Technology360

True/Slant, a different approach to online journalism

In last Thursday's (Apr. 6) Wall Street Journal, tech columnist Walt Mossberg reviewed the "alpha" release of True/Slant.  He writes:

... True/Slant is run by a former news executive at America Online who worked at a variety of publications, including The Wall Street Journal. It covers a wide range of topics, such as politics, culture, sports, business, health, science and food.  ¶  It is launching with 65 journalists, or “knowledge experts,” assigned to specific topics. Each of these contributors gets a page to house their journalism and, it is hoped, an active social network of followers who will regularly discuss the articles they read there. Each page also will feature headlines of stories elsewhere on the Web selected by the contributors. These “headline grabs” link back to the originating outside site.  ...

It's an ad-based business model, but approaches it in a new way that's worth watching.

Link:  D|All Things Digital.  --Dennis

Google and the news business

Nicholas Carr has a thoughtful essay on the impact of Google as "middleman" between content producers and content consumers, extracting trillions of tiny tolls in the process.  He takes a particular look at the impact of this on newspapers, writing:

... When a middleman controls a market, the supplier has no real choice but to work with the middleman - even if the middleman makes it impossible for the supplier to make money. Given the choice, most people will choose to die of a slow wasting disease rather than to have their head blown off with a bazooka. But that doesn't mean that dying of a slow wasting disease is pleasant. ...

He goes on to argue that the news business needs to massively reduce supply to consolidate traffic.

Link:  Rough Type.  Thanks to Clay Shirky via Twitter for the link.  --Dennis

Will Apple Kill Sirius XM?

I get a little tired of the blogger and columnist cliché that [insert disruptive technology here] will kill off [insert legacy technology here], but if you can get past that, Mike Elgan makes some excellent points about the superior "radioness" of the iPhone (I have one), especially with the many radio-centric or radio-like apps available in Apples app store.  He writes:

... One of the most popular (and fastest growing) application types on iPhones is Pandora and its ilk, including iheart radio, Public Radio and other streaming services. People are getting used to the idea of listening to exactly what they want to hear at any time on their phones. ...

On the other hand, satellite radio is primarily a vehicular listening activity and the iPhone is primarily a two-handed machine.  If you think talking on your cell phone is unsafe, try finding a channel on your iPhone app or restarting the stream when you need to.  But it's just a matter of time -- and not much time in the geological time of radio -- before IP radios are built into dashboards and designed for eyes-on-the-road one-handed adjustments.

Link:  PCWorld.  Thanks to Tom White for the link.  --Dennis

HD Radio Crying Out to Be Heard

Tech columnist David Pogue has a mostly favorable article about HD Radio in today's New York Times.  Can you pick out the errors?  --Dennis