Now the AP plans to, according to the New York Times, “attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt without infringing on The A.P.’s copyright.” The AP wants to set some sort of guidelines that bloggers and others should follow when it comes to quoting its material, and will apparently attempt to define fair use — in such a way as to fit its means and motives, of course.

The thing is, though, AP, you don’t get to make these rules. Fair use is an already established doctrine in the Copyright Act of 1976, and specifically doesn’t let the copyright holder make the determination about what is and isn’t fair use. It specifically doesn’t involve the holder.

The arrogance of this move aside, it would also seem the AP doesn’t really like people linking to its stories (see Belgian newspapers v Google). Fair enough. I’ll join all the other folks in actively not linking to it.

And thus Scribe came to be. It’s a Wordpress blog editor for S60 3rd edition… and looks like just what the doctor ordered.

Nice one Jay!

So we thought we’d extend this popular service to include all our Mobilist friends too and offer a Mobilist Mobile RSS reader, consisting of the 14 most popular and active Mobilist contributors, who are (in strict alphabetical order):
 
C Enrique Ortiz

Darla Mack 

Golden Swamp 

M-Trends 

MobHappy 

Mobile Enterprise Blog 

Mobile Marketing & Spam  

MoPocket  

Open Gardens  

Smart Mobs  

Textually 

The Pondering Primate 

WAP Review 

Xellular Identity

Plus this blog as a bonus, so you can keep up to date with all the latest Mobilist news.

Many thanks to Carlo for co-ordinating this and working up the rather arcane scoring system he developed to determine who was included. This basically works by giving points for hosting a Carnival and also for writing for it, with hosting scoring more points. So if you’d like to be included when we next update this, volunteer for hosting duty or contribute more – pretty simple really. I would add that’s it’s hard to make the cut just from writing alone.

To host, write to Russell AT mobhappy DOT com, and say if there’s any weeks you aren’t available – check the schedule above for available dates.

Finally, before telling you how to download this marvel of modern technology….thank you again to the guys at Free News for making their very nifty product available to everyone.¬†

How to Download Your Free Mobilist Browser

It’s pretty simple actually. 

It’s pretty simple actually. Just point your phone’s browser to http://cv.mwap.at and download the application. Or if you’re a download-and-sych-to-your-phone kind of person, point your computer’s browser here, and if you need the Palm version, get it here. 

Most phones are supported, but it doesn’t work on Verizon and if you have a Treo, you’ll need to download Java . For a more complete guide to compatibility, click here. 

That’s it. We hope you enjoy your RSS Reader. Tell your friends! 

 

[tags] free rss reader [/tags]

 

Ted Shelton nails it with the term “dialing for dollars”.

A PR person called me to pitch a meeting with her client and didn’t know anything about me as a writer or blogger, who I might write for, or why I might be interested in her client. She was simply dialing for dollars. PLEASE, at least know something about me and what I write about before you call me! As I pointed out to her, without knowing the basic facts, she might be wasting my time and her clients time. Of course, since she gets paid by the hour by here client, her time isn’t wasted… which is the problem here!!

There is the problem. While these PR people are technically doing their job, they’re certainly not doing it well — and a client must be able to perceive that. This isn’t a complaint session as much as it is a call to action to smart PR folk to change how they do things, if they’ve not already done so.

Andy Abramson, who tries to play both sides of the fence as a VoIP blogger as well as a PR person has fired back, laying the blame at the feet of writers and reporters. Apparently, the problem is that people these days just don’t cultivate sources like they used to, and we’re supposed to respond to each and every PR spam with “a question back to help frame out the next approach”. Ignoring all the irrelevant spam we get — no matter irrelevant is apparently evil.

With all due respect, that’s just a load of crap.

Don’t say people no longer cultivate sources — that’s blatantly false. The problem here is that Andy appears to be assuming that anything and everything a PR person shoves at a reporter, writer or blogger is worthwhile, which isn’t the case. So every PR person doesn’t have value as a source to every writer. It’s a PR person’s responsibility — if they actually care about their job — to do some background research on the people they pitch (see Ted’s “dialing for dollars” comment above), and if they can’t be bothered, I’ve got no responsibility to give them feedback. There’s really no point, and no need to try to develop them into a “source” — they’ll just keep sending me all their stuff anyway, should anything interesting come along.

I guess I’ve been fortunate to work with a number of good PR people, who have become reliable sources and valuable points of information. But, without fail, all of them have taken the time to get an understanding of what I write about and what I’m interested in, even if it’s been as simple as spending a few minutes looking over the site. Sadly, they’re far outnumbered by the ones that have sent me pitches for things that don’t come within miles of areas I cover. And you know what happens to most of them? Their address, or even their company’s domain ends up on my spam blacklist.

