Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Media The Media

Sunday Newspapers, Now With CDs 229

Posted by michael from the 1045-free-hours dept.
VirtualUK writes "The BBC news site has a story today about The Times news paper now distributing a CD along with the tree mass that comes with its Sunday edition. They cite that one of the main reasons is that Internet connection speeds have still yet to catch up on the whole in order to benefit from the rich multimedia content of the CD."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Sunday Newspapers, Now With CDs More

Sunday Newspapers, Now With CDs

Comments Filter:

  • Oh I get those (Score:5, Funny)

    by zifty ( 692892 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @07:35PM (#6841523)
    I used to get CDs with my paper all the time. Of course, they were from AOL...

  • True (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Stonent1 ( 594886 ) <stonent@stone[ ] ... t ['nt.' in gap]> on Sunday August 31, 2003 @07:36PM (#6841529) Journal
    I remember playing pretty decent video on my 486 from a CD yet still forced to a tiny little window with garbled sound quality and badly pixelated video when trying to watch some streaming news.

    • Re:True (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      ...video on my 486 from a CD yet still forced to a tiny little window with garbled sound quality and badly pixelated video

      You played Myst too?

  • CD Contents? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Does it have the full text of the paper? That would be excellent...

    • Re:CD Contents? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Basehart ( 633304 )
      Not sure if the CD that comes with the Sunday Times has a static copy but they already have an "ePaper" version of their daily available for around $120 a year. It's "printed" at 5am GMT on the day of publication!

  • No wonder there's only 2 reply so far (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    with the sunday edition AND a multimedia cd, nobody will be done reading the news paper before next week!

  • Monthly, not every Sunday (Score:5, Informative)

    by sinjayde ( 661825 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @07:38PM (#6841542)
    The CD will come out monthly, not every Sunday as reported in the story.

    I'm surprised this hasn't happened earlier actually. Magazine's have been slapping on CDs to their publications for a long while now (especially Gaming and computer mags) and these days you can even get CD's on Breakfast Cereal boxes.

    Of course, whether or not any of the information contained on the cd's will be of any use/quality is another matter.

  • Environmental concerns? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Negative Response ( 650136 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @07:39PM (#6841547)
    Newspaper is easily bio-degradable, I'm not sure about that of CDs. Plus you can wrap things with newspaper, but not with hard plastic.
    • OK, I can understand that people might have environmental concerns about the excess CD production (although AOL is a far greater offender in that regard), but:

      Plus you can wrap things with newspaper, but not with hard plastic.

      What kind of complaint is that? How many people choose their newspaper based on how much of it they can use to wrap stuff with? If the newspaper said they'd start shipping solid gold bricks with the Sunday Edition, would you response be "I'm not too sure about that, can I use the
      • Actually, if they included gold bricks...

        1) The paperboy wouldn't be able to make it through the route.

        2) You WOULD be able to wrap stuff with it, lots of stuff, just requires a lot of hammering ;)

        Chris

  • Pure advertising (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mwongozi ( 176765 ) <slashthree&davidglover,org> on Sunday August 31, 2003 @07:40PM (#6841555) Homepage
    Everything on the CD is an advert for something else. You can't even get to the main menu without watching a video of a car advert.
    • So? Someone else will just come up with a utility to block all the ads on the CD.

    • Very true, but... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 )
      ...you have to remember who their target audience is for this venture.

      The target audience certainly isn't the more technical or internet-savvy PC or Mac user (the disc is dual format), it's the PC or Mac user who hasn't used their machine for much more than word processing, light browsing and email.

      The kind of people who are wary of buying from websites like CD-Wow.com [cd-wow.com], Play.com [play.com], etc who offer great prices simply because they don't recognise the brands that they're dealing with are far more likely to buy
    • And how else do you think they would justify spending money on this? At least they're not raising the price of the paper to reflect this....well, to my knowledge at least.

