Results matching “web to users mo”

Online search engine Yahoo! is now offering Virgin Mobile's 4.4 customers mobile search possibilities through the Virgin Media Portal, strengthening its mobile presence.

TheStarPhoenix.com has launched a new website.  The new site offers more content including breaking news, feature, entertainment, sports, photos and commentary.

In addition, the pages will be in an extra wide format, "allowing viewers to scan much more of the page without scrolling," according to the paper's website.

A World Internet Project-International Report 2009, released by the Macau Internet Project, reveals that even though people may have increasing trust in online sources, a "surprisingly high" amount of users find that only half or less of the information found on the Web is reliable. Meanwhile, almost half of users from around the globe believe that offline newspapers are dependable sources, Macau Daily Times reports.

A sampling by the Egyptian Information and Decision Support Center shows that 89% of Egyptians age 18 to 35 are in favor of an Internet censorship law.

The number of Internet users in Egypt has increased by nearly 9 million people since 2000.  74% of those surveyed use the Internet "to stay up to date with recent and current news," with 50% of those surveyed on the Internet daily.

The Internet has "connected" youth with the rest of the world, according to the survey, and 98% of the sampling agrees "the Internet makes most information accessible."  In fact, one in three people surveyed have a blog.

However, a majority of those in the 1,338 person sampling distrust the Internet, with 72% seeing it as a "bad influence," and 71% finding it "dangerous for children."  Internet relationships and friendships are also seen as "untrustworthy," and 43% have found it negatively impacting family ties.

Source:  Blogging Times via Global Voices

According to Brand Republic, Microsoft has signed a one-year agreement with Hargreaves Lansdown, a financial services and asset management firm, to provide MSN Money users with information, news, comments and services related to the financial industry.

The service will cover funds, Isas, pensions, Sipps, annuities, share dealing and currency.  It will allow users have access to investment and technical research and use interactive tools.

The series of coordinated terrorist attacks in Indian financial capital Mumbai have gained worldwide attention, and the speed with which Internet users were able to read first-hand reports within hours of the initial attacks is proof of a revolutionized way that information reaches an audience.

Although mainstream news coverage has dominated headlines thus far, social media has been a major outlet for news at the scene and around the world.  Internet users are sharing news and information for updates and reactions.

Sony Ericsson is jumping on the mobile application bandwagon, making Facebook, Windows Live and Dashwire available for download on its multimedia phone the Xperia X1.

The phone provides opportunities for users to "interact with their personalized experiences, and for developers to help bring them to life," said Ford Davidson, founder and CEO of Dashwire.  The Xperia X1 has been built on a "custom panel."

To promote its growing mobile market, the BBC is running a new campaign advertising its mobile news website.

Steve Herrmann, editor of BBC News Website, discusses research of users' consumption habits on the editor's blog.

Herrmann calls the habits a part of a "news ecosystem," constructed from a range of different media.  The plan for BBC's campaign is to target current mobile users, or gain new ones.

BBC's mobile services have 3.2 million users a month, and is used mostly to "access news headlines, major news stories and areas of specific interest."

Source:  Journalism.co.uk

The New York Times is boasting a "successful" advertising campaign on social networking site Facebook, increasing their number of "fans" following the presidential election, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.

An internal memo from Times president Scott Heekin-Canedy said that the goals of the campaign were to increase the company's number of Facebook fans, "raise awareness of NYTimes.com as an interactive news center, and engage the Facebook community in a conversation about the election outcome."

As outlined in the first entry of this series, consumers will start using mobile electronic reading devices routinely. But will these versatile tools also become the preferred display for news and current affairs? Publishers' ability to inhabit this uncharted territory will matter greatly, but even more important is the decision of media consumers that news offered in this way best fits today's lifestyle and nicely blends in with their expectations and routines.
 
The readers' view is currently being explored and tested in several prototyping and/or pilot initiatives, although this effort is modest compared to the involvement of hardware and software engineers. Nevertheless, first results reveal the contours of what in the eyes of the digital reader will be the ideal form of electronic information delivery. Based on four recent research actions, this contribution will sketch the preconditions for successful deployment of e-readers and services, seen from the users perspective.

The eNews project, set up by Ifra, explored the consumer readiness for e-readers. Via focus groups in European and Japanese locations it was found that the use setting is different: more lean backward compared to the lean forward use of PC and print. This finding will have consequences for the kind of content that can be offered. Surprisingly, the consulted test persons appreciated the daylight readability of the e-readers, but by no means hyped it as heavily as the manufacturers themselves always do. The love for the device stems much more from its environment-friendly image.

Microsoft, partner in the design of the New York Times News Reader, has evaluated the user appreciation of this application in a field study. A selected group of readers worked for weeks with the NYTReader, especially while commuting, and was interviewed afterwards. Overall assessment was very positive: two-thirds, especially the serious travellers, would stick to the service. The kind of use however depended much on personal reading style: the news junkies appreciated the amount of detail, the skimmers the quickness of updates while the fun-seekers enjoyed the sophisticated layout. The synchronisation feature for permanent updating was less popular: too time-consuming and difficult to understand.
Conclusion: newspapers will have to bear in mind all these different use categories, and with an improved product.

