Apple to Revolutionize TV With Subscription Service?

Apple already revolutionized the music industry with the iPod and iTunes, and now they seem poised to change the way we watch TV as well.

Rumor has it that Apple has been shopping around the idea of a $30/month subscription TV service to various television networks.  But instead of offering up the service on the Apple TV (as was previously speculated) Apple is reportedly implanting the service into the massive iTunes ecosystem.

But Apple could be taking this one step further.

Just recently Apple released a brand new 27” iMac with a massive 2,560 x 1,440 pixel 16:10 screen and 1 TB of storage.  All the iMac needs is a highly anticipated integrated Blu-ray player and the all-in-one behemoth could compete with flat-panel televisions with this proposed TV subscription model.

Some have speculated that Apple could start producing their own TV’s, but this subscription service puts them in the position to gradually mold their iMacs into the TVs of tomorrow.

Finding Subjects and Sources on Twitter

About midway through the Spring 2009 semester I decided on a topic to pursue for the coming summer News21 journalism initiative.  The topic was broad: Latinos in the military. I decided to do a little research on the Web to see if there were any discussions already brewing.

Last August, I joined the social networking site Twitter, where millions of people share their thoughts about everything and anything.  I wanted to know if anyone on Twitter was talking about my topic, so I threw a few word combinations at Twitter’s search engine.

Nothing much came up in my first few searches but eventually I got a few results by searching for “citizenship AND military.”  One of the results was particularly interesting.  It said:

“My heart breaks for him that can’t go in the military. He should B able to  serve the 4 yrs and B given the opportunity to get citizenship.”

The message was posted on April 9 by a user named “Yankeelin” and was the third “tweet” in a series about this individual.  Prior messages from the same user said:

“My daughters boyfriend Alberto is from Mexico too. He’s been here since he was 5.”

and

“…and he graduated H.S. as the top ranking ROTC cadet in NC, but his family and him are not legal. So he can’t go in the military!”

I found the story compelling, so I saved the links to the posts and forwarded them in an e-mail to my reporting partner for the summer project. The subject line was: “Maybe we can use Twitter to find stories?”

On May 18th, the first day of the News21 program at Arizona State, I decided to follow up on this story but I wasn’t exactly sure how to proceed.  How does one approach a complete stranger on the Internet?

Yankeelin’s Twitter profile revealed that her name was Linda and lived in North Carolina.  A White Pages search of her name and hometown returned one result with a phone number, but I decided a less forward method of first contact might be more appropriate in this case.

On Twitter, you can send a message to other users by beginning a message with the “@” symbol followed by the person’s username.  One problem with this method is if the user does not log onto the service frequently, he or she could easily overlook this kind of direct message.

The other challenge was that Twitter limits each message you send to 140 characters, 11 of which I would be using up with “@yankeelin” and a space before my message.  So cramming an introduction and an explanation and a request to talk was going to be tough to do in 129 characters.  However, I managed to squeeze in the following message:

“@yankeelin Im a student studying latinos in milit, love to chat about ur daughters bf Alberto (saw ur tweet from april)- chcameron@gmail.com”

By sacrificing some punctuation (”I’m” became “Im”) and with the use of some well known Internet abbreviations (”ur” for “your” and “bf” for “boyfriend”), I was able to get my message across in exactly 140 characters.

A few days went by and I considered calling the phone number that the white pages search had turned up, but to my surprise, just before noon on May 20, I received an e-mail from Linda in response to my tweet:

“Hi I saw your ‘tweet’ to me about my daughter’s boyfriend wanting to go into the military.  You were writing me in reference to a tweet I wrote back in April.  My daughter’s e-mail is attached, and the two of you can communicate about it.  Her name is Jo Beth.”

A few emails to Jo Beth eventually led to some phone calls with Alberto, the JROTC superstar with dreams of joining the military.  He mentioned that his girlfriend had explained how we found him and we shared a laugh over this unorthodox way of reporting.

The more my reporting partner and I chatted with Alberto the more interested we became in his story.  Here is a kid who was the top JROTC cadet in the state and all he wants is to serve his country in the military, but he can’t due to his citizenship status.

We pitched his story to our editor and the decision was made: we HAD to talk to this young man.  So we booked our flights to North Carolina.

Next thing we knew we were sitting in Alberto and Jo Beth’s living room with two cameras, a lighting kit and a notebook full of questions.  We emerged a few hours later having squeezed every last detail out of Alberto and feeling very confident about the story.

As we flew home from the East Coast, it was amazing to think that the opportunity to interview Alberto started with a successful search on Twitter.

