I know we’ve been going steady for three years. I really loved last Christmas when you got me that new phone for free. But I didn’t know that meant we had to keep seeing each other for another two years. I just don’t get it — you can still be my carrier if I get a new phone.

I just don’t want to pay an early upgrade fee and be forced into another two-year commitment if I get an iPhone. It’s not that I’m afraid of commitment. Really. I love the $10 line I pay for.

But I want more. And I don’t want to pay the $5 a month fee for a measly 200 text messages and $30 a month for Internet access that you won’t let even let me hook up to my computer. In Europe and Asia, iPhone users with other carriers can do this, so why can’t I without hacking the device?

I’m sorry to go behind your back, but on Wednesday, I spent all night with an iPod touch in my bed. I wanted to buy an iPhone, but I’m so glad I didn’t.

About 95 percent of Apps cross over from iPhone to the iPod touch, about half of which are free, an Apple employee told me. Currently, there are 41,000+ applications. The major drawbacks for the iPod touch are not having a camera for pictures or videos and being dependent on wireless LAN spots. Fortunately, my small college town where I work has free Wi-Fi downtown.

You see, text messaging and phone calls are now free. Applications for the iPhone and iPod touch like Textfree Unlimited cost $6.99 a year, and ad-supported “lite” versions with limits on the number of messages sent are free.

With the AIM application, I spent a one-time fee of $2.99. I then sent an AIM message from my iPod touch to a friend’s cell, who informed me about the six-digit number received. Now, others can send texts to that number, and I have no limits on the number of messages sent or received and no monthly or annual recurring costs. (Other free text messaging services only provide an e-mail address, which mobile users can respond to and save for future use, but friends and family can’t initiate that first text).

With the 3.0 OS system for $10, a feature called Push sends me updates so I don’t need to manually check each application.

With Skype, I can call others for free who use the service. There are some costs if I want to call landlines or mobile numbers, and there is an annual fee to set up a mobile Skype number so that non-Skype users can call me. Sure I’ll need to buy some earbuds that have a mic, but I think this PDA could be the one.

AT&T, I just don’t want to pay $20 a month for unlimited texts. Even your business buddy at Apple said so. “It’s nuts because there’s so much more bandwidth needed for one phone call than 1,000 people texting.”

xoxo

Stay tuned with my RSS feed to keep updated on more App coverage this week. Coming up: how news orgs are looking in all the wrong places.

Recent applications downloaded:
QuickVoice Pro: record voice messages, which can convert the audio into a transcribed e-mail.
Last.fm (free): Internet radio station that plays songs by bands similar to a band you choose.
NPR Addict (free): news in audio and text formats.
Accept Credit Cards (free): process a banking transaction for a customer on the spot and e-mail a receipt.
Google Reader: I bookmarked my google.com/reader page, which is probably my biggest use for the iPod touch and getting news.

Two weeks was enough for me to see how much PR and propaganda make up a newspaper — nearly everything.

A school official I talked to today was shocked that I presented information not in a press release but known throughout the school community. “How did you know that information?” he said. “This is a non-story.”

Hospitals and schools, my primary coverage areas, hate information they can’t control. I don’t see how they view themselves as prima facie public relations agents. Schools especially are run entirely by public servants, even if those in positions are not elected.

Often a public relations statement makes information less congested if there are numerous media and hopefully lessens the probability of an error. But I have yet to see a negative public relations statement.

The former dean of my journalism school had wanted to rearrange our newspaper, magazine, television, film, radio, and public relations majors into three areas:
>Information
>Entertainment
>Persuasion

It seems the last category is as simple as the following: exaggerate the good and spin the bad. But I don’t see how teachers, sometimes referred to as mandated reporters, get to decide which category they are in.

FERPA allows school staff to blur these distinctions and abuse student privacy laws. FERPA does not allow an administrator to shut off information about an incident involving public money. Nor does identifying the repercussion of students or the number involved infringe on their privacy. Taxpayers should not allow school staff to get away with such arguments.

I’d rather dig for information than rely on a steady supply of persuasion coming to me.

