According to New York Times press reports its “taking a step that has tempted and terrified much of the newspaper industry, The New York Times announced on Wednesday that it would charge some frequent readers for access to its Web site — news that drew ample reaction from media analysts and consumers, ranging from enthusiastic to withering.”
Beginning in January 2011, unlimited access to NYTimes.com will require a paper subscription or payment of a flat fee.
Starting in January 2011, a visitor to NYTimes.com will be allowed to view a certain number of articles free each month; to read more, the reader must pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the print newspaper, even those who subscribe only to the Sunday paper, will receive full access to the site without any additional charge.
“This announcement allows us to begin the thought process that’s going to answer so many of the questions that we all care about,” Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the Times Company chairman and publisher of the newspaper, said in an interview. “We can’t get this halfway right or three-quarters of the way right. We have to get this really, really right.”
For years, publishers banked on a digital future supported entirely by advertising, dismissing online fees as little more than a formula for shrinking their audiences and ad revenue. But two years of plummeting advertising has many of them weighing anew whether they might collect more money from readers than they would lose from advertisers.
“You can’t continue to be The New York Times unless you find” a new source of revenue, said James McQuivey, media analyst at Forrester Research.
For today’s podcast, I gave a shout out to Sandra Niehaus, VP User Experience and Creative Director of Closed Loop Marketing. I asked Sandra to provide her perspective on the state of the Web today. Specifically, I wanted to know the level of adoption of Web services within medium level organizations and the enterprise. I also wanted to know if today’s Web services falls within the responsibility of the IT department, marketing or both. Additionally, I wanted to know how the various departments work together and if any issues existed between the two.
Sandra heads up the company’s usability and conversion optimization projects. She is co-author of the book “Web Design for ROI” from New Riders Press, and regularly speaks on the topics of usability, design, and conversion at industry and business conferences. Sandra has contributed her expertise to projects for a wide range of companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Brocade, ReelzChannel, and Allstate.
Sandra’s creative and scientifically-inclined family fostered her early fascination with technology and the arts. After discovering computer programming in high school, she balanced college courses in computer science and electronics with orchestra, music theory, and composition.
Sandra’s music studies took her to France, Hungary, and the prestigious San Francisco Conservatory of Music, resulting in a Master’s degree in music composition. She complemented these studies with graduate courses in business law, IT management, and, as the Internet emerged into public awareness, multiple web development languages.
She joined Closed Loop Marketing in 2004 after nearly a decade as an independent web consultant. She resides in Northern California, where she surfs, writes, practices mixed martial arts, and thinks about stuff.
“Don’t Hire Your Nephew to Build Your Small Business Website” says the makers of Intuit
Intuit, the maker of Quicken is hitting the traditional airwaves and social media channels with ads depicting disgruntled small business owners regarding the build out of their websites. The YouTube ad featured below for example entitled, “Don’t Hire Your Nephew to Build Your Small Business Website” hits the point home.
At first glance, I thought to myself that I should cancel my subscription to Quicken in protest for picking on the Web design tribe that we here at the WOW represent. Then again, I’m not a customer of Quicken or any Intuit products that I know of so that won’t work out very well.
After giving this some thought, I think the ad does an effective job at communicating the reasons that small businesses should “hire a Web professional” in the first place. As a result, the ad campaign is kind of growing on me. That’s not to say that all nephews that create websites are bad mind you. I know a few personally and they do very nice work!
As the executive director for the Webprofessionals.org organization, I’ve been getting hundreds of calls over the years from disgruntled small business owners asking if WOW could intervene on their behalf to settle contract disputes. I suppose ads of this nature are inevitable. Ugh, so thanks I guess for that Intuit!?!
The walk away from this ad for Web professionals I suppose is to take it in stride. It comes with the territory. General contractors and those in the construction trade face similar issues every day and have for years. Makes a great case for ethical behavior, a Web professional code of conduct and best practices I’d say. Changing the public’s perception however is a whole another discussion.
IT Savvy – What Top Executives Must Know to Go from Pain to Gain and What Top IT Professionals Need to Know About the C-suite
Greetings and Happy Holiday’s Web Professionals!
Today’s podcast is an extended interview with Dr. Jeanne W. Ross, Director and Principle Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management Center for Information Systems Research and author of a recently published book entitled, “IT Savvy” what Top Executives Must know to Go from Pain to Gain.
I reached out to interview Dr. Ross in response to and interview with Cia Romano CEO, Interface Guru last week regarding her take on the state of the Web and frustration with the lack of education of those providing and contracting for Web services.
If you ever wanted to better understand the mindset of the folks in the C-suite regarding the topic of Information Technology, (IT) you owe it to yourself to listen to this thirty minute podcast on today’s Web Professional Minute.
