As traditional print newspaper readership is declining, online content is becoming more and more predominant. Just fewer than three-quarters of Internet users gather their news today online, according to the 2010 State of the Media Annual Report by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. People are exploring various media outlets to get their news when they want it, especially as the amount of information continues to grow online.

But this transition presents itself with issues. Daily print newspaper circulation has dropped just over 25 percent since 2000, according to the State of the Media 2010 Report, and in September 2009, industry-wide circulation fell just under 11 percent from a year earlier. “Those declines, however, pale by comparison to the loss in revenues, which represent a more significant problem,” stated the report.

Both online and newspaper ad revenue has fallen over 40 percent over the last three years, concluded the report. According to a new survey on online economics, online users simply ignore online advertisements; “79 percent of online news consumers say they rarely, if ever, have clicked on an online ad.”

Newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal have tried a different approach to make money online by putting up a paywall. Beginning in January 2011, The New York Times is also implementing a type of a paywall. After users view and read a number of articles each month, the reader must pay a fee for unlimited access. Print subscribers will receive full access to the website, said an article in the New York Times. This paywall, the New York Times stated, should not have much of an effect on the occasional visitor but will target the devoted readers.

However, less than ten percent said to the State of the Media 2010 Annual Report that they would actually pay for online content. When polled if they had to pay for content, over half choose the subscription model – access to all the content on the site. Some readers do not feel this type of content is worth paying for.  Most audiences of a typical news organization are not willing to pay for online content, especially as many are beginning to gather their news elsewhere, such as Facebook, Twitter and Google.

Many readers feel online content is and should be different than what is found in the print product. Online content is something one should be able to transmit quickly, as well as provide the means for one to keep up-to-date on local, statewide, national, and international occurrences. The stories should be short or long, providing as much or as little information as needed to get the point across.

Newspapers will need to determine how to produce high-quality online content users are willing to pay for, or if readers are not willing to pay for the content, journalists will need to rethink their model for digital delivery. The industry must do more or the readers must adapt.

We at Media Genesis do not feel that regular news outlets should charge for online content, though. If news organizations want to maintain a readership, providing free online content is how they’re going to keep it.

But while online content should be free, this freedom comes at a cost: whether it is the newspaper cutting back on jobs, the advertisers generating new ideas to create revenue or the readers paying for content. Maybe the “payment” will appear in other means.

Whatever the cost, if traditional journalists and newspapers that have built up credibility after all these years are replaced by citizen journalists and bloggers, for instance, who will produce the news that gets fed to various search engines that people can trust? Will there be partnerships between old and new media outlets? Maybe collaboration between citizen and traditional journalists will be possible. Perhaps aggregators will find ways integrate original content, becoming the “new” news provider.

While the future cannot be predicted, Journalism has continually evolved and must continue to evolve as the industry moves forward. Journalists will have to find innovative ways to adapt, yet it might just be a little different than to what most are accustomed.

If you are reading this, there is a good chance you are tethered to a power strip which is tethered to the socket in the wall. If you are one of the unlucky ones, that socket may be deep within the cave under your desk, or worse, behind the couch.

If you aren’t plugged in (as us laptop users sometimes brave against the waning tide of battery life), you’re likely nervously watching the battery icon in the corner of your screen.  In which case, I hope you can finish reading before you’re rudely interrupted by the shutdown.

But what if we could break away from the wall? What if I said that you never had to reach underneath a piece of furniture to plug into an outlet?

This is where the VoltPot comes in. VoltPot is a unique table that uses soil and grass to charge your laptop. This segmented counter/ planter pot has a built-in Microbial Fuel Cell. A microbial fuel cell is a device that converts chemical energy to electrical energy making it capable of generating enough energy to charge small electronics.

According to the creators of VoltPot, Nectar Designs,  this new commodity is currently still a product idea which is being constructed on this new promising technology of Microbial Fuel Cells.

