Talking about some of the most useful sites online during the past three months mixed with my ongoing interest in online broadcasting inspired me come up with the following list:
Five Things The Internet Is Killing
1. The Music Industry
- I saw a stat somewhere that 80% (!) of teens in the US hadn't bought a single CD in the last year. That's not a good sign if your (inflexible) business model is selling overpriced CD's!
2. The Movie Industry
- see above. It's a bit slower death since the file sizes are bigger and it's harder for the average user to get high quality video displayed in an enjoyable format compared to outputting high quality music to a stereo or even just decent speakers from a computer.
3. Real Estate Agents
- I keep hearing these commercials that slam "do it yourself" real estate sales sites while talking about all the expertise a realtor brings you. Frankly, they reek of desperation. Selling or buying a home yourself is a natural for the strengths of the Internet - many-to-many reach, incredible cost savings (realtors usually charge around 7% for their service), unlimited space for featuring photos and specifications. Plus, ultimately, who's going to care the most about selling a property - the person who sees it as a house or the person who sees it as a home?
4. Traditional Software
- increasingly, people are using online applications that they don't need to buy, install or update instead of their more traditional cousins. MS-Office is the most obvious example of software that Google and others are trying to replicate online but I don't think it'll be long before pretty much everything you do locally on your computer is available online and the only piece of software you'll need is a web browser.
5. Newspapers
- I think classified ad revenue is down something like 20%, subscribers are down 15% in the last few years (disclaimer: all stats quoted in this and any other post I do - are usually from memory. Don't quote them in your academic papers without verifying them!) Online competitors now provide news that is interactive, has alternative perspectives and is more timely. Some newspapers are migrating online but still use old school subscription models or pay-per-article (boo G&M after what, a week?) The New York Times gets it right - all their content is available as soon as it's published, its archived, searchable and free.
Bonus: One Thing The Internet Is Not Killing
Books
- outside of music, more ink (real and digital) is spilled proclaiming the death of the book than anything else. To paraphrase Twain, "the rumours of [the book's] death are greatly exaggerated." I'll always remember going to a national publishers' conference in 2000 where the e-book was all the talk and one presenter said that by 2005, more than half of readers would be using e-books over regular books. Really? Even most of the tech-types I know don't use e-books yet. I don't think e-books aren't without their merits and we're heading to more of a Movie-Television relationship. When TV first came out in the 1940's-50's, commentators warned about the death of the movie theatre. Instead, they developed a symbiotic relationship. I think that's what will happen with "real" books and e-books. E-books will continue to gain traction with users but also continue to co-exist with traditional books.
(Here's an article I found on this topic which discusses many of the same ideas I'm talking about.)
[2008-08-11 - Edit: here's another list on the topic from Cracked that counts phone books, MP3 players, DVD's, magazines, catalogues and newspapers, hard copies of video games, and cash. I'd also add "Post Office" to the list of things you'd think the Internet is killing but isn't.]
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Sunday, March 30
Five Things The Internet Is Killing (and One It Isn't)
by
Jason
on Sun 30 Mar 2008 09:13 PM CST
Friday, March 21
Friday Fun Link - Atheists and Anger (March 21, 2008)
by
Jason
on Fri 21 Mar 2008 02:37 PM CST
Continuing my trend of posting contrarian viewpoints on major Christian holidays, here's a piece on why atheists get angry and frustrated with believers.
(But I am glad to have a long weekend so thanks for that and the chocolate eggs, Jeebus!  )Wednesday, March 19
Home For Dinner: A Saskatchewan Shopping List
by
Jason
on Wed 19 Mar 2008 09:11 PM CST
Amy Jo Ehman and her husband recently spent a whole year eating nothing but Saskatchewan-produced foods. Her year-long experiment is over but she's continued to buy (mostly) from local suppliers. She recently posted a list of where she gets her food from these days.
Sunday, March 16
Road Stats
by
Jason
on Sun 16 Mar 2008 02:36 PM CST
If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know that I've been on the road for the past two months doing computer and Internet training at our various branches around SE Saskatchewan (for anyone who doesn't know about our territory, if you draw a straight line from Regina east to the Manitoba border and south to the US border, that's pretty much us. Here's a map but I just realised that it doesn't render in Firefox very well so you might have to look at it in Internet Explorer - sorry about that!)
Anyhow, I thought I'd sum up the last couple months in numbers...  Branches Visited - 45 (out of 48)Number of kilometres put on the company car - 10 000+Cancellations Due To Illness (mine) - 1Cancellations Due To Illness/Family Emergency (the branch librarian) - 2 (and it was the same person both times which makes me wonder if she was just really nervous about the training as happens with some people)Cancellations Due To Cold and/or Blizzards - 1.5 days (the half day is because I went out for my daytime sessions but had the evening one canceled by the local librarian)Number of blizzards I drove through when travel wasn't recommended - 1Number of -30 degree or colder days - too many to countNumber of 0 degree days where, the mix of melting/half-frozen snow and massive wind gusts made it feel like you were driving on a combo curling rink/jet engine turbine simulator scarier than any blizzard - 1Number of members of the general public who attended my sessions overall - 150-200? (sounds impressive until you realise that averages out to 3-4 people per library)Number of communities that had not one person show up for either of my two public sessions - a drop-in Q&A and a one-hour "guided tour" of the Internet - 3Not having done the math, what I think my average rating would be for all training sessions (2 with general public, 1 with branch librarians) based on the feedback forms (out of 5) - 4.0What it would be if you discounted the people who obviously filled out the form wrong - 4.5 (some examples - a few people gave all 1's - our lowest mark - but wrote nothing but favourable comments, some put lower marks in the "Length of Session" field meaning they enjoyed it and wish the session could've been longer but which comes across as a negative when you include it in the average rating. Who said survey design in 504 was useless?)Two reasons I probably got higher marks than I deserved. 1) I often mentioned I was from Indian Head and had grown up in SRL which immediately sets a "you're one of us" vibe and 2) people filled out the feedback form before actually going home to see if my advice actually would help with their problem!Number of our branches still on dial-up - 5Question I should've expected but which caught me off-guard with how much it was asked - "how do I get satellite Internet on my farm? What does it cost? What are the advantages/disadvantages?" In my opinion, the single biggest problem for people who at least have the skills to get online but are otherwise total beginners? They don't recognize ads on pages or know how to tell when they've surfed away from a site. The amount of people I'd show a site to and have them miles away as soon as I looked away because they just started clicking on the page randomly boggled my mind.Number of people I helped figure out how to use a mouse - 4Number of people I (may have  ) instructed in the use of BitTorrent - 6 Number of members of the general public who brought me fresh-baked cookies when they came to the second session after attending the first one - 1Number of 80+ year old ladies I helped sign up for Facebook accounts - 2  Saturday, March 8
Top Ten Grammar Myths
by
Jason
on Sat 08 Mar 2008 11:25 PM CST
Did you know that March 4 is apparently National Grammar Day? Neither did I which is why this post is coming on March 9.
In honour of this obscure but auspicious occasion, here's a list of the Top Ten Grammar Myths. 10. A run-on sentence is a really long sentence. 9. You shouldn't start a sentence with the word however. 8. Irregardless is not a word. 7. There is only one way to write the possessive form of a word that ends in s 6. Passive voice is always wrong. 5. I.e. and e.g. mean the same thing. 4. You use a before words that start with consonants and an before words that start with vowels. 3. It's incorrect to answer the question "How are you?" with the statement "I'm good." 2. You shouldn't split infinitives. 1. You shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition. (via Reddit) |
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