I’m sure Andy would respond by saying that’s a foolish answer, and that I’m cutting myself off from the potential of catching that elusive big story. Fat chance — companies on the list have pitched me such products as bilingual radar detectors and an energy drink developed by the US Army, so the likelihood they’d come up with something relevant and/or really interesting is pretty remote.

The real issue, though, is that their PR approach is wholly dependent on me and every other writer they spam) sifting through all the junk to find a story in which we’re really interested. Is that effective — not just for writers, but for PR companies’ clients? Hardly.

We raised this issue about six months ago, and it looks like little has changed. Again, this is a call to action for PR companies, not just baseless complaining. Moving away from the spam-driven model won’t just make our lives a little more enjoyable, it will deliver better results for your client, and make you more successful.

[tags]PR, public relations, VON[/tags]

One of my points that was that while word of mouth marketing was undoubtedly very, very powerful, paying people to spread the word defeated the whole point and undermined the credibility of the people passing the good word.

Joe Chernov, BzzAgent’s PR Director, was quick to point out in the comments that the company didn’t pay people at all. They merely gave them points that could be converted into prizes, which seems like pretty much the same thing to me.

Like their core concept – a good idea, which misses the point in its execution – they came up with another potentially winning concept. Why not get a blogger to document the next critical 90 days of the company, as the cash arrives and BzzAgent really starts to motor? Handled in the right way, this could be used as a great way to examine some of the controversy, discuss the arguments and humanise the company – to Scobilise it, as perhaps we should call this form of “marketing”, in the loosest possible definition.

Sadly, they didn’t take the idea to its potential. The blogger they appointed wasn’t an independent voice who would look dispassionately at the company, the model and some of the historical issues that have dogged – and continue to dog – the company. It was CEO, Dave Balter’s co-author of his recent book, Grapevine: The New Art of Word-of-Mouth Marketing.

John Butman can certainly write, which is nice. But it seems to have turned a great potential way of answering critics into a pallid hagioblography – a blog that idealizes or idolizes the subject of the blog.

It’s entertaining enough, but what a missed opportunity.

[tags]bzzagent, scoble, blogging[/tags]

On the other hand, if you are attending, by all means let me know. I’d love to connect with readers or fellow bloggers. But be warned, compared to last year I am trying to cut down on the caffeine, so I will probably be holding only an espresso or a Red Bull and not both. See everyone there.

The Code reeks of fear and attempted protectionist practices and you can read more about it on Neil McIntosh’s blog, Complete Tosh here. Neil is a “proper” journo, so his criticism needn’t be viewed as envy by writers who don’t get paid.

However, my problem with the Code is twofold.

Firstly, it attempts to restrict the role of Citizen Journalists to those people who witness breaking news stories in the flesh. So it ignores the efforts of millions of bloggers, as an example. Sounds a little like denial, no?

But more importantly, what are they doing creating a Code for Citizen Journalists in the first place and why should we adhere to it anyway? Isn’t it a bit like the ancient Senate of Rome seeking to impose a Code on the invading Barbarians?

Story via Alfie’s Blog. Image from Genre Online

This was a big risk on the part of Nokia and I wanted to applaud their bold move – and confidence – in embracing Andy’s vision and for giving people who arguable spend more time thinking about and using mobile devices than any other folks anywhere a chance to experience these unique phones as well as providing them with an even larger platform than our individual blogs. Bloggers, and especially bloggers that have achieved some prominence tend to be a highly opinionated lot. Giving us all a bunch of phones is a dicey proposition. Giving us a bunch of phones and a microphone takes heuvos grande.

Personally, I have been having a blast with the N90. The phone did something totally unexpected in my case; it changed me. I was never the photo guy or the film stuff guy. I have a nearly eidetic memory so I take snapshots of my world all day long. The last thing I thought I’d want are a bunch of images to mess around with. Plus I HATE having my picture taken. But what I discovered with the N90, which takes pictures so superior to any other camera phone I’ve tried that it’s like comparing surfing Sunset in Los Angeles to surfing Sunset in Hawaii, (for you non-surfer types this is a REALLY BIG DIFFERENCE) is that it is TAKING the pictures as much as actually having the pictures that has become enjoyable. Plus, when you end up with images worth keeping or worth sending to friends or family it’s a total plus.

To put it in perspective, as much of an early adopter as I am, it wasn’t until I got this phone in November that I bothered to sign up for Flickr. As someone that is always lugging stuff around – computers, phones, books, other gear, I just couldn’t see adding a camera to the mix and I am certain that a lot of people share the sentiment as the incredible popularity of camera phones in general will attest. The thing is that most of them are basically toys as far as the camera is concerned.

