Metropolitan newspapers in Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore and other places, seeking to survive, are embracing tablet editions to the point of marketing their own e-readers, most of which seem to be Android tablets. It’s a noble effort to avoid extinction but I’m here to tell you it won’t work. Private label tablet computers are a bad idea for newspapers.
The reason I can make this statement with such conviction is because I once tried to do it myself. The year was 1993 when I convinced International Data Group (my employer at the time) to create an electronic magazine about Microsoft. We called it Microsquish.
The magazine was intended to be distributed weekly in PDF format over this new thing they called the Internet. At more than a megabyte in size Microsquish was bigger than most ISPs at the time would allow as an e-mail attachment, so we had to find another way to send it. Gopher and Fetch were considered. It was possible we could have done it as a downloadable web document in HTML, but that standard was only two years old and unproven while PDF was working fine. Remember this was pre-Netscape.
We soon had a magazine and a document format but no means of distributing a file so big to so many people (we were hoping for 100,000 subscribers). Understand we were proposing to somehow deliver over the Internet more than 100 gigabytes per week, a task that at that time could easily have taken more than a week just to accomplish, killing the whole idea of a weekly publication.
So I invented a way to do it. My delivery system, called Pronto, may have been the first Content Distribution Network. It was a Java application intended to run on hundreds or thousands of servers all over the world. We built it and it worked. Pronto could still teach the world a thing or two about reliable delivery, and it scaled beautifully.
But how would people read our magazine? Like any PDF it could be read on computer screens, but to take advantage of PostScript’s beautiful typography and vector graphics it made sense, too, to allow people to print their copy of Microsquish. Better still, why not avoid the PC entirely and build a Pronto client into a cheap color printer? That way the paper could be printed overnight and be ready for reading at breakfast.
I visited Canon in Japan and asked what it would cost for a custom inkjet printer with a built-in Pronto client if IDG took charge of actually distributing the printers to Microsquish subscribers. Canon said the cost of such printers would be… free! But in order to close the deal I would have to find publications beyond just Microsquish, they said. I had inadvertently built a publishing system that should be leveraged, they explained. Do a co-marketing deal with the New York Times to gain some real volume, Canon suggested. They wanted to build a lot of free printers.
Well the Times wasn’t interested, nobody was. As usual, I was 18 years or more ahead of my time, so Microsquish was never born.
The reason Canon was willing to provide the printers for free was so they could make their profit on ink cartridges, which is where the money has always been for those low-end printers. And a Pronto printer was especially attractive to Canon both because of its high volume and because the Pronto client could be adapted to automatically reorder ink as needed. Cool, eh?
Now jump to today. The wan and limping Chicago Tribune wants to make its own Android tablet reader, which it thinks it might be able to give away or sell to subscribers for a small price. I don’t think the economics of such a device work without consumables. They need the equivalent of ink cartridge sales for the numbers to work out, but tablets don’t use ink.
These newspapers like to think they’ll get a sweetheart deal from the big cell companies but they won’t. Everyone who would read an electronic edition already has a mobile phone company.
Maybe the Trib and those other papers can white label a $199 or $299 Android tablet, but I doubt that will generate enough sustainable subscriptions to support an electronic edition. There’s just too much work for too little reward.
Don’t get me wrong, I would love to be wrong about this. I looked seriously into doing my own Android tablet but it made no business sense. Not enough has really changed since 1993. We’re still ahead of our time.
Which is why I’ve decided to do my own Android phone, instead, rather than a tablet. Now that makes more sense.
I gotta say, I don’t get the insistence of cell modems in tablets. I would imagine most homes that are prime to buy a tablet already have wifi enabled. (Or can bug their niece/nephew to set it up for them.) And a large number of businesses do as well. (And I live in south Georgia.) This leaves “riding in transit” as the place where you can’t connect, well, except planes that offer wifi. So, trains, buses, and riding shotgun with a pal. Sure, our Internet speeds are shit, but access is not exactly hard to find.
