Wall Street Journal to offer free Wi-Fi in NYC and San Fran

In an effort to combat its declining print readership, the Wall Street Journal is now providing readers with free Wi-Fi access in New York City and San Francisco, as long as one signs up for a new WSJ account. Existing subscribers can hop online with their already-paid accounts, paidContent reported.

According to the report, there will be more than 1,300 hotspots provided in New York City throughout September, including Times Square and in the West Village. In San Francisco, people can access the free Wi-Fi on Nob Hill, Fisherman’s Wharf, and at some other locations.

This is not the first time a non-telecommunications company has provided free Internet access, PCWorld pointed out.

Given that Google and Skype offered free Wi-Fi previously with the requirement of account registration, the new business model is likely to be that costs will be burdened on advertisers instead of consumers, Gigaom noted.

“The marketing data these companies get in return for providing free service make giving away the Wi-Fi service itself a worthwhile expense,” PCWorld commented.

Image: PCWorld

Google promotes AdWords in newspaper ad

Google, the Internet giant, recently released an ad in the Canadian newspaper, The Global and Mail, promoting its latest Google AdWords service.

Ironically, Google AdWords served clients to place their ads on Google in order to attract more customers. This time when it comes to Google, it chose the traditional media to promote themselve, placing the printed ads to reach their potential clients.

The paradoxical situation was spotted by The Global and Mail reporter, Steve Ladurantaye, who soon gave his opinion on Twitter: “An ad for Google ads in today's Globe demonstrates the value of print ads, yes?”

Ladurantaye shed the light on the importance of traditional printed media, presenting that newspaper still has its influence on today’s digital world.

While Google believed in the newspaper may bring them customers to register for AdWords service, it also slightly doubted the ability the Internet ads can have on people.

Nick DeLorenz, the director of interactive and new media for The Times Leader, showed his suspect:

“What I suspect, though, is that a 60-year-old CEO is more likely to be reading Globe and Mail than they are to be putting around on Google AdWords or paying attention to the ads on a website, no matter how much tech-savvy posturing they do in public.”

Image: Mashable

London: The world's first social-media Olympics

According to Wall Street Journal, the London Olympic Games were described as "the world's first social-media Olympics."

Twitter's official figures on Olympic Twitter records reveals that, Jamaican gold medalist Usain Bolt ranks the top when he dominated in men's sprint, with 80,000 tweets per minute for his 200m sprint final and 74,000+ for his 100m. Local tennis player Andy Murray ranks the third when he won gold in the men’s tennis singles, with 57,000+ tweets per minute.

In addition, Usain Bolt was also the most discussed athlete of the Games, with more than 1 million Tweets in total.

However, according to Herald Sun, the single-most tweeted subject went to Spice Girls, with more than 116,000 tweets per minute in the closing ceremony. 

According to CNN,  Facebook's figure was slightly different, but Bolt and Phelps still dominate as the first and second most-talked athletes.

Athletes themselves are likely to be the biggest winners.  Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter help athletes promote their social media profiles to their fans across the globe.

"Social media has been an incredibly positive experience," Jane Cowmeadow, agent for British heptathalon gold-medal winner Jessica Ennis, told Wall Street Journal. "Jessica had incredible support. It gives fans a lot closer insight into the people they are following."

 

However, social media may also distract athletes from their Games.   "You are open to everyone saying anything about you. We recommended to Jessica [Ennis] that she shut her Twitter account down during the games because she didn't need distractions." Tom Daley, an English diver, said.

"British diver and bronze-medal winner Tom Daley and Ms. Ennis increased their Facebook fanbase up to 800 percent during the games," Nick Thain, CEO of Sports New Media, a company that helps sports stars manage their social-media pages on Facebook, told Wall Street Journal. Both of the athletes are Sports New Media's clients.

According to Mr. Thain, building up fans gives athletes a higher chance of brand potential and engaged users.

