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I’m a big fan and subscriber of Paste, an independent U.S.-based monthly (now shifting closer to bi-monthly, with every other issue being a single-topic special edition) magazine focused on music, film, and books, with a passionate spirit.

Currently, however, they are running a Campaign to Save Paste, soliciting donations to offset operating losses. What does the need for such campaign tell us about the future of online publishing?

Many people, myself included, got hooked on Paste via the CD-sampler which accompanies each issue and lets you hear many of the artists being discussed and reviewed.

Paste has also made interesting moves to reflect the popularity and primacy of the Internet as a mechanism for discovering music, while still retaining their editorial vision and curatorial role.

First, they moved the sampler CD online. Instead of distributing physical CDs with every copy of the magazine sent to subscribers or sold at newstands, the CD is available for download, with subscribers having accounts and print versions containing a code to access the download. Subscribers who prefer the physical CD can still request one.

Digital VIP

• 12 Free Albums (downloads) selected by Paste editors, plus often bonus albums
• Digital versions of the magazine, including access to back issues
• Early access to the sampler and magazine
• A Paste t-shirt
• The ability to give gift subscriptions (not VIP but regular) to friends for $10

It’s a great program - allowing the brand evangelists to pay more and get premium access, while also enabling them to spread the brand. (Disclosure: Paste is not a client. I’m just a very happy subscriber and brand enthusiast!).

I wish, in fact, that magazines like Mojo and Q, which I often buy in print while in the UK, would emulate this model: keep publishing in print, but let people choose to subscribe to a digital edition and get the tunes which would otherwise come on a physical CD online.

None of this, however, has enabled Paste to completely avoid the global economic meltdown current recession. They’re recently launched a “Campaign to Save Paste,” calling on readers, musicians, and other supporters to help them get through what they’ve described as “a little cash infusion to make up for running at a loss for a while.” (See Save Paste FAQs).

The campaign itself is very well executed, including a letter to readers, a Facebook Group, a twitter account, over 70 tracks (many rare and otherwise unreleased) made available by musicians and labels to anyone who donates, and even banners supporters can take and embed on their own blogs, myspace profiles, and the like:

So what does this campaign, and the model of Paste in general, tell us about publishing in the age of the assembled web?

The pessimistic view would be that it demonstrates that even a small, dedicated, niche-focused print magazine can’t survive. Music, film, and book bloggers have taken over the curatorial role and publish mp3s, trailers, and samples - often with less respect for the strictures of current copyright than a published magazine can manage. In this view, even though Paste was doing everything right they can’t survive without the voluntary donations of supporters. Philanthropic patronage is the only hope of the print publication.

A more optimistic view, though, would take seriously the version Paste themselves offer. The model is fundamentally sound, subscriptions are growing, and the future looks bright. As they write in the Letter to Paste Readers:

Long-term, Paste will emerge in good shape. Even with the fall-off at the end of the year, 2008 was our best year yet—print subscribers, print ads, online readers and online advertising were all at record levels. Readers (print and online) remain strong. And new advertisers have come on board even in the recession, with more ready when their advertising budgets come back.

In the meantime, we’ve adjusted our business to weather this storm. We’ve cut costs, and we developed a robust online business that’s among the best in the industry. Fundamentally, we’re in good shape and won’t need another appeal down the road.

I have, of course, no visibility into Paste’s finances and can’t really discern which of these views will be more accurate in their specific case. But I truly hope it’s the latter.

A recent trend among the eDiscovery industry is that more companies are bringing the process of search, discovery and document management in house. Companies that once saw eDiscovery as third-party expense left to off-site experts have now come around and have begun implementing cost-saving solutions that allow them to take control of their eDiscovery needs.

Today, Kazeon Systems (news, site) announces the availability of its fourth generation eDiscovery software for use by corporations, legal service providers and law firms. Kazeon’s solution solves a wide range of customer challenge such as in-house eDiscovery, internal investigations, audits, legal hold retention management and GRC.

Recently, we had the opportunity to talk with Karthik Kannan, Kazeon’s VP of Marketing and Business about v4 and the future of eDiscovery.

At first sight, the images at the Nano GigaPan blog look like fairly ordinary electron microscope photos. But notice the zoom button.

Here’s an ant. Here’s some blood and hair.

[Tags: images zoom photos ]

Recently, in a set of interviews UIE conducted with avid users of Netflix.com, the online DVD rental web site, we asked "What are the things you like best about the site?" Lots, apparently.

