The current state of the newspaper industry is in a difficult situation. That was true before the entire economy made a massive downturn. Traditional newspapers have high printing and distribution costs due to the cost of materials, and the distribution costs due to the weight of the publication. To offset these costs, newspapers sell advertisements. Ironically, the addition of advertisements adds to the weight, which adds to the shipping costs.
Another factor that causes difficulty for newspapers is the user expectation that online news should be free. This is correlated to the principle that openness on the web is empowering. It’s this principle that has enabled so many, to create new applications and visualizations of information, by combining 2 more sources of data. In addition, traditional newspapers need to offer free news to remain competitive with the blogosphere for the attention of customers.
What are some of the factors that have contributed to the success of newspapers? The first is ubiquity. It’s possible to walk to a street corner and buy one from a newspaper vending machine. Supermarkets, liquor stores, and magazine stands are also common venues of purchase. Another factor, is reading text on the printed page. Some people find it easier that reading text on a monitor, while others enjoy the feel of paper. A third factor is archivability. There are people who want to capture historic moments, particularly those with famous headlines like “Dewey Defeats Truman” (Chicago Tribune, 1948), “Kennedy Assassinated” (Daily Mail, 1963) “God is Dead”(NY Times, 1968). For those, capturing a piece of history for the price of the daily edition is a powerful thing. In order for online newspapers to be successful and return to profitability, all of the above need to be addressed.
As noted above, it’s important to not break the web by hiding the news content – at least not in totality. An acceptable solution would be to expose some articles for the public to freely consume. Others would be exposed if someone is a paid subscriber. Imagine a front page where the free articles expose their headlines and the 1st paragraph or two. The articles requiring a subscription would expose headlines that link to the full articles, all of which would be in a panel on the homepage that clearly labels the box as subscriber content. This would allow the free viewing public to be aware of the content that subscribers can access. For the print operations, there are two obvious paths to consider. The first is total elimination. Becoming a totally digital publication has a number of positive aspects – greater responsiveness, significantly lower distribution costs, and decreased personnel requirements. The second path is to print back issues on demand. This allows the customers to print out the editions that would like to keep. Because it would no longer a primary service, but rather a supplemental one, the customer would need to absorb a higher cost. This will cause them to be more selective about which editions they want in print.
One of the attributes of the internet is it’s a great medium for distributing content. It would be cost effective to allow customers to have a digital edition download to their computer. This allows the editions to be distributed cost effectively while maintaining the ability to archive. While some people prefer to read paper instead of on a monitor, technology is always improving. The Kindle 2, a new device from Amazon, is reported to have improved text rendering abilities that more closely resemble the print experience. As this technology becomes more available, the quality difference between electronic and printed text will be less of an issue.
While the internet isn’t totally ubiquitous yet, its presence is growing by the hour. Most users currently access the news on their desktop or laptop, whether at home, work, or on the wifi at a cafe. But as mobile devices become more powerful, and barriers to entry are removed, it will only get easier to access information.
Mystery In The UK
I’m currently working on a webapp that will allow every country to participate. the content is locally consumed. I’m attempting to build a database to hold all the information, in a structured way. I’m confused by the country relationships of the UK. I’m in the USA, so I’m not sure what the typical experience is for a UK citizen.
There are four countries: England, Wales, Scotland, and North Ireland. These four countries, have formed an entity called “United Kingdom”, or UK for short. Plain old ‘Ireland’ is a separate country. There is another entity called “Great Britian”, which refers to the countries England, Wales, and Scotland (source: DirectGov). There’s an organization ISO that maintains global standards. One of the standards is ISO 3166-2, which is a list of country names, and their 2 character abbreviations. Looking at this list of country codes and names, the United Kingdom has the code of ‘GB’. Huh? More confusingly, the countries England, Wales, Scotland, and North Ireland are all without their own 2 character codes. I guess the real question is “Who’s on first?“.