Celebrities and others have given Twitter a reputation for obnoxious and pointless messages about what someone ate for breakfast, but in terms of connecting with REAL people with REAL stories, it was the perfect tool.

The Unreachables: How Can New Media Attract Teens?

Some fascinating statistics are hitting the web today as a Morgan Stanley intern has published a report on the media habits of teens.  The intern – a teen himself at 15 years old – surprised many when he found that most kids his age not only avoid traditional media – TV, radio and newspapers – but they even eschew some new media, like Twitter.

I too have seen this trend when I talk to kids in high school (which I do on a somewhat regular basis with a part-time job).  They often are unaware of many “mainstream” news items that would interest a younger audience, such as advances in cool gadget technology and video games.

But when you think about it, who can blame them? A teen’s life is consumed by their friendships and their schoolwork, so how can they find the time to stay on top of the things that matter to them when they are doing a few hours of homework each night?

These teens represent a nearly unreachable demographic of media consumers in terms of getting news.  They don’t read newspapers, they don’t listen to the radio, and they don’t watch TV, and when they do it’s not for news.  And when they go online, they stick to social networks like Facebook and Myspace to keep up with their school friends.

In my generation, kids always wanted their own phone to chat with friends, which gave way to kids wanting their own cell phone.  Now, every house has a computer with internet and along with their cell phones, the teens continue their schoolyard discussions on the Web.

So how does new media find a way to reach teens? If teens can’t grab onto Twitter, what innovation is going to steal their attention away from their everyday lives with their REAL friends?

AT&T Drops Ball With iPhone 3GS

The internet is all a’buzz about the brand-spankin’-new iPhone 3GS announced today by Apple, but AT&T users are upset with how the carrier has prepared for its new device.  The new phone looks the same, but upgrades to the hardware and a soon-to-come iPhone OS have ushered in a boatload of new features, some of which AT&T won’t be able to provide when the phone launches.

Apple boasts the new iPhone’s ability to send multimedia messages through MMS (including pictures and video) and the new tethering feature which allows users to turn their iPhone’s in portable 3G modems for their laptops.

AT&T is still in the process of upgrading its system to allow for a greater flow of data from devices like the new iPhone, and features like MMS and tethering will likely not be available until they finish.  When will they finish? AT&T has arbitrarily said, “later this summer”, but that both features WILL be supported.  Eventually.

And as if that wasn’t enough to boil the blood of its subscribers (like myself), AT&T has set higher purchase points for those who already own an iPhone 3G.  While the new iPhone tops out at $299 for new subscribers, existing users could have to pay as much as $699 to upgrade. This is likely because AT&T offered a discount with a 2-year contract for the iPhone 3G, and allowing those users to upgrade their plans at another discounted price would cost them the difference.

In response to outrage over the charges, AT&T said that “an iPhone 3G customer in most cases can early upgrade at $399 [16GB] or $499 [32GB]”.  Still, $200 extra for a new phone and new contract?  I could understand a $100 boost (equal to the discount attained by purchasing the 3G at a subsidised price), but why $200?

Perhaps AT&T is anticipating the fact that Apple wants to move the iPhone to other carriers (such as Verizon) in the near future.  The extra $200 to switch from 3G to 3GS is more than AT&T’s $175 early termination fee, so at this point, its more economical to switch to Sprint and get the new iPhone-worthy Palm Pre (with a cheaper monthly plan also).

For me, the possibility of Apple developing an iPhone for Verizon in the near future is enough to give me pause on jumping on the new 3GS.  I need the 3GS.  I want the 3GS.  But at this point it may be a bad deal.  I may just have to settle with the new iPhone OS on my 3G, or bite the bullet and pay the extra $200 to get the 3GS, and I know many other 3G users in my position are thinking the same thing.

AT&T also announced plans to allow for pre-ordering of iPhones, and will have a separate line for pre-orders at its stores when the phone launches.  I doubt we will see the insane mad-rush of AT&T and Apple stores we saw last year when the new phone goes on sale.  The fact that it was as crazy as it was last year attests to the fact that Apple is drying up the “going to buy an iPhone” market.  A lot of those who were going to get one have bought one already, and my guess is a lot of 3G owners will not want to pony up $200 extra to get a 3GS.

Sarah Lacy vs. Journalism

Sarah Lacy is one of those people you hear of and – in my case – you shake your head in jealously and amazement. I first heard of the tech/business writer a few months ago when TechCrunch welcomed her as a guest blogger and then later hired her on as a regular contributor.