Craig of the List blogs that South Carolina’s Attorney General General Henry McMaster feels he has “no alternative” but to investigate criminally prosecuting craigslist for continuing to run sex ads, even though (as Craig explains), craigslist has complied with the AG’s requests, and the ads that are running there are far more tame than what you can get in more mainstream locales. Yes, Mr. McMaster, I’m sure your hands are tied in this matter.

(And, by the way, sir, if you want your hands tied in that other way, you can find someone in the local yellow pages who’ll do it for you. Just look under “Adult Services.”)

[Tags: craigslist south_carolina ]

Having enormous quantities of people visit gargantuan numbers of pages on your website is the only metric that matters. (Santa Claus is a woman who lives in the Bahamas.)

Eurostar confirmation page: “Unless you have a photographic memory, you might want to print this page for your records.” :)

• MindTouch Releases Collaborative Desktop Suite - ReadWriteWeb
  MindTouch desktop suite - publish to mindtouch from Word, Outlook, also a windows-explorer like interface and a print-to-mindtouch connector. Competitive with Alfresco's sharepoint services and CIFS implementation?

This blog has been a bit quiet over the last few months due to some hard work on two seriously exciting projects. The first is a new book, released today.

Over the last eight years, we’ve published 200+ articles covering every aspect of intranets, and beyond. While these have proven to be very useful for intranet teams, what we hadn’t done was pull together all this information into a single volume. Until now.

The only book of its type in the world, What every intranet team should know provides a succinct overview of managing and growing intranets. A must-have for every intranet team, whether just starting or looking for fresh ideas.

This is the definitive ‘quick start’ guide to intranets, providing intranet teams with a to-the-point overview of how to plan, design, manage and grow intranets.

For the first time, we’ve released this volume as a beautifully printed A5-sized 110-page book. This is available via Lulu internationally, and directly from us if you’re based in Australia (we’re surrounded by boxes of books).

I’ll be very interested to hear what everyone thinks about this book!

More information

From the AP:

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Republicans can reach a broader base by recasting gay marriage as an issue that could dent pocketbooks as small businesses spend more on health care and other benefits, GOP Chairman Michael Steele said Saturday.

Steele said that was just an example of how the party can retool its message to appeal to young voters and minorities without sacrificing core conservative principles. Steele said he used the argument weeks ago while chatting on a flight with a college student who described herself as fiscally conservative but socially liberal on issues like gay marriage.

“Now all of a sudden I’ve got someone who wasn’t a spouse before, that I had no responsibility for, who is now getting claimed as a spouse that I now have financial responsibility for,” Steele told Republicans at the state convention in traditionally conservative Georgia. “So how do I pay for that? Who pays for that? You just cost me money.”

This argument counters the “No one’s hurt by it” defense of same sex marriage. The only problem is that Steele’s argument is also exactly an argument against “opposite marriage.”

Yeah, that’ll catch on, Republicans!

[Tags: gay_marriage republicans michael_steele politics ]

It was nice to wake up this morning and see this article in the New York Times about the emergence of machine translation and volunteer translation (aka crowdsourcing). These are two very important developments that every companies needs to be aware of — and possibly champion.

That said, I do wonder how this article is going to be received by the translators of the world who actually expect to be paid for their services.

For example the for-profit, invite-only conference company TED saved about $500,000 using volunteer translators. Clearly TED could have coughed up the money.

I can see this article spurring on CEOs across the land to think that they too can get free translations.

One thing I mentioned awhile back is that you need to be translation-worthy to get away with pro-bono services, particularly if you’re a for-profit company.

Facebook, Google and, now, TED appear to be translation-worthy. But I wouldn’t expect to see, say, General Motors succeeding in this area (though they could certainly use the help).

But the larger issue here is to the extent that volunteer translation for companies that can afford to pay for translation undermines the translation industry. I don’t believe machine translation undermines human translation because companies generally use it to translation text they would never have hired people to do (or they use it as a first pass before bringing on the human translators).

But volunteer translation is different.

Are  volunteer translators taking money away from their colleagues? After all, TED and Google and Facebook certainly can afford to pay. Or are volunteer translators raising awareness for the value of their work, thereby benefiting the translation industry as a whole?

Personally, I think we’re entering a dangerous area where companies that don’t know better are going to think they don’t have to pay for translation. This all reminds me of Seinfeld’s George Costanza’s aversion to parking garages: Why should I pay, when if I apply myself, maybe I could get it for free?

