nineball media

The New York Times has ended its pay-to-view experiment, Times Select, after two years. Now, all of its online content is free to read, but it looks like there will be plenty of advertising. WebbAlert reports that The Wall Street Journal may be following suit after Rupert Murdoch completes his acquisition of the venerable paper. Methinks someone at the Times crunched the numbers and realized they’d get much higher revenue from advertising rather than subscriptions…

A quick hit from Costa Rica… Just heard about the new iPods and the
(gulp!) massive price drop on the iPhone. Kudos to Apple for pushing a
rebate to us early adopters though.

From a podcasting perspective, I’m most intrigued by iTunes wifi
music store… I’ve ranted about the possibility of wireless downloads
of podcasts for months, and this brings us a step closer. From what I
can tell, however, the wifi store does not include podcasts… Maybe a
future add, perhaps? Regardless, I think these new products and
services are good additions to the tech marketplace. And, since I
apparently have a $100 rebate available from my iPhone purchase, I
suspect apple will get more of my money. It’s an illness, really.

Back in the States tomorrow… Regular blogging resumes Monday. I
missed you too.

Reporters sans frontières has out out this amazing map showing the places where the Internet is pretty much dark as far as the free flow of news is concerned. I’m happy to say I’m not going to one of the countries devoid of light on the map tomorrow… I just might not be able to access the ‘net all that frequently! Have a great Labor Day weekend for my US readers… and a great week if I don’t get to find much to say from Costa Rica!

Thanks to Valleywag for the original source…

A hard-core Linux user who was busted for pirating Star Wars Episode III (the least objectionable of the painfully bad second set of Star Wars flicks) was smacked upside the head by his sentencing judge. Because he will have his computer use monitored as a part of his probation, and because the monitoring software doesn’t run on Linux… yes, he is being forced to use Windows for all computing needs. Open Source users are proud of their lack of affiliation with Apple or Microsoft… now this guy is being fored to turn to the Dark Side. Cue the irony alert!

I have several clients in the yoga industry (Hello öm time and Hip Tranquil Chick!)… this short on Ogden, the Inappropriate Yoga Guy is simply genius, whether you’ve hit the mat before or not. Have a great weekend!

An IBM study states what a lot of us already knew… new media is starting to replace old media in the hearts and minds of the public. Here are some of the findings:

• TV is increasingly taking a back seat to the cell phone and the personal computer among consumers age 18 to 34
• 19 percent of survey respondents reported spending six hours or more per day on personal Internet usage, versus nine percent of respondents who reported the same levels of TV viewing
• Consumers are demonstrating their desire for both wired and wireless access to content: an average of 81 percent of consumers surveyed globally indicated they’ve watched or want to watch PC video, and an average of 42 percent indicated they’ve watched or want to watch mobile video

This trend impacts everything… media delivery, advertising, the works. If you’ve got a product or a point of view, this is the time to start strategizing a new media plan.

It’s amazing how much one relies on being wired… I’ve had a maddening amount of access here in rural New York the last few days and I’ve never been more grateful for my iPhone for giving me just a taste of access over the past few days. Mental note: don’t think about doing work on a working vacation if there’s no wifi.

Mental note #2: McDonalds wifi is not worth the Filet o’ Fish. Ever.

I present to you, your Friday ridiculousness. Cisco hired KISS to come and speak to their khaki clad crowd. Unfortunately, they also thought it would be prudent to get the band’s take on technology.

Memo to Cisco: Script… the… aging… rock… stars. I’m with Paul Stanley… we need mini projectors on handhelds.

Huh? Wha? Enjoy the weekend everyone…

I’ve just been lead to a great new app called Jing… it’s a free application that makes image capturing and screen videos a snap to make. Coolest part? It’s cross platform and includes free hosting for all of your images and screencasts. Now if you need to show your mom how to do something on the computer, make a simple 5 minute video on Jing and send her the link. She can play it like any other video. No more typing out instructions! Also, since it’s cross platform there are no worries if you’re a PC owner sending to a Mac person, or vice versa. There’s even a Linux version in the works… very cool.

Check out the overview video here… it explains it better than I can in a paragraph, which is kind of the whole point of Jing, isn’t it?

Maybe Apple is getting too good at building excitement… the reviews on the Steve Jobs keynote yesterday are a bit mixed. I think there were a few interesting things (the iPhone info and the fact that Apple is releasing a version of its Safari web browser in Windows) but overall it was a little flat.

With that ringing endorsement… check it out here.