I have asked dozens of tech friends why they thought magazines were not presented front and center when the iPad was introduced a month or so ago. I mean, magazine publishers had been calling for and yearning for such a screen for some time and Apple was in earshot. The answer from these friends and magazine publishers alike was that this was no omission on Apple’s part. Magazine publishers are lining up to design content for this device. There was no need to announce the store was open. Publishers are taking numbers.
Brian X. Chen raises an interesting question in his gadget lab column for Wired Magazine, warning publishers in their stampede to the iPad (he includes his own magazine) about Apple’s arbitrariness when approving apps. For Chen this is a freedom of speech issue and he appears hopeful that over time Apple will be less censorious. “I’m optimistic that Apple will eventually create a separate section in iTunes for digital newspapers and magazines, giving publishers a platform to distribute their digital content based on a strict, contractual agreement that prevents their content from being arbitrarily removed at Apple’s discretion. Publishers should be waiting until Apple delivers that platform, rather than whipping up iPad apps and subjecting them to the gauntlet of Apple’s approval process.”
In the meantime the work Wired magazine is doing with Adobe, public for some time and presented at the Tools of Change (TOC) Conference is impressive. Adobe, of course, is an important part of the book and magazine value chain and offers a suite of authoring tools, such as InDesign, plus software for content protection, and applications for content delivery. This is technology that delivers immersive and differentiated content experiences.
Nick Bogaty, Senior Business Development Manager, Digital Publishing, Adobe addressed the challenges of taking consumers out of the web-based experience with stand-alone applications. The user experience is more like the time spent with print. Reading experienced outside the browser results in more time spent, higher levels of engagement and presumably higher CPMs. Applications built on Adobe Air include interactive elements, seamless advertising insertion and the ability to switch between portrait and landscape views. The collaboration with Wired is built around cross-platform functionality with Adobe Air. Air also provides a seamless bridge between online and offline. And Adobe, through its recent acquisition of Omniture is in a good position to provide rich usage analytics across the various platforms. ( Note: Omniture is scheduled to announce today a deal to bring analytics to Facebook).
The designing and reflowing of content across devices, and the underlying standards, will be discussed at the MPA E-reading conference March 18, 2010 in New York. Nick Bogaty will participate and is expected to discuss these and related issues.
I look forward to seeing you there.
Charles McCullaghcmccullagh@magazine.org
March 1, 2010
How Content Becomes King
The conference was full of companies that help publishers successfully compete in the world of aggregators. Connotate Technologies () helps publishers create high-quality digital assets through data mining. The business reality is this: most publishers struggle to develop enough profitable content to compete with aggregators and online content producers. We all know it’s a jungle out there. According to a Connotate Technologies white paper, 80% of enterprise and 100% of web content is unstructured or semi-structured. Traditionally, publishers would staff up an editorial team and get content from syndicators to reach the required scale. But social media, distribution tools such as RSS feeds and embedded video clips, and UGC have changed all this.
With good reason much of the publishing focus today is on Content Management Systems(CMS) that make it easy to collect, edit, organize and repurpose digital media. A robust CMS allows as publisher to create and use existing content more efficiently but doesn’t necessarily increase the overall inventory of content for distribution and monetization. In other words publishers can’t out-produce the web.
One solution “is to extract unique content from Web-based sources that may not have previously been thought of as editorial assets.” These include: corporate web sites, social media sites, e-commerce sites, government sites, and internal web sites. This is easier said than done, of course. Connotate Technologies notes that knowledge workers spend about 25-40% of their time searching and extracting information. The company offers a suite of tools that will reduce this labor and extract useful text from a wide variety of verticals. Connotate has apparently used this technology and approach with the Associated Press, aggregating content from a host of technologically dissimilar news sites, providing a new revenue stream. See the above web site for a Case Study.
Let me say a few words about RAMP, a content optimization company, with deep technology roots and 19 patents. They did not present at TOC but I wanted to mention them because this seems a breakthrough technology. The business proposition is simple: “With the changes that major content producers are experiencing, how their content gets discovered, how audiences engage with this content, and how publishers develop revenue streams, is no longer about building the best web site and having the best content. For dynamic publishing environments and highly fragmented audiences, Content Optimization holds the key to giving publishers, media companies and content providers the ability to adapt to these new realities.”.