It was nice to wake up this morning and see this article in the New York Times about the emergence of machine translation and volunteer translation (aka crowdsourcing). These are two very important developments that every companies needs to be aware of — and possibly champion.

That said, I do wonder how this article is going to be received by the translators of the world who actually expect to be paid for their services.

For example the for-profit, invite-only conference company TED saved about $500,000 using volunteer translators. Clearly TED could have coughed up the money.

I can see this article spurring on CEOs across the land to think that they too can get free translations.

One thing I mentioned awhile back is that you need to be translation-worthy to get away with pro-bono services, particularly if you’re a for-profit company.

Facebook, Google and, now, TED appear to be translation-worthy. But I wouldn’t expect to see, say, General Motors succeeding in this area (though they could certainly use the help).

But the larger issue here is to the extent that volunteer translation for companies that can afford to pay for translation undermines the translation industry. I don’t believe machine translation undermines human translation because companies generally use it to translation text they would never have hired people to do (or they use it as a first pass before bringing on the human translators).

But volunteer translation is different.

Are  volunteer translators taking money away from their colleagues? After all, TED and Google and Facebook certainly can afford to pay. Or are volunteer translators raising awareness for the value of their work, thereby benefiting the translation industry as a whole?

Personally, I think we’re entering a dangerous area where companies that don’t know better are going to think they don’t have to pay for translation. This all reminds me of Seinfeld’s George Costanza’s aversion to parking garages: Why should I pay, when if I apply myself, maybe I could get it for free?

After a day of poking at the awesome WolframAlpha and watching some of the reactions around the Web, a major problem has emerged. WA is fantastic if it has what you’re looking for. But if it doesn’t, it looks like it’s failed, as in: “What? It can’t tell me how much energy it would take to move Henry VIII one kilometer, expressed in cheeseburger-calories? What a piece of crap!”

Google doesn’t have this problem. If you get no hits, it’s almost always because you’ve so egregiously mistyped something that no one else on the planet has ever posted anything with that same typo. Or, it’s because you’ve put an odd phrase in quotes, which requires taking the special action of, well, putting things in quotes. Almost always, Google succeeds at what it does (find pages that contain particular text), even when it fails at doing what you want (find a particular answer).

WolframAlpha, on the other hand, is like a roomful of idiot savants. Each knows a scary amount about a topic. And, unlike a such a roomful, WA also knows how to recombine and compute what each of the savants knows. But if the room doesn’t have the savant you’re looking for, you get back nothing but a “Huh?”

The eclecticism of WolframAlpha is its selling point. But the delight that it knows things you would never have guessed at means that you can have trouble guessing what it knows about. The question is whether general users will go back enough times to be trained on the sorts of questions it can answer. If not, WA will remain an awesome tool for specialists but will not become the broad, general-purpose tool it wants to be.

It would, however, be a completely awesome addition to Google…a path I suspect Stephen Wolfram does not want to take.

[Tags: wolframalpha google search experts knowledge everything_is_miscellaneous ]

Online Pinoy TV. The Filipino Channel. Watch local and international TV Series, Movies, Entertainment and Sports events.

The twists, turns and tips you need for staying up-to-date by the water cooler.

• Microsoft to Rename Groove as SharePoint Workspace: Microsoft Groove 2007 - the collaboration and document sharing software for small teams working online and offline — is getting a new name: SharePoint Workspace 2010.
• Collaboration Service Drops Simple Presentation App: present.io, the newest feature from the private, real-time sharing and collaboration solution provider drop.io, is an application which enables users to set up a multiple participant screen sharing presentation.
• Quick Take Review: Adobe Contribute for Micro Publishing: We’ve been keeping tabs on developments in the desktop web content authoring and management tool business and Adobe caught our attention anew just recently. Their release of Creative Suite 4, including Contribute v5.0 sparked hope that we might find a wonderful desktop tool in which to while away our days.
• A Third Wave of Web CMS Vendors Hits North America: The 17th edition of CMS Watch’s independent research report on Web Content Management: Web CMS Report 2009 notes that there is another wave of web content management vendors from Europe entering the North America market.
• MS Web Platform Installer Hits 1.5 Million Product Downloads Released to the public in January of this year, Microsoft has announced that the Web Platform Installer has reached 1.5 million product downloads.
• SharePoint 2010: Preparing Your Infrastructure It’s getting closer. SharePoint 2010 that is. And now that the dates are all out in the open, Microsoft is offering us information to get our infrastructure ready.

