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Everyone's Blog Posts - Printcasting (10 unread)

March 10, 2009
11:04
Printcasting Update Newsletter, March 10, 2009
» ‎ Everyone's Blog Posts - Printcasting

Hello,

You're getting this e-mail because you've participated in an alpha or beta test on Printcasting.com. If you don't want to receive future e-mails please, let me know (Dan Pacheco / dan@printcasting.com) and I will gladly remove you from the list.

As we approach our public launch date, we'll be sending an e-mail every couple of weeks. Want to be on the e-mail list? Let Dan Pacheco (dan@printcasting.com) know.

Thanks for Beta Testing!
First, I want to personally thank you for helping us through our alpha and beta testing period for Printcasting. If you haven't tried out beta yet, you can do so without entering a password at http://beta.printcasting.com.

What's New on Beta?
We're adding new features all the time. You can check this page for updates on what's new and what's still being worked on:

http://beta.printcasting.com/content/about-beta-test

One great feature that just launched is an improved Printcast directory that shows the most recently added Printcasts and browse by category all in one place:
http://beta.printcasting.com/publisher/categorylist

A Couple Notes on System E-mails
Second, just a couple notes on other e-mails you may receive. If you have created or subscribed to a Printcast, you should already be receiving an e-mail whenever a new edition is generated. When you click the link it will bring up the "microsite" for that Printcast, and you can view the edition in your browser or download a PDF to print out.

Please note that we had a little snafu last night where one of our development servers accidentally sent e-mails. If you see an e-mail that has the URL http://fernworks.net in it, and it asks you for a password, you got one. We apologize for this glitch and have put things in place to make sure it won't happen again.

And Finally ... Did You See Printcasting in Business Week?
OK finally, just because we can't stop talking about it, check out the story about Printcasting in Business Week! [is.gd]
A blog on the Christian Science Monitor also picked up the story: [is.gd]

Woot for Printcasting!!!! None of this would have been possible without you, and it is and always will be all about you and your content, so thanks for your support.

- Dan & the Printcasting Team
March 09, 2009
10:39
Printcasting is in Business Week
» ‎ Everyone's Blog Posts - Printcasting

Big news!

Printcasting has been mentioned in a Business Week story about "online experiments that could help newspapers". It also leads with Bakotopia.com, the social networking site I started for The Bakersfield Californian back in 2005. This is fitting, as Bakotopia's later success with a printed magazine helped inspired the Printcasting concept.

The story also cites other good examples of things newspaper companies are doing to change with the times, including collaboration with Outside.in and Yahoo and the upcoming Plastic Logic e-reader.

This is great timing for us, as we recently opened our beta site to the public and are putting the final pieces in place to publicly launch in Bakersfield later this month. Here are some excerpts worth mentioning:

"... the independent, family-owned Californian is preparing to take the idea of Web-created niche magazines national. Using an $837,000 grant from the Knight News Challenge and about $200,000 of its own money, it's launching a site called Printcasting.com later in March. The site will allow individuals, schools, homeowners' associations, wine clubs, and the like to create their own digital magazines. 'If we see a magazine that really has potential, we'll print it, place additional ads in there, and distribute it, [first in Bakersfield, then in five other cities as early as this summer],' Pacheco says. The Californian will get a cut of ad sales while spending little on the product itself. 'This is cheap and targeted,' Pacheco explains. 'Even though there's an ad recession, it doesn't mean there're no more ads.' "

And later on ...

"This reinvention is taking publishers such as Bakersfield Californian away from selling ads just for their own news content. 'Our future may be very different from how we started, in newspapers,' Pacheco says. '[Going forward], we are the network that allows people to communicate among themselves.'"
That accurately sums up what we're trying to do with Printcasting. Thanks to senior writer Olga Kharif for good reporting.

Of course the real story will begin once we launch later this month and are able to point to how regular old people are using Printcasting to make their own magazines and newsletters. Our local outreach is already starting in beta, and I can tell that what people do with these tools will ultimately be far more interesting than the tools themselves. The same has been true of Bakotopia and other social-media initiatives -- connecting with people and allowing them to connect with each other is what the user-generated content space is really about.

