Posts Tagged New Business

Can newspapers also be tech incubators?

Posted by on Thursday, 5 January, 2012

We’ve written before about the need for newspapers to be “digital first” and to think like startups as they try to adapt to the evolution of the media industry. Can a traditional newspaper take an even bigger step and actually help give birth to new technologies or services by acting like a startup incubator? At least two of them are planning to give it a try: the Philadelphia News Network just launched an incubator, and Digital First Media recently launched a venture-capital arm and says it plans to invest in tech startups. While both of these efforts could easily fail, at least these two media entities aren’t just sitting back and relying on paywalls to save them.

The Philadelphia incubator is known as Project Liberty, and is being operated by Ben Franklin Technology Partners, a non-profit agency aimed at fostering new business in Pennsylvania — who also chose the three existing entrants to the program — but will be based in the same complex that is home to the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, as well as the online site Philly.com. The project is being funded by a 0,000 grant from the Knight Foundation, which has backed a number of media-related startups over the years, and gives the three startups six months worth of office space and other support while they work on partnerships with the papers.

New technologies could help companies adapt

Read/Write Web has an overview of the three startups that have been accepted to the program: CloudMine provides an API service that makes it easier for developers to come up with new applications, and another named SnipSnap lets customers scan printed coupons and then use them online — a natural fit for a newspaper that carries plenty of advertising inserts. The third is ElectNext, which is developing a web app to help readers decide who to vote for, a goal that has an obvious fit with the editorial side of the newspapers.

The CEO of the Philadelphia News Network, meanwhile — former Newsweek publisher Greg Osberg — has said he has much bigger goals for the project, and that he wants to “find the next Foursquare and house it at Philly.com.”

Whether that’s going to happen or not remains to be seen, but at least the startup idea shows a spark of life from the newly reformed newspaper company, which was created after lenders to the previous owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News bought the assets out of bankruptcy. And it’s not the first unusual venture to come out of the new media company: earlier this year, it announced a plan to offer discounted Android-based tablets to readers who signed up for one or two-year subscriptions to the Inquirer and the Daily News.

Digital First Media, the parent company of the Media News Group — which owns a chain of newspapers across the U.S., including the Denver Post and the San Jose Mercury News — is also wading into the tech-startup funding game. The company’s CEO, John Paton, who helped turn around the bankrupt Journal-Register Co. before taking the helm of Digital First Media, last month announced the creation of a new venture-capital arm that will invest in media-related tech startups. Paton said this approach was a natural outgrowth of the company’s “digital first” mantra, which he has outlined in a number of presentations as well as on his blog.

Experimentation is something more companies should try

I admit I was skeptical when I heard about Digital First’s new venture-capital entity, in part because it sounded like the media company was going to try and compete with the hundreds of VC firms and angels who are already trying (and mostly failing) to pick the next Foursquare or Facebook. But Paton said the emphasis of the new venture would be on partnering with companies that could help the company take advantage of digital media in new ways, which is something more traditional media outlets should be thinking about.

Other media companies have already taken similar steps in this direction: the Financial Times just acquired the company that developed its HTML5 app, which allowed the newspaper to do an end-run around Apple’s restrictions on iOS apps — as well as the 30-percent fees it charges content companies that offer subscriptions. And the New York Times helped give birth to News.me, a social content-filtering app that was later acquired by Betaworks, a New York-based incubator run by John Borthwick, in a deal that gave the newspaper shares in the company. The NYT also has its own in-house incubator of sorts in the beta620 lab project.

As Om and others have mentioned, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about the explosion of incubators — a trend that didn’t end well in the last tech bubble — but despite the low odds of success, it’s still interesting to see companies like the Philadelphia Media Network and Digital First Media trying to think outside the box a little.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr users John Donges and David Daniels

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Say Hello to Memory. It’s the New Hard Disk

Posted by on Wednesday, 28 December, 2011

“Memory is the new disk,” Jim Gray would say. The database pioneer died in 2007 after he was lost at sea, but like so much of the man, these words about memory and disk live on, describing a new movement across the database business and beyond.



