NY Times Archive

Stephanie Clifford at the NY Times has an interesting story today about a test that Rolling Stone and Men’s Health are running with certain advertisements in each print magazine. The idea is to take a photo with your mobile phone, email the photo to a specific address and then you will receive your goodie sent back to you. Isn’t that exciting? Doesn’t it make you want to jump off your computer and head down to the local 7-11 or Borders to pick up the latest issue? Kind of reminds me of the skill games at the amusement park – you shoot the water into the frog’s mouth for an hour, spend $25 and get a tiny frog which loses a leg on the way home.

Ray Chelstowski, the publisher of Rolling Stone said, “We’re always in the market to find other ways that we can work with our advertisers in providing empirical data in showing how readers engage and interact with our ads.”

It’s a great idea to make the ads in print magazines more interactive. But for adoption, the technology must be so easy that people will do it. And the ads and the goodies have to be well worth the effort. Would Britney Spears fans do it if they knew they would get a free Britney ringtone? Perhaps. The key is in the offer and the effort. This test program seems like a lot of effort for a very small return.

Above I have inserted an image of a QR code. If you are new to these codes, check out our coverage for a primer. Are QR codes the answer? Perhaps as long as they work when you scan them.

What I’d like to see is something as simple as holding your cam up to a QR code (or other "thing") and automatically the goodie is sent to you. No picture taking, no emailing, no effort. Otherwise these potentially innovative advertising programs might never get off the ground.

The NY Times has a very interesting article this morning about how the U.S. government uses top venture capitalists to help find innovations from tiny companies.

Author Matt notes, "Through a program that recently emerged from an experimental phase, the Defense Department is using some of the nation’s top technology investors to help it find innovations from tiny start-up companies, which have not traditionally been a part of the military’s vast supply chain.

The program provides a regular exchange of ideas and periodic meetings between a select group of venture capitalists and dozens of strategists and buyers from the major military and intelligence branches. Government officials talk about their needs, and the investors suggest solutions culled from technology start-ups across the country."

I can only venture a thought here but wouldn't it make more sense to consult with some top bloggers in the tech news space? I can only imagine that some of us see more startups than the vc firms will ever see or hear from. I get so many emails and releases a day and maybe 1% make it to the vc firms?

The NY Times has a pretty good description of what it takes to earn $50 million a year in ad revenue off a startup ad-supported web site. Some of the background for the article comes from Jeremy Liew, from Lightspeed VC.  My first thought is that most startups need to work towards many other things before they think about $50m. Let's work towards a good customer base, loyal users, virality, and others.

Tim O’Reilly, the chief executive of O’Reilly Media, says, “This may be why more entrepreneurs are going for low-investment sites that don’t need an exit but provide ‘lifestyle businesses’ for their owners.”

I think over the next 5-10 years, we will see hundreds, if not thousands, of new Internet businesses that are able to let the owners live comfortably with a very small team (if any) and afford the things in life they want. Not everyone is looking to build the $1.5b takeover sites.

Mr. Mitchell says, "But to make $50 million with a big staff-produced content-rich guitar site, sponsored by, say, Fender and Gibson, a site would have to generate more than 200 million page views a month, Mr. Liew estimated. "

Jeremy Peters at the NY Times has a good writeup today about Joost (formerly The Venice Project). I have believed for a while now that YouTube won't be the answer for television online. YouTube should remain as a user-generated media site. That's where the $1.5B value comes from.

The creators of Joost come from a pretty strong background. Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis initally started Kazaa, then moved into leadership roles with Skype (where they remain today).

From the Times article:

Joost (pronounced “juiced”) (allen note: I thought it was pronounced yooste) said last week it had reached what amounts to the mother lode of television programming: agreements to broadcast programs from Viacom networks like MTV, Comedy Central and VH1. While the deal’s terms were not disclosed, Viacom and Joost will share advertising revenue.

