Week in Review

Short reads on a Saturday morning:

• Engadget has more on the mysterious Courier, Microsoft's pen driven, two-page tablet that appears to be far more rumor than product as pictures and videos keep getting leaked, with no product in sight -- the exact opposite of what seems to happen when a real product is about to be produced. In any case, Engadget says they have more concrete information about Courier including that it doesn't run off of Microsoft's recently unveiled Windows 7 (which won't appear itself until later this year), but instead runs the same OS as the Zune. I don't know, it looks cool, but I never write anything anymore, I type. And besides, the whole thing seems odd -- if they really were ready to launch this thing wouldn't they want to keep things under wraps? Maybe this is just an effort to raise the spirits of Microsoft folk who have been taking a beating lately from all the talk about Google and Apple?



• Rusty Coats will be leaving his post as V.P. of Interactive for E.W. Scripps. Coats said the decision was both professional and personal. Said Coats in a memo to staff: "On the professional side, after more than 20 years with newspapers – 15 of them on the interactive side – I would like to explore the broader interactive world. There is a lot of innovation happening in the interactive space – some in newspapers, some outside. I want to see what’s outside without viewing it through a familiar lens."
Rusty Coats: It’s time to see less of the world alone from an aisle seat, rental car and hotel room. 
Corrected thanks to input from Jack Lail, who is Director of Innovation of the Knoxville News Sentinel -- thank you! I wrote in the previous version that Coats had been head of interactive at Scripps 15 years -- a bad mistake on my part.

• Back to tablets for a moment, Apple publicly announced the iPad will make its appearance inside Apple stores: April 3, with pre-orders taken starting March 12. I speculate here on prospects for sales. I personally will wait, not because I am one of those iPad naysayers, because that is my pattern with all new Apple products. Let the early adopters buy their iPad, let them work out the bugs, then go by version two . . . and then hear the early adopters complain about the fact that Apple has dropped the price, or added features not found on their version one device.

• It's hard to follow all the newspaper and B2B media firms going into, and out of, bankruptcy proceedings. Here's another: Penton Business Media won court approval yesterday of its reorganization plan, and will be officially no longer in bankruptcy some time next week. Penton's efforts will result in the company dumping $270 million of its total debt load. But as the Reuters story points out, Penton had $841 million in assets and $1.13 billion in liabilities as of November 30.

• Looking ahead: Local news aggregator Outside.In is hiring their first ad sales person, and we'll look at what the company is up to in an interview I conducted with Camilla Cho, veep of biz dev.  Media folk sure love meetings, don't they? Next week there will be something called the 2010 Media Summit in New York -- I won't be going, but I'll keep an eye open to see if any news comes out.

Photoblogging Friday - 9

It's Photoblogging Friday again, TNM's version of catblogging. Dean Brierly is back to recommend this week's content.  Dean's better at this stuff than I am; and frankly, I could use a little break. (Though I will say that it was nice to be able to reproduce a still from Metropolis last week. I may due it again the next time a silent film is restored and released on DVD or shown at a festival).

Dean had picked a photo by Steven A. Heller, the director of photography services at the Art Center of Design in Pasadena, a position he has held for more than 20 years. This shot is from his "Lost Series" and was taken with his iPhone. You can find more of Heller's work here.

Dean Brierly's site remains, Photographers Speak, and is worth exploring to see what new interviews he has conducted.

What to do with a monopoly? Put up a paywall.

UBM's move to put up a few paywalls where it feels it has a monopoly may only be an experiment, but it feels like an invitation.

Eventually, the VC community has to take notice and realize the future won't be magazines behind paywalls, but B2B online pure plays. Thanks to VerticalNet B2B pure plays may have a bad name, but with companies like UBM, Nielsen and Reed essentially getting out of the print business altogether, or at least shrinking down to minnow size, an opening has to be there for online pure plays.

Additionally, tablet publishing offers an online company another option (making them, I suppose, no longer a pure play). Between tablet publishing, mobile media, e-mail newsletters, data, and events, a non-magazine B2B still has lots of revenue sources -- all more profitable long term than print.

Read More >

Now that the iPad launch date has been announced, media can get down to some serious business

OK, Apple has finally given us a date, April 3, for the actual launch of its iPad tablet. So what's next? Do Apple stores get flooded with buyers, eager to consume all sorts of media on their new tablets, while simultaneously canceling every print publication they subscribe to?

Well, if iPhone sales are any guide, the real rush towards iPad adoption won't materialize on Day One, but will be seen some time in the future, after consumers have seen the device in the wild, and are given an additional reason to buy the device.

Looking back at the iPhone, sales started out fairly slowly for the device with Apple not able to crack the one million units mark until the first sales quarter of 2008, before declining again until the fourth quarter of 2008 when Apple introduced its first 3G model.  But many would be surprised how low the initial sales were compared to a year later. The reason is that Apple's phone sales were zero before the introduction of the iPhone, and so Apple received positive press for simply getting into the market (and for introducing such a revolutionary new version of the smart phone).

Two developments really changed the cell phone game in 2008: first, Apple's first 3G phone brought their product to the same level as other advanced smart phones; and second, the 3G phone also brought OS 2.0 and the app store on iTunes.

Some have been disappointed that Apple's iPad will launch without many features prospective buyers have requested: a front facing camera for video conferencing, Flash support, a standard USB connection (though the bottom iPod connector is, in reality, a USB connection), etc. Many of these features may be introduced in the future -- though Flash support certainly is questionable -- and so a second generation iPad, like the iPhone, may be a more popular product.

What I look for, however, is more Apple viral marketing, word of mouth, and the Starbucks effect. I think no product benefited more from coffee buying than the iPhone. In 2007 stories began to appear about iPhone users slowing down the register line as they fiddled on their phones while ordering their lattes. Then Starbucks dropped T-Mobile and did a deal with AT&T, giving iPhone users free Wi-Fi at the chain. Finally, Starbucks introduced their own app, allowing iPhone users to buy their lattes using their phones -- it didn't really catch on, but it did lead to more press and more "cool factor".

My guess is that we will see the same sort of sales performance for the iPad as the iPhone. Sales will appear impressive at first because Apple will tell us it is impressive and because once again the base is zero. But the spike in sales will appear later. This time, my bet is that sales will spike in a more traditional fashion, around the holiday season as shoppers decide between netbooks and tablets. The spark may be the holidays, or it may be the arrival of more media and game offerings for the device.

Read More >

Apple announces launch date for its iPad; tablet will be in stores April 3rd, pre-orders starting March 12th

Apple announced today that its new tablet, the iPad, will be in stores starting Saturday, April 3. The WiFi model without 3G capability will be available first, with 3G models promised by late April.  Apple also said that both the WiFi and 3G models will launch at the same time in Canada and Europe -- late in April.

Pre-orders begin March 12, as eager buyers will be able to begin spending their allowances of all models of the iPad online.

The press release mentions the new iBooks app, but does not say if it will be available on day one. The new books app will feature a bookstore and "will feature books from the New York Times Best Seller list from both major and independent publishers, including Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Group and Simon & Schuster," according to the release.

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