NewsGadget

Will 3-D viewer eclipse iPad in a decade?

2010-04-06T09:27:00.000-07:00

Today’s news reports note that Apple sold 300,000 iPads in its first day of sales has received prominent headline play. True, one can’t ignore when Apple starlings gather in flocks outside stores. But another reason for the journalists’ focus on the story no doubt is the hope held by some that the iPad is a new delivery system to revive sagging newspaper circulation.
Oddly enough, there’s another technological event underway in my city which has been totally ignored by my hometown newspaper. Likely in your town, too. The Best Buy outlet is demonstrating 3-D televisions.
That raises the question: Will news editors 10 years from now be slapping their foreheads and saying “we missed the big story?” (Editors usually say I except when blame is to be distributed and democratically shared.)
At least three manufacturers are bringing out stereoscopic screens this year. Advertising for the products is already appearing on two-dimensional TV networks. Currently there’s not a lot of content available in three dimensions. A wikipedia page listing all the 3-D movies ever flies by in three scrolling clicks of a mouse. Cable networks, however, are experimenting with content. Sports is a first target and the New York Times has noted that golf is especially impressive in 3-D.
To view 3-D TV, one has to wear special glasses. The first manufacturers are using costly, electronic visors, which to resupply a family of four total nearly as much as regular TV. That is not to mention the big screen set itself runs about three to four times the price of a 2-D television.
No doubt there will be an evolution of cost. One way to get rid of the most expensive element is to lose the big screen. Since the viewer will be wearing glasses why not migrate the screen to the spectacles themselves? Video glasses already exist, so it is just a matter of a redesign for high-definition 3-D video.
Feed the glasses with signals delivered by WiFi or wireless, by cellphone - mobile TV and the video glasses become a personal media viewer to rival iPad. And become another method to deliver news text, audio, video and sports.
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Newspapers should sell a $99 iPad

2010-01-29T10:44:00.000-08:00

Apple Computer’s tablet device, the iPad, made its debut yesterday. Sleek, light and familiar, it looked like an oversized iPhone cradled in Steve Jobs’ hands. Indeed, some thought the glow from its backlight was like that in paintings of a new born saviour. Visions of redemption for the newspaper publishing industry fluttered like angels overhead. But outside walls of the Cupertino Church of Apple there was more silence to be heard than hallelujahs.

The arrival of a new-generation e-reader that can display color graphics, animation, crisp fonts and even movies, promises to shoulder aside its older brother, the morose, grey-bound Kindle of Amazon and like. But if promises all came true everyone would still be respected in the morning. Superior technology is no guarantee of financial success. Witness the victory by the cheaper VHS video recorder over the technically better, Beta. That iPad will become the “new book” is not assured, much less the revival of the newspaper industry in search of customers and a cheaper system to deliver to those customers. The decider will be the market place and Miss Market pays no attention to promises. Thus the silence and doubts.

Here’s a proposal that might give Miss Market a kickstart. The New York Times, or other newspapers, should offer the iPad for $99 with a three year electronic subscription. My financial scribblings on a napkin indicate it is plausible. It costs $150 to buy the seven-days-a-week NYT at the store for a period of three months. That is $1,800 for three years. Currently paper, ink and printing account for about 10 per cent of the industry’s expenses. Distribution costs about another 17 per cent. Eliminate that 27 percent in costs – you don’t need paper, ink, etc. for the electronic edition -- frees up about $486 or thereabouts.

Apple’s manufacturer’s suggested retail price for the basic iPad with WiFi is $499 and no doubt the price can come down to $486 with bulk sales., (likely would come down a lot more for a large wholesale purchase.) Thus the purchase price is covered and the $99 charge is gravy.

Of course many people purchase the Times through subscription rates which average about 50 per cent of the newsbox prices. In which case, revenue is $900 over three years and, the potential savings of an electronic edition is $243. In which case offer the iPad for $199, and negotiate a $450 wholesale purchase price, for a break-even point.

Charge more for the iPad with 3G wireless to reflect the greater value. Also consider an alliance of publishers offering a subscription package to generate a larger subsidy for the contracted purchase.

Virtual newspaper shouldn't be wordless

2009-12-08T09:59:00.000-08:00

I am rooting for e-readers here at the NewsGadget blog because they currently seem the most promising platform to replace newsprint in the delivery of the virtual newspaper. So it was with delight today that I read an online report by the New York Times of five major publishers joining forces in an attempt to revolutionize the delivery of magazines and newspapers. On the team are Conde Nast, Hearst Corporation, Meredith, News Corporation and Time Inc. Their goal is a system for electronic dissemination that can include a variety of receivers, such as cell phones, web displays and, perhaps, gadgets not yet on the market. One device that has potential, and noted in the Times report, is a next-generation e-reader recently unveiled by Time Inc. and the Wonderfactory. See a video demo of the test Sports Illustrated here. While most current e-readers have anaemic displays of blacks and greys and slow-as-molasses graphics at best, the Sports Illust. tablet has colour images, motion video, and touch screen navigation. Sometimes the pages whiz by in a manner akin to the scan-or-read system seen in Google’s fast flip. The tablet is gorgeous and I can’t wait to get my hands on one for a test drive.
But it falls short of the 3B test needed for a virtual newspaper. Judging from the video, the tablet appears to be about 9 by 4.5 inches. That is too big for a pocket and the electronics likely too delicate to tuck under the arm. In fact it will probably need a case to protect it when carried around. The touch screen navigation includes gestures such as flicking to move an object, or ‘scissors opening’ to expand a picture. But the video includes some two-handed movements (each index finger involved.) How, then, do you hold the tablet? Having a desk or stand nearby could be mandatory especially if you are one of those restless bipeds with a slippery lap.
The tablet has a wonderful workup of layout for displaying the copy. Colour images dissolve into motion. Slideshows come and go at a touch. Swimsuit models stretch, strut and saunter. However, I got my 13-year-old a subscription for the magazine’s wonderful prose on an English teacher’s suggestion that it is an excellent incentive to get adolescents to read. And here text appears to be a secondary consideration. It appears as a ribbon, little wider than a thumbnail, running down a page of photos in one shot; a block of monolithic type from frame to frame in another.
The S.I. prototype here is a multi-media jukebox, while a virtual newspaper should be more about reading than watching.

