The web should always be free is one of the mantras that started back when the forefathers of the web were ordaining rules for the new medium. Except that in the beginning it was not a "medium", it was really a way to share academic research and so forth. Information should be free.
But the web became a place to buy books - with the rise and rise of Amazon. It became a place to buy anything with web shops everywhere - some that work and many that simply do not.
A catalogue of products obviously is not something you can ask for a subscription to, but the news media produce access to information that is not exclusive. It originates from the public domain so charging for it, per se, seems unnatural.
Charging for a document that carries advertising makes perfect sense. But the internet's evolution has deconstructed that idea. Now we are all so overloaded with information that the very idea of paying for any of it seems downright silly.
In this brave new world, journalists and content makers are expected to make a living for free.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
The death of the blog
No more boring blogs! The linked article is the most magnificently detailed and varied layouts more like a magazine than a traditional web page.
With a webpage, a blog like this one, a template is used to give the entire site a common look.
But who are we kidding. Looking at the same page design all the time may be branding, but it is boring. Therefore the blog is a dead medium. To make it exciting an alive requires design.
Maybe we will switch our templates around more often.
With a webpage, a blog like this one, a template is used to give the entire site a common look.
But who are we kidding. Looking at the same page design all the time may be branding, but it is boring. Therefore the blog is a dead medium. To make it exciting an alive requires design.
Maybe we will switch our templates around more often.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
0900 Give Me A dollar for FREE
The world is drowning in media-ocraty
If you had a message for others to listen to 2000 years ago, you stood on a mount, and raised your arms to the sky. These days there are a million ways to invoke powers you may or may not really have, to impress people. Primary amoung these is "design". Another is "compelling communication". Both are merely vehicles for something. What? Something!
The media is not the message. It took a long time to afford broadcast quality beta cam video and it restricted our air waves to only include "broadcast quality" images. Now the media analysts have just noticed that a handheld video device you can get for three hundred bucks can make fairly decent TV. The "real" world of artificially popularised journalism has newly reborn at TVNZ, with a tech revolution now only 10 years behind the rest of the internet. We have new channels to carry more local content, most safe and pedestrian, but one gem is radical new-school journo Russel Brown on Media7 quizzing the Minister of Broadcasting (who's on camera manner is truly dreadful) essentially if the show he makes analysing media can still attract Government funding? He could have been waving him arms in the air. Quite surreal.
Government funded TV should be find expressive arts, to develop a pool of talent. Sorry, Julie Christie may enjoy her own ideas. But Government funding is wasted if spent on quiz shows.
Reality TV is simply observing human behaviour. Sleezy setup journalism dressed in dapper graphics is still boring. The endless quest for yet another way to slice bread brings us a million ways to not make profit.
Real news and real drama take the breath away. Yet another way to scalp $2.50 for every sucker that puts their mobile number into your website is not art. It is crime.
The greatest friend the conman has is his next victim. These sites that invite you to call in on your teenage funded mobile account (they figure parents have lots of money to waste) to vote and be charged each time do nothing for the consumer that uses them.
And then they appear in millions of guises. They are annoying and do not advance humanity one little bit. The danger of the intrusion of "Web 2.0" into newspapers is like the intrusion of advertising into editorial. It does not belong.
Quality content is not dreamed up by "designers", they do the shiny part. Quality is dreamed up by thinkers, architects and designers create surfaces to represent them. The danger with Web 2.0 media is that everything is so designed, that nobody noticed what a waste of time most of the iPhone apps really are.
Computer software is an art, and every so often it is highjacked by those who only want a surface to slide upon, and do not want to be bothered with the detail.
Like my old boss kept saying "click the ticket" - he wanted applications that provided a minimal if somewhat useful service and took a few cents each time. It was a mantra gimmick he was after. A magic spell. A service that essentially gave you an excuse to click the ticket.
When I read a news story, I want the paper it is printed on to not be the best thing about the news. I want the writing to hold my attention. The product is human shock.
If you had a message for others to listen to 2000 years ago, you stood on a mount, and raised your arms to the sky. These days there are a million ways to invoke powers you may or may not really have, to impress people. Primary amoung these is "design". Another is "compelling communication". Both are merely vehicles for something. What? Something!
The media is not the message. It took a long time to afford broadcast quality beta cam video and it restricted our air waves to only include "broadcast quality" images. Now the media analysts have just noticed that a handheld video device you can get for three hundred bucks can make fairly decent TV. The "real" world of artificially popularised journalism has newly reborn at TVNZ, with a tech revolution now only 10 years behind the rest of the internet. We have new channels to carry more local content, most safe and pedestrian, but one gem is radical new-school journo Russel Brown on Media7 quizzing the Minister of Broadcasting (who's on camera manner is truly dreadful) essentially if the show he makes analysing media can still attract Government funding? He could have been waving him arms in the air. Quite surreal.
Government funded TV should be find expressive arts, to develop a pool of talent. Sorry, Julie Christie may enjoy her own ideas. But Government funding is wasted if spent on quiz shows.
Reality TV is simply observing human behaviour. Sleezy setup journalism dressed in dapper graphics is still boring. The endless quest for yet another way to slice bread brings us a million ways to not make profit.
Real news and real drama take the breath away. Yet another way to scalp $2.50 for every sucker that puts their mobile number into your website is not art. It is crime.
The greatest friend the conman has is his next victim. These sites that invite you to call in on your teenage funded mobile account (they figure parents have lots of money to waste) to vote and be charged each time do nothing for the consumer that uses them.
And then they appear in millions of guises. They are annoying and do not advance humanity one little bit. The danger of the intrusion of "Web 2.0" into newspapers is like the intrusion of advertising into editorial. It does not belong.
Quality content is not dreamed up by "designers", they do the shiny part. Quality is dreamed up by thinkers, architects and designers create surfaces to represent them. The danger with Web 2.0 media is that everything is so designed, that nobody noticed what a waste of time most of the iPhone apps really are.
Computer software is an art, and every so often it is highjacked by those who only want a surface to slide upon, and do not want to be bothered with the detail.
Like my old boss kept saying "click the ticket" - he wanted applications that provided a minimal if somewhat useful service and took a few cents each time. It was a mantra gimmick he was after. A magic spell. A service that essentially gave you an excuse to click the ticket.
When I read a news story, I want the paper it is printed on to not be the best thing about the news. I want the writing to hold my attention. The product is human shock.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)