According to Alex Huot, IOC Head of Social Media, London 2012 paves the way for future popularity of Social media in sports. The IOC used many kinds of existing social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Google+ and even China's Sina Weibo, with messages sent in Russian, Chinese, Portuguese as well as English and French.

Image: Marion

Google plans to slash 4,000 jobs at Motorola

Google will slash about 4,000 jobs at its Motorola Mobility unit, which accounts for 20 percent of the staff at the company, Bloomberg reported.

Two-thirds of the reductions will come from outside the U.S., which falls under Larry Page's plans to streamline the company as it pushes into the hardware market.

According to Bloomberg, Google will also shut down about a third of Motorola Mobility’s 94 facilities. Apart from these, simplify Motorola's wireless product portfolio is also expected. Google said the severance cost will be no more than $275 million.

“Google is trying to focus on the broader array of smartphones,” Brian Wieser, a Portland, Oregon-based analyst at Pivotal Research Group, told Bloomberg. “The legacy feature phones, although still important in many countries like India, are not necessarily able to take advantage of Google’s competencies.”

According to the Guardian, the move is the first sign of a complete reorganisation under the ownership of Google.

"We're excited about the smartphone business," Dennis Woodside, Google's former Americas boss, told The New York Times. "The Google business is built on a wired model, and as the world moves to a pretty much completely wireless model over time, it's really going to be important for Google to understand everything about the mobile consumer."

According to The New York Times, some analysts are not sure about Google's capacity to survive in the "brutally competitive, low-margin" smartphone business.

“Ninety percent of the profits in the smartphone space are going to Apple and Samsung, and everyone else from Motorola to RIM to LG to Nokia are picking up the scraps of that 10 percent,” Charlie Kindel, a former manager at Microsoft, told The New York Times. “There’s no real sign that’s changing anytime soon.” 

The search giant Google completed its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola in May, which the Telegraph described as "a history in gadgets".

According to Guardian, Motorola once had a big share in the phone business before the arrival of smartphones, particularly the iPhone. Although it tried to recover by adopting Google's Android system for its smartphones early on, it has not been able to break Apple's dominance on key parts of the US smartphone market.

Image: Digital Clicks

Smartphone patent battle: Apple and Samsung's trial continues in California

Samsung defended itself and went into attack mode, saying it didn't copy the iPhone, and accused Apple of violating three of its patents, Wall Street Journal reported. 

The high-stakes patent trial between Samsung and Apple has reached its second phase, according to Wall Street Journal.

According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the witnesses in the San Jose court demonstrated technologies resembling Apple’s “rubberbanding” -- the way an iPad or iPhone screen bounces when users scroll down to the end. Witnesses claimed that this technology was gained by Samsung years before 2007, which was the official release time of the iPhone.

Samsung and Apple have been accusing each other of intellectual property infringement. Their patent trial was presented in a court in San Jose, California in early August. "one of the biggest trials of its kind", quoted from BBC. 

Apple claimed a total of $2.5 billion in damages and a total of seven patent breaches by Samsung. However, it is likely that the judge triples that figure to punish Samsung for unscrupulous misconduct, BBC remarked.

According to BBC, Samsung and Apple account for more than 50 percent of global smartphone sales. The two are the world’s largest makers of the high-end handheld devices that combine the function of a phone and a laptop. 

If the jury finds any or both parties guilty, billions of dollars of payments would be generated from one company to the other.  Apart from that, sales bans could also be imposed, which would have great impact to the whole industry.

The trial is the first before a U.S. jury in this intellectual property battle. Wining the case means dominance in a smartphone market on four continents, which Bloomberg Industries estimated the value to be $219.1 billion. 

 “There are a number of Samsung phones and two Samsung tablets that are substantially the same as those” Peter Bressler, an inventor of 70 design and utility patents of Apple patents, told Bloomberg.

Submitted documents and testimony are likely to affect the two companies' decision making and deals with others in the future, according to BBC.

Though Apple have purchased many of its components from Samsung in the past, the two companies have failed to reach an agreement on cross-licensing deals even after the courts ordered their bosses to meet for talks.