Addressing the newspaper business failure

2009-09-04T11:33:00.000-07:00

The local big box electronics and appliance store has stopped putting its weekly flyers in my daily newspaper. It hasn’t stopped putting the flyers in the paper as a whole, just the subscriptions being delivered to my neigborhood. It is known as ‘zoning’ in which decisions to advertise or not are made on demographic studies, largely measurements of disposable household income.
I live in an area which has become a rental district for undergraduate university students. The students are bad numbers, they don’t buy newspapers and they don’t have much disposable income. At first glance the decision seems sensible. But upon examination, I think it points to the flaw in the current newspaper business model – and maybe it suggests a solution.
As indicated in this blog, my hobby involves a lifelong interest in electronic devices and technical gadgets. Years ago I hooked a used teletype machine to a Radio Shack computer to become the printer I couldn’t afford. Three years ago I hooked a digital TV tuner to a computer screen to see what HDTV was all about.
I am the kind of customer that the big box store wants to read its flyers. I drop a considerable amount of money in the store on an annual basis. And because of my hobby I have become a kind of guru, advising friends who are less tech savvy on good buys. I am an influential shopper.
Yet the newspaper can’t deliver my eyes to the advertiser. That is the flaw of the business model; the demographics on which decisions are based are too broad.
Let me propose the concept of the “addressable” newspaper. If papers were delivered labelled with the name and address of the subscriber, just like first class mail, newspapers could begin to fine tune their customer data base to help advertisers find their targets.
Newspapers could also begin to publish customized packages for delivery adding enhanced sections according to the customer’s order. And they could expect the subscriber who asked for the enhanced packages to pay more for them.
For instance my order would be for regular news, extra financial section, extra science and health features, regular sports but extra on Sunday or Monday, regular lifestyle section. That is just five sections. But if you offered five choices of regular coverage or extended, that results in 32 “flavors” of the news package, and thus, consequentially, 32 reader profiles.
Google keeps track of the searching and surfing habits of millions of its users and uses that knowledge to help advertisers reach their prospective markets. But I doubt that advertisers need millions of profiles. Give them 32 profiles to sort through and they will be happy.
The technology to publish an addressed newspaper exists now. Newspapers already do makeovers, assemble targeted bundles, up-date sports scores and other news as the press runs. It just takes another piece of automation in the mailing room to package each subscriber’s order.
Let’s do it. If I get my electronics flyer, I’ll be happy and the big box store will be happy and the newspaper will get paid for it.

Resolved: Seeing big news with the iPod

2009-08-05T10:55:00.000-07:00

Could a virtual newspaper system be sitting on my desk and I didn’t realize it? As mentioned in the previous post, my iPod has become a ready news source. But, because of the small screen, the handheld doesn’t deliver the satisfying experience of scanning a broadsheet. If there was only some way to enlarge the image to newspage size while retaining the pod's portablility to take to the beach, bedroom and breakfast. Sigh.
A picoprojector (see Logic Wireless phone) is a possibility, but it needs a darkened room Another possibility is a set of video glasses and I haven’t explored that option for a while. Some research is in order. The iPod screen has a resolution of 480 pixels by 320. The pixel size of an analog television (now being phased out in the US) is 640 by 480.Thus the image on the iPod has all the detail of an analog television picture but the useable shape is turned sideways and the picture detail would be one-half the TV frame.
Currently I can easily view my newspapers in that letterbox profile on the iPod but the 3.5 inch (diagonal) means the pixels are packed close together, 163 pixels per inch (ppi). Since the lowest resolution recommended for photos on the web is 75 ppi and if we use that as the low mark, then the iPod image is medium definition at best.
The question is that enough detail when “blown up” for the larger screen? My Internet research turned up a number of video display products but the specifications of Myvu’s “personal media viewers” are useful. The “Shades” model, about $100 US, has a resolution of 320 by 240 pixels or the equivalent of viewing a 24 inch screen at six feet. I have a computer screen that big and at the suggested distance I can read headlines but not text.
The “Crystal” model, about $300, has the resolution of 640 by 480, or the equivalent of viewing a 32 inch screen at six feet. I have a HD television that size and I can read text but not easily. Mvvu says frankly Crystal’s resolution “is generally not high enough….where reading fine text is a requirement.”
I haven’t tried the viewer, hesitant to spend the $300, but I think the ability to zoom in on text using the iPod pinch and expand touch-screen techniques would overcome that drawback. On the other hand, when one zooms in, one loses the ability to scan the entire page, which is the unique experience of a newspaper.
Another drawback is that most viewers have a 4:3 viewing ratio. That is the standard analog TV screen ratio of 4 wide to three deep. But, keep in mind, that the iPod screen is a turned-on-its-side version of that or 3:2 ratio. So there will be some unused space when the image is transferred to viewer.
There are e-spectacles out there with a 16:9 ratio of the new digital televisions. The letterbox look is closer to the iPod screen shape. But, be careful, despite product claims of "high definition" I had difficulty finding viewers with a higher than 640 by 480 resolution. Check specifications closely.
Can the iPod be partnered with video glasses to become a virtual newspaper? Yes but with drawbacks.