“As opposed to a chemical battery, a Microbial Fuel Cell uses the metabolic energy of microbes present inside soil samples & converts it directly to electrical energy to generate low intensity, but continuous output of energy. The basic construction revolves around making an anode and a cathode soil chambers, just like a conventional battery,” Nectar Designs said.

The premise of individual objects generating electricity is exciting.  Just imagine never tripping over a stretched out power cord again. Better yet, imagine the future possibilities for your office, or the planet.

For more information on Voltpot, visit www.nectardesign.com/ecotopia-shujoy-chakraborty-voltpot

Photo from www.nectardesign.com

10. Your site has dead links

This might not be the sole reason you redesign your website, but might be the first step into evaluating the content, design and brand and how these play into your online reputation of your company. A free Microsoft tool to find dead links on your website is http://www.microsoft.com/web/Downloads/platform.aspx

9. Your website is not optimized for mobile users
Using a smart phone for phone calls is almost becoming a secondary feature. People are now using them more frequently to find information on the go and your website should take into account the way people will be viewing it. Below are some things to consider for mobile web users.

• Be conscious of font size – small text can be hard for mobile users to read.
• Have clear and concise content – people viewing your site on a mobile device are not usually at home. They don’t want to read a book, they want quick, useful information.
• Make sure your images are optimized for better loading time. Using Flash within your site can create slower loading time, thus decreasing the usability and experience for mobile users.
• Provide a contact number on every page.

8. Structure of the site – using Divs vs Tables

You may not think so, but the way your site is structured can affect how optimized your site is, your maintenance costs and limitations with functionality.  Using Divs instead of tables is becoming a best practice on how sites are coded and structured. Divs are HTML tags used to create containers around blocks of content such as images or body text. So if your site is built in tables rather than using Divs, then it might just be time for a new site. Below lists some of the positives of using Divs and the shortcomings of Tables.

• Using Divs reduces the file sizes within your website, which makes it easier for Search Engine Spiders to crawl your website.
• Coding a website with tables creates a lot of additional markup, making it not only more time consuming to make edits, but harder for search engines to decipher between code and content.
• Tables also reduce a website’s flexibility in accepting different media and design elements, and they often limit a website’s functionality.

7. Navigation is confusing to users

A user should be able to find the information they are searching for within three clicks. If not, then it might be time to examine your site structure and the paths needed to get to important information. Good navigation and organization will only make the user experience more enjoyable and increase their chances of them returning. Also, for better usability, have a search field on your site.

6. Content is dated
Having news on your site that was last updated a year ago does not give users the greatest first impression of your company. A user may then think the rest of the information on your site is old and irrelevant to them as well. You should give users a reason to come back, whether it be in the form of keeping your site current or having occasional giveaways. So when redesigning your site think about having it built with a content management system or in other words, a tool that can allow you to edit content and images on your site without a strong knowledge of HTML or any other programming language. This will save money and time in the long run.

Reason 5-1: To be continued

This year’s relations between Google and the Chinese government seem to have hit a significant bump. After four years of compliance with China’s “Golden Shield Project,” a set of censorship standards often referred to as “The Great Firewall of China,” Google has announced that they will no longer permit censorship on the Google.cn (or any other Google) site.

It begs the question: how much do you trust Google? Or Yahoo!, or Bing, or your ISP for that matter? Google’s stance earlier this year seems to be a positive step towards network neutrality and freedom of information. Do you think it is important that these service providers maintain neutrality in their services? Or, perhaps you would prefer a certain level of non-user applied censorship? Furthermore, do you trust them with your information? For years the people of China didn’t get the same information that those here in the United States were privy to. Google, in that time, was a willing participant in shielding millions of people from information that was otherwise available to the rest of the world.

We aren’t looking to start a debate (so keep it clean), but we’d love to hear our readers thoughts on the free flow of information and how comfortable they are with information available on the web, both personal and public. Please comment below.