Lacy has her own blog on BusinessWeek called “Valley Girl”, co-hosts Yahoo’s Tech Ticker, has published a book, is halfway through her second book, and on top of all that now she writes for TechCrunch. Aside from the business stuff, she’s living my dream.

And apparently, she’s living several journalism students’ dreams.

Today, Lacy wrote a terrific and bold article on TechCrunch called “Who the Hell Is Enrolling in Journalism School Right Now?” which caught my eye on my RSS feed and made me think, “uh oh”.

In the article, Lacy says “I’ve gotten farther in ten years than I thought I would in fifty” while a friend of hers who chose journalism school is not even in the industry. She then launches into a powerful affront on why journalism school is a bad idea, including this gem:

“Journalism schools are like foot-binding. They force you into a style that a bunch of dinosaurs all agreed was acceptable a zillion years ago. So in an age of blogging, you have no voice. In fact, if I were in J-school now, I’d have my knuckles rapped for using the rhetorical “you” in those last two sentences.”

If I weren’t on a crowded train at the time, I would have started a slow-clap for Lacy. That paragraph pretty succinctly sums up part of the reason I do not like traditional reporting and why I do not want to find myself in a traditional journalism setting. To close her article, Lacy hits it out the park:

“Journalism isn’t dying; it’s just in a period of extreme volatility. And in any time of volatility, there’s huge room for opportunity. But you’re not going to learn how to exploit it in a stuffy classroom taught by people who got there by working at newspapers.”

The funny thing is a graduate journalism student like myself should be offended by this article, but instead I’m feeling more assured about my position. I do feel the urge, however, to explain that not all journalism schools are alike, and that The Cronkite School is encouraging this non-traditional path as well.

I read this article on my iPhone while riding the train home from journalism grad school and just after, I noticed that Lacy had posted this on her Twitter account:

She of course is referring to her BuisnessWeek article also written today called “AP and News Corp.: Wrong About Google” in which she wags her finger and warns that “asking web companies to pay up for content won’t fix a business model that Old Media should have remedied a long time ago”.

Two amazing articles published within hours of eachother? This girl is my hero for the day. Call me a fan-boy, but she has a hell of a silver tongue:

“The AP’s rant followed News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch telling Forbes that Google should have to start paying for linking to News Corp. content. What’s next? Charging Twitter for the privilege of all those editors and reporters who try to drum up interest in their articles via Tweets? …

Once you’re reduced to legal threats and whining, you’re one step away from admitting total defeat. Just ask the music industry. What’s next, suing our own readers for clicking on Google links?”

I encourage everyone to read both of these articles, because they are flat out amazing. Lacy has written some things that some would hesitate to say, but the truth is a lot of people share her opinions.

Point/Counterpoint: URL Shorteners

It seems that these URL shorteners are a dime a dozen these days, what with Bit.ly, Tr.im, TinyURL and now even Digg.com has rolled out their own service for keeping those pesky hrefs in line.

With the increased use of short messaging services (such as – dare I say? – Twitter), these shortened URL’s have become increasingly popular on the Web. But are these services a good or bad thing? Could they put you at risk? Or are they just a useful tool?

Perhaps Ben Parr over at Mashable decided to play devil’s advocate, but his April 5th post entitled “5 Reasons Why URL Shorteners Are Useful” is a worthy response to blogging superhero Cory Doctorow‘s April 4th BoingBoing post “Why URL shorteners suck“.

To sum up Parr’s argument in defense of URL shorteners, he says they are useful because “they make links more manageable”, “they can track and compile click data”, “they can be transformed into social media services”, “they can provide users useful features” and “they promote sharing”. Go read Parr’s post to get more info, but for the most part these are good points about the usefulness of URL shorteners.

Doctorow’s challenge that these services “suck” is based on the ease at which a hacker could gain access to an unsuspecting user’s computer because of a tainted shortened URL. He cites a blog that suggests Twitter make their own service to ensure the safety of URL’s sent across its network along with another by Del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter.

Schachter says that we are being burdened by clicking these blind links that could lead to malware, as well as by the middleman between us and the content we want to access. The later is a weaker argument than the safety argument, but it is interesting to note how much of our Web lives are in the hands of the cloud.

I don’t think Doctorow is claiming that URL shorteners are not useful, but rather, he is wary of their safety. A lot of things are useful but could potentially be dangerous, like an automobile, for example.  Perhaps the post should have been titled “Why URL shorteners are dangerous”.