Not to get too technical but this is about optimizing the discovery of content, whether its text, video, audio or image content, through metadata tagging, SEO, semantic technologies and the like. Content Optimization is not a new science, of course. But what seems to differentiate RAMP from other metadata creation technologies is that RAMP is built to handle universal content formats—across video, audio, text and image. Rich media discovery is very difficult without the use of advanced technologies.
Please see RAMP web site for the white paper containing some case studies, including Fox News, Boston.com, Petside.com, Howcast and Meredith.
I’ve heard more than one media executive, lamenting about content repositories, say that you can’t monetize what you can’t find. This is not an unusual statement. The publishing industry has been creating, managing, and storing digital content since at least the mid-1990s in different forms, content management systems, and repositories. RAMP and other emerging technologies can help unlock these riches.
February 25, 2010
Technologies in the Magazine Space
The Tool of Change Conference focuses on the technologies, applications, software and business practices that help book and magazine publishers manage and monetize content. Glen Hopkins, VP and GM, Imaging and Printing Group, HP, spoke about the merging of technologies and publishing; and the merging of terminology to describe this marriage. He spoke of “offramps,” how we view or will view content (smartphones, notebook computers, TV and paper, including smart paper). One can quibble with his choice of platforms but not the essential point: this is really all about using technology to shape, differentiate, disseminate and monetize content in its various forms across an increasing number of devices with multiple form factors.
Here are summary remarks about three technology companies contributing to this transformation:
HP
One expects a company that provides printing equipment and products to extol the value of print. What is interesting about HP is how much attention they are paying to digital publishing and technologies that allow for high CPM hyper-local, print-on-demand products, with their MagCloud business being a public face of this business. MagCloud has 3,000 magazines in its suite and is beginning to scale.
As with other companies in the space HP is also paying attention to ways in which they can join the printed, dimensional product with the web and social media by the use of QR tags and augmented reality. We’ve already seen magazines such as Esquire and Popular Science experient with these applications.
HP is thinking about paper as technology, or perhaps a kind of a slate. Glen Hopkins calls this smart paper and demonstrated the Livescribe Pulse Digital Smartpen that is a low-cost mobile computing platform which includes a Pulse smartpen, dot paper, and other applications. In effect the smartpen creates digital copies of everything you write and this content can be uploaded to your computer. Livescribe also offers other features including a calculator, translator, and a paper piano that plays a pretty good Chopin. Have a look at.
Mark Logic
Mark Logic is a technology company that, among other things, helps content producers manage and exploit content to its full potential.
Fernando Mesa, Chief Technologist, spoke about using technology to enhance the mobile opportunity. As other speakers noted at the conference, Mesa suggested for mobile to advance it had to get beyond the tonnage of applications and move from pages and data to answers. In his discussion of the importance of the mobile context he suggested that the persona of the mobile customers changes from hour to hour and day to day and mobile content producers must be sensitive to these dynamics if they are going to provide content that meets the dynamic needs of their customers. So this in a way is a post-application world that is somewhat one-dimensional and hit-or-miss. It was refreshing to hear a chief technologist talking about the psychology of mobile.
As publishers we talk about content, usually in its finished form in print or digital. For Mesa talk of content begins with an appreciation of XML mark-up language that allows content producers to be granular and flexible in content configurations. XML makes it easier for publishers to integrate, enrich, slice and dice, deliver, analyze and contextualize content. For Mesa these considerations become even more important as publishers figure how to reflow content in its richest and most monetizable form across numerous platforms.
Mirasol
MPA’s Technology Task Force has been looking at screen display technologies for almost two years, starting with a visit to the Arizona State University Flexible Display Center. It quickly became apparent to us that the E-ink technology would not accommodate the needs of most magazines. The industry needed full-saturated color screens.
Much has changed in the last year. The Apple iPad was launched a month ago and developers are flocking to create applications for magazines.
Getting less attention but no less important is Qualcomm’s mirasol display technology. This also has the potential to be a game-changer for smartphones and other screens. In short mirasol offers many benefits that magazine publishers have been asking for. This technology offers low power consumption in part because the display does not require continuous refreshing and little power is required to sustain an image. Mirasol has about the same reflectivity as a newspaper, making it readable in most lighting situations. According to Qualcomm the response time for this display is 10 to 1000 times faster than competitive LCD technologies. From what I have seen the color looks impressive.
