Category: Uncategorized

I’m not a visual design expert, but when I went to the NYT home page (which I do rarely, I realize) to look at TimesSelect, which was introduced yesterday, my reactions were to the visual presentation. More on that below.

What is TimesSelect? Read the full details, including a well-presented comparison chart speaking well of the free NYTimes.com while still calling attention to the features of TimesSelect.

However, the larger point is revenue diversification. After a decade on the free web (albeit registration required), NYTimes is reasserting that content has value. Will they be successful? To be determined. Of course, this might be too grand a goal to lay on the NYT… maybe it’s just a smart revenue mix opportunity. However, part of being the country’s (the world’s?) leading newspaper means having your every move watched like the Kremlin of old. Those on the outside interpret each small move as a possible industry bellwether. That probably makes the Times a tough place to experiment… maybe that’s why About.com is a helpful separate entity?

My first impressions, starting at the home page, were… orange is now the color of money. The mark of premium content is an orange version of the site’s cursive capital T icon. Compared with the favicon, the TimesSelect icon looks cut off at the bottom? Again, I’m no designer, but why cut off the existing letter? The reversal of field (white cutout on an orange background) would have been enough for me. As to the color… beyond the icons next to the columnists, I noted three other uses of orange on the home page:

• Navigation arrows for Job Market, Real Estate, Autos… in other words, classifieds, where there is certainly money to be made, and NYTD is making some.
• A skyscraper (vertical ad banner) on the far right for TimesSelect, where I cropped the larger cut-off T.
• Vonage ads in the left-hand navigation of the page. Ouch. This is most certainly just a coincidence, and it happens all the time on all websites.

So orange = money. Fair enough. Hey, I work for a company whose corporate color is orange, so I’m predisposed to find it attractive.

Side note: Who gets to be a visual design critic? Anyone with eyes! Doesn’t mean the critic is an expert, but that’s why those pictures get to replace a lot of words.

As a legacy of my NewsTracker subscription, I have access to the TimesSelect material. The question will be whether in my normal reading patterns, I’ll find myself using/needing the service. I don’t follow the columnists, although I see that the sports columnists I do occasionally read are behind the wall, too. If I were still following the Yankees closely (where are you now, Craig Nettles?), I might care more.

Just to try the service, I clicked on the link on the home page to Just Sports Business as Usual If the Saints Go Marching Out, by Harvey Araton. The annoying part? Even though I was logged in (member bar at top right showed my username), I was not taken to the article, but rather the upsell page for TimesSelect (specific to the article). It wasn’t until I went to the Member Center, and logged in to check my Transaction History (yup, I’m a subscriber converted from News Tracker) and then returned to the home page and clicked again that I was able to read the article. If you pay money, that’s not a happy thing. I expect the folks at NYTimes.com will sort it out, unless it was a deliberate effort to make me re-login… in which case I should have gotten specific messaging recognizing that I was logged in and explaining the reason for the extra hurdle. This is all in Safari 1.3.1 on Mac OS X 10.3.9, in case that’s useful/pertinent.

I subscribe to a Times RSS feed for Tech; I depend on other people pointing to articles of interest for my other Times reading. That’s despite the fact that I deeply respect what the Times offers… but I have a print subscription to two newspapers, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Wall Street Journal. I can’t keep up, so I’ll drop the WSJ when it expires, even if I can continue to use airline miles to keep the papers coming. The Chronicle… well, it’s a quick skim: front page, comics, sports, with occasional reads of John King for architecture. But I digress…

The point? I wouldn’t pay for the TimesSelect content right now, so the question is whether the services are strong enough. Services include: extra access to the archives, early access to the Sunday Times articles, Times File for bookmarking/saving NYT articles (and beyond, smart), multimedia (too early to put that stuff behind the wall, but maybe too early/small an audience to sell anyway), News Tracker (email alerts). As an early customer, News Tracker doesn’t have a lot of benefit you can’t find from free services, though perhaps it’s more convenient. So, I’d have to guess that the archive access is the true value in the mix… just hasn’t proven to be a need for me personally so far.