More history on Google and China:

Google made the decision to no longer permit the censorship after finding evidence that they have been the victims of hackers trying to access G-mail accounts of human rights activists with histories of anti-Chinese government actions. This came on the heels of harsh criticism from human rights organizations such as Amnesty International. For the last four years, Google has maintained an office and separate search portal for China that has adhered to the many (and ever-changing) rules of Chinese censorship.

While Google is maintaining its corporate office in China for the time being, it is uncertain that it will be open much longer. And while Google.cn continues to maintain Chinese censorship standards, the clock is running out and the question to be asked is ‘will another search engine company fill the void, or will China have to bend to change?’

Only time will tell…

As advances made in the technological sector are happening rapidly, so are changes being made in the way that legal decisions and precedents deal with the advances.

Every day, the legal system, both here and abroad, is adapting to the most recent breakthroughs and changes in defining legalities, property rights and even what “is” the law.

A legal (and security) issue that has become a major concern in the last year is the download and use of false internet security programs.  Symantec recently estimated that as many as tens of millions of internet users have downloaded and legitimately paid for any of the scores of fake security programs online.

The sad irony is that many of these programs are, in themselves, malware – programs designed to pilfer information from and breach the security of the users’ computer.  It is always a wise step to research a computer security program online before downloading, installing or even visiting the site of any such program.

For more information on the topic, read this article from Reuters, which explains how tens of millions of U.S. computers have paid for scam security software installed that could actually be putting the computers at risk.

Have you ever done something you wish you could undo? Wouldn’t life be grand if, at the touch of a button, we could unsay that embarrassing remark, unmake that last minute u-turn or uneat that double cheeseburger? Of course it would. It is empowering and oh-so delightfully passive aggressive that you could publicly, but with no direct interaction, terminate the friendship with any person that displeases or offends you.

This dream of being impervious to the actual consequences of ending a relationship has brought rise to the term “unfriend”. In 2009, the New Oxford American Dictionary named this little public breakup the word of the year.

For those not in the know, the term refers to the action of removing a contact, or friend, from those amassed in any online social network a user has joined. For example, if an old eighth grade schoolmate of yours happens to profess their love for John Mayer and you do not like it: One click – Unfriend. You just let the masses know “I hate John Mayer and all of his minions,” and you’ll never hear about it again. At least not from that guy. This action of unloading folks from your digital social circle is applicable across most social networks.

In a statement issued by New Oxford, senior lexicographer Christine Lindberg referred to the term unfriend as having “both currency and potential longevity.”

Well, we should all hope so – because there is a plethora of things that would be phenomenal to “un”.

For starters, unbuying a car would be phenomenal. It’d be like one of those 24-hour test drives, but for as long as you like.

“That Mustang isn’t working out for you sir? Wow, even after three years? Well, you unbought it, so here’s your money back. Have fun at the Chevy dealer!”

How about uneating some cake? Well, hmm… It would seem logical that vomiting is nothing revolutionary. However, the idea of uneating without the act of bulimia would be a huge hit. Just picture the uneating infomercial starring Chuck Norris and Christie Brinkley in spandex, telling you how young they feel. Not sold? Don’t worry, you can always unbuy it.

The list really does go on:

• When you’re at a lame party, you can untravel there and find yourself instantly nestled into the grooves of your own sofa.
• Traveling to Milwaukee and hate the smell of beer and cheese? No problem, just unsmell it! The effect would be similar to that of a new car smell.
• If your local senator is turning out to be more of a money-grubbing deadbeat, fear not. Just unvote. Only Green Party supporters and militia-member libertarians are going to sit that “un” out.
• Yuck, you’ve just returned home from the gym and you’re all slimy and gross. Forget the shower and simply unsweat.
• Decided to see a Keanu Reeves movie? Ouch! You can always unwatch. Granted, your head will be filled with emptiness for that hour, but not seeing Keanu is almost as satisfying as having just watched Swayze. Win!
• Jimmy John’s already has an Unwich, which a bread-free sammy. Yeah, Jimmy Johns!
• Sometimes deep thoughts and dilemmas keep us up at night pondering decisions, opinions and courses of action. If you don’t want that hassle anymore, just uneducate yourself. Ignorance is bliss!
• If underwear is already an “un,” does ununderwear become like outerwear and leave one standing with one’s boxers over their jeans?