As the smoke clears, it seems like URL shorteners are too useful to disappear due to safety, but taking precautions with them is good practice. Beware clicking shortened links from people you do not know, and make sure you tell this to your mom when she inevitably gets on Twitter.

The Mobile Wave: iPhone 3.0 and Newspapers

Earlier this week, in another installment of their infamous product announcements, Apple previewed their upcoming changes to the iPhone firmware.  The new iPhone 3.0 firmware includes a plethora of additions and fixes such as the long awaited implementation of something as simple as copy and paste functionality.

One feature, which allows users to purchase items from within an application, caught my eye more than the others.  For those unfamiliar with the iPhone, Apple allows iPhone users to purchase applications made by third party developers through the App Store.

Since the conception of the App Store, the interaction between developers and their customers ended once an app was purchased and installed. With iPhone 3.0, developers will be able to sell additional content from within their applications, increasing their potential revenues and encouraging them to upgrade their applications.

Apple used game developers as an example of one community which could potentially benefit from this feature.  A game developer could sell their product in the App Store, but offer additional levels or features to be purchased from within the game.  Ben Parr of Mashable wrote an excellent article today about the importance of this feature to the mobile economy (read it here).  The possibilities are, quite literally, endless.

As a grad student working on my masters in journalism, the current crisis facing newspapers is a topic that is constantly crossing my mind.  For years, newspapers survived heavily on advertisements and classified ads for their revenues, and subscriptions played a much smaller role.  But with the introduction of free online services like Craigslist, the well of cash which classifieds brought to newspapers has all but dried up. Additionally, advertisers are putting more of their money in cheaper, more focused online ads forcing newspapers to brainstorm ideas for paid subscriptions services.

The newspaper industry did little to prepare itself for the oncoming storm of the Internet, and instead chose to ignore the problem.  Now, with revenues plummeting, some are grasping at straws to find ways to survive, while others are either closing their doors (as in the case of Denver’s Rocky Mountain News) or switching to an online-only publication (take for instance the Seattle Post-Intelligencer).

Most newspapers have some sort of online companion to their printed editions, but the majority of their revenues still come from the printed edition.  The problem is, the cost of printing a newspaper is far more expensive than maintaining a website, but until the newspapers can discover how to transfer their revenue from print to online, they are stuck in their downward spiral.

In a recent episode of the MacBreak Weekly podcast, Andy Ihnatko stated that the only way for the newspaper industry to survive on the web was to abandon the web because the web will always and forever be free.  Instead he suggested that newspapers concentrate their digital monetization efforts to mobile devices such as the iPhone and Amazon’s Kindle.

Newspapers have already missed the web wave, and to jump on now is impossible.  As Ihnatko pointed, the web inherently wants to be free, and newspaper survival on the web would seek to break this law.  Besides, why pay to access the New York Times website when there are thousands of other free credible news sources and aggregators?

Instead, newspapers need to see that another wave is coming, and they can choose now to jump on before it overtakes them.  The wave is mobile devices, and with the new iPhone 3.0 in-app purchasing feature, there are now countless possibilities for newspapers to get on-board.

Hypothetically, a newspaper like the New York Times could sell an application for the iPhone which accessed their top stories at a low price of, say, $2.99 (about half the price of a week of print subscription).  Where the Times could turn a profit is offering subscriptions from within the application.  Perhaps a user could subscribe to different sections of the paper, like Politics or Sports for an additional $.99 a month which they could be prompted to renew.  Or the Times could even offer personalized news feeds based on keywords or a user’s interests and browsing habits.  Exclusive content made specifically for the iPhone could also be sold at a premium, and prices could be placed on viewing an entire story versus the first couple paragraphs.

As the nation’s mobile infrastructure expands, the number of people with the need to access the news on their mobile devices will continue to grow.  In 2005, 40% of mobile users in Japan (over 100 million people) used their devices to access news and information services.  This number grew to 52% in 2007, and I would venture a guess to say that nearly two-thirds, if not more, are getting news on their phones today.

The possibilities are out there, and newspapers need to be talking not only with companies like Apple and Amazon to learn how they could profit from their devices, but they also need to be communicating with each other.  Additionally, I think newspapers should be getting the word out to the public about their woes, instead of calling out for help when it is too late.  One day we could wake up and our most beloved papers could be gone, and many may not even know why.

New York Times Is At It Again

Lately I’ve been writing a lot about how the New York Times has impressively been going open source with its data and opening up various APIs to the public programming community.  Well, if you were thinking this post was going to be another API release… you’re right.  BUT, the Times also has another new exciting announcement.