Let’s hold off on that issue for a moment, and look back to my original problem. I’m unclear as to how I should model the relationship between the UK, the individual countries of the UK, and their cities. Let me give you an example. I live the United States, in the state of Washington(WA), in the city of Seattle. So my record would be like this: country=US, state=WA, city=Seattle. Given that, lets do an example for London. Three examples come to mind. The first captures the most information: country=UK, state=England, city=London. This one is appealing as it captures the most information in an existing structure. The second just removes England from the state field: country=UK, state=null, city=London. The third uses England for the country country=England, state=null, city=London. I’m considering this one because I know that England is a country, so it’s technically correct.
Do people who live in the UK, look on web forms for UK, then their own specific country? Or do they look for their specific country, then UK? What’s the convention most users expect? Is there another territorial breakdown I’ve missed? I know of postal codes.
I appreciate any feedback you can provide.
UPDATE 2009-FEB-21: Everybody’s feedback was very helpful, particularly Gary Gale (@vicchi) who just happens to be Head of UK Engineering at Yahoo Geo Technologies (@yahoogeo).
Let’s recap of the things I’ve learned. First ‘United Kingdom’ is what users search for. It’s also the name that appears in the ISO 3166 list. So I can safely use it. Second, people never look for things by their individual country (England, Scotland, etc) – partly because of the previous point, and partly because postcodes are so informative, they can be used to pre-populate other fields like city and county. Third, the ‘county’ is what people typically use to filter things. There are actually two sets of county information – administrative and postal. The web apps I’m writing are for people and not the government, so I’m going to use the postal counties.
In summary, Mr Gale said “if you’re designing a web based mechanism for addresses you’d use the country, the county and the town followed by the street address and our Postal Code, the equivalent of the US ZIP”. Nice! Pragmatic and simple.
Thanks again everyone. It’s been illuminating.
Architecting Your Dev Environment
Every web developer has a particular way of working. This can be anything from using particular software applications, to storyboarding with construction paper, to drawing diagrams on paper napkins at their favorite local cafe. Whatever it may be, they learned at some point in their experience as a developer, that their technique works. But if you’re new to the business, you have nothing to draw from. So these next few posts are targeted to the newcomer. However, if you’ve been around for a while, you might learn a trick or two, that you can add to your own tool belt. The following is a list of the upcoming titles in this series
Application Architecture on Localhost
Source Code Control Architecture
Hosting Architecture
Foreach of the items in the list above, I will discuss the technical aspects of setting up your environment. Setting things up the first time will seem like a lot of work. but every additional project will be very easy to set up, once you have the blue print. There are few technical constraints, as most of these concepts apply across environments. I am on a Mac OS X machine, so all command line items will use BSD syntax using the Bash shell. I’m approaching this from the perspective of a LAMP developer. PHP 5 is my language of choice.
Application Architecture on Localhost
This segment will give you a practical, scalable structure that will keep things organized. Also, you’ll be given some very useful bits for configuring your Apache server, as to how it relates to your day-to-day. I’ll try to ensure that you get all the essential, plus a couple of cool bits.
Source Code Control Architecture
If you’re new to web development, you might need an introduction. However, that’s already been covered by many people smarter than myself. What I’ll give you are suggestions/strategies on how you might make the best of organizing your strategies.
Hosting Architecture
So you’ve got a working a site on your local box. Your next step is to put in on your hosting environment. You’ll need a staging environment, so you can let other people test your code, have clients preview updates that you’ve worked on. the things you learn for the staging environment, can also be applied in your production environment.
Stay tuned, as I plan to write a post every few days.
NOTE: As each post is written, I’ll update this one to link to it.
Seattle Twestival 2009
On February 12, 2009, cities around the world attended an event called Twestival. Its composed of people in the Twitter community who gathered to raise money for a common purpose – clean and drinkable water for poorer countries. This was done in association with Charity: Water. It was a great implementation of the slogan “think global, act local”.