Apple prompted to sue Samsung in April 2011 after several high-level meetings between the two companies failed in which Apple alleged that Samsung had copied Apple's patented technology. A countersuit by Samsung followed by Apple's case. After that, the two cases were combined. 

Image: CNN

Google can appeal against Authors Guild

A new chapter is unfolding in the long-running lawsuit between the Authors Guild and Google.

Google is now allowed to appeal a book scanning class action ruling against Authors Guild, the US Circuit Court of Appeals announced yesterday in an order, according to paidContent.

Only last week, Authors Guild claimed the online giant would pay US$750 per unauthorized scanned book if the company loses the case, making a total of as much as $2 billion in copyright damages, reported the Christian Science Monitor.

In 2004, Google partnered with several universities to scan their libraries, in order to make the digital copies available online. However, Google was scanning books withouth the rights holders' permission, which resulted in Authors Guild suing the company for copyright infringement the following year.

After extensive negotiations, both parties reached a settlement last year: Google would continue scanning books and displaying up to 20 percent of the text online, as well as allowing to sell entire books online. On the other hand, the rights holders would get 67 percent of the revenues, reported Wired. 

However, Google would scan without first asking for permissions, which meant that any published book from any author, letting Google go too far upon the limits of copyright law. Plus, this also included the so-called orphaned works, (whose authors are unknown or can not be located) into Google's digitization project.

US District Judge Denny Chin rejected this settlement as it would have granted Google a “de facto monopoly” and the right to profit from books without the permission of copyright owners. He acknowledged that “the creation of a universal digital library would benefit many,” but said that the proposed agreement was “not fair, adequate and reasonable," reported NY Times.

 Image: searchengineland.com

Kindle e-book sales surpass print in UK

Amazon, the biggest retailer in the UK, announced last week that its e-book sales have overtaken printed book sales flipping a new page for the publishing industry.

After being introduced to readers in the UK just two years ago, Amazon said British readers now buy 114 e-books for every one hundred printed books sold via its store since this year.

“Customers in the UK are now choosing Kindle books more often than print books, even as our print business continues to grow,” said Jorrit Van der Meulen, vice-president of Kindle EU, according to the Guardian. “We hit this milestone in the U.S. less than four years after introducing Kindle, so to reach this landmark after just two years in the UK is remarkable and shows how quickly UK readers are embracing Kindle. As a result of the success of Kindle, we're selling more books than ever before on behalf of authors and publishers.”

The changes of readers’ habits also note the so-called “reading renaissance”:

“As soon as we started selling Kindles it became our bestselling product on Amazon.co.uk so there was a very quick adoption … [And they] are buying four times more books prior to owning a Kindle," an Amazon spokeswoman said, Tech Hunter reported. “Generally there seems to be … a love of a reading and a renaissance as a result of Kindle being launched.”

 It indicates the convenience of ebooks and the popularity of Kindle, drawing a bright future for the probably incoming debut of Kindle Fire, a media consumption tablet, in the UK.

However, e-books challenging the sales of printed books is not news. While some critics are worrying about the traditional publishing industry and book shops, Jonathan Rupin, web editor for bookseller Foyles, said the whole book industry must get used to the trend.

“The proportion of sales that are taken up by ebooks will continue to increase,” he told the BBC. "At some point they will overtake printed sales across the whole market."

Although He said online buying could put smaller businesses at risk, he was confident in that that more traditional bookshops still had an important role by explain that for every worrying story he has heard about a good independent book store flourishing.

Image: TopNewsToday

Time Out London to be free

London listings magazine Time Out will be distributed freely in London, the Guardian reported. 

With a circulation of 55,000 and a current price of £3.25, the cultural weekly will be undergoing a three-year plan of reinvigoration. The management aims at a circulation of 300,000 which will make up the loss of cover price revenues through more advertising revenues.

“The move highlights the changing nature of the publishing business, with most paid-for newspapers and magazines seeing circulation fall as readers look online for free news, reviews and listings information,” the Guardian noted.