And these are the articles you couldn’t get enough of during the past week — if page views are anything to go by, anyways. So, what was your fancy? SharePoint, social networking or web analytics?

• Open Text: Why They Wanted to Buy Vignette: While many in the enterprise content management industry seem a bit baffled by this decision, Open Text’s President and CEO, John Shackleton believes it was a good choice. Here’s why.
• SharePoint Online (SaaS) Review - What it is and Isn’t: SharePoint Online isn’t for everyone. While it offers a nice bit of functionality that will support many organization’s collaboration and document management needs, there are some things you can’t do and you should be aware of these before you sign up
• SharePoint 2010: Preparing Your Infrastructure: It’s getting closer. SharePoint 2010 that is. And now that the dates are all out in the open, Microsoft is offering us information to get our infrastructure ready. (hmmm…didn’t I mention this one already?)
• J Boye: Web Analytics and User Experience, A Match Made in Heaven?: At the 2009 J. Boye Philadelphia conference, Lou Rosenfeld called for web analysts and user experience people to work more closely together. The result? A solid basis for identifying the right design questions, and the power of surprise and vision brought to data.
• CubeTree: Social Networking for the Enterprise CubeTree: A new-ish collaboration suite designed specifically to bridge the gap between the social Web and the enterprise by offering users the best of both worlds.

If you’re looking to advance your career, or if your org has got empty seats in need of savvy CMSers, you’re in luck. Catch the best fish of the season on our content management job board.

• Lead Technical Writer at PaperThin
• Senior Quality Assurance Analyst at Open Text
• Research Analyst at Aberdeen Group
• Manager, Application Development at Ning
• Business Development Director – Content Management at Nstein Technologies

Wondering how to spend your time in the next few weeks or months? Attend a conference or maybe just a webinar or two. Have a look at our new Events Calendar to see what’s happening in your area.

• 4th Intranet & Portals Forum 2009  Conference May 28, 29 in Amsterdam, EMEA
• Shifting Your Focus: Content as Conversation Webinar May 28, 2009
• Plone Symposium East 2009 May 28, 29 in State College, PA
• Gilbane San Fransisco 2009 Conference June 2-4, 2009
• Mobile Web 2.0 Summit June 3,4 in London

The Whitehouse.gov blog continues to improve, by which I mean it’s getting less like the glass-topped version of White House press releases. But it’s missing a big opportunity by keeping the blog posts anonymous.

The White House bloggers seem quite aware that a press release isn’t a post and are trying to create a difference between the two. For instance, the blogger begins the post on President Obama’s speech on credit card reform with a friendly paragraph about the citizen who introduced him. It’s not much and it’s still directly tied to the President’s remarks, but that paragraph doesn’t read like a press release or like a speech. And, that post ends with the blogger’s evaluation of the President’s proposal: “Long overdue.” That last phrase, expressing some personal enthusiasm, is uncalled for, and thus is refreshing, for blogging is a medium for the uncalled and the uncalled-for. (Which is why I love it.)

Still, it’s hard to see how the posts can blow past this minimal level of bloggishness…unless and until the bloggers start signing them.

The problem, I believe, is that the bloggers feel (and are made to feel) the awful weight of speaking for the White House. Their posts come straight from the offices behind the long lawn and the pillared portico. In some weird, ineffable way, they represent the building, its inhabitants, and its policies, just as press releases do. Press releases have authority because they’re not an individual expression. They have authority because they are unsigned and thus speak for the institution itself. Blog posts come from the same building, and, if they’re unsigned, maybe they’re supposed to have similar authority, except written in a slangier style. So, we don’t yet know exactly what to make of these unsigned posts. And neither do the bloggers, I think. It’s too new and it’s too weird.

But, if the bloggers signed their posts, it would instantly become clear that bloggers are not speaking for the institution of the White House the way press releases do. We would have something — the bloggers — that stands between the posts and the awesomeness of the White House. That would create just enough room for the bloggers to express something other than the Official View. They would be freed to make the White House blog far more interesting, relevant, human, and central to the Administration’s mission than even the most neatly typed press releases ever could be.

Already most of the bloggiest posts at Whitehouse.gov come from guest bloggers who are named and identified by their position. They feel free-er to speak for themselves and as themselves, in their own voice. Now, I don’t expect the official White House bloggers to speak for themselves exactly. They are partisans and employees; they work for the White House because they love President Obama. But, if they signed their names, they could speak more as themselves.

