BEA is wrapping up today, and the writers, editors, and publishers of the world will have to slink back to their offices and continue toiling away in relative anonymity — unless of course you’re Flavor Flav, who I did see yesterday, and who has apparently been allowed to write a book (Yikes!). If you’ve never been to BEA it’s a massive gathering of people from all walks of publishing life: from HarperCollins to Quirk Classics to our very own ITI books. Fans line up for hours to get their books signed, and in a quiet corner of the floor is the “Digital Zone” where companies across the digital publishing spectrum show off their wares. (more…)

I’ll admit, I’m excited about this new project, Authentically Local, which I read about on Media Nation today:

Thirty independent community news sites have banded together to tell the world, in effect, “We are not Patch.” The project, called Authentically Local, includes such well-known sites as Baristanet, based in Montclair, N.J.,The Batavian, of Batavia, N.Y., and the New Haven Independent.

As a Connecticut resident, I’m very familiar with the New Haven Independent, a truly fantastic local news organization. And, as a former local news reporter, I’ve written about the importance of local news for EContent more than once. So it was with great interest that I read about this new endeavor, but this problem of truly local news versus the  local wannabes isn’t a new one — and it didn’t start on the web. (more…)

Sitecore, a web content management solution provider, today announced a platform and product group called the Customer Engagement Platform. The Customer Engagement Platform provides new ways to orchestrate customer needs and solutions previously unattainable due to complex hurdles. It does so through the addition of three new major and integrated products; Engagement Analytics, Engagement Automation, and the Personalization and Experience Editor.

“Sitecore is the first vendor to focus in on qualitative metrics as most analytics tools focus on quantity. Our solution is all about the quality of incoming leads,” according to Darren Guarnaccia SVP of Sitecore product marketing. “Marketers have reams of data from all the various channels, they’ve got data buried in dark corners of their company, what they don’t have an actionable picture of the customer. And actionable is the key word. There is no shortage of data–mostly quantitative data–how many visitors, how many clicks, how many new leads etc. There is a shortage of understanding on which data to take action on.” (more…)

The serfs surrounding the mighty AOL castle are none too happy with their new feudal lord: Arianna Huffington. Another round of firings has AOL freelancers gathering their pitchforks. Over on BusinessInsider.com one freelancer sounded off:

We’ve been told that all these new, full-time employees will be expected to report to the office every day for a 40-hour work week. For some reason, it’s very important to Arianna [Huffington] to have writers physically working in a newsroom in either LA, New York or Washington, DC, thus going back to an archaic newsroom model that went out with the invention of the telephone, and needlessly eliminating any talented writers in other parts of the country. So much for a global, cutting edge news team. (more…)

Earlier this week, paidContent.org generated a list of 50 companies it guesstimated to be the Most Successful Digital Media Companies in the U.S. Some of the findings were surprising, to say the least. Others were almost confusing.

The top 10 is as follows:

1. Google
2. Yahoo
3. Apple
4. Microsoft
5. Netflix
6. IAC
7. Aol
8. News Corp.
9. AT&T
10. Facebook (more…)

Another day, another new phase of the ongoing Google Books legal drama. Google’s proposed settlement with authors and publishers was rejected by the case’s judge, and both sides are now undoubtedly returning to the drawing board for the next phase of litigation.

Given that the duration of this case is approaching the 7-year mark, it’s probably not necessary to rehash it once again. Here’s a two sentence synopsis just in case, though: Google wants to scan and make searchable the text of every book ever published. Pretty much everyone in the publishing industry wants to stop them from doing so. (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!”

(more…)

Zinio announced today that it is now using MarkLogic’s expertise to power its UNITY multi-device platform. Zinio needed a common repository that would enable reliable, rapid aggregation of magazine content and adapt it for exportation in a common format to smart phones, which brought the company to MarkLogic.

“Zinio faces a huge challenge with the content received from magazine publishers. It comes in multiple and inconsistent formats, and many times Zinio simply receives the PDF document, which is not ideal for a good reading experience on a mobile device. In addition, it’s also difficult to get article level access, as opposed to an entire magazine,” says Seth Shearer, director of media solutions at MarkLogic. ”Then there’s timeliness – getting the content on time so the digital version isn’t lagging behind the print version. Imagine if you received a huge batch of inconsistent content today and had to clean it up and transform it so that it is available for electronic distribution tomorrow – that’s a common scenario for Zinio and creates a huge challenge in terms of the speed in which digital content can be made available.” (more…)

AOL and The Huffington Post have officially tied the proverbial knot. The $315 million deal closed and was made official with an SEC filing this morning. According to TechCrunch:

Along with the closing of the acquisition, AOL has also poached a number of talented new writers to join its newly formed team. Yahoo’s Michael Calderone has been named Senior Media Reporter, the New York Times’ Trymaine Lee has been named Senior Reporter, the New York Daily News’ Michael McAuliff has been named Senior Congressional Reporter, and The Daily’s Jon Ward has been named Senior Political Reporter. Bonnie Kavoussi will be Business Reporter, and Lucas Kavner has been named Entertainment Reporter.