    • Re:Pure advertising (Score:3, Insightful)

      by 1u3hr ( 530656 )
      Everything on the CD is an advert for something else. You can't even get to the main menu without watching a video of a car advert.

      Turn off autoplay for CDRs in Windows. Then just browse the files with Explorer or whatever filemanager you prefer. I really hate apps that just start installing themselves or playing some crap when I just want to check out a disk.

  • Already Done (Score:5, Interesting)

    by someguy456 ( 607900 ) <someguy456@phreaker.net> on Sunday August 31, 2003 @07:41PM (#6841560) Homepage Journal
    I've seen something like this done in a neighboring city, Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico (I live in El Paso, TX). The subscription rate is really low; the paper is almost completely distributed in stores and newstands. Every once in a while, the paper has a special edition contating a cd. I think it's only music for now, but it may change. The special edition costs around US$0.50 more, which is about the normal cost of the paper (Sunday doesn't cost any more). I have never heard anyone else actually mention it, so I don't think it is fairing well.
    • Not quite. This is a "multimedia CD" whatever that means. Papers here (including the Sunday Times) have been including exclusive music CDs in certain editions for ages. I believe the Guardian's Sunday paper - The Observer tends to include audio CDs quite a lot these days.

  • That's nice (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @07:42PM (#6841562)
    Somebody should suggest they run an article on Linux, so they'd just have to stick knoppix on the CD and save on the multimediocre content creation.

    Also, somebody should suggest the same idea to Playboy Magazine. They don't even need to make it fancy, just a directory with huge jpegs and another with videos ...
    • When my friend was put in charge of the multimedia supplement of our high school yearbook, I joked about him just putting pictures and videos into labeled folders. Sadly, this was the case; he "didn't have time" for his plans: html navigation complete with thumbnails and tons of other fancy stuff.
    • Also, somebody should suggest the same idea to Playboy Magazine. They don't even need to make it fancy, just a directory with huge jpegs and another with videos ...

      From what I gather, Hustler has started including a DVD with theirs, at least some of them. Friend loaned it to me, just half a dozen clips from some of their video releases.
    • Hmm, I'm not sure I like the idea of distributing
      linux alongside things like AOL, MSN and 50,000
      other types of cd's people immediatly dismiss as
      junk.

      besides what happens when someone pop's in the cd
      and fdisks the hard drive? Not what I'd call
      a good first impression

  • What the really mean is.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SolubleFrank ( 637562 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @07:42PM (#6841564)
    benefit from the rich multimedia content

    "suffer from the bland multimedia advertising"

  • Pffft ... CD Newspaper (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 31, 2003 @07:43PM (#6841570)
    Gonna be awkward trying to read the news while I'm on the throne.

  • Two mediums = bad (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheAntiCrust ( 620345 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @07:43PM (#6841573)
    Other than a few media clips the CD doesnt contain anything different from a normal newspaper. I think distributing the same thing in two mediums is annoying. I either want to read the paper, or watch a video. The short clips on the CD are easily available online too. The only place it makes sense to me to put a CD is on computer or game magazines where the CD content (game demos and apps) cannot be duplicated by 'traditional' means. Adding a CD to the paper makes it clumsy.
    • Adding a CD to the paper makes it clumsy.

      What?

      "Hi Honey I'm home! I've just got back from the shops and I bought the Times! HOLY SHIT!"
      *CRAAAAASSHHH*
      "I'm alright honey. I just tripped over the CD included in the newspaper and knocked over your favourite vase... What? What do you mean you want a divorce?!"

      Other than a few media clips the CD doesnt contain anything different from a normal newspaper.

      The "few media clips" you refer to is exactly WHY the CD is different from a normal newspaper. I do

  • Good luck (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Safety Cap ( 253500 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @07:43PM (#6841577) Homepage Journal
    This will last a few months, then they'll figure out that the required tech support ("No, ma'am, you need Quicktime!") and the cost of burning and stuffing will not result in additional sales.