Dr. Ross’s research centers on the organizational and performance implications of enterprise initiatives related to enterprise architecture, governance and new IT management practices. At MIT she lectures, conducts research and teaches public and customized executive courses on IT management.
I’ll have a full transcript of this podcast shortly. In the meantime, here is what I asked Dr, Ross to respond to.
* What prompted you to write IT Savvy?
* What is the role of IT from the perspective of the C-suite?
* How does the Internet fit in to that role and that definition?
* How can companies strive to convert IT from a strategic liability to a strategic asset?
* A lot has been said about the potential divide among and executives and IT and you refers to this in your writings. For example in your book you recommend that executives become IT Savvy. Does that mean that executives are solely responsible or should IT professionals become more business savvy?
* What effect if any did the tech bubble bust have on the reluctance of some companies to invest in IT?
* Many in this industry talk about a talent and a skills gap? What are your thoughts?
* Is outsourcing contributing the reluctance on the part of some executives to embrace becoming IT savvy?
* Is their a role that education can play in improving the synergy between IT and the executives?
* What role should business and industry play to encourage parents and youth to see the opportunities IT as a profession? Second part of that question what role if any should business and industry play in promoting the benefits of IT both from employment productivity point of view.
* What kind of foundational knowledge should future IT and business professional’s posses and what will they need to succeed.
* In the book you talk about the importance of IT empowerment. Can you expand on the benefits of this?
* In the book you talk about empowering the digital culture? Can you summarize that and can you provide with a summary benefit statement on Why IT Now?
State of the Web: Interface Guru Shares Perspective on Hiring Web Professionals : Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
State of the Web
For today’s podcast, I reached out to Cia Romano, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of InterfaceGuru.com for her thoughts on the current state of the Web today. Cia is a ten year veteran of the Web profession and is a hands-on user interface expert living and working in her home state of Arizona. Cia was in between flights and in this three minute interview Cia shares her thoughts regarding the need for education within the Web profession and a technical baseline for those that hire, employ and contract with Web professionals.
A full transcript of this podcast will be available in forty-eight hours.
Today’s Web Professional Minute is brought to you by the folks at An Event Apart. The makers of A List Apart. An Event Apart is an intensely educational two-day conference for passionate practitioners of standards-based web design. If you care about code as well as content, usability as well as design, An Event Apart is the conference you’ve been waiting for.
Founded by web visionaries Eric Meyer and Jeffrey Zeldman, and dedicated to the proposition that the creators of great web experiences deserve a great learning experience, An Event Apart brings together twelve of the leading minds in web design for two days of non-stop inspiration and enlightenment. For additional information and registration check out the site today.
The global recession is still upon us but according to recent reports some marketing executive’s say companies are set to booth ad spends. It appears that consumer sales are back in the game. Third quarter sales for online ad spends were up for 2008. According to analyst the fourth quarter increase should continue according to the report in IBD.
A recent JP Morgan poll of 20 big media buyers released mid October found that 12 expected second-half ad spending to be up 5% to 14% vs. the first half of the year. Only two expected a decline and six seeing no change.
Today’s Podcast is a continuation of WOW’s media coverage of the Adobe MAX conference 2009 Los Angeles, CA. Adobe promised an event that would connect, discover and inspire. I walked away with all of that and much more.
Although the keynote on day one kicked off a little late, the professionals at Adobe recovered with an uncanny ability to regroup, refocus and shine.
For Web professionals, Adobe MAX is part design, development and business. Candidly, I can’t recall a time in the eleven years that I’ve been managing the WOW organization that I’m walking away from a conference with something for everyone. Over the course of the next few days, I’d like to expand on that. I’d also like to provide you with a series of interviews why I think this conference provided solutions for designers, developers, those that teach and mission critical business applications that will keep Web professionals like us for a long time.
For today’s podcast, I caught up with Ted Patrick, Senior Evangelist Platform at Adobe. Ted shares his thoughts on the content, the develop and the design community and jobs.
Check out the full five minute podcast on today’s Web Professional Minute. Check out the video of Adobe’s FedEx demo on the YouTube Video below:
A full transcript will follow in twenty for hours.
Today’s Web Professional Minute is sponsored by the Nokia Corporation and their Nokia Web Runtime (WRT) Extension for Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 software making the creation of mobile WRT widgets for supporting Nokia devices easier then ever. Through the Nokia Ovi Store and Adobe AIR Marketplace, developers and designers have an easy way to engage, build and publish their content to Nokia mobile device customers. For additional information check out the Nokia Forum.
RIA, SOA and the Enterprise - Interview with Duane Nickull, Senior Evangelist at Adobe : Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
RIA, SOA and the Enterprise: Interview with Duane Nickull, Senior Evangelist at Adobe : Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Today’s podcast is a continuation of the media coverage of the Adobe MAX 2009 conference taking place at the Los Angeles Convention Center downtown Los Angeles, CA. Today’s topic is Rich Internet Application, (RIA) Service Oriented Architecture, (SOA) and the Enterprise.
