Category: internet

How the future of magazines may work online

The recent postal strike made some magazine publishers sit up and consider their regular subscribers.

How to make sure that those who pay extra to receive the magazine don’t miss out because of striking postmen? The answer seemed simple – send them a lovely online edition of the magazine to look at.

The likes of Red magazine and The Word both offered sparkly and attractive digital editions, which were easy to turn and simple to zoom in and out of.

And it’s not just a flash in the pan. Tindle Newspapers have announced that they’re rolling out digital editions of their online publications, after a successful trial on a small number.

In fact, The Word is continuing to offer a digital edition to magazine subscribers, as another add-on.

But these digital editions are surely a way of cashing in on the appeal of magazines. Sure, they don’t have the same cachet as holding the magazine in the hand, but I can imagine people stumping up cash to buy a digital edition, which automatically means that companies can reduce their costs.

I can’t claim to be an expert in the economics of printing, but a reduction in print run, paper, etc would inevitably help cash-straped publishers. By gaining some sort of revenue from a digital edition (for the fraction of the price of a printed edition) must be something to look at.

After all, when magazines start to get into trouble, one of the first things that goes is paper quality, print run and number of pages.

It may take a while for it to be worthwhile, but I can’t believe that there aren’t a number of publishers who haven’t thought about it and aren’t already heading in that direction.

The joy of digital inclusion

Last week, we went up to visit my ‘de facto’ in-laws. Although they’ve had a computer for a while, they’ve never had broadband so the wonders of the web were practically a mystery to them.

After much fannying around with Belkin USB adaptors, we managed to get the broadband connection working and, lo and behold, the internet was there.

We set up email accounts for them both and typed out some basic instructions for using it and other simple web behaviour.

We also downloaded Skype and set up an account and sorted out a basic webcam.

A week on and it has already been revolutionary, according to my girlfriend’s mum. Not only is she able to video call every day for 10-15 minutes and see our daughter, but our little girl gets a kick out of seeing her grandparents and their assorted animals.

On top of that, they’ve discovered the wonders of things like Amazon – the ability to buy obscure books at half the price and get them delivered for free, rather than trawl round half-a-dozen bookshops in the faint hope that they’ll be there.

OK, so they’re not about to code and launch their own website, but that’s not what digital inclusion is all about. It’s about opening up basic access to the internet and allowing everyone to enjoy the benefits.

Seeing someone discover this for the first time is a lot of fun!

Why it pays to have a quiet week on Twitter

spawn-of-the-devilIn spite of the furore over Nick Griffin’s appearance on last night’s Question Time and the running commentary provided by almost everyone I know during the show’s broadcast, it’s been a quiet week on Twitter.

Quiet, that is, when you compare it to last week. There has been acres of web space devoted to the double whammy of Twitter-power in the previous 7 days.

First, there was the now infamous Twitter campaign to embarrass lawyers Carter Ruck and their client Trafigura to lift the quite bewildering gag order on reporting in the House Of Commons.

Being part of the constant Twitterthon on Tuesday felt rather special. It was like going on a student demo without leaving the comfort of your own living room. Populace action using the web in a way that had previously been unimaginable.

And the Twitter community had only just recovered, when the second huge ‘scandal’ of the week erupted. Namely, the now equally infamous Daily Mail article, penned by Jan Moir about the ‘strange, lonely and troubling death’ of Stephen Gately.

My partner read it very early on Friday morning and said, rather presciently, ‘That’s going to cause a bit of a stink’. Too right – a stench that Jan Moir herself and the Daily Mail could never have imagined.

In an even greater show of strength than the earlier Trafigura moment, the Twitterverse went into meltdown. The level of astonishment at the column’s content was quite something to behold.

When a friend of mine tweeted that Moir had quite rightly breached the PCC code and forwarded the message to Derren Brown, the die was cast. His retweet flooded Twitter and the PCC was deluged with complaints – in itself a delicious irony given the relentless Daily Mail campaign against Ross and Brand last year – a number that currently stands at around 25,000.

Every development was noted. When the article headline changed and the ads were removed, tweets went round everywhere. When Charlie Brooker published his comment on the whole sorry saga, a link to his article achieved almost equal saturation.

But all good things come to an end. At lunch the other day with some friends, we noted how quiet it had been on Twitter this week, in comparison to the fire and brimstone of the previous seven days.

And we all agreed that actually a quiet week was actually really important. A sense of order and decorum has returned. Changing the world, or at least a couple of small parts of it, takes energy and emotion that cannot be continuously maintained.

Twitter needs time to gather itself before the next assault on freedom of speech and the erosion of liberal values. Let us get our breath back!