In the Dutch MePaper project, the five participating newspapers are exploring novel journalistic formats for two types of e-readers: the e-ink devices and the mini laptops (UMPCs). New content models for mobile reading are developed in a joint design studio and these prototypes are tested in lab-based proof reading sessions. Here, it shows that there is a difference between what journalists think is important, for instance the addition of time frames to story overviews, and what the public wants (don't bother us with release hours). Also in this R&D effort, the variety of user demands is apparent. Many want both local (often hyper local) news, without loosing the global perspective. The preference can change from day to day, depending on personal circumstances and the attraction of news on offer. A definite outcome is the demand for customisation of the e-paper, ideally composed of sections, even editors from a range of different media. This result is in fact a cry-out for joint ventures between titles and across newspaper groups. Thus, e-reading will provoke unconventional business practices.
If the newspaper world manages to respond to these user requirements, there certainly is scope for a quick roll-out of the e-reading technology. In a Swedish large scale online survey (part of the UbiMedia project), 42 percent of the 3600 readers indicated to be ready for it now, and another 19 percent in the next five years.  Would these people want to change their trusted print edition for an electronic version? Two-thirds said yes, only one-third would be faithful to newsprint. The e-service however is expected to be considerably cheaper (says 58 percent), with a meagre 8 percent willing to pay extra for premium content.

The conclusion is obvious, the adoption potential for mobile electronic reading is certainly high, but it is a medium in its own right, not just another print or online edition spin-off. It needs to be well designed, fully user-driven, with convincing personalisation options. Valuable lessons in this respect are being learned by a Dutch paper, NRC. The e-reader service it launched last year based itself on simple copy streaming, and it obviously doesn't work. Disappointed users created an open forum in wiki format to voice their concerns, criticism and improvement suggestions. The company hasn't been able to respond to it adequately yet. E-reading clearly asks for special content formats, a different type of navigation architecture and innovative forms of news organisation. In the next entry, first design principles will be reviewed.

Director of the Euorpean Centre for Digital Communications and long-time journalist, Jan Bierhoff is currently conducting studies on e-reader technology and the consumer trends that will define their use. 
 

According to recent findings from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Pew Research Centre's Project for Excellence in Journalism, health is a key issue for internet users. However, only 3.6% of Internet-based news content between January 2007 and June 2008 dealt with the issue, according to the study. Directnews.co.uk reports that the demand for online health news may be increasing.

The study showed that 42% of all online news stories covered specific conditions. Meanwhile, 31% focused on public health and 27% on health policy. Traffic to online health outlets in the UK rose by 10% in September since the previous month, comScore research showed.

"As the public's news consumption shifts more toward online and cable outlets, people are likely to come across fewer stories about health and particularly about health policy," said Kaiser Family Foundation's Victoria Rideout.

The Kaiser Family Foundation recently announced the launch of a news utility that will offer  "in-depth coverage of the policy and politics of health care" on the Internet and though the mainstream media.

Source: Directnews.co.uk

A renewed effort by Danish newspaper publishers to stop search engines from linking to individual articles rather than a newspaper's homepage has sparked controversy with blogging journalists in the country.

"Deep linking" is a blogger's bread and butter--it's how users are directed to their sites--and search engines, such as Google News, are facing pressure from the Danish Association of Newspaper Publishers who only want homepage links to "better control the user experience."

The number of British people accessing the Internet via mobile rose by 25% in the third quarter of 2008, Nielsen Online report.

The study, Mobile Media View, highlighted that mobile internet use is increasing eight times faster than PC-based internet growth, growing from 5.8 million to 7.3 million between the second and third quarters of 2008.

The most popular site is BBC News, which is visited by 24% of British mobile internet users, then BBC Weather, Sky Sports and Gmail. On computers, Google Search (23%) and eBay (43%) are the most popular.

Google is upping the browser war against Microsoft in considering pre-installing its Chrome browser on personal computers.

Chrome, launched in September, is direct competition for Microsoft's Internet Explorer in a "battle to dominate how users access and interact with the web," The Times is reporting.

A free site that helps out-of-work journalists set up their own blogs has been launched, according to Poynter.

The Typepad Journalist Bailout Program provides journalists with "professional help," and is an initiative that helps journalists survive in a changing industry, Poynter notes.

The site "acknowledges that journalism needs a business model," keeping its users planning ahead and "thinking about future revenue streams" by enrolling journalists in an advertising program.

The Typepad Journalist Bailout Program promotes journalists' new sites, and is a positive venue for journalists' morale, "letting them know that storytelling is alive and growing."

Source:  Poynter

Spot.Us is an innovative new sight that recently won funding and support from the highly respected Knight Foundation. It is garnering much attention as the concept essentially transforms the idea of community reporting and reinvigorates investigative reporting on a local level. However, would it be attracting this much support and attention if the newspaper business model weren't struggling?

The concept

Spot.Us allows anyone to send in a story idea to the site as long as it is a local issue affecting the San Francisco Bay area. Spot.Us calculate how much it would cost to investigate said story and the ideas is then "pitched" on the site, if other users of the site support the story idea then they can donate money to pay for a freelance journalist to cover it. It is then published on the site and other news organisations can publish it as well. The point being, some stories that are interesting to the public are being ignored by news organisations, this is an opportunity for the public at large to read a story that they want written about. The public becomes the editor.

Spot.Us deserves credit for coming up with an innovative way of bringing journalism back to the community and reinvigorating local investigative reporting. Furthermore, it is an original concept that has won the support of not only the Knight Foundation, but also Jeff Jarvis and other significant names in the journalism community.

Will the public pay?

While Spot.Us is