Monthly Archives: February 2010

Digital Takeover, The Fairfax way

February 28, 2010 – 1:48 pm

TweetNew world, new approaches. Australia is a vibrant, younger economy. You can feel it everywhere. It moves on, it changes, it adapts. And, in the media business, it seems to adjust pretty fast. Fairfax Digital is, by far, the leading online group in Australia and in the region. It is a division of Fairfax Media [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (28)

Windows Mobile Reset

February 28, 2010 – 1:48 pm

TweetMicrosoft is doing the right thing: at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, two weeks ago, Steve Ballmer hit the reset button and announced an entirely new smartphone OS, Windows Phone 7 Series. This is fundamentally better than flogging yet another ‘’new and improved’’ rev of the aging, failing Windows Mobile (née Windows CE) platform. [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (9)

iPad: Publishers look for the winning formula

February 21, 2010 – 10:49 pm

TweetAmong Australian media executives, like everywhere else, the talk of the town is the iPad. I was in Sydney this week, giving a talk at the Media 2010 conference. This gave rise to vibrant discussions of the ways in which the Apple device could transform our industry. Among the group of speakers, the most enthusiastic [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in mobile internet, online publishing | Tagged | Comments (11)

Mobile World Clusterf#^k

February 21, 2010 – 10:48 pm

TweetIt happens all the time: when CEOs don’t know what to do, they create a strategic alliance. Alone, they’re exposed. As a group, they must be doing something right because everyone  else in the herd does it too. In the early nineties, my friend Denise Caruso, a NYT columnist and editor of the Digital Media [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in hardware, mobile internet | Comments (17)

Cashing in on stolen contents

February 14, 2010 – 11:46 pm

TweetFor publishers: How much money is lost because of stolen contents? Of that, how much can be realistically reclaimed? Before getting into numbers, an overview. In recent weeks, I’ve gained a first-hand media perspective on anti-piracy technology. The technology is Attributor’s, and the media is Agence France-Presse, one of the big three global newswires along [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in journalism, online publishing | Comments (13)

Crowdsourcing Propaganda

February 14, 2010 – 11:45 pm

TweetOnce again, Apple, or, getting to the point, Steve Jobs defies common wisdom. This time it’s about communication, positioning, propaganda. Never let others take control of the story, don’t let anything go unanswered, ever. (Well, almost anything, there is the ‘When did you stop beating your wife’ exception.) The recent and still on-going –raging might [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in hardware | Tagged , | Comments (5)

The iParanoid Scenario

February 7, 2010 – 6:07 pm

TweetI’m not through with the iPad. Actually, I’m just warming up. For today’s column, let’s focus on the perils of a closed system. I live in a country (France) where censorship is a big deal. It comes mostly from greedy celebrities (sorry for the truism); they use a legal system that largely favors them. Often, [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in hardware, mobile internet, online publishing | Tagged | Comments (12)

Soft Brakes on the Prius

February 7, 2010 – 6:06 pm

TweetOnce upon a time, I took my Wehrmacht staff car to the Palo Alto service shop. As I mentioned a barely perceptible change in the feel of velvety autobox when it shifted gears, Ernesto, the all-knowing, all-seeing tech nodded: ‘Yes, we need to load a new revision of the software in your automatic transmission…’ When [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in software | Comments (3)