What’s Murdoch’s ‘cool new toy’ for accessing media content?

Australian media is busy speculating over Rupert Murdoch’s new idea for content access.

Margaret Simons of the Content Makers, reports how Caroline Overington, senior writer and columnist with The Australian (part of Murdoch’s News Limited) let slip that Rupert Murdoch’s pay wall plans might include a ‘cool new toy’ for accessing media content.

Simons reports from the Media140 conference:

“Overington said that News Limited had many wonderful plans of which they were very proud, and they could not be unveiled yet, but she believed they would lead people to pay for content.

“Then in the closing stages of the session, she referred to iTunes, and how people had turned to paying for music that they could get elsewhere for free because of the entry of a ‘cool new toy’ in the iPhone.

“She added: ‘That’s kind of what we are thinking about.’

“So what is it, I wonder? Some kind of deal with Apple, soon to release its new electronic reader? A competing product? Very intriguing.”

An update, pointing to coverage of the Apple Tablet negotiations, with more speculation on the ‘iRupert’ at this link.

And Overington at Media140 courtesy of SlowTV.

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Nieman Journalism Lab: HuffPo’s A/B headline testing

The Huffington Post is applying A/B testing to some of its headlines, reports the Nieman Journalism Lab.

“Readers are randomly shown one of two headlines for the same story. After five minutes, which is enough time for such a high-traffic site, the version with the most clicks becomes the wood that everyone sees.”

Full post at this link…

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TechCrunch: New site for Hearst to semi-automate content

Following on from Peter Kirwan’s Wired.co.uk article on the move away from journalism and journalists in business magazine publishing, TechCrunch reports on consumer mag publisher Hearst’s new site, LMK (or ‘Let Me Know’).

Using semantic filtering technology the site will aggregate and filter content to create curated topic pages – each with its own freelance editor and designers. The best sources for each topic, e.g. college football, are selected by the editing team and then the technology takes over.

So far, sports topics seem to be dominating the launch – can such semi-automated pages work for breaking news and other news areas?

Full post at this link…

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Computer World: WikiLeaks plans to make leaking easier with new upload system

Wikileaks.org, the document leaking website, is working on a way to enable newspapers, human rights organisations, criminal investigators and others to embed an ‘upload a disclosure to me via WikiLeaks’ form onto their websites, Computer World reports (IDG News Service article).

“The upload system will give potential whistleblowers around the world the ability to leak sensitive documents to an organisation or journalist they trust over a secure connection, while giving the receiver legal protection they might not otherwise enjoy.”

Full post at this link…

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The Atlantic Wire: E-Reader round-up

A good sweep-up of e-reader comment across the web, following news that Amazon’s Kindle e-reader will come down to $40, with a new international version planned. Is the age of the e-reader finally upon us?

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#DataJourn: Royal Mail cracks down on unofficial postcode database

A campaign to release UK postcode data that is currently the commercial preserve of the Royal Mail (prices at this link) has been gathering pace for a while. And not so long ago in July, someone uploaded a set to Wikileaks.

How useful was this, some wondered: the Guardian’s Charles Arthur, for example.

In an era of grassroots, crowd-sourced accountability journalism, this could be a powerful tool for journalists and online developers when creating geo-data based applications and investigations.

But the unofficial release made this a little hard to assess. After all, the data goes out of date very fast, so unless someone kept leaking it, it wouldn’t be all that helpful. Furthermore it would be in defiance of the Royal Mail’s copyright, so would be legally risky to use.

At the forefront of the ‘Free Our Postcodes’ campaign is Earnest Marples, the site named after the British postmaster general who introduced the postcode. Marples is otherwise known as Harry Metcalfe and Richard Pope, who – without disclosing their source – opened an API which could power sites such as PlanningAlerts.com and Jobcentre Pro Plus.

“We’re doing the same as everyone’s being doing for years, but just being open about it,” they said at the time of launch earlier this year.

But now they have closed the service. Last week they received cease and desist letters from the Royal Mail demanding that they stop publishing information from the database (see letters on their blog).

“We are not in a position to mount an effective legal challenge against the Royal Mail’s demands and therefore have closed the ErnestMarples.com API, effective immediately,” Harry Metcalfe told Journalism.co.uk.

“We’re very disappointed that Royal Mail have chosen to take this course. The service was supporting numerous socially useful applications such as Healthwhere, JobcentreProPlus.com and PlanningAlerts.com. We very much hope that the Royal Mail will work with us to find a solution that allows us to continue to operate.”

A Royal Mail spokesman said: “We have not asked anyone to close down a website. We have simply asked a third party to stop allowing unauthorised access to Royal Mail data, in contravention of our intellectual property rights.”

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TheStreet.com: New York Times looks to newspaper ‘Tablets’

The Times is reportedly looking at Tablet computers as a way to boost readership.

The small portable computers with touchscreen technology could offer a new way of delivering newspaper content – and a new potential revenue stream, thestreet.com reports.

Full story at this link…

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