CONTENTed

GOOD -- brought to you by Starbucks A few months ago I noticed a new newspaper available at Starbucks. It is quite small, free and is distributed right where one waits for coffee (at least in Madison, CT). The idea for this came from the Mystarbucksidea.com website. The paper takes advertising, covers one topic and helps disseminate useful information all while you wait for your double tall nonfat dry cappuccino. I remember reading years ago that the articles in People Magazine were short enough to be read during a visit to the restroom -- perhaps the Good sheet fills up the time while waiting for your coffee. More details here: http://www.good.is/

F l o o g l e I read with interest about the new service that came out of Google's philanthropic arm. By culling data from the last 5 year's of searches and running it against reports for the Centers for Disease Control Reports, Google found that they were two weeks to ten days ahead of the CDC in learning about the outbreaks. I hope they call it "Floogle". What a great use of "data exhuast". I think it also shows how important it is for publishers to see and understand how their customers construct queries on their databases. It can be such a great data set to mine for new products or to improve existing ones. 20 years ago while working in Washington DC, I used to file Freedom of Information Act requests at the Securities & Exchange Commission for all the other FOIA requests that had been filed. We found some great product ideas and market insight in those letters. The Internet makes the process a whole lot easier!

No Free Launch I attended the InfoCommerce Conference in Philadelphia this week and caught Ann Michael’s interesting session on launching products. She was joined by Michael Balsam , VP Products & Services, Onvia and Adam Bernacki, VP Sales & Marketing Leadership Directories . Ann started out by remarking how change has affected product launches. Back in the day of books you had to be perfect because if a mistake was made it would live forever. This is not true in the Internet world – you can no longer afford to be perfect as you'll never get the product out the door. The panel addressed this phenomenon by reviewing its impact at several places along the development process. Michael talked about how Onvia publishes 60+ million pages per year with all sorts of detail about government contracts. This information can help clients like Dell know a year ahead of time when and where a new school would be built. Dell can use information to help them size future markets Onvia’s de

Selling Cookbooks by Giving Away Recipes I'm an avid cook and am the person responsible for the grocery shopping and cooking at our house. An article entitled " A Plan to Sell Cookbooks: Give Away Recipes Online " in the Saturday New York Times caught my eye. Reporter Motoko Rich writes about a site called Cookster that draws on recipes from chefs like Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson, Mario Batali and a hundred or so others. Each recipe will appear on a page with a picture of the chef and links to places to buy the book. Users will be able to search the site using a multitude of criteria. Founder Will Schwalbe said the site will go live with 2,500 recipes and he hopes to expand it to 10,000. The aim of the site is to sell more cookbooks. It is hoped that by giving recipes away as samples, people will buy the books. This business model has worked very well for Martha Stewart and Rachel Ray, neither of whom are participating. Not surprisingly Cookstr will be suppored by adver

Whining about Wine I was flipping through the Saturday New York Times and was intrigued by a full page ad from Wine Spectator that screamed FREE ACCESS in massive type. The pitch is to provide visitors to the website with free access until October 1st. The offer provides access to 200,000 wine ratings and tastings as well as access to newsletters and other content. In mousetype the limitations are barely visible to point out that "Free Access does not include use of site personalization tools or the ability to post comments on our Editors' Blogs". All in all a pretty standard online publishing offer of giving some content away for free in the hopes that you will become a subscriber. I clicked through on the link and not surprisingly was confronted with an email capture box with another bit of fine print. This one disclosed that "By entering your e-mail address in the field above, you give WineSpectator .com permission to send occasional e-mails regarding promotiona

SIIA in Paris II While in Paris I was able to spend the better part of a Sunday wandering around the Louvre . I paid for one of those dorky headsets with an oversized Palm Pilot-like device swinging around my neck. Some of the content on the device was quite good -- the Masterpieces of the Louvre tour took you around to three of the museums signature pieces like the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. That tour provided step by step instructions on how to maneuver around the museum and through the crowds. I was pretty impressed at this point and thought that Korean Air had scored a great coup by locking up the sponsorship of these devices for 1 million euros. Imagine my disappointment when I found that the other tours were lacking in that level of detail. They only provided crude maps to direct you to the next piece of art. In some cases the art had been moved! It seemed that the museum had put all their effort into their A-List products and had skimpe

