Live Search for Mobile

Microsoft has updated Live Search Mobile, a search and mapping application for Windows Mobile- and Java-equipped phones. The new version offers movie showtimes, better GPS support and the ability to cache previously viewed maps for faster performance.

It's a lot like Google Maps Mobile, though if forced to choose, I'd have to give a slight edge to Microsoft on this one. Though I prefer Google Maps on my PC -- it's the snappiest online mapping service by far -- I've always liked the way Microsoft/MSN/Live maps look. It's the closest thing I've seen to "real" paper maps. Now, I can get the maps I like in a service that's just as fast as Google's alternative.

Anyway, both are handy little applications to have on your phone.

Separately, Microsoft also updated its Live Search Web service for mobile phones. Among other things, the new version lists search results across multiple categories, much like Google's standard PC Web search. It's pretty handy -- I'm not sure why Google doesn't do the same thing its mobile searches.

Still, Google's mobile search gave me much better results in two quick tests.

On Google, a phone search for "7-11" listed nearby stores -- Microsoft gave me what looked like completely random results.

A Google search on "Harry Potter," meanwhile, gave me local showtimes for the movie, a couple of recent news stories, J.K. Rowling's official site, the official Harry Potter site, the Wikipedia entry and more. Microsoft gave me the Wikipedia entry, some photos (a nice touch, actually). It had a space for news stories and local results (showtimes, etc.) but they were empty -- despite knowing my home address. So Google was far more useful in both situations.

It seems Microsoft has a little more work to do.

The Future of Journalism, part 534

"Recovering Journalist"  Mark Potts notes the Wall Street Journal's precipitous revenue plunge, but worries more about the industry's lackluster and unimaginative response so far.

His ideas, paraphrased:

• Accept that the Web and mobile devices are your primary publishing platform, not the printing press. Even better, stop printing the newspaper altogether and move entirely to the Web.
• Get local. Very local.
• Embrace user-generated content and bring readers into the conversation.
• Give readers' social networking tools to help that them interact and flourish under your banner.
• Find ways to make your company essential to your advertisers' businesses by providing them with non-advertising services.

I don't quite agree with that last point, especially when he gets into some of the specifics he has in mind. But the rest of it is spot on.

 Meanwhile, Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 notes what he calls the "10% problem" newspapers face going online. 

What you find, with some modest rounding, is that print circulation is about 10% of total audience reach, while online advertising revenue is 10% of total ad revenue — the economics are nearly the perfect inverse of what they should be.

In other words, it's not newspapers that are lagging in this technology transition -- it's advertisers.

Maybe the industry is trained to think that, for display ads, bigger is better. Many are resistant to newspapers publishing in a tabloid-sized format for the same reason -- they don't want to pay the same amount of money for smaller ads.

Maybe newspapers are fetching less for online ads just because that's all they're worth. With online ads, advertisers know exactly what they're getting for their money.

Maybe they're realizing that they've been overpaying for decades.

In any case, I hope my industry, to paraphrase of Jeff Jarvis, can survive long enough to solve this dilemma.

Two brands I love come together

I use both Answers.com and Dictionary.com (along with its sibling, Thesaurus.com) several times a day, so I take a keen interest in Answers.com's purchase of the company that publishes Dictionary.com.

The services overlap, but I've found Answers.com, with its handy 1-Click Answers tool, a fast way to look up stock symbols and company addresses. And Thesaurus.com is my synonym finder of choice, calling up more synonyms and related words than any online reference tool I've ever used.

I'm not sure what, if anything, the merger will change, but I'm happy to hear that both services will remain operational. I'd be especially happy if the company were to create a right-click popup thesaurus like the one it created for Answers.com.

Source: Download Squad

Journalism as a service

In a post about the fight at the L.A. Times about whether to run front-page ads, Jeff Jarvis makes an interesting point about journalism as a service vs. journalism as a product.

But what is the LA Times as a local brand and service — note: service vs. product — going to look like in five years and how is it going to get there? How can it get far more local than it is today? How can it build broader networks of people and content and advertising? How can it pay for all that development and experimentation? And how can it survive long enough to get there?

While the distinction may seem semantic, I think the industry's mistaken impression of itself underlies its fear and loathing of readers' migration online.

As a product, newspapers are doomed -- and their demise is coming a lot faster than many of us realize. But as a service, journalism and the journalism business have unprecedented opportunity. The sooner journalists start thinking of their business as a service, the better equipped they'll be for the changes ahead.

Source: BuzzMachine