From Fortune‘s Hearst to launch a wireless e-reader:
Against a backdrop of plummeting ad revenue for newspapers and magazines, and rising costs for paper and delivery, Hearst Corp., is getting set to launch an electronic reader that it hopes can do for periodicals what Amazon’s Kindle is doing for books.
According to industry insiders, Hearst, which publishes magazines ranging from Cosmopolitan to Esquire and newspapers including the financially imperiled San Francisco Chronicle, has developed a wireless e-reader with a large-format screen suited to the reading and advertising requirements of newspapers and magazines. The device and underlying technology, which other publishers will be allowed to adapt, is likely to debut this year.
What could be the business model here for a content creation/media distribution company like Hearst?
What Hearst and its partners plan to do is sell the e-readers to publishers and to take a cut of the revenue derived from selling magazines and newspapers on these devices. The company will, however, leave it to the publishers to develop their own branding and payment models. “That’s something you will never see Amazon do,” someone familiar with the Hearst project said. “They aren’t going to give up control of the devices.”
By now, you might be thinking what does Hearst know about hardware?
A decade ago, Hearst invested in E-Ink, the company that supplies expensive screens to the current crop of e-readers like the Amazon Kindle and Sony PRS-700 Reader Digital Book.
The urge to cross over core competencies into unchartered territories is a disease that has often caused acute problems for many well-known companies. Microsoft, the diva of cross-dressers, has tried everything from cable programming to online publishing. Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Virgin thought they could be online music giants. Prada and Ferrari pretended they know how to design consumer electronics.
And now Hearst, a media publisher apparently with more money to burn than hardware chops to show for, is out to demonstrate what happens when a company can’t summarize its business model in 5,000 words. You thought ‘synergy’ was dead after it was brutally strangled by Sony after an intense, decade-long effort?
EcoGoons? Come down from the trees!
Thu, Feb 19, 09
In various mostly-European projects, we’ve been noticing that trees are coming under assault from presumably well meaning tree-hugging architects. Four of the more visible cases in recent months:
The cocoon is supported by steel suspension cables that are attached to the tree’s stronger branches above. With the tree trunk running through the center of the cocoon, the trunk naturally acts as a hand rail and central divider between the home’s triangular shaped spaces. The polygonal-shaped panels of the EcoCoon make the structure easily assembled on site. Each made of pre-insulated materials with high thermal resistance, the panels are designed to make the interior more comfortable without using a ton of resources.
Much like other retreats, the EcoCoons allow its inhabitants to re-connect to nature. On each level of the shelters, one panel is hinged so it can open up into a terrace while smaller, fixed windows give residents a chance to peek out into the surrounding nature.
Nestled amidst lush pine and magnolia trees, this treehouse from Baumraum updates a traditional backwoods form with a sharp modern profile. The quadratic cube is supported by two high-quality steel frames and features a terrace and an outdoor shower. The interior is outfitted with a full set of modern features including a stereo system, heating, and large windows that contribute ample amounts of natural light, making it a perfect place to enjoy the outdoors no matter the season.
As a nod to childhood treehouses and those good old days of youthful splendor, Dustin Feider obsessed himself with developing the perfect eco-friendly version of the tree sanctuary. After much trial and error, the 23-year old freelance furniture designer came up with a unique and green take on the conventional kiddie sanctuary which he dubbed the O2 Sustainability Treehouse. Inspired by the construction of Buckminster Fuller’s infamous geodesic dome, Feider discovered that by following Bucky’s lead, he could use less material and construct a more stable structure than that of the ‘traditional’ treehouse – most importantly, without at all harming the tree.
Mitchell Joachim insists that his plans are not futuristic. As the Executive Director for Terreform, a “philanthropic design collective,” he is responsible for progressive solutions for current problems. Save for the overt reliance on CGI imagery, the plans he presented at Postopolis! seem robustly conditional on collective goodwill, but still grounded on hard statistics and grounded feasibilities.
Is there a good reason for all this? Judge for yourselves, in this video where Joachim explains the imperative for hugging trees so closely.
Daily question: Foot. Bullet. Trigger.
Thu, Jan 15, 09
From The Crystal Reports® Underground, SAP resurrects the “screenshots” issue:
Business Objects claims that no one can use a Crystal Reports screenshot in a book without their approval. They sent letters to courseware vendors (including me) telling use that we need to get permission to use screenshots in our books. Most vendors ignored those letters and nothing more was said in the three years since. Now it appears that more letters are going out from SAP (who now owns Business Objects). I read one of the letters this past week and it talks about screenshots and adds a new warning about using SAP trademarks like the term “Crystal Reports”. The letter was very impressive, with majestic references to various sections of US copyright and trademark law. Sprinkled throughout the letter was the Latin incantation “inter alia” to make it seem almost pontifical. It sounded so ominous that it brought to mind the blustering Wizard of Oz (“ignore the little man behind the curtain”).
