I remember when 3D was the fad of the 60′s when I was a kid. And every once in a while another film will come out 3D. We also have the likes of Panasonic, Sony, et. al. pitching 3D LCDs. Its not doing too well at the box office–
Analyst Richard Greenfield of Wall Street’s BTIG has long been skeptical of claims by Jeffrey Katzenberg and James Cameron that 3D would do wonders for the movie business. But now Greenfield says that 3D is actually hurting the industry: “U.S. consumers are increasingly rejecting 3D movies,” he said in a report today. Attendance for Disney’s Pirates of Caribbean: On Stranger Tides “would have been higher” this past weekend if half of its screens showed the movie in conventional 2D instead of just a third, he says. The evidence? He notes that about 38% of the $90 million in box-office revenue for the film’s opening weekend came from non-IMAX 3D screens. That’s much lower than the average last year, when 54% of the opening revenues for DreamWorks Animation’s Shrek Forever After, and 57% of the initial sales for the studio’s How To Train Your Dragon, came from non-IMAX 3D screens.
Well 3D LCD’s aren’t selling all that well either. To be useful you have to wear specific glasses. They are $30 per and up. So if you want to do 3D for a party, well lets just not add it up shall we? 3D is something that comes and goes but it never lasts.
AOL appeared to have been slowing it’s slide into irrelevance in its transition from access provider to an online portal.While it’s return to prominence is a virtual impossibility, at least it looked like it may be worthy of removal from our dead pool. In fact, AOL has seen a little growth in its more technology centric offerings like Endgadget and Techcrunch.
It’s been no secret that AOL has been looking for a merger partner, with Yahoo mentioned more than a few times over the last couple of years. That match, with the already bloated and unmanageable Yahoo, only made sense to a few folks on Wall Street who could profit handsomely from the process of joining the two companies. Instead of joining forces with a stronger partner, AOL has acquired a weaker one. In what could be a fatal move for the company, AOL announced it would acquire the Huffington Post.
While it makes good press for AOL finally having found a major online partner, there is little or no synergy between the two companies. In fact the Huffpo’s traffic has been sliding. As a one trick Bush Bashing pony, there’s been less fodder to frenzy readers with since W left Washington a little over two years ago. In light of this AOL’s decision to turn over it’s news operation to the Huffpo team seems very misguided. To make things worse, giving Ariana Huffington editorial control of AOL tech likely means less pure geekery and gadgetry reporting. Those stories will more than likely be displaced by more pseudo science reporting like global warming, green energy and save the earth from technology nonsense. With so much of the looney left agenda already displacing serious tech news in the media, this move will certainly will certainly dilute AOL Tech’s readership.
Who wins in this deal? Ariana Hufffington. She’s cashed out of a declining business and has been given a new one to run into the ground. The other winners are small and independent publications like Third Pipe. We’ll be very happy to take up some of the slack she creates in the marketplace of ideas.
[[Dog Update]] Since the buyout, AOL stock has slid nearly $3/share. Based on total outstanding shares of AOL, they have lost nearly what the HuffPo purchase represents. Another words, The Street value the HuffPo property at $0!
I’ve often commented that I can’t understand why more authors don’t self publish. Self publishing insures complete creative freedom and nearly complete control of pricing and revenue.
Established author J.A. Konrath provides a detailed account of how he and three co-authors self published a horror novel on Amazon with very little investment. The book is selling for $2.99 in electronic format. Even with with a 4 way split its authors will be receiving income similar to the royalties a big publisher would offer the typical individual writer for a novel.
Since professionalism is essential, we hired a cover artist and an ebook formatter. A publisher providing these services takes 52.5% of an ebook’s cover price, and the retailer gets 30% through the agency model. That leaves only 17.5% for the author. By absorbing these sunk costs ourselves, we’re able to earn the full 70% royalties and not have to share them with anyone. Though we’re splitting the profits four ways, we’re each earning only slightly less per copy sold (51 cents each) than we would on one of our own paperback books (64 cents each), and still only charging the reader $2.99. (Huffington Post)
A blonde is praying to God
[Blonde] Dear God, I pray night after night to win the lottery and never do.
[Blonde] Do you hear me Lord?