Technorati Tags: printcasting, knight news challenge, newspaper industry
March 05, 2009
6:41
Daripada Pusing, Pilih Caleg Perempuan
» ‎ Everyone's Blog Posts - Printcasting

Siapakah yang akan kita pilih pada 9 April 2009? Inilah salah satu pertanyaan paling penting -- dan membingungkan -- bagi sebagian calon pemilih saat ini.

Hiruk-pikuknya kampanye para calon legislator, riuhnya tempelan poster dan baliho caleg di pinggir jalan tak membuat pilihan makin mudah. Sebaliknya, publik kian bingung akan memilih siapa.

Poster-poster caleg itu tak memberikan informasi apa pun, kecuali potret, nama, partai, dan nomor urut caleg. Publik sama sekali tak tahu seperti apa kualitas mereka, program sang caleg, kelebihan caleg itu dibanding kandidat lain, bagaimana rekam jejaknya, dan sebagainya. Alhasil, mereka sama saja di mata para calon pemilih. Bahkan untuk sekadar mengingat nama calon di daerah pemilihan masing-masing pun, publik tak mampu.

Lalu, apa solusinya?

Seorang teman berbisik, pilih saja caleg perempuan karena mereka relatif bersih dibanding caleg lelaki pada umumnya. Buktinya, belum pernah ada legislator atau pejabat perempuan yang ditahan karena korupsi.

Kalau dalam sebuah partai ada lebih dari satu caleg perempuan, kata teman saya itu, pilih saja yang sampean sukai namanya. Pokoknya, yang penting perempuan.

Dengan memilih caleg perempuan berarti kita berpeluang memiliki anggota Dewan yang bersih, yang tak korup. Makin banyak caleg perempuan yang terpilih, makin besar peluang itu.

Bagaimana seandainya kelak caleg perempuan itu ternyata korup juga?

"Jangan khawatir," kata teman saya itu. "Lima tahun lagi kita pilih caleg perempuan lainnya, ha-ha-ha...."

Bagaimana menurut sampean, Ki Sanak?
February 27, 2009
23:03
Printcasting is in Open Beta!
» ‎ Everyone's Blog Posts - Printcasting

Tonight, I'm extremely proud to announce that Printcasting is in open beta!

The beta site at [beta.printcasting.com] has been updated with the most recent functionality (previously only available through our closed alpha site), and you can now use it without entering a password. And for those of you who registered for our alpha test and signed an alpha testing agreement, all confidentiality is now lifted.

From this point forward, feel free to register your content, create Printcasts, send them to your friends, post links on your blogs, and use them in any way that fits within the Terms of Use.

We're putting the site out in open beta in order to get more testing in some critical areas so that we can identify and squash all remaining bugs before we officially launch in our first city: Bakersfield, California. The welcome note on the home page explains where we're at, including a link to a separate page about some remaining features that are undergoing final testing before they appear on the open beta site.

Here's a quick overview of what's working, and what you can expect to see in the coming weeks:

What's Working?

* Contributing RSS feeds that anyone can use in a Printcast magazine. IMPORTANT: PLEASE ONLY REGISTER CONTENT YOU OWN THE RIGHTS TO, or you will be breaking copyright law. If we're notified of a copyright violation, we are legally required to remove the content, and as a matter of policy we will also terminate your account. We really don't want to have to do that, so be sure to only register content that is legally yours. (If you're registering content that belongs to a company you work for that's fine -- just make sure you're able to speak for the company).

* Posting blogs on Printcasting.com, using the "Create a Blog for Me" option.

* Creating Printcasts that automatically update every day when new content is available. You will find out when new Printcast editions are available at the same time as your subscribers do.

* Creating ads. Right now, ads flow randomly into Printcasts, but they will soon be targeted to appear in Printcasts you select.

* Subscribing and unsubscribing to Printcasts that you find in the directory.

