Forever a Game Changer: The Internet Turns Publishers into Bloggers

How times have changed! I remember just a few years ago putting together a website would take sweat and tears, and today absolutely free content management systems allow someone with a bit of skills to setup and launch a site within hours.

There is no point in reviewing content management systems, plenty of blogs out there have done that proficiently, but there is something to be told about the effects empowerment will likely have on the web. As I see it today, we can all be active contributors of news and information, causing a massive dissinformation effect.

Holiday Break

This week I've been taking a break from work (with some interspersed conference calls every now and then) to try and gather myself for all there is to come in the next year. These are exciting times, where companies no longer wonder the value of digital products and simply demand how fast can we get them to market. It is a dream come true for digital product developers only clouded by the stress that speed to market puts in our lives. 


But who are we kidding, we love pressure, and my break is just some time to get out of the things that I don't care for so I can focus on the ones that matter: building. Our roadmap encompasses monthly releases of multiplatform products of the utmost quality, so stay tuned as I post information once available. If you are a Shaw customer, your are in for many treats in 2012.

That was quite the break!

Amounting to half a dozen posts over the last five years is beyond embarrassing. It doesn't matter that I do keep another blog for bed time tales (www.themailthread.com/tales/) or that during this time I completed my masters degree (and wrote a significant number of essays for school) and have been faced with increasingly difficult job challenges. It is unjustifiable, but it is a fact.

Working twelve hours a day to help the late Canwest (now Postmedia) launch their redesigned newspaper sites back in 2008 should have still left me with enough time to squeeze a line or two. I could have shared a lot about the incredible group of developers working on the project, the amazing designers, and the inspiring collaborative process we employed to work in much needed features even after the scope was locked down.

Why Newspapers Are Losing the Internet Battle

It has become a challenge for newspapers to survive in the digital world, and while most of them have embraced the Internet as a new medium to deliver their content, many are lagging when it comes to being ahead of the curve.

The evidence is in the facts: Classifieds used to be a newspapers owned industry, however the top online classifieds companies today are not associated to any newspaper (Craiglist, Kijiji, among many others). Most newspaper maintain their classified section and continue to push it as an extension of their print product, but are so constrained in their thinking because of their dire need to turn a quick coin that can't seem to understand that online business models differ from the conventional one they are so used to.