Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
iPad and the Future of Publishing
Popular Science+ on iPad
Now there is a lot of excitement about iPad saving the publishing industry. Even though I love my iPad, I doubt that it can do anything for the print media. The only real difference between an iPad-optimized website and an iPad App is the price expectation. We come to associate the Web as a free medium whereas we expect to pay for “Apps”. But this will change rather soon. The prices of iPhone apps keep dropping, and if any apps are more than 99 cents, people complain that it’s too expensive. It’s just a matter of time before the vast majority of Apps are free.
Although the novelty of iPad magazines like Popular Science+ may be worth paying for it now, the excitement will wear off pretty soon. Ultimately I don’t think there will be any advantage with reading magazines on an App. Google has done a great job of optimizing Gmail for iPad, and I actually prefer using it within the browser over using iPad’s native email App. Gmail has many great features, some are built-in by default, while others can be added. The features like labeling and filtering would not work on iPad’s email App. There is no chat or SMS features from within the email UI either.
App-based magazines will have the same problem: While some features are going to work better on the App versions, others will be better on the Web versions. The App version could only be used on the device you installed it on, while the Web version could be accessed from any device, iPad, iPhone, or desktop. Your own machine or someone else’s. You have to manage your copy of the magazine App; installing, upgrading, and backing up. The Web version would not require any of them.
As more websites start to take advantage of HTML5, the differences between the App versions and the Web versions will be virtually none. There will be less and less reasons to publish anything as Apps.
Also, less popular magazines could create an iPad version and make it free to take the audience away from more popular magazines, which could force all the magazines to go free.
Another situation publishers are facing now is that the brand names of magazines and newspapers are less relevant now for the readers. Because of the efficiency of the search engines, I can find relevant articles in any publications. I don’t really care who published them. I’m often reading articles from magazines that I’ve never heard of. And, I surf from one publication to another.
The same phenomenon is happening on TV. Because of DVRs, we no longer care what channels our favorite shows are on. In the old days, people were loyal to certain network channels, and watched whatever shows that came on those channels. This was mostly due to the fact that we could not watch what we wanted whenever we wanted. We were at the mercy of network schedules. DVRs and other on-demand video technologies freed us from this. Now we can search and play what we want to watch, just like on the Web. The concept of “network” is no longer relevant.
The same holds true for magazines. Much of the existing conventions and our reading habits are tied to the physical limitations of printed media. Because it did not make sense to print and sell one page at a time, they published a set of articles at a certain time interval. This is no longer relevant.
Furthermore, with printed magazines, we could only buy and carry a limited number of them, so we were stuck reading everything in the magazine we bought. This too is no longer relevant. With the Internet, we have access to thousands of magazines at our fingertip. There is no reason for us to read all the articles in one magazine cover-to-cover. We can jump from one great article in one magazine to another great one in another magazine. We don’t really care who published them. In the end, it’s the content that matters. This is yet another disadvantage of App-based magazines: It’s disruptive to have to go from an App to another App. It’s much easier to surf within a browser.
In the early days of blogs, most of them had no specific topics. Now, the idea of general interest blog is almost an oxymoron. On the Web, there is no point in grouping a variety of unrelated contents because the Web itself is doing that. There has to be a good reason why you would want to group contents into one site. I would rather follow a particular writer than to follow a general news media outlet like New York Times. The latter is too general to be useful. The differences between various news media outlets are too subtle. “New York Times” is just a way to group a variety of contents, and what ties them together is their editorial vision. But the difference between their editorial vision and that of, say, “Washington Post” isn’t great enough to offer any real value in those groupings. In our digital age, such groupings are no longer relevant.
In comparison, “Engadget” and “Gawker” are groupings that make sense. Many of these popular blogs started out as ordinary blogs operated by one person, but they have now become institutions. Blogs are becoming closer to traditional media as traditional media are becoming closer to blogs. I believe somewhere between the two is the future of publishing. iPad is a great device, but I do not think that it can save the traditional business model of publishing. If anything, it will probably accelerate the demise of it.