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Boost Your Website Design With Good Key Words

Posted by on Sunday, 1 May, 2011

Did you know that there is a program out there that can further optimize the keywords you have adopted for your website? Good Keywords V3 runs smoothly with Google’s Keyword Tool, to gather the best overall results. You will get a Keyword Database Manager tool that links to Google when you use it. As such, you can get much more out of your searches with Google’s Keyword Tool. Increasing the attention on your website design is possible, as you will be using better keywords to optimize your website soon.

Good Keywords V3 does not affect what you get from Google negatively whatsoever. Google will not be annoyed with your use of this software in the slightest, as it is completely legitimate. The misspelled keyword tool will be extremely handy and is bundled with the software. All you do is insert your keyword and it gives you several of the most popular misspellings for it. This is a great way to fully take advantage of your keyword because you can use the misspelled words as well for more results.

Good Keywords V3 also comes with a built-in Phrase Builder. Since searching habits have moved on from single keywords to ‘key phrases’, this tool can create phrases based on the keywords you intend to use. This is a great way to optimize your results because you are broadening your audience who can find you. The keyword suggestion tool actually provides with you plenty of alternative keywords that will only benefit those that you personally thought of.

One of the best ways to improve your search engine ranking, especially if you are about to build a brand new website for your business, is through using this website designer. It might seem daunting that your brand new website has no chance to get to the top of the search engine rankings, but it’s not impossible thanks to this software. It allows you to use the best keywords for your product or service, so you have a better chance of more people finding your site in searches. The software also has great customer support, so you do not have to worry about being left in the dark if you have any questions.


The Ladbrokes Free Bet Offer: Key Help And Advice For Novices

Posted by on Friday, 25 March, 2011

Betting online is definitely very fashionable right now and there are lots of online bookmakers like Ladbrokes competing for new business. That’s an element that beginners normally find puzzling. Competition is usually a good thing since it motivates organizations and businesses to work harder to attract potential customers, and that’s why online bookmakers are actually giving consumers signup bonuses such as the Ladbrokes free bet. Really the only drawback is usually that many people who would not have much experience involving online betting could struggle to choose from the many different promotions on the market.

In addition, as though choosing among all the various online bookmakers and also free bet promotions wasn’t difficult enough, the promotions may also be continually altering. It is not just novices who will find it difficult to remember the ever shifting online betting industry. In fact expert players would most likely find it very hard.

The great news is that if you do really feel stuck, there exist websites that you can make use of to find no cost professional assistance. The best option is definitely to identify a free impartial source of advice that will show you all the current bookmaker free bet promotions. Even better, this unique free resource will evaluate each and every free bet offer and provides suggestions on those that are best. I am referring here to free bets websites. This important resource will direct novices through the occasionally perplexing world of online betting and all this unique information is completely free .

A good free bets website will reveal how the Ladbrokes free bet measures up to all of the bonus deals offered by their rivals. You can actually evaluate lots of different free bet offers and read reviews regarding each one, so it’s an easy task to choose which is actually ideal for you.

An important thing to consider is that you can become a member of as many bookmakers and get as many free bets as you would like. It’s not necessary to just pick one and remain faithful to them. Consequently you’ll be able to accumulate numerous free bets which can offer you a substantial amount of free money to use.

Good free bets websites will always ensure that every piece of information exhibited is always up to date, therefore you’re certain you are considering the most up-to-date Ladbrokes free bet and also other offers. This is very important as there’s nothing worse than making your final decision on outdated information.

Maybe you can now see that going to a free bets website prior to when you join up with an online bookmaker may be beneficial. And so, now I’ll tell you the way to get the main Ladbrokes free bet in precisely three basic steps.

Initially, visit a free bets website and evaluate the choice of bookmaker free bets on offer, study all of the critical reviews or suggestions and choose a bookmaker to join.

Finding out how to meet the criteria for a particular free bet and how much money you can get is the second step. It really is advantageous to be aware of this info at the start and so the website will often ensure that you get an indication of this.

Once you’ve looked at the entire independent review article plus established the fact that the bonus is suited to your needs, you may then sign up in confidence and start to enjoy the Ladbrokes free bet bonus.