I attended the Seattle Twestival, and had a great time. Seattle has a strong Twitter community, and it was great to see many there Thursday night at the Spitfire Grill. I saw several of my friends there, and met some new people as well. It’s a fantastic thing to be able to meetup with these people. It strengthens your relationships when you take the online relationships offline. It solidifies the sense of community, and the feeling of connectedness.
I haven’t heard yet about the amount of funds raised, but I’ll updated this post when I find out. Whatever the outcome, every little bit helps. Some people’s lives are going to be changed for the better, and that’s a good thing.
Seattle Startup Weekend 2 Wrapup
This was the best startup weekend I’ve ever been to. Ok, so this was my first one, but it was still awesome. On friday night, about 150 people were there. As you know from previous posts, I had 2 ideas. I picked one, then pitched it to the group. I’m not well versed in public speaking so I was pretty nervous about giving the presentation. Sure, it’s only a few minutes, but I had never in my life spoken to 150 people. That’s kinda of a big deal for me. I actually handled it better than I had anticipated. Result: pleasantly surprised.
It’s a great opportunity to be able to interact, converse, and share ideas with so many smart, creative people. There were 48 project ideas pitched, of which 16 were built. Here’s a list of all the projects that were created.
During the event, Q13 News from Seattle came by . Here’s is video
It’s clear from this video, and the twitter messages after the event, that Tom Music’s project Obey The Decider is the favorite project. Cassie Wallender’s project Tweetsum is close second, with it’s talented development team and outstanding UI design. Their upcoming public beta release should arrive soon!
I look forward to seeing what happens with all of these projects.
Seattle Startup Weekend Idea 02
This is the second of two ideas I’m contributing for Seattle Startup Weekend.
Nomidate
This is a social network designed to augment your dating life. You create a profile to specify the qualities and attributes you’re looking for in someone that you would like to date. The feature that separates this site from others, is that your friends are making the initial connections to your potential mates, on your behalf.
The beauty of this is that it’s acceptable for married people to be on the site. In fact, I expect that married women will be one of the core user groups. It’s just like your buddy’s wife, who enjoys playing matchmaker for her single friends.
Here’s another scenario that I imagine would be quite common. Lets say there’s a guy, we’ll call him Clark. Clark has a neighbor and has a crush on her. We’ll call her Lana. Clark asks out Lana and they begin dating for a while. It’s comes to an end, but on good terms. Clark and Lana are both on Nomidate and connected. Lana’s profile mentions that she dated Clark, and thinks hes a good guy. Lana sends Chloe a message recommending that she date Clark. Chloe looks Lana’s profile, and sees that she’s rated as a good person for making matches. Chloe sends Clark a message saying Lana recommended him. Now Clark and Chloe can date.
Revenue model: Low signup fees + Vendor subsidies. Our partners post their articles in the advice section of the site. They pay us for that priviledge.
Partnership opportunities: Magazines like Cosmo, Men’s Health
UI: XHTML/CSS, PHP, MySQL
Seattle Startup Weekend Idea 01
UPDATE 2009-feb-11: I’m still interested in doing this project. however, it’ll be more challenging as I’ll need to do it in my spare time.
UPDATE 2009-feb-07: I was unable to get enough team members together, so I swtiched to the tweet reporter team.
UPDATE 2009-feb-06 : I selected this project, and pitched to the group. There were 48 projects submitted. This project made it into the Top 16. Were moving forward tomorrow morning. I’ll be at Peet’s Coffee in Fremont tomorrow at 8:15am for anyone that would like to discuss the project.
Original Content
I, like 150 others, am very much looking forward to the beginning of Seattle Startup Weekend this evening. This is the first idea of two.
Borrow Local Stuff.
This is a social network, but very different than most, as it emphasizes those who are closest to you geographically. Also trust is a key component. The way this works is you create a profile, which contains a catalogue. Then you add items to your catalogue that you’re willing to share with your friends. You might start small, with things like: books you’ve already read, CDs that you have, or maybe some tools you don’t use often.
