Digial Revolution Series on BBC

My brother Will is currently filming new BBC series on Digital Revolution “which looks at how nation states have tried and largely failed to control internet content”. Remembering the late 90s and the dot com boom era, there were more TV programmes about the internet than today. It will be challenging, he says, to visually capture the small screen (PC) on a big screen (TV). “So what is actually that you do as a Digital Product Manager?” he always asks me. I hope he will find out soon using his camera, and I look forward to the new series!

The Economies of Free

Chris Anderson's new book

What if Google, Facebook and your daily online news feeds started charging you for the usage? In the free online world of the ordinary internet consumer, the only thing to pay for is your broadband connection and occasional purchases such as air tickets, shopping etc. Ah yes, and your electronic gadget to be able to view it. Information is (should be?) free. Wikipedia is free. Twitter is free. Blogging services are free. Most of your daily news are free. Horoscopes are free. Flickr basic is free. Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Email is free. Maps and Journey Planners are free…

In the world of democracy, information should be free, no? But how do content creators sustain businesses with direct revenue being rarely generated? Chris Anderson from Wired.com argues that as the marginal cost of supplying processing power, storage and bandwidth gets closer to zero, a whole new economic environment will emerge. While on holiday I read his new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price. It was a great read.  Would economies of free change towards more freedom or reverse to paid-for?

What does online local journalism mean to you?

I posted this open question on Linkedin and here are some interesting answers:

Answer 1: “I think there are two parts to the answer. A daily edition recapping all the stories prior to printing and all the traditional stuff-sports, classified, etc. And then an online version that updates at least hourly.”

Answer 2: “Local Newspaper needs definition as in the past succesful local media cater to local geographic population
-On line and local seems at odds (re access)
-Refine market segmentation may be needed

Else “local” newspaper would have ALL of he ABOVE. Quick, frequent Updates, Blogs, Local flavor services, features, hot spots reviews local buzz inclu government and civic,discounts and deals etc and hopefully a lot more reader, viewer interaction – Web 2.0.”

Answer 3: “Local events, political news, editorials, readers grievances which should reach the civic body authorities and demand explanations/responses, weather, sports, classifieds, deals/discounts at restaurants…”

Answer 4: “An online local newspaper should have a very need centric approach. It thus needs to provide plethora of home grown information. The news should be of kind and type, should be relevant and drawn out of context as well as prevailing situations. The online mode has to be discussion oriented with discussion boards and contributory features. The online medium should have mass appeal with kaleidoscope of features for people in the entire age bracket. This would only enhance the utility of the newspaper as it would be read by the masses and not just a class or section. The language needs to be simple as the idea should be to provide “informational content and not a fanciful editorial content. The local online daily should have lot of interactivity inbuilt in it. The daily should cover city specific highlights from all the strata’s. It should have the flavor and the material of the city. You should think of incorporating collaborative tools, should also be more open source. Think of a newspaper where “you can create and contribute to the process of news making”. You should also think of using filters and scanners to collect quality news. Also if the local online daily is made accessible to more number of people through various resource channels and touch points, will induce people to amplified consumption.”

Answer 5: “News updated at least hourly, features, editorial, local services, classifieds, offers readers’ comments on news/features and something that makes me want to return to read you rather than buy a local paper. My local paper offers daily news, so I’d want a more frequent update from an on-line paper. I’d expect more interactive (web 2.0) type features as well such as being able to comment on news and features, maybe a connected forum to discuss local issues or the opportunity to contribute comment pieces myself perhaps via a blog (draft comment pieces could go to an editor for approval first).”

Anyway, thanks to all who wrote back with very detailed answers, and yes, check out the ‘journalism in the changing world‘.

SEO blah SEO,… blah

And yet another SEO basics document posted on the net I just stubmled upon. It has been published today so I guess it must be the newest basics in the SEO developments. Best to send to your coleagues who claim to know much about SEO but actually forget the basics and get stuck in SEM and SES and all that jazz. An yes, and one search factor such as links pointing to the site has been ommitted from this document so please bare this in mind when you read it. It is probably because the site owner can only control certain things to improve SEO and links in and out is a topic for another time.

Monocle web design – staying clear of Web 2.0

A friend of mine based in the States just joined a group ‘Monocle’ on Facebook which reminded me to buy the latest issue of this uber-sophisticated intellectual magazine about culture, business and international lifestyle. It is the most blogged about magazine of the year, because the content is great.  I’d definitely give it 5 starts for editorial judgement which is so hard to find lately due to us bloggers and users creating content as opposed to hardcore journalists. Monocle is created by intellectuals for intellectuals and it is not web 2.0 so content is based on purely editorial judgement. Anyway – an interesting blog about the Monocle website design,..

Advanced Search

While defining the new UI strategy for our site, the team came up with different design propositions to redefine the search experience on the home page and the results page. The idea is to add more complex tools to help users actually simplify the search experience. I am not going to talk about the tools here yet, but having a few different databases to search (and they are not easily merged in a results set!), the user stumbles across many unidentified fields of data that are irrelevant to him/her but relevant to the simple search keywords in some shape and order – Who/What and Where. So, from this came the Advanced Search discussion.

Prompting users to actually think about what they search before they enter keywords, is something that we want to try and test. The search task is somehow related to the browse task. We are trying to connect the two by giving users the option to 1) search within categories/channels and 2) browse the results that appear in a taxonomy-like categorization.

How to make the advanced search more popular and a core function in the search UI without making the user think too much?

Now read this great article about ‘advancing’ the advanced search.