Learned from experience: Never fold showing four cards to an inside straight in a game of Indian poker. The inside card is, without fail, the one you have stuck to your forehead.
June 2009
Borrell: Local online ads beat forecast
By Jay Small | Tue, 06/30/2009 - 12:37pmGordon Borrell says local online advertising outperformed his Borrell Associates forecast by a fair piece:
"We may have been far too conservative earlier this year when we projected that local online advertising would grow 8% in 2009. At the end of the first quarter, the increase looked closer to 11%. When we finish collecting our second-quarter data in the next few weeks, I'm certain the number will be quite a bit higher."
He says some companies even indicate "triple-digit growth" in local ad sales, but notes not all players can be winners:
Photojournalism can be strategic
By Jay Small | Mon, 06/29/2009 - 9:16amAfter wrapping up his 10-part series on what local newspapers should do to survive (he rolled up all the recommendations in one post), John Temple posted a wise reply to questions I asked him by e-mail last week.
My questions, in a nutshell: What about photojournalism? Can it be considered a strategic asset for local newspapers?
John wrote me back, but then expanded on his reply in the blog post. Good advice abounds these days on his blog, as the post exemplifies:
More on SND: Time to think bigger
By Jay Small | Fri, 06/26/2009 - 7:13amCharles Apple, one of the primo bloggers at Visual Editors, picked up the discussion about the future of design at newspapers and the troubled Society for News Design, in particular. In Apple's post, he channels Dean Lockwood of the San Antonio Express-News:
Site 2 in Scripps' new UX rollout
By Jay Small | Thu, 06/25/2009 - 12:46pmWhile I joined my son yesterday on a college campus visit (yes, he's that old, meaning yes, I'm that old), our gang at Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group rolled out the second site in our latest cycle of user experience upgrades: redding.com, site of the Redding Record-Searchlight in northern California.
As with Site 1, courierpress.com of Evansville, Ind., redding.com demonstrates Scripps' latest thinking about news Web sites, in form and function:
- Flexibility to showcase news of the day.
Customer privacy after shutdown? Hardly Clear
By Jay Small | Tue, 06/23/2009 - 12:05pm(Update [1:25 p.m. EDT, June 26, 2009]: Clear customer service just sent a note to members answering my questions and more. I added it in full at the bottom of this post.)
Greg Sterling noted the end of Clear, the program that let travelers pay to register with biometrics in exchange for swifter passage through security at several major airports.
As a Clear card carrier for roughly two years now, I got word of the shutdown last night. My first concerns, as I posted to Greg in comments on his post, are:
- Do I have any prayer of a refund for unused months on my membership?
What must SND become?
By Jay Small | Fri, 06/19/2009 - 6:40amI am reposting here, with only a few edits for style, comments I posted in a heated thread about the recent resignations of the president and executive director of the Society for News Design. As background, my own long history with SND includes several years on its board of directors, putting on its 1996 annual workshop in Indianapolis, rebuilding and managing its Web site, and providing first-ever live Web reports from the annual competition judging at Syracuse.
These days, I serve no official role, but remain keenly interested in the society's future, as my comments describe:
Friends,
More straight talk from Temple
By Jay Small | Tue, 06/16/2009 - 7:17amEnough! Moving to Google Reader
By Jay Small | Thu, 06/04/2009 - 7:30amBloglines beta site remains down this morning, victim of an expired and apparently neglected security certificate. Meanwhile, "classic" Bloglines still exhibits the classic problems that led me to try the beta months ago:
- Item refresh counts out of whack
- Showing thousands of old items as new
- Too many visits by the "Bloglines plumber" (outages)
Another great new Bloglines beta feature!
By Jay Small | Tue, 06/02/2009 - 7:02amAlong with the impressively frequent "Loading..." and "There appears to be a server communication problem..." dialogs, the long-running beta of Bloglines sported a lean, mean new home page this morning.
I know installing and renewing SSL security certificates can be tedious and time-consuming; however, if you force your beta project traffic through an SSL connection you pretty much have to consider the certificate at or near Job 1.
I can still use "classic" Bloglines, which has no SSL requirement, but seems to sport many of the same reliability problems as the beta. Anyone have an RSS aggregator/reader suite you just love?