Cheryl Goodman, Director, Marketing, Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, will speak at our March 18 conference on e-reading and will address in more detail this display technology and opportunities for magazines.
Charles McCullagh
February 24, 2010
DRM as Smackdown
Until learning my lesson at this Digital Right Management seminar, I used to think of DRM on a metaphorical level. I imagined a lone California highway patrolman—one of the original CHIPS if you like—straddling Highway 101 like some classic colossus tossing pirates and other stealers of content out of the HOV lane. The bad guys didn’t stand a chance.
After spending a delightful hour with Kirk Biglione, who you will find at http://medialoper.com, and a thoroughly engaged audience, I am starting to think DRM tussles are closer to a smackdown than to the above scenario. And better yet, the subject is thick with business, political, technological and even existential implications. Who wouldn’t want to be in the room? This is DRM; this is big.
No matter how complicated the story line, it helps if the narrative begins as a kind of medieval morality play with the predictable stick figures, at least until things get complicated. The speaker shows a picture of a pirate on the screen. The man wears a patch and a bandana and might have had a knife in his teeth. On an adjacent screen is a white cat with a pirate patch. No one asked the real pirate to stand up but I wouldn’t have been at all surprised.
Before I get lost at sea here is the full description of the seminar: “DRM, Digital Content, and the Consumer Experience: Lessons Learned from the Music Industry.” It wasn’t so much that the music industry couldn’t tell the difference between a pirate and a cat with a patch. The industry failed to recognize that the consumer wasn’t a pirate in the traditional sense, plundering the shoreline for gain. By and large this consumer was a taster and a sampler of music. She was not trying to make money from illegal downloads.
Ironically, the music industry was not even selling digital music and consumers didn’t have the option of buying music from a commercial source. In effect the music industry declared war on digital when it wasn’t even in their business plan. RIAA, the music association initiated 1700 lawsuits and a lot of pre-litigation activity against everyone in sight including at least one deceased. The lesson learned was that digital is inevitable and the consumer eventually gets what she wants.
Biglione outlined a number of myths about DRM. A robust DRM would be the answer to the challenges the music industry faced, would prevent piracy, keep consumers honest and would enable a market for digital content. The speaker noted there are unintended consequences related to these “misconceptions” and offered a case study of Microsoft’s DRM, PlayforSure that was intended to be licensed to a large cross-section of content companies. MTV was involved in a big way. The product launch was supported by a massive branding campaign. The thinking was that this DRM would encourage a robust marketplace and become the standard. Apple didn’t stand a chance.
Microsoft and their content partners seemed to have thought of everything except the consumer experience that the speaker described as “lousy.” Microsoft pulled the plug in 2006. Apple would own this eco-system because the iPod was cool and a great user experience.
At the end of the session there was a very thoughtful exchange among audience members about the need for DRM and whether we are underestimating the consumer. Bigione reminded us that the busiest day for DRM hackers is Christmas Day after all the presents are opened. He noted that traffic to his site spikes on December 25.
The speaker’s position was clear. He thinks there is an irrational fear of piracy; DRM doesn’t prevent piracy; and this technology does not grow and shape the marketplace.
He suggested there were a few hints that history might be repeating itself. The conventional wisdom is that the Kindle with its revenue share and proprietary system doesn’t stand a chance against the competition. But Kindle has some of the attributes of an open system. Books can be read on the iPhone and soon the iPad. Biglione remarked that it consumers think a system is open, it is open. If the prices are reasonable, the device has interoperability and a wide selection of products, it has the feeling of openness. Amazon is following Apple in a sense by offering a frictionless buying experience. In the speaker’s words: the iPad might be the best Kindle reader.”
This is not the place to review what’s happening on the EPUB standards front. Please have a look at Biglione’s informative blog. We’ll be addressing some of these issues at MPA’s e-reading conference in New York on March 18, particularly at the session on the content and device eco-system.
I hope to see you there.