Launched in 1968, the magazine saw its heyday in the mid-1990s with a circulation of more than 110,000 copies, twice the most recent official figure.

The declining sales were not the driving force to the decision, however, explained Tim Arthur, editor-in-chief of Time Out UK. Neither was the move forced by the private equity firm Oakley Capital, Arthur added. Oakley Capital purchased 50 percent of the company from Tony Elliott, the founder of the magazine.

“It is driven by opportunity. As a magazine it was the next thing to look at really, and now feels like the right time,” Arthur commented, the Guardian quoted.

The move to a more viable commercial model, however, received caution by its former employees, Duncan Campbell, who used to be its news editor from 1975 to 1981.

“Can it reclaim its commitment to the magical and radical city of London by introducing a news section that exposes, reveals and challenges – or will it settle for being just another of those bland, consumer-led handouts that are discarded to clog up the floors of London’s Tube trains and buses? Let’s hope it’s the former,” Campbell wrote.

Amid the keen competition, many magazines have responded with free titles. London paper the Evening Standard, which by reaching more out to more readers, was one successful example, the Guardian added.

Image: esPResso

Should comments be anonymous or use real identities?

The debate over anonymous comments has been ongoing in newsrooms. According to Martin Kaste, the Internet space is becoming less anonymous: YouTube is encouraging commenters to use real names, and many news sites allow users to log in from Facebook. And anonymous comments are bringing legal risks to the media.

Judge orders Spokesman Review to reveal the identity of an anonymous commenter within 14  after the online commenter posted disparaging comments, which the Republican Party official in Idaho named Tina Jacobson claimed defamed her, Poynter reported. The anonymous commenter insulted Jacobson's appearance, as well as indicating that she stole party funds.

"You know, it's against the grain for a newspaper to give up anonymous sources of any kind," the paper's city editor, Addy Hatch, responded. "And we just felt like we had to take a stand."

Even Journalists themselves are not sure whether to protect anonymous commenters or not A columnist of Spokesman Review, Shawn Vestal wrote a column comparing anonymous commenters to monkeys "throwing poop."

For Vestal, free speech does not necessarily require anonymity. "I don't begrudge anyone their right to say anything they want to say," Vestal says. "But I don't know that it's our job to go to court to protect their right to say it anonymously."

However, Dave Oliveria, who runs Huckleberries Online, said he feels differently. "To have free speech in this community, I think you have to have anonymity," Oliveria argues.

Earlier this year,  New York State legislature outlawed anonymous commenting on all New York-based websites. The bill, sponsored by Assemblyman Dean Murray and Senator Thomas O’Mara, was expected to combat cyber bullying. However, many critics say the bill would jeopardize speech freedom.

When news media outlets around the world seem to be moving towards commenting systems with real identities, the U.S.-based Gawker is going anonymous by introducing a new comment system earlier this year. In the new system, users can submit information or add commentary without disclosing their identities. Gawker says no username, e-mail address or password could compromise a user’s identity even if it was hacked. 

Image: Digital Mental Health

Realtime brings trending links in real time

URL shortener bitly launched last Friday a new search engine for the most trending bit.ly links, called Realtime, TechCrunch reported.

Realtime, or simply "rt.ly," is "an attention ranking engine, offering the power to navigate through the stories that the world is paying attention to right now," as described in an official statement by bitly. In other words, Realtime enables users to know, at any given time, what's most discussed on Internet.

Realtime aggregates all the bit.ly links shared by users around the world, while also paying attention to how many users have clicked on those links. Users can also filter the results by keywords, topics, countries, languages, and the social network or website on which it appeared.

However, the results will depend on how frequent the users themselves use bit.ly links. Also, since most popular social networks (Google, Facebook and Twitter) are using their own URL shortening services (goog.gl, fb.me and t.co.), results on Realtime can be limited too, as Sean Hollister wrote for The Verge.

Bit.ly already launched a social search engine for its enterprise customers last October, TechCrunch reported.

At the moment, Realtime has free beta service and can be applied through an invitation.
However, this blogger went to its website, registered and got access immediately.

Image: seetio.com

Will Apple invest in Twitter?

Apple may invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Twitter, according to an unnamed resource, The New York Times reported last Friday.


If it is true, “The deal would have valued Twitter at more than US$10 billion,” the NYT stated.

The Wall Street Journal also pointed out that Apple’s discussions with Twitter were more than a year ago, citing a person familiar with the matter, though there is no current formal investment or acquisition talks between the companies.

Although dominating the hardware world of smart devices, Apple has no power in the field of social media, not to mention competing with the largest dominant, Facebook. Apple launched Ping in September 2010, a social network for music, as the first step to get into the world of social media.

Since then, Apple has taken a different approach. Forbes analyses Apple’s strategy: In June 2011, Apple announced it would integrate support for Twitter into its mobile operating system. Last month, Apple said it would do the same with Facebook. Such support extends Apple’s reach into social networks it hasn’t been able to build on its own.

Many critics think that Apple won't take a stake in Twitter because of the timing as well as Apple's investment strategy. Apple is famous for buying small tech companies and incorporating their technologies into its own products rather than making strategic investments, Harry Mccracken ,TIME’s Techland blogger, wrote.

Matt Marshall, the founder of VentureBeat, pointed out that Apple doesn’t have to invest in Twitter because it began working with Facebook closely to integrate Facebook deeply into Apple’s latest operating system, iOS 6.

While the rumors shake the valley, Bloomberg noted that the two companies held talks more than a year ago but never reached any agreement. Neither Apple nor Twitter responded to the NYT’s report.

Image: 9 to 5 Mac

Report: Social media's global revenues to hit $16.9 billion

When social media becomes a part of people’s daily lives, the prosperous foreground of it generates amazing revenue from the virtual world.


The latest report released by Gartner noted that social media's global revenues are set to reach US$16.9 billion this year, a nearly 43 percent jump from $11.8 billion last year.

Social media advertisements contribute the most to global revenues. Gartner predicts advertising revenue will hit $8.8 billion this year. The Next Web noted that soaring advertising revenue not only depends on the Facebook-style system, in which revealing lots of users’ information, helping companies target their potential customers, but the high level of engagement offers click-through rates for brands.

In addition, social media games play a pivotal role in the straight-up revenues. Gartner says that the benefits will be caused by the sale of virtual goods, one example being virtual gifting outside of a gaming environment.

Moreover, what can shift and increase the revenues of social media will be the efficiency of analyzing the colossal amount of data from users. Companies may want to understand their audience more and attract them. Neha Gupta, the senior research analyst at Gartner, says:

“In the short and medium terms, social media sites should deploy data analytic techniques that interrogate social networks to give marketers a more accurate picture of trends about consumers’ needs and preferences on a customized basis. In the meantime, however, they should also continue to exploit other channels of revenue like mobile advertising and social commerce.”

Instead of the good performance of social media this year, the report points out that there won’t be any innovative revenue models of social media until at least 2016.

“New revenue opportunities will exist in social media, but no new services will be able to bring significant fresh revenue to social media by 2016. The biggest impact of growth in social media is on the advertisers,” Gupta explains.

Image: SmartRecruiting

Digg relaunches today

Digg is relaunching today, Betaworks team members Jake Levine, Michael Young, and Justin Van Slembrouck announced in an official blog post.


“With this launch, we’re taking the first step towards (re)making Digg the best place to find, read, and share the most interesting and talked about stories on the Internet.”

Digg was acquired for US$500,000 by technology investment firm Betaworks, as we posted two weeks ago.

Although Digg will be combining with the daily briefing service News.me app, it won't be a reskinned News.me, VentureBeat reported. "News.me will continue to be available, and you can expect similar personalization from Digg in the next few months, but we will ultimately roll them into one product, under the Digg brand," said the Betaworks team members.

"This is the beginning of a new generation for Digg — a restoration of what was brilliant and disruptive and a reinvention of what was not,” they added.

Image: idigitaltimes.com