—posted by Dyske » Follow me on Twitter or on Facebook Page
Beta-testing Typotheque’s Font Embedding Technology
I had the opportunity to beta-test Typotheque‘s new font embedding technology. Great job. It worked very well. I secretly applied their fonts on one of my clients’ website so that I can see how it works in the real world situation. Here is before I applied their font:
http://clintonstreetbaking.com
This site makes an extensive use of browser fonts (very little GIF type). So, it was a good candidate for testing this. If you add the argument to the URL “?font=fedra”, the site will be rendered with Typotheque’s Fedra font:
http://clintonstreetbaking.com/?font=fedra
You notice that the browser first renders the page with standard fonts and re-renders it with Fedra. This re-rendering flicker is a bit annoying but unfortunately it’s a limitation of the browser and there is nothing anyone can do about it at the moment. I hope that the future browsers would check the font embedding first before they render the page.
The only requirements for using Typotheque’s font embedding technology are:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://test.typotheque.com/WF-008291-000085" type="text/css" />
And, after inserting this code, you can specify one of their fonts as if it’s a browser font. For instance:
p { font-family: "Fedra Sans Book"; }
That’s really it. Naturally, if you try to use these lines of code on your website, it won’t work because your domain name has not been registered with Typotheque.
They use only CSS to achieve the same thing Typekit does. I cannot say this automatically means better because I’m not aware of the security implications behind Typotheque’s implementation. (I believe the only reason why Typekit uses Javascript is to strengthen the security.)
For now, I believe Typotheque is interested in selling only their own fonts. If so, the security is not a big issue because they would not be liable to anyone else, even if their fonts get pirated. But as soon as they start accepting fonts from other designers, security would be an important aspect to scrutinize.
The administration site for purchasing, licensing for the web, and registering your domain is very well implemented. I had no problem. The user experience was excellent. As I said before in the thread about Typekit, building this type of system isn’t going to be realistic for independent font designers who are not programmers. So, services like this would probably be quite popular in the future. Perhaps Typotheque could even license their system to other foundries who are interested in distributing embedded fonts on the Web.
I would imagine that in 5 years, we will no longer be generating GIF images for non-browser fonts. I can’t wait. The font rendering on Windows would have to improve significantly too. Browser fonts render beautifully on Macs, but on Windows it’s still pretty crude. (Maybe this changed since Vista, but I wouldn’t know because I don’t got no Vista.)
Because the DPI is low on computer monitors (compared to print), at first, I would probably use embedded fonts only for headers. Sooner or later, more font designers will design browser-specific fonts. Web 3.0 will probably have a very distinct look because of the font embedding technology.
—posted by Dyske » Follow me on Twitter or on Facebook Page
How I Read Blogs
I often hear people say, “I can’t keep up with all the blogs.” Well, you don’t have to. I’m surprised that so few people use RSS readers even though they have been around for a long time. Without some type of aggregator, it is not practical to keep up with all the blogs you are interested in. Who could remember to revisit more than a dozen blogs on a regular basis? Even if you do revisit them, it does not mean that they have something new for you to read. Your friend’s personal blog may not update that often, but whenever it does, you might want to read it. How can you be sure that you read it when he posts something every month or so? The answer is RSS reader.
When you visit a blog, you should be able to see a little RSS icon somewhere on the page or in the address bar. If you click on it, it should prompt you to choose your RSS reader. I use Google Reader because it allows me to see all the blog entries within a Web page. I don’t need to install any special application. It also works well with my iPhone. (When you visit Google Reader on iPhone Safari, you get the mobile version of the site.)
Once you have RSS reader configured, this is the only place you need to visit on a regular basis. All the new blog posts will come streaming into it. Add your friend’s blog to it, you will see it as soon as he posts something, even if he posts only once a year.
I add to my RSS reader liberally. If any blog looks remotely interesting, I add it. Right now, I have 128 blogs in my reader. Most of them do not update so often, so my main window is usually filled with entries from popular blogs. The list only displays the name of the blog, the headline, and the date/time, so I can scan very quickly, and I only click on items that sound interesting. Even if I don’t read any of them, just by scanning through the titles, I can get an idea of what’s going on in the world.