So, assume subscribers to the paper are synced with the latest news any time they enter wifi range. The only thing I consider a major loss is the ability to reliably push breaking news.
Of course, all that said, I agree with the basic premise that the a single-service device like this is really shooting itself in the foot…
… Also, good luck with the phone, can’t wait to hear more! And, actually, I’d also like to hear why an Android tablet is less worthy! Maybe a good article before details would be one on what you aren’t doing (the tablet) and why.
They’re for people who can’t figure out how to teather, or they have a feature phone they are happy with.
I find it very disturbing that carriers are clamping down on teathering and hotspot apps. I still have mine because I’m on an old plan, but if I change anything I’ll have to start paying extra. And the extra happens to be about the same cost as going with another device data plan. As you point out, it really isn’t something I use all the time, so I can’t justify the extra cost.
“They’re for people who can’t figure out how to teather [sic]”
You’re the kind of person who wonders why more people don’t run Linux on the desktop, aren’t you? 🙂
“or they have a feature phone they are happy with.”
I’d wager a large sum of money that the vast majority of people who buy tablets with 3G(/LTE) hardware in them are people who already have smartphones, and who got the “anywhere data”-enabled version of their tablet because they’re data junkies and figure the extra cost is worth it. They may not actually pay for the data plan, but they fancy themselves living on the bleeding edge and they at least want the option when they feel they can justify the charges.
People who still have feature phones are cost-conscious (read: cheap) and are much less willing or interested in paying the $100-$130 price premium for a tablet with 3G(/LTE) hardware, plus the data charges.
Also, if you’re someone who’s still using a feature phone, you’re clearly someone who hasn’t yet “got religion” about having data access anywhere/everywhere. It’s smartphones that are the gateway to this: You’re already paying a monthly phone bill, and adding a data plan is only a little more on top of that, so…
3G(/LTE) data on a tablet, on the other hand, is the kind of thing that people who still carry feature phones aren’t as likely to see the value or use case for themselves, yet.
You’re the kind of person who “has religion” (how sad) and think that the words “new” and “better” mean the same thing:-) You also throw money away because you’re insecure and think if you don’t waste money others will think you “cheap”. In short you’re a marketing man’s dream (read patsy).
Who *I* am is not relevant.
Who I was describing is not me. I’ve neither bought a tablet with 3G/LTE networking, nor am I someone who’s still using a feature phone.
I’ve interacted with many people who HAVE bought tablets with 3G/LTE networking. They all have smartphones.
I know many people who ARE still using feature phones. None of them have bought tablets with 3G/LTE networking.
My sample size is admittedly not large, but I was also stating what I’d make a wager on, not something that I claimed to have empirical data about.
Has anyone else noticed that both Lun and Marketing are 100% correct?
Yep, why have a data plan for a tiny phone when my laptop is always right next to me? Even crappy bedbug-infested motels have wifi. So I killed my phone’s data plan. It’s just voice and texting now.
1993, my man? I think I was still using a 286, maybe I had converted my PC to a 386 by then. And I was either still using my old 2800 baud modem or I had just installed an internal 14.4 modem. I’m a geezer now, I can’t remember exactly when I upgraded my machine (and no, you wise-asses, I’m not still using that old Headstart, I’m on my quad-core laptop.).
Oh, and I love Bazz’s idea, taking your idea and morphing it into new life for bookstores.
I know, I’m rambling. Reference geezer, it’s what we do.
Have to say, I wouldn’t consider any portable internet device such as a tablet that didn’t have built-in cell connectivity such as 3G. If a wifi hot-spot is readily available, that’s great, if not, that should be no problem what so ever.
For me, the whole point is to have instant access anywhere and everywhere without any hassle, without having to hunt for wifi -hot-spots or hooking the device up with a cell phone. And to be able to move around without losing connectivity.
The only plausible exception is when roaming abroad and 3G costs risk running too high: the savings are enough to justify the extra effort of having to find a wifi hot-spot.
-bogomipe / Finland
Out of curiosity I have to ask, how often do you find yourself in a place that doesn’t have wifi?
