It’s been a long time coming, but the New York Times has finally announced the details of the pay wall it’s been talking about for what feels like years. It’ a little complicated, so I’ll let the NYT explain:

If you are a home delivery subscriber of The New York Times, you will continue to have full and free access to our news, information, opinion and the rest of our rich offerings on your computer, smartphone and tablet. International Herald Tribune subscribers will also receive free access to NYTimes.com.

If you are not a home delivery subscriber, you will have free access up to a defined reading limit. If you exceed that limit, you will be asked to become a digital subscriber. (more…)

I’ve been curious about the direction AOL and the Huffington Post would take their new joint venture following last-month’s headline-grabbing merger announcement. With AOL undergoing a major reorganization this week, it looks like I’ve gotten my answer.

There are a lot of gritty business details here, but the biggest points are that AOL is cutting its own AOL Media operations (by somewhere in the order of 200 positions, by most accounts) and moving away from freelancers to focus more on in-house writers, while simultaneously trimming a bunch of veteran editorial staff. A surprisingly frank tweet from AOL SVP of news Jonathan Dube noted, “I have just laid off dozens of the most talented journalists & product folks I know. Need talent? Let me know!”

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It looks like paid content will be the next battleground for Google to go head-to-head with Apple. If you haven’t yet heard about Apple’s new rules for in-app content purchases or Google’s One Pass storefront, it’s time to get familiar with the latest conflict in the ongoing Mountain View/Cupertino cold war.

EContent covered Apple’s sudden rigorous enforcement of its content sales guidelines earlier this month, and the terms have only gotten more restrictive since then. With the release of Apple’s subscription management features, publishers are not only prohibited from linking to an external marketplace for content sales, they’re required to offer their App Store content at the same (or lower) price as they do anywhere else. Not surprising, since otherwise you’d have companies offering much lower prices for direct buys in order to entice users away from the App Store purchases and the 30% cut for Apple they entail.

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There’ve been plenty of reactions to this morning’s news that AOL is purchasing The Huffington Post for the princely sum of $315 million ($300 million in cash, the remainder in stock). Shock. Surprise. Horror, even.

Take a look at the company’s activities for the last couple years, though, and you’ll notice that this sort of purchase isn’t anything out of the ordinary (although it is a particularly large one). Ever since subscription revenue started dropping like a rock in the mid-2000s, AOL has explicitly pursued a business strategy that isn’t too different from the recently-IPO’d Demand Media: generate tons of ad-optimized content, sell tons of ads. (more…)

It would appear that all e-reader hell is about to break loose. The New York Times reported today:

Some application developers, including Sony, say Apple has told them they can no longer sell content, like e-books, within their apps unless the transactions go through Apple’s system. Apple rejected Sony’s iPhone application, which would have let people buy and read e-books from the Sony Reader Store. (more…)

Like many of you, I’ve been buying a lot of stuff lately in anticipation of Christmas. A few years back, when I lived in New Jersey, I started doing almost all of my Christmas shopping online. It was easier to have stuff delivered to Connecticut than it was to lug it all home with me a few days before the holiday. Since then, I’ve been hooked. Between free shipping, coupons delivered to my email inbox, and Ebates I’m pretty sure I come out ahead on this deal. However, according to 2ergo, those of us using old-fashioned websites to shop next year might be behind the times. (more…)