"We are very happy with the Viacom deal because it spans all their big properties," Mr. Friis said. “It has content from their biggest properties — MTV, Comedy Central — that are very good for our demographic." (Mr. Zennstrom was on vacation and unavailable to comment, a Joost spokeswoman said.)

While I am not sure if Joost will be the winner in this market, their application (which I check out daily) is pretty strong and the video quality is decent too. I look forward to checking out the Viacom clips once they are integrated.

Below is Jason Sadler's recap from Day 2 of the Future of Web Apps in London. Jason is co-founder of popular startup Only Human and also runs a blog at Thought & Theory. The following presenters are covered below: Mark Anders, Knoi Vinh, Simon Willison, Jonathan Rochelle, Daniel Applequist, Rasmus Lerdorf and Richard Moross/Stefan Magdalinski. (Allen's note: This is a great recap post, very worth the read.)

Mark Anders (Adobe)

Mark's presentation started off with a great overview of the trends of web platform technology: developer productivity, performance scalability and reliability, technical integration and new application capabilities. This is where Adobe Flex comes in, creating flash based web applications with rich Actionscript framework and the ability to use it for free on Windows, Mac and Linux. Mark's demo of creating a Flickr Photofinder via tags was very interesting. The software seems to use a similar WSYIWYG editor like Macromedia Dreamweaver (code/design view), heavy emphasis on using "states" which give you the ability to have two (or more) versions of the same file open within one file, a markup language called MXML and a style component to support CSS.

The next demo Mark showed was that of Apollo, the same product Michael Arrington mentioned about 5 times in his presentation (so I guess that means it is good?). Mark's description of Apollo was using Flash and XML to create desktop applications via local files, online/offline content, drag/drop and background files. He showed two demos, one that was an application called Maptactular, which used Google Maps with flash overlayed, and the second demo was an eBay desktop application that had most of the features of eBay.com.

I remember when Flash first came to the web world and there were a lot of compliance issues and version control; who was using which x.0, who had what web securities, what your local cache settings were set to, etc. If web applications use this technology and users aren't up to date on the newest flash player they will have to go through the download and install process. For things as fragile as web applications, which you want to reach as large of an audience as possible, aren't you going to run into all the same previous flash hurdles? I could see a lot of features being created in Flex, but I am skeptical about how many real-life applications will be made with it.

Twingly (Featurette of the conference)

Ryan took a second to bring two students from Sweden up on stage to show off a small web application. The application was a 3D digital representation of the blogosphere connected to Google Maps. It showed blogs across the world, varying in intensity by the amount of light and size of the light rods. You can click any blog on the map and it will take you to that blog. There is also a small ring around the world, which represents a pie chart of the amount of bloggers per country.

Kudos to Ryan for giving these guys the time to show off their web application.

Knoi Vinh (NYtimes.com)

In coverage of Day 1 I know I said that Stefan Fountain's Soocial.com presentation was the highlight of the conference, but Khoi's speech was by far the most interesting and compelling. Coming from a background working on an editorial website (as a designer/developer), it was very fascinating to hear what Khoi had to say about how NYtimes.com dealt with editorial design challenges.

He talked a lot about templates they use and how much they get changed around but still keep them very limited on design. I wonder if someone will come up with a design-driven WYSIWYG template editor? It would open the doors for architectural planning around content and only help to focus more on the content and less on the design limitations. I completely agree with Khoi's point that there is a lot of tension between designers and editors and the curve to new technology slopes upwards very slowly.

Khoi brought up a great point about "countervailing forces in quality":

• High Definition vs YouTube
• Skype vs SMS
• TimesReader vs Memorandum
• Digital SLR's vs Camera Phones

It is almost ridiculous that in a society of growing technology the masses of people are still hooked on rudimentary and simple items. Obviously some of these have a cost involved, but it's amazing how basic some of the most used technologies are in the world.

