Mike McGuire

Well, this certainly is one possible solution to the problem facing small, typically local newspapers: a Maryland senator has submitted a bill that would allow struggling newspapers to become tax-exempt non-profits.
Possible benefits? Ad and subscription revenue would be tax exempt. Downside? Non-profit papers could not make political endorsements or recommendations.
While it’s unlikely the New York [...]

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With its preview Tuesday of the iPhone 3.0 (OS and SDK), Apple ratcheted up the pressure on not only its competitors in the smartphone business,  but I believe, in a weird backwards sort of way, that the preview will put pressure on a few folks in the media industry.
In particular, publishers, especially newspaper and [...]

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We all know them.
I speak of these people who studiously observe the screen of their iPod. Or iPhone. Or Zune. Whatever. The end of each song is an excuse to pick up the device and stare at the screen. Then there are those who pick up their device, hit “play” and live for the [...]

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Can the popularity of Rock Band franchise translate and extend the timeless — but let’s face it, musically archaic — Beatles catalog to a generation of folks who grew up disconnected from the album, AOR radio but have come of age in a time when music is effectively a public good? And speaking of “public [...]

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Is it possible to create more efficient links between searches for online content and multiple payment or monetization schemes?
ImageSpan, developer of licensing automation technologies, appears to have come up with a very efficient approach: linking search results from a search engine to a purchase or licensing engine.  (Read this for more detail.)  What ImageSpan [...]

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It appears Amazon is taking a page from the realpolitik school of business to insure the future for its Kindle e-reader product by agreeing to turn-off a text-to-speech converter featured in the new Kindle 2 e-reader. (We blogged about the issue  here when it first surfaced.)
The decision to give individual publishers control over [...]

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