Rojo

 

Historically, Macs and small business aren't often associated with each other. Yet smaller firms seem to be one of the markets Apple is targeting with Mac OS X Leopard Server.

 

&products SubRosaSoft today announced the release of DasBoot 1.0.2, the latest version of their free boot creation device software...  

On Friday VMware released a second beta of its Fusion virtualization software for Mac OS X.

 

Mark Evans has an intersting post titled Who Reads Blog? Apparently, "Almost No One" in which he quotes Jeff Cole, the director of the Center for the Digital Future:

"Almost no one reads blogs," he said today during a lunch-time presentation in Toronto put together by eBay Canada. "The audience for most blogs is tiny... We think most bloggers have achieved the anonymity they rich deserve."
I would actually have to agree (but perhaps without the attitude). However, it also depends on how you define the word 'read'. While it's certainly true that blogs are probably not "read" per se anywhere near the amount some in the blogger community believe, the fact is people hit blogs all the time when searching for answers, and for the average person they don't really know the difference between a "blog" and any other web content, nor do they care. Few of them want to read a blog regularly. Most people don't ready anything 'regularly' whether blogs or big-media. They read what they want, when they want.

In my analysis of blog readership, the traits and behaviors of blog readers, the data suggests to me that there is a disconnect between those with an affinity to blogs and mainstream web users. The blog-savvy, those that use a ton of RSS feeds and stay up on the latest blogger, or blogged about, widgets and tools, have tendencies that are distinct from mainstream web users. They are essentially an elite sub-culture. They are not representative of the masses and should not be weighed very heavily in estimating behaviors of web users at large. I don't believe they are leading the industry or "ahead of the curve" as Mark does. I don't expect the mainstream to follow this elite segment toward the same level of sophistication. Aggregation and Search Engines will continue to have a role for mainstream users.

Posted by MrBlog On 02/26/07 At 05:55 PM

 

Somebody passed on a Romney campaign strategist's power point to the Boston Globe's Scott Helman, and an interesting article resulted. But the story tells us much more about the Globe than it does about one set of...  

AP - An orbiting spacecraft has sent back new evidence for the presence of water on Mars.

 

 

Cory Doctorow: Bruce Schneier has a great column today about the "security features" in Vista that cripple your machine to keep you from copying Police Academy sequels.

This isn't about stopping pirates and the small percentage of people who download free movies from the Internet. This isn't even about Microsoft satisfying its Hollywood customers at the expense of those of us paying for the privilege of using Vista. This is about the overwhelming majority of honest users and who owns the distribution channels to them. And while it may have started as a partnership, in the end Microsoft is going to end up locking the movie companies into selling content in its proprietary formats.

We saw this trick before; Apple pulled it on the recording industry. First iTunes worked in partnership with the major record labels to distribute content, but soon Warner Music's CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. found that he wasn't able to dictate a pricing model to Steve Jobs. The same thing will happen here; after Vista is firmly entrenched in the marketplace, Sony's Howard Stringer won't be able to dictate pricing or terms to Bill Gates. This is a war for 21st-century movie distribution and, when the dust settles, Hollywood won't know what hit them.

Link

 

NYT pub Arthur Sulzberger suggests that the debate over how far online newspapers must go is over in an interview with Haaretz.com. He sees his job as shepherding the times onto the Internet while maintaining profit margins - and "I really don't know whether we'll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don't care either."

Sulzberger says the New York Times is on a journey that will conclude the day the company decides to stop printing the paper. That will mark the end of the transition. It's a long journey, and there will be bumps on the road, says the man at the driving wheel, but he doesn't see a black void ahead.

Newspapers can maintain an online business by driving towards the obvious advantages of online classifed advertising. While there's more competition for such ads, the Internet is also a massively cheaper platform than print.

"(Site development costs) aren't anywhere near what print costs," Sulzberger says. "The last time we made a major investment in print, it cost no less than $1 billion. Site development costs don't grow to that magnitude."

The Times cut a deal with Microsoft to create software that enables a decent reading experience on laptops.

Also, the Times signed a deal with Microsoft to distribute the paper through a software program called Times Reader, Sulzberger says. The software enables users to conveniently read the paper on screens, mainly laptops. "I very much believe that the experience of reading a paper can be transfered to these new devices."

Will it be free? No, Sulzberger says. If you want to read the New York Times online, you will have to pay.

All of this shows an understanding that the Times is only one player in a chorus of news reporting voices, from major to media to blogs.

"Once upon a time, people had to read the paper to find out what was going on in theater. Today there are hundreds of forums and sites with that information," he says. "But the paper can integrate material from bloggers and external writers. We need to be part of that community and to have dialogue with the online world."