The still camera is really only half the picture though. The N90 sports a video camera that in my non-expert opinion, but as a guy that has seen his share of camera’s and mini DV recordings can attest this is once again a cellular phone that is capable of making recordings that would be expected from a quality dedicated digital camera or mini DVR. Here’s a sample from a New Year’s Eve program. Keep in mind the difficulty inherent in filming in the dark now add the difficult associated with filming something that is moving quickly. Add to this a videographer with limited experience. It’s a recipe for very poor quality video, isn’t it? Now check this out: FireWorks Video

Not bad. Not bad at all if I don’t say so myself. The first few seconds were only shaky because I needed to stabilize my arm. The noise is someone speaking Thai.

I haven’t been looking for a competitive edge so much as
something that compliments others in a way that is uniquely
enabled by the fact that I work inside Nokia’s multimedia
group and have a lot of friends on the “inside”. After killing
several dozen ideas I think I have finally found one worth trying… The idea is pretty simple. Pick a product like the 770, track
down the people responsible for the product and get them to
answer some questions from the blogoshpere. That’s it.

So pop on over and fire away. This is a great idea — it’s nice to see bloggers inside companies use their resources like this.

Congrats to Rafat Ali for the scoop that Weblogs Inc are selling to the venerable (and vulnerable) AOL for $25 million.

Assuming it’s true, it’s certainly a very fast turnaround from startup to sale – about two years – and Jason Calacanis and team are to be congratulated if they’ve pulled this off. Mark Cuban also invested $5 million in the company, so he’s presumably done very nicely too, though hardly the kind of returns VCs typically look for.

But the $25 million question is; is it worth the money? Frankly, I don’t think so and my bet is Jason has cannily sold out at the top of the market. It’s yet another sign of the bubble that’s going on.

There’s a couple of reasons why I think it’s over valued.

Firstly, we have the business model itself of niche publishing. The concept is to offer advertisers and sponsors a way of targeting niche audiences via their blogs. This sounds supremely logical when married with the obvious benefits of advertising online – accountability, efficiency, speed to market.

However, most advertisers and their agencies just aren’t equipped with the skills and manpower to delve into these rich niches, unless they enjoy real volume of readers. The 30 TV second slot may be dying fast, but it still delivers millions of eyeballs. To get anywhere near these numbers (even taking account of the wastage) an advertiser would need to get on what? 100 blogs? 1,000? Even more? Don’t forget that the average blog outside the top 5,000 gets less than 16 visits a day.

So, the poor advertising buyer is suddenly faced with 1,000 buying points, with the same manpower and resources as they had to buy from one.

Ahhha, they say. Isn’t that exactly where Weblogs Inc can help? They can offer the advertiser one buying point for 130 blogs.

But it really isn’t that simple.

If I’m an advertiser and want to hit parents, as an example, Blogging Baby may well be a great vehicle. It’ll help me pick up a few thousand readers a day (and maybe more – I don’t have the readership figures). But it’s nowhere near the millions of parents I want to hit. So what else can Weblogs Inc offer in that line? Err…nothing.

So, there really is little synergy between the titles.

OK, they do make a lot of money on Google AdWords and the long tail of advertisers this has uncovered. According to PaidContent, Jason recently claimed this was $2 million a year. If so, this would still be a very high multiple and who knows if this kind of thing is really sustainable?

My final concern is the way the content creators get paid. Weblogs Inc pays its bloggers relatively small amounts to create content, which is at the heart of the value proposition – no content, no readers, no value creation. In fairness, it has to be relatively small amounts, as the readership of most of the blogs is pretty small and therefore won’t generate much income to spread around.

But, if they’re not earning much and it costs nothing – or a few 100 dollars at the most – to set up on your own, why would they stay with you long term? Particularity, as they’ll now see you pocketing a nice fat cheque/check off the fruit of their labours. After all, if they move to their own site, work hard for 2 years, might they not sell for a few million dollars too?

Most of these publications are one-wo/man creations and really only have value while the founder is in place. If you doubt this, do you think an individual title Weblogs Inc could be sold, without a very generous share being given to the writer? Engaget might just possibly be the exception that proves the rule.

So a hearty, “well done” from me to Jason and Co. I think AOL have picked a bit of a dud, but then $25 million is small change to them and nothing in the context of their wider business problems and indeed, their very future. In this context, they can take a little risk like this and if I’m wrong, enjoy any upside that comes with it.

Image from Corante.