Month: April 2006

The Columbia Business School students mashup Sting and the Federal Reserve in “Every Breath You Take.” Didn’t know it could be done, but it’s funny. Watch the YouTube-hosted version (how does YouTube pay for its bandwidth again? anyone?). Via Bubble Generation.

Scott Karp asked a few days ago “What If Media 2.0 Is Less Profitable Than Media 1.0?”

As consumers spend more and more of their media time online, ad dollars have been pouring into online media — the assumption has been that the billions of dollars that large companies spend on mass media advertising and marketing (i.e. TV ads) will ultimately follow the small company dollars online. [snip].

But what if there’s a fatal flaw in this assumption? What if the transfer of marketing and advertising dollars online is not 1-to-1? What if the Internet has fundamentally lowered the marketing and advertising costs for big companies as it has for small companies? What if large companies can achieve the same sales objectives for a fraction of the cost of traditional mass media advertising?

I think Scott’s hypothesis is interesting, and worth considering, though I’d add a different view on the challenges of the media business.

The atomization of the audience across an increasing number of channels means that audience aggregation gets more difficult every day. If you can’t aggregate an audience, then you can’t build more media revenue. Google’s strength in aggregating an audience in an ever more diverse world is in large part because Google isn’t about anything in particular. Instead, it’s treated as a source for anything.

If you want to connect the dots, read Vin Crosbie’s data-driven reminder that you can already smell the curdled milk in the newspaper business. And focus on this point:

…as print edition circulation declines, the average newspaper will need between 20 to 100 website users to replace the revenues lost from each former print edition user.

Unless ways can be found to increase the per user revenues generated from newspaper websites, newspapers need to gain fantastic numbers of Web site users just to replace the declines in print edition revenues. A 50,000 circulation daily would need to gain a million to 50 million Web site users to postpone the time when it’s no longer economically feasible to produce its printed edition!

It’s not just newspapers.

(Evidence point #324 that I’m a dinosaur beyond my years… I subscribe to, and (partially) read, two print newspapers, in addition to my online consumption. That cannot last.)

In reading Mark Hurst’s interview with Katy Börner of Indiana University, I learned for the first time about Places & Spaces. This exhibit is about maps, and visualization, and it’s going to be at the New York Public Library for much of the summer. On my list to visit if I get the chance.

When we moved CNET News.com to CSS in September, 2003, an obvious inspiration was CSS Zen Garden. Later on, as the style sheets were improved and refactored as part of the October, 2005, redesign, we discussed just how far we had come. And we even discussed holding a contest to let our readers see what they could do to change/design the site with their own style sheets.

So, when I see the Slashdot CSS Redesign Contest today, I can only (a) applaud the effort and (b) kick myself about following through. Or not doing so, in this instance.

I’ll also be curious to see the end result.

After playing a stalling game all night, Arsenal pulls out a 0-0 draw and moves on to the Champions League final. Tense, yet boring, for an Arsenal fan…with a penalty kick save by Lehmann in the final three minutes. Phew!

I can’t imagine the Gunners would get by Barcelona (the favorite to get past Inter Milan tomorrow night, in the other semi-final), but maybe the magic missing from the Premier League will follow Arsenal to Paris in mid-May.

Once again, happy American disinterest let me avoid the score until watching the game this evening. I hope ESPN2 also runs the final.

I’m looking forward to Thursday night’s RSS Industry Night Roundtable II, hosted by Pheedo during Ad:Tech this coming week. Thanks to Bill Flitter for the invitation.

Alistair MacLean claimed a few more hours of my life earlier this week, with Force 10 from Navarone.

The Guns of Navarone (1957) grabbed enough attention (and money) that MacLean must have felt obligated to create this sequel. The story in Force 10 (1968) starts only hours after the end of Guns. The lead characters are rushed off to solve a new war-turning problem, this time in Yugoslavia, saving a Partisan force from the Germans (this is all World War II action). Nobody stops for thought… action, action, action.

The only jarring note? The leader of the English force is supposed to be a world-renowned mountaineer (critical skills in both Navarone novels), but in Force 10 he has to act as a double-agent, as if no one would recognize him. But the tale rushes on, so just keep moving…it’s better that way.

Thanks to the very helpful geekgrrl on the WordPress.org support forums, clock is ticking once more, after being broken for a bit. All posts have their content once more.

I noted the problem this morning with this note “Post content and comments not rendering (WP 1.5.2)” and a similar post “All copy in posts has disappeared had the solution.

Deactivating the Markdown plugin, which is one of the default set in WordPress, fixed the problem immediately: all content reappeared. I’m still running v1.5.2 of WordPress. I have no idea if this affects other versions and combinations.

I don’t believe I ever activated the plugin, though it’s possible it was on by default. I’m curious whether Simon Waldman‘s experience was triggered by # of posts or is all of this somehow strangely tied to the date?

I’m going to reach out to the developer of the plugin, Michel Fortin. No blame, but maybe he can take a look at his code if similar reports confirm the cause.

Somehow, I broke my blog. All that shows up now are the headlines, categories, and timestamps. The content is still there in the database when I go to edit, but not rendering. I haven’t changed anything that I know of, but it is suspicious (maybe?) that post 1000 was the last one live. I’m making this post in a (futile?) attempt to see if post 1001 might help, while I also look directly at the database (not my expertise) and other search support forums.

When you can read this, all will be well again. How’s that for a Catch-22?

Update: working again. See next post for details.

Michael Moore was born to make Fahrenheit 9-11. Love him or hate him, you know what you’re going to get with a Moore movie: full-bore agitprop. Metacritic score of 67, which is probably higher than I would have given.