Denver Business Journal: More firms joining fight against faxes
Puget Sound Business Journal: Traffic tapers on MSN pages: Other portals pick up new visitors.
St. Louis Business Journal: Build-A-Bear primed to go public after major marketing push revitalizes sales, pumps up profit
Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal: Auto dealers try more incentives to boost sagging SUV sales
For those who hate site registration: Bugmenot.com lets you read NY Times, LA Times and other sites without registering. Here’s its FAQ. The scrimmage between publishers and readers continues. Tip from Digital Deliverance.
And readers don’t like pop-up ads either. NY Times: As Consumers Revolt, A Rush to Block Pop-Up Online Ads.
Update: (Aug. 20) Boing Boing: RIP, bugmenot.com
Update: (Aug. 21) Boing Boing: Bugmenot.com returns, spokesbugperson says some news sites trying to block it.
N.Y. Times: In the Classroom, Web Logs Are the New Bulletin Boards. Teachers find it encourages students to write.
CBS MarketWatch: Fast Company’s editor gets a lesson. “When I came into this job, I was incredibly naive,” Byrne says. “I didn’t know how hard it was to get a page of advertising.”
MediaDailyNews: Next Big Player In Consumer Media: Consumers . “(T)he trust factor for consumer-to-consumer communication is near 90 percent. As Blackshaw says, so-called speakers ‘are finding reach in ways that have never been experienced before,’ through various online mouthpieces such as blogs, bulletin boards, public/private discussion boards, forums, reviews and opinions on product pages, and consumer feedback on branded Web sites.”
Digital Deliverance: Why 1998 Was The Turning Point For Newspapers. “Unless the path of history changes for the newspaper industry, 1998 was the year that the newspaper industry lost the future. It was the pivotal year in the newspaper industry’s attempts to utilize electronic media.”
Digital Deliverance on the same day pointrf to this story from MediaSavvy: Why can’t a newspaper be more like a blog? Part I: RSS. “Publishers don’t understand that the home page is no longer the gateway to their site. Every well-designed page has enough navigation and headlines to draw you into the site.”
Broadcasting & Cable: Paper Chase: Atlanta newspaper adds video to a reporter’s toolbox. “We’re going to redesign our Web site to give [streaming video] more visibility,” says Hyde Post, editorial director for AJC’s Web effort. Tip: Lost Remote
Wired News switches to internet from Internet, Web become web and Net becomes net. It’s recognition that these words are nouns, not proper nouns. Now when will the Associated Press change its style? FYI, Wired News changed from email to e-mail several years ago, even though they were an early advocate of email.
From Donata Communications writing about local TV stations choosing to not break news for fear of tipping the competitors: “Until we begin respecting the power of the immediacy offered by the Web ? and especially RSS ? we’ll be hopelessly left behind in the race to see who wins the local online news prize. Money follows eyeballs, and the eyeballs are abandoning broadcast in favor of the Internet at a speed that frightens every corporate broadcast executive on the planet.” Tip from Lost Remote
Washington Bureau: Employers seek help as unemployment taxes soar
Milwaukee Business Journal: Overbuilding of golf courses has some owners struggling to make money
Portland Business Journal: Olympic gold comes after games are over: Shoemakers expect delayed sales hit