What's Still in Development?

* The ability to review and approve every edition of a Printcast before it comes out. This is partially working on our alpha, so let us know if you would like to help us test it out.

* The ability to choose individual articles that appear in each edition of a Printcast (assuming you have set it up to review and approve).

* Targeting ads to specific Printcasts.

* Paying for ads (e-commerce gateway). This will be the primary focus of the next 3 months of our development.

* Sharing ad revenue with publishers and contributors, and the Printcasting network. This is also a primary focus over the next 3 months.

One goal of an open beta is to identify issues and collect feedback so that we can address important issues before heavy marketing begins. If you have any questions, find bugs or have ideas to share, we encourage you to share them with us. You can post them in a comment here, in a comment on the beta site, or by sending a private e-mail to help@printcasting.com.

After a few weeks we plan to begin heavier marketing, so the next few weeks of beta testing are crucial. Thank you all for your interest in Printcasting, and all of your help and support. We couldn't have gotten this far without you, and there's much more to come!

Sincerely,

Dan & the Printcasting Team
February 23, 2009
20:42
Art bargains through essays and flea markets
» ‎ Everyone's Blog Posts - Printcasting

My father was an art collector. He collects various pieces from the different eras, ranging from paintings, sculptures and all those other knick-knacks. However, he is not the type who goes to auctions, private biddings, or goes to curators in order to inquire. I do not think the family has money for that. What my dad does is to read essays then scour all across the country looking for art pieces and collectibles that could be had at a bargain price.

In order to find these items, my father uses the internet and reads up on essays, blog posts, and other articles about these works. He then goes to review sites and other similar pages to see the values. After reading a certain essay, he would try to contact the owners ask if the item is for sale. If the owner agrees, my father would then negotiate prices.

Another method that my father used is to go to flea markets and garage sales. He said that you would be surprised how many great finds you can get at those places. He said that once, he even saw a painting that usually costs 100 dollars, and bought it for just 10!
February 20, 2009
10:26
Jay Small on Printcasting: "Watch closely"
» ‎ Everyone's Blog Posts - Printcasting

I'm reposting this entry from PBS MediaShift Idea Lab. Click here to read that post and associated comments.

Scripps Executive and media consultant Jay Small has a shout-out to Printcasting in his Small Initiatives blog. Here's what he says about Printcasting in a post about decapitalizing printing.

"Watch Dan Pacheco's Printcasting developments closely. My read: This project attempts to cut cost, waste and inflexibility out of producing printed periodicals, while adding customization and speed to market for publishers of most any scale. I don't know if it will work -- Pacheco doesn't either, I'd guess. But it represents a creative, logical and valiant effort, with realistic chances of success."

And later ...

"I imagine, therefore, that Pacheco's experiments and others like them may favor new entrants to local economies for printed news and information. Incumbent holding companies might be able to free up funds for capital investment by consolidating printing if they are fortunate enough to have local newspapers clustered geographically in ways that would support regional printing centers. One press rolling off 10 newspapers in a 100-mile radius saves money vs. 10 presses, or even five, printing the same titles. That short-term efficiency might release funds to invest in digital printing that could, eventually, replace even the remaining central press."

I'm reposting my comments on Jay's blog entry here, as I think they speak to how Printcasting is primarily about preserving the news and information function of local communities in a sustainable way. Our use of print (or more accurately, printable content) supports that goal, but we're not intentionally trying to "save print."

The reality is that the future of print is digital, and there's no reason to print every single publication people create. We do want to print and distribute the highest-quality publications that come out the other end of this grand experiment, and only where the potential for ad revenue is higher than what those editions could receive from online self-serve ad revenue alone. This approach turns traditional print business model upside down, and also inside out thanks to the way it invites collaboration with people in the local community.