Easy Methods to Boost Your Free Traffic Percentage

Posted by on Tuesday, 8 February, 2011

If you are a frequent user with the internet you will definitely have found that there are a variety of internet sites dealing together with various materials, and it is typically quite difficult to find what you look for since there are countless sites to read via. So how exactly do you think you’re, a newbie in the earth of the internet, likely to find your place among all these well-known websites? You would find that even harder to do so for anyone who is a small business as well as a blogger and don’t own too many resources to handle marketing in order to help advertise your products or bring you work out there.

If you’re a new business or possibly a writer you would know that you cannot afford to spend on various marketing techniques which are often quite costly. Big firms can afford to employ the services of pc hardware training engine company and graphic designers for making their website meet the requirements so as to drive more traffic into the site. If you can’t purchase it, does this shows that there’s no hope in your case? No of course not really. There are several ways by which you could increase free traffic and not having to pay anything at most!

These methods to maximize free traffic could be just like, or even better than paid internet marketing techniques, if used successfully. The key would lie in understanding these different processes to increase free traffic after which you can employ them with a fantastic plan. Remember that this would require determination. You would need to do some careful research as to what sort of techniques to increase free traffic could meet your needs exactly. While you could try a total load of techniques, remember that if they don’t work, you’ve wasted much of your valuable time trying to find it to work. Because of this , some background research is vital.

Several sites online provide tips and ideas on the method that you could increase free traffic aimed at your web. A great seo software that definitely could help in this situation is micro niche finder. Read these articles in addition to follow these tutorials to help you get you website listed on the top of a seek engines’ results page.

Some of the ways in which you might increase free traffic aimed at your web include, adding your how does a person free directory listings that deal with the kinds of blogs/websites from the niche that you help. You could also employ a number of the easy well-known seo techniques for instance using certain keywords and phrases to ensure that anyone who searches for them can find your website easily. In a similar fashion, you could find sites that would like to put up articles submitted by budding writer/new businesses without cost. Doing so would also provide inlinks, thereby being a strategy to increase free traffic.


Take In-House Printing To The Max With An Oki C5500 Printer

Posted by on Tuesday, 21 December, 2010

Making the decision to start a new business can be one that is filled with anxiety coupled with a great deal of worry. While there is no money coming in, there are purchases that need to be made in order to make the company viable. Very few companies can operate without having a reliable printer that can handle all the tasks of a new and growing company. When it comes to efficiency and cost effectiveness, the Okidata C5500 Printer is one of the best choices and the Okidata C5500 toners is within most new businesses price range.

Nothing is worse for a family than not being able to make ends meet and for this reason, many people decide to open their own company. There are not many companies that are hiring and the odds of being laid off are much higher with this failing economy. When looking into a new venture, it is important to know what is trending now and what has staying power, then merge the two and see where there is a lack in the community.

There are always going to be purchases that need to be made in order to get the company up and running. For those who need help with funding, they need to write up a business plan that can be taken to financial institutions when applying for a loan. Once the loan is approved, these funds can help to get the business open and can be used in any way the company sees fit.

One of the most vital pieces of equipment for any type of company is the printer. A good printer is a necessity for any company and the Okidata C5500 Printer is a great choice because of its flexibility and its printing power. The cost is very comparable with other printers and will not eat up the entire budget for office supplies.

Another cost saver is purchasing the Okidata C5500 toner instead of going with one of the generic brands, just remember to purchase more than one at time to save even more money. Many printer companies charge more for the inks than they do for the printer so being able to save on this expense is great for the company. It is vital for start up companies to have the ability to save when possible.

As a start up company, these savings are even more important than for larger, well established companies. Just because there is this huge savings in purchasing the printer and toner does not mean that there is going to be a lack in the quality of the printing. Even photographic quality prints can be made using this printer and toner combination and the printer does not take its time when producing them.

It is never an easy decision to make when choosing to open one’s own business. Most start up companies fail within the first two years and those that make it do so because of proper planning and having the best equipment on hand. For printing, the best option for a start up company is the LED Okidata C5500 Printer and Oki C5500 toner. The Okidata toner will last for what seems like forever and you are always assured of quality printing when an Okidata printer is used.