Mesh is Back!

We've been bursting at the seams to tell you, and finally we can: mesh is back! "Canada's Web conference" will be held again at MaRS in Toronto on May 30-31. Check out Mathew Ingram's post on the mesh blog for more details, although we're not quite ready to start selling tickets yet. In the meantime, we'd like to give everyone an opportunity to get together to talk about what's happening on the Web (and give us some input about mesh '07) so we're hosting an after-work meet-up at the Irish Embassy pub on Nov. 15. As an added bonus, you'll also get to meet the b5media gang, including Darren Rowse and Duncan Riley, who will be in town from Australia (we haven't told them about the frigid weather yet!). If you've got any comments, insight, feedback, suggestions about mesh '07, feel free to pass 'em along. For anyone interested in listening to last year's keynotes, we've finally got podcasts available on the mesh site.
Update: More mesh enthusiasm can be found from Mathew, Stuart, Rob and Mike...:)

Written by Mark Evans on October 23rd, 2006 with no comments.
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North Korea: Luddite Nation

For all of us techno-geeks obsessed with gadgets and having a big, honking connection to the Web, the New York Times has a fascinating story about North Korea, which isn't connected to the Internet at all (although some high-power politicians apparently have access). Can you imagine a world with no e-mail, no Google, no YouTube, no Daily Show clips? There's a wonderful quote from Julien Pain, head of the Internet desk at Reporters Without Borders, who describes North Korea as "by far the worst Internet black hole". One more thing, North Korea banned cell phones in 2004.

Written by Mark Evans on October 23rd, 2006 with no comments.
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This Week’s Talking Tech

Another week, another Talking Tech podcast. We've gone high-tech, migrating from an Olympus digital recorder (which mysteriously locked up and remains so until someone from Olympus returns my e-mail) to Apple's GarageBand (sweet!). Anway, where was I? Oh yeah, Talking Tech. This week, Kevin and I take a look at Apple's stellar fourth-quarter results, including the fact more than 39 million iPods were sold in fiscal 2006. We also explore the "new and improved" Internet Explorer 7, and take a skeptical look at the virtual world/Second Life phenomena. If you have suggestions, comments, etc., you can e-mail us.

Written by Mark Evans on October 23rd, 2006 with no comments.
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Newspapers 2.0 - The Five "W"s

The lead story in yesterday's Globe & Mail was about a senior management shake-up at the Toronto Star, mostly prompted by a sharp decline in the company's stock price and the controlling shareholders' unhappiness with the newspaper's editorial direction. It makes for a good story but it's just another sign of the newspaper industry's struggles as the Internet changes how people consume information and how advertisers are reacting. This process has seen many newspapers slash costs by laying off reporters, close bureaus, and rely more on wire services for out-of-town sports coverage. So, let's look at what the newspaper industry needs to do to survive using the traditional five "W"s: who, what, where, why and when.

Why do newspapers need to change?: Frankly, they have no choice. Circulation is declining as more people, particularly 15-to-25-year-olds, use the Web to get the news. Many newspapers in North America and Europe are also being hurt by free dailies such as Metro that appeal to commuters with a low-cost mix of wire stories and colour graphics and photographs.

What must newspapers do?: Experiment, innovate, focus on and engage the community. Clearly, newspapers need to embrace the Web, but it's not just a matter of migrating stories from paper to the digital world. They need to encourage interaction with readers by soliciting comments about stories, providing links to external resources, launching blogs, podcasts and video blogs, and driving traffic between the newspaper and the Web site. There also needs to be more focus on the local community given national and international news is a commodity available in a wide variety of places. Fast Company, for example, has an excellent profile on the Naples Daily News, which has become the poster-child for local coverage with a Web site that offers news, including a daily video blogcast, and tools such as the ability to compare house prices, and receive text alerts about the weather. (Hat tip to Jeff Jarvis)

Where is the newspaper industry going?: As a starting point, let's assume a growing number of consumers get the news fairly quickly from the Web, all-news radio and 24-hour TV stations such as CNN and NewsWorld. I'm talking about the major news such as accidents, natural disasters, political issues, business earnings, sports scores, etc. It means by the time a newspaper hits the front door in the morning, you're probably aware of a good chunk of the news inside. So what does this mean? Well, newspapers - and this sounds strange - need to abandon the "news" because it's become a commodity. Instead of telling people what happened (which they already know), they need to explain why it happened and what it means. It's about perspective and context, which is difficult to find in a 300-word story on the Web. Among newspapers, the Washington Post, New York Times and Wall St. Journal lead the pack, which is why they also tend to be cited so frequently in the blogosphere. There is one exception to the "news" argument: newspapers need to provide strong local news coverage given they have the resources to provide coverage not widely available on the Web.

Who's going to write the news?: There are two schools of thoughts: one, hire young, aggressive reporters for peanuts, and leverage their enthusiasm until they start to demand more money. Then, you let them go and hire a new crop of cheap talent. Rob Curley, who heads up the Naples Daily News online operations, has used this approach to provide extensive coverage with a skeleton staff. This low-cost approach will likely be embraced by more newspapers as a way to control costs. The question is whether there is room within this landscape for experienced, high price talent, and, if so, how many do you need? The other side of the coin is using some young talent to run around town to do the "grunt stuff" while having a small, but talented, group of senior reporters to write columns, news features and analysis pieces. Either way, the end result is you will end up with lower-cost and likely smaller newsrooms.