February 23, 2010
Finally, the Year of Mobile
Mobile remains in its infancy. Did you know that the first cell phone call was made in 1983? In 1999 Motorola introduced the first phone that weighed in at less than a pound. In 2003 Palm offered a phone that was the first convergence device. By 2004 Motorola and others were offering phones that were becoming slim and sexy; yes, fashion statements. And in 2008 the iPhone changed the world forever; thus all the messianic metaphors.
This information is courtesy of mobile expert Rana Sobhany who took an audience of around 200 on a three-hour deep dive into mobile: history, platforms, and applications. During mobile three decade history there’s been a fair bit of storm and stress. The carriers owned the 1980s and much of the mobile space. In the 1990s aesthetics came into play as people grew weary of carrying around bricks in their purses. The focus was on the weight of the cell phone. And now we are in the era of the smartphone where data and applications rule.
Ms. Sobhany said she came to mobile after stints in politics, entertainment, venture capital, and brand advertising, all of which seem a perfect training ground for the mobile jungle. The speaker knows history and offered an interesting perspective on the difference between mobile and digital. She suggested that it wasn’t exactly digital first and mobile second; they have existed in parallel universes. Ms. Sobhany seemed to be referring to digital as the browser experience where it offers immediacy without a value exchange. In her view this is disruption without a real financial return. So “Mobile is more like print than digital.”
This was music to my ears. Of course she was referring to great mobile content that is curated and delivered to consumer in a manner that is immediate, customized, personal and measurable. That said, mobile still offers huge challenges for content. Short attention span—three to four minutes), eye fatigue and small screen remain constraints to mobile content usage.
Insiders joke about another Mythical Year of Mobile. 2010 could be the real thing for a number of reasons. There are about 4.6 billion cell phones globally. Apple has trained the consumer and provided an application store that co-exists alongside the iTunes Music Store. We’ve heard the numbers: 2 billion downloads; 200,000 individual apps available. And then there are the devices with the iPhone leading the charge.
As Ms. Sobhany noted it is hard to exaggerate the influence of the iPhone and the store in changing consumers’ attitudes toward mobile. There had been mobile applications around for decades, starting with when the carriers provided their selection of apps “on deck.” By “dis-intermediating” AT&T and putting the consumer first, Apple changed the game. The speaker noted that while the Apple approval process is at times confusing and often outright arbitrary, she suggested there was a need for some kind of gatekeeper given the frenetic growth of the app universe.
She indicated that the Android platform could be the real thing. It doesn’t hurt that this platform is being spearheaded by Google, is supported by an open alliance of thirty technology and mobile companies, and uses Java, a straightforward programming language. Ms. Sobhany noted that there are still some questions about how an individual application might look on the growing number of Android devices and suggested caution. In a similar vein she mentioned that the app process on this platform is handled more like the YouTube experience. There is little quality control.
She called Blackberry the Linkedin of mobile platforms, offered praise for its minimum price point for apps--$2.99 but questioned its limited functionality and lack of a centralized payment system.
She suggested the Palm might find an audience among women, that Symbian could be of interest to those with international plans (given the Nokia connection), and Windows Mobile 7 bears watching because it is integrates with the Windows operating system and seems to target the business user.
The session would not have been complete if we didn’t learn that a ruby app, priced at $800, wins the price for the most expensive application in history. The speaker explained the app offered only an image and symbolic representation of the ruby and not the real thing. Nonetheless, eight people purchased this thing of beauty before it was taken down.
If the app buyer should beware; so should the app maker. Ms. Sobhany advised publishers should not to rush into apps; this is not a foot race. You shouldn’t necessarily choose the easiest path to deployment. And there’s the question of your brands. Users are not forgiving when it comes to bugs from a brand they respect. So you need to test the app on all devices. This doesn’t mean you have to buy dozens of handsets. You can purchase time for this test.
Then there’s the price. Applications can cost anywhere between $20K and $100K; they are not inexpensive. It is not unusual for a senior executive to see an app and want one for his or her company. The speaker underscored that when you enter the app business, this constitutes a serious extension of the brand. So you should be listening to the marketing director as much as the technology person. After all, you want a one brand look in the app icon, messaging, and description. This becomes above all a marketing exercise.
Ms. Sobhany offered some interesting views on pricing and distribution. More on these topics in a later post.
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