links for 2007-11-15
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Can’t decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing. On the one hand, it shows that mapping photos can be powerful for a community. On the other hand, it’s kind of EXACTLY like my Knight News Challenege proposal.
1) Facebook, et. al, are criticized for not fully opening up the troves of data they collect. “It’s the data, stupid.”
2) Online newspaper ads stall.
3) Conde Nast rolls out Tastebook, which allows people to create real, live cookbooks from a variety of recipe sources for a mere $35. Cost of printing book? Far less. Hard profit ensues.
4) Wired runs a story about Manga finding new niche audiences by allowing their content to be, er, appropriated… (thanks to Patrick Beeson for the link).
5) A major newspaper implements tag-driven content.
In the past few weeks, it seems, stories suggest that openness and embracing change leads to riches. Not opening up –in other words, whatever the hell newspaper companies are doing — is leading to stagnation. My conclusion? It’s time to open up.
This isn’t a complete deviation. We already allow free syndication via RSS in a bevy of categories. And our print product costs roughly cover the cost of materials. and to do nothing, it seems, isn’t halting the inevitable march of progress. We should take charge of our content — allow readers to serve it up as they see fit. Our content is our content, but it’s fully transitory without being categorized, tagged and coded in such a way as to be useful later on.
I’m not pushing for a NYT API. Okay, I am. But there’s more to it. What’s limiting Tastebook to recipes? Allow, say, Yankee fans to create their own books from the photos, clips and interviews we amass during the course of our business.
The content is there. To allow new ways of serving it up is just good business sense.
As I mentioned, things have been happening at just about breakneck speed the past few months. Here are a few things that I think merit mention:
I think I know how you feel. I mean, I was here, and you were there, and everything was great for so long. We had our ups and downs, sure, but who doesn’t? Everything was going great.
And then, Poof!, I was gone. Just like that. Oh, sure, there were a few little blip of life now and then; an animated “under construction” .gif, some awful Wordpress incarnation. But it just wasn’t the same, and now you want answers.
Well, here it goes. Cliffs Notes version: Sometime in about April 2006, Chase Davis , who, while a goofball, has always had a pretty good head for these things, started talking about a little thing called Django. And it sounded cool. Really, it did. But I was still wrapping my head around things like how best to devour a Chipotle burrito, and just didn’t have time to look into it. Then, a few months back, Matt Waite rolled out this fantastic creation called PolitiFact. I was floored. And a few weeks later (For those keeping track, that’s at least 1.5 years behind the rest of the pack), I downloaded it for myself and started putzing around on my computer at work.
I realized this tool had some pretty enormous potential. And after asking, realized it’s something I’d have to play with on my own time. So I bought some space on a shared server from A Small Orange, and here we are.
I know what you’re thinking. “Right, Matt. That’s all well and good. So where’s all the cool Django stuff? Huh? Where is it?”
All I can day is, you’re right. There’s some work to be done. Installing it on Windows, which I’ve been using since puberty, was a heck of a lot easier than doing it on a shared UNIX host via Putty — two things I’m not even sure I can spell, much less use. But there’s been a lot going on, and I want to get it out there. So, probably for a long while, this is how it’s going to be. Yes, it’s another WordPress incarnation, hopefully not as awful.
I hope we can patch things up.
Sincerely,
Matt