school? I dunno) firewall in the hotel, when a much more open one had been called for. Which is why IM came back. Port 25 is still blocked, though; and so is ssh, so I'm still using Gmail for outbound email. When the system is up. (Yes, they're still working on it.)
Oh, and another good thing. My bag arrived from Seattle just in time for a scheduled gathering at a local bistro in the evening. It was great taking a shower and putting on fresh duds.
BTW, thanks to Brent Ashley for this. Maybe I can get it to work later.