Here are my reposted comments, with a few additions:

I indeed do not claim to know 100% that the Printcasting experiment as currently defined will work exactly the way we except, but thanks to the Knight Foundation (which funds the project via the Knight News Challenge), we will have 15 months after launching to tweak things based on local community response. We will learn a lot during that time, make changes where we need to and end up with something that is more than just a theory, and hopefully a big success. For the record, I do believe it will be a big success -- I just can't point to anything that proves it will be. That's the nature of innovation. It all comes down to making intelligent bets and staying flexible.

Our objective is not so much to "save print" as it is to find new, sustainable ways to meet the news and information needs of local communities -- beginning in Bakersfield, but ultimately serving many different local communities.

Our idea for Printcasting came out of our experience in Bakersfield of creating multiple niche-focused social networking sites. We noticed that the brands that had a lot of user-generated content and printed magazines that locally distributed that content attracted more ad revenue than the sites that had less user-generated content and no print component.

As the business model supporting the general-interest printed product (the daily newspaper) began to crumble, while the business for niche digital-print hybrid products remained steady or increased, we asked ourselves, "what would need to happen in order for this new niche model to replace what we're losing in the general-interest space?" The answer was that we needed not just a handful of niche sites and magazines, but hundreds or thousands, all in a network that was supported by affordable self-serve advertising. We then submitted that idea to the Knight News Challenge, got funding and got to work.

I also want to point out that we're not assuming that all delivery of Printcasting publications needs to be via physical printing. And since the focus of our product is democratized publishing, where anyone can be a magazine publisher, we also don't want that. As with blogs and any type of user-generated content, there will be a wide range of quality and we will only invest in printing those that merit printing. Does this assume that a large quantity will be of low quality? Most likely, yes. Look at the blogosphere. Most of what's out there isn't up to the quality standards we expect from The New York Times, but it does have its fans who are willing to apply a different quality standard in exchange for getting the niche information they don't get from their newspaper.

Another theory we will be testing out is what I think of as the "American Idol" approach to print publishing. After a few months of outreach, we anticipate having a hundred or more Printcasts out there. Most will be subscribed to online so that readers who want to be informed receive an update in e-mail about new editions. They can read the content online -- in HTML form as well as in a "pageflip" view of the PDF -- or download and print the magazine on their home printers.

We will track each Printcast's online traffic and PDF downloads, as well as reader ratings, and use that information to identify high-quality citizen publications that we think could attract even more advertising revenue if they were printed in larger quantities and locally distributed.

Here's just one example of how this may play out. Numerous people at the Californian over the years have suggested creating a local wine publication, but creating that ourselves would be risky. It would take a lot of up-front investment in design, planning, sales outreach and content creation, and it may take many years for such a publication to break even. It could also fail.

With Printcasting, we'd reduce our risk and increase audience engagement by partnering with the community to generate a great new local wine magazine. We know there are people in town who know far more about wine than we do, and some are already blogging about it. Others -- such as local wine shops -- could write wine columns in their sleep, but they may not be doing it yet because they don't have an online audience to make it worth their while. We'd reach out to all of these people and get them to register their content (or post it on Printcasting.com), then in 5 minutes make a self-updating wine Printcast that features their content. Others may come along and create their own Printcasts about wine, or use the wine reviews in Printcasts with a slightly different focus. We may print a few thousand copies of our wine Printcast, or possibly even a citizen-produced version, and place additional pages of ads in it.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of other Printcasts may have a good online following of people who print copies from home, and those Printcasts will be supported by self-serve ad revenue alone. Each will each make a little money and reach only a handful of people, and that will work just great for their publishers and readers who are currently getting no compensation for their online content.

Some topics may be so niche that we would never, ever want to invest in printing them ourselves. But no matter -- the community is full of people with home printers, and they can use their $60 ink cartridges to print them out if it's worth it to them. I should also point out that the Printcasting network will take a small portion (around 10%) of ad revenue from all Printcasts to support this activity, so it will be in our interest to foster wide adoption of mostly-digital subscriptions.

The revenue from the self-serve ads as well as the additional ads we sell would be shared with those bloggers. Why do that? We want them to continue contributing high-quality content, and letting them share in the rewards is one way to motivate them. But it will also cost far less to share a portion of ad revenue than it would to hire a writer or two or three to write about those topics -- let alone a publication designer, dedicated salesperson, and so on.