Update: I started this post this morning, and finished it this evening. Today, the New York Times Company announced August 2005 results, which were not super. Separately, but also today, the company announced some layoffs, or, more accurately, provided details on its earlier warnings about staff reductions. The timing of the TimesSelect introduction cannot be coincidental — better to have something innovative (or at least new) to talk about.

In closing: I want the Times to succeed, both as a reader and as a member of the media, albeit on the business/product side. Intelligent, timely, accurate information and analysis has value, so experiments in finding a new balance point for media businesses strike at the heart of what I care about, personally and professionally. I don’t know how TimesSelect will fare, but it’s a step to watch, if not follow.

The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1941-1945 has a misleading title. The book has a semi-interesting tale to tell about the debate within the American corridors of power about what to do with Germany after the war was won. Roosevelt, clearly, is a central character in that debate, but Truman, in this telling, is peripheral. Despite the title, the author, Michael Beschloss, focuses on Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, who urged a punitive future for Germany.

What happened to the Morgenthau plan? Well, do the words “Marshall Plan” mean anything to you? Morgenthau’s arguments didn’t prevail, and Germany recovered from the devastation of losing the war and 40+ years of division between East and West to become the third-largest economy in the world, according to a Wall Street Journal article I read last week (even if things aren’t rosy on the economic front there now). I guess Morgenthau in the title wouldn’t have sold many books.

The writing is tolerable. However, Beschloss is so proud of his research that he overuses direct quotes, to the detriment of his narrative. The “you are there” style didn’t bring me anywhere close. In the preface, Beschloss notes that he started this book in 1992, and then put The Conquerors aside for several years to work on other projects. The author’s excitement about the additional historical archives made available due to the extra time didn’t pay off in a better history for this reader.

(Peter, thanks for the book all the same. It didn’t make any life lists, but I did learn some things, despite my overall disappointment.)

Rex suggests that I list my answers to seven things. These are thought-provoking (well, some of them are), but I’m not likely to devote the time to answering this fully, or honestly. The blog is a public forum, even when you’re writing for yourself. I like to be honest with myself and others, but not every line needs to be crossed publicly. Rex, thanks for thinking of me, but don’t hold your breath on this one. 😉

I haven’t played many group games recently, but telephone pictionary sounds simple, quick, and fun.

I’m learning a lot about marketing in recent months. I’m no longer believing that an idea will succeed (at least in part) simply because it’s a good idea. OK, naive to ever pretend such a reality exists, but don’t we all want good ideas to win out? Sure, but life isn’t fair. Never has been, never will be.

So I remind myself that part of getting a message across is saying the same thing many times to different people. (Actually, this works with the same people, too, because not everyone listens carefully each time.) Every time, listen to the response, not just with your ears. Watch how body language demonstrates acceptance or rejection. Adapt to what works, dismiss that what doesn’t. And don’t let the necessary repetition bore you, because it is necessary.

These vague, unkempt musings spring from last night’s event and a presentation this morning. Both went well, but were different for me.

The blogging/marketing panel last night brought out 60-70 people, smart folks who were eager to learn how they could apply lessons of blogs and social media to their businesses. What I learned is that my experience reading dozens of blogs for several years is uncommon and that some of the mental checklists I take for granted are not yet common. The idea that you must influence and cajole, rather than shout and control, is emerging, but not yet standard fare. I hope last night’s conversation helped reinforce the right ideas.

This morning, I shared my excitement about a project at work with several dozen people whose understanding of why I’m excited is critical to its success. The conversation is really just beginning, but I appreciated the time devoted to learning and listening. Now I need to repeat and expand upon those themes with many of the same people in smaller groups, again and again, so the excitement doesn’t diffuse to the point where it can be shared no further. Enthusiasm may be contagious, but everyone has an immune system all the same. I hope I ‘infected’ some of my colleagues this morning.