The last point I wanted to touch on from Khoi's presentation was offend experts, not beginners. This makes so much sense because experts should have thick skin and will be much harder to offend. The last thing you ever want to do is not listen to your users and only focus on what an "expert" is telling you. Feedback comes in all shapes and sizes from different people and it is our job to do the things we believe in and take into account all the suggestions we get.

Simon Willison (OpenID)

The concept of OpenID is very solid, but I think the implementation and consistency of it around the web is going to be the hard part. In essence you are supposed to be able to get rid of all of your user accounts and passwords by using OpenID (which initially requires a user account ID, password and personal info if you desire). AOL, Symantic, DIgg and Microsoft have all joined the OpenID parade, hoping to lead the way for everyone else across the web.

The biggest problem I have with OpenID, is that if you wanted to set your OpenID account up with your own host or with a site you enjoy that isn't mainstream, what do you do if that host goes away? You would think there could be ONE domain that everyone creates an OpenID account on, but then you run into possible issues of unique names (just like today with user accounts). I think OpenID is good for the greater purpose, but at the moment it is hard to swallow for your everyday Internet user. If my mom/dad can't figure it out, is it ready yet?

Jonathan Rochelle (Google Docs & Spreadsheets)

The needs of many outweigh the needs of a few – this should be Google's mantra. A lot of people have Microsoft Office, use Word and Excel regularly, but what if this software didn't come with your computer? Are you really going to spend money on Office when you can get most of it through Google Docs & Spreadsheets (or another avenue)? Google does a great job of creating simple, easy to use and functional applications that appeal to the masses.

Jonathan talked briefly about the acquisition process, buying 2Web Technologies/XL2 Web (which he was apart of) and Upstartle/Writely. They were two separate projects that were merged to create Docs & Spreadsheets. I would love to hear more about the acquisition process and what it is like working for yourself and then coming into the Google world.

With the announcement of Google Apps Premier Edition a few days ago, you get all of the applications created by Google in one friendly/free package (until April 30, 2007 when it becomes corporate/paid subscription). Jonathan said, "We have nothing to announce at this time" while at the conference, doesn't he know it's not nice to keep secrets?

Daniel Applequist (Vodafone)

It's hard to listen to a presentation entirely dedicated to cell phone applications when the iPhone is looming overhead. I am all for the advancement of the Internet on cell phones, but once there is a full-fledged scalable browser without limitations, what's the point of any application? When I say 'application' I am referring to his demo which showcased a soccer team's stats, some video and a few other editorially related features. What can't you get from that team's website?

Don't get me wrong, the iPhone is not out yet, has not been approved by the FCC and is still in a patent war with Cisco. However, are people really going to go this route for the time being? I know that these applications aren't enticing to me at all and maybe that is simply the American outlook towards cell phones.

Again, I hate to overshadow this presentation with another Apple reference, but Apple transformed the computer when there were already computers out there and Apple also has a pretty good product called an iPod (not even close to the first MP3 player). There are cell phones with web applications that are very popular, people probably use them everyday, but when there is a fully scalable limitless web browser (wait, doesn't my Blackberry have Internet…….) who is going to use applications on their phone?

Rasmus Lerdorf (Creator of PHP)

I have to mention Rasmus' funny stab at the wireless Internet mix-up at the conference, I am sure Ryan was ready to bust some knee caps after all the hassle. Rasmus showed a couple of slides depicting images of a cruise ship, a desert and a tropical mountain. He said he had given presentations at all of these places around the world and at every one there was free wireless access – touché!

Rasmus made an excellent point that he was not concerned with the "Future of…" anything, only concerned with doing things right today and enduring the pain to get to the destination. He talked about why people contribute to things: self-interest, hormones (specifically oxytocin: nature's trust hormone), self-expression and the desire to improve the world. In all aspects of life, it is not about you, it is about what people think about themselves.

