Archive for the ‘News’ Category
AOL to Lay Off 10 Percent of Staff, Cutting 700, Due to Ad Meltdown and a Refocusing on New Structure
I finally waned my mother-in-law off of thinking she needed AOL software on her computer to access the internet and e-mail.
They’ve had to reinvent themselves several times since 2000. At this point, I’m surprised it was only 10%. Maybe their plans for mobile web apps will keep the rest of their staff busy.
A favicon is a small logo that appears in your browser’s address bar or tab, and the bookmarks/favorites drop-down menu. Here’s this year’s new multi-color version: Google blogged about how they came to the new favicon here: Here’s the original (still seen in the Firefox toolbar search box): The first change was last year’s little ‘g’: I still think last year’s change was a nice idea. The font has a fun feel to it, but they didn’t match it with the same blue that’s found in the Google logo, for some reason. I’m surprised no one at Google noticed this, if they did, they didn’t care. It’s odd to me that they solicited users for ideas on what Google branding should be. Even though a favicon isn’t a large branding effort, it is for a company so associated with the web. I did find myself doing a double take when I noticed it yesterday, wondering if I was at the right site. That 3-5 second hesitation that I felt was all you need to know about how important brand identity is. Usually companies change brand identity because they want to capture new attention or need a fresh look for a new age. You can’t be too careful about alerting users to new iconography, though, especially when security alerts can be displayed in the same area of a browser (like Firefox 3 does). Even something as small as a 16-pixel image can give the user a small concern, and no company wants that to happen. Update: Looks like the blog Brand New picked up the story. Another blog also mentions similarities with AVG’s favicon.Google changed their favicon again
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/googles-new-favicon.html
The funny thing is, when you turn the new favicon 90 degrees, the background colors match up in the same sequence as the Windows logo colors.
Pandora and other Internet Radio could be forced to close their virtual doors
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2008/08/music_biz_still_trying_to_kill.html
It’s brain-dead what the music industry is doing to itself. They’ve already lost touch with the modern world so much that they’ve marginalized their product to the point where people find no value in owning a copy of it. Making the discovery of, and purchase of, new music less-easy is an ingenious way to flush new-found money down the toilet.
The Internet Radio Equality Act needs to be put in place. Terrestrial radio gets their content for free (thanks to the corporate-owned lobbying they have) for the same content Internet radio and satellite have to pay for.
Watch as illegal avenues of music acquisition become more popular again when outlets like Pandora fall. And those illegal outlets don’t have links to iTunes and Amazon for legal purchasing, nor do they intuitively introduce me to new content I would like. I don’t endorse stealing music as an alternative, but when the system’s as broken and tainted with lobbying corporate interests at heart, and not the artists’, consumers will just turn to whatever’s easiest, regardless or any moral dilemma the recording industry attempts to enlighten them with (which also is a waste of money). Wasn’t this clear years ago, when we saw the Superbowl commercial Pepsi put together to promote their iTunes give-away to the tune of Green Day’s cover of “I Fought the Law, and the Law Won”?
I think if this continues, the musicians are the ones who will suffer most from these actions. They’ll be forced to continue to actually do even more live performances to earn that “Performance Royalty” fee they get every time their music is played because the number of outlets for these “performances” will diminish to the point where they’ll have AM/FM only again, and the only way people will pay to hear music (and the only way performers will get paid) is some Clear Channel or Live Nation event house. Or you’ll see a band 10 years old (or less, at the rate of how quickly musicians become “Yesterday’s News”), playing at your local bar for far less than they ever thought, desperate for the same buck that could have been made if Pandora were still around…