SIIA in Paris I Early this summer I was invited to speak at GFII’s “Summer School “ program in Paris. The GFII is sort of the French equivalent of the SIIA. I was told I’d be the only English speaker so I thought it made sense to try out Rosetta Stone to pick up some language skills. I was impressed first by their pricing model as it had a perfect option for me – a three month software as a service model. For my $150 I could use all three levels of the product. This was a much better deal than buying the $495 version of CD-ROMS. Although I did not make it as far as I would have liked in the program, it was impressive software that tracked my progress and presented the material in a pretty intuitive interface. But there were a few drawbacks and limitations that could have increased the utility of the product: Profiling & Market Segmentation – Although I signed up as an individual, I think they should have asked if if my use was going to be primarily business or leisure. Thi

A Different Take on Orphaned Works -- Orphaned Brands! I received a press release last week from the team at CoreBrand . They focus on brand power and strength and its impact on a company's value. They wrote to tout a new service call Brandvault that will allow marketers to purchase or license once popular but now defunct corporate and product names. Names include Shearson, Allied Signal, Breakfast Mate and Handi-Wrap. The company claims that "BrandVault offers marketers a turnkey collection of 120 out of use brand names that have been revived and newly trademarked in a wide range of consumer product categories, all ready for re-launch." “This is a rare opportunity to acquire a classic brand that has been pushed aside through a merger, or some other quirk of business, yet retains tremendous brand equity,” said James Gregory, CEO, CoreBrand “The astronomical cost of creating a name from scratch includes; research, name development, and legal research, just to get to t

Part 2 The June 7 th Economist has an article entitled Unbound about Book publishing in America. It highlights Amazon's impact on the industry through POD (Print on Demand) and the Kindle. There were a few key points that are worth noting: Unlike digital music or video, digital books require consumers to change their consumption habits. Textbooks is a growing category and it is helping to reduce costs by eliminating all the frictional expenses that occur along the value chain. The Economist points out that this could have a huge impact for Springer & Elsevier in terms of the $2.3 B college textbook-resale market. If the books are only available electronically, they become very hard to resell to the old college bookstore. POD is now cheaper than standard print for runs of fewer than 1200 copies according to Steve DeForge of Ames On-Demand. The last paragraph says it all and ties in with my last post: Publishing has only two indispensable participants : authors and read

Standing in between someone and the information they need... is a sure way to lose a job. Jeff Jarvis, in his excellent blog Buzzmachine recently commented on the Justice Department’s antitrust settlement with the National Association of Realtors. He rails against the market inefficiency created as realtors monopolized listings. He goes on to point out that 6% commissions are a thing of the past as internet brokers will now be able to compete on a level playing field. It brings to mind a comment that a b-school professor made to me years ago "Never stand between someone who needs information and the information itself as you'll soon find yourself out of a job". So far I can only think of examples that by and large support this theory. For example, when financial data became more ubiquitous, the role of stock brokers changed drastically. The same is true for travel agents thanks to websites like Expedia, kayak.com and travelocity. However, it is important to note t

NOYS BOYS and other Acronyms I've always been interested in language and acronyms in particular have intrigued me. Acronyms are quite prevalent in technical fields and often have the impact of creating a "language" that is only known to members of a particular community. When I worked for legal and tax publisher Commerce Clearing House, they published an internal directory of all the three and four letter acronmyms in use so sales, editorial, technology and fulfillment could all be on the same page, so to speak. A few recent sightings got me thinking about these constructions. For example, I received a vacation response from someone at Google, the subject line had OOO (Out Of Office). I also read some reviews of the swag bag at the All Things Digital Conference and learned that SWAG = Stuff We All Get. With a 7 year old in the house, we've come up with our own lexicon for everday words and happenings. Here are a few of my favorites: RB = Roast Beef BOYS = Both On

Social Networking for the St. Elmos’ Fire Crowd My 25th prep school reunion was this weekend at Choate in Wallingford, CT. Being a glutton for punishment I agreed to be one of the reunion chairs for the event reasoning that since I plan a lot of events for SIIA, there should be some skill overlap. Luckily there was. We made extensive use of email to help in the recruiting efforts and used blogs , Photobucket , Skype and FaceBook to supplement. Unlike the information industry crowd, there has not been as much acceptance out in the general populace yet. We got about 25 classmates to join Facebook and through that process found out that some of my classmates are in the info industry! I’m hoping that a lot of the photos taken will make it up to Facebook or Photobucket to help lay the groundwork for our 30th reunion. Our approach stands in sharp contrast to the graduating 6th formers (seniors) that I got to meet a few weeks ago. Every one of them is on FaceBook now and as one student

