To Be Frank

If traditional newspaper companies are going to ‘survive’ the Internet, there are two things that they are going to have to embrace for their online media: make it ultra-local and interactive. Small(er) local print media are best positioned to deliver this.

However, before they can do this transformation, they have to understand one thing: You are NOT a newspaper company anymore, but rather you are a MEDIA company, like Time Warner or General Electric or even Google (yea, I said Google). Your art is no longer just the printed word on newsprint (or at least it shouldn’t be). While that will be a part of what you do for some time, you need to start to focus on what is next for your company.

When you look at smaller-sized papers, ultra-local should be easy to deliver online since most are already doing this. Far too often local newspapers try to be bigger than they are when they move to the Web, thinking that they need to do this to keep up with the regional media-type sites. It’s not needed and in a lot of ways, not wanted by Web users looking for local news. I know that if there was a local Web site that served my community (or at least my local ‘news’ area), I would be there daily.

But, delivering ultra-local client in a traditional style is not enough. The content needs to be dynamic and interactive. This is a hard thing for ‘print’ media to get because it is very different than anything they are used to. Most print media think that it is their job to inform their ‘users’ – a one-way conversation with the readers/user of a site. I think that new media needs to not only inform but allow for the public to talk among themselves.

Sites that have built in opportunities to allow the public to interact with your site, even as simple as sending calendar items online to a database and more advanced with technology where people can actually post news and questions to your site, are already ahead of the game. There are many types of interactivity that a media company can look at adding to your site. Even doing what you think is small, is probably a lot more than most are doing.

Blogs are part of this, but only a little part, I think. Blogs are more ‘traditional’ in nature, where one person has a voice and pushes information onto the public. Yes, the public can comment and interact with the writer, but it’s one-sided to start.

User submitted video and audio is also something that every newspaper should look at under this heading. There are several thoughts about how to implement: You can either allow the public to post video to your site and then you can remove it later, if you need to, or ‘gate keep’ the site and approve everything. I would vote for the former, and remove with caution and postings that are in the wrong place.

So, how do you tie this all together?

While it is great to have an overall plan for where media companies want to be in a few years, I think it is better to know short term what is to be accomplish and not be afraid to try it. Far to often, it seems, newspaper companies try to find a ‘grand plan’ for where they want to be online and take WAY to long to get there. I am the first person to say that I hate it when I build something and then have to scrap it because it didn’t meet the requirements of what was truly needed, but it is my feeling to try something… if it doesn’t work, try something else.

Technically, you have to look at databases (duh!). This is maybe the biggest challenge for smaller newspapers because the technology is potentially different than what they are doing now. But, using flat HTML files rather than a database will prevent companies from moving forward. Database-afying content not only makes the information more searchable, but allows more flexibility to how it is presented. It allows structure where the site can interlink stories and features and could also help implement interactivity.

One last thing that I thought I would mention is the idea of a ‘community’ online. It’s an idea that has been tossed around a lot. The ‘MySpace’ or ‘Facebook’ models of allowing your members to interact with one another, those with like ideas or similar lifestyles, are huge online right now. The problem with trying to do a ‘local’ version of a site like that is getting the critical mass to make it work. Don’t get me wrong. I think there is a place for them, but I question whether or not they will work on an local platform.

I’ve been working on this for about a year (you really couldn’t tell by the graphics, however). It’s been one of those things that have been on-again-off-again, but I think it’s finally ready to roll out. What is it? It’s the TheTownBlogger.com, a place where you, if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area can go and list your blog or site and people can look them up.
What makes it different from other sites is that it’s organized geographically by either the subject or the author. For instance, since I blog from San Carlos, California, my blog would be listed under San Carlos (which it is).
Anyway, stop by and take a look. It’s needing blogs, so if you blog, please consider putting it in there.

Ok… this is one of the more ‘geekier’ posts I’ve written, but I was trying to convert a Unix epoch (the number of seconds from January 1, 1970) to a standard time using Microsoft Excel. I found a solution online, but it didn’t work completely for me, so I thought I would add my solution here, mostly so that when I need to use it again, I’ll be able to find it!

Searching Google, I had found this site which converted the epoch for me but I kept coming up with the wrong date and time… All the times were about four years in the future. Obviously, that was wrong, which I knew because I converted one of the times using another converter I had. The formula I was using was this:

=((epoch - 25200) / 86400) + 25569

Then I remembered, being on Mac OS, that day 0 is January 1, 1904. When I subtracted the extra four years from the formula, I got the right time. So, on a Mac, the correct formula is this:

=((epoch - 25200) / 86400) + 24106

So, here you go. The next time you are faced with using an epoch time and having to convert it to a standard time, you can use these formulas for whichever OS you are using.

So we built a new news program and wanted to include all of the ‘Social Tagging’ sites out there, which meant I had to go sign up for all of the sites. I did on Technorati and it asked if I wanted to claim my blog. Of course I did, right? So that’s what this post is doing. Technorati Profile

Ever wonder what your dog (or pet) is up to when you’re not at home? Our family has. A lot, actually.

We have a cockapoo, Gracie, who is just over three years old. Gracie seems to sleep a lot while we are home. Sure, she plays and gets up to see what’s going on in the house, but mostly, she sleeps. We wonder if it’s because of the wild parties she goes to overnight and while we are not home.

Wild parties?!?!? Yes, wild parties. The boys are convinced (and the wife and I are not far behind) that the wall in our kitchen is more than an normal wall — it’s actually a portal for dogs to go through to get to other dog houses or even a different dimension where dogs party all the time.

Check this out… during dinner she sometimes stares at the wall, at us eating and then back at the wall. We have concluded that she’s saying in her head, ‘if those humans were not around, I can blow this joint and get with my friends’.

Another suspicious thing is sometimes we’ll get home and the pillows are tossed from the couch and her toys are everywhere. We’re thinking that she’s was the host and it was the typical, ‘oh shoot, the garage door is opening — mom and dad are home, everyone out!’ It would explain the weird markings on the wall as the dogs stumble through the portal.

We wonder if it’s a dog-only thing or if cats and other animals are invited as well.

It’s something to think about…