There are plenty of places without free Wi-Fi which is why people pay $$$ for cell service, whether for voice or data. (And thanks to Firesheep, you may not want it anyway.) A more relavant question is do you need cellular access often enough to pay for it for each internet device you own and would it be adequate given the 5 GB caps.
Good luck getting deals with the major U.S. carriers to carry it in their stores and sell it subsidized. Or do you plan to sell it: 1. Unsubsidized? (Ask Nokia how well that works out.) 2. Direct to consumers over the Internet? (Ask Google how well that worked out for the Nexus One.)
Is it going to be GSM? AT&T or T-Mobile 3G bands in the U.S.? Or do you plan it to be the first phone in history to work on both AT&T and T-Mobile’s U.S. 3G bands? Or a CDMA+GSM world phone? That’ll add a headache to people trying to get it to work on Verizon and/or Sprint if you don’t have deals in place with them. How about LTE? That would realistically means including CDMA for 3G fallback on Verizon in the U.S., plus there’s no single multi-band LTE chips yet available that will cover both Verizon’s existing LTE frequencies and AT&T’s upcoming ones.
Or are you going to avoid the mess of the U.S. carriers’ hodgepodge of technologies and frequencies and start selling it only outside of the U.S., where there are fewer different technologies and frequencies to cover in a single device?
Beyond all that, how do you expect to differentiate YOUR phone from the dozens of other Android phones already on offer?
As the saying goes: “Good luck with that.” 🙂
@Lun
Bob certainly has no shortage of crackpot ideas, but even still I find it hard to believe he hasn’t already considered all of your points.
I’d like to hear his reply to these basic questions, then.
I bet Bob’s phone will be a WiFi only phone and I bet he gives it away for free.
“Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains.”
i would like to have wifi phone. Reception sucks in my apt.
“Which is why I’ve decided to do my own Android phone, instead, rather than a tablet. Now that makes more sense.”
I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that’s a joke.
Maybe he means to make his own version of Android.. it’s open source after all.
As far as newspaper pdf’s etc. I can see a market for downloading a “newspaper” so you can read individual articles without some nosy computer tracking which articles you’re reading. Oh I give up…
Lun,
Great point. The day of developing products in the US for use only out of the US has arrived, thanks to the US carriers and their monopolies enabled through congressional lobbying.
They’re obviously of the opinion that their “consumable” will be a premium edition of the newspaper which I would indeed pay for as I miss well-written articles. It’s not a bad idea overall, but all of print is still stuck in a 19th century revenue model, which ironically is where our batteries are stuck as well.
We need a technology leap and let me tell you it doesn’t exist yet. After working to get my epubs on Apple’s iBookstore (which they still aren’t) this revenue model needs a great many more iterations.
More than just needing a CDN to deliver your content, you’d have first had to get the JVM installed on all of those client hosts 2 full years before the programming language was released to the public.
PDF was created in 1993 too. So, he was using the well established format that…. wouldn’t be on the market for a couple months? Ok, lets me generous… had been on the market for a couple months…. and nobody was using it regularly for another 4-6 years!
The reason PDF wasn’t pervasive until 4-6 years later was the amount of document production applications that had to be amalgamated into a common format – Word, WordPerfect, QuarkXpress, PageMaker, Framemaker, etc. It was a monumental task just getting around patents.
PDF was the evolution of EPS – Encapsulated PostScript. But the writing was on the wall – it had to happen. How do I know? I was on the beta/development team for Adobe. Before it was Acrobat, it was known as “Carousel”.
PDF is much more powerful than people give it credit for.
Now you know! 🙂
Can’t wait until we are all queueing outside the Cringely store for a cPhone.
Well, he could have a go at it.
It seems to me the real driver, for more than the last decade, is something me and my friends once called total digital convergence. For a short while, around 1999, Palm Pilots, and their knockoffs were all the rage. Around that time I got a job with a cell phone provider, and so soon I was carrying a Palm and a cell phone in my pockets. I then, also got a lap top, but before that I bought a collapsable keyboard to try to make my palm function like a laptop for taking notes in the classes I was taking at night. Eventually I relented and bought a lap top. So I was up to three portable devices. This was all well over ten years ago, now.