[God] Child, I hear everyone.
[Blonde] But I don’t win the lottery, ever.
[God] Child, meet me half way at least — Buy a ticket!
Oh yes, it is a dear old joke. Been around for years. But there is a reason I mention it. There is a corollary in today news feeds –
Apple has re-instated the popular iPad news-reading application Pulse. The move seems to overturn a decision earlier today to remove the app because of objections from The New York Times that the app violated its terms of service by encouraging readers to read the Times.
Apple did not respond to a request for explanation, but it looks to be sticking a finger in the eye of the Times, which it has heavily partnered with to promote the iPad.
The Times objects to the news-reading app because it includes it as one of five default publications whose RSS feeds can be read. The Times also objects that the two Stanford student programmers charge for the app, which the Times says violates its non-commercial license for the feed. And it objects that the app launches links from excerpts of its stories to the full Times site in a browser window inside the app, rather than to an external browser.
Read More here
So lets get this straight. NYT who is in the business of pushing news, even via RSS feeds, is objecting to somebody READING their news? There is alot of sidebar legal mumbo-jumbo, but the nit is that it sounds like NYT is objecting to that very action.
So am supposed to show sympathy for the Media, when an organization like the NYT sends a cease and desist letter to Apple to remove the Pulse application? Pleeeeze, that is like driving a stake through your eye and wondering why it hurts. Not only that but there is another old saying — “When you are the piker, stay away from the poker table.” You can’t afford the ante. For most of the industry that is exactly where they are. NYT should be thankful that somebody even thinks they are worth the time to develop the app.
Not one dime of my tax money to these idiots!
You have heard us rail here more than once that the Legacy Media are in deep dodo. Whether its content, positioning, cost structure, or technology issues. Well now we can add one more — management issues –
Only 51% of pubs think pay walls will fly
A bare 51% of the newspaper publishers in the United States believe they can charge successfully for access to their interactive content, according to a survey released today. The other 49% of publishers either fear that pay walls will fail or just aren’t sure.
The survey, which was conducted for the latest in the series of industry conferences this year studyng how to monetize the valuable content most newspapers give away for free, shows that publishers who are worried about charging for content have good reason to be concerned.
While 68% of the publishers responding to the survey said they thought readers who objected to paying for content would have a difficult time replacing the information they get from newspaper websites, 52% of polled readers said it would be either “very easy” or “somewhat easy” to do so.
These findings – and the others summarized below – are contained in an exhaustive survey by industry consultants Greg Harmon and Greg Swanson. They were hired by the American Press Institute to conduct the research for an invitation-only meeting of about three dozen industry executives being held today at a hotel in suburban Washington, DC.
Well first, just to get it out of my system, the snarky comment — Well Duh! If you are pitching a crappy product, and you are their editors and publishers, then what do you expect. Of course the public won’t follow you thru a pay wall system to get their news content. Wen your print side won’t even cover the Van Jones Bus Throw or Dear God the shameless ACORN story that is now all over the ‘Net then why should they?
But the publishers are now admitting that they cannot make it over to digital content. 49% of them are saying that they will fade into oblivion no matter what. Well I’ll tell you, if I were a subscriber to a daily today I would want to know that. Why expend money today for a publication that even they know will not be around say 5-6 years from now?
Read the whole thing over at Reflections of a Newsosaur. Pay particular attention to the various schemes that those that are going digital are brewing up.
ikonoclasm alerts us to the news that Murdoch is angry and threatening to remove all News Corp. material from the kindle unless Amazon is willing to hand over subscriber names and info to News Corp., despite having just negotiated a larger share of revenue. Of course, the subscribers themselves might actually like the fact that Amazon isn’t handing out their user info. (Techdirt)
Imagine this email coming from Amazon.
“Dear Kindle owner.
When we promised to not share your personal information with anyone, we didn’t know that the big bad Murdoch would take away his very valuable content if we refuse to share your information with him. Therefore we have provided all of your information to him in order to keep providing his unique content”
My prediction: Murdoch will pull content from his dailies. Amazon won’t bend. If Murdoch makes good on his threat, there will be plenty of alternative news sources to fill the vacuum.
Dear Rupert: You’re pointing your gun at your own foot.
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