Tag Archives: co-founder

End print edition of New York Times, argues Netscape co-founder

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In Marc Andreessen’s world the Christian Science Monitor wouldn’t be the only traditional print product going online-only.

In this interview in the latest edition of Portfolio, Andreessen, who is co-founder of Ning, Netscape and investor in Digg and Twitter, says the New York Times should cut its print losses and focus on ‘the market of the future’.

If you were running the New York Times, what would you do?
[Andreessen] Shut off the print edition right now. You’ve got to play offence. You’ve got to do what Intel did in ’85 when it was getting killed by the Japanese in memory chips, which was its dominant business. And it famously killed the business – shut it off and focused on its much smaller business, microprocessors, because that was going to be the market of the future. And the minute Intel got out of playing defence and into playing offence, its future was secure. The newspaper companies have to do exactly the same thing.

The financial markets have discounted forward to the terminal conclusion for newspapers, which is basically bankruptcy. So at this point, if you’re one of these major newspapers and you shut off the printing press, your stock price would probably go up, despite the fact that you would lose 90 per cent of your revenue. Then you play offence. And guess what? You’re an internet company.

Digi bears’ picnic: live streaming from Amsterdam

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Get your rugs out in the office, today’s the first day of PICNIC 08, the ‘cross media bonanza’ in Amsterdam, from 24-26 September. This year’s theme is ‘Collaborative Creativity’.

The speakers’ line-up is eclectic, and includes people such as Kara Swisher, co-executive editor of AllThingsDigital, Ethan Zuckerman, co-founder of globalvoicesonline.org, and Genevieve Bell, anthropologist for the Intel Corporation.

For those who have to munch their jam sandwiches on their own and can’t get to the Netherlands, follow online. There are RFID games, online social networking, a mobile application, a widget, a live feed, live report aggregated content, and blog, all available from the main site.

Live streaming can be followed throughout the three days.

Newscred picked up by Yahoo

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Newscred, a site aimed at gauging the credibility of online news, is gaining momentum: a Twitter update from co-founder Shafqat Islam earlier this week said the site had been featured on Yahoo’s personalised homepage My Yahoo.

The service was featured as a daily recommendation from Yahoo for new apps to add to the homepage.

Islam said it was not part of a deal between the two companies, just a pleasant surprise.

International Blogging and New Media Association names new president

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The International Blogging and New Media Association (IBNMA) has relaunched under the leadership of new president Paul Chaney.

“The IBNMA strives to serve the interests of the blogging and new media communities as a global non-profit association. The Association’s mission is four-fold: to provide research, information, education and advocacy to bloggers, podcasters, social media consultants and others engaged in the industry in any way,” the IBNMA says in its mission statement.

Chaney, a business blogger and co-founder of blog software company Blogging Systems, will head up the board of the organisation, which was founded in November last year.

links for 2008-07-14

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NowPublic buys rumour-based news site Truemors

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‘Crowd-powered’ news site NowPublic has bought Truemors, a site which aggregates sources backing up news rumours, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.

The acquisition, which was made for an undisclosed sum, will expand NowPublic’s news coverage, which already has 100,000 active contributors.

Content from Truemors will feature on the NowPublic site to be used as tips for budding contributors, NP’s co-founder Len Brody told AFP.

“Truemorists are digging in the four corners of the web for the status of the rumor mill at any moment. It will drive leads to our members for stories going on around the world and give our readers a look at what’s bubbling under the hood,” he said.

As part of the deal Truemors will remain an independent company with founder Guy Kawasaki becoming chair of NowPublic’s advisory board.

Online news network VillageSoup in print expansion

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Village NetMedia, which owns community news network VillageSoup, has purchased six weekly local newspapers from the Courier Publications series in Maine, USA.

Several of the sites will be merged with the existing VillageSoup sites, which serve the Knox and Waldo areas, a release from the publisher said.

In addition, new VillageSoup sites will be set up as companion sites for two of the newly acquired locals.

VillageSoup, which was set up 10 years ago, combines local news reporting with an online forum to create a ‘virtual town hall’.

Around 26 jobs will be lost as part of the takeover.