At work, my friends and I were all talking about the idea of total digital convergence… that is, get down to one device.
I think, that’s all Jobs, at Apple, was doing. He had the same idea – so I don’t think he was some Svengali. The only difference was he owned a hardware and software company and could act on the idea.
But it’s still incomplete. The problem, is the form factor.
Back in 2000, my idea was a device that I would afix to my wrist or still put in my pocket. I think the magic size is a five inch screen – which dell had accomplished with the streek, however the device was still to bloated.
I could fit that in my pocket, or afix it to my wrist. It would be large, as its 4.3 inch length made its way up my wrist. But I just watched another predator movie over the weekend (Predators) and I noticed that the enlarged digital wrist device didn’t seem to slow any of the Predators down.
A five inch screen is the minimum I want for a reader (it’s about the size of a paper back book). I want a detachable blue tooth device attached to it. If I get a phone call, I can lift my wrist up to my face to see who it is and if i want to answer the call, Dick Tracy style (Dick Tracy’s phone, every since I was a kid, is the real source of my wrist device fetish). If It’s a quick call, like, I’m going to meet someone and they are wondering where I am, and I’m still stuck in the subway, I’ll talk into the device like Dick Tracy. If it’s my girl friend and she suddenly says she wants to break up with me, I’ll detach the blue tooth device and afix it to my ear for a longer more private conversation.
At five inches, I can watch video while I’m sitting or standing in the subway. If its on my wrist my pockets are free, and I don’t have to waste time digging it out. While waiting for my flight, I can read Cringely’s column, the Chicago Tribune, or Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”. On the flight, I can watch another incarnation of Pretator.
Incidentally, Samsung has gotten a step closer to this with the Infuse (I think) – it’s 4.5 inch screen and thin as a wafer and light as a feather. One half inch left to go, and a mareware wrist device and we are just about there (need a detachable wrist device).
By the way, total digital convergence, means that:total. I want to be able to listen to the radio and watch t.v. on the same device. This is the idea we talked about in 2000. Not everyone is down with the wrist device. But I lived in Seoul for a few years, and subway life makes it desireable. It would be awkward at first, but most people would get used to it. The rest would put it in their purse or pocket – at least they would only be stuck with one device.
Here is a 5″ screen that can do anything Windows can do: http://www.oqo.com . Too bad the company went out of business in 2009.
I’m echoing ideasculptor, but assuming the HTML spec was 2 years old we’re talking 1993, which is pre netscape (1994). And it’s also pre java (1995). So how did you write a java app before it was even released??
Didn’t you read the article? It was way ahead of it’s time! 😀
its.
it is its.
ideasculptor and JRB: it’s obvious that Bob had his own independent implementation of Java. Good thing Oracle didn’t acquire sun until 1997, or that might have created further difficulties for the project.
I love your passion and drive Bob. I’d love to see the foil hard drives and the moon explorers too…and NerdTV 2 while you’re at it.
You are wrong! Have you not seen Star Trek Voyager? Every week Neelix walks around with a stack of tables with people’s mail.
That’s the delivery method of the future. Not just one tablet to read the one newspaper, but a new one for every edition! A young person we’ll call a “news paper delivery boy” will bring you your fresh tablet every morning.
We can have recycling stations where you can hand in your used ones.
i would love to get mail on a table!
This idea could work, but it would almost have to be exclusively a marketing only deal. No custom skins, no distrubution, maybe a featured app. Do some trade with Samsung and offer a coupon and a back page ad for a few weeks. If it works, do the same thing with your TV stations. Avoid all carrier involvement! They already have national deals with the manufacturers and don’t need you screwing it up.