Large-scale enterprise vendors like IBM, Oracle, SAP and Microsoft sell complexity and arbitrage general IT cluelessness, fear and risk adversity. It’s good business if you can get it.
Does anyone still wonder why they go out of their way to not make their products less user-hostile when the obligatory training, support and maintenance taxes are integral profit channels without which some of these products may not even be viable?
Snake Oil: “Transformation” kills “Innovation”
Sun, Jan 4, 09
On the last day of 2008, Bruce Nussbaum in Business Week:
“Innovation” died in 2008…
He couldn’t start the new year more…well, wrong.
It reminds me of a client in London who approached me after a presentation I gave to his holding company at the dawn of the commercial WWW in 1998. He asked, “How can I make money on the Internet?” It was at once a breathtakingly open-ended question for a new platform so pregnant with myriad possibilities. And so demoralizingly foreclosing in its shortsightedness. After a minute of resignation, I remember answering, “The same way you make money on the telephone.”
A decade later in 2008, the WWW — the “Information Superhighway” to be more precise — is indeed dead. Like all good things, it’s been absorbed to become an essential part of commerce, and indeed our daily lives.
Did “‘Design’ die in 2006″ so that “Design Thinking” Nussbaum has since been promoting could be born? Will “‘Transformation’ die in 2010″ so that design bureaucracy can manufacture another buzzphrase, maybe “Reformation”? When the pendulum makes its way back, will it be “Restoration” in 2015?
Nussbaum either doesn’t quite understand the root causes of our “current” demise or is purposely distorting the meaning of “innovation” to make an otherwise improbable distinction. Take, for example, his characterization that “indeed, financial innovation was to large degree responsible for the economic trainwreck.”
The evidences of financial engineering which Nussbaum is apparently referring to, like complex derivates, lending without risk analysis, overly aggressive levering, opaque securitization, various Ponzi schemes, etc., are not instances of “innovation” as much as they remain either illegal or unethical.
How can anyone characterize as “innovation” originating arbitrary amounts of loans without verification or risk analysis simply because the originator will no longer be on the hook once an individual loan is bundled with other assets to be securitized and sold to others? Is avoidance of inevitable defaults on payment through securitization “innovation”? Only if you must come up with another buzzword for a new year to hang your hat on. “Transformation” indeed.
Who said this at the very end of 2005?
The design profession may be indulging in a navel-gazing exercise of immense proportions that is important to no one but designers. You folks are wasting a lot of time.
Yes, Nussbaum.
So by this time you might be wondering just what’s wrong with plain old “Design”? Why does it always need to be qualified with another buzzword of the year?
Innovation is a term too aligned with big business and corporations. But as a design advocate who fought for years to get designers to get over themselves and their obsession with framing their profession in terms of art, I can’t help but feel haplass in this debate. Just when victory is near, when design is finally being accepted for what it can do, people are denying its power, whining about the nomenclature and clutching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Yes, that too is from Nussbaum.
I could go on. Innovation or transformation, Design speaks for itself. It will in 2009, too.
Daily question: ExitReality soon to exit
Fri, Sep 19, 08
About ExitReality:
ExitReality is a new technology that has made the entire Internet 3D. By creating an instant 3D world from any web page, ExitReality adds a new dimension to the Internet. And this new universe of inter-connected worlds expands even beyond 2D to include thousands of innovative 3D places and games created over the past decade, and now ready to be explored.
It’s an opportunity for any Internet user to connect with friends, meet new people with the same interests, and create a virtual home. An easy decoration tool allows anyone to build a unique 3D version of their website or social network page for everyone to see and friends and others to visit – see them, wave to them and chat to them with 3D avatar multi-user chat. Open standards mean any business or 3D designer can create places and worlds that can be visited with ExitReality, and things, widgets, gadgets and other applications that can be used to decorate 3D web spaces.
Compatible with Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome Internet browsers, ExitReality includes a 3D search engine, which gives the user access to the biggest repository of 3D objects and worlds on the Internet. It’s free and easy to get started. After a quick 3.7MB download, the ExitReality Internet browser plug-in is installed and a button with the ExitReality logo appears on the browser. Visit any web page and click on this button to convert the 2D webpage instantly into a 3D place.
ExitReality is the solution to what vexing problem?
