Sorry for the lack of updates. I’ve been in full on Winston Wolfe mode for the past week and a half as I got pulled into a time critical project to upgrade performance using Akamai for 15 or our websites, some of which I’ve never seen before. The good news is that the Akamai DSA product is for real – an incredible boost to performance that requires very little work to set up and very real benefits. This sums up…
I remember when I first setup WordPress back in 2003, the old 1.x days, my comment was that “It’s just like a CMS (content management system) with most of the functionality removed.” Well, with the release of WordPress 2.6, I can finally eat my words. It’s now simply a content management system, and a darned good one at that. That’s right, content management system. To call it a blogging platform is to sell it short. It’s now all the features…
Sean Pollay pointed out that the Boston Herald will be outsourcing printing and laying off up to 160 employees. This from E&P: The Boston Herald will layoff between 130 and 160 workers under a plan to outsource its printing operations to other locations within the state, the paper reported Tuesday. The publisher attributes the action to the fact that some of their newspapers have presses that are more than 50 years old, which one would expect are a maintenance nightmare. …
When Reuters did this 6 years ago, we all laughed at them. “Want curry with that?” Now respected American daily The Orange County Register has begun a test using a New Delhi firm for editing tasks. From BusinessWeek: Orange County Register Communications Inc. will begin a one-month trial with Mindworks Global Media at the end of June, said John Fabris, a deputy editor at the Register. Mindworks’ Web site says the company is based outside New Delhi and provides “high-quality…
We’re generally quite happy to say it’s the online revolution that’s killing print media. Sure, it’s had it’s effect, but the truth is that there’s (as there generally is with all things) more to the story. You see the downturn for print also came at a time when big print publishers (aka “newspapers”) were starting to get a whole lot more information to deal with. They had invested in systems that allowed them to get into some very extensive data…
Tom Willmot of EdgeDesigns, one of our team lead developers posts on the launches of www.hotcars.com and www.dreamwheels.com last week. He succinctly sums up the niche social networks for those not familiar: A niche social network is simply a social network aimed squarely at a niche interest, be it wine or geeks. You take the classic social network components: user profiles, friends lists, user messaging, forums and groups; and then you tailor the experience towards your intended niche. Throw in…
Okay, I hadn’t seen this when I posted my previous bit. All in all its a very bad day for the print media. Quoting from Eric Alterman’s article: …trends in circulation and advertising––the rise of the Internet, which has made the daily newspaper look slow and unresponsive; the advent of Craigslist, which is wiping out classified advertising––have created a palpable sense of doom. Independent, publicly traded American newspapers have lost forty-two per cent of their market value in the past…
The NAA (National Association of Newspapers) has revealed that newspaper ad revenues are off 9.4% to $42 Billion in 2007 vs. 2006. That’s a huge number, even for the sinking fortunes of print media. And one we’ll surely eclipse when the next round of figures are released next year. I have worked with newspapers for years, and frankly, I don’t often pick them up looking for ad info anymore. If I want to look at used boats, I go to…
Apparently much of my email from the weekend has gone into the ether…I’ll try to reconstruct later. Also, for those trying to contact by phone, it pains me to relate the untimely demise of my cell phone, which was the victim of a Sunday afternoon trip through the rinse cycle of the Maytag. If you need me by phone, try using 4092 instead of the standard 4091 for the last 4 digits. Of course, I’m in a building which is…
An interesting move – and for most of you thinking “this doesn’t affect me” I can tell you you’re dead wrong. You see over the past couple years, MySQL has become the back end database for a good deal of the web. If you’re CEO doesn’t have his own Gulfstream, chances are that some of your mission critical applications and quite probably your own website is using MySQL for something, if not everything. I’ll withhold judgment on the whole thing…