What will happen, though, is yet another layer of developers between Google and your tablet, meaning yet another layer of committee approval, and more delays in firmware updates. Imagine if they do follow through and partner with a carrier… Google releases Ice Cream, then Samsung adds their 2 cents (and 3 months), then AT&T puts it through their “testing” process (and adds their layer of bloatware), which takes another 3 months. Now the newspaper gets their turn… and they decide there’s a new shiny object out there and forget the whole thing. Meanwhile the people who bought the tablets are stuck with a backspace key that sends 2 backspaces per push (which is what my Galaxy Tab is doing as I typ this). In the best case, Samsung might fix it (it is a flagship device after all) with the next firmware release, which they said is going to be supported.
NEWSPAPER EXEC’S — PLEASE READ THIS
I live in a big city and subscribe to our last remaining big newspaper. The first thing you need to know is what we read first and most often from the newspaper — the advertising inserts to the Sunday paper. This is our single best source of retail products on sale in our community.
When I go to our newspaper’s website I am hard pressed to find any advertising. Worse I have no access to the weekly inserts through the paper’s website. This is a key part of the problem. My paper, and most papers of the country never really adapted to the Internet. This is what I should be able to do on my city’s newspaper website.
Example I want to buy a pair of shoes. I should be able to go to an advertiser’s search window and type in “mens shoes.” I should get a list of all the stores selling shoes and advertising in the newspaper. There should be links to their online ads and electronic copies of their inserts.
Hear Hear — ITS an added revenue source for the local paper ( forget Google) keep the journos in jobs by making advertising copy for all the local businesses discounted because its electronic and it would employ people locally and not in some distant impersonal monolithic automated cash sinkhole!
Ground Roots Economic Recovery.
whoa, John… the flippin’ Flash page-snatchers are gobbling our two newspapers’ espace all the time. fargin’ rollovers triggered as you go for the scrollbars. the occasional pop-and-cover ad. there aren’t enough ad blockers to cover ’em all.
and of course the classifieds and car ads are in a nice list on a tab near top right.
if you can’t find an ad on your paper website, please post your ad-blocker, we all want to download it. if you have none, that site, and paper, will be gone before you can finish reading this.
we go for the home center, supermarket, and coupon inserts at once, set them aside, and discard the rest. then we strip the car ad sections. then we can look for coupons and needs in the ads pile, and after that we read our Sunday paper. ymmv.
online, I go for the news, not the non-tent. if there are specific wild-arse things I need to get, I usually Google, or if specialty items, check eBay.
snoozepapers need to get with the alternatives, and get their face up in places they don’t control, because they are missing maybe 80% of the New Market.
Yeah, what the heck Bob? Java was two years from release at the time of the your story.
Bob, one market you might not have considered–all the folks who currently do not use smartphones or computers, and only read the paper in paper form. For them, this would not have to replace or compete with other gadgets. It may seem that there are not a lot of folks like that, but in my home town, the one remaining print paper still prints about 100,000 copies a day. If only 10% of those buy a tablet, or better still, if the papers give away 10,000 of them, in the majority of the 100 US metro areas with 500,000 or more, that’s a million new readers. I know at least two neighbors on my street who would jump at the opportunity, especially if it means the local paper can keep publishing and providing local advertising. I don’t know if the economics work out, but doesn’t it seem like it could make a difference for mid-sized cities that face losing their last paper?
I guess they could fund the cost of the tablet with savings in printing costs and delivery. What makes more sense to me is to come out with an edition that’s friendly to a lot of different screens – tablets, PCs, smartphones, whatever – and then offer a rebate on the purchase of any such device. Subscribe to the paper for a year, and we will give you a $150 rebate on the purchase of any compatible device. If you already own the device, we’ll give you $50 off your annual subscriptions for some period of time. Why would a newspaper want to get into the highly competetitive and rapidly changing tablet business, and what consumer wants another device, and one that’s probably second rate at that?
IMO the problem isn’t that people lack the devices to read newspaper content, it’s that the content itself is of abysmally poor quality – full of ads in the middle of text, poorly formatted, difficult to navigate, etc. It seems to me that the reason these organizations can’t sell online editions is the poor quality of those editions, not lack of interest or unwillingness to pay for a subscription.
