Rev2.org

Major newspapers like the New York Time and others have been struggling to figure out where they fit in today’s instant information society.  The old paradigm of printing news and delivering it on dead trees to people’s doorsteps is melting away and the once-giants in the industry are paddling upstream to try to preserve it.

The recent addition of a paywall to the paper’s website is proof that the management behind this news behemoth just can’t seem to understand how the Internet functions.  Many people, including myself, have stopped reading the NYT altogether and have barely missed it.  The sad truth is that many (often better, more timely) news outlets are out there and publishing online.

Some reporters at the Big Paper outlets, though, do seem to get it.  Recently, conflicts in places like Libya, disasters in Japan and Haiti, and others have shown that people with access to the Internet via their phones can do some amazing on-the-spot, real-time reporting.

The latest example is NYT reporter Brian Stelter, who was in Joplin, Missouri to witness the aftermath of a tornado touching down there.  He did it via Twitter, since he had no access to the Internet or the voice call system on his phone.  He did, however, have access to text messaging and used that to send messages to Twitter as well as post photos on his Tumblr account.

None of that happened officially through the NYT.

Of course, Twitter is no replacement for real news reporting, but this example shows that blogs, online-only news outlets, and more can produce reporting that rivals or even surpasses what is done at outlets like the NYT and their ilk.

Some old timers in the print industry have realized this and are moving away from on-the-spot news reporting and into commentary and other arenas where timeliness is no longer a factor.  The NYT, however, seems to have missed that memo and continues to struggle along as a paper-based dinosaur that just won’t acknowledge its own extinction.

Finally, some confirmation. Twitter’s purchase of Tweetdeck has been in the works for a number of weeks now, with rumours flying about since early May. Originally discussed in February, reports indicated then that the popular Twitter application would be acquired by Bill Gross’ UberMedia for somewhere between $25 and $30 million. Twitter, apparently, bit back with a counter offer, reported by CNN and CNET at $40- and it’s been duly accepted.

The deal appeared to be as good as complete for quite some time, but hadn’t been reported or numbers confirmed. Twitter, apparently, weren’t comfortable with UberMedia taking another lump of its market share; with Twitter-related startups seemingly all ending up in the hands of companies like UberMedia and EchoFon. Twitter didn’t want UberMedia to have the massive leverage over it that it would have done, so buying TweetDeck was almost a necessity as far as they were concerned.

While TweetDeck appears to go against the ethos of Twitter itself, it is commonly used, often regarded as essential by businesses looking to hawk their wares to the self-aware masses residing across the social network. With an operating user base of around 200 million and 65 million tweets being recorded every day, Twitter is often referred to as the SMS of the Internet. While obviously 200 million people aren’t using it as such, it is highly interesting to note the exponential growth seen across the service. If an offshoot start-up only of value due to Twitter is worth $40 million, then the future can only be bright for the service, no matter how the acquisition of TweetDeck is presented.

A recent start-up application service called SpotOn provides consumers with a data collection service, taking things like Foursquare check-ins, Facebook likes and other information all in to consideration. This then provides a number of choices tailored to the individual. Importantly, the app doesn’t require all friends to have it in order for choices to be made, meaning that your friendship group will be represented as long as they use one of the social networking services or location services purported by the application.

It’s also possible for friends to recommend different merchants to the service by rating them through a lovely petal interface. While it provides user accounts distinct to the service, the fact that it incorporates a pre-existing social graph means that it avoids the zero start problem faced by many new location or data services.

The SponOn maps service takes into account how many of your friends have been to specific venues or rated places highly to suggest different places to go. CEO Gauri Manglik said, ‘In short, we take your digital preferences, whether it be Facebook Likes, Foursquare checkins or anything else and make them useful in the real world.’

The system advertises through daily deal affiliates- as this may be useful for those customers who are already using the service. The app is currently bootstrapped but an iPhone app version is supposedly coming soon. The service could end up being very popular, but considering the relatively low number of check-ins being utilised on average among friends, it will require a significant friendship group in order to create the tapestry of venues required to promote regular visits to the app.

Tragedy hit a Foxconn factory in China (the company produces Apple’s iPad, iPhone, etc.) last week when an explosion killed 3 and injured more than a dozen others.  The company as well as Apple are investigating the cause of the explosion, but Foxconn has officially told China Times that the tragedy will not delay iPad 2 and related item releases slated (unofficially) for this September.

This is not surprising since Foxconn has several facilities throughout China and employs over a million people, so the factory affected may or may not have been integral in production of the iPad 2 or the upcoming iPhone.

Background on the factory itself is sketchy, but shows that the explosion was apparently in a “polishing shop” and not a main production floor.  The factory itself was built in record time and is capable of producing around 40 million iPads per year.  Teh factory itself was built in Chungdu, the capital of a province where most of the young people who were migrating to other areas of China (including the much-maligned Shenzhen) came from.

The location is meant to keep suicides and defections of factory workers at a minimum, since they will be working and housed close to home and thus able to see family and friends – a problematic topic in Chinese factories where most workers leave home and go long distances to cities in order to find factory work.

Signs are beginning to indicate, as Google I/O fast approaches, that Chrome OS may make a stable debut at the conference. I/O is a vast annual conference for the company to launch new products and inform consumers and manufacturers of upcoming matters.

Chrome OS, rumoured for a long time and eventually launched as a beta product for selected devices, is positioned in a strange way as a direct competitor of Android. However, Chrome OS has suffered numerous delays, the cloud-heavy operating system originally looking to launch 6 months ago. Developers have since received copies of demo hardware, but the product itself has been nowhere to be seen for consumers.

I/O will definitely be showcasing the launch of Google’s new music service, which is directly tied to Android, making the second day a likely suspect for the launch of Chrome OS. Samsung also plan to hold a ‘mystery event’ on the evening of day two, rumoured to support the new operating system. In fact, ‘Stable’ now appears as an option in Chrome OS’ latest builds, which is almost certainly version 11.

As the first round of products will inevitably gear up for launch, this version will be the one featured at launch. The extremely light OS at 1/60th the size of Windows 7 runs entirely from a browser window, offering a large number of cloud-based features like Google Docs, Google Apps and Cloud Print, most of which are available on Chrome for desktop PCs and Macs already. However, the future may begin to look more like Chrome OS as the Internet becomes an always-on option. The 15 second boot time of the OS certainly has its place for light application use.

Apple found themselves at the tip of an 84% increase in brand value over the past year to top Google as the world’s most valuable global brand. Google, however, dropped in brand value by 2%, but it was one of the many technology companies to overpoweringly head the standings. Tech brands made up one third of the entire top 100.

Nigel Hollis, executive VP of Millward Brown, assistant producers of the BrandZ Top 100 list, said: ‘The prevalence of technology and telecom brands in the BrandZ Top 100 reflects a continued global trend. Mobile technology is becoming increasingly important in the lives of people all around the world. Smartphones are changing the way people communicate and access content, but they are useless without the connectivity provided by the mobile infrastructure.’

The study ranks the top 100 ‘Most Valuable Global Brands’ in conjunction with Millward Brown, WPP and The Financial Times. The list includes Facebook for the first time this year, which made its debut at number 35, with the biggest increase in brand value at 246%. Meanwhile, Amazon became the world’s number 1 retail brand, up 37% from last year. They overtook Wal-Mart to place highest in the retail category.

Technology was indeed a catalyst even for other brands to maintain prominence worldwide, with companies like Burberry, Chanel and Coca-Cola utilising a wealth of social media and application products in order to remain at a level of worldwide importance.