Try try try to understand... it's a Magic Mouse?

I have spent a few days using the new Magic Mouse from Apple. I have been around the world on the input device front. Over the last 20 years I went through all sorts of mice. I tried trackballs for a number of years. I have a Bamboo tablet. But sometime in the last 5 years I sort of gave up on input devices and just started using whatever was available.

When I got my iMac it came with the Apple Mighty Mouse. The whole mouse was a button (although it could simulate a right-click - a bit unreliably). It had a weird "squeeze" feature that was pretty much useless to me, but I used it for day-to-day work. When I started playing World of Warcraft I brought an old Logitech MX Laser mouse out of service. I'm not a demanding mouse user even in that game (I'm pretty sucky at it actually), but the unreliability of the right click on the Mighty Mouse drove me bonkers.

So I'm not sure what possessed me to order the new Apple Magic Mouse for $69. Expensive for a mouse, but I guess I was ready for something new. And I'm thrilled I did. The new Magic Mouse is the first mouse that made me excited to use it in years.

Like the Mighty Mouse, the whole mouse is a button, but the top of the mouse is touch-sensitive, like a track pad curved onto its surface. I have yet to note a single case where it confuses my left-click for a right-click.

But where it truly outshines everything else I've used is on the scroll action. It is so sensitive, subtle, and perfect when scrolling I almost get tingly when I use it... weird! And you can run your finger across almost its entire surface in a scroll action. Want to scroll in a circular motion? No problem.

The CTRL-scroll makes for a lovely zooming experience. And if the program doesn't support zoom the entire Macintosh screen zooms. Smooth and very useful!

I haven't had as much occasion to use the double-finger slide motion... but it seems a lot more convenient to have around. I do remember to use it for a Web back once in a while, but I seem to have a mental block around this most of the time.

Whenever I reach for the mouse now I suddenly feel like the epitome of elegance... yes there's an old can of soda, spilled peanuts on the floor... and my desk looks like a tornado just blew through the hall of records. But I touch this mouse and feel like I've achieved a new sophistication.

Mac users - head over to the Apple store and try one out.

TV's greatest friend: The DVR

Bill Carter of the New York Times published a very intriguing article discussion how the DVR has become televisions greatest friend. It seems that all the TV executives' fears that DVRs drive down the value of advertising is not happening. In fact, the DVR has increased the number of viewers for ads.

It appears that 46% of the population who watch a show also watch the ads. Why? They argue that because television in a passive activity these viewers are not prone to pick up the remote and skip over ads.

In the old days also viewers who didn't happen to be home when a particular show aired just missed the show and its related advertising. Now those users tape the show. Coupled with a 46% chance that they will watch the ads, it seems that this results in more exposure for the advertising not less.

Internet Explorer: With Chrome! If you can't beat 'em, plug 'em!

I was reading a short article on Webmonkey about Google's fantastic new way to make ancient versions of Internet Explorer behave like civilized beasts. Coincidentally, I also heard a Slate podcast of an article "Chrome for Clunkers" on the same subject. Both articles are good, but geeks will gravitate toward the useful Webmonkey article since it gives you the magic tag to enable the Chrome plug-in on your Web pages.

So to get around the hordes of users who have never upgraded their browser -- and, from the Slate article, most likely don't even know what a browser is -- Web developers can call a plug-in that runs Google's Chrome browser as a plug-in inside Internet Explorer. And for those of you who wonder if this might be a tough thing to do for a Web developer, never fear. Webmonkey tells us that it is absurdly easy to do. Apparently this takes advantage of Microsoft building in backwards compatibility between IE7 and IE8 using an emulate tag in an unexpected way.

From then on the HTML rendering is handled by Chrome. The browser-ignorant will just get yet another mysterious plug-in to install ("Install? Just click "Yes" to everything!"). And Web developers will rejoice at being able to gloss over Microsoft's lack of HTML5 support.

Just when I start to think Google has gone corporate yet again they prove me wrong by finding a clever hack to a complex problem that makes the world better. And on the same week I was going to try to start using Bing! Ok, so I'm a sucker for an excuse not to update my browser preferences and bookmarks...