Noting makes me crazier than the idea that in the middle of the night, some guys print a newspaper on dead trees, and another guy drives it to my house in his car. Then I get up, read it, and throw it in the recycling bin. Blank paper to trash in about 6 hours, seven times a week. What a waste.
Instead of the hardware, why don’t they offer a “piece of the cloud”? Most people already have devices to view the content – why not offer cloud services and apps (like photo/video storage/editing) bundled with the subscription as the goodies at the end of the rainbow?
Sport,
Now that is a good idea! For a small subscription, the magazine/news/pdf appears daily in your DropBox.
Every day, open the NYT folder and there it is. Go to work and open to the exact same page you were on. Tomorrow, it is a new edition.
Nice. That one could be nice extra income for DropBox.
I Like that!!!!
Limited Offer Robert Redford Print…
[…] r free was so they could make their profit on ink cartridges, which is where the […]…
If anyone ever gets electronic newspaper distribution to work, make sure Sunday coupons are somehow included. That’s the reason I still buy a printed newspaper once per week and I know I’m not the only one….
Loving these last article lines as jokes, RC…
Heh, I come back to this after making my first pay and think you may be right. But I certainly didn’t get that the first time around. Maybe I was over-thinking the paper tablet part of the article, the meat. Maybe I’m just a bit more dense than I give myself credit for!
Regardless, now I’ve been thinking about who the perfect partner for a cheap/free tablet would be: ISPs. Like phones come free with phone plans, in competitive markets surely even a cheap wifi-only tablet would garner attention.
Oh, wait. Do many places even have competition anymore? Or maybe Bob’s friend from a few articles back can hit alibaba.net and find a partner, and tell us how it goes.
First thing – chaps, please read ALL the wikipedia article before you site 1995 as the earliest implementation of JAVA!! ;-D Tsk!
In retrospect an idea ahead of its time always seems trivial and commonplace umpteen years up the line. Remember the eye-opener Mr Cringely’s first book was to us all? All of that was new to me. Now we all think we know everything…
By coincidence I’ve been looking specifically at Kindle newspaper subscriptions here in the UK today just to see how the system works and what is available.
Sadly all publications specify less content than the news-stand item, so I doubt there are any coupons, or cartoons! The lack of photos in most is also a downer.
(Android pads at least offer colour screens but suffer from a relatively lousy battery life; and offering colour jpegs, which can’t really be compressed further, would negate the advantage by costing more to distribute)
Given that there are profit margins and sales taxes, bandwidth costs and even whispernet data charges I can still understand that if the volume is high enough for a publication then it might add up to a considerable income.
Would that work for one or two smaller, provincial publications though?
If they include a lot of local advertising then maybe.
Would the cost of implementation ever actually be recouped?
As for Android phones… why not? Everyone else is! Martin_’s suggestion for a “cPhone” is great! More seriously, just rebadge a far-eastern mobile, spruce up Froyo and introduce a Cringely App. Streaming industry NerdTV videos, podcasts etc etc and no Apple approval. Of course there is the slight Big-G obstacle to overcome but… 😉
Not sure I could tell someone that I’ll Cringely them from the bar or restaurant.
Why in the HELL would anybody want a stand-alone reader for anything? Sheesh – are they living under a rock?
They are living in a community where they trust their neighbors rather than far off money grubbing, acid-dropping hippies without morals who do nothing but stick their noses into other people’s business. Obviously.
I’m from the sticks where our local news is purchased by subscription like it always has even though you have a choice of distribution via print or the internet. Online you get to see a few headline articles, really nothing more than you would read passing by a print edition kiosk. To see inside you need to subscribe.
It also helps to keep people not in your community – out. The prospect of keeping details of people’s lives away from the prying eyes of a wider audience is appealing.
By limiting reading the news to a device that somebody actually has to sell you ensures control over the information. If the publisher of a local newspaper doesn’t want to sell his new reader to somebody out of the geographic area it serves then the sense of community is preserved and I think people’s safety enhanced. People do think this way.