Every now and then, I review the list of blogs. If I see blogs with a hundred unread posts, it’s a good indication that I wouldn’t read any of their future posts either, so I remove them.
Google Reader allows me to create categories. I have categories like “Economy”, “Friends”, and “Technology”. If I’m interested in what’s going on in the economy, I click on that category to see only the blogs related to economy.
I rely on my bloggers to deliver news to me, so I rarely use news websites as a way to get a sense of what’s going on. Most news websites allow you to customize your view based on news topic (e.g. politics, finance, health, entertainment, etc..), but that is not particularly a good way to filter news items. For instance, I’m not a sports fan, so I generally ignore news about sports, but every now and then there are news events in sports that grab my attention. For instance, some famous athelete might launch a Website that is interesting from a point of view of user-experience. Different people see different things in the same fact or event, but those differences are not easily categorizable or even identifiable. This is where bloggers come in handy; they function as intelligent information filters. They are your information brokers and advisors.
—posted by Dyske » Follow me on Twitter or on Facebook Page
Typekit’s Advantage Is Its Licensing Model
One of my readers asked me some questions about my post regarding Typekit, so I want to share my responses here.
Regarding the “in-between” parties involved in the business of selling fonts:
Without a service like Typekit, you would need 2 in-between entities. A foundry who would market/promote/distribute your print fonts, and a service like Typekit who would safely and centrally distribute your fonts on the web. Many foundries use online stores like myfonts.com, so if you are a designer of these fonts, you already have 2 in-between entities. Adding a web distribution service would make it 3 in-betweens.
As I said in my comments, what is revolutionary about Typekit is that it’s a SAAS model, meaning the fonts are distributed from their central server with a proper mechanism to keep track of the usage and billing. I don’t know the details of @font-face and EOT-fonts, but they are just embedding technologies. They would not keep track of usage. If true, they are quite different from what Typekit is offering. Typekit is a subscription service like Rhapsody; they offer a different type of licensing model for the artists/designers.
Typekit’s SAAS model would enable licensing models which are based on usage. Right now, you as a type designer are getting paid by the number of designers who purchase your fonts. So, if some super-famous designer purchase your font, and use it for 1,000 different clients, you get paid the same exact amount from this designer as another designer who used your font only once. Licensing model based on usage would be similar to what music composers/song-writers have had for TV commercials and radio plays; it is a lot more lucrative. Even if small independent designers wouldn’t use Typekit, the usage fee from big design firms with high-profile clients would probably generate a lot of money for the type designers. Typekit might turn out to be like iPhone App Store. There might even be a gold rush at first for some font designers.
It is not easy for individual font designers to set up a SAAS mechanism on their own server with a system to keep track of usage and automatically charge and pay based on usage, and to ensure that the server would never go down. This is the part that sets Typekit apart from the rest, not their embedding technology.
Typekit’s licensing model effectively passes the responsibility of licensing to the end users, not to the designers. In my opinion, this is a much better business model for font designers. Think about it: We could create a variety of licensing models. We could charge per site, per page, per visitor, or per hits. Whatever would make sense. Right now, we only have a per-designer model, which is quite unfair for the font designers.
When we purchase stock photos or illustrations from places like Getty, it’s not the designers who license them; it’s the end users (such as magazine publishers, website owners, and advertisers). Why shouldn’t this be the same for font designers? If your font becomes really popular where a big corporation like Microsoft uses it on their massive advertising campaign, why shouldn’t you be paid for the usage? With the current licensing model, you as a font designer would get paid for several copies of your font for the designers in charge of the advertising campaign; that’s it! Meanwhile, the composers who wrote the music for the TV commercials and the photographers who licensed the use of his photos would be paid for the usage. They’ll be making a lot of money.
This is the revolutionary part of Typekit’s model. It could fundamentally change the business potential for font designers. Font embedding technologies cannot do this. It’s the SAAS model that changes everything.
In fact, other businesses like large font foundries could offer services similar to Typekit and compete with them. I believe Adobe, Microsoft, Apple, and Linotype are in a good position to do so.