Handheld more news compass than map

2009-07-23T08:29:00.000-07:00

My iPod is set up as a news machine. It is loaded with links to national, metropolitan, and local feeds. There are sport and stock wires on tap. And I especially like consulting the realtime weather radar on the 3.5 inch screen when it is suppertime. Around here there often is the threat of a surprise rain just when it is time to light the barbeque.
Recently I spent two weeks out of town and, because of circumstances of where I stayed, the iPod was my sole connection to current events. The link to my hometown newspaper got heavy use, something that doesn’t happen at home because the actual morning edition is always available. For a news junkie like me the iPod edition was a godsend. I would spend 20 minutes over my morning toast keeping in touch. I would visit several more times during the day.
I felt well-informed while away and, so, it became a surprise when I returned home and a neighbor turned over the stack of my unread newspapers. I thought I would just flip through a recent few pages but I soon began reading them in depth.
The next day as I cleared the finished stack away, I wondered what happened here? Normally I would give a day-old newspaper a quick one-minute glance at most. Since the stories were identical to what I previously read on the iPod there must be something additional that a newspage delivers that a handheld can’t.
I have two quick observations. One is the impact of the guiding hand of an editor is at work on a paper page. The size, location and graphics of a story send additional information about the importance of the reported events and puts them in context with other events. It helps us find order in a chaotic world. A small screen can’t provide this extra dimension of communication. The medium truly becomes part of the message.
The other observation is that I changed my reading habits. With a newspaper I scan almost all the stories, taking clues from the headline and lead as well as placement, and venture deeper into some stories while abandoning others after the first 30 words. But with the handheld, every story seems to have the same significance. I scanned more and read in depth less. It also seemed tedious to get the news although, since the time I spend with either medium was the same, I suspect that is subjective. Perhaps the newspaper was just more absorbing for the reasons given.
When travelling through news reports it appears the iPod is a compass while the newspaper is a map. The compass just tells you where north is. The map gives a location and perspective; you know where you are.
Now it would be nice if there were a delivery system that gave the spatially-embedded information of a large layout with the ease of navigation as with the touch features on a handheld. In fact here`s an interactive projector that might be able to do just that. It provides bedsheet-size images with hand gestures for selection. Alas no one is packaging a newspage on it yet.
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Plastic Logic holds promise

2009-04-06T08:08:00.000-07:00

Detroit’s two daily newspapers have just entered the second week of a daring business model which includes ending home delivery for up to five days a week and a campaign to switch subscribers over to electronic versions available on the Web. As a long time reader of the Sunday Detroit Free Press I was pleased with the surviving newsprint version I got at the corner store yesterday. It has the requisite new look that every marketing re-launch demands but enough of the old face remains that I recognize my good friend.
One new characteristic is the pages have been prominently labeled for content and a generous mix of briefs and medium length stories fitted to the topic. My subjective feeling was there was more to read, and indeed, I put sections aside to return to later in the day. That is something I haven’t done in recent months with the Freep. So by heft and content the Sunday edition seemed “meatier.” One disappointment was how thin the special advertising sections, such as for real estate and cars, remained. We know the economy is in the dumpster but you would think corporations might have been convinced to splurge at least for the first Sunday package out from the starter’s gun.
But what I really am waiting for hasn’t even made a presence in the Motor City yet. The Freep and the Detroit News both have enhanced digital offerings which can be read at the computer or on e-readers. One of the proposed readers is Amazon’s book-sized Kindle 2, but the tantalizing second reader only exists in demo form so far. It is a clipboard shaped unit made by Plastic Logic, a spinoff company of a Cambridge University laboratory. The yet unnamed e-reader is a letter-sized 8.5 inches by 11 inches, about a quarter-inch thick and weighs in at 16 ounces. Navigation is by touching the screen, a method which has become natural to me since getting an iPod Touch as a Christmas gift. Plastic Logic’s baby has enough real estate, see it here, to give a sense of holding a newspage in the hand. In fact Sunday’s actual newsprint page is 21 by 12 inches and the printed portion an inch shorter in either direction. So the new reader is close to 40 per cent the size of a broadsheet. That’s a good-sized window for the news and promised later this year.

Virtual Newspaper Update

2009-03-16T09:49:00.000-07:00

Ah, the world laughed when NewsGadget proposed a virtual newspaper that could appear as an image at arms length before the reader. That was a year ago.
The proposal suggested using a small projector that would hang from a chain around the neck. Content would arrive from the web and load wirelessly into the unit.
Unlike the current generation of internet news platforms squeezed into computer screens or six-word summaries on mobile devices, the virtual pages would resemble the traditional layouts of broadsheet newspapers.
That means the virtual newspaper could be read in the easy and familiar way printed pages are read today. The full-size layout permits the traditional habits of browsing; scanning some stories, selecting others for an in-depth read.
The readers would navigate through the mirage pages by hand movements in the air; a flick here, a finger slide there. They can go where their curiosity takes them, not forced through a menu of links elaborated with only snippets of information.
See the original proposal made in February of 2008 below.
Now one year later, NewsGadget is delighted to learn of the SixthSense project at the MIT Media Lab.
"The SixthSense prototype is comprised of a pocket projector, a mirror and a camera. The hardware components are coupled in a pendant like mobile wearable device. Both the projector and the camera are connected to the mobile computing device in the user’s pocket. The projector projects visual information enabling surfaces, walls and physical objects around us to be used as interfaces; while the camera recognizes and tracks user's hand gestures and physical objects using computer-vision based techniques." say the developers.
The developers suggest a varity of uses for the system and one of the demonstrated is a supplement to the newspaper. A reader holds a regular newspaper and it becomes a screen as a multimedia, background story adds itself to the printed main feature.
But, if the projection system can be used to supply additional news, why not project the newspaper itself, I submit. The system certainly is affordable. The SixthSense project puts a price of $350 on the hardware.
Visit researcher Prana Mistry's site here for more details. Be sure to check out the demonstration video.