I greatly enjoyed Rasmus' presentation and think his final points were spot-on:

• Avoid participation gimmicks
• Get oxytocin flowing
• Solve one problem
• Clean and intuitive UI
• Make it fast and scalable

Richard Moross & Stefan Magdalinski (MOO)

Ryan could not have picked a better presentation to end the conference (aside from the following day of workshops of course). Richard immediately grabbed everyone's attention with a slide entitled "Print is dead." He talked about how much he enjoyed curling up in bed with his laptop to read the .PDF of a book (instead of a novel), how he loved to send informal SMS messages to people on special occasions (instead of greeting cards – which I think Hallmark is doing okay with these days) and how whenever you go to a conference everyone is bluetoothing'ing their business cards to each other (instead of handing them out like 99.9% of the attendees did).

The guys at MOO had to stand out, had to become 'remarkable' and had to tackle the challenge of using a process everyone in the web world says is dead. When they launched another company (Qoop) launched with the same concept. The difference was in MOO's dedication to using the best paper, the best trees, recyclable paper, a unique size and developing a great partnership with Flickr. When you looked at the two companies on Flickr, Qoop had two comments and MOO had 2,264! I would say they have a stronghold on the market and have created a successful product. It was interesting to hear about their marketing strategy, which was summed up in one word – free. They believed that if they gave the MOO cards away for free from the beginning and people liked them, they would be willing to buy them. They also used some small tactics to grow their brand and develop a tone using funny notes inside packaging, cute e-mails and every card shipping with a luggage tag.

I think that we can come up with a very unique partnership with MOO and I look forward to talking to Richard very soon. It was evident that a lot of people had similar aspirations as he had a line of people waiting for him after he spoke (they could have been going after the free MOO card offer though?).

The New York Times has a good (albeit short) interview with the Blockbuster CEO, John Antioco. He speaks about Netflix's new download service along with how many users actually convert from free trials to full paying customers.

Mr. Angioco mentions that their download service will begin in 2007. His comment about digital downloading, "While we don’t see digital downloading as becoming a big business in the next year or two, our mission is to provide customers with completely convenient access to movies."

Having tried both Netflix (I think I was one of their initial customers way back when), Walmart (gone now) and Blockbuster, I think the net result is that the services are basically so close in overall quality that whomever gets you the movie you want quicker might be your choice in the long run.

I have started to see ATM-style machines that dispense DVDs for $1 a day popping up at malls, supermarkets, airports, etc. In fact, in NYC I noticed a machine next door to a Blockbuster. Without an online membership, individual rentals at Blockbuster can be as high as $5. Why not just rent it for a buck?

I still give the nod to Blockbuster with the ability to return the movies in their stores along with picking up another. Of course for the lazy (me included), the download ability from Netflix might win out.

Scott Kirsner has a column today in the Times about bringing bling to your blog using widgets. He begins the column by describing a pastor's widget usage. He shows three popular widgets: Blufr, Streampad and ChipIn.

From the column, According to Widgetbox, its most popular widget allows bloggers to incorporate an updated feed of news items from the site Digg into their blogs. Matt Mullenweg, creator of the WordPress blogging software, says the widgets that his users have been incorporating into their sites lately include Meebo, an instant-messaging application that allows blog authors to chat with their visitors.

“One of my favorites,” Mr. Mullenweg said, “is the Sphere It widget, which pops up a window to show you articles and other blog posts related to what you’re reading.”

2007 will certainly include widgets as part of the big trends for the year. As companies (startups and the old standards) try to get their information in front of consumers and people who consume media, widgets can provide an avenue for this. The interesting thing will be to watch if (or how) these widgets become monetization engines for these same companies. Could you signup for a better widget for $x/month? What about advertising inside the widgets? Some will argue that the widgets provide branding and typically a link back to the widget creator and that is enough. But just like the airline industry, one one airline takes the leap and raises a fare, the others follow. We will see this same trend here I believe.