Written on July 2, 2008 – 11:31 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
About a month ago I reported that Belgian newspaper publisher Copiepresse demanded that Google should pay €49 million to compensate for the damage listings in Google News had caused them. A weird case, and not just because Copiepresse can easily prevent these listings. What struck me the most was the old-fashioned attitude of the Belgian media company. Call me naive, but I expected the executives of traditional media companies to be visionary enough to realize Google News brings them nothing but traffic. Was I shocked back then, now I’m really amazed by the next step of Copiepresse: they’re suing the EU’s news aggregator NewsExplorer.
This aggregation service from the European Commission wants to help visitors to grasp cultural differences among the EU by showing articles from all countries concerning the same matter. This unique piece of technology is a bit too modern for the Copiepresse conservatives, who prefer officials that use scissors and scrap books to collect the latest European news - behind closed doors. Just imagine helping out citizens by publicly organizing news.
Forgive me my cynicism and lack of respect for traditional business models. It’s just plain frustrating to see a large media company trying to destroy an emerging world of news and information. Copiepresse fails to see threats to their business models as challenges and tries to keep us in a bygone age of information.
There are only two positive notes here: the court has tossed out the case, based on jurisdictional grounds (so there’s hope for Google too), and what goes around, comes around. A company that only sees threats in the digital revolution, will find itself dismantled in a few deccenia. The only thing that bothers me about that, is the waste of journalistic talent.
I hope you like that post!
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Written on June 22, 2008 – 9:08 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
When you favorite blog or news site has a slow day, you might wanna turn to different news sources. A good alternative is Eufeeds, this site is fed by 500 hundred feeds from European newspapers. People from 28 different countries can check what their nations’ journalists are writing about.
When you see a headline that arouses some curiosity, the article opens in a fancy Ajax layer - you know the type: inner screen pop-up that fades the original site away. A selection of countries is easily made with the collection of flags in the top.
There’s one minor problem though: most Europeans speak only two languages - their native one and some English. Of course some exceptions can be made, in Dutch high schools for example, students can learn French, German, and Spanish as well. But for most Europeans, an integrated translation tool would be essential.
When you think of it, this page is just a Netvibes universe on steroids. Or an European Alltop rip-off. However, when you’re in the need of some news, and you need it fast, eufeeds.eu is the place to go to.
Written on May 19, 2008 – 3:56 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
China’s most popular news and sports site Sina has launched an English version to provide international readers with the latest on the earthquake that took 32.000 lives and made millions of people homeless. Sina president and CEO Charles Chao told AFP: “We have chosen to launch our English news site now as we would like to provide up-to-minute coverage of the earthquake for overseas people who are concerned about the tragedy”. Quite a digital after shock, if you’d ask me. But just a nasty little thought here, is it really an aftershock? Or does a media hype, how terrible it may be, comes in handy for China’s leading portal?
Chao: “Over the longer term, we intend to make this site a window for international communities to have an easy access to China-related information and to have better understanding about modern China.” Right, there it is. Sina is just an ordinary media giant with a healthy ambition: to conquer the world. Revenues are expected to grow with 30 percent over the next few years, thanks to the Olympics, so Chao and his executives probably aren’t afraid of investing some capital in international expansion.
You don’t here me complain though. I’m sure there are some Sina editors that genuinely want to tell the world how their fellow citizens are suffering. Yet I just don’t buy the noble words by Chao.
Written on May 19, 2008 – 11:45 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
The design is hideous, yet the user interface is just fine. The news sources are limited, but their selection is actually pretty good. I’m talking about Surchur, a site that gives you an one-page overview of results from different search engines and services like Delicious, Digg, Google News, Technorati, Flickr and Amazon. As the before mentioned names suggest, you can search through pages, news, pictures, video, and products.
It’s an easy-to-use meta search engine which is perfect for a quick news check-up about a certain subject. For example, when I started this article, I tested Surchur by looking up articles about the service itself. This gave me a neat overview of the bloggers - like Emily Chang - who had already shined their light on “the latest, the greatest”. When I hover over the results, a handy overlay pops up with some more information.
An improvement would be a browser plugin, so users don’t have to browse to Surchur before they can start searching. Another idea would be a suggestion box, so users can tip the team behind Surchur which search engine they miss. I for one, would like to see a Wikipedia and LinkedIn box. But first of all, let’s work on that design, shall we?
Belgium, business models, copiepresse, Europe, European Commission, google news, News, newsexplorer, Newspapers, traditional media
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