Thursday, April 21, 2005
Newspapers, Kraft Foods' Marketing, and Free Software
Advertising Age had a good article today, "Analysts: Newspapers Could Lose $4 Billion to Internet," which focuses mainly on the classified ad business that they have lost. Classified has always been a huge source of high margin dollars for dailies and non-dailies. http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=44826
A second article has yet more comments about the state of newspapers: "Newspaper Conference Bemoans Changing Consumption Patterns" http://adage.com/news.cms?newsId=44820
Here is a good, but short, article on Kraft Foods' use of multichannel marketing. www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3499396
For you road warriors out there, Computer Shopper is running an article on the top 50 free software programs http://shopper.cnet.com/4002-7409_9-5668904.html
Among my favorites, some of which are not mentioned in the article are:
Word processing (compatible with MS Word): AbiWord www.abiword.com
Office suite OpenOffice is a full featured suite (compatible with MS Office), with word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, data base, drawing, free PDF maker and free Macromedia Flash making capabilities. Get it at www.openoffice.org (new version 2 to be released in this summer; stable version is 1.1.4, but take the risk of the version 2 beta download)
Browser AvantBrowser works "on top" of MS Internet Explorer. It has built in ad blockers, popup blockers, many other features; asks for free-will donation; can be set to automatically clean up cookies and temporary files. www.avantbrowser.com
Audio recording and editing Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Instant messaging GAIM is just superb, consolidating my AIM and Yahoo Messenger addresses, and saving me from all those ads and popups. http://gaim.sourceforge.net/
File management PowerDesk 5 replaces Windows explorer; if you're an old DOS user and remember Lotus Magellan or XTree or Symantec's Norton Navigator which was released with Windows95, this is is for you. PowerDesk just does things Explorer can't. It has many more functions than Google Desktop Search, too. The full version is PowerDesk 6; if you have the full version of 5, I can't say that there are big reasons for upgrading. V-Com's SystemSuite has PowerDesk built in, and is a better deal than Norton Systemworks. Check out the free version of PowerDesk 5 at http://www.v-com.com/product/PowerDesk_Free_Trial.html
PDF making If you need to make a PDF or don't have good reason to buy the full Acrobat package, OpenOffice is a good alternative. But, if you want to keep using your current office suite, add this PDF making software to your system http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator
A second article has yet more comments about the state of newspapers: "Newspaper Conference Bemoans Changing Consumption Patterns" http://adage.com/news.cms?newsId=44820
Here is a good, but short, article on Kraft Foods' use of multichannel marketing. www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3499396
For you road warriors out there, Computer Shopper is running an article on the top 50 free software programs http://shopper.cnet.com/4002-7409_9-5668904.html
Among my favorites, some of which are not mentioned in the article are:
Word processing (compatible with MS Word): AbiWord www.abiword.com
Office suite OpenOffice is a full featured suite (compatible with MS Office), with word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, data base, drawing, free PDF maker and free Macromedia Flash making capabilities. Get it at www.openoffice.org (new version 2 to be released in this summer; stable version is 1.1.4, but take the risk of the version 2 beta download)
Browser AvantBrowser works "on top" of MS Internet Explorer. It has built in ad blockers, popup blockers, many other features; asks for free-will donation; can be set to automatically clean up cookies and temporary files. www.avantbrowser.com
Audio recording and editing Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Instant messaging GAIM is just superb, consolidating my AIM and Yahoo Messenger addresses, and saving me from all those ads and popups. http://gaim.sourceforge.net/
File management PowerDesk 5 replaces Windows explorer; if you're an old DOS user and remember Lotus Magellan or XTree or Symantec's Norton Navigator which was released with Windows95, this is is for you. PowerDesk just does things Explorer can't. It has many more functions than Google Desktop Search, too. The full version is PowerDesk 6; if you have the full version of 5, I can't say that there are big reasons for upgrading. V-Com's SystemSuite has PowerDesk built in, and is a better deal than Norton Systemworks. Check out the free version of PowerDesk 5 at http://www.v-com.com/product/PowerDesk_Free_Trial.html
PDF making If you need to make a PDF or don't have good reason to buy the full Acrobat package, OpenOffice is a good alternative. But, if you want to keep using your current office suite, add this PDF making software to your system http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator
