Handheld News on the Go
by John Bryan
Pick up The Wall Street Journal and give it a good gander. Now imagine looking at the same content on your handheld PalmPilot organizer.
On one side you have depth, the ability to scan multiple stories, and more information per column inch than the Encyclopedia Britannica.
On the other, you have portability and all the other features of a multifunctional information appliance.
And it’s cool.
Well, maybe not to you, Mr. Dead-Tree Reader, but to about 175,000 of your compatriots who regularly download the highlights of the Journal (and The New York Times, Slate, CNN, USA Today and even a weather service or the Disney Channel). Do they know something you don’t? Could this be the dawn of the NewsSlate era, in which we forsake newspapers to peer slack-jawed into intelligent Etch-a-Sketches?
Not hardly, says Neil Budde, vice president and editor of the Journal’s Interactive Edition.
"I think someday Roger Fidler [credited with the NewsSlate flat-panel newspaper concept] will be proven right," he says. "But I think the present devices have a way to go to be as convenient as people would like." At the same time, though, "people like to carry something around that gives them a slice of news."
That slice is available using a personal digital assistant, a PC or Macintosh, an Internet connection and free browsing software called AvantGo from the San Mateo, Calif., company of the same name. Its browser pulls the news off the World Wide Web, cleans it up a little and injects it into the willing Palm Pilot (or Windows CE handheld machine) you’ve thoughtfully left in your docking station. Then you undock your PDA and board the train or plane—or maybe enter a boring meeting—and catch up on the rest of the world via your little screen.
Couldn’t you just take the paper? Sure, except that in a meeting, newspaper reading is in poor taste. (The executive poring over his PalmPilot in a meeting could be doing company work.)
But let’s ponder this from the supply side: What’s in it for your paper? According to Budde, it’s neither money nor subscribers, but rather knowledge gained poking around the nooks and crannies of the online world for the Next Big Thing.
Over at AvantGo, Stuart Reed, vice president of marketing, is learning from the people who download the free software and see the potential of an engine that can store and upload data, and dial the phone to boot.
"More than 70 percent of our customers are people who download our free stuff, then call us up and say, ‘I was reading a newspaper using AvantGo and I have an idea’," he says. The resulting data-collection systems are in use by FedEx, McDonald’s and New York’s Con Edison utility.
For newspapers interested in providing AvantGo content, Reed suggests pushing some content out of a corner of your site where you can feel free to eschew Javascript, frames and big graphics. While AvantGo will dutifully suck up and spit out any Web site to which it’s pointed, without the custom tailoring, it’s going to look on the PalmPilot screen like—well, like something that’s been sucked up and spit out.
And even the most practiced meeting-faker will have trouble reading that mess and making it look good to the boss.
John Bryan leads the news systems/pagination team at the Los Angeles Times. E-mail, john.bryan@latimes.com; phone, (213) 237-4711.
Zip2 Acquisition buys Eyeballs
by Greg Francis
The outgoing head of Zip2, which develops local and electronic-commerce World Wide Web sites for more than 160 U.S. newspapers, says Compaq Computer Corp.’s acquisition of the company will have only positive ramifications for Zip2’s clients.
Compaq announced in mid-February that it would buy Zip2 Corp. of Mountain View, Calif., as part of its plans to transform its AltaVista search engine into a leading information and e-commerce service. Zip2 will become an operating division of the AltaVista Co., a wholly owned subsidiary of Compaq slated for a future stock offering.
While cautioning that he could not speak for AltaVista and that the Department of Justice has yet to approve the merger, outgoing Zip2 Chief Executive Officer Derek Proudian says local affiliates can expect to continue receiving the same services.
"Existing contracts will be honored," Proudian says. "Projects Zip2 was pursuing before will stay in place, although they may proceed at a more rapid pace."
Proudian stresses that AltaVista is unlikely to change Zip2’s business model as a platform provider for the newspaper industry. Zip2 agreed to the merger in part because it shares with AltaVista a "very strong, complementary strategic vision," Proudian says.
Proudian believes that for Zip2’s local media clients, the primary effect of the merger will be to increase benefits—and eyeballs. Although Zip2 had been able to provide a good Internet platform and help create compelling Web sites for its newspaper clients, many sites received little traffic, he explains. As Compaq seeks to fashion AltaVista into a full-service portal, all that could change.
"AltaVista is a formidable force on the Internet in a way that Zip2 never was," he says. "The combination creates something that has a reasonable chance of competing with an AOL, a Microsoft or a Yahoo. That may not have been possible for Zip2 alone."
AltaVista is likely to continue Zip2’s plan to develop a national network of local-media affiliates, as well as use Zip2 technology for its own national site, according to Proudian. AltaVista is also expected to adopt Zip2’s revenue-sharing model, containing a mix of local and national advertising.
Francis is an Arlington, Va., free-lancer. E-mail, grfhome@aol.com; phone, (703) 838-9565.