Robert Niles: July 2009 archive
Eight tips to keep your mobile website readers happy
July 30, 2009
The past few weeks have found me on the road quite a bit, as I visit theme parks around the country for my "day job" website. So I've been using my iPhone to keep in touch, via WiFi, AT&T's 3G network or, when I'm really out in the sticks, the Edge network.Smart phones provide a great way for people to work productively during "down" moments throughout the day. And for road warriors to stay in touch, even when driving the nation's Interstate highways. (Okay, when riding on the Interstate. I'm a stickler for not using the phone when in the driver's seat.) Heck, earlier this week I set up and did two radio interviews while in the car.
But as useful as smart phones can be, their effectiveness can be undermined by information providers whose sloppy or ill-advised design keeps phone readers from getting the information they want. Here's what I wish Web publishers would do to make reading the Web by phone easier: More...
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How early online newspaper production tools led the industry down the wrong path
July 16, 2009
Wisdom is the ability to see your life and career not simply as a line going forward from wherever point you are, but as an arc that extends from the past into the future. That's why I believe it is important to teach online journalism students about the history and development of the Internet and for online news professionals to remember the early days of their craft. (It's also why I find books like Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" so interesting.)I've written about how legal precedents shaped the thinking of early online news managers. Today, I'd like to suggest that early online publishing technology affected industry thinking in profound, and, ultimately, tragic, ways as well.
For those of you who weren't working on a newspaper website around 1996, let me take you on a trip into the pensieve (or, down memory lane, for those of you overdosed on Harry Potter references this week). I started on the Rocky Mountain News website in November 1996, and was the only person at the paper updating and maintaining the news side of the website. Every morning, I came in around 5 am, selected a couple dozen stories from the newspaper, then called them up on the paper's ATEX terminals. One by one, I sent a copy of each story to a queue we'd created which interfaced with the Pantheon Bridge program on a Windows NT box in the paper's computer room. More...
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Newspaper columnists ought to be the perfect bloggers. So why aren't more doing it well?
July 2, 2009
Newspaper columnists ought to be the perfect bloggers - the best write in a lively voice and forge a strong connection with their readers. Their work build an ongoing conversation with the communities they cover. Frankly, they've been blogging (in print) since long before anyone other than academics and soldiers went online.So why aren't more making a successful transition to online publishing? Why are so many columnists living under the same fear and uncertainty that's consuming their newsroom coworkers? Those are a couple of the questions that I sought to address last weekend when I spoke to the annual gathering of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.
This year's conference theme was "Survive and Thrive." (Well, we've drilled down to the basics now, haven't we?) My talk was "Tips on Branding Yourself," and I was joined by Erika Stalder of ABC Family.
I told the group that your brand in the Internet era is the public's perception of its relationship with you, a sentiment that Erika concurred with, citing a similar quote from Amazon's Jeff Bezos: "Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room."
Anyone writing online needs to come to this understanding: That what matters most in determining your online success is how your work is understood and acted upon by its audience - more than what your intention with the work was or the process that you used to create it. You can do work you believe to be great, but if no one reads it or no one who does cares, what was the point? More...
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