That appears to be the strategy of the Google Wave team. Apparently rather than code for or test with IE, they run Chrome Frame (the Google Chrome plug-in for IE). If a user adamantly refuses to run Chrome Frame, apparently much of Wave works, but only after ye who enter there click "OK" to the "Abandon all hope" disclaimer.

What a cool, ingenious way to pull developers off of the Microsoft products. It takes advantage of two common behaviors of the unwashed technology masses -- the propensity to say "Yes" or "OK" to anything a computer asks you, and the propensity to never update your software. All converge in what appears to be a fantastic way for Google to ensure that Web developers code to Google Chrome's advantage, despite its tiny market share. And years ago I used to wail at the differences and quirks in the various versions of IE -- oh marquee tag, we hardly knew ye. Mighty seductive to be able to work in HTML 5 and forget about these things.

I will probably never need this, as I use a Mac and Safari is my browser of choice, and being Webkit based will probably remain largely in step with Chrome. And I have a propensity to click yes every time my computer wants a system update. Since IE is clearly here for a long time, this is the next best thing to using a cool browser.

Paywalls, micropayments, and the future of news part 2

I've been reading more interesting debates on the concept of paying for the news. PBS.org has an interesting 2 part debate between David Carr of the New York Times and Mike Masnick of Techdirt.

I suspect that one thing to add to the debate (and that newspapers need to consider as they try these strategies) is that audiences are much more likely to move to alternative news outlets when walls are erected around the traditional content providers. In Seattle a number of hyper-local neighborhood blogs are providing local news. If there were paywalls around the Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer sites, would these grow even more rapidly?

As I blogged earlier, Jeff Jarvis contends that one can make a pretty nice living blogging local news.

If the audience leaves the newspaper sites due to barriers, will the people writing the news also depart and form networks of community blogs? Will that be the new local news model?

The West Seattle blog serves a neighborhood in Seattle and has evolved rapidly. Look at the menus and see how it is drifting towards becoming a news site. And look at the stories covered on the site - these are things you don't see in the big printed papers or on the larger newspaper Web sites.

And other players are looking to move into the online news space in a bigger way, at least in local markets. Check out some of what's going on here.

Yet another UI rant

I continue to be perplexed at the way in which products continue to be released with crummy UI decisions. My DishTV receiver (a VIP 722) has a feature set I love. I can record three shows at a time and simultaneously deliver television to two locations in my house. It's got plenty of space. But compared to my old Tivo or Snapstream (PC-based DVR software I still use) the user interface is needlessly complicated. The scheduling features are powerful, but many of the common things I do regularly are buried in menus. I don't know how new products continue to be released with so many UI shortcomings... the Tivo set the standard ten years ago!

With effort, though, I've managed to become adept at managing my DVR despite its UI shortcomings. But I cannot get over the most annoying information message... when the satellite signal deteriorates, rather than discretely notifying me of this with a small icon in the corner or something, a gigantic box obscures the entire screen to let me know of the problem.

When I fail to do something right I try not to scream my shortcomings to the world in the loudest possible way... I wish my DVR would do likewise.

Paying for the news online

I was reading a recent article from PaidContent.org outlining how newspapers who have set up paywalls are faring. As I expected, it appears that the answer is not very well. Yet there are a substantial number of newspapers who are thinking that paywalls and Web site subscriptions are the key to saving their organizations.

At the same time, you have people like Jeff Jarvis who are touting a new business model for the news. He recently posted an excellent piece called "What crisis?" where he contends that there really isn't a crisis in the news. What's a media organization to do?

Often when paywalls enter the conversation people point to Web sites who have successfully maintained a subscription model. The Financial Times and Wall Street Journal are often cited. The Chronicle of Higher Education uses subscriptions effectively. If they can do it, why not my local newspaper?

