Dr Joe's Printing Industry Blog

Business Week has a story about Random House's digital initiatives called "Random House: Digital Is Our Destiny" http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_48/b3961106.htm

CNET had a multicolumn series on the effect of the Internet and all of the new communications and collaborative approaches it has brought (like "wikipedia" and the like). The most interesting article is about the kids who have grown up in this environment, "the millenials." That article starts on page 17 of this PDF
http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fnews%2Ecom%2Ecom%2Fpdf%2Fne%2F2005%2FtakingBack%2Epdf&edId=3&siteId=3&oId=&ontId=&lop=pdf.tbw
The article can be seen online at http://news.com.com/The+millennials+usher+in+a+new+era/2009-1025_3-5944666.html?tag=ne.tbw.nav
Great line: "For their grandparents, the bicycle was a symbol of childhood independence. Today, for many kids and youngadults, it is the Internet." I can see someone picking up some kind of task they haven't done in years and instead of saying "it's as easy as riding a bicycle", or "once you learn to ride a bike, you never forget" they'll say "once you learn to Google, you never forget."

It's no accident that Internet ad revenues for the third quarter were more than $3 billion. Ah, but it's just a fad :)
http://www.iab.net/news/pr_2005_11_21.asp

Publishing guru Bob Sacks recently highlighted a Business Week story about Carl Icahn's attempt to take over Time Warner. http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/05_48/b3961119.htm?chan=gl
I wrote the following note to Bob when I saw the story:

• What's really sad about this is that AOL-TimeWarner was a great idea. But it was one of those great ideas on paper, or today, one of those great ideas that MBA's create using Excel spreadsheets. The top wanted to merge, but no one under them did. TW Music? No, the Internet is a bad thing for music. TW Magazines? The Internet will kill our advertising and subscription revenue. TW Cable? Nah, no one will pay for an AOL subscription once they get cable access. TW Books? E-books... no way.... the Internet is not a serious way to distribute content.
• Years from now, people will look back on AOL-TW as one of the greatest of missed opportunities, and their internal dawdling with legacy legal and bureaucratic issues which allowed Google and Yahoo to mature beyond just being search engines and become real media players. Shame on you AOL-TW, you teased us, and let us down. But we should have expected it because big companies are best at protecting their internal political turfs and not creating exciting new businesses. Long live the entrepreneurs!

Advertising Age reports on a DMA study called "Financial Direct Mail Marketing Takes a Dive" -- but it was the subhead that caught my attention: "Lead Generation Response Rates Drop to 1.43% From 2.48% in 2003." Seems that these mailings went beyond the point of diminishing returns, and that's the point where you start looking for other media or better targeting. USPS direct mail data are still look pretty good, but they don't break details down by segment. Perhaps other segments are putting more into direct mail at a greater rate than financial is decreasing... that is, if they're decreasing at all... with interest rates heading up, it makes each credit card customer all the more valuable it would seem, and that value might cause them to tolerate lower response rates.
http://adage.com/news.cms?newsId=46845#

Road Warrior (incredible computer deals!):
Strongly recommended-- Norton Ghost 10 for FREE!
http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=201955877&adid=17070&dcaid=17070
250GB external drive for $99! http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=10384871&adid=17070&dcaid=17070