Of bare arms and naked porches

2008-08-04T10:43:00.000-07:00

The clock was stopped in my classroom and I had forgot my watch. I needed to track time for my lesson and I looked over the 30 students with plans to borrow one of their watches. To my surprise the first dozen or so within my glance had naked wrists. “Does anybody know the time?” I asked. The answer was almost unanimous:“1:28” the students said after glancing as one at their mobile phones. I soon realized students no longer wear watches, carry calculators, or keep “little, black books” of addresses. The cellphone has taken over. In fact some think the smart phone is becoming the ultimate personal tool with swiss-knife utility. A fusion of communicator, mailbox, jukebox, videobox, wireless web terminal, GPS and PDA. It is also a base for delivering the news as Google News and its ilk demonstrate. But can it replace newspapers, making front porches as bare as my pupils’ wrists? The New York Times this past week speculates in a blog whether the cellphone can save local newspapers. Prompting the question is the success of Verve Wireless, an electronic publishing system to package news for delivery to smart phones. One of Verve’s biggest customers (and an investor) is the Associated Press or AP, a cooperative with deep newspaper roots. Since May, some 728 of AP’s 1,700 member newspapers have signed into the Verve mobile network. Unlike Google News which just accumulates and links to the reports of others, these are the people who gather the news, own the content, and are both grassroots and nationwide. The system can deliver news from your neighborhood and even select localized ads, providing new revenues for the papers. Editorial selection is significant and one old saw in the business is “content is king.” Personally, I don’t know if I want to read news that fits in the palm of my hand. I think I would prefer the broadsheet experience, something that maybe the e-paper (see next item below) or a picoprojector coupled to a smart phone could do. But then, I still wear a watch

Esquire does an Edison

2008-08-04T08:04:00.000-07:00

My Fedora with the Press card in the hatband is off to the lucky 100,000 Americans who will get the first mass-market magazine with an electronic display cover. Esquire will usher in its 75th anniversary celebration with an October issue that can animate the headlines, change words and flash images on and off. It might even blow a kiss goodbye to paper. The septuagenarian publication with an ageless glint-in-the-eye demeanor has contracted with E-Ink, the folks behind Amazon’s Kindle reader, for the magazine’s salute to the 21st century. The cover will be flexible, the images limited to four levels of grey and the coin battery good for 90 days. Color will be accomplished by tinted overlays on the images. Ford Motor Co, with its own e-paper ad on the flipside featuring its Flex Crossover is paying much of the freight for the innovation. The magazine goes on sale in selected bookstores and newsstands in September. Another 650,000 with old-fashion paper covers will be mailed to subscribers and others.

Police radio scanners overlooked news tool

2008-06-22T10:53:00.000-07:00

Two adults survived but with burns when a light plane crashed and burst into flame about six blocks from my home at noon today. The plane took out a hydro feeder line, downing live wires, and skidded into a railyard bringing train traffic to a halt. I never left my lunch at the kitchen table and had the basic facts to relay to a colleague when he phoned in the midst of the excitement.
My name is Dio Clese and I am addicted to monitoring emergency radio. Forty-three years ago, I walked into the newsroom as a rookie and was assigned a desk below the wall-mounted police radio. It emits constant background chatter and most reporters move away as soon as possible, thus the free desk. But I became hooked and a police scanner and I have been together ever since. I think what got me was the ’67 riot and listening to the police calling out targets for the national guard snipers. Or maybe it was the plane hijacking and when the gunman told the tower he was taking “this moth___cker to Cuba!”
I brought the habit home and now, in our retirement, my wife turns on the Bearcat BC895XLT trunk scanner at breakfast. It sits on the fireplace mantle and rattles quietly away like alien elevator music until after the 11 p.m. news when the wife puts the cat in the basement for the night and turns the radio off. There’s a palm-sized BC246T scanner in my upstairs office to turn on if out of earshot the living room monitor. But we don’t really “hear” the scanner. It becomes background noise and only when the tone changes to urgency does the broadcast return to our consciousness. It’s like when the baby’s cry changes and mother knows something is wrong.
My radio habit started in vacuum tube days, progressed through Heathkit monitors I built, to solid-state, computer controlled systems of today.
But what puzzles me is how the basic emergency band scanner has disappeared as a standard tool in a reporter’s arsenal. For instance, on her blog, multi-media whiz Mindy McAdams, Professor and Knight Chair for Journalism at the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications, invited new media scribes to show what they have in their “Mobile Journalism Kit.” The responses show cellphones, laptops, digital camera, video recorder, and voice recorders. Darned if I see a police scanner.
(McAdams is also author of Flash Journalism – How to Create Multimedia News Packages and which I am pleased to recommend here. Update Jan., 2010. McAdams says Flash has revised to the point that her book is out of date. She doesn't plan to update it but she has suggestions for a subtitute. Details here.)

Brace yourself for the newsreel

2008-05-20T08:22:00.000-07:00

A store here has begun selling miBook which apparently, according to my Google search, used to include an electronic reader not unlike Amazon’s Kindle. Except the current package is only content – how-to-do-it articles – on a memory card and no reader unit. The concept is that the buyer slips the card into her home digital photo frame and the text, sound, images and video clips begin to play. It is a marketing strategy based on the fact digital screens are becoming universal. They seem everywhere from photo albums on key chains to TV crime episodes where the investigators flash iPhones instead of badges to show mugshots to witnesses.
The migration of news and other content to handheld screens makes 24-hour information manageable on the human scale. When we want the latest NBA playoff score we have it at our fingertips. When we are exhausted by the tragedy of the earthquake in China we can slip it back in our pocket. But what if current events streamed into our awareness in a big picture? As in 80 feet big.
Imax Corporation, the entertainment company associated with the stadium-sized film presentations in commercial theatres and museums, has announced a strategy to cross over to digital productions. While its exclusive big-picture digital projectors remained in final stages of development, the company announced in its April 28/08 report to shareholders it hopes the system will be available for production and sale by the middle of this year.
Digital not only eliminates the costs of film prints, which ranges from $22,500 to $45,000 but it allows faster turn around to get more three or four more titles into a theatre per year. Digital transmission also accommodates programming of live events such as sporting and concerts, the company stated in its annual 10-K.

Can the stars help the photo desk?