If you’ve made it this far, you may want to consider unreading something. Do that now. Ok, so if you’re now wondering why this sentence is taking up your eyes’ time, just start from the top. Don’t worry, you’ll be reading this again, and again, and again.

For some serious stories about this year’s unnews, check out the Unfriend Google search results.

On October 28 through October 30, a Global Forum will be taking place in Bangkok, Thailand.  The forum is centered on building peace through communication and information. The conference is facilitated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO.

Media Genesis President Antoine Dubeauclard is one of the speakers at the conference. He will be presenting a social media platform and how it can be used to exchange information and create discussion relating to peace. He is presenting the platform along with Abdul Waheed Khan, assistant director-general for communication and information, UNESCO, and David Nostbakken, UNESCO consultant for The Power of Peace Network.

“Utilizing social media is a great way to start motivated and intelligent conversations on peace because of its ability to be discussed on a global level,” Dubeauclard said. “People can interact with issues relating to their local area and also learn about what other countries are facing.  Better global understanding can create unity to work toward common solutions.”

Some of the other speakers at the conference include:

• Chinnapat Bhumirat, vice-chair of the National Commission for UNESCO, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education (Thailand)
• Hiroshi Matsumoto, trustee, International House of Japan (Japan)
• Patricia Morris, executive director, Peace X Peace (USA)
• Simon Cohen, managing director, Global Tolerance (UK)

Media Genesis is one of the largest independent Web development companies in Michigan, offering a host of services from Web sites, to e-learning, to online marketing. For more information, please visit www.mediaG.com.

Would you take your business to a place where you’d have to work alongside a garage sale, a pyramid scheme, a kid who modifies Xboxes, a speed dating table and a lot of profanity?

The prospect might seem crazy, but every day thousands upon thousands of employers and would-be employees do just that. The place where they lay it all on the line is Craigslist.org. Craigslist is best described as a collection of online classified ads. It is simple, free (for the most part), expansive and almost completely unregulated. With the ability to reach so many people and search for so many services and products, Craigslist might seem like a no-brainer for your office.

The mega-site has a jobs listing section that absolutely dwarfs the likes of Monster.com or CareerBuilder. However, with a community that is controversially nefarious at times, it would be understandable to not want to job hunt or search for talent on Craigslist. You can find out plenty about the popular online community and uncanny founder Craig Newmark, but we are here to tell you that this site can and does work as a professional resource. Like all other things online, you just need to present yourself professionally and know what to look for.

To give you an idea of how functional or dysfunctional Craigslist can be, we posted an anonymous job posting as well as tried to ask for employment as an inexperienced individual to see how honest the web would be to us.

Posting a Job

Let’s start with the good news. Any job posting, regardless of how vague it is, will generate a fair amount of response. This might be due, in part, to the sheer number of users on Craigslist. Still, most of the replies to our job posting seemed genuine. Our description was pretty much a catchall for anyone who might work at a web firm. So, to be fair, we won’t critique our applicants. Let’s just say that the majority of them were off-point for the general job they applied for, although about a third could fit the bill at first glance. We did pick up a few scams and clearly phony resumes, but not enough to consider the endeavor frustrating.

As a side note, we should say that posting a fully descriptive job ad that discloses your company name and information will yield more applicants and, thus, more qualified applicants. We know this because we’ve done it.

Applying for a job

Now, for the ugly stuff – there are clearly individuals on Craigslist who are out to make a buck. Our attempt to find a position didn’t go nearly as well. Looking for a position by searching the listings can be tiresome. There are just so many listed as work-from-home scams, buy an online business posts, blog for free listings and general illegitimate junk that it’s easy to become discouraged. With that considered, it makes our good applicants from the first posting seem a lot more determined.

