GlobeReader makes a quiet debut

With little fanfare, the Boston Globe has unveiled a "preview" edition of GlobeReader, an attempt to produce an online newspaper that offers a better experience than the Web version. GlobeReader is slick and highly readable. Save for subtle differences in the fonts that are used, it looks exactly like Times Reader 2.0, which the New York Times unveiled last month. Both are built on the Adobe Air platform, which allows developers to build applications outside the context of the Web.

Unlike Times Reader, which you can subscribe to as a standalone product for $14.95 a month, GlobeReader is free but available only to print subscribers. You do not, however, have to be a seven-day subscriber — a Thursday-through-Sunday or Sunday-only subscription is sufficient.

That's probably a smart move. Knowledgeable people have told me that more than half of the Globe's advertising revenue comes from the Sunday paper. Still, Globe spokesman Bob Powers says that could change.

As for what we can expect once GlobeReader has moved beyond the "preview" stage, Powers writes:

We've chosen the term preview edition to reflect that GlobeReader is a brand new product for us, and to a large degree the industry, which we will continually improve based upon reader feedback. We want to make sure the customers help shape future editions. We are also opening GlobeReader Preview Edition only to subscribers because we do want to hear from our most loyal readers.

We also expect to add features such as crosswords, 'news in video', a 'latest news' update, and 'email to a friend' in the upcoming weeks/months, as they become available.

[F]or formatting reasons we are not including features such as comics, TV grids, weather, and sports box scores. We will look to add these features to a large degree based on reader's priorities.

A friend who works at the Globe told me recently that GlobeReader is actually a bigger technical challenge than Times Reader because of some peculiarities in the way the Globe is assembled. So I'd give it some settling-down time.

So what's the business strategy? It seems to me that it's a hedge against people canceling home delivery of the Globe altogether, especially now that prices have gone up quite a bit. The Globe benefits if people at least hold on to Sunday delivery; it may also benefit from not having to pay the printing and distribution costs of the considerably less lucrative Monday-through-Saturday editions.

It's an interesting strategy and, combined with other delivery platforms, such as the $9.99-a-month Kindle edition, may help chart a path out of the current mess in which the newspaper business finds itself. Such projects are not going to be nearly enough, but they could help.

Globe gets ready to unveil GlobeReader

Thanks to rozzie02131, who discovered that an e-version of the Boston Globe will become available next month. Called GlobeReader, it will presumably be based on the same Adobe Air platform as Times Reader 2.0, which was unveiled earlier this week.

No word on pricing. The come-on says that it will be available with "all Boston Globe home delivery subscriptions." If that means Sunday-only print customers can get it for free, that would represent quite a savings.

But being able to buy a separate GlobeReader subscription for $10 or $15 a month, as you can with Times Reader, would be better.

Quality control (or not)

If you click here, you'll see that New York Times columnist Ross Douthat is in the paper today.* But he doesn't show up if you choose the "Today's Paper" feature. Nor will you find him if you read the paper using Times Reader — which, after all, is a paid product.

Even before the new version of Times Reader came out, I noticed that David Pogue's Thursday technology column, "State of the Art," was generally missing.

If the Times is serious about charging people for certain types of enhanced online access, it's going to have to do better.

*Correction: Well, this is really stupid of me. Several readers have written in to point out at Douthat simply wasn't in the print edition today. D'oh! Looks like Media Nation is experiencing some quality-control problems.

Times Reader 2.0 is a big step up

I'm trying out the new Times Reader software. It's based on the Adobe Air platform, so there are no longer separate Windows and Mac versions. I was ambivalent about the previous version, but Times Reader 2.0 is faster and more attractive.

The new version abandons the Times print-edition font — too fussy for the computer screen — with what appears to be Cambria, an excellent choice. Photos are better integrated. Videos are part of the mix. Scrolling is smoother. You can even do the crossword puzzle on your computer — something you were supposed to be able to do on the previous version, though I couldn't get it to work on my Mac.

The questions remain: Where does this fit in the hierarchy of news products the Times offers, and does it point the way for other papers? Times Reader costs $3.45 a week. It's definitely a faster, smoother read than the regular, free Web edition, and, once you've downloaded the paper, you don't need a WiFi connection to read it.

But free is free. In addition, the Times Web edition is a livelier place, with more ads (perhaps that will change as Times Reader gains in acceptance), blogs and other extra content. In addition, if you're a blogger and you want to post something you see in Times Reader, you have to leave, access the Web edition and find the story again in order to grab the URL.