    The Marketing Drone that thought of this baby will be canned and sent back to Publix [publixdirect.com] or wherever he came from.

    • My guess is that the Times doesn't really care about the CDs, as long as their advertisers are willing to pay big bucks for new multimedia ads...
      The paper surely covers easily all the CD-related expenses by those new ads anyway.
    • There is an easy way to avoid the tech support issues. Just put an OS and application software right there on the CD. There are two popular architectures that need catering for {80586 and G3/G4}; everybody else probably already has an OS of their own already installed and knows what to do with an unfamiliar CD. So you have two different boot images, depending upon which architecture is found; then /bin &c. get linked to either /pc/bin &c. or /mac/bin &c. by something somewhere in /etc/rc.d.

  • good news!! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by 0x12d3 ( 623370 )
    That's good news for the trees, I hope the CD's are recycleable. This reminds me, I get really annoyed when I see a big stack of phone books lying around, that no one really wants. How long do you guys think it'll be 'til phone books go CD for standard (/common)distribution method? I'd much prefer grepping for pizza than flipping through hundreds of pages.

    • Re:good news!! (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Why do you imagine that including the CD will in any way cut down on the amount of newsprint in the paper? I'd expect just the opposite. Anytime a notion like this suggests itself, just think "paperless office".

      As for CDs being recyclable, even if they were (which they're not particularly), how would you gather them up after distributing them to every Sunday Times reader? Really the best way to "recycle" useless crap is before it's diffused out into the world.

      Basically, does this need to exist? If the Sun

    • Re:good news!! (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Most newspapers are already made from recycled paper, and in most places there's usually a pretty good system for recycling again.

      Old or unwanted CDs on the other hand generally get tossed in the land fill. Not to mention the nasty chemicals required to make the plastic in the first place.
  • One of the online course delivery systems I work with has a "CDROM Tool" that allows the instructor to specify a directory, mirror the filenames/paths of the CD in it with empty files, and distribute a CD. The student then sets a preference that says "my cd-rom is located at d:\" or /mnt/cdrom or whatever a mac uses. Any references to files in the CD directory are then re-written to point to the end users CD drive, saving bandwidth, etc.

  • sweeet.... (Score:2, Funny)

    by jr87 ( 653146 )
    more coasters
  • This is nothing new. I have CDs I got from Sunday papers in the UK from a couple of years ago. They are mostly music CDs, but some also have "embedded multimedia" (read: Flash interfaces to Quicktime files).

  • Never underestimate (Score:5, Funny)

    by The Famous Brett Wat ( 12688 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @07:57PM (#6841645) Homepage Journal
    The cite that one of the main reasons is that internet connection speeds have still yet to catch up on the whole in order to benefit from the rich multimedia content of the CD.

    Never underestimate the bandwidth of a paper-boy on a bicycle.

  • The cite that one of the main reasons is that internet connection speeds have still yet to catch up on the whole in order to benefit from the rich multimedia content of the CD.

    Seriously, what do I pay you people for anyways? :P

  • No more CD's please! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kegetys ( 659066 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @08:04PM (#6841674) Homepage
    I prefer to have things available online these days rather than having them on a CD. I have hundreds and hundreds of CD's stacked up everywhere, and its becoming slower to find something small from those cd's than find and download it from the net. Especially the CD's that came with a magazine get useless quite fast as the things there get old, and the process of finding the cd and listening to the loud cd drive reading it is far less comfortable than just finding and using the same content from the internet.

    I find it more interesting to have access to magazine articles from the net after subscribing. That way the content is always available from almost anywhere in addition to the paper magazine.

    • I have hundreds and hundreds of CD's stacked up everywhere, and its becoming slower to find something small from those cd's than find and download it from the net.

      On the same theme, although I assume it doesn't explain most music downloading, I find myself file sharing instead of hunting for a specific CD (in our house we probably have nearly a thousand).

