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 […]
A reader came to me this week with a problem. He was being sued in federal court by a company claiming he had defamed them online. That will be $75,000, please. I’m not getting into who the reader is, which company is suing, even what jurisdiction, because none of that matters here. But the case is real and I feel for the reader. So let’s come up with a way to make sure this doesn’t have to happen again.
Internet Service Providers in the USA are trying to apply bandwidth caps to their users, with those caps being 2, 4, or 5 gigabytes-per-month for wireless users at various price levels and generally 250 gigabytes-per-month for home users. Most of the press coverage of this issue comes down on the side of consumers but lately the ISP publicity machine has been revved-up and we’re being told that bandwidth caps are necessary, even inevitable. This is, as my 87 year-old Mom would say, BS.
