2009-08-06
Posted on August 6, 2009 6:13 pm by Shel Holtz
| Media
Since Rupert Murdoch announced his plans to eventually charge for all of his newspapers’ online content, a number of opinions have surfaced about the feasibility of the pay wall and the reasons it won’t work.
For example, a MediaPost item by Wendy Davis (free subscription required) suggests that enough people who pay for the content will share it in violation of the publisher’s terms that the content will get out anyway. Others note that for every news site with a pay wall there will be plenty of alternatives that remain free.
From my perspective, the issue isn’t about whether the online content offered by news organizations have any… Read More »
2009-07-13
Posted on July 13, 2009 6:08 pm by Shel Holtz
| Legal
Repent, all ye sinners. The end of the Web is nigh.
Well, okay, that may be a bit extreme. But when you consider that links are the Web’s foundation, a disturbing trend doesn’t bode well at all.
Consider these two news items:
2009-03-06
Posted on March 6, 2009 1:33 pm by Shel Holtz
| Brands
A couple of days have gone by since Mars, Inc.‘s Skittles brand tossed out its website and replaced it with links to various social media properties. So frenetic was the commentary that I decided to stay out of it other than a mention on Monday’s episode of For Immediate Release. But I just can’t keep my lip buttoned any longer.
Most of the declarations that the experiment launched by Agency.com has failed are based on the flood of obscene, racist, and otherwise tasteless tweets Twittered by the adolescent set as soon as they learned that their juvenile output could be seen on the Skittles website. These messages run counter to the… Read More »
2008-12-29
Posted on December 29, 2008 2:15 pm by Shel Holtz
| Politics
All you opponents of Net Neutrality, explain to me why this is okay:
Verizon customers living in Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire are being switched over to Fairpoint Communications (Verizon sold its land-line business to Fairpoint in order to erase some debt from its books). (Details here.)
Fairpoint has announced to customers who use the service to access the Net that, effective February 6, subscribers to Yahoo, MSN, and AOL will no longer be able to access their email through those sites. If you want to retrieve your email from the Web (as opposed to routing it through to an email client like Outlook), you’ll need to do so through… Read More »
2008-12-28
Posted on December 28, 2008 6:07 pm by Shel Holtz
| Technology
I was devastated when I learned “I Want Sandy” was going the way of the carrier pigeon. This now-defunct site was the first and only calendar service that worked the way I wanted it to. Rael Dornfest, CEO of Values of n, Inc., was apparently hired by Twitter, which acquired I Want Sandy and Stikkit, then shut them down. (Acquisition seems to be a regular approach to extinction. Just as Pownce users how they feel about the xxx acquisition and subsequent shutdown.)
Searching for an alternative led me to Get Satisfaction, where 17 people responded to another Sandy fan looking for a comparable service. I’ve looked at most of those that… Read More »
2008-08-11
Posted on August 11, 2008 11:15 am by Shel Holtz
| Business
The next time management asks workers at its Benecia, California, facility to lend a helping hand, the answer is likely to be something along the lines of, “Sure, hyappy to help, just as soon as the Stanley Cup Playoffs are held in hell.”
Who would be willing to offer discretionary effort at management’s request after several workers were fired for allegedly doing just that? This practice won’t rank high on the means by which companies build engagement among their workforces.
According to workers who got the ax, they had been asked by management to participate in the “My Coke Rewards” promotion, that lets registered consumers exchange… Read More »
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