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Category: Publishing Technology

A Few Coherent Thoughts on Murdoch Blocking Google

A Few Coherent Thoughts on Murdoch Blocking Google

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Yesterday Rupert Murdoch, Chairman of News Corp, said that he was going to have Google blocked from all New Corp. websites.  That means something From EditorandPublisher.com: The Chairman of News Corp. said in an interview with Sky News Australia (reported here in MediaWeek U.K.) that once the newspapers get their paywalls, News Corp. plans to pull its content from the likes of Google and others. Murdoch said: “We’d rather have fewer people come to the Web site and pay. Consumers…

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Money for Nothing and Your Chicks for Free…

Money for Nothing and Your Chicks for Free…

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(Disclosures: I work for Namemedia, who is technically a competitor of Internet Brands, owners of vBulletin.  I also run several sites that use vBulletin and spend a significant part of my work week working in vBulletin code…) Over the past month, there’s been a slowly erupting feud in the vBulletin community over the new pricing structure that was announced for vBulletin 4.0 by Internet Brands. You see, back in the day, the original vBulletin license cost $185 (originally $160 I…

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A few WordPress sites you might not have seen…

A few WordPress sites you might not have seen…

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I’ve had a few launches recently and a few of them are worth mentioning. The Afternic Domainer’s Advantage – this is a knowledge center for use by Domainers, which is fully integrated with the AfternicDLS.com site.  For those who aren’t aware, Afternic is the world’s largest premium domain marketplace with over three million domains available for sale. The Domainer’s Advantage site is a fairly standard WordPress installation that makes use of several fairly standard plugins.  Special features: Integrated news feed…

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What is the next Wave?

What is the next Wave?

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For some time, I’ve been looking for the next compelling thing in social media sites. For that next development that transforms the way we interact, that re-envisions forums, chat, photo galleries, articles, etc; in fact a redefinition of the way in which we communicate online altogether. For the past couple years, I’ve watch as vBulletin, my favorite forum software, basically did minor incremental releases, remaining essentially the way it was in 2001.  Wordpress has done better, yet still, the fundamental blog/cmslite experience remains pretty…

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Has the Public Library Killed Book Publishers?

Has the Public Library Killed Book Publishers?

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As I was in the local public library picking up a little something to read on Saturday, I realized there was an interesting parallel between that and Internet file sharing. What does the library do after all; it loans books for free to people.  The same books which both publishers and authors base their entire commercial livelihood.  Thus if the picture the music industry draws of the dire future for music if file sharing is allowed continue were really a…

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Newspaper Tipping Point: Current Events

Newspaper Tipping Point: Current Events

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My 11 yo daughter called me while I was driving home last night, to ask me to pick up a newspaper so she could start her weekly current events assignment for school.  Without thinking, I told her “you don’t want a newspaper for that, you need to get the information of the web where it’s up to date.” Now I’ve worked with newspapers on and off since my days atthe  University of Vermont, and I worked for Atex where we…

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News Has Always Been Free…

News Has Always Been Free…

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I read an interesting post this morning by Michael Hickins on The Faster Times that posit that “Internet Isn’t Killing Papers, We Are“.  His basic premise: that the tech industry, and the web in particular with with the dotbomb era and sky high salaries and insane stock packages, inflated journalist salaries well beyond their regular levels. Why? Because salaries had to be adjusted for the stock options that artificially inflated the potential compensation packages offered by the dot-com start-ups. How…

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A Grand Diaspora – The “Conversation” Disappears in the Ether

A Grand Diaspora – The “Conversation” Disappears in the Ether

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One of the things that is most missed in the Social Media rush to “join the conversation” is that in many cases, by offering a plethora of places to get our content, we’ve turned the tables.  Our readers who used to find us now expect us to find them.  Even though I write on my blog, I’ll often get the comments for that post on my Facebook page, or via FriendFeed or Twitter, or on some other blog somewhere that…

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Reel-Time.com Updated

Reel-Time.com Updated

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Over the past couple months, I’ve been working nights and weekends to get Reel-time.com updated and running on WordPress.  The project, while far from complete, reached critical mass this week and I was able to go live Tuesday night. This site has been around since 1995, and frankly, if you knew where to look, it was showing it’s age.  The homepage was left justified, which is something designers haven’t been doing since around 2001. There were a lot of challenges. …

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Web Development: A Blog to Watch

Web Development: A Blog to Watch

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If you’re not a developer or ever spend time in the engine room of the Internet, ie. working with servers, move on, there’s nothing to see here.  On the other hand, if you do, I’ve got just the blog for you.  Over the past couple months, Matt Sheilds, System Administrator extraordinaire, has resumed blogging at a new site, SysadminValley.com.   If you want quick access to the tips and tricks that will make your Linux servers or MySQL databases hum…

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