What You Didn’t Know About Nintendo [Weekend Treat]
Posted: April 9, 2010 Filed under: Department of Digital | Tags: interactive media, Nintendo Leave a comment »Video Games count as media, too! (I tell myself to get away with posting this…):
Via: Online MBA
Quote of the Day: AP Fact Checking and The Frozen Four
Posted: April 9, 2010 Filed under: Department of Print, sports | Tags: #WeAreBC Leave a comment »“The Eagles are making their fourth Frozen Four appearance in five years. One more win will give them their fourth national title in three years and the fourth in school history.”
Associated Press, Game Story for BC’s 7-1 Win over Miami of Ohio.
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, BC Coach Jerry York is so good he could win his fourth national title in three years. I’d like to see Geno Auriemma top that record. I haven’t taken a math class in awhile, but still, I’m a little suspicious.
Next time someone tells me bloggers aren’t responsible as journalists and don’t fact check, I’m pulling this up.
So Now It’s a Dictionary and a News Aggregator
Posted: April 9, 2010 Filed under: Department of Digital | Tags: aggregators, Dictionary Leave a comment »
I used to have two annoyances involving elementary school and the dictionary. First, why was I always told to look up words I didn’t know how to spell in the heavy tome? If I can’t spell it, how am I going to find it?!
Second was, of course, really useless contextual sentences. Think back to the last Spelling Bee you watched (and you don’t have to deny tuning into Scripps on ESPN2, promise I won’t hold it against you). When’s the last time the sentences they used ever seemed helpful?
Of course, Google has a solution. Google has offered it’s own, online dictionary for some time now, but a post this morning on the Google OS blog notes that there’s a new change to help answer my second dictionary pet peeve. Instead of out-dated sentences, GDictionary will now pull contextual usage from news stories and include those results with the word’s entry. You can further develop your dominance of the English language, catch up on news and piss off Rupert Murdoch – all at the same time. How can you beat that?
You Want Murdoch on that Wall, You Need Him on That Wall
Posted: April 7, 2010 Filed under: Department of News | Tags: don't build the wall, Droopy Murdoch Face, Eric Schmidt Leave a comment »
You know something is up when I take out the Droopy Murdoch Face .
At a conference in DC over the weekend, as PaidContent reports, Media Mogul Rupert Murdoch actually shared a stage with Google CEO Eric Schmidt to talk about the role of publishers and content online.
pC covered it as a normal run of the mill Murdoch message session, except for one little wrinkle that he added this time around. When asked about public attitudes of paying for news online, Murdoch replied:
“I think when they’ve got nowhere else to go they’ll start paying and if it’s reasonable—no one’s going to ask for a lot of money.”
That’s just it! Will there be nowhere else to go? Shouldn’t a quick investigation into how well a paywall would create a monopoly around specific content help to debunk this business model?
A full video of Murdoch’s session from Sunday is available here.
Where’s Big Media in the App Store?
Posted: April 5, 2010 Filed under: Department of Digital | Tags: don't build the wall, iPad Leave a comment »I’ll let the chart do the talking first (from Paid Content, via Nieman Lab):
Yep. That’s Big Media over there, up and down the free column. Pay walls are going to be awesome for business.
In Honor of the iPad… [Weekend Treat]
Posted: April 2, 2010 Filed under: Department of Digital | Tags: iPad, weekend treat Leave a comment »Since the iPad is being launched tomorrow here in the U.S., it gives me the perfect excuse to post the greatest MadTV sketch of all time:
Let the record show, I will not be getting one. But maybe the media will truly love it…
Old Media Will Love the iPad [Tradition]
Posted: April 2, 2010 Filed under: Department of Digital, mass media | Tags: anti-social media, iPad 1 Comment »
I just got back from an excellent panel here in D.C. hosted by Slate and the New American Foundation on the state of the mobile technology industry in the U.S.. Trust me, it was geeky, and I won’t bore you. However, there happened to be some relevance to my favorite issue – traditional media producers trying to hold on to the send-receive transactional messages of old. One of the panel members, Tim Wu from Columbia Law School and Slate, took a quick detour into the media world by way of Apple’s iPad.
Wu pointed out that the iPad has a significant amount more in common with television than the personal computer, and most of that is from a medium/delivery standpoint. Content gets created by someone and whoever is using the device gets served it. It’s broadcast to a passive media – it’s anti-social media.
As Wu put it perfectly, “With the iPad, you do nothing yourself.” And that’s why old media will love it.
It puts traditional broadcast back into the position of streaming shows they create, on a delivery they can serve ads on. They have to be ecstatic. The iPad is not a creation, tool – probably exactly why there isn’t a camera – it’s just an accepting tool. And it will be popular because of it’s simplicity and portability of this content, and as Sascha Meinrath, another panelist noted, the simplicity is what will make it likable.
I’m no Apple fan boy, I’ve never been shy about my mild disdain for over-simplified products. But that does put me in the minority and outside of Apple’s profitable demo. Producers are probably glad I’m with my Android and not in the way, but there are many many people who want the iPad for exactly the purpose described above. Old Media has to be happy about the audience it is about to gain back.
That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think it Means [Social Media]
Posted: April 1, 2010 Filed under: Department of Digital, social media | Tags: princess bride, social media Leave a comment »
Last month, I made a switch to include social media under the umbrella of digital instead of as its own category. With a little bit of research and help from Princess Bride, I explain why over at Edelman Digital.
I believe that the baseline of users sees “social media” and gets distracted by the social part. That conclusion translates into treating these types of publishing in interpersonal ways, thinking that what we create is a one-to-one or one-to-small-group manner. What is actually happening is that what we are constructing a personal broadcast based on what we choose to publish around our social contacts. We are building media by being social and not the other way around.
Some fun with nomenclature and research never hurt anyone, so read the whole thing here.