CCC on May Day Copyright Clearance Center , an SIIA member, recently held a one day conference on Copyright. Once there I saw the schedule and got a little worried – they had schedule four ninety minute panel discussions on the topic. I’m thinking that is way too long and people will be nodding off. SIIA runs lots of conferences and we’ve moved to much shorter sessions , never venturing beyond 60 minutes. To my surprise and delight – they were all terrific. CCC matched the right speakers with the right audience. The people in attendance, including Keith Kupferschmid and Ken Wasch from SIIA live and breath the topic and were quite passionate about their opinions. They touched on copyright in print, music and video. The highlight for me was hearing recording artist Suzanne Vega talk about her experience with the global remixing of “Tom’s Diner”. This tune was remixed by a variety of artists. Once they reached some level of popularity they’d contact her or her legal team for perm

NY Times Incline or Decline? I recently attended Incisive Media’s ePublishing Innovation Forum in London. It is put on by the same team that bring the industry the iconic London Online conference. They put on a good conference with some really great speakers. Vin Crosbie, a media consultant presented some information about the decline in newspapers, specifically citing the decline in readership at the New York Times. The question I raised was how looking at only one metric is misleading. Sure, people are not consuming as many dead trees as they used to. Where I live in CT I can only receive the Times for home delivery on the weekends. However, I receive the excellent DealBook newsletter every morning, plus emails containing the top news headlines every day. On the home pages I maintain there are links to NYT headlines as well as a variety of RSS feeds from the auto sections, food sections and from freakonomics. (I also download a crossword from time to time). The implications

Anagram I was in London last week for the ePublishing Innovation Forum and flew over on Virgin Atlantic. As you may know, Virgin Atlantic has those wonderful personal video screens that allow you to watch whatever you want along with the ability to pause, rewind and fast forward. While flying over I caught the first 50 minutes of a UK show called Torchwood . It is kind of like X Files on steroids. Alas, we were landing at Heathrow and I missed the ending. Upon arrival I checked out the BBC website to see if I could watch it but they did not make it easy. However, I found out that the episodes can be purchased on iTunes in the states. I also learned that the show can be viewed on a BBC channel here in the US which I don't subscribe to. What the heck does this have to do with content, you may ask? Well, I think it is an interesting parallel to a B2B business model where some of the content is given away for free (1 episode), then I have the option to buy by the drink for $1.99

My First Directory The other day I was riding my bike and spotted a Schlitz beer can on the side of the road. Not really a remarkable occurrence except that it flashed me back about 30 years to when I used to collect beer cans. Schlitz was known for having cans in a variety of sizes from about 7 oz. to 24 oz. Those cans looked pretty cool on my shelves back then. As my friends and I sourced these cans from road sides or cajoled our parents to buy them we learned about a book called the Beer Can Collector's Bible. It was published by Jack Martells in 1976 and it served as a directory to help us organize our collections. Aside from a dictionary, thesaurus or encylopedia, this was the first bit of reference material I owned that was not for some scholarly pursuit. The biggest frustration, however, was that the publication lacked any information on price or value of the cans. It's amazing to think about how the market for collectibles and other items has changed with the advent

UGC for Lawyers The New York Times ran an article on Sunday in the Novelties section entitled Lawyers Open Their File Cabinets for a Web Resource. The company that was profiled is called JD Supra.com and they have built a service that "offers free access to a constantly expanding database of legal documents". Contributions include filings, decisions, forms and articles that are contributed by groups as varied as the Electronic Frontier Foundation to Morrison & Foerster. This site assists researchers, members of the press and lawyers from smaller firms by providing a source for quality legal product. And, as with many user generated content schemes, offers the authors a wider audience to share their knowledge and grow their business and reputation. JD Supra also benefits by charging contributors $240 per year if they want to add links in their profiles to their e-mail addresses, Web sites and blogs. The site will also carry advertisements according to the article. I'

SIIA Executive FaceTime Interview with Y.S. Chi of Elsevier Last week Hal Espo, President of Contextual Connections interviwed Y.S. about a variety of topics. One of the most interesting for me was on the future of print. Y.S. pointed out that they realize that print is no longer the staring point for al research and that they are having to adjust their products accordingly. It's not a surprise if you stop to think about it but it points out the danger and short sightedness of the simple maxims like "Print is dead". Sure, some print is dead but it really depends on how well you segment your market. For Elsevier it may be an age based segmentation based on roles/positions that will help them determine when print will die or migrate.