mikolas

Time to Change (the Subject)

I have been trying to find anything of importance to report about in the media industry for a while. I mean, really trying. However, it seems that nothing that interesting is going on, apart from multitudes of cost cuts, layoffs and abysmal quarterly reports. As it seems to me, this is not going to change in the near future as there also isn’t really any great innovation in the business.

So, time to change the theme to something that is more interesting for me. From now on I’ll be focusing more on things that I am really passionate about: music, science, technology and the digital future. Stay tuned.

Posted in Business, Computing, Science, Technology | No Comments » |

Hearst Goes for Digital Distribution?

According to CNN, Hearst is developing their own version of electronic reader that can be used to read both newspapers and magazines. While I’m all for digital distribution of books, I think there are some issues that should be considered before setting high hopes for electronic newspapers:

• The netbook. People already have portable devices suitable for reading news in web format. What is the real benefit of having to drag around yet another device?
• You might argue then, why a book reader is OK while news reader is not? Well, there are 2 things: 1) people rarely read more than a few articles in each newspaper so the need for paper like display is questionable 2) book reader is small form-factor while news reader is large form-factor. And then again, you don’t carry around dozens of magazines or papers so the usage scenario is totally different from book reader one.
• Price. There is tremendous amount of information available online, so why pay for it? If you really want to have the occasional paper, just pick one up as a paper version. No need to carry around another gadget just in case.

I understand this incentive from monetary perspective, as moving content to digital distribution channel might make for huge saving in the future when the whole logistics involving printing and distribution could be cut down. But once again, a good idea really should have more into it than the idea itself. Just take a deep look into the consumer behaviour and current capabilities to get the information they need and a dedicated device could be rendered pretty useless. You know, people are using their phones to listen music and web browsing and there must be a reason for that. And that reason is to not having to carry around so much stuff.

Posted in Business, Gadgetry | No Comments » |

Journal Register Company Files for Chapter 11

Another casualty of unmanageable debt.

Posted in Mental Note | No Comments » |

Why Micro-Payments Will Fail?

Clay Shirky has a sobering opinion about the discussion that has been revolving around micro-payments recently. I think the real greatness of his article is not in the way he discusses the micro-payments as such, but in the thorough view he has on why the model will fail. I must point out that he has pretty much some of the same arguments that I had in one of my previous postings. If you work for a media company, you have to read the article.

Posted in Business | No Comments » |

Two Interesting Scientific Events of the Week

It’s been a while since anything that really has caught my eye has been happening in the science department. However, this week I came across two very interesting pieces in my Google Reader.

First, New Scientist had an article about an anomaly found in the cosmic microwave background. In essence, there might be some indications that our universe has collided with another universe soon after big bang. This sounds like science fiction, so check out the article and make your own conclusions.

Second, Science News reported about successful quantum teleportation. The method is still very unstable, but it has succeeded in something that has been theoretically possible by quantum entanglement.

Posted in Science | No Comments » |

Xbox 360 Outsells Playstation 3 – Or Then Again Not

According to PCWorld, Xbox 360 is outselling PS3. The current sales figures they quote (Microsoft) are 28 million for Xbox, while PS3 has sold, depending on the source, 20-25 million since launch. What the reporter, once again, accidentally forgets is the fact that Xbox 360 launched one year earlier than PS3. By my math, this makes overall yearly sales of 9.3 million units for Xbox 360, while PS3 has sold at least 10 million units per year.

Also, these figures have some additional skew, since the return rate of Xbox 360 has been, according to some sources, as high as 33% in the early life of the console. I repeat, 33%. The return rate of PS3, according to retailers, has been around 1% (with some reports referring return rate of 0.2%). So if you add all this up, actually PS3 has been performing better than Xbox 360 both based on pure numbers, but also in terms active consoles due to the marginal return rate. Remember, sales figures normally quote the number units that have been put into the distribution channel.

While I own a PS3 as it makes a good Blu-ray player and DLNA client, I have no preference whatsoever regarding which console performs better in terms of sales. However, I find it very annoying that people who are paid for doing their job, can not even perform the simplest math and are making big headlines with information that is either intentionally biased or simply overlooked.

Posted in Business, Technology | No Comments » |

We Live in a Giant Cosmic Hologram?

Via New Scientist. The holographic principle was given a precise string-theory interpretation by Leonard Susskind, in order to tackle black hole information paradox (and Stephen Hawking in the process). Read his books, they’re great.

Posted in Mental Note | No Comments » |

The New York Times 2008 YTD Classifieds Sales Fell Over 26%

A whopping 26,8% down from year before. Also display was down 20,9%. No word about debt restructuring yet.

Posted in Mental Note | No Comments » |

Calais 4.0 Released, Supports Linked Data

ReadWriteWeb has a short article about Thomson Reuters’ new version of Calais. I think the inclusion of Linked Data makes this new version really interesting as it enables de-referencing semantic entities within content and such allows for much better functionality for content providers and more rich user experience.

While I’ve had my doubts about the whole buzz around semantic web, developments like this and new open APIs for social networks really makes possible building totally new kind of online services that can better utilize social graphs cross-referenced with semantic content. Sound nice, but also a bit scary.

Posted in Technology | No Comments » |

Life on Mars?

Recent methane discovery hints at biological activity on Mars…

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