On the other hand, Times Reader really does offer a superior online reading experience. You're more likely actually to read the paper rather than just skip around. And it's a lot cheaper (we get the Sunday print edition delivered, so there's no extra charge for us) — not to mention more environmentally friendly — than the print edition.

Might there come a day when the Times and other papers can dump their print editions and instead offer various paid electronic versions via Times Reader, the Kindle and the like? I don't know. But I do know that Times Reader 2.0 is a huge improvement over its predecessor.

Platform angst

I'm seriously thinking of switching to WordPress.org so that I can bring my various Web sites under one roof — Media Nation, "Little People" and DanKennedy.net.

Pros:

• WordPress has nicer templates than Blogger, so I should easily be able to come up with a better look than I've got now.
• I'll be able to use my own domain name.
• I can set up static pages so that each of my different online projects will be in one spot.

Cons:

• I'll have to pay $6 to $10 a month for Web hosting. Not bad, but free is free. (I can't use the free WordPress.com service because it forbids advertising.)
• I can use dankennedy.net or media-nation.org as my main domain name, but the one I really want — medianation.org — is already taken.
  
• I'll need to put in some time getting up to speed technologically, and I really could put that time to better use.

So I don't know. If you were me, what would you do?

Re-Kindling the Globe (II)

Recently I threw some numbers around regarding the possibility that the Boston Globe could give away the Amazon Kindle to its home subscribers and shut down its presses.

Today, Media Nation reader M.G. points to this Time magazine story about a new, bigger Kindle that's in the works and that might be ideal for displaying newspaper and magazine content. Yesterday, the New York Times reported on other e-readers that are being developed.

The challenge, needless to say, is to come up with an experience so compelling that people will be willing to pay for it rather than click around the free Web edition. For it to work, you need a critical mass who really want to read the paper, as opposed to spending 10 minutes grazing the headlines during their lunch hour.

Gmail and its discontents (II)

Problem solved, although not the way I would have liked. I'm now using Apple Mail to pull in my Northeastern mail (via POP) and Gmail (via IMAP) separately. I'm able to use Northeastern's SMTP server off-campus as well as on. So all of my outgoing NU mail contains official-looking header information, and will thus not be intercepted by anyone's spam filter.

Oh, well. Apple Mail's not so bad, I suppose.

Gmail and its discontents

It must be the season of technical difficulties.

I use Gmail for everything. I've set it up to pull in my Northeastern e-mail, and I have an alias that allows me to send mail via Gmail as if it were coming from my Northeastern address. Gmail isn't perfect, but it's better than anything else.

Today, though, I sent an e-mail to a colleague at Northeastern. It never arrived. I tried again. No luck. Finally, I sent the same message using my Gmail address. Bingo — she got it immediately.

What I had run into, I strongly suspect, was a hyperactive spam filter at her end. The filter saw that my incoming e-mail address did not match the underlying Gmail information in the header and flagged it as spam. (The theory is that I must have been faking my outgoing e-mail address, and so therefore was up to no good.) I've run into this very occasionally before, but not quite so directly.

Now, of course, I'm wondering how many other e-mails I've sent to people at Northeastern that never arrived. I've contacted the IT folks to see if there might be a solution that doesn't force me either to stop using my NU address (unprofessional) or abandon Gmail for NU business (undesirable). But I'm not holding out a whole lot of hope.

Any thoughts?

NewsTrust J-hunt: The final five

My stint as host of NewsTrust's journalism topic area comes to an end today. Here are five stories I submitted this morning:

• For The New York Times, the digital future is now by Daniel Terdiman, CNET News
• TV Paparazzi Turn Cameras to Corporate Titans by Brian Stelter, The New York Times
• About that newspaper "doomsday" list by Alan D. Mutter, Reflections of a Newsosaur
• How Newspapers Must Change to Survive by Michael S. Malone, ABC News
• Brawl Street: Get Read to Buy Low! And Sell Die by Jon Stewart, "The Daily Show"

I could write an entire post on the last item, but I'll just say this: Stewart is perhaps the best and most important media critic we've had since A.J. Liebling.

His dissection of CNBC's Jim Cramer last night — as well as his two eight-minute pieces lampooning the so-called experts of CNBC (here and here) — will have, I predict, a major and well-deserved negative effect on the network.

Opening the spam door a crack

The spambots usually attack at night. Since I'm going to be on the road, I'll remove moderation for the day and see what happens.