To assist me in the process of better understanding the topic from a Web designer, Web developer and from the business value proposition perspective, I sat down with Duane Nickull, Senior Evangelist at Adobe.
Duane’s an accomplished Web professional and a main focus of his professional career has been working for both the United Nations CEFACT committee and OASIS for the purposes of writing and building new architectures for global integration of multiple systems. Since 1996, Duane also has been working on multiple enterprise architectures including many service oriented architectures (SOA) within various standards bodies including W3C, UN/CEFACT, OASIS and others. Duane has also contributed to many SOA papers and articles on service oriented architecture.
Check out Duanes blog for additional information abut Duane and his rants, rave and event coverage.
A full transcript will follow in twenty for hours.
Today’s Web Professional Minute is sponsored by the Nokia Corporation and their Nokia Web Runtime (WRT) Extension for Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 software making the creation of mobile WRT widgets for supporting Nokia devices easier then ever. Through the Nokia Ovi Store and Adobe AIR Marketplace, developers and designers have an easy way to engage, build and publish their content to Nokia mobile device customers. For additional information check out the Nokia Forum.
About Rich Internet applications (RIAs)
According to Wikipedia, Rich Internet applications (RIAs) are web applications that have most of the characteristics of desktop applications, typically delivered by way of standards based web browser plug-ins or independently via sandboxes or virtual machines.[1] Examples of RIA frameworks include Curl, GWT, Adobe Flash/Adobe Flex/AIR, Java/JavaFX, uniPaaS, Mozilla’s XUL and Microsoft Silverlight.
The term was introduced in March 2002 by vendors like Macromedia who were addressing limitations at the time in the “richness of the application interfaces, media and content, and the overall sophistication of the solutions” by introducing proprietary extensions.[5][dubious – discuss] As web standards (such as HTML 5) have developed and web browsers’ compliance has improved there is still need for such extensions, when companies want to bring a truly high-end, seamless experience to their users. Javascript compilers with their associated desktop-like widget sets reduce the need for browser extensions even further. HTML 5 delivers a pseudo-application platform. It is still not possible to build RIA-like Web applications that run in all modern browsers without the need of special run-times or plug-ins. This means that if one could run a modern Ajax-based Web application outside of a web browser (e.g. using Mozilla Prism or Fluid) it would essentially be an RIA, though there is some contention as to whether this is actually the case.
About Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
In computing, service-oriented architecture (SOA) provides a set of principles of governing concepts used during phases of systems development and integration. Such an architecture will package functionality as interoperable services: software modules provided as a service can be integrated or used by several organizations, even if their respective client systems are substantially different. It is an attempt to develop yet another means for software module integration. Rather than defining an API, SOA defines the interface in terms of protocols and functionality. An endpoint is the entry point to such an SOA implementation. Service-orientation requires loose coupling of services with operating systems, and other technologies that underlie applications. SOA separates functions into distinct units, or services[1], which developers make accessible over a network in order to allow users to combine and reuse them in the production of applications. These services communicate with each other by passing data from one service to another, or by coordinating an activity between two or more services. SOA can be seen as a sort of continuum, as opposed to distributed computing or modular programming.
Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals Everywhere!
I’m sure you’ve heard the news that Microsoft has launched its new BING search engine. For today’s podcast, I’d like to cover a few of the highlights and connect you up with a couple or pertinent links you and a short promotional video of the features and benefits according to the source.
If you have checked out the Bing, you may notice have noticed different search results from MSN search results and Bing. Although search results are small by comparison to others (5-10 market share) is significant enough to warrant your attention. Clearly, Microsoft will have an uphill battle competing with the 800 hundred pound Google guerilla. That said it’s definitely worth your time to investigate and to resummit your sites and those of your closest customers. :
Bing is marketing itself as a core provider of the following core search categories:
•Shopping
•Health
•Local
•Travel
Although not as robust as Google’s Webmaster resources, Bing does offer some limited information for Web Professionals. Check out the links and all of the great resources on today’s Web professional minute.
Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals Everywhere!
It’s no secret that the economic situation is at its worst position in the past quarter century. That said, I am pleased to report that business and technology consumers continue to seek help from highly trained Web and technology professionals according to a recently published report by Ziff Davis.
* HTML
* Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
* Search Engine Optimization
* PHP
* .net
* SQL SERVER
* MYSQL
* Java
* C programming
Today’s Web Professional Minute is sponsored by Peach Pit Press. Peachpit has been publishing top-notch books on the latest in graphic design, desktop publishing, multimedia, Web design and development, digital video, and general computing since 1986.
A complete transcript will be available in twenty four hours.