This might let them do more of what the White House blog needs to do, in my opinion. For example, I’d like to read a White House blogger explaining the President’s decision to try some Guantanamo prisoners using the military tribunals President Bush created. White House communications officials probably consider it bad politics to acknowledge the controversy by issuing a defense. But bloggers write about what’s interesting, and hearing a spirited, partisan justification would be helpful, and encouraging. I personally think that Pres. Obama probably has good reasons for his decision in this matter, but the “good politics” of official communications are too timid. I want to hear a blogger on the topic. And I would love to learn to go to the White House blog first on questions such as this. And isn’t that where the White House would like me first to go?

Bloggers with names are the best way to interrupt the direct circuit from politics to official public expression. That would put people in the middle…which is exactly where we want them. [Tags: blogs white_house obama blogging media egov e-gov e-government ]

Posted in slightly improved form at HuffingtonPost and TechPresident.

Rebecca MacKinnon reports on China’s desire to shut down the Internet Governance Forum. The IGF was formed in 2005 to discuss among governments and some human rights groups how to govern the Internet. China now thinks it’s a pointless group. Its statement ends with a rousing defense of the right of nations to block access to Web sites they believe go against the interests of their people. And, of course, every country does reserve that right. (Don’t they?) The question is how much, and what, and in whose actual interest.

Later that day: Newsweek has a good article out on Herdict, The Berkman’s Jonathan Zittrain’s tool for crowd-sourcing info about blockages, outages, and censorship.

• Wireless/Mobile Accelerating Past Landlines - End in Sight?

  Disruptive innovation in the communications world - we've reached a tipping point...

  "Preliminary results from the July-December 2008 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) indicate that the number of American homes with only wireless telephones continues to grow. More than one of every five American homes (20.2%) had only wireless telephones (also known as cellular telephones, cell phones, or mobile phones) during the second half of 2008, an increase of 2.7 percentage points since the first half of 2008. This is the largest 6-month increase observed since NHIS began collecting data on wireless-only households in 2003. In addition, one of every seven American homes (14.5%) received all or almost all calls on wireless telephones, despite having a landline telephone in the home. This report presents the most up-to-date estimates available from the federal government concerning the size and characteristics of these populations."

  tags: disruptive_innovation, wireless, mobile, adoption, maturity, affordability, capability

As part of my work on the site search analytics book, I've begun learning about the way that web analytics people, like my co-author, Marko Hurst, think. It's different than us user experience people, and quite complementary. In fact, though it's added some lag to finishing the book, I think the final product will be much better. I have half a brain, Marko has a different half, and both are needed.

So I've begun to make the case for a more unified practice of web analytics and user experience. In fact, doing one without the other is probably a short-term waste of resources and a long-term recipe for your product or service becoming obsolete. I've started to scratch the surface in a presentation given a week or so ago at the Janus Boye Philadelphia conference and, earlier today, at the IA Konferenz in Hamburg (Keynote slides below).

One issue that came up at today's talk: we would probably all benefit from a dashboard of reports that included the ones that we've come to expect from our analytics tools, but that also include other quantitative reports (such as from help desk logs) and, perhaps more importantly, qualitative reports from such sources as ongoing usability testing. The presentation of these various reports could be designed to support better integration of the results from quantitative and qualitative research. For example, questions that arise from the former are often answered by the latter, so perhaps the dashboard would visually make the connection between the two.

Is this happening now? I think some of the analytics applications are starting to incorporate CRM reports, but I'm really out of my range here. I'd love to find some examples of dashboards that go beyond the basic behavioral data that are typically addressed by analytics tools. Suggestions?

Marrying Web Analytics and User ExperienceView more presentations from Louis Rosenfeld.

• OneRiot.com - Find the Pulse of the Web
  "Real Time" search engine - find what's going on on twitter and other social networks
• Getting past newspapers’ past « BuzzMachine
  Jeff Jarvis rant on how newspapers need to recognize the changing market - very compelling basic argument plus good issues in the comments
• Content Publishing Process,Publishing Platform,Content Management | WoodWing.com
  Publishing industry focused ECM which pushes to Drupal among other web CMS platforms
• Owned? Legal terms of video hosting services compared « Advancing Usability
  Comparison of legal terms for video hosting services, in terms of what rights you as the upload concede to the hosting provider
• 8 Essential Apps for Your Brand's Facebook Page
  Facebook apps that can help a brand promote itself on its facebook page