I worked on the first GIS project in our state. The only way our administrator – a publicly elected official – could get public support for the project was to deploy the GIS in such a way as to make the data available to the users it served and not to everybody in the world. What was finally deployed was a series of stand-alone computers at each water district office around the county. Anybody wanting to look up property records has to go to their water district office and use the computer. People’s sensitive data is protected from the prying of land and real estate speculators looking to make a quick buck.
Just like the pissed-off real estate speculator from our state capitol who expressed his displeasure at not being able to mass copy the ownership records of our county’s property owners. I was polite and mumbled sympathetic noises when in reality I wanted to tell him it was none of his business. Really.
Its a no nonsense approach to data security, business and journalism. This is how WE, the people living in our little community want it. Outsiders, like YOU, may get your noses out of joint, but, there it is.
And I write this knowing that I could also end up being on the other side of the equation, being stonewalled for information. But then I understand the concept of privacy and was taught at a young age how to mind my own business.
I’ve learned at least that lesson.
My response was based on big newspapers doing it – The Chicago Tribune, et.al. I don’t see the logic for them to do so in such an internet-accessible city. Small communities are different for sure. BUT – those papers won’t be able to port their news over to such a proprietary system.
Indeed they are in a Catch-22, but a separate reader for a large newspaper really doesn’t make sense. – It’s too little too late.
The tree newspapers are dying. Electronic delivery devices, as well as their cloud networks, can fry from a strong-enough sun flare, and data is lost. Manufacturing electronic devices pollutes. People are losing their ability to memorize.
So, forget newspapers. Forget iOS and Kindle. How reliable are oral historians to preserve ancient knowledge and troubadours for providing current news and entertainment?
Our hometown paper has a free iPad app that let’s me read the full edition each day from a PDF file. It is rather lame and slow, but it does the job. Do I use it? No, in fact when the subscription runs out in November I may cancel it altogether.
The paper fired most of its editorial staff last year and now it seems a couple of 16 year old interns write most of the local stories and the rest is sourced from the usual online sources, a day after the fact. The wife says the coupons and cartoons on Sunday are worth the dollar a week we pay, but I could do without it.
Newspapers without editors and writers have no reason to exist. Like, grammar, spelling, and complete sentences, they are victims of this new age of techno-ignorance. Orwell predicted most of this in his famous novel.
Excellent final paragraph, Trex! Spot on! :-))
I agree Nigel – it’s all pablum now – just like Fox News. Who needs it?
Just give me a damn pdf that I can view as I please. Offline, when, where and how it is convenient for me.
Why every retailer insists on trying to replicate their paper inserts in flash is beyond me. After all their headers, banners, ads and controls, I’m stuck viewing the actual content in a small portal which allows me to actually use mayber 20-25% on my available screen. You can’t read the minuscle type, but zooming in for each item becomes unbearable after 2-3 items. Its like trying to read the newspaper through address window of an envelope.
Yeah, I realize these decisions are probably made by a bunch of MBAs trying to justify their degrees and 6-figure salaries by collecting all sorts of quantitative data points – tracking everything I look at and click on. But, if I disappear and don’t view or buy anthing, isn’t it pointless.
Sorry, I’ve got better things to do. Good-Bye, I’m done.
You mean “FTP” instead of “Fetch”, right?
Fetch was an FTP client for Macs back in the day (OS/5?).
Fetch is still around.
@Nigel: right back atcha, pal. Did you read the wikipedia article yourself. First public release of java was may 1995. There was an initial release in late ’94 which still puts it almost a year ahead of Bob’s timeline. (side note, I started working with java in late 96 which is why I quoted 95 originally, but I did go back to read the wikipedia articles to verify). So… my original question still stands.
“The reason Canon was willing to provide the printers for free was so they could make their profit on ink cartridges, which is where the money has always been for those low-end printers”
Profiteering on Ink! “Cool eh”!