Back to NewsFire

Since last summer, I've been using Google Reader as my RSS aggregator. It's attractive, and I like the community features that it offers. Last night, though, I decided to switch back to NewsFire. Why?

• NewsFire, installed on my desktop, is instantaneous. Sometimes that matters. All I have to do is hit "refresh." With Google Reader, which is out there in the cloud, you have to wait.
• Google Reader is superfically more attractive. But NewsFire is easier to set up with a nice, big, readable font.
• Skimming is faster with NewsFire.

So what have I given up? Mainly the ability to access my feeds from any computer. Since I'm rarely without my MacBook, that's generally not a problem. Still, my thinking continues to evolve.

Social-networking the inauguration

I'll probably be watching plain old CNN by the time the actual inauguration rolls around. Right now, though, I'm looking at a couple of interesting experiments:

• CNN.com has set up a live stream integrated with Facebook. If you've got a Facebook account, you can watch video as comments pop up on the right-hand side of the screen.
• Check out what people are saying on Twitter by clicking here and searching on #inaug09 — especially fun because most of the posts are from folks who are there.

Reading the Times with Times Reader

Last week's David Carr column on paid content brought a response from Slate's Jack Shafer, who reminded us of his love for a product I had frankly forgotten about: Times Reader, a subscriber-only program that lets you download that day's New York Times and read it offline, at your leisure.

Times Reader is based on some of the earliest ideas for online newspapers — ideas that were washed away by the rise of the Web. Indeed, Shafer even links to a video about the Knight Ridder digital tablet, an early-'90s idea that never came to pass. As envisioned back then, you'd plug your device into a slot on your cable-television box in order to receive newspapers, magazines and possibly books. You'd pay for it all, of course.

Click on image or here for a Flickr slideshow
of page captures from Times Reader

Anyway, Shafer's latest prompted me to see if a Macintosh version of Times Reader had ever become available. Indeed it had, and I promptly downloaded it for a test drive. Because we subscribe to the Sunday print edition, there's no extra charge for us. Otherwise, it's $14.95 a month.

Is it worth it? Reluctantly, I have to say no, except for a certain small subset of readers. If you want to read the Times on your laptop every day in a place without an Internet connection — say, on a commuter train, or a bus — then Times Reader is for you. Of course, even trains and buses are increasingly likely to offer WiFi, so maybe I should describe the target audience as a subset of a subset.

First, the good. The typeface used by Times Reader is strikingly attractive, presented in a three-column format, almost as if you were reading a print newspaper. Because the entire paper resides on your hard drive, navigating Times Reader is very fast. Using the cursor keys, I find that I can skim through the paper much more effectively than I can with the Web edition.

In addition, we all know that the experience of reading a newspaper in print is very different from reading it on the Web. In print, there are boundaries; we're limited to what the editors have chosen for us. The glory of the Web is that there no limits, but that's its downfall, too. The temptation is to follow link after link. Before you know it, your intention to read the paper is gone.

Times Reader reimposes those sense of boundaries, especially when you turn off your Internet connection. (There are links, but you can't follow them unless you're online.) It's just you and the paper, so you might as well read it. Unless you are an extremely disciplined person, you're likely to read more of the Times using Times Reader than you would with the Web edition. If, like me, you don't have to pay extra for Times Reader, then you ought to give it a try and see if you like it.

So what's not to like? Quite a lot.

First, despite the attractive typeface and presentation in Times Reader, I actually find the Web version easier to read. The type is plainer, the leading (spacing) wider. I'd also rather have one column to negotiate rather than three. Readability tends to be a subjective judgment, but there you have it.

Second, photography in Times Reader is an afterthought. The Times, like many newspapers, has used its Web site as a way of giving us more, better photojournalism than ever before. Yet Times Reader doesn't even give us as much as the print edition. There is a "News in Pictures" feature, but it's completely random and unsatisfying.

Third, the Web edition includes a view of the print-version front page. I have no particular psychic need to have the print edition, but I do like to look at page one to see how different stories were played. You don't get that with Times Reader, and the organizational scheme is such that, beyond the lead story, you don't get an entirely clear idea of what's important and what isn't.

Fourth, Times Reader isn't just a closed environment; it's claustrophobic, even compared to the print edition: there are no ads in Times Reader, and I miss them. Advertising gives you a sense of liveliness, of stuff going on. I hardly ever click on Web ads, but I'm glad they're there. Of course, Times Reader also cuts you off from all the great online-only content the Times Web site offers — videos, blogs, slideshows and the like.