Now that you’re set up, look for things that you want to borrow. Doing a search will look through the assets that your friends have, and return any potential matches. When you find something you like, you send a request for that asset. The owner will then accept/deny. If they accept your request, you meet them in some public place and make the exchange. They’ll update their record they delivered the item to you, and will enter a due date of when it should be returned. If you have not returned the item by the due date, you’ll receive an reminder email everyday until you have.
How can you ship things, you wonder? You cant. Items are delivered via the Sneakernet.
Revenue model: Free/Premium. Premium accounts will allow you get insurance on items of particular types. In order to borrow a premium item , you pay a rental fee.
Partnership: Delicious-Monster.com – They have cool software that makes adding things to your catalogue easy.
UI: xhtml/css, and add some AJAX-y features for good measure. Future versions will include mobile apps.
Adventures in Bookmarking
Until recently, I had been using Ma.gnolia for my bookmarks. Then they experienced massive data corruption and data loss. this forced me to re-evaluate, and found Foxmarks via a recommendation on Twitter. I really like Foxmarks. Here a little background on what brought me to it.
In the early days, I started out like everyone else, using the Firefox’s built in bookmarks. That was in the Firefox 1.x series. It did the job, but when I was on a different machine I had a different set of bookmarks that I had to manage. It’s easy enough when the set of bookmarks is small, but that gets out of control when your set of bookmarks gets significantly larger. If only there was a way to synchronize.
I searched the Firefox Extensions and eventually found Bookmarks Synchronizer. This was a great step forward. I now could have one set of bookmarks. There were 2 limitation though. First, the authoritative copy was on the local machine, as that had the most recent edits. Secondly, I had to manually tell it to synch. so I if forgot for a while, it was possible to overwrite newer bookmarks with older bookmarks. I didn’t want to have to manage that. I needed something that had a centralized place where all the bookmarks were kept and then sent to each local machine.
Enter del.icio.us, the social bookmarking service with an odd URL. Del.icio.us got around the synch issue by always writing to the server instead of the local machine. This was done using either a bookmarklet, or their toolbar. Then the local browser would download updates from the server. One point of authority, with multiple points of distribution. I was happy for a long time with this solution. It was very easy to add new bookmarks to my collection. I also made use of a feature called ‘bundles’ which allowed me to associate multiple tags together, and then I added these bundles to my toolbar. This was awesome as it allowed me to use the delicious bookmarks like the native Firefox bookmark toolbar. The downside of delicious was that they never had a good solution to editing bookmarks in bulk. If you wanted to delete 50 bookmarks, it took a long time. With each deletion taking 3-4 clicks, you’d perform approximatey 150-200 clicks. I had far more bookmarks to deal with, so I decided I’d start over – but where?
When I went to Gnomedex in 2008, I discovered Ma.gnolia. One thing I really liked about magnolia was their use of OpenID – many sites, one set of authentication credentials. Awesome! Note: If you’re creating a new service, use OpenID out of the gate. Another thing I liked was the UI is much cleaner and better organized that del.icio.us. So I’ll happily computed for a number of months until last friday. That’s when Ma.gnolia experienced massive data loss. As of today (Feb 5, 2009) They’re working hard on restoring their users data, but it’s looking less likely as time goes on. So now what?
A few days a friend of mine tweeted about Foxmarks, as Walt Mossberg from the Wall Street Journal had done a write up on Foxmarks and recommended it. It too uses a firefox extension, but it makes use of Firefoxes built-in bookmark system which, with Firefox 3, uses tags. So I’ve come full circle, but I still get all the features I want. Firefox allows you to make use of folders to organize and tags your information, so you get the best of both worlds. The way tags are used is awesome. In the location bar, start typing a tag name. Any items that match that tag will be listed in the drop down list that appears – regardless of what folder it’s in! I have a folder called ‘Google Apps’. In this, I have bookmarks to docs.google.com, calendar.google.com, gmail.com, www.google.com. That folder sits in my Bookmarks Toolbar. I love how easy it is for me to access these.