      Me (listening to radio) : "Woah, what was that song?"
      Dad : "Otis Reading, from the Blue album. We've got it somewhere."
      Me : Somewhere? (Opens iBook

  • Enviromentally friendly ? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by EpsCylonB ( 307640 ) <eps@STRAWepscylonb.com minus berry> on Sunday August 31, 2003 @08:05PM (#6841675) Homepage
    The BBC news site has a story today about The Times news paper now distributing a CD along with the tree mass that comes with it's Sunday edition.

    are cds more enviromentally friendly ?, aren't plastics created from oil ?. At least trees can grow back.

    • Re:Enviromentally friendly ? (Score:5, Funny)

      by wackybrit ( 321117 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @08:10PM (#6841721) Homepage Journal
      aren't plastics created from oil ?. At least trees can grow back.

      Most experiments in producing wooden CDs have failed miserably, except for Madonna's latest album which was both wooden and sold heaps.

    • I'd need to compare the cost of making a CD with the cost of making paper and ink, and printing them. Many newspapers (I don't know about NYT, there are a lot of different presses) are printed with a photographic mythod, where the paper is printed from a film negative, and that requires a darkroom and all that chemicals, plus the energy to run the press, plus the energy and polution in making paper, plus the energy and polution in making ink.

      I have no idea what the values for any of the above is, much le

    • Um. Trees grow back...if planted.

      Oil comes back when stuff dies.

      Either way I wanna know when they start giving me coupons on DVD or cdrom. :)

  • Audio CD? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @08:07PM (#6841692) Homepage Journal
    A few months ago I read about how a San Fran newspaper was providing an audio CD so you can listen in the car. I like that idea.

    Taking that idea a step further, I wish Avant-Go would do something like that. I'd like to synch my PocketPC in the morning, then plug it into my car's audio so I can listen to fresh news on the way in.

  • CD's are not Biodegradable. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by reporter ( 666905 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @08:38PM (#6841842) Homepage
    Unlike newspapers, compact discs (CDs) are not biodegradable and will contribute to the mountains of trash that Western societies already generate. Surely, Westerners can tolerate a bit of lag in an Internet connection to "The Times" newspaper in order to save the environment.

    Forget the CD. The environment comes first.

    ... from the desk of the reporter [geocities.com]

    • As long as there is recycling for plastics available, A CD is recyclable. The problem is that a CD isn't "clean" in that it usually has a label and the aluminium reflecting layer which must be separated so the plastic is pure.

  • bad implementation (Score:3, Insightful)

    by doodleboy ( 263186 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @08:41PM (#6841858)
    An obvious attempt to find a new channel that more closely couples the advertisements and the content. I can see how the marketer-droids at the Times would want this, since with normal webpages it's so easy to run proxies [privoxy.org] that strip all the ads out. But here you have to endure entire commercials before you can even get to the menu. I bet half the people who look at it are going to shitcan the thing right there, never to try it again.

    It kind of defeats the purpose of finding new eyeballs for ads if the implementation is so cumbersome and painful that it drives people away. Will these people ever learn?

  • CD Contents (Score:5, Informative)

    by bobbis.u ( 703273 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @08:48PM (#6841892)
    I have the CD in front of me and for those that care, this is some of the stuff it contains:
    • Lots of renault adverts
    • Feature on David Bowie
    • Film trailers (with a small write up): Calender Girls, Gigli, Le Divorce, Italian Job, Matchstick Men, Ned Kelly, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Young Adam
    • DVD trailers: Antwone Fisher, Bulletproof monk, City Of God, Evelyn, Maid in Manhatten, National security
    • Music (few short samples, CD writeup): David Bowie, Elvis Costello, Dido, Seal, Placebo, Starsailer, + about 10 others
    • Few arts features: Andrew Lloyd Webber's paintings, Opera, Ballet stuff
    • Game trailers: Colin McRae Rally 04, Crimson Skies, Great Escape, Italian Job, Rugby '04
    • Few kids games and DVD trailers
    • Best of TV guide
    • What's on listings for your area (requires internet)

    The loader is quite slick, but unfortunately it has been made with flash and took an age to load the first time on my machine.
    As an asside you also got a code with the cd cover to see if you had won 1000gbp. I was tempted to write a program to brute it because it was only 3 letters (all ucase) and 4 numbers, but you also need to send in the cover to claim the prize...
  • The question of the day is, can you download a CD's worth of material over dialup? The answer is YES. Would you want to? Depends on who you are!