Such a great template for sustainable industry. Not.
This story reminds me of another technology that the newspapers tried to implement that ultimately failed, but its failure didnt really harm any business.
In the early 1930s a machine was invented that used fascimlie (fax) technology to recieve transmitted newspaper stories that were broadcast over AM radio waves to a subscriber’s home.
Users would tune into a specific frequency and the machine would print up stories at the rate of about 1500 words an hour.
The technology never caught on enough to survive primarially because of a lack of ability to print advertisement images, the odd narrow format of the paper, the slow printing speed, the economic realities of the Great Depression and the fact that all production costs were now born bu the reader.
It would be about 50 years before fax technology returned as a consumer device. (One little known fact: fax technology was invented and patented before the invention of the telephone!)
NOOOO not an Android phone! You want to be sued by Apple and everyone else!
But I like you print idea. I like book shops and I would buy Ebooks from them by downloading to my Epad rather than Amazon something about ambiance and local commerce. I could browse using their Ebooks and then buy and download in the shop to my Ebook.
AND if I liked the Ebook I would like a print version for keeps – where your printer comes in – provided it was bound as well. Apple did it for photo albums so do it for books. The French style where its soft bound ready for hard covers. A dying art binding and with the printer all the books in my library would be A5 (6X8) size fixed shelf size etc. NOT the variation of formats in books today. For large type books just increase the font size. The advantage is that the print run is exact with no remainders, and transport costs.
And it provides local jobs!
The Japanese made for Cottees photo development machines they could do it for books!
Java wasn’t released until 1995. You claim this occurred in 1993. Just saying…
[…] subscribers free — or highly subsidized — tablets that will reportedly be built by Samsung. Many think the effort is already doomed for […]
Is this a test? In 1993 Java was still a gleam in Gossling’s eye as I remember it. Might it have been 1995 instead? Typo? It still would have been a very optimistic plan with what Java was like then. If it was 1993 and you were working with a pre-release then that would have a very good reason for low acceptance.
alert(‘d’)
OT: re the Google plan to purchase Motorola: What do you think about the fact that Google owns large amounts of dark fiber and a large chunk of ipv6 address space. Perhaps they have bigger plans than just phones and patents.
Did Bob call the acquisition of Motorola by Google with this article?
I keep listening to the news speak about receiving free online grant applications so I have been looking around for the most excellent site to get one. Could you tell me please, where could i find some?
enter wifi range. The only thing I consider a major loss is the ability to reliably push breaking news.
Umm, Bob, Java appeared in 1995. So what was Pronto written on again, back in 1993?
I was wondering the same, but Bob doesn’t explicitly say he wrote it in 1993, only that he pitched the idea to IDG that year.
Granted, I too get the impression it was developed at the same time from the text. If not then I suppose it’s possible it took 2 years to get to the software dev phase.
Thanks for the hubpages tips. Now if I can remember them when I write my next hub, so I can make some money, unlike my other ones. I’m really starting to like hubpages though. The new improvements they have made make it even easier to edit your writing there.
celebrity news…
[…]I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Been there, done that: Private label newspaper tablets make no sense – Cringely on technology[…]…
Ebooks-and-free|Marketing Ebooks|Best marketing ebooks online|Get your marketing ebooks online|Get your marketing ebooks online now|Get your marketing ebooks today…
[…]I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Been there, done that: Private label newspaper tablets make no sense – Cringely on technology[…]…
If you need cliencts or customers for your business then the best system to use is ibuzzpro.
of your blog. you just have to…
put yourself out there and give the most accurate and quality information. make people want to read your blog daily and make them repeat readers. the more people who read and the more traffic you have the greater the chance of…
offer an e-book you have written to…
your readers. you can sell this for a cheap price and make some good money. or you can offer your e-book for free if someone joins your e-mail list. then sell affiliate products to your e-mail list. there are a lot…
seabrook windows…
[…]I, Cringely » Blog Archive Been there, done that: Private label newspaper tablets make no sense – I, Cringely – Cringely on technology[…]…