2008-05-01T08:46:00.000-07:00

In a new development in amateur astronomy, sky watchers are adding webcams to their backyard telescopes. At first that seems counter-intuitive. The turbulence in the atmosphere often makes a planet look like a greasy thumbprint. The night sky is best viewed by eye when the watcher can hope for a break in the shimmering or to build a picture, patiently sketching features. So why the popularity of webcams most of which have poorer resolution than an eye and other drawbacks? The answer is software. Image-processing known as “shift and add” will take hundred or thousands of blurry frames to calculate the correct location for errant pixels and sharpen the image. A webcam running three minutes at 30 frames/second will produce 5,400 frames to feed into the process. The before and after pictures are remarkable.
Also driving the webcam popularity with amateur astronomers is that one of the software developers, Cor Berrevoets of the Netherlands, has made his program RegiStax available for free download on the internet. Version 4, the latest, had 45,000 downloads in November and December.
The photodesk might find some uses for this type of image processing. One instance that comes to mind is when a passerby’s cellphone video is the only record of a major breaking news event. Stills off the video often look like they’ve been shot though a gauzy curtain or lit by a dying candle. Scenes from the evacuation of the London tube come to mind. There are also those police handouts of a wanted suspect. The grainy frame pulled off the security camera video always looks like Uncle Mac after his sixth beer.
Here’s the site for the Registax download. The program has a challenging learning curve but a number of tutorials can be found on the web.

A smart pen to note

2008-04-29T07:35:00.000-07:00

I've covered more government meetings than I like to remember. The most painful were budget debate meetings that lasted up to seven hours at a stretch. Not only was my butt aching by the end of the day's session, I thought my hand would never open from all the note-taking. I tried easing the job with voice-recording equipment but unless one is constantly jotting down bookmarks, finding a desired quote was too time-consuming. Every 15 minutes of recording takes about 30 minutes to transcribe.
Nothing was as efficient as pen to paper.
I am intrigued by this new smart pen, the "Pulse," offered by LiveScribe. The user can scrawl notes on paper and the pen interprets the handwriting and records the text electronically. The text can be downloaded to a computer and filed, searched and managed as with regular word processing tools. That alone is a time-saving improvement over paper notes. But, the pen also can record the conversation going on in the room. Later the reporter can point the pen at a spot in his paper notes or on the computer screen and hear what was recorded at that time.
The pen is said to be thinner than other computers-in-a-pen system and thus easier to write with. It uses special graph paper as notepaper -- that is what helps the pen track the cursive script -- but users can download the graph pattern to print their own.
What I think is really neat is the audio pickup. Earphone buds come with the pen to listen to playback and each bud has a small microphone on the outer side. That permits the pen to record in stereo and, as anyone who ever has been in a bar at happy hour knows, it is stereo that permits us to focus on one coversation in a noisy room.
There are video demonstrations at the LiveScribe site but a journalist for Popular Science gave the pen a test drive for the May edition (Steve Morgentstern, page 24). The magazine has a report online. The basic pen, with a gig of memory, good for a mind-numbing 100 hours of recording costs about $150.

Virtual Newspaper here soon

2008-02-12T07:51:00.000-08:00

Here's the scene. Paul settles into his favourite living room chair for a leisurely read of The Sunday Globe. He picks up a brass-colored object, not much bigger than a bar of hotel soap and clips it to a fine gold chain around his neck. He pulls a silvery-threaded handkerchief from his pocket and unfolds until he can hold it open between his spread hands. Once settled into a comfortable position, he nods his head once. The rocking motion brings the pendant hanging from the chain alive. A bright image of the Globe's front page appears on the handkerchief. It is a full-size broadsheet which can't be all accommodated on the hand held screen. But sliding his hands slightly left or right, up or down, sets the image into a slow scroll to the desired edge of the page. Navigation to follow stories or to turn to another page is accomplished by a combination of hand movement, sliding a menu into view, and selecting with head nods.
The scene may be from the future but not the distant future. The hardware to create the virtual newspaper is on the shelf now. Texas Instruments has produced a digital light processor (DLP) project the size of a matchbook. The Pico projector, seen here in a TI demonstration posted on YouTube, can fit into handheld devices such as a cell phone or MP3 player. Texas Instrument is not the only developer of micro projectors. 3M has a 1.3 cm LED projector in the works, while a firm Microvision, has a unit said to have higher definition than its current competitors.
Couple the miniprojector with a wireless text unit such as Amazon's Kindle in the post below and you have the basic newspaper pendant which can be projected on the nearest reflective surface. The "paper" in newspaper can be replaced by the breakfast tablecloth, a handkerchief, clipboard, bedroom ceiling or the back of the train seat in front of you.

News in the hand, Amazon-fashion

2008-02-11T07:37:00.000-08:00

There have been several promising developments in the last six months that bring the paperless newspaper closer to reality. Check out the Kindle reader sponsored by Amazon.com. The size of a hard-cover text, this wireless device can be loaded with book-length content in a matter of seconds. Amazon has contracted with authors and publishers for an expanding collection of reading material including daily newspapers. Publications such as The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post are available at subscription rates less than $10 a month. The New York Times for slightly more.
The wireless delivery system is not dependent on the availability of WiFi hotspots or WiMax because it uses a common cellphone system. But the subscriber doesn't have to worry about running up mobile minutes, because the delivery cost is included in the base price. Amazon says a novel can be uploaded to the reader in about one minute.
Battery-life is said to be long enough for a week of reading once the wireless connection is powered down. A recharge takes two hours.
Amazon currently has 100,000 titles that can be transferred to the reader and the unit can store up to 200. A small library can be tucked into the 10-ounce unit. Amazon will even arrange to have personal documents converted for storage and reading on the unit.
As of this writing Amazon is having trouble keeping up with the demand for the $400 unit but is taking orders with a promise to ship on a first come, first served basis. Sale and delivery is limited to the US.

