Nielsen-Netratings Says Fewer People Used Internet From Home in Some Major Countries

Nielsen//NetRatings believes that usage of the Internet from homes actually shrunk worldwide during the past year. The auditing firm estimates that 3.5 million fewer people worldwide used the Internet at home from May 2004 to June 2004. In the U.S. alone, 3.6…

Tell Vin Crosbie to Take a Hike!

Ever want to do that? Join the club. George Simpson in MediaPost proposes some media industry-specific video games, in one of which you can. On a similar (if not so personal) note, we enjoyed veteran journalist Pye Chamberlayne‘s list of favorite links.

'Mac-in-the-Box' Narrowcasting

I’ve agreed to talk on Monday to the University of Missouri’s Online Journalism class. I spoke to them in person last October, but this time I’ll be video narrowcasting the talk from my office in Connecticut. A complication is that ‘Mizzou’ uses…

Looking for Writing Assignments

I’m looking for a few publications for which I can write about subjects such as electronic publishing, e-mail, e-commerce, paid content, digital editions, and other phenomena of the Internet. I very much enjoyed my recent writing assignments for Online Journalism Review (on…

The Popular over the Authoritative?

Google, the de facto search engine of the Internet, indexes the most popular Web sites for a keyword, not the most authoritative. Meanwhile, I believe that Clay Shirky has accurately applied the Power Curve to the phenomenon known as blogging. And blogging…

New Graphic Interface Designs for News

Many people (recently, Editor & Publisher Magazine columnist Steve Outing) have written about how news Web sites need better graphical layouts. Most of those layouts date back to the early days of the Web, when designers were attempting to replicate printed page…

Alistair Cooke R.I.P. (1908-2004)

The Guardian in the UK and The New York Times were among many English-language newspapers today publishing obituaries of Alistair Cooke. A cultural bridge across the Atlantic, he lucidly wrote for one and perceptively read the other. The Guardian‘s Media section today…

Concensus in the Trenches

Azeem Azhar pointed me to Terry Eagleton‘s essay about the importance of theory, which the Guardian published on Tuesday. Azhar writes: “… it’s a brilliant criticism of the critics of thinking, reason and principle. During my time working for large organisations there…

Crawling for Local News

Last week, I wrote about Topix.net, which spiders more than 3,000 other local news sites, then lets users enter their local ZIP codes and see a page showing all local news from all local media. The San Jose Mercury News quoted me:…

Busy Monday

I’m having a busy Monday because the previous day one of the journalism reviews commissioned me to report about the Project for Excellence in Journalism‘s The State of the News Media 2004 study, specifically the section about US online journalism. The study,…

Shameless Plug? You Be The Judge

Aside my article this week at Online Journalism Review, someone has posted a comment that amuses me:             Shameless Plug I find it more than a little coincidental that Vin’s prescription for online success involves using products quite similar to his PublishMail product,…

Solo Act

I’m now writing this blog solo, a change from the past two years when I’ve written perhaps two of every three postings. So, blame just me from now on.      — Vin Crosbie

Prophetic Words

“It is the thesis of this book that society can only be understood through a study of the messages and communications facilities which belong to it; and that in the future development of these messages and communication facilities, messages between man and…

Ask Their Employees That Question

EditorandPublisher.com features an article headlined Tony Ridder Still Having Fun. We’ll presume that Rupert Murdoch, the Cox family, and the Newhouse brothers are also having fun.* The real question is whether their employees are enjoying themselves, too.      * We should note that…

The Future of Television

Hong Kong already is the world’s most telecommunicative major city, having more wired and more wireless access than any other. San Jose Mercury News Columnists Dan Gillmor (who’s doing his annual sabbatical teaching gig in Hong Kong) says that the future of…

Now For A Completely Different Treat

After gorging on turkey during the long Thanksgiving Holiday in America, we’re now in the mood to eat anything but foul. However, what we found at the American Hotel off Amsterdam’s Leidseplein was an entirely new culinary treat. Yes, live pasta! Although…

Thanks to The Few

Our thanks to Ola Ahlvarsson, Rosenthal Alves, Bruce Annan, Colby Atwood, Azeem Azhar, Clyde Bentley, Matt Benner, Gordon Borrell, John Breen, Peter Brennan, Dan Bruns, Neil Budde, Mike Cassidy, David Card, Bob Cauthorn, Todd Chronis, Craig Cline, Séamus Conaty, Peter Conti, Ron…

The Two Views About Interactivity

We’ve been dwelling on Jeff Jarvis‘ remarks about how there was the no interactivity demonstrated in the presentations during the Online News Association‘s panel entitled Engaging Readers with Interactivity. During our trip this week between Chicago and Detroit, we were discussing how…

Hyper Cow – for Young Web Developers

If you think the new hires on your Web staff are getting younger each year (which actually means you’re getting older), fear not. As they get apparently younger, too young to be drinking Coca-Cola® or Red Bull® energy drinks, the beverage industry…

Do Columns On This Page Overlap?

Because this Web page is written using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), is formatted for three columns, and CSS doesn’t always display three columns in all Web browsers, we’ve been getting reports (particularly from AOL users) that some of this page’s columns overlap.…