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Techmeme Intros Mediagazer, Media News Aggregator

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From the same people behind tech news aggregator Techmeme comes a similar service called Mediagazer, aggregating your daily dose of media news. Mediagazer is backed by media companies such as WordPress, Seesmic, Zemanta and others.

So, if in your daily browsing of the Internet you encounter questions such as “What do news organizations need to do to survive?”,  “Will books become extinct?”, “Can video bring television and the internet together?” and other questions regarding new or old media Mediagazer will organize them in a similar fashion as Techmeme. In other words, everything else that don’t fall under Techmeme, you can find it on Mediagazer.

Mediagazer is organized through the same technology and process as Techmeme, that is combining automated aggregation technologies with direct editorial input from human editors. The media news memetracker collects relevant takes on an issue and package these into group of links.

And just like Techmeme, Mediagazer also makes it easier to share headlines via a recently introduced “share” button. A mobile site is also up and running if  need to get your daily fix of media news  via smartphones on mediagazer.com/m or through mediagazer.com/mini for simpler phones.

So there, another site to monitor for daily news coverage. Hopefully, the human editors of Techmeme and Mediagazer will be able to distinguish clearly what should be aggregated on each of these news verticals and duplication of entries will not happen.  Otherwise, they  might as well combined these two aggregators later on.

Originally posted on March 8, 2010 @ 5:05 pm

Pew Says Americans Turn to the Internet for News More than They Do on Newspapers, Radio

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Another day, another Internet research findings. This time it’s from Pew Internet  saying that more Americans are turning to the Internet to get their daily news fix, rather than the traditional print newspapers and radio.

Pew Internet’s study on “Understanding the Participatory News Consumer”  revealed that 46% of Americans are getting their news from four to six media platforms/online sources including social networking sites, Twitter and Facebook as well as on their mobile phones.  Only 7% get their news from a single media platform.

Pew’s findings also revealed that 33% of mobile phone owners get their news from their devices, 28% have personalized their mobile phone’s home page to include news from various sources and on topics that interest them and 37% of internet users have contributed to the creation of news, either by commenting or disseminating them on various social media sites such as Twitter or Facebook.

What’s peculiar about the current trend on reader behaviour is that news is being shared socially. Just like when reading a newspaper and you find an item that is interesting enough, you share that news orally, but now, news sharing is done almost as quickly as you’re done reading them – through social media tools. [Read more…]

Originally posted on March 1, 2010 @ 11:01 am

Weather Channel Lets You Download its Android App from your TV

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If you’ve watched the video attached to this post from start to finish, you’ve probably noticed the advertisement that flashed  out  starting from the 15 seconds time mark. Did you scan the barcode? If you did not ,well you just missed the chance of taking a crack on possibly one of the coolest way of downloading an app to your phone. To be specific about it – the Weather Channel app for your Android device.

Believe it or not, it actually works. After scanning the barcode using the Bar Code Scanner Android app,  your phone will be triggered to connect to the Android market to download the Weather Channel app.

And that’s for the Weather Channel app only. Can you imagine how effectively the Android can reach out to its targeted users if more Android apps will adopt the same advertising strategy?  You don’t have to do the numbers because we all know that perhaps majority of consumers still watch the weather segment of their favorite news programs on TV.

Soon enough, there might be a big chance that corporations will adopt this same method to reach out to their consumers directly as well. But in the meantime, let’s be contented with the fact that this might give the Android platform a boost in terms of popularity. This has to be done especially since the IDC predicted that the Android platform will the number two mobile OS by 2013.

Both the Bar Code Scanner app and the Weather Channel are free apps. Just visit the Android market from your phone’s apps screen.

 

Originally posted on February 4, 2010 @ 9:53 am

Enjoy One More Year of Free Access to New York Times

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Just a quick note to follow-up on the latest development about New York Times plan of introducing a paid model for its online newspaper.  It is now official, NYT will be rolling out the paid-metered model beginning in 2010.

The metered model approach to making its loyal readers pay for their access to the New York Times will give users free access to a set number of articles per month. NYT will start charging users online when they’ve access more than the number of free articles.  According to NYT, this is their way of creating a second revenue stream that will somehow help in preserving the online newspaper. Furthermore, offering the NYT online on a paid subscription basis will also give them the flexibility to keep an appropriate ratio between free and paid content – hence helping them stay connected to the Internet.

To prepare the online NYT, new online infrastructure will be designed.  The good news is,  those who subscribe  to the print NYT will continue to have free access to the online NYT, even when the paid model system is already implemented.

NYT Chairman Arthur Sulzberger expressed confidence that the loyal NYT users would not mind the paid model since it will help the NYT improve on its content.

“Our audiences are very loyal and we believe that our readers will pay for our award-winning digital content and services.”

Pricing and other details about the new paid model will be released in the coming months. In the meantime, you’ge 11 more months of free access to the NYT online, so make the most of it.

 

Originally posted on January 20, 2010 @ 3:40 pm

New York Times to Charge for Access to its Online Paper

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The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times both charge for access to their online publication and seem to be working along fine. So, I don’t really see any reason while New York Times won’t succeed as well. But to be honest about it,  Im really hoping that NYT’s plan will not push through. I’m not subscribed to both WSJ and FT and was glad that NYT’s online newspaper is still free. But then it’s all business decision, so be it.

The New York Mag is running a story about New York Times Chairman Arthur Sulzberger close to announcing that NYT will start charging for access to its online publication.  Actually, there has already been an internal debate going on as to what payment scheme that the paper will adapt. It was a choice between the WSJ-type subscription scheme or the Financial Times’ metered system wherein readers are asked to subscribe after being offered a number of free issues.

The decision as to which payment model that it will adopt is said to be announced within a matter of days while announcement of the plan is set to be made within weeks. So, if push comes to shove, by next month or early March New York Times we may no longer be able to access the New York Times online for free.

There are other considerations that are yet to be resolved within the management of NYT, conflicts to be ironed out and both major and minor kinks that could spell out the demise or the continuation of the online newspaper.

In the meantime, let’s all take advantage of the NYT while it still remains free. But should the plan paid subscription push through, will you be willing to pay for it?

Originally posted on January 17, 2010 @ 8:15 pm