What people fail to understand is that the successful sites above are all sites that can sell subscriptions as a business expense. If I am in finance I can get my company to pony up for a Wall Street Journal subscription. Or claim my subscription as a business expense tax write-off. The same is true for a lot of niche publications that serve very specific markets - like the Chronicle mentioned above. But when I am at home spending my own money, I'm likely to be much more reluctant to give my credit card information to a bunch of general news sites. For one, 90% of the stuff is re-cycled and available free elsewhere. Two, the news doesn't necessarily have any predictable business benefit. If I don't read the paper tomorrow, it may not make a bit of difference to me. If something significant happens that directly effects me, I'm likely to find out about it through my other networks (Facebook, Twitter, colleagues at the water cooler, friends, family phone calls, TV and radio, blogs...).

What I found most interesting in the PaidContent.org piece was how many of the newspapers explicitly said their goal was not to make any money charging for online subscriptions, but instead put up a barrier that drives people to get a subscription to the print edition of the newspaper.

REALLY?!

I am utterly shocked that anyone would make such a statement publicly. I have long thought that this was the real motivation behind a lot of the moves towards paywalls and registrations, but figured that was sort of a conspiracy theory. Something I thought might be true when thinking that the newspaper leadership were utterly out of touch. I had no idea that not only was it more true than I thought, but an openly stated strategy!

If I was an investor in a newspaper and was told that the new Internet strategy was to make online content expensive of difficult to access in order to bolster our print business I'd fire the guy on the spot. It is unbelievable that these leaders are sacrificing their future with such short-sightedness. This is an attempt to kill online news by a print organization. Good luck with that one, Don Quixote.

In Seattle, the thriving West Seattle blog is delivering hyper-local news in a way the newspapers never did. Non-profit news organizations have sprung up in San Diego and Minneapolis and are spreading around the country. News organizations are fond of saying that bloggers and other alternative news outlets won't compete because they won't want to sit in a boring water board meeting. Well I have some news for you - the newspapers didn't sit in those water board meetings either, especially given the dramatic cuts to the staff of reporters at most newspapers. But a lot of citizens do... and those citizens can easily post content relating to their experiences and ideas online without the benefit of a printing press.

I've done a number of informal surveys and it seems to me that it is harder to find anyone under the age of 25 who reads a newspaper. Yet these people seem highly engaged with news and communication, sharing lots of information on Twitter and Facebook, glued to their computers and mobile devices, and able to access more content more quickly than ever. This audience is not going to grow up, settle down, and get a nice old-fashioned newspaper subscription in 10 years. On the contrary, they are the future on which the news must build their business models.

Newspapers who focus on preserving their ivory tower are wasting their effort. Forget about trying to recreate the glory days of news and get with the business of building a new model of doing business. Yes, it will be smaller. No longer will newspapers have armies of delivery trucks hauling paper. Instead they will have to become smaller organizations focused on online experiences. And about those gigantic buildings - time to think about scaling those back too. Reporters can easily work in the field. Editors should be interacting with people outside those walls as much as those inside. It's time to take a hard look at what is really needed to accomplish to goal of informing the public efficiently.

That's not to say that there is no money to be made online. Quite the contrary. Jeff Jarvis presented findings in Aspen last month that hyper-local bloggers are currently bringing in $100,000 to $200,000 annually in ad revenue alone and they "...believe that can be optimized by at least 50 percent with the creation of metro, local, and ecommerce networks and with better training, technologies, and efficiencies."

So a memo to the newspapers who are trying to save themselves by looking to the past: those reporters you are laying off, or paying less than $100,000... they are working on how to build a new Web-based news business model while you wall off your content and work to protect your print revenues.

Are you going to bet that they can't do it?

Visit your classified ad department and think about Craigslist.

Upgrading to Snow Leopard

I updated my iMac to Snow Leopard Friday. It was trivial to install, and so far I am most excited about the changes to Exposee and the yellow "minimize" button. Now all windows associated with an app can be easily seen by clicking and holding on its icon in the dock. Extremely useful and intuitive. And an option now allows minimized windows to hide in the application icon (instead of the right hand side of the dock).

I was already using Safari 4, and so haven't noticed a big jump with that upgrade. But overall everything seems quite smooth.