“VillageSoup integrates a highly interactive website with traditional print, and is the future for small town media. This purchase allows us to expand our reach and breathe new life and energy into these papers, all for the benefit of readers and advertisers,” Richard M. Anderson, co-founder of VillageSoup, said.

“Our approach helps transition traditional community newspaper companies into community host companies, and that’s the future for the industry.”

Innovations in Journalism – live streaming video from mobiles developed by Qik

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We give developers the opportunity to tell us journalists why we should sit up and pay attention to the sites and devices they are working on. Today, it’s live video streamed over the web from mobile phones from Qik.

image of qik website logo

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
Hi. I’m Bhaskar Roy, co-founder of Qik.

Qik’s vision is to enable anyone with a camera-phone to stream live video from anywhere in the world to the web, TV, mobile phones, and gaming consoles.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
For news – immediacy of information is very important. Qik enables journalists to capture and report news live from wherever they are – without having to wait for the news truck to arrive.

It enables journalists to conduct better interviews by taking questions from anywhere in the world. It provides the ability for viewers on the web to send real-time chat messages to the person streaming the video straight to their phone enabling a high level of interactivity.

As a result journalists are able to conduct richer, better interviews. It also enables journalists to leverage anyone who may be at a particular event to capture the story for them.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
We are just getting started! 🙂

In our current invitation-only alpha release, users with Nokia smartphones can stream live video from their phones to anywhere on the web and playback their Qik videos from their phones.

We are working on addressing other smartphones and Java-enabled phones. We are also working on providing the ability to stream live from phone to phone.

4) Why are you doing this?
We truly believe that sharing and experiencing moments of your life with your friends, family and/or your world is invaluable.

5) What does it cost to use it?
We are currently in a free, invitation-only alpha stage.

6) How will you make it pay?
We are at a very early stage of bringing this innovation to market and focused on ensuring that we deliver high value to the billions of camera phone users globally.

Innovations in Journalism – live geo-tagged video broadcast from Seero

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We give developers the opportunity to tell us journalists why we should sit up and pay attention to the sites and devices they are working on. Today, live video streamed over the web with extra geographical information mapped in real-time from Seero.

image of seero’s website

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
Hello, I’m Justin Cutillo, co-founder of Seero. It’s a geo-broadcasting platform that fuses live and on-demand video with GPS mapping.

Our technology is a response to the convergence and proliferation of video and GPS features in the flourishing mobile device market.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
Seero was built to reflect the core needs of video bloggers and online journalist. The platform incorporates tools for live mobile broadcasting with additional real-time GPS tracking and static location marking.

We also have a geo-information/advertising server. This system allows us to geo-tag specific information to enhance any broadcasts near that location.

For example, if an online journalist was covering a fire in London, we have the ability to upload facts specific to the building and geo-tag them to the exact location. The information is served based on its proximity to the location of the broadcast.

All you need for mobile broadcasting is a laptop and a mobile broadband card. You can add on an inexpensive GPS receiver for the real-time tracking feature or use an Ultra Mobile PC is you don’t want to carry around a full laptop.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
We are currently working on some major build items. We should be releasing an embeddable flash player that includes the live video player and the full map functionality within a month. We are also working on a module to add course tracking to previously recorded videos.

Our largest project is to build a mobile broadcasting application for Symbian mobile phones to enable journalist to broadcast live video and GPS right from their Nokia phones.

Beyond that we have a secretive project that could really redefine how people interact with live video on the internet.

4) Why are you doing this?
When it comes down to it we are technology buffs. We came up with the idea on a vacation to San Francisco more than two years ago while thinking of ways to virtually tour a city.

Combining live video and location info opens up new, exciting uses for online video.  Needless to say we are very enthusiastic about the prospects.

5) What does it cost to use it?
Besides the hardware cost, which may be very little if you already have a laptop, the service is completely free to all users.

6) How will you make it pay?
We currently envision three main channels of revenue. The first channel involves white label sites built on the Seero infrastructure for promotional as well as professional and government services.

The second channel is geo-advertising. We have a proprietary geo-advertising system that provides a simple and powerful solution for correlating advertising to site content.

Beyond those revenue streams we also see potential for our geo-advertising system as a stand-alone service.