    650megs would take about 26hours at 56K assuming conditions were ideal. Ideal conditions are clean line and zmodem transfer from a shell account mind you, but you get the picture.

    Reality wise, 28.8k to 33.6 are more realistic speeds for most people... about 43 - 50 hours..

    Ok, so between 26 and 50 hours to transfer a CD over standard dialup a connection.

    ---

  • Favourite comment from the page... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I have large picture windows in my living room
    and birds keep flying into them, usually breaking
    their necks - it's most distressing. However, I
    find that if I hang the Sunday Times CD ROM on a
    string outside the window they stay well clear.

    Thank you, Sunday Times!
    Jean, UK
  • Right now, CDs are as clsoe as we get to universal broadband.

    About a year ago, I built a PC which was optimized for video capture, learned Lingo and bought a licensed copy of Macromedia Director (I believe on this site, buying a licensed copy gets more attention than nearly anything) and started a part time business as a multimedia author.

    There are lots of decisions that need to be made... formats, codecs, bitrates. What is the 'universal donor' codec for Windows (I chose mpeg1)? What resolution vid

  • Idiots still (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pileated ( 53605 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @10:14PM (#6842281)
    What I notice in the article and in the responses is that we have one more example of piss-poor hybridization. Though a few readers liked the idea most of them found the CD about as useful as the AOL CDs that used to seem to appear out of the ether.

    What's sad but telling about this is that is looks like one more lame-brained, half-hearted, probably cheaply implemented, attempt to hybridize, or as I'm sure they PR people would say, synergize, two media. But it's like tacking Greek columns on a log cabin. It just doesn't work. The current CD adds nothing really useful to the newspaper. So eventually the newspaper will probably decide that it's not been as successful as they'd like and not worth the effort and cost to make it really successful. And the few readers who do find it useful will probably give up as it slowly degenerates due to cost-cutting.

    This is not at all to say that I think that it couldn't work. It just seems to me that most people aren't willing to spend the time and money to really think through a winning hybridization that both makes money for the newspaper and gives readers something that they really want. I have to think of Google in relation to this. They came up with something that soon became indispensible to most people. It's possible that something similar could be done with newspapers and other media. It's just that no one's had the vision and resources to make it work.

    Ah well. I guess you can't get a Google every day.

  • Virtual Page Three (Score:3, Funny)

    by mdmitchell ( 703290 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @10:30PM (#6842357)
    >The BBC news site has a story today about The Times news paper now distributing a CD along with the tree mass that comes with its Sunday edition.

    Who cares about the Times on CD?
    We want the Sun--page three(*) in particular!

    *--for explanation see http://home.freeuk.com/webbuk/page3/about.htm

  • How about just selling CDs (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Hao Wu ( 652581 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @10:32PM (#6842362) Homepage
    Why not have ONLY CDs and stop killing 75,000 trees for every Sunday edition? Even better, put it all on-line and don't print a damn thing.

    • Re:How about just selling CDs (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ajs318 ( 655362 ) <sd_resp2@earthsh ... minus herbivore> on Monday September 01, 2003 @05:15AM (#6843487)
      What is the big deal about killing trees? Trees are just plants. Nobody complains when they pull up potatoes to make chips, or lettuce to be put into sandwiches to be carefully picked out before eating.

      When you cut down a tree to make paper -- at least in a country with private ownership of land -- you have to plant another one in order to keep the value in the land you own. Sure, it takes awhile to grow a tree in human terms, but it isn't long in tree terms. You can also do this in parallel, as long as you have enough land available.

