Wired Magazine

Mondo Times editors    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 9:51am on Monday, March 15th, 2010

New Wire Service Serves as Middleman to DIY Journalists

Wired/Epicenter reported on March 14, 2010:

"Demotix is a new type of wire service designed to make it easier for international news stories by citizen journalists and freelance reporters to make it into the mainstream media.

The U.K. company is essentially a user-friendly middleman. For instance, a photographer in Afghanistan with an image of a car bombing can log in to the Demotix website and upload an image with caption info; Demotix reviews it and pushes it to the company’s feed.

Then, news outlets like The Wall Street Journal, the Times of London and The Telegraph, etc., subscribe to the feed, just like they do for established news agencies like the Associated Press and Reuters, and buy stories and assets they deem important.

“It’s a very, very simple process,” says Turi Munthe, Demotix CEO and founder. “And whatever fee we make we split 50/50. Fifty for Demotix to keep us running and 50 for the contributor.”

The full story:
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/03/demotix/

Mondo Times editors    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 9:42am on Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Study Says Giving Away E-Books Translates Into Higher Print Sales

Wired/Epicenter reported on March 8, 2010:

"Giving away an e-book seems to lead to at least a spike in sales of the print version, Researchers at Brigham Young University have found, especially for fiction.

In research that monitored the sales of 41 print books in the eight weeks before and after a free version was released, study authors John Hilton III and David Wiley said they found “a moderate correlation between free digital books being made permanently available and short-term print sales increases.”

All 41 books in the study (via Boing Boing) were made available as complete PDF downloads (as well as other formats in some cases), including two by former Wired.com managing editor Leander Kahney that he distributed for free via bit torrent. Hilton and Wiley’s data showed that giving the books away resulted in higher print sales in the eight weeks following the giveaway than during the same time period preceding it for fiction (a 26 percent increase), non-fiction (5 percent) and Random House releases (9 percent)."

The full story:
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/03/e-book-giveaways-correlate-to-higher-print-sales/

Mondo Times editors    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 10:14am on Friday, February 26th, 2010

Wired Magazine and Universal Pictures Launch Nationwide Repo Man Hunt

Universal City, Calif., February 25, 2010 -- What does it take to disappear in America in 2010? Starting today, four contestants in a first-of-its-kind event will find out. Universal Pictures, in conjunction with Wired magazine and Lone Shark Games, announced today that four Runners--with a $7,500 bounty on each of their heads--have been selected to drop everything and go on the lam for an entire month. Their pursuers? Anyone in America.

The contest is inspired by Universal Pictures' futuristic action-thriller Repo Men, and Wired's December 2009 feature story, "Gone." For the Wired story, reporter Evan Ratliff attempted to live under a new identity--and elude a nationwide citizen manhunt--for a month. Ratliff made it 25 days before being caught by a team of Facebook hackers, Twitter sleuths and New Orleans pizzeria owners. We will soon find out if four new people, scattered in cities across the country, can do even better.

To succeed, the contest Runners must outwit a legion of self-deputized pursuers known as the Repo Men, named after the occupations of the film's lead characters. Starring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker, Repo Men is set in the near future where artificial organs, called artiforgs, are available on layaway. Artiforg recipients who fall behind on their payments will have their organs tracked and repossessed by the repo men, with no concern for patients' comfort or survival.

"Just as Jude Law's character, Remy, tries to vanish from the men chasing him, Universal's partnership with Wired creates a real-world experience to showcase the challenges of vanishing in a digital world," said Doug Neil, senior vice president of digital marketing, Universal Pictures. "We can't wait to see how far our contestants get."

Mondo Times editors    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 10:18am on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

Wired Debuts iPad Edition

AdAge reported on February 16, 2010:

"As the Apple iPad and countless other devices approach, many magazine publishers are working furiously to make sure they can play on the new platforms.

GQ, Esquire and Maxim are selling iPhone app versions of their issues that are clearly bound for the iPad. Sports Illustrated has shown off souped-up issues under development to play on the iPad. And many in the industry are members of the Next Issue Media joint venture, which aims to build a digital storefront where readers will hopefully go buy all these products.

Most recently Wired editor in chief Chris Anderson used an appearance last Friday at the TED Conference to show off how his magazine will look as an edition for tablets and other devices. The video shows the product using live code, not just a vision of what might be, a spokeswoman added."

The full story and video:
http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=142129