The Subscriber Dump

2007-07-16T10:44:00.000-07:00

After an association of 15 years, my national newspaper is dumping me. The owners have turned up their noses deciding I don't live in a neighborhood they would chose to live in. Therefore, I must leave their company of accepted customers.
I get two newspapers, my local newspaper and a national paper owned by the same chain. My subscription to the national paper goes back to 80s when I was worried about not having a pension and began investing privately. I wanted better financial news.
I guess I should have spend more time evaluating my circumstances. I live on the edge of a university campus in a neighborhood that once housed many of the faculty. But as the faculty retired -- or moved to the suburbs -- their old homes became student rentals.
Real estate investors can make a good buck on the leveraged purchases. The annual rent alone can be two to three times the amount of the downpayment to buy the house. The mortage payments and operating costs are easily covered and in five years or less, the house can be sold for a profit double or triple the initial downpayment. Since there is not enough student housing on campus the rentals are always in demand.
Eventually the census takers worked the neighborhood. When the figures were published, the average income for the district no longer reflected a professor's pay but a student's pay. They get paid? Students can't even afford newspapers! So not only does the national newspaper have a nearly non-existent circulation in the district, the average income is not the kind that advertisers are looking for. The marketing folk call it a bad demographic.
My "Dear Subscriber" letter from the v.p. of reader sales says July 28 will bring the last newspaper. I can look at the Internet newspaper for free if I like, but no paper version to spread across the breakfast table.
Of course, I always could have looked at the Internet edition. In fact I tried several times. Its organization of financial news is unreadable. It was the coherent paper one I paid $180 a year for.
The national paper is having circulation (read profit) woes. Maybe it should try a new subscription drive slogan. "The newspaper money can't buy."

News -- Young people don't give a damn

2007-07-16T09:41:00.000-07:00

A survey comparing the interest of teenagers, young adults and older adults in daily news suggests the demand for news will continue to shrink.
While there are more sources of news available now, including 24-hour broadcasts and Internet , the multiple media choices "also make it possible for citizens to avoid the news at ease", said the report from the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.
The study, funded by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, looked at how the three age groups consume news. After growing for 150 years, the demand for news began to decline noticeably in the 1980s with the rise of cable television.
When parents watched the evening news, their children were freed to watch entertainment in another room on another set. The consumption of news apparently is an acquired habit.
Despite hopes that the Internet may bring a revival of an appetite for news, the online medium is a solitary experience letting individuals to continue to follow their own interests.
"Our finding suggests that some surveys have overestimated either the amount of news young adults consume or the capacity of non-traditional media to take up the slack from young people's flight from traditional news media," the report said.
One intriguing finding -- although young people claim to like the Internet for their source of news, the study of their behaviour shows their main source remains television news.
And late night satirical programs such as The Daily Show with mock news have a hard-core following but it is a relatively small audience when compared to all who seek news.

Sherpa Wanted

2007-06-21T10:09:00.000-07:00

My first beat job was part paratrooper and part vampire. I'd draw the general assignments for events occuring between 6 p.m. and 1 a.m. which would be anything the regular beat reporters didn't cover. As well, the task included the police beat with regular phone checks on the hour to the cop shop. Invariably on weekends there would be a traffic fatality after midnights with an ugly scene of bodies and blood. The night shift cops, idle paramedics waiting for the coroner and the night photographer with whom I rode shotgun developed a ghoulish sense of comradery. Thus the vampire quotient. As for paratrooper -- well, the night assignments could bring anything. One evening it is a school board awards presentation. The next night it's violence on a picket line dodging stones that drunken strikers lobbed at the scabs and then in the direction of the car marked all too prominently as "press." It might as well said "kick me."

I carried a set of tools for the job: A wad of folded cheap typewriter paper for notes. (It was a couple of years until the beancounters put spiral notebooks in the editorial budget.) Then two pencils and a pocket sharpener. (Ballpoint pens tend to go dry at the most inopportune times. Plus they freeze in the winter.) And finally a pocket of quarters for the nearest pay phone to call the office and the police checks. Since I often worked in tandem with a photographer, I didn't carry a camera. A few of the reporters in the office were rated "two-way men" , were assigned cameras, and got extra pay for the responsibility. As the new kid I was at the bottom of the payroll.

My equipment -- paper, pencils and coins -- I stored in two pockets.

Since I now have an interest in multi-media reporting, the list alone of recommended equipment for convergence would fill my two pockets.

The European association of newspaper and media publishers, IFRA, has coined the term "NewsGear" for the tool kit. The 2006 list includes:

Smart phone with still and video image camera

Mini digital video camera

Laptop and/or tablet computer

Pen input (which can keep track of 40 pages of notes)

Monochrome document scanner

Digital voice recorder of broadcast quality

High resolution digital camera with WiFi connection built-in

Multimedia storage device (MP3 etc.)

Backpack for all the above.

I would recommend a full media jacket and a sherpa to carry the spare batteries. Oh, and maybe a pencil.

-30-

Gadget lovers can check out previous shopping lists and the newsroom of the future, the IFRA newsplex, one of which is at the University of Southern Carolina.

Venture in Broadcasting

2007-06-19T11:19:00.000-07:00

The object at right is a television transmitter called a TV Genie. It is about the size of a pack of smokes and the antenna is about six inches long. About 20 years ago, one could by them at K-Mart. It was meant for sending a VCR movie from one room to your television set in another, such as the bedroom. The signal was on Channel 14 of the UHF band and, if there was no commercial broadcaster on that frequency, the signal could be picked up for a couple of hundred feet, at best.
We are early adaptors in my family; thus the "gadget" in the name of this blog. My brother bought this one for me as a gift and one for himself. But my brother was the first to venture into the area of what now might be called the public media.
He had a summer cottage by the lake and he was one of the first to install a C-band satellite receiver. That is one of those systems you used to see with the 12-foot dishes. Local, over the air, regular TV reception was limited to one channel and the programming was meagre at best. With the satellite he could get network and cable feeds. It was industrial stuff meant for broadcasters, cueing up newscasters, but complete shows, etc. not the consumer, encrypted, satellite systems of today. In short, the system could get everything and for free and was fascinating to watch compared to the local fare.
This was true cottage land where he stayed. Lake, beach, sand and no stores save a general store. While all the family was there on the weekend, most working folk would return to the city for their jobs on weekdays. But mothers and their kids would stay behind to enjoy the sunny summer life. My brother got an idea. He plugged the TV Genie into the satellite video feed to let the neighbours share his wealth of TV entertainment. Soon he learned he had a small audience about the size of a couple of city blocks. Most of the cottages had outside antennas on rotors and the word got out about his system. He noted the rotors pointed at his cottage.
Aware of the many children in the area, he was careful when he left the cottage for the work week to set up the TV Genie with suitable children's programming. Nickelodeon was a popular choice.
He didn't realize his impact on the summer life until one weekend when he and the wife returned, many of the neighborhood mothers dropped by for a friendly greeting and token welcome-back gifts.
About 24 hours passed before he figured out his popularity.
Most of that week it rained.
Most of that week the kids were stuck in the cottage with their mothers.
He had forgot to turn on the TV Genie when he had left.
The mothers didn't want that to happen again.

