12 Feb 2009 · media
Has it really? Is content being devalued because of the current economic conditions or is there a larger trend here? Have the accountant got it all wrong?
Read the Time article “Content, Once King, Becomes A Pauper”
Continue reading →12 Feb 2009 · media
The 2009 Online Advertising Attitudes report of UK reports that “22% of British consumers claim to only visit niche sites that are specific to their interests… A further 34% of British consumers spend the majority of their time visiting niche sites that are specific to their interests.”
Raising questions about the effectiveness of advertising on large portals and social networking sites, the report found that “26% of users never pay attention to the advertising on these sites and a further 36% rarely claim to pay attention to it.”
Continue reading →11 Feb 2009 · media
When White House press conference doesn’t invite correspondents from The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, Time and Newsweek but president Obama fields questions from the correspondent from The Huffington Post, a news blog (or should I call it an Internet only news publication) it sure is a sign of change!
Continue reading →10 Feb 2009 · media
Google is making its database of 1.5 million public domain books accessible from mobile devices for free. Amazon is working to make all its Kindle titles available on mobile devices.Random House Publishing has announced that will make books available for free for mobile devices. Penguin Group (USA) has started Penguin 2.0, again aimed for mobile devices…
Google already has a mobile version of Google Book Search…
Is the future of ‘books’ likely to be in our palms?
06 Feb 2009 · media
Like the open source movement in software, an open source movements in the textbooks may be afoot. If this movement takes hold it will surely impact the textbook business, which is perhaps the only safe island in a sea of troubled publishing business.
The other question is what motivates people like Professor R. Preston McAfee to make their books available for free, when they could have earned a fair bit from it – $100,000 advance and more, according to a New York Times article (Don’t Buy That Textbook, Download It Free)
Continue reading →06 Feb 2009 · comment
Kids who are exposed to too much screen time (TV, Computers, video games, iPods) during their teen years are likely to display depression symptoms later. Science News article says:
“Exposure to more television and other electronic media during the teenage years appears to be associated with developing depression symptoms in young adulthood, especially among men, according to a report in the February issue of Archives of General Psychiatry…”
Continue reading →03 Feb 2009 · media
According to Time magazine, novel podcasts, unlike audiobooks “are truncated into segments and may include ambient sounds, music as well a cast of voices playing different characters.”
“Evo Terra, the co-founder of Podiobooks.com, says 45,000 episodes are downloaded each day.”
If you are in the publishing business you may want to find out more… at Podiobooks.com you can find and subscribe to audio book as well as novel podcasts.
Continue reading →11 Jan 2009 · community-radio
I’ve been hearing about Ideosync’s CR project in Lalitpur for a while now, but a news story finally suggests that they’re close to getting on air.
Here’s the full story.
Village Community Radio will give voice to people’s issues
10 January, 2009
“Community radio is the real voice of the people, it is a communication service that caters to the interests and needs of a certain area, its culture, craft, cuisine and above all social and development issues,” said Mridul Srivastava, the station director of ‘Lalit Lokvani’.
Continue reading →16 Dec 2008 · community-radio
According to Elise Nordling, “The primary function of radio is that people want company.” Assuming that to be true, what kind of company do people normally want? Who do you and I like to talk to? To listen to? To someone who speaks our own language, perhaps. To someone who understands our world, and our lives, and the joys and sorrows and challenges that go into living each day. A mirror that we look into, sometimes admiringly, sometimes critically, but a mirror nonetheless.
Continue reading →03 Dec 2008 · media
Marcella Nunez-Smith of Yale School of Medicine and his team spent more than 18 months studying some 173 researches conducted over the last 30 years on how media affects the lives of children – ‘…obesity, tobacco, drug and alcohol use, sexual behavior, low academic achievement and ADHD’.
Turns out that 80 percent of the research efforts show a ‘link between a negative health outcome and media hours or content’. The study says there is ‘…above average evidence to support the link between media exposure and drug use, alcohol use and low academic achievement.’ This research focused on television, music, movies…
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