Major media conglomerates Conde Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corp. and Time Inc. recently announced that they are forming a coalition to produce a digital storefront to sell their content in digital form — and challenge eReaders such as Amazon’s Kindle. In a time when major newspapers are collapsing and magazine subscriptions are plummeting, who can blame them for washing their ink-stained hands and trying something new?

The plans for the digital storefront would enable publishers to bundle eReader content with print subscriptions. Eventually content such as paid blogs, books and newsletters would be available for purchase. Beyond the store, the consortium of media moguls hopes to create a common reading application, publishing platform for multiple devices, operating systems and screen sizes; a digital storefront; and advertising opportunities. In short, they’re proposing new standards for the distribution and consumption of digital content.

The venture, still in its infancy, is little more than an idea at the moment, but its future success depends largely on the value that we, the public, assign to the content and information we consume.

The Good Old Days

For years, the public was accustomed to paying for news, unfolding a newspaper to learn about the events of the day. Then the internet came along, and in an attempt to compete with free online news outlets, many (probably most) newspapers and magazines began to give their content away for free online. Rather than stick to their core expertise and provide something that free outlets couldn’t provide — dedicated, trained resources to do more in-depth, thoroughly researched, nuanced and targeted reporting — they tried to outpace the instantaneous updates of the internet.

The Road Ahead

I believe that people are still willing to pay for content they find valuable, but how exactly do we value information these days? In an age where there are endless media outlets, people are accustomed to getting information from a variety of sources: public radio, bloggers, online newspapers, following people on Twitter, etc. Many new media sources have supplanted traditional news outlets and are a trusted source of information. As digital technology levels access to diverse news sources, it will be interesting to see how the traditional heavy hitters play it out. Some have already found success.  

The Wall Street Journal uses a pay wall that keeps most of its general-interest content free and available to the general public, while charging a premium for its premium financial reporting. ESPN uses a similar pay wall tactic, the New York Times once did and is considering using it again and many magazine publishers offer premium online content to print subscribers.

It will be interesting to see how the mega media venture affects how the public consumes information and how publishers attract advertising dollars. Will an easy-to access storefront open opportunities for new points of view? We’ll have to wait to see what shakes out.

You control the perception of your brand on your website, even on your Facebook and Twitter profiles. You can track your user demographics and analytics to a T. You might think it’s tidily under control … but your brand has been sneaking out at night and quite possibly leading a double life.

With a beaucoup of restrictions at home and the multitude of irresistible social media sites, blogs, groups, forums, etc. out there, it was inevitable. Your brand is blossoming and, with that, is making new friends (or enemies), demanding some independence and making a name for itself outside of your closely guarded realm. That is, people are likely discussing/rating your brand off your radar, and other people are forming opinions and making decisions based on those discussions. So what do you do?

You hone in on those discussions and help guide them. Find out exactly where your brand has been sneaking off to, who it’s hanging out with and why they appeal to each other. What do they do together? What kinds of conversations do they have? Join them. Start new ones.

With buzz metrics tools, you can track mentions of your brand on a plethora of sites, view data in chart and graph format, pinpoint any spikes or dips in your brand activity, view demographics, most active keywords, even sentiment analysis (designed to help decipher positive/negative opinions) and drilldown into combinations of data.
There are some pretty swift (free and paid) monitoring applications out there for getting to know your brand across the entire social media sphere.  Take Me To Your Leader has a thorough list of free tools. For something more robust check out Sysomos Heartbeat 2.0 or any of these.  

Neilsen’s Blog Pulse is a great place to see what folks are talking about — even if unrelated to your brand — then get creative to tie your brand into the hot topics you see fit. Check out WOMMA (word of mouth marketing association) for extra tips and resources about encouraging and facilitating positive conversations. 

You might just find that you have as much to learn from your brand as it does from you.

 

Creating web experiences is a perpetual process. Having a team of skilled tacticians and established processes is paramount to success. This article examines how one framework, the 960 Grid System, streamlines time to launch from two different viewpoints: The designer’s eye and the developer’s expertise.   

The Designer’s Side

Web designers will tell you that regardless of how beautiful your site design may look as a jpg, the translation process from comp to browser will make or break your design’s success. For years, designers have relied on grid systems to create harmony and balance in their designs, and while they are invaluable and fairly easy to work with once set up, recreating that same structure in a browser is a challenge, especially when you factor in page rendering inconsistencies among browsers. That’s why a CSS framework like 960 Grid System is a godsend.

960 Grid System provides designers with a variety of templates that are pre-sized and contain guides set up to either a 12-column or 16-column grid layout. These templates not only help speed up the preliminary steps of design but also ease the hand-off to the developer, as the framework provides consistencies between the comps and the code. 

Not every web designer is fluent in CSS, HTML, PHP or other programming languages, so we often rely on developers or frameworks to see us through the coding phase of a project. However with the 960 Grid System, the framework is so carefully constructed and documented that it empowers a designer to tackle the front-end development of a project, only requiring minimal understanding of mark-up languages. It also gives designers peace of mind in knowing that the things we slave over, i.e. spacing and making sure everything lines up properly (imperative for a successful grid layout), are taken care of automatically via the framework.

The Developer’s Side

At some point, web developers end up reusing the same code over and over, repurposing it for different situations and applications. When it comes to front-end code, the most reused code is a reset CSS of some sort. Once a reset is created, most developers will rewrite the same CSS, modifying it to fit their current needs.

Enter the 960 Grid System. A CSS framework made to streamline front-end production, the 960 Grid System enables developers to build websites designed on a grid efficiently and effectively. Plus it requires the developer to use an object-oriented CSS, thereby meeting better web standards and fostering cross-browser compatibility.

Springbox’s most recent use of the 960 Grid System was on a comprehensive redesign of the Unicast website. The site design called for a width of 960 pixels, so it was an ideal candidate for using the grid system. Since everything was consistent from the beginning, days of time were shaved off of both development and testing.

In the end, the 960 Grid System is a win-win: you get fewer CSS errors and less time is needed for coding and testing. What more do you need to build a nice site quickly?

Art Director Phil Coffman and Developer Josh Kemmerling co-authored this article.

We've all seen neat Flash text-based animations and other effects, such as those found at TxEff.com, that have become increasingly more complex and attractive. However, in most cases, you'll find that these animations are built on proprietary systems, and usually require you to pay on a per-effect basis (though TxEff has moved to a more package-oriented pricing structure). This is very disappointing for developers who would like to create their own unique effects while on a budget or time crunch.

Recently, rather than shop through different canned effects, I spent a few days writing a free, open-source Actionscript text engine that provides all the foundations required to do these kinds of effects, all while retaining the ability to modify the text in real-time. It’s not a package for non-coders looking for a drop-and-publish effect, but rather for developers who would like to include such effects in their projects but don't have time to code out the comprehensive engine required to maintain complete functionality. The engine doesn't include any pre-built effects, but rather acts as a platform to enable a developer to quickly and creatively design the necessary effects.

The text engine is compatible with Flash Player 9 and newer releases, and we plan to make it available for free under a non-restrictive license soon.