The worse part about the job hunt is attempting to post your own availability for a position. We tried it out. Our fictional job hunter, Brandi, was planning to go to art school and was looking for an entry-level position or internship anywhere in the creative field. Her experience, as listed, was barely there. She was bubbly, a poor speller and previously worked in fashion.

Brandi was bombarded with scams – online marketeering stuff where you pay to work (read: pyramid scam) and pay-per-click blog spamming were popular offers. Telemarketing was another common pitch. While not completely shady, it was in no way a response to her actual post.
Then the offers for dates flooded in. And she did get a few. Remember how we mentioned all of the “other” stuff on Craigslist? Well, singles ads are certainly one of them. It became clear to us that some of these people troll around the jobs wanted section as well.

Craigslist can be very R-rated. While we don’t encourage you to browse for this type of content, it is not hard to find. Luckily, most of Brandi’s would-be suitors were fairly polite and kept their inquiries very general. Still, she was posting for an internship, not a boyfriend.

At the end of the experiment, Brandi did get two or three offers that seemed encouraging and educational. The rest was unfiltered hogwash or offers for long walks on the beach. Gross.
There really doesn’t seem to be a good answer for using Craigslist to get a job or as an employee-finding tool. It definitely seems like ambiguity brings out the creeps and weirdos.  Just like many online interactions we’ve written about, legitimizing yourself and being upfront about who you are and your purpose for the interaction will help you avoid spam, trolls, creeps and scams.

You’re afraid the average Internet user – a slightly attention-deficit, click-happy web surfer – will never pick up on what your website is all about. Their eyes are dashing around, judging whether or not your site is worth their time.

Unfortunately, this fear leads to the desire to cram every bit of significant information onto the screen as it pops up. A bit of classic newspaper journalism terminology, above the fold refers to exactly that – the content area above the creased fold of a printed newspaper.

Since a newspaper lies flat, there would be no way for readers to see the rest of the paper unless they unfolded it – one extra step to access information. Website design clients see this extra step in print journalism equivalent to the effort it takes to scroll down a page.

However, web design experts and modern studies say this just isn’t true.

• Users actually do scroll. A study from the 2006 Clicktale Scrolling Research Study of 120,000 page-views shows:
• 91% of the websites with page-views had a vertical scroll-bar, and 76% of these views scrolled the page to some extent.
• Screen resolutions vary from user to user, ranging in the most popular resolutions from 800×600, 1024×768 and 1280×1024.
• Not only do screen resolutions confuse the exact location of the fold, but so do wide-screen monitors and their unique displays that stretch and distort layouts.

There are better ways to ensure users easily access and understand your website.

• Reorganize content to include more divided sections and less clutter.
• Users are more apt to understand your message with a simple, clean layout.
• Cut down on the copy – readers online tend to skim content.
• Put a few highlighted features near the top of the page, and then use links to guide users to read more about other topics.

Follow these recommendations and you can breathe easy about the fold and let the scrollbar live.

As humanity continues to trend away from such oddities as spending time with each other, a new trend is emerging. No longer is television the undisputed king of making people sit idle. In fact, companies in Great Britain are actually spending more money online for advertising than they are for television. Yet, at least in America, online advertising is down.

So what does this mean for you? Online advertising isn’t even remotely trending toward being useless. You don’t even have to be smarter about it; a lot of that decrease is probably due to capacity cuts and huge expenditure decreases more generally. That said, more profit is good, and, with keywords costing more and more on Google, greater bang for your buck may be had in the social media realm. Nielsen reports that advertising on social media networks is up 119% from last year. The same study says people are spending 17% of their time online on social networks.

Think about that. When people are on a social network, what state of mind are they usually in? They might be using it for work, sure, but most of the time they’re bored and just killing time. Not exactly busy, you could say. Add to that, they put their demographic information in their profile. Does this get easier?

Bottom line: Strongly consider allocating more of your online advertising budget toward social media advertising. Depending on your demographic, this could be a no-brainer.