As you can see, while we will be using the print medium in some cases, this model is completely different from how print-based media businesses operate today. It merges the best of the Web with the best of print, and throws out all the inefficiency and waste.

I also hope that Printcasting will remove once and for all the artificial, largely institutional barriers that exist between "the print side" and "the online side" at most newspapers. In the Printcasting model, all content originates online, and flows into print where the ad revenue can support it. If not, the content is still printable by millions of home printers where readers think it's worth the cost. The dividing line between print and online departments, not to mention staff and community, will become very difficult to discern -- as it should be. Then we can all get along with the business of serving new audiences, collaborating with them and supporting our efforts with shared revenue.
February 17, 2009
12:33
Printcasting Screencasts
» ‎ Everyone's Blog Posts - Printcasting

Here are a few recently updated screencast videos of the Printcasting beta.

"Create Your Magazine"

Printcasting Publisher Demo - Closed Beta from Dan Pacheco on Vimeo.

"Place Your Ads"
February 12, 2009
18:16
Preview the Printcasting Publisher Flow
» ‎ Everyone's Blog Posts - Printcasting

Four months ago we posted a video of an early conceptual prototype of what the Printcasting publishing tool might eventually look like. Now we're in beta, and we can show you exactly what it will look like when it launches in just a few short weeks. How time flies!

The video below shows a screencast of the Printcasting publisher experience as it existed as of February 12, 2009. You can watch a publisher choosing feeds, layouts and header images to create an automatically-generated PDF that can be used to print an 8-page magazine. We're really proud of how far we've come, and can't wait to begin local marketing and outreach in Bakersfield on March 2!

"Create Your Magazine" Screencast

We hope to open the Printcasting beta site to anyone as early as next week, but you can try it out now. All we ask is that you join the beta testing group on this site. It gives us an idea of who's playing around with the beta, and also lets you post feedback and bugs. We've paid close attention to everyone's feedback, and if you participated in alpha tests it's likely that you will see many of the usability problems you identified fixed.
January 27, 2009
18:12
Printcasting Featured on "Spark"
» ‎ Everyone's Blog Posts - Printcasting

Last week I got a call from a guy named Dan Misener who works on the CBC radio show, "Spark". He was very well informed about Printcasting and asked me a ton of questions about it. Then he asked me if I could head down to a nearby public radio station in Denver to give a longer interview. That happened yesterday, and one day later the radio show is up. You can listen to the Podcast on the "Spark" site.

Many thanks to Dan, and also host Nora Young, for a great interview. And extra special thanks to them for doing their homework, which as a former journalist I'm embarrassed to say is becoming a rarity among reporters.

In other news, we are getting our beta site ready over the next couple of weeks, and we may invite some of our alpha testers in to help make sure everything is in good shape. Our soft date is February 9 and -- knock on wood -- we're feeling good about hitting it. Based on how the beta is performing, we will take off the password soon after, and then start moving down the runway toward our March launch!

If you've tried out the alpha, the beta will be similar, but will include two very important features: daily feed updates from registered blogs, and ongoing self-updating editions of Printcasts.

Wish us luck!

- Dan & the Printcasting Team
January 26, 2009
12:51
Printcasting Helps Spark a Global Movement
» ‎ Everyone's Blog Posts - Printcasting

Here is an excerpt and link to our latest post on PBS MediaShift Idea Lab. It focuses on some of the great ideas and feedback posted by the 191 members of this social network.

Ever since the Knight News Challenge was first announced in 2006, I've been fascinated and inspired by its open nature. While the primary goal of the contest is to fund great ideas for new local news and information projects, it has a larger mission. It also requires those projects to eventually be released under open source licenses. To me this has always meant that News Challenge projects have a responsibility to a larger community of people who will one day repeat our successes in their communities.
Read the full post on PBS MediaShift Idea Lab ...