Stories Count

2007-06-19T06:54:00.000-07:00

My first reporting job involved an evening beat and I would arrive in the office just as the "late sports" editor was finishing up the task of remaking the front page with the closing stock prices and the race track lineup. This last edition of the day, called "the pink" for the salmon colour front page would be sold only in streetboxes to people just leaving work.
One day, as Joe the l.s. editor and I had coffee, he told me with some glee that , despite a struggle with an unusually news-dry day, he was able to squeeze 14 stories on the broadsheet.
Fourteen stories. My journalism training had included rudimentary layout and page design but the simple idea of counting stories was new to me. Eighty years ago there were up to 21 stories on the page. In my career, I've seen the front page count drop from 14 to 11, then nine, and now seven, although a few newspapers are set at five.
Some designers, including Mario Garcia, breaking the myth of story counts, say the page makeup should not be ruled by an arbitrary number. While more is preferred than less, the visual impact and flow should be the controlling factor. Even so, a glance at newspaper makeovers, suggests the count is going down. Airy, easy on the eyes, poster-like pages are in.
But are pretty pages pennywise? One of my publishers insisted that his daily newspapers have a minimum of 28 pages even during an economic downtime when there wasn't the advertising to support a 40 per cent newshole. He argued the readers would stop buying a thin paper on the grounds they weren't getting their money's worth. The last thing he wanted was a falling circulation on top of slipping ad revenues.
I still count stories, including news outlet web pages. Counting stories requires some arbitrary ground rules. A thumbnail head and shoulders is part of a story and not counted separately. A three column feature picture with stand alone cutlines is one. A box of mutliple newsbriefs is one. Do you count a skybox index or a cellar ad? (I don't.) Make your own rules but be consistent.
Interestingly, I've concluded that most newspaper webpages have seven to nine news items per screen, that is before scrolling down. I wonder what Joe would do for the late sports.

All the news that fits

2007-06-17T12:33:00.000-07:00

In my part of the land, there are TV commercials running for Apple's new Iphone sponsored by AT&T (formerly Cingular.) In one of them, a users pulls up what looks like the front page of the New York Times. With a couple of finger passes over the touch screen, the user slides across the front page, selects a story and enlarges it for reading.
Wow, great! This looks like a possible entry for the long sought after paperless-newspaper. (see entry below). Maybe I'll be a potential buyer for the expensive Iphone, afterall.
Then it occurs to me. I am watching this demonstration of the handheld phone and mini-newspaper page on my 40-inch TV screen.
Just like my passenger side car mirror.
Objects in this screen may appear larger than in real life.

Reporters: respected everywhere but at work

2007-06-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

I've been reading while recovering from minor surgery and this description of the newsroom and reporters seemed worthy of note enough to drag me to the keyboard.
"No one needs more TLC, or loves to complain more, than reporters. They moan when they don't make page one, when their copy is altered or cut, when they don't like an assigment, when a colleague gets a better one, or when they believe they are being lied to. To those outside the paper, they are kings, makers or breakers of reputations. Governors and mayors and White House staffers break appointments to bend a reporter's ear. Inside the paper most are grunts, the ground troops editors send to cover stories. Editors are brusque with them and reporters get to speak to the executive editor as often as a White House correspondent for the Tuscaloosa News speaks for the president. The disparity between a reporter's reception outside and inside the paper helps fuel the anxiety found in any newsroom. Couple this with unforgiving deadlines, and newsrooms can be pretty grim. Sure there are lots of laughs, pranks, shared memories and affairs. But as a general rule, newsrooms are wary precincts."
Ken Auletta, "Backstory: Inside the Business of News" Penguin Press, New York, 2003

Thomson Rules

2007-05-16T10:05:00.000-07:00

Today's news of Thomson Corp.'s purchase of Reuters for $17.2 billion brings to mind how the company came to master the media business in the first place. Founder Roy Thomson was a salesman who bought a radio station so he could sell more radios to his would-be customers living in an area far from regular broadcasts. When he acquired his second station in an nearby town, the building also housed a dormant newspaper which Thomson realized could help sell more advertising. He took it over.
Knowing little about the newspaper business, Thomson hit upon a strategy to get up to speed.
"He drew a hundred dimes from the bank, looked up the names of a hundred cities in America that were approximately the same size as Timmins ( then 15,000 pop.) and sent a dime to every newspaper office in each town asking the publisher to mail him back a copy of his journal," wrote Russell Braddon is his fascinating biography "Roy Thomson of Fleet Street."
Then equipped with a ruler, he spread the papers over the floor of his room and "went about the systematic task of measuring, analysing and charting -- most particularly charting -- all the conclusions about the make-up and earning power of small rural newspapers.
"From that moment onwards, his researches completed, Thomson the publisher knew exactly the proportion he wanted in his newspaper of classified and display advertising, of editorial comment and news and illustration."
Anyone wanting to follow in the late lord's foosteps will have to pay more than a dime for each of the 100 newspapers but you can get a printer's ruler measuring inches, pica and agate for about $10.

