:: Future of Journalism

Six ways Scandinavian media companies approach iPad

BetaTales :: Less than a year after iPad was launched, media products for the device flourish in the Scandinavian market. Here are six media approaches to the new platform.

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Publishers need to better understand what news readers want

newmediaage :: Murdoch's The Daily should be applauded for begging the question: how many people out there have actually bought their iPads for daily news consumption?

The industry isn’t doing much to understand digital news consumption beyond unique visitors, dwell time, traffic spikes and SEO. These numbers do nothing to tell us about how users feel, respond and interact with news content online, nor about design content, product or style. What the growing popularity of aggregators over digital news sites as a destination tells us is that the industry is being neither efficient nor clever.

Publishers need to come up with the right brief.

Understanding news consumption - www.nma.co.uk - Publishers need to better understand what news readers want by Gina Lovett

A comparison - US local news experiments leagues ahead of UK

Media Standard Trust :: It is easy to overestimate the similarities between the U.S. and the UK. As Oscar Wilde wrote back in 1887, ”We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.”

But one of the unfortunate recent similarities has been the parallel crisis in local news, especially at newspapers. In both countries existing local news providers have been the hardest hit by the structural changes in news provision and consumption, each having relied so heavily on classified and recruitment advertising.

Continue to read mediastandardstrust.org - US local news experiments leagues ahead of UK by Martin Moore

Q&A site Quora announces new ranking algorithm to boost quality

The Q&A site Quora has detailed its plans for a ranking algorithm, of sorts, for answers submitted to the site. In a nutshell, "good answers" from those who consistently write "good answers" will rank higher than others' responses.

Continue to read the announcement  www.quora.com

The epic fail of Wired - Digital magazines and their too long download times

New York Times Blog :: Nick Bilton decided to try a little experiment: he opened up his iPad, clicked on the little Wired icon and purchased the magazine’s latest digital issue. After he agreed to fork over $4, it began downloading. For the next phase of the experiment, he grabbed his car keys, left his apartment and drove about 12 blocks to a local magazine store in Brooklyn, where he also purchased the latest issue of Wired magazine, this time in print.

Guess what was faster: to purchase the magazine or the download?

To continue the story: he didn’t run any red lights, or speed, or park illegally during his shopping expedition. Yet when he returned home with the glossy paper product in hand, the digital iPad version still hadn’t finished downloading to his iPad.

Nick Bilton: "Anybody who reads Wired would call this an Epic Fail."

Continue to read bits.blogs.nytimes.com - A Race Between Digital and Print Magazines

Developers build apps for four devices on average - focus switch to Android

The average developer is now building for four different devices, a joint survey from app development firm Appcelerator and analyst firm IDC has revealed.

Of those multiple devices, building apps for Android tablets is now a consideration for many developers, with 74% of the 2,000 developers surveyed responding that they are "very interested" in developing for Android tablets. The more platforms need be served the higher the production costs for mobile media products.

Continue to read www.appcelerator.com - Survey

Reported by www.readwriteweb.com - Developers Report Increased Interest in Android, Tablets for 2011

Is Android more open? When apps get kicked out of the Google's Android marketplace

Google's Android is widely considered the more open and democratic of the two leading smartphone operating systems, whereas Apple is criticized for its allegedly tight control over what apps get accepted into its iTunes app store.

And yes, openess is the key success factor for innovations especially if you do not only have to reinvent the news production processes but if you have to work on business models as well.

Perhaps contrary to that reputation for openness, tonight we learn that casual game service Kongregate has had its gaming app kicked out of the Android Marketplace. Why?

Continue to read www.readwriteweb.com - Is Android More Open? Google Kicks Kongregate Out of the Marketplace

What new things could we discover if social network analysis took time and space into account, in addition to the raw connections between people?

In most cases, social network analysis today is limited to discovering friend connections, community leaders and outlines, influential people and personal friend recommendations - in a static or snap-shot kind of way.

If new factors could be taken into consideration, specifically changes over time and space, then social network analysis could discover things like emergence or decay of leadership, changes in trust over time, migration and mobility within particular communities online. That's very valuable information that the social web has barely begun to tackle capturing.

Continue to read www.readwriteweb.com - Mapping Our Friendships Over Time and Space: The Future of Social Network Analysis

Liquid Newsroom - time zones and (blogging) publishing worldwide

How to optimize your time schedule, if you like to publish worldwide? When do readers get your tweets or Facebook postings if they are located elsewhere in the world?

To answer these questions, I defined major time slots first. Since I work and live near Munich/Germany (near the Alps) Berlin time is my reference point. I'm an early bird, so that my work and life starts at 06:00 a.m. usually ending at midnight - at least for the research & project time.

The Google spreadsheet document above shows you how Berlin time relates to world time zones. The table is available as public Google spreadsheet document.

How to read it? - Cells with green background mark early morning prime time (0800-1000 am). When I start to post my first news, short curated articles from news sources I find interesting, during my morning hours, I'm too late late or too early for North America. It's lunchtime in Karachi /Pakistan and evening already in Tokio and Sydney. So it is the best time to reach readers in Asia/Australia/Pacific.

In contrast evening hours (after work hours - 0600-0800 pm), red background, is the best time slot to send posts to readers in North America and still in Europe. That's nice for me as both, early prime time and after work hours do not interfere with my normal working ours at a leading German publisher and articles can be posted automatically utilizing the scheduler of my blogging platform.

:: Liquid Newsroom ::

The question on how to optimize international publishing is part of the Liquid Newroom project. The Liquid Newsroom is a new form crowdsourced news innovation. The platform will enable to collaborate, to edit, publish and distribute news worldwide. One of its core requirements is to make the journalistic process more transparent.

I use the nextlevelofnews.com blog to experiment with some of the main questions in the open innovation process. As mentioned earlier the I decided to make the process of developing the Liquid Newsroom public.

Instead of the Google spreadsheet you can also click on the image below (enlarges on click)

Tablet and smartphone fragmentation concerns publishers

"Most media companies have barely scratched the surface on optimizing their content for Apple’s iPhone and iPad. Now, they’re faced with an ever growing stable of smartphone and tablet devices with different operating systems and multiple screen sizes," writes Rob O'Regan, emedia vitals.

And he is right to emphasize that an increasingly fragmented market makes it even more difficult for publishers to define a coherent, cost-effective mobile strategy.

In his article "All these tablets and smartphones – now what?", he explores the problems publishers now face after the first disillusion.

More www.emediavitals.com - All these tablets and smartphones – now what?