Finally, I'm not sure all content is present in Times Reader. Last Thursday, for instance, I couldn't find David Pogue's technology column (and, as best as I can tell, there is no search function). I was also interested in trying out the crossword puzzle, but the necessary Mac software for my version of OS X (10.5) seems to have been botched.

Times Reader is a valiant attempt to come up with an online newspaper that people will pay for, and it's something you may consider trying if you want to read the Times in a spot with no reliable Internet connection. But, to my eyes, it's not nearly as good as either the Times in print or on the Web. Too bad.

Cell-phone spam

Just got my first spam text message via cell phone — a Viagra come-on. What gives? Why haven't I gotten any of these until now? What can I do?

Making sense of Google Adsense

I'm trying to add Google Adsense, and I've made a mess of it — I'm approved (I think), but I never activated it (I guess) and now I can't get into my account. The messages Google gives me are not helpful. Anyone know what I should do?

And, oh yeah — Merry Christmas!

The Journal's flawed net-neutrality story

The Wall Street Journal today reports a potentially disastrous development, claiming that President-elect Barack Obama is softening in his support for network neutrality, which guarantees common-carrier status for all Internet traffic.

But it's the story itself that may prove to be a disaster. The Talking Points gang is all over it and has found that (1) Obama has not changed his commitment to net neutrality; (2) Google denies [link now fixed; no, really] the Journal's claim that it has shifted its support; and (3) academic Lawrence Lessig says what he told the Journal does not represent a change, either.

That's three for three. How did this crap make it into the Journal? You'd think Rupert Murdoch owned it or something.

Tracing Blogger links

Recently I turned on the Blogger feature "Links to this post." You can see it at the bottom, right next to comments.

It would be a whole lot more useful, though, if I could somehow be notified every time something pops up there. Any thoughts?

Don't beam Alex up when it comes to Twitter

Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam mocks Twitter. I sympathize. I ignored it for as long as I could, and jumped in recently only as it became clear that it was morphing into a journalistic tool of sorts.

I have not researched the demographics of Twitter, but I think Beam might have gotten one thing wrong. He begins, "You have heard about Twitter. Maybe. It's something other people do, mainly younger people."

My brief experience is actually the opposite — Twitter is social-networking for old farts like me. I know very few students who use it. I recently asked Media Nation Jr. — a certified Facebooking, BlackBerrying, text-messaging fanatic — and he'd never even heard of it.

Maybe Twitter will go away. For the moment, though, it's something journalists need to understand.

"Little People" is back online

My 2003 book on dwarfism, "Little People," is back online, this time with its own domain. Thanks to Media Nation readers for finding me a free hosting service. I also took your advice by adding some meta tags and getting my name on the title bar. In a few weeks, I hope, it will at least show up on Google searches.

iPO'd

Within the last month or so, the battery life of my five-year-old, third-generation iPod dropped to almost nothing. It was too old to justify sending it back to Apple for one of its expensive battery-switch jobs, but too functional to toss out. So I sent away to a company that promised to sell me a battery and easy installation instructions for just $33, a price that included shipping. Sounded pretty good to me.

The battery showed up last night. According to the instructions, and to a really nifty online video, all I had to do was wave this blue plastic tool (included) in the general vicinity of my iPod, and the case would magically, and safely, come apart so that I could make the switch without causing any damage to the insides. (I exaggerate only slightly.)

Let me cut to the chase and tell you there was no way on earth that case was coming apart with the magic blue tool. I enlisted the help of Media Nation Jr., who opened it the only way I think it could have been done: with a utility knife and a screwdriver.

The sides ended up slightly worse for the wear, but he was able to make the switch without incident and put things back together the way they were before I had attempted my blue-tool magic. It was pretty easy — no forcing anything, no pushing anything around.

And yet. Now that it's back together, the headphone jack doesn't work. If you squish things around, you'll get some momentary sound, but you can't sit there and listen to the thing. The other end — the slot used to charge it, transfer music and play through my car stereo — works just fine, which makes me wonder whether there's some sort of headphone adapter I could get. For now, though, it looks like I've got a car-only iPod, which takes care of maybe two-thirds of my needs.

I'm not singling out the battery company because the battery seems fine. I suppose it's not the company's fault that it felt it had to lie emphasize the positive about how easy it would be to crack open the iPod. But, as careful as MNJ was, the difficulty he had in opening it up is obviously why the headphone jack got damaged.

All of which means that I'm now iPod-less, more or less. And wondering why Apple had make the thing so difficult to pull apart.