publishers

At this time of alleged retirement, I wonder if Bill Gates has turned to anyone for advice.

Just in case, I have done so for him.

I have been strangely immersed in a book this week called "How To Get Rich."

It is written by a man, also allegedly retired(ish), who knows he is called the Bearded Dwarf by many others.

A man who openly admits, in his past, to having taken many girls simultaneously to far-off places for far-off behaviors, while enjoying some of Peru's more troubling exports.

His name is Felix Dennis.

I have … Read more

Google announced on Friday the release of a number of updates to its Blogger publishing platform--well, sort of. The updates have gone into Blogger in Draft, the service's beta platform, with the expectation that they'll eventually become full features.

The updates will seem a bit humdrum for people who don't use Blogger, but for those who do, it's a set of important baby steps toward shaping the service to fit customer feedback. That's especially important for Google, as this is one niche of the Web where Mountain View doesn't have a huge lead: there … Read more

While blogging tools like WordPress and TypePad have recently undergone considerable overhauls to their respective blogging interfaces, a service called Viviti is going in a different direction. The blog host lets you edit and manage your content right on the page. There's still a simple WYSIWYG editor, but all you have to do to edit and change content and the look and feel of the site is to click and drag the bits and pieces around. Users of Ning will feel right at home.

Like other hosted blogging tools there are a tons of customization options. You have your … Read more

A month after announcing his resignation from PC World magazine, tech journalism veteran Harry McCracken has announced a new venture: Technologizer, an online destination for general technology news and analysis.

The new site will be launched later this summer in conjunction with advertising start-up Federated Media Publishing; founder John Battelle is himself a veteran of the tech press, having co-founded Wired magazine and founded The Industry Standard in the 1990s.

Federated will also work to develop the site, in addition to providing ads, much as it did for Boing Boing Gadgets and Webb Alert. Technologizer will join the company's &… Read more

Despite occasional oddities and a distinct lack of polish, Scribus offers up an open-source freeware desktop publisher robust with a full complement of useful features. Available for Windows, in a portable edition, and for Macs, too, they compare very favorably against more expensive competition.

The detailed Web site includes a wealth of documentation, tutorials, and notes on everything from installation problems to drawing a grid to creating a text frame. As with other similar open-source apps like Blender, the online resources for Scribus are nothing less than invaluable. The interface doesn't sing, but it does hit all the right … Read more

Red Herring's 19 employees were evicted Tuesday from the tech publisher's offices in Belmont, Calif., after it fell behind in rent payments, according to a source close to the situation.

Deputies from the San Mateo County Sheriff's Department on Tuesday arrived at around 3 p.m. and gave the staff 30 minutes to leave the premises, said the source, who is not authorized to speak on the matter. A locksmith and the landlord's attorney showed up at the same time to change the locks.

Employees were seen trotting back and forth from the office to their … Read more

Earlier today I had a great demo with Webjam, a do-it-all publishing service that launched at the Le Web conference in late 2006. In many ways it was ahead of its time with a platform that lets you create your own social network, blog, online shop, or iGoogle alternative.

Like Ning (which picked up $60 million in funding last month), it lets users build pages out of various components without needing to know any coding. The twist is that if you come across someone else's design of modules that you dig, you can copy the entire thing to your own page and make it your own. The same goes for individual modules, which can be ported over to any of your Webjam pages, complete with whatever feeds or standalone content they contain.

Co-founder and CEO Yann Motte, formerly of Yahoo Europe thinks his platform's got what it takes to rise above the noise of other platform services, social networks, and blogging tools because it can do nearly all of those things nonexclusively. "[Users] don't have to split their activities between several Web sites," he says. "It works for you and me, and other people in this industry, but it does not scale for the average user." Does that mean he wants people to give up their Facebook profiles? No, but Motte believes that Webjam offers the average user more possible combinations to post and discover quality content than the competition.

The service has already seen accelerating growth in the U.S. over the past few months. Motte says the site has been growing 10 percent a week and is seeing users spend more than 12 minutes on the site (according to Compete), something I think is due to the page creation tool, which is really well done. If you've ever used Netvibes or Pageflakes it uses the same system; you simply have a bunch of different boxes you can drop down onto a blank editing canvas, which can be skinned and re-arranged to your liking. Motte says that in many ways his system is like Facebook's except more open because you get more control over the privacy controls of each box, as well as the data that goes with it.

These extensive privacy settings might be one of the most complex bits of the service. Each module has its own settings for viewership and editing. Users who visit your creation can become members, and in some cases co-contributors to the content that gets pushed out for others to read. Motte's example was to show me a page where a Webjam user had two different versions of a blog--one for everyone in the world to see, and a member's-only version.

One thing I'm not sold on is that people would pick Webjam as a blogging platform over a more established service like WordPress or Blogger. Motte acknowledges that Webjam's blog editor does not offer as many tools or the same level of community interaction, but comes back to say that if you decide to change the focus of your site later on it's not limited to being just a blog, and that's not a freedom most users are used to having. One service that took that idea and ran with it was Tumblr, which lets people change course if they get tired of writing things, and simply lets them republish photos, videos, audio, and IM conversations.

When it comes down to it, I found Webjam's creation tools and skinning to be far easier to use than the ones that come with Ning. I think the results looked a little better too, at least with some of the themes you can apply which are on par with some of the really simple and beautiful ones on iGoogle. What's not as established as Ning is the business model, which for now is simple text ads. The good news for power users looking to potentially get a little cash off of the hosted sites is that the service is rolling out a premium plan in July, which is currently being offered for free until then. Premium members get all the usual perks of services like this, with domain mapping and the option to remove or place banner ads.

To see some examples of popular Webjam pages you can go here. You can also check out a quick demo of the site maker in action after the break. … Read more

It's very cool to see Dries Buytaert, co-founder of Acquia and founder of Drupal, listed on Businessweek's list of the world's top technology entrepreneurs. The story of Drupal - started by Dries in his spare time - is amazing, and testifies to the power of open source.

Great work, Dries. You deserve it.

The first rule of building an active online community? Don't tell people they need to be active.

Helium.com, a hub for citizen journalists and writers, drew hundreds of heated--and sometimes snarky--comments from its membership over the weekend after the company said it wanted to change its payment system to reward the most active participants, and slough off the dead weight.

Helium pays a portion of its advertising revenue to people who write the most widely read stories on the site--popularity that is based on user reviews from members. But the company suggested that its new system would … Read more