Starbucks and Yahoo! Personals join forces

Starbucks and Yahoo! Personals are partnering to cross-market each other's services, as read in an article posted on Online Media Daily. The service is a co-branded site called "Espresso Dating Guide". The site offers dating advice, how to locate the nearest Starbucks, and a $10 Starbucks gift card for subscribing to Yahoo! Personals. The test will only last through Valentine's Day.

This test is one of the latest examples of the creativity with which companies are approaching their consumers. This intriguing partnership shows that companies are taking a long hard look at their consumer base and their needs. And what other companies have the same consumer base. It's all about the audience. Young customers are the connection behind this relationship. Starbucks and Yahoo! Personals are combining their forces to reach them. A good idea. Now let's see if it works.

WashPo Shows The Expert's Way

The Washington Post has gone deep by giving their readers a database of all Congressional voting since 1991. Here's a good example of a newspaper providing an online service they're uniquely positioned to offer, leveraging their clear expertise in the political field, setting context, and meeting their readers' needs.

The more that newspapers can offer these sorts of media and information products, the healthier their bottom line will be.

New Design and Navigation for the French Citizen Journalist Web site, Agoravox.fr

The French citizen journalist web site, Agoravox.fr, is in the process of renewing its design and navigation. The objectives are to:

• Improve the navigability and the ergonomics of the site
• Increase the visibility of the principle of citizen journalism
• Propose new tools to increase interactivity with the audience

The logo is also being redesigned.

5W Mignon Media is rethinking this site. It will be re-launched before the end of January.

The Day Film Died

Check out our colleague Hart Van Denburg's take on the announcement that Nikon will (almost completely) stop making film cameras.

Photography began with images being captured on glass, and then later film of various sizes,. Today, the image is captured not by etching the scene in the viewfinder but rather a description of the image onto a recording medium. Will we ever have fidelity of memory again?

GoogleEarth for Mac

Google has finally released a version of Google Earth for the Mac. Since many designers prefer the Mac to the PC, how long will it be before we see an increased number of satellite images in newspaper stories and reviews, as cutaways in video reports, and even in advertising?

5W is developing a weekly Rugby magazine

Group l'Équipe is going to launch a weekly Rugby magazine in France, on March 2nd. The company is the publisher of the famous daily sport newspaper L'Équipe. The largest national daily newspaper in France, that also owns a cable TV channel.

The magazine will have a companion website. It will be updated in a daily basis.

5W Mignon-Media has been in charge to help develop the editorial strategy of the magazine and the website. Our team has designed both products.

5W will soon announce its collaboration in the creation of a new weekly product for a regional French newspaper.

Sony E-Book Reader Coming to the US

The Sony Librie hasn't done very well overseas in Japan, but that is not stopping Sony from expanding its reach with an e-book reader for the US market. According to an article in Business Week, Sony will be announcing a Librie-like E-ink e-book reader for the US market at the annual Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas.

Sony will have an uphill battle in trying to gain critical mass with an e-book reader. No other e-book reader has gained traction. However, the time may be ripe for consumers to accept these gadgets. Book publishers have recently announced their initiatives to digitize their book lists, both front and back lists. E-paper technology has reached a state where the screen is close to the reading experience of paper. And they will be able to accept standard SD memory cards indicating a more open approach than previous versions.

We look forward to the launch of the Sony e-book reader. If successful, this reader could have many applications in education, and for newspapers and magazines.

Post, Daily News Headline Their Own Irrelevance

Heading into work today in arguably one of the world's most media-savvy cities, here are headlines (4-inches tall, no less) from two major dailies about the West Virginia mine disaster:

Daily News: "Miracle in the Mine"

New York Post: "Alive!"

We've talked a long time about how print newspapers have lost a prime product advantage - timeliness - to the Internet; this is just a glaring example that, unfortunately, seems to clearly and loudly trumpet print newspapers' irrelevance.

Is content less important than the links that help to find it ?

An interesting conversation, about hypertext on the internet, is happening (in French… sorry) on Francis Pisani's blog, Transnets.

In his last post, he talks about, Press without Gutenberg, the book of Bruno Patino (publisher of Le Monde's website) and Jean-François Fogel (journalist). He quotes them :

"Information on the Internet is less important that the links that help to find it."

What do you think about it ?

Gadgets Galore: Consumer Electronics for the Future

This year's International Consumer Electronics Show kicks off tomorrow (Wednesday, January 4, 2006) in Las Vegas. "Annual gadget show is biggest ever" as written in an online Business Week article.

Not only is this show the biggest ever, but Yahoo and Google will also be making their debuts with keynote speeches. Digital portals for video content will be highlighted at the show. There will be 2,500 exhibitors covering 28 football fields of space.

As competition escalates in this market, how many is too many? We have plenty of providers out there clamoring for the attention of the end consumer. But how many gadgets can the end consumer handle? Is this just another simple supply and demand equation or are the market dynamics so different this time that we are at a turning point in media consumption?

"Local news will continue to fill our pages"

"Our goal in 2006 is to give you even more news and information that you cannot get elsewhere. We won't neglect national and international news, but the days in which wire services dominate the front page are waning at mid-size newspapers across the country. Instead, we will devote more space inside the paper for the stories that explore national and world issues in greater depth," explains John Robinson, editor of the News-Record (Greensboro, North Carolina) in his first post for 2006.

A post worth reading and that, from our point view, should be the agenda of many local newspapers.