by eubie

It’s the DVDs that count

Oligopoly Watch: DVDs triumphant. The main source of revenue for movie studio feature films is now the DVD release (63 percent) compared to 21 percent from the box office. “On the whole, however, the DVD is making the movie industry more than ever into the beneficiary and slave of the same market forces as face Coca Cola and Colgate.”

by eubie

Writing tips for business blogs

If you need more suggestions on writing for the web, especially with a business blog, go to BusinessLogs and their PDF on Writing for the Web.

Among the suggestions:
* Break articles up with headings.
* Use meaningful titles that tell the reader what the section is about.
* Use bold text to place emphasis on important words and phrases.
* Start the article with a short summary.
* Short paragraphs, especially in longer articles.

by eubie

More fear/admiration of Wal-Mart

NY Times: What Wal-Mart Knows about Customers’ Habits. It another of those Wal-Mart articles that creates both admiration and concern, such as Fast Company: The Wal-Mart You Don’t Know. Their vast amounts of data, more than twice the amount available on the internet, gives them the ability to see that demand for Pop-Tarts and beer will go up before a hurricane. They make sure there’s plenty in effected stores.

They are tough competitors and do so many things with brutal efficiency. We as consumers enjoy those low prices, while at the same worry about what else are we buying with Wal-Mart’s low prices. One view of the Sears/Kmart merger announced this week is that combining the two will create a stronger competitor to Wal-Mart (NY Times: Trying to Get Big Enough to Battle Wal-Mart).

by eubie

RSS: The bandwidth glutton?

GlennLog: What Bandwith RSS Uses. This article takes a look at the growing bandwidth on this well-known tech blog through its RSS feed. The problem isn’t RSS as it is ill-behaved aggregators that hit the same sites repeatedly even when the sites are not updated. Its become a costly issue for bloggers when they face bandwidth surcharges.

by eubie

Tabloids as the future

Tabloid newspapers (size not content) are looking like the new thing for print newspapers. Since converting to a tabloid, Times of London, the paper’s environment has changed dramatically. The editor of the Times says the changes were driven by the realization of what the internet is doing to people’s reading habits and tabloids were a better format for that. Tip: The Pomo Blog.

Romenesko points to a Chicago Tribune article where design guru Mario Garcia reiterating his prediction from 1996 that a large number of daily newspapers will be tabloid format by 2020.