      Recycling options for paper include paper feedstock, composting and energy recovery. It is quite biodegradeable if suitably cut up.

      Making CDs, on the other hand, uses up oil which will take much longer to replace than a few trees, and ties it up with aluminium. Recycling options for a CD are building materials or energy recovery. CDs are not biodegradeable.


      By the way, why does every pet care "expert" make out that newsprint is poisonous to rodents? If this was the case, then wouldn't city rats all be dead from eating the discarded newspapers you see in every city? I suspect a plot by the pet shops to sell more bedding!
  • before the vast nature of the internet today, I used to think that the computer world would be just as big it has become today. One thing i didn't evaluate is the fact that we would have such a vast network of so many machines from household to household.

    I thought that multimedia for the newspapper companies would have to change in the future to meet this demand in some other way.

    I predicted that we go to the newspapper vendor and pick up a diskette or have a news cd delivered everyday to my house w

  • Why not just, um, watch TV? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ewann ( 209481 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @10:56PM (#6842473)
    Don't most people just flip on the TV (or 'telly' in the UK I guess) when they are seeking "rich multimedia content" that neither broadband nor a newspaper can deliver?

    Oh well.

  • This is a stupid idea (Score:2, Insightful)

    by KRL ( 664739 )
    How many people do you know that actually read the daily paper that would be willing to stuff a CD in a computer? I don't know any.

    CD's and paper don't mix... two completely different media... two completely different markets.

    The only place that it makes sense to put a CD is a computing magazine or a gaming magazine... where the content of one is directly related to the other.

    People read newspapers to get quick news and to scan the headlines. You can't scan a CD in a split second.
    • It said the cd is with the SUNDAY papers, not the daily ones.

      Daily and sunday papers are completely different markets.

      Hopefully this will mean that the sunday paper can
      stop being so big!
  • that's where this is going. they'll put the weather and other important sections on CDROM and stick a shrinkwrap license on it, depriving you the right to do... well... anything with it. That's the whole point here.

  • Ah the joys of multimedia development. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ahfoo ( 223186 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @12:50AM (#6842848) Journal
    Reading through the comments, I saw the reaffirmation of my ongoing belief that you've got to have a serious masochistic streak to do multimedia development these days. People are never satisfied because the desireable media experience is such a personal preference.
    I've little doubt the product sucks and the criticisms are justified, but I was trying to imagine what it would be like to be on the, most likely, small staff cranking out a multimedia CD every week and I thought --you know, it's probably not such a happening position.
    And for the people complaining that it doesn't work on their Gnu-Linux systems I have to ask --did they even try running it under Wine? From the article it sounds like a Macromedia based product and I've yet to see a Director or Authorware packaged piece that doesn't work under Wine. In fact, these types of products often work better under Wine than on Mac or MS systems because when Wine encounters an error that would freeze the program on the proprietary
    OS's, Wine simply pops up a dialogue and asks you if you'd like to ignore the error. This makes life difficult for multi-media people trying to create DIY DRM techniques that work by intentionally crashing the program under a given condition on Mac or Windows platforms.
    • Huh? Am I missing something? Never in all my years using computers have I seen an application trying to enforce some runtime rules by crashing itself. That's just too fucking weird, especially since you seem to think it's a common practice. In anycase, what do you think ignoring a crash error will accomplish? Make the application function correctly again? I would think most crashes are due to referencing invalid pointers or serious bugs in the API... ignoring them doesn't seem like a very wise idea to me.
      • Okay, perhaps you don't like the word crash. Would you prefer another phrase like "prematurely exit" or "conclude" or "restart." Those are all suitable replacements to what I was referring to. Perhaps you've never worked with DRM. And that's great. I'm happy for you. Really. It's a better worls without it. But some companies in the past have actually tried to force their users to purchase passowrds or other such inconveiences and one of the enforcement techniques is to not allow the program to continue.

  • hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ColaMan ( 37550 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @02:51AM (#6843172) Journal
    I have no idea how much an average printing run costs for your average paper, but surely it'd be a packet.

    So, how hard would it be for a newspaper co to go moderately into 'offline' e-news?

    What if you could buy a decent reader for 10 bucks (subsidised) and just zap the content in every day for 50 cents a pop? A 100-page pdf / zipped html of the daily paper'd have to fit in 32MB, even with pics. Perhaps you could keep yesterday's news as well , until you run out of storage space.

    For those with slow net connections, you could wander into your nearest newsagent, give them yesterday's card and get another card with todays news. The advantage there being that it could be updated throughout the day, rather than the "print it at 3am - good till tommorrow" approach. Your old card simply gets flashed again , ready for someone else tomorrow.

    After the initial outlay (subsidised readers, cards etc) , would it balance out in the end?

  • Ah, Sunday! The day to kick back, drink coffee, read the paper, play with the kids. Perfect! Ah, sunday! A day to NOT look at a computer screen. Why would anyone ever ruin their Sunday (or any other day) by loading up a cd/dvd that you KNOW willl be filled with ads? It's just junk mail in a different form. Junk mail that takes work to view.... sigh.

  • CD-RW newspapers (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cowbutt ( 21077 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @04:27AM (#6843405) Journal
    I wonder if it would be economic to "print" the weekly (possibly even daily) newspaper onto cheap re-usable media such as CD-RW? The readers could keep or return previous editions for re-use (for a small refund) at their option.

    This idea inspired by the "Universe Today" [vnunet.com] personalised newspaper in Babylon 5. Alternatively, the linked article suggests printing on a re-usable (as opposed to re-cyclable) paper substitute, such as Tyvek.

    --

  • If it comes out once a month, but had the whole month's newspapers availbale in searchable format, then it would be worth having! But if it's just another way7 to ram advertsiing down our throats, then it's just another coaster that isn't worth booting up.

  • Well, it is multi-media (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gone.fishing ( 213219 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @09:17AM (#6844279) Journal
    Ever since the term was coined, I've felt that multi-media lacked something. I never could quite put my finger on it. To me, multi-media means a combination of different types of sources coming together to create a single more impressive product. Yet almost every multi-media project that I have ever seen fell far short of my expectations. Typically the products have seemed rushed and lacked depth or are missing elements that I had expected to be there.

    The application that would define what multi-media is never really came along. Perhaps some games have come close but I don't really know since I no longer game.

    Frankly, I don't blame a newspaper for trying a CD-ROM. I can't think of a business that needs to look at changing how it does business in response to the computer and the internet more than the dead-tree based newspaper. They need to change or they will be left in the dust. Like blacksmiths, saddle makers, and buggy whip companies. Newspapers have huge investments in printing presses, delivery methods, and other things that the internet could simply kill. It probably already has to some degree.

    If I were a newspaper publisher, I can see how I would think a CD-ROM could be a useful adjunct to the tree based edition of my product. I'd see it as a bridge to moving away from paper and on to something different. If I were sitting in that seat, I think I would see the internet and computers as being a double-edged axe. If I moved towards internet publishing I could reduce costs but would also risk alienating a significant number of my subscribers. That is where the bridge would need to come into play. You could gradually get the readership used to it and as the profitability of the paper portion of the newspaper started to decline you reduce the size of it and put more of your efforts twords the CD and online versions. Eventually you reduce depencance on the CD and get everything online. This weaning process could take a decade or longer or may never have to happen. I'm sure newspapers suffered with the advent of radio and TV but they have weathered both rather nicely.
  • Spray on computer. http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/2 4/054219&mode=thread&tid=126&tid=137
    Then spray on a monitor..umm oh yes, spray on speakers and BAM! Newspaper that needs a CD.

Slashdot Top Deals

Over the shoulder supervision is more a need of the manager than the programming task.

Close