For more on this topic, Noam Chomsky’s “Manufactured Consent” goes deeper than this post. You can do that right now, though, too — tell me your thoughts.

Print media have failed online because they don’t know how e-mail works. Their Web sites have no regard for the basic principles of e-mail. In fact, they operate in a completely opposite fashion.

Imagine logging on to your e-mail to check for new messages. And imagine that you had hundreds of messages each hour because you had no filter. They’d be a horrendous system. You obviously need a filter for spam. Otherwise any relevant message from friends, family or colleagues would be lost. With a filter, you receive only the e-mails you want, which may amount to a dozen or so messages each day.

Print media run Web sites, however, in this exact manner. They spam readers with irrelevant content. And they fail to incorporate the most basic function of e-mail: the queue system.

E-mails queue when an individual does not immediately read a message. The message is stored so an individual can read the message at a later time. It’s the equivalent of a voicemail. Rather than being unavailable, individuals are essentially always accessible – they choose their availability. Bad timing doesn’t inhibit content.

A 24/7 news cycle creates bad timing, though, in terms of readers. Readers do not access information 24/7. They choose their availability. And this creates a disconnect — online media force updates on their terms rather than readers’. Content spams readers with no queue system. And that makes any news whatsoever essentially disappear.

A typical e-mail system with no filters bombards you with dozens upon dozens of e-mails. Online media are worse than this. Articles disappear in hours, being replaced by newer ones. Imagine if e-mails from your family had a lifespan of less than one hour. After that hour, they would be erased permanently. You wouldn’t desperately check your e-mail 15 times each day, as online media bank on. You’d abandon such insanity.

Aggregator feeds solve this. Queued items serve as a checklist, an agenda. They store items to allow readers to dictate their own terms, and they kill spam. Aggregators are voicemails. They are the equivalent of e-mail.

Online media still put the burden on readers, who must subscribe to an aggregator and specify their desired feeds individually. One alternative that news Web sites should provide, though, is personalized Web pages that embed aggregators.

Regardless of the approach, online media must change their mindset: companies need to place the burden on themselves. Currently, these media companies have failed for one simple reason – their mindset. They place the burden on the reader rather than themselves.

The change is fairly minor, but it seems symptomatic of what one AP writer recently told me, “Newspapers are desperate to try anything.”

Bylines for The Times U.S. feed scream the author’s name in capitals, but the text prior to the name has read “by By” for the past five days.

The New York Times RSS feed for U.S. news has added bylines

As a magazine consumer and journalist, I’ve always leaned towards currency for a news value more than timeliness. I want analysis and wisdom, not just a small piece of the puzzle.

Online, though, information revolves around my fingertips, not an editor’s. Why do newspapers maintain the top-down hierarchy of print editions online, though? Customized electronic editions seem a step in the right direction, but measures like Google News and My Times constantly throw information in one’s face, often pushing unnecessary information in a “customized” manner.

This seems to miss the point. Customized options should allow a reader’s history of articles read reflect similar articles. These articles should not bombard the reader but present themselves in a fashion similar to new messages in e-mail. Articles would que themselves based on readers’ pre-selected preferences, and varying combinations of similar stories and random stories would also que. These combinations, of course, would be based on what the reader wants.

For details on this business plan, e-mail me at davetaube@gmail.com to negotiate a contract.

1) Technology seeks to become wireless. The telephone, computer, video game controllers, planners and headsets are just some examples. HP developed a solar-powered digital camera for a remote village in a third world country. Computers, which already made a wireless revolution from desktops to laptops, should soon see commercial success of wireless chargers.
2) Devices become multi-platform. Individual Apple handheld products are one exemplar. Any new device compounds all previous handheld products, whereupon the iPhone is an MP3 player, palm pilot and mini video player.
3) Innovators pummel a specific question. The creators of social network sites like CouchSurfing, Facebook and Napster all had identified a specific problem prior to launching. What are news sites doing?
4) The digital masses snowball willpower. Lawsuits fail when sympathizers to the defendant replicate the offense exponentially. Corporations cave when those same defenders use peaceful protests or mob-like behaviors.
5) Customized technology overthrows one-dimensional, flat content. Search engines, the transition from HTML to XML, and active server pages all point toward personalized, accessible content. Consider this the death sentence for PDFs.

