Disqus - Latest Comments for mturro

Re: Maybe Murdoch isn’t nuts about blocking Google

mturro — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:44:22 -0000

Yeah... as soon as that came rolling off my finger tips I thought of at least half a dozen ways to do a mag with out USPS ;)

Re: Maybe Murdoch isn’t nuts about blocking Google

danielrmccarthy — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:41:16 -0000

Your comment made me smile.... You can put out a magazine without the postal service, just like we do with our home and apartment rental catalogs. You just find ways to get your product in front of people as they go about their daily business, and when they pick it up, they'll have more value as prospects. That's not to disagree with your point about the danger of disintermediating Google.

Re: Maybe Murdoch isn’t nuts about blocking Google

mturro — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:48:20 -0000

Whether there's a logic at work or not - doing business on the internet while blocking Google is like putting out a magazine without using the USPS - possible yes, wise...?

Re: Maybe Murdoch isn’t nuts about blocking Google

danielrmccarthy — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:09:00 -0000

Unless, of course, they want to pay for every piece of traffic. Three things drive web traffic: your Google juice, your social graph and paid promotion, either with online marketing or offline marketing. The print brands count as paid promotion. My first thought -- along with a lot of other people -- when I saw Murdoch's comment was that he didn't know what he was talking about. Looking at the data, I realize they probably have got a logic behind the statement, as misguided as it might be.

Re: Maybe Murdoch isn’t nuts about blocking Google

mturro — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:17:38 -0000

It's a web, a network. Trying to segment it, block it out, is a fools errand and will lead to serious and unintended repercussions. Looking only at referral logs is a recipe for disaster... sure Google may only drive 13% of a given site's traffic, but the search engine's influence is latent in every other referral site on the list. Not acknowledging that is serious mistake.

Re: It’s not magazines that need saving

mturro — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:49:41 -0000

In the immortal words of the Flight of the Conchords: "What are your overheads?" Rex is totally in the zone with this one... Although I might add that beyond the "Geary-designed dining rooms, cars for all executives, legendary expense accounts" there lies a profound and somewhat unmanageable cultural problem. The people who make mass market magazines have no idea how to respond to a steady wave of technological change that is de-massifying everything in site.

Re: That Strange Light you’re seeing is the future of magazines

mturro — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:55:24 -0000

Brilliant.

Re: A simple Twitter proposal

mturro — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 08:51:20 -0000

Dan: you should post this over at microsyntax.org - they're already working in this direction.

Re: Former <i>Time</i> Editor Jim Gaines: Did You Get the Memo? - mediabistro.com: FishbowlNY

mturro — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 11:19:43 -0000

please... nothing beats fresh perspective.

Re: Former <i>Time</i> Editor Jim Gaines: Did You Get the Memo? - mediabistro.com: FishbowlNY

mturro — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:43:32 -0000

You know, that DONUT thing is humorous, but so important. As soon as a killer device drops so might paper.

Re: It’s a free concert from now on: Woodstock as media allegory

mturro — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 12:09:33 -0000

Hmmm.... tried to research that before writing this and it was difficult to find a definitive answer. The only info I could find stated it was Monck. I was only a month old so I wasn't there... but I'm willing to take your word on it.

Re: FLYP's James Gaines Offers Old Media A New Way Of Thinking About Online Content - mediabistro.com: FishbowlNY

mturro — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:52:46 -0000

Ok, so Flype is pretty... I guess. That is, it's pretty in a digital edition, lets throw some bells, whistles and Flash at them kind of way.

Still, if this is the future of magazine publishing the industry may be in some serious shit. If we can't get beyond this destination mentality, this egocentric way of looking at media, this fundamentally print conditioned approach that ignores the user's evolving and increasingly flow based media interaction, then I fear the die off we've seen recently will only be the beginning.

Suggestions for Flype: Acknowledge the mediasphere you live in. Let your readers interact with your high quality content in a way that is natural to the web. Accentuate sharing (beyond the kind of lame email a friend feature).

If magazine publishers really want to get serious about surviving they'd do well to worry less about digital presentation and more about how their content logically fits in the overall media ecology. Flash is nice, video is occasionally interesting, but interoperability with the natural and organic flow of the other media and other communities in my life is truly priceless.

Re: My two cents on Gates (Scripting News)

MAD Inventor — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 11:04:14 -0000

I think Dave's advice is, to the extent that any confrontation should be limited to the legal arena where there is adult supervision for the armed citizen with a badge, is sound, and is based on a rational assessment of the factual reality. The police inhabit a fraternal social space where they protect one another. They can fuck with us and they most likely will get away with it.

However if there is an implication by him that this is OK, then I disagree. This country has taken a turn towards becoming an overt Police State. And things are not going to get better once we have private companies take over the law enforcement portfolio.

But all of this has its roots in the economic structure of our society. Its an oligarchy (lets stop kidding each other, shall we?) where elements from the underclass is recruited and empowered by the upper class to keep the middle class in line.

Re: My two cents on Gates (Scripting News)

mturro — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 10:53:14 -0000

Not sure I want to live in Dave's police state. I agree there is a way to act when stopped or questioned by the police, but shear submissiveness is not it. Cops are human - believing that they either are omnipotent or pigs is equally ignorant. Deal with them from a position of respect and you will get that back. But what we sure as shit do not want is a state in which police on the street are exempt from real time criticism. The public must have the right to voice opinion free from fear of arrest. Anything else is just totalitarian bullshit.

Re: If 140 is too little, what's the right number? (Scripting News)

Solo500 — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:05:50 -0000

The brevity of tweets is a feature, not a bug. Linking to a longer post elsewhere gets the job done if you need to develop an idea. What you seem to be looking for, Dave, is something like Tumblr, but with the cool network effect of Twitter. IMO, if tweets were longer, the network would not be as effective since even now scrolling through the feed of people I am following is a timesuck.

David Allen recently compared Twitter to a cocktail party. The metaphor holds up if one thinks of the difference btwn the form of conversation that happens at a party & what happens when the conversation gets serious. Usually the best kind of conversations in that context gets moved to the kitchen or an area slightly outside the main party. (Esp now that the smokers have to go outside--we can speculate on whether there is a correlation btwn the smokers and the talkers...).

In the cocktail party people who pontificate are generally seen as boors. That wd be the effect of an overlong tweet.

Re: If 140 is too little, what's the right number? (Scripting News)

mturro — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:37:04 -0000

Expanding the character limit on twitter would fundamentally ruin the service for me. While we're at it we might as well expand the Haiku and the Sonnet too. In some cases that restriction is the very thing that makes the form interesting.

Re: How To Increase Your Email Whuffie Factor In 5 Easy Steps

mturro — Thu, 21 May 2009 10:49:35 -0000

Nice post - one correction: Tara didn't coin the term Whuffie - she borrowed the concept from Cory Doctorow - it's from his book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie

Re: The Death of Display: Thoughts on “Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet”

mturro — Fri, 15 May 2009 14:23:42 -0000

Thanks, Paul - I appreciate the feedback,

Re: Search vs Serendipity: Some Proof

mturro — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:21:01 -0000

You have to ask yourself - at some level isn't it better to get news about and from sources that are meaningful to you as opposed to news about and from a single source corporate entity that takes as its primary motivation the making of money?

Re: What about Sy Hersh? (Scripting News)

mturro — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:30:10 -0000

Great point, Dave - it has the potential to revitalize academia and journalism all in one fell swoop.

Re: Why Newspapers Must Die

mturro — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 12:11:04 -0000

1. I don't come to that conclusion - I'm simply saying that of all the aspects of "quality" the only one that is relevant in determining the value of news is that it's accurate. I take as a primary example the work of Janis Krums on the Flight 1549 crash. The quality of the pic is quite poor - but that does not matter in the least. Its value is determined by it's accuracy and it's speed to market.

2. Pointing out grammatical errors in this medium - especially when the writer obviously knows the difference - is rather silly. In fact I would refer you to my explanation of #1 above for an example of how compositional imperfection really does not factor in determining credibility of a news source. If it did I'd have to disqualify your comment since you obviously lack a skilled command of the language: "I newspapers are embracing a dying model" (I kid of course).

Also - I don't think that getting to the new journalism will be easy at all - it will be a difficult, bloody, costly, and imperfect process. And my best guess tells me that it might very well involve a falling away of the corporate entities that currently oversee the news process - newspapers.

Re: Clear Magazine PRINTS a paperless magazine and I missed it.

mturro — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:02:14 -0000

I had a notion of synthetic paper - but I thought it was really a specialty
kind of thing - not really an offset, magazine kind of thing. Since it runs
roughly half the weight of paper I'd imagine that the postal cost savings
would be fairly significant - not sure if that would be enough to offset any
potential production cost increase though. Interesting nonetheless -
anything that enhances the industry's green rep can't hurt.

Re: DesignNotes by Michael Surtees » Blog Archive »

mturro — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 11:10:49 -0000

"There’s at least 25 ways to blog, and to think I thought there was only one way. "

No - there is only one way to ROCK - but there are in fact many ways to blog.

Re: STACK independent magazine subscription and delivery

mturro — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 14:15:28 -0000

I m certainly pulling for you Steve - you're off to a great start!

Re: Designers Review of Books

mturro — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:36:24 -0000

My pleasure Andy - you have an enjoyable site - keep it flowing.