First of all, the new API: dubbed the NYT Newswire API, this new programming interface will allow instant – yes I do mean instant – access to every New York Times article as it is published.  

“With the Times Newswire API, you can get links and metadata for Times articles as soon as they are published on NYTimes.com. The Times Newswire API provides an up-to-the-minute stream of published items.”

Personally, I’m not a programmer, so I don’t fully appreciate everything these API’s have to offer, but I know the devoloper community is surely excited about the plethora of access points to NYT data.  It will be interesting to see what sorts of applications are created with open access to these keys.

Now for the OTHER New York Times story: a proposed community blog network.  According to a Brooklyn blogger, on Monday the New York Times will begin a network of blogs at the local level:

“Starting next week, The New York Times will be rolling out a neighborhood blog initiative starting mid-day on Monday… According to an email that was forwarded to us, the subject matter will include “cultural events, bar and restaurant openings, real estate, arts, fashion, health, social concerns and anything else that goes on in the ‘SoHo of Brooklyn.’”

Though this has not been confirmed or announced by the Times itself, it doesn’t seem to be too far fetched an idea.  The Times already has several successful blogs of its own and helped fund WordPress and other web publishing platforms.

When it comes to the future of newspapers, the New York times seems to be doing to most to keep its head above water and to embrace Web technology.  I only hope their well of money doesn’t run dry too soon.

NYT Maps Super Bowl Tweets

The New York Times is doing a great deal to draw in the internet audience to nytimes.com and this map mashup is terrific.  They tracked Super Bowl related words by Twitter users and mapped them based on location word cloud style.  You can browse different sets of words, as well as view the timeline of how they changed throughout the game.

Above is a shot of the “player names” tweet group, so as more people in a specific region Tweeted about a specific player name, the size of the name grows.  This shot is from just after Larry Fitzgerald scored his second touchdown, giving Arizona a temporary three point lead in the fourth quarter.

This is really well done, but in the end, its just another “cool trick” to bring people to a site.  This really serves no purpose as far as newsworthiness.  There are still millions of people out there that don’t know or care about Twitter.  That being said, I think it is really cool to play around with for a while, but in the end what is it accomplishing?

Bye Bye Spy Cam

Have you ever feared that the person sitting across from you on the subway wasn’t innocently looking at their phone, but rather silently taking cameraphone pictures of you?  Or perhaps you’ve found yourself in a situation where you had to cleverly and nonchalantly snap a photo and send it to your friends with a funny caption attacehd.  Well, thanks to a bill before congress, this sort of activity may be squashed.

A bill has been sent to congress that will require manufacturers of cameraphones to incorporate a sound with the taking of a picture to allow suspicious subjects to know who’s photographing them.  Most camera phones already have this feature, but the feature can usually be turned off for silent photography.

If passed the sound will be mandatory, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission would have to determine what types of sounds qualified, as well as a “reasonable radius” in which it could be heard.

This article on Ars Technica has good information about this bill, but proposes some what I found to be rather non-important information and suggestions.  Author Matthew Lasar introduces some facts about how many teenagers use cameraphones to share rather revealing or explicit pictures of themselves with friends, or even the entire Internet community.  Lasar then suggests that cameraphone manufacturers allow users to customize the sound their camera shutter would make.

First off, the issue at hand is hardly about taking pictures of one’s self.  The whole point of having a sound would be to alert others to your surruptitious photo snapping, so sharing data about teens who post pictures of themselves is irrelevent.  

Secondly, allowing custom shutter sounds would defeat the purpose (which the author clearly missed).  Any user wishing to again silence their cameraphone could simply change the sound to the sound of silence (no, not the Paul Simon tune).  

Now on a serious note, this is an important issue to discuss in today’s world of technology.  Cameras are getting smaller and smaller but picture quality is not suffering, and while these advances in technology let us legitimatly take great pictures with compact cameras and cameraphones, it is certainly abused.  

But is forcing manufacturers to disable silencing shutter sounds the right answer?  Sound or no sound, if some one wants to take a picture of you at close range, they are going to do it, whether that means covering the speaker on the phone or coughing or by taking the picture in a loud environment.  The only way to get around that would be to make the sound deafening, but that would be rediculous and that is not going to happen.  

This will likely not pass, but if it is taken seriously it could.  Even so, I don’t feel that cameraphone sounds are going to keep predators from taking creepy pictures.  Even the non-predator, just-taking-this-for-fun, look-at-what-this-guy-is-wearing kind of pictures would still be taken.