Content Wise

Notable Links: May 16, 2010

iPad usability: First findings from user testing: iPad apps commit some of the same errors as early Web sites, says Jakob Nielsen's first report on the device's usability, including confusing navigation interfaces and inconsistent interactions. (Nielsen's Alertbox)

How to save the news: James Fallows says Google is the problem, er, the savior. (The Atlantic)

New Consumer Reports mobile website offers complete Ratings: In a smart move, Consumer Reports now allows users to tap into all the latest ratings wherever they are, free with a subscription to the main site or $5 per month. (ConsumerReports.org)

Putting a price on words: A primer in entrepreneurial online journalism models, where search and demand set the fees paid to contributors. (New York Times)

Notable Links: March 27, 2010

Scrolling behavior and users' attention: Research from the Nielsen Norman group shows that, although users do scroll, they spend 80% of their time looking at information "above the fold." (Nielsen's Alertbox)

MPA's catalog of magazine apps: A constantly updated compendium of mobile applications produced by magazines and media companies. (MPA)

Social media presence is now a journalism job performance metric:Twitter is part of the job for most journalists these days. (Village Voice)

How magazines use social media to boost pass-along and build voice: Examples from Seventeen, Lapham's Quarterly, Sunset and others. (MediaShift)

The iPad could revitalize story-telling: Or not, depending on whether publishers push the boundaries, says E-Media Tidbits' Steve Myers. (Poynter Online)

Publishing Headed for the Toilet?

As implosions and cutbacks continue to rattle our industry, you can now keep track of the body count via a Twitter feed called The Media Is Dying.

Created by an anonymous public relations employee, and previously accessible only to selected viewers, it reports on media layoffs and personnel changes in updates of no more than 140 characters at a time. Unfortunately, the tiny size of these "tweets" doesn't make the news any easier to take.

And if you had any doubts about publishing being headed to the toilet, a new cell phone app will dispel them. Sit or Squat is a Web-based collection of user-generated reviews of public restrooms around the world. The site recently added mobile applications that, tying into the global-positioning abilities of iPhones and Blackberrys, help users on the go (who need to go) find nearby facilities with good reputations.

Actually, it's a pretty clever combination of user content and mobile technology to create practical, "have-to-know" information. The New York Times Bits blog reports that the Web site registered more than a million page views last month and that 25,000 people have downloaded the iPhone app.