A few weeks ago I was interviewed about Astek by Alice Truong from Medill. She wanted to write a story focusing on how a small company like Astek gets through a tough recession. We’re very happy with the way it turned out, and encourage you to read on.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Fun, Marketing, Web

If you’re curious about journalism entering the virtual age, this is worth a watch:

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Fun, Social Media, Technology, Web

And it’s a good thing. Since the newspaper industry, much like the music industry, resisted the Internet rather than embracing it, they shot themselves in the foot. Rather than proactively identifying opportunities they missed the boat entirely and are now suffering badly. Reminds me a bit of how Kodak could have OWNED digital photography if they had a bit of vision a few years ago. Instead they are playing catch-up, too.

In the newspaper’s race to play catch-up, they started giving it all away for free since that was the culture. We all grew up on a free Internet (I even remember when we used to think there would be no ads. HA) and that is being threatened in various ways.

The opportunity now is for newspaper’s to collectively demonstrate their worth by asking people to pay for the content they provide. Everything business has to do this, they have just been around so long they took their status and distribution model for granted.

I’ve been a little hard on mainstream media and probably sound like I want social media (blogs, etc.) to replace it. That’s not quite right. I believe they are complementary and both necessary. We need in-depth reporting and someone who can afford to put a correspondent in Iraq. We also need citizen journalists who are not influenced as directly by big business.

Here is a good explanation of why media must charge for web content. I think the key to pricing lies in micropayments, which use new technology to charge a very small amount of money (cents not dollars) for each piece of material you consume rather than paying full price for a newspaper you only read part of anyway. We just need to find a way to make it work on a small, local level.

Read this great article describing some real world ramifications of a future without mainstream journalism from The Atlantic. Kinda scary.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, General, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

This slick electronic reader from Plastic Logic might give the Kindle a run for its money. Of course this won’t be in the U.S. for another year and we’re already seeing a new version of the Kindle. Basically, Plastic Logic tries to simulate a piece of letter paper rather than a book, and Amazon’s new Kindle model goes slimmer and lighter without losing the keyboard for annotation. Plastic Logic’s addition of a touch screen is also nice as we are all getting more used to that with GPS and phone devices. Color screens are not far off.

My hope for the E Ink technology years ago was to create a flexible page that you could roll up like a newspaper. The technology accommodates it, but we have yet to see any consumer products designed that way.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Gadget, Social Media, Technology, Web

This is what it’s come to. Newspapers containing the content of blogs. The Printed Blog purports this to be revolutionary. I must ask why? One of the most compelling things about blogs is the fluidity of being on the Web. This allows people to interact with the author and the material being discussed.

I’m similarly intrigued by the large button on their home page advertising the downloadable version of the paper. So let me get this straight: First, you grab stories from blogs. I don’t get to choose, interact, follow links, or comment. Then I get to download this static/frozen content in the form of a PDF. What’s inconvenient about the Web? Or are you hoping I’ll print this out, consuming paper and ink resources that would be saved if I read it online? This had better be more than a weak ploy to get advertising space.

Look, trying to turn newspapers into Web sites isn’t going to save them. Making them “more portable” isn’t going to save them. At this point, I doubt anything will. People prefer getting their stories from billions of sources rather than one. For better or worse, the trend is clear. There may be something to the localization and usage of the free newspaper model, which seems to be the only viable paper medium moving forward, but I don’t see this one going very far. The logistics of paper printing will never match the velocity of the Web. Never.

I can’t let them get away with one more faux pas. In the screenshot below, which was pulled from their home page, they’ve incorrectly used the word, “comprised.” It should be “newspaper comprising entirely blogs…,” though that’s pretty awkward anyway. Perhaps the only way to save newspapers is to make them as insensitive to grammar rules as many blogs.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web