The business of type design as it is now is not really a business, mainly because the licensing model is flawed. To my knowledge, there are no type designers making hundreds of thousands of dollars just designing fonts, regardless of how popular their fonts are. On the other hand, there are many photographers, musicians, writers, software developers, and even chefs making millions of dollars. If the business of type design could be like the rest of the business, it would be a huge improvement. In order to get there, we need to change the licensing model. Distributing the fonts using @font-face or EOT-fonts does not change this fundamental problem.
So, Typekit is taking the right step towards it. Nobody else is (that I know of). That’s why I’m excited about it.
Addendum (I know it’s getting long)
If I were to submit my own font to Typekit, I think I would prefer a licensing model that would allow me to make enough money from the Web usage alone, and make the print-version available for free, to encourage the use of it for the web.
Here is an example. Suppose I have a font called “DyskeSans”. Suppose I am selling the printer-font for $100 (for each designer). And, suppose the font is relatively popular and I’m making roughly $1,000 every month from the sale of it. If I were to sell this font via Typekit, I would prefer a licensing model that would make me roughly $1,000 a month only from the web usage. For the sake of the argument, let’s say it’s 1 cent per each web-page view (100,000 page views per month).
An alternative would be to charge for both web and print, but reduce the prices on both. For instance, I would make the print version of the font $50 and 0.5 cent per page view (or 1 cent for 2 page views). Either way, I would make the same amount of money.
But what if one day, Bank of America decides to use my font as part of their brand? Suddenly the usage of my font shoots up to 1 million page views per month. With the former licensing model, I would make $10,000 a month, whereas with the latter model, I would make $5,000 a month. Suddenly I would want to switch my licensing model, but it’s too late because Bank of America has already bought into the original license agreement.
—posted by Dyske » Follow me on Twitter or on Facebook Page
Typekit – the Future of Web Typeface
This evening, I went to a meetup for Typekit and met the people behind this potentially revolutionary product. If everything goes as planned, Typekit will allow us to use any fonts on our Web pages. Right now without Typekit, we have a very limited number of fonts we can reliably use; the rest of the fonts have to be created as images. So, this would be a welcome change.
In the last 15 years or so, Web browsers have dramatically improved, but the limited availability of fonts has remained the same. In the end, this problem comes down to one thing: licensing. It was never a matter of technology. If it weren’t for the licensing issues, fonts could have been distributed to the visitors of your sites in a number of different ways. (Or, Microsoft could have given away thousands of fonts for free with every installation of Windows or Internet Explorer.) The problem from the get-go was how to resolve the licensing issues.
Interestingly enough, typeface is not copyrightable. It’s like cooking recipes. The only way that typeface can be copy-protected is to sell the fonts as a piece of software. But, you could open a font in a program like Fontographer or FontLab, slightly modify it, and release it under a different name. As far as I know, this is legal. [Correct me if I'm wrong.] Technically speaking, a company like Typekit could probably batch process thousands of well-known fonts in this manner and release them under slightly different names, but this would naturally anger many people, and would never get the support of the design community.
Because typefaces are not copyrightable, typeface design is not a thriving business. Not many people are full time font designers. But Typekit can potentially change this. For me, this is the most exciting part of it. Because the fonts are distributed on demand from Typekit’s central server, it is easy to keep track of licensing and usage. They would be able to tell which fonts were used, where, and how often. It’s sort of like submitting your own music to a subscription-based music service like Rhapsody. Independent typeface designers might be able to submit their fonts to Typekit and make money based on usage.
I asked Jeff Veen, one of the founders of TypeKit, if they are going to accept font submissions from individual font designers; he sounded open to the idea. But for now, they are working with font foundries. Foundries play a role similar to record labels. They market and distribute fonts for font designers, but if Typekit can do it directly, this could work better for many type designers. If you could eliminate some people in between, you might be able to actually make a decent living as a font designer. (No offense to foundries.)
I think Typekit will be a successful product. It would be a quick and easy way for design firms to create a design that would stand out from the rest. It would be SEO friendly too since we wouldn’t have to use GIF images for any type. We could also give quick face-lifts to the existing websites, since the implementation of it is very simple.
—posted by Dyske » Follow me on Twitter or on Facebook Page
