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NEWS FEATURES
Promising to free users from the bondage of PCs and clunky headsets, Skype is bringing its signature voice over IP (VoIP) services—which let individuals and companies make cheap or free phone calls over the Internet—to the mobile space. To this end, Skype has teamed up with Netgear, a provider of networking products, to develop a family of new products, including the world’s first Skype wireless mobile phone.
With each emerging content type comes the ever-present need to help users find it. While text-based search has continued to evolve, effective tools for rich media are still nascent. For the Web’s hot content-type du jour, podcasting, search tools have only just started to appear, though this search niche is poised to heat up: Forrester Research predicts that 12.3 million U.S. households will listen to podcasts by decade’s end; the Diffusion Group estimates the U.S. podcast audience will be at 56 million by 2010.
Long the bane of your inbox, spam has come to a blog near you. You may have already encountered a spam blog, though they often look exactly like the real thing: there’s an area at the end of each “post” for Comments, an Archived Blog section by month, a Recent Posts section, and some even include a BlogRoll so you can see who has viewed the blog. But that’s where the similarity to real blogs ends. The spam-esque content bears little resemblance to the insightful, edgy commentary associated with popular blogs. Spam blogs—or splogs—are comprised of the all-too-familiar content of spam email: porn links, mortgage offers, and drugs for sale.
Google co-founder Larry Page’s much ballyhooed unveiling of the Google Video Store made official the company’s plan to launch a video content marketplace. The announcement came in January at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas where über-geek Page’s keynote was punctuated by onstage banter with comedian Robin Williams and two-time NBA champion Kenny Smith. It wasn’t all fun and games though; Page’s announcement is big news for video content providers and consumers alike.
FEATURED STORIES
Now that we’re more than a decade into the widespread use of email, the platform may not be in crisis so much as awash in mid-life ennui, suffering from middle-age spread and lacking the motivation to fix itself. The real answer may lie in learning to go with, rather than curtail, the flow.
In its earliest incarnation, elearning was viewed by businesses as a tool to provide basic education to employees, many of whom no longer occupied desks at the office. These days, however, executives expect elearning to do much more, including provide a potent way to help drive sales by leveraging it to educate every member of the value chain.
DAM has experienced slower-than-expected growth, in part because of the perception that DAM limits access, rather than the reality—that it expands access. Effective strategies for implementing and using DAM are emerging, particularly in various vertical markets. Within verticals—regardless of differing needs and challenges—the demand for simplified, universal access drives adoption.
COLUMNS
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FACES OF ECONTENT
"It's so much easier to be a student now!"
PRODUCT REVIEWS
Adobe now owns Macromedia and, with it, the venerable Studio software suite. That fact is bound to leave consumers uneasy while trying to figure out which products will survive the merger. For now, know that Macromedia is making a graceful transformation with some sound enhancements to cornerstone programs Dreamweaver 8 and Flash Professional 8. The suite now also includes Contribute 3, a move that makes perfect sense for enterprise users who need a more complete workflow between content contributors and Web site developers.
CASE STUDIES
The New Yorker was interested in providing a complete archive of its magazine to its readers, and was intent on also providing a disc-based product. Through a truly collaborative process with Bondi Digital Publishing and Lizard Tech, The New Yorker produced a beautifully packaged eight-DVD collection that includes a search database, abstracts, issue-by-issue tables of contents, and the cover art for each issue.
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