PrintWeek would like your votes – but quickly – for its Power 100 chart. Voting closes today, July 23, so get clicking for your favourites (a suggested listing for you to select from is presented, or you can offer you own preferences). It’s a one-time electronic vote, so don’t even think about voting yourself to stardom! I look forward to the celebrations evening for this which is next Wednesday, and we will point you towards the winners next week!
As a follow up to last week’s piece about The Times going paid-for on the web, you might like to take a look at how The Guardian has viewed the outcome (I read this story, by the way, on The Guardian’s iPhone app, currently available for a one-off £2.39 payment). It suggests that The Times site has suffered a 90% drop in visitor numbers. It does also, however, indicate right at the end of the article that this was to be expected anyway. It also does some complex maths regarding what it suggests might be the current level of income. In my opinion, the jury is still out, and probably will be for some time. For any publisher of a paid-for web site, it has to be about achieving a consistent, regular income over time. As a very small personal stat, I would still say that there is too much news out there for free for this to be a success. A friend I had not seen for a while told me just last weekend, however, that he now has an iPad and has already subscribed to The Times, and thinks it’s just great. We will wait to see the verdict from the rest of the paying public.
Late Addition: What I should have included in the above, of course, was that July 23 was also the launch day in the UK for the BBC News app for both iPhone and iPad. It's a mighty fine piece of work for sure, and its free, but is this fair competition? Poor Mr Murdoch is trying to scratch a living out of this! Tell us at PIND.editor@gmail.comIn the world of print, the long running debate about pre-packs lumbers on, with the latest edition of PrintWeek offering over its Reader Reaction column to opinion on the BPIF’s decision to ban such organisations from the membership.
It was also interesting to read earlier this week of another 500 redundancies to be made at leading German press manufacturer Heidelberg, though the most interesting piece of the article detailed a new initiative for reducing the hours of those still employed. Is this the way forward for industrialised countries, or is this just a sneaky way to cut costs? Your thoughts welcomed to PIND.editor@gmail.comFancy a simple .co web address? Well, now they are available! Go have a read, then register your new name before it gets taken . . .
We have long been a fan of DropBox for a quick, cheap (free!) and easy way of shifting files around between your own computers, to getting files to friends and associates easily without the restrictions of e-mail attachments. Well, it would appear that we have found another even simpler solution with write.fm This allows you do load a file, add a note, or some text, and then just let folk know what you called it. Seems too simple? Maybe it is. It’s not even password protected at the moment, so maybe it is just too basic (ie, open to the viral brigade)? Go have a look at write.fm/russhxs1 (or type the address directly into your browser) for an example of a couple of files that I have left there for you!One interesting piece of research that those nice folk at Marketing Week have offered us this week confirms that whilst online use in the UK is certainly on the increase, we haven’t really yet reached the critical mass needed to call ourselves Digital Britain.
And in the "Only in India" section, a $35 tablet PC has been announced, with the aim for product to appear some time next year. The price could even drop to $10 - now that really is the economies of scale working overtime! Just in from our Engadget friends: a little bit of video on this product, which sheds just a little more light on the project. The BBC raises the topic of a similarly cheap laptop project which seemed to evaporate . . . however, you have to hand it to the Indian government for the efforts that it is making it trying to push the internet into the hands of as many of its population as possible.PIND015
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