| Diffing The New York Times on thermal paper Posted: 20 Nov 2013 12:31 PM PST Noah Feehan, a “Maker” at The New York Times R&D Lab, wanted to create a physical artifact that marked all the changes in Times headlines, in real time. So he built Diff,  a small device that monitors the internal events stream of The New York Times and prints out a summary each time an active headline is changed. As it runs, it generates a long stream of changes printed on thermal paper: text that was removed from a headline is rendered as inverted, while additions to a headline are underlined…
Of course, we were aware of and inspired by the excellent NewsDiffs project, which provides a more complete and persistent summary of changes to entire articles across several different websites. Our objective in making Diff was as much rooted in the notion of "fixing" an evanescent resource in a place and time (as NewsDiffs does) as it was a reaction to the emerging shape of "internet things" whose purpose is to transpose or transform the properties of network space onto physical space, and vice versa.
Diff found that headlines get changed roughly every five to seven minutes, unless big news was breaking. Okay, here’s a Nieman Lab hook: We've only just begun exploring the full potential of the data source for this project, which is exciting in its own right: it's basically a near-real-time, highly-detailed stream of every event that our publishing framework sees, from the first words typed into our CMS, to an article's publishing in its own section, to its promotion to the front page. I unplugged Diff after a week or so of printing, and have saved the 300-odd feet of generated text for some future application. Expect to see more stream-processing tools, internet-things and interaction experiments here soon!
Feehan’s built a lot of nifty things in his young career, but for me it’ll be hard for him to top Steak Filter, in which he made a video of a steak cooking by sending the video signal through the steak as it cooked. (More cooked = less moisture = degraded signal. Now that’s exploring meatspace.) (This is what eventually happens to the signal.)  |
| “Five Ways the Advertising Industry Is About to Transform” Posted: 20 Nov 2013 10:55 AM PST That’s according to Bob Lord, global CEO of AOL Networks, writing for HBR. All five make sense, but let me highlight two of particular interest to publishers: 1. Automation will take hold. As automated, or programmatic, advertising technologies replace unwieldy manual media planning and buying processes that eat up too much time and overlook critical consumer data, more (human) resources can be directed toward the creative side of the house, and toward engaging and effective advertising that drives commerce, for example, native advertising, sponsorships, take-overs and other strategic initiatives. Automation is a win for web publishers as well. Programmatic advertising does not mean publishers need to put their inventory up to the highest bidder. It simply means they can make it accessible via a technology platform that makes it easier for buyers to access it while still setting premium pricing. Programmatic advertising is about automation, not auctions. Bottom line: sophisticated technologies will serve to complement and enhance the creative talents of humans by freeing up their time that has — to a great degree — been occupied by rote tasks such as completing insertion orders for ad buys. Projections put about 22% of all digital media being automated next year — up from just 4% in 2010.
4. Premium advertising will get more premium. 2014 will be the year when immersive advertising experiences that tie directly to a transaction will begin to flourish on the Web. As automation kicks in and time is given back to agencies and marketers to be more creative, we will see an industry call for more premium opportunities that goes beyond banners and gets much more sophisticated and customizable. Whether it's a new live advertising execution (think Oreos response during the 2013 Super Bowl blackout) or a commerce campaign that drives sales through location based content, digital advertising will be remarkable, unique and experience-based.
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