Tomorrow, Thursday, September 15, 2005, I’m moderating a panel at a meeting of the San Francisco chapter of the American Marketing Association: Blogging: Leveraging Blogs for Marketing, an Evolution of Journalism. A bit of a mouthful, but read the description and I think you’ll see why I’m interested and involved. Thanks to David Shimada for the invitation to participate.

The real fun, of course, starts with the panel, which includes:

• Dan Gillmor
• Bill Flitter
• Om Malik
• Brad Bowers
• Nathaniel Murdo of Ubisoft

This group is certain to have informed opinions about how marketing and the media landscape will continue to change… perhaps in sync, but more likely in fits and starts.

I know Bill and Brad, and have met Dan and Om ever-so-briefly at previous industry events. Looking forward to the discussion, and I’ll report back afterwards.

I’ve considered several questions and thoughts, but I also hope audience participation removes the need for my moderation. If you have any last-minute questions or thoughts, drop me a email at my initials @ this domain (see the copyright line on the website if you don’t know my middle initial).

frieNDA n.

1. An agreement between friends to “non-disclose” confidences without formal paperwork, such as an NDA.
2. A necessity in the Bay Area (and beyond).

Talking with a friend recently, I traded some information, after we assured each other that this wasn’t to be shared more widely. I said, “Yes, this is all under frieNDA.” To my surprise, he had never heard the term. I don’t remember where I first heard the term here in San Francisco, but it’s a favorite, and a reality. The signed piece of paper may have significance in some venues, but if you can’t be trusted to be discreet in the right places, you’re not going very far.

How many frieNDAs are you party to?

Few things more useful in the world of general knowledge than an accurate representation of the world: a globe. Of course, every map is out of date shortly after it’s printed, but the physical form of a globe certainly helps reinforce the reality, even if the labels and colors and lines move over time.

I only wish I had room for the world’s largest globe somewhere in my life. Or even the slightly smaller versions — you can buy one! (Check for the link to a 10-page PDF at the bottom right of that page.)

However, before you whip out the credit card, the smallest Eartha globe (6.25m) is 2 million euros worth of custom-built cartographic splendor. (Why priced in euros when Delorme is a Maine, USA, company?) Since Google is telling me that each euro is 1.241 dollars, the price tag only get higher.

In other words, probably cheaper to visit Yarmouth, Maine for your globe fix, no matter where in the world you live. I do find it ironic that Delorme doesn’t have a map on either their Visit Us page or their Directions to Delorme page. Sure, they have their lat and long at the bottom of every page, but are they really going to make me go look up the location in Google Maps??? No, the actual street address (Two Delorme Drive) is on their Contact Us page. So here is the Google Maps link, or satellite version, though not of high enough a resolution to even guess which building houses the Eartha.

For someone who sells mapping software to not provide a map to their own location… can I get a link in This is Broken? (Am I missing something?)

But I still love their globe.

Found this older post by Tim O’Reilly on Books That Have Shaped How I Think. Several quotes in there which resonate, especially:

Wilson also shaped my relationship to books. So many critics write about literature and philosophy as a dead thing, an artifact. Wilson writes about it as a conversation with another mind about what is true.

Blogs are only snippets of that conversation… still nothing like a book.

I’ve only read two of the books he cites, Dune and The Innovator’s Dilemma, so some ideas for the future, although not all are of interest. Poetry doesn’t reward my mental time invested, for example. I do think about other books; maybe I’ll compile the life list sometime.

If you’re into web development, check Anil Dash’s predictions for Web Development in 2006. I’m not playing with the sharp end of the programming stick, so I don’t have the skills required to jump in here. The list is compelling (even if I’d quibble about some of it, in my uninformed way) since I agree completely with the importance of UI.

Some of the overall areas of focus are integration (as always) and front-end technologies that have highly visible impacts on end user experience.

To me, Web 2.0 means technologies serving the experience, rather than vice versa. If that becomes the norm, everyone benefits.