Cheap Connections

2007-05-15T07:09:00.000-07:00

All major TV networks are in my area but two of the local stations focus on the news of my neighborhood. One station, call it Alpha, has a costly Electronic News Gathering truck (ENG) with microwave feed back to the station. The other station, Beta, has no truck. In fact it once gave up its fixed satellite uplink to airfreight any weekend story with national interest to the network base 400 miles away. Right, they would take the VCR tape to the airport and put it on the next regularly scheduled passenger flight. Beta was also one of the first stations to drop camera and reporter news duos for the one person video journalist. The studio is automated with three robot cameras facing the anchor and one operator in the control room who has a zillion switches and just four limbs. Beta gives immediacy to its newscasts by having every correspondent file "live" from the station's front lawn. The impression of "on-location" is enhanced by repositioning the reporters and pointing the camera in a different compass direction with each story. The backgrounds change.
Financial desperation spurs creativity. There is a recent report from California of a station cutting its ENG costs by using Slingboxes which any consumer can find at Best Buy for less than two $Cs. Meant to enable the home viewer to watch TV on a laptop, the Slingbox hooks up to any TV input -- cable, antenna, dvd, handycam, -- and outputs it in Internet format. The source can be viewed anywhere on the home network, or in the world, via Inernet connection. The California station spokesman says a ENG truck costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and about $8 a minute for just the transmission. The $200 Slingbox, employing a highspeed-internet cellphone-like card for the connection to base, costs about $60 a month for transmission.
I am sure there will be local interest. You can beta on it.

Praising Acrobat

2007-05-14T11:49:00.000-07:00

My local newspaper, owned by a national chain, has finally embraced the web without hesitation. After several stilted versions, the paper is online in a surreal format. It retains the format of print with the hypertext freedom to click and read.
Instead of pages redesigned for the small screen web page, the newspaper page appears in whole, although mini. It is big enough to read the heads and larger type. Click on a story and the report zooms to the screen for reading, while the minipage appears to one side for context.
The reader, or is it viewer, can scan and choose stories as if a broadsheet was spread before him or her. Added features include translation of the English copy and a mechanical voiced-reader who will drone through story after story.
What I find interesting is that most newspapers can duplicate this production with a piece of software already in the house. Acrobat converts pages to portable document format (pds) which means, in part, they can be read on any computer of any ilk. PDFs compress into a smaller file to take up less bandwith in transmission. They are ideal for posting content on the web or taking to a printer.
Often overlooked is the fact that Acrobat permits the addition of multimedia to the printed page. Printed web links can be made into working urls, stories can automatically jump to the turns at a reader's click, movies can be imbedded into still pictures, sound effects can be added.
For three years I worked with a group that produced a printed tabloid using the desktop publisher Quark and photo editor Photoshop. The finished pages were then converted to pdf with Acrobat (5). The crew brought stories with web links alive by activating the links. The still photos on the page were actually the first frame of Quick Time movies that launched when selected by the reader. We experimented with sound. One story about a historical war re-enactment includes the sound of musket fire and shouted commands when the reader selected the printed story. In another story, there was an audio sidebar to enhance quotes in a breakout box. We could make sidebar text boxes and explanatory graphics pop-up on mouse roll overs.
Acrobat. who knew?

Paperless Newspaper

2007-05-13T11:04:00.000-07:00

Newspapers are searching for a new delivery method. The cost of newsprint and the labour to drop the package at the doorstep has major impact on the bottom line. Price-sensitive subscribers and advertisers are turning to other sources. There have been experiments with other methods of delivering text including "electronic books" and web-based newspapers. So far none have caught on in any large number. They fail the "3-Bs test" -- can you take it to the bathroom, bedroom or the beach? Most of the elements for portable text are now on the market in some form or another: Mp3 players with small hard drives such as I-pod to store text, digital publishers of content, simple download systems. So far the drawback has been a suitable display that is as easy to use as the printed page.
Video eyeglasses are a possible solution and here is a promising development. Micro Optical has begun to market v-specs that in many ways resemble the reading glasses used by the post war babyboom generation. Unlike other video glasses that cover the eyes like googles, these sit like a ribbon across the nose. The user can glance over or under the frames. In fact the images seen in the lens are semi-transparent although users caution they found it hard to watch music videos and walk alertly at the same time.
The glasses are relatively expensive and designed for I-pod video players. Other video formats are promised. There are some reports of the usual kinks that come with new products, such as not being shipped with appropriate cables for all users. The resolution may need improvement in order to display the text equivalent of a broadsheet newspage. Yet the product is tantalizing.
A pair of electronic reading glasses and a player the size of a bar of soap sound like a "newspaper" you can take to bedroom, bathroom and maybe even the beach.

Napkin Finance

2007-05-12T16:15:00.000-07:00

It's a given that reporters aren't happy unless they are independent. At some point in their lives, many reporters will think about owning a newspaper rather than working for one.
Just a small newspaper -- maybe a weekly -- but it will be theirs.
So what will it cost to buy that newspaper?
Grab a napkin or the back of an envelope and start scratching out an estimate.
A 25-year-old study determined that for ever $1 paid by a subscriber, advertisers paid another $4. So put that formula to work and a medium-sized newspaper with a circulation of 80,000 and selling its newspaper for a reader's subscription of $4 a week can gross up to $1.6 million a week or about $83 million a year. Flabbergasted? Well check the math: just the subscriptions alone would be $16 million a year.
How much is profit? Assuming 90 per cent goes to expenses, a $83 million gross leaves $8.3 million in the owner's hands. A ballpark selling price in good days can be 15 times the profit or in this case, $124 million.
Whoa, where did the 15 times come from? Well a return of $8.3 million on and investment $124 million is a yield of 6.6 per cent and at that rate you would get 100 per cent of your investment back in 15 years because 6.6 X 15 = 100.
Is it a good price? Well if the buyer has $124 million they could invest in government bonds yielding 4 per cent so the yield they want from a business has to be higher. Exactly how much higher is subject to negotiation.
All these figures are ballpark but it is a start for sizing up that small town weekly. Check out the subscription rate and the audited number of subscribers. Figure in the advertising contribution. Ask for an annual earnings report for the last five years. There's a lot more work to be done but you now know where the park fences are.