When do newspapers have to change?: Easy answer: now. Anyone who got caught with their pants down by the Web's emergence as a news resource needs to adopt an aggressive, risk-taking approach. This will mean mistakes will be made, experiments will blow up, and pet projects will fail. It means newspapers have to stop being afraid of the Web cannibalizing the print product; they have stop thinking about the Web as a separate entity; and they need to stop thinking the sky is falling. As REM frontman Michael Stipe sings: "It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine". Well, the Web means it is the end of the print world as the newspaper industry knows it but that's okay. For newspapers that embrace change, experiment and dramatically change how they operate, they'll likely survive and thrive - much like radio survived TV, and movie theatres survived the VCR and DVD.

(Note: I spent 18 years as a newspaper reporter, including nine covering the Internet, so my view of the world is very Web-biased.)

Written by Mark Evans on October 22nd, 2006 with no comments.
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Targeted TV vs. Couch Potatoes

So, I was having a beer last night with b5media's Jeremy Wright and a 23-year-old online video entrepreneur, Matt Dickinson, having an animated discussion about the future of TV and how the Web will affect how video is distributed and consumed. An idea I increasingly believe in is how people watch TV will radically change. (Okay, it's not an earth-shattering idea but go with the flow, okay?) Instead of being couch potatoes and consuming whatever the major networks dish out, consumers are becoming far more selective. This is happening for several reasons: one, the 500-channel universe means there is a lot of programming noise, and with so much competition, quality shows that don't immediately attract an audience have little chance of success. (Arrested Development is a fairly good example) It means most programming is middle of the road aimed at a broad audience that simply wants to be mildly entertained. Second, the PVR, video-on-demand, time-shifting, the Slingbox, the iPod, streaming video, IP-TV, etc. mean consumers have more power than ever to watch what they want, when they want. With busier lives and the Web gobbling up hours that used to be devoted to TV, I believe many consumers are watching fewer shows but embracing these shows far more than they did in the past. How so? Well, it's not just the show itself but how the Internet also allows people to build a stronger relationship with the show and its characters/actors through the show's Web site and, of course, blogs where communities can gather to share their enthusiasm. b5media, for example, has a number of popular TV blogs, including 24 Headquarters and Grey's Anatomy News that play right into this trend. So, in a sense, consumers are still devoting a lot of time to TV but it's being divided between the TV and the Web.
   So what does this mean for the TV industry? For one, they have no choice but to embrace the Web as a distribution vehicle. Pay-per-view via a Web site or through a video-sharing service such as YouTube will become more relevant as a way to complement traditional TV distribution. Second, the television industry will have to adopt a different, lower-cost programming model as a way to deal with the competitive landscape. The days of the $1-million pilot that fail to get out of the gate may be over. For guys like Matt Dickinson, it's a whole, new world where a 60-episode television series about two backpackers traveling through Europe (produced for about $150K) could become the new TV reality. I'm not suggesting high-production, high-price shows such as House, CSI and Desperate Housewives will disappear but there will be a new wave of lower-cost programming vying for and getting the attention of broadcasters and consumers. Another trend to keep an eye is the emergence of Web TV networks such as Blip.tv and Network2 that will aggregate online shows or produce programming themselves. TV as we know is about to change big-time. As someone who doesn't watch a lot of TV (other than Toronto Maple Leaf games and the NFL on Sunday), I can't wait.
Tomorrow's Media Theme: the New Newsroom - hiring 'em cheap and young vs. a smaller, more experienced team.
Update: Robert Scoble has a post on the challenges facing Internet video business. Other views come from Paul Colligan and Duncan Riley. In other news, YouTube has been asked to take down 29,549 after complaints from several Japanese content owners. A sign of thigns to come??

Technorati tags: Video, TV, YouTube

Written by Mark Evans on October 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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Can Satellite Radio Survive?

We're driving for a golf (and Corona) weekend, listening to my brother's 20GB iPod for a couple hours when we started talking about what happens to satellite radio when every car comes equiped with an iPod connection as a standard feature. If it's a snap to plug in your iPod when you drive and have total control over content (music, podcasts, audio books, etc.), why would you want to pay $15 or so a month for satellite radio? That said, satellite radio does offer tremendous variety and there will be niches where it will thrive (rural communities, cottage owners, travelling salesmen) but how big will the market be if the iPod becomes really car-friendly? I could be badly under-estimating the appeal of satellite-radio and/or over-estimating the appeal of the iPod but I can see the iPod becoming a far more popular on the road tool.

Written by Mark Evans on September 23rd, 2006 with no comments.
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37Signals Takes Some Bezos Cabbage

37Signals, the "low-cost and we're proud of it" developer of BaseCamp, Backpack and Writeboard, has decided to take some of Jeff Bezos' cash. It's somewhat of a strange move because the company claims it doesn't need the money but wants Bezos' entrepreneurial wisdom in exchange for a "minority, personal investment". I thought that's the role advisory boards? And why Bezos, whose an e-commerce guy? Here's 37Signals' explanation:


 At the very least, it's an interesting marriage. I wonder what Rick Segal thinks of the deal? At the mesh conference, Rick literally begged (well, that's maybe a little dramatic) 37Signals' Jason Fried for an opportunity to invest. Then again, 37Signals said it has turned down nearly 30 other VCs so at least Rick's in good company.

Written by Mark Evans on July 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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