Week in Review

Short reads on a Saturday morning:

• Arguments were held Friday in the Comcast, FCC net neutrality dispute. The case revolves around an FCC order banning Comcast's blocking its broadband customers from the file-sharing technology BitTorrent.  The original order by the FCC was issued when the commission was headed by Republican Kevin Martin. The current commission, chaired by Democrat Julius Genachowski, is placing a top priority on the issue of net neutrality.

• The expected closings at Reed Business Information began a little earlier than expected with the news that Video Business was being shuttered, along with MBT (Manufacturing Business Technology) and Industrial Distribution. Penton quickly followed with the news that two of its B2B pubs would stop publishing print editions and become online only pubs.

• The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was held and the news was tablets, tablets, tablets (oh, and readers, too). Whether you are in the newspaper, magazine or book business, new devices are being targeted at consumers.

ComputerWorld states the obvious: You don't need to work in my business to know that publishing is in a world of hurt. Newspapers and magazines are cutting staff or closing down due to declining readerships and the loss of advertisers. Book publishers, also losing readers, bank on high-priced blockbusters, franchise publications, and dashed-off tell-all books, and take fewer risks with unknown authors.

This same article also pointed to an older post on MacWorld that asks "Does Apple really want to sell magazines?": Apple would need to create a new set of iTunes storefronts for books, magazines, and newspapers, and would need to sign deals with major publishers. Publishers would need to present their content to Apple in a compatible format, which could be easy or hard, depending on if Apple were to support a common format or create something completely new.

• Yet more CES news: Sling Media, maker of the Sling Box (I want one, too bad Christmas is over), announced support for Flash support in its hardware and software products. The Sling Box allows users to view television broadcasts on their computer when the device is hooked up to a cable box. Sling Media also has an iPhone app that allows users to watch live television on their phones via their Sling Box.

• And finally, this story backs up my assertion that Microsoft head honcho Steve Ballmer's CES keynote address was a bit of a disappointment.

Apple must be patting themselves on the back, as the Hewlett-Packard (HP) tablet unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on Wednesday night failed to wow those expecting a true competitor to the mythical Apple tablet ... The HP tablet is basically a color e-reader running Amazon Kindle software, with few other details besides a sub-$500 price point and an estimated arrival on the market by mid-2010. So disappointing was the release that Microsoft and HP's shares fell yesterday according to BusinessWeek.

So the media world still remains waiting for tablet publishing revolution.

Zinio launches iPhone app; states it is striving for "ubiquitous" magazine reading platform

Digital publishing technology and distribution company Zinio announced that it had launched a free iPhone app (iTunes store link), and is currently offering two magazine samples to entice readers to use the service.

The move is a wise attempt to allow readers access to their favorite publications, regardless of the device they prefer to use. Zinio describes the move as the "cornerstone of its ubiquitous “Unity” reading platform."

The easy to use application allows users to download their favorite consumer magazines (hey, where's the B2B?), assuming they are being distributed by Zinio, and read them just as they would an online flip book -- only easier, in my opinion, as the app does not require Flash.

Once the reader has selected the magazine, either the free samples currently available (Vivmag and PC Magazine) or purchased magazines, the reader is taken to a cover shot as seen at left and the app begins to download the rest of the file. The reader swipes to go to another page, a quicker and more natural motion that the corner click used on flip books.  The reader can zoom in using the usual iPhone multi-touch motions. A double tap will zoom you into the desired area, or zoom you back out. Unfortunately, Zinio zooms in a set amount, often too close. (iPhone users familiar with browsing on their phone will immediately compare the way zooming works magically with Safari versus the Zinio app. A tap of a story here often zooms you in closer to the story than you want.

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Photoblogging Friday - 1

You've heard of Catblogging, right? The blog tradition goes back almost to the beginning of the medium. The New York Times first wrote about the phenomenon in 2004. Kevin Drum, who then published the Calpundit blog, now of Mother Jones, was most likely the first to start posting pictures of his cat Inkblot every Friday.

Well, I don't own a cat.  So what will our Friday not-to-be-taken-too-seriously feature be? Why not Photoblogging Friday?

Dean Brierly, former managing editor of Camera & Darkroom, and a photographer himself, will assist me with the photo selection. Dean writes about photography and photographers on his interview blog site Photographers Speak, and you can see more of his work on his own portfolio site.

The inaugural photo is his own, "Wrong Turn, Tokyo" -- click for enlarged view.

Canada's largest media group, Canwest Global Communications, files for bankruptcy protection

Proving that the newspaper industry's woes are not isolated to just the United States, Canada's largest media group, Canwest Global Communications Corp. announced that it had filed for bankruptcy protection for its newspaper division and began the search for a buyer.

The Winnipeg based media giant publishes The National Post, as well as the Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Victoria Times-Colonist and Vancouver newspapers, the Sun and Province.

Update: Spelling corrected thanks to Anonymous reader.

Twitter as classified killer

If you look to the right of this post you will see my Media News Feeds.  I use Feedmingle, but there are other aggregators that will gather up the RSS feeds and combine them into one clean list of stories.

Every once in a while I notice something that I want to follow-up on.  This time it was the headline from paidContent.org: We're Hiring Reporters.

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Now its up to Apple after Ballmer keynote at CES fails to ignite tablet wars

TalkingNewMedia is a not a tech site so I won't waste much home page space on this, but I think the tablet wars may be the most important development in publishing this year, so here is an update.

Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, gave the keynote address last night at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Engadget, a great place to get updates on the show, blogged the event live last night. When it was over, surprised at the lack of big news, they wrote: "8:11PM "Thank you very much." And Robbie is gone. And... that's it? Wow. Incredibly boring. Incredibly incredibly boring. Really."  Brutal.

Going into last night, the rumor was that Ballmer would introduce a new "slate" computer from HP.  Hopes were high, and not just because there are those who truly hate Apple and want to see Microsoft lead in this area. A demonstration video of a product, supposedly called Courier, was posted on the Gizmodo site, and videos drawn from that original one have proliferated on YouTube. The reaction was a definite "wow".

But last night Ballmer ran through a laundry list of Microsoft initiatives, XBox, Windows 7, and the rest, before finally, and very briefly, mentioning a "slate" from HP. Ballmer proceeded to play a game on the device and moved on. This was not what publishers were waiting for.

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