If US newspapers follow suit, they’ll have to wait behind the porn industry.

Multimedia ad prior to and banner ad during an NBC show online

My Sundays become Mondays and Thursdays become Fridays when I’m busy. I watch my TV shows on my time, tuning my computer to The Office, 30 Rock and Family Guy. But even that independence from traditional network programming is still subject to advertising.

New business models for newspapers often show a major disdain for one major aspect: business. Many newspapers have yet to even monetize their ancillary services. The issue is not just “Can the Web make money?” but “Are newspapers even attempting to recover multimedia expenses through revenue?” The answer for the vast majority of newspapers that produce combinations of podcasts, slideshows and videos is unfortunately a resounding “No.”

Attempting to mimic radio or TV services online without advertising outlets deserves bankruptcy. Furthermore, newspapers are constantly competing against broadcast journalists at network stations who have noticeable, sometimes painstakingly noticeable, differences in experience and skills. Even so, most newspapers could use some basic training from media networks in business alone.

TV networks eventually caved to the Internet. Piracy through torrents and YouTube forced networks to provide all of their content online. TV networks, struggling to retain their power, knew they could at least diffuse piracy and recover some revenue by implementing Web commercials before and during digital syndication. Newspapers, failing to see business opportunities, squandered the pockets of investors for more money instead of learning a simple economics lesson: you cannot have a business with all expenses and no revenue.

TV programs budget commercials accordingly, and newspapers do the same for ads. Ads are never shortened in either medium, only the content. Why do newspapers, however, abolish this relationship when they put content online? Other media learned this move is suicidal, but newspapers just behead themselves by abandoning their lifeblood.

Only seven of the 30 most visited sites currently provide ads before or during multimedia services in the same format (unless noted, these rankings are predominately based on videos). Perhaps the strongest argument for not advertising before or during multimedia services is that slideshows and video merely drive traffic and ads are displayed on the same page. I have yet to find a majority of news sites, though, using ads to the sides of videos or slideshows in an effective way. One site even launched a new browser with no ads for its multimedia.

News sites that display ads within a video viewer

Overall the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Detroit Free Press both appeared to have the strongest use of advertising for multimedia because video viewers displayed alternating ads before videos. For the few news sites that incorporated multimedia ads, the ad was only presented once before the consumer had access to the entire library of clips. These two sites, however, cued an ad for each consecutive video watched. The Free Press, however, failed to provide any ads on its homepage video player, whereas the Post-Gazette consistently delivered ads. Even so, both incorporated zero ads into slideshows and podcasts, unless I’ve missed some skillful plugging.

Reporters

• Respond to readers in comment sections
• Twitter where your assignments take you
• Promote your articles across Web sites
• Post the audio of your taped interviews online (packaged and/or unedited)

Editors

• Use Web traffic to steer coverage

[A journalism professor once told my class, "Editors should always respond to opinionated writers, 'Who the hell do you think you are to add your opinion to a story?' " Editors who think their insight supersedes statistics should ask themselves a similar rhetorical question]

• Provide short and long versions of articles online
• Use Web stats to steer which of those two options readers prefer
• Write nut graphs for freelancers and contributing writers before they write articles
• Explore untold stories with interns rather than using them for fluff

Publishers

• Establish a diverse workplace not for its own sake but for diverse perspectives
• Pay reporters a base fee with incentives according to Web hits
• Stand up to advertisers: no multimedia ads that make reading online articles unbearable (keep ads stationary)
• Hire broadcast journalists if you want broadcast journalism for Web sites
• Include multimedia ads before slide shows or videos

Webmasters

• Code unique Web ads for every reader
• Keep Web ads separate from the mainbar
• Don’t try to disguise RSS feeds as Twitter accounts
• Provide links to previous coverage for each article
• Rank comments within response sections (reader or editor votes)
• Customize, customize, customize Web sites for readers

This blog’s video, featuring the CEO of Financial Times Group, solidifies these suggestions: