Q6. Brief bio of Michael Rapoport:
A: 1999-present: Columnist writing the "In the Money" column for Dow Jones Newswires, focusing on delving beneath the surface of financial statements and market trends to find the stories that companies would rather investors not know about.
Awards:
Finalist in World Leadership Forum's Business Journalist of the Year awards, best wire service journalist or team, 2008
Society of American Business Editors and Writers "Best in Business" award, wire service columns, 2007
National Headliner Award, best news service columns/commentary, 2001
Dow Jones Newswires Awards for best work done by Newswires journalists, 2001 and 2007
1996-1999: Reporter for Dow Jones Newswires covering courts and legal issues, stationed at federal courthouse in Manhattan
1995-1996: Copyreader on the desk at Dow Jones Newswires.
1993-1995: Editor for Dow Jones News Retrieval (now part of Factiva), working on business-news databases and other projects
1985-1993: Reporter for various daily newpapers in Connecticut
Master's in journalism from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, 1985
Bachelor's in English and political science from University of Rochester, 1984
Q7. What are the three top websites you read everyday?
WSJ.com - the online edition of the Wall Street Journal. Subscription required, but I'm sure the NYU journalism library would have access to it.
SEC.gov - the Securities and Exchange Commission's website. Useful for finding companies' securities filings, learning about SEC rules and enforcement cases, and how investors, companies and everyone else interact with regulators.
The Big Picture (http://bigpicture.typepad.com/) - The best blog about Wall Street and American business, written by Barry Ritholtz, head of a securities-research firm.
Columbia Journalism Review's The Audit (http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/) - Critique of business news.
Q8. Please recommend a few books on writing or on business and economics.
Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis (A classic about Wall Street's take-no-prisoners culture.)
Conspiracy of Fools by Kurt Eichenwald (The best book on the Enron scandal.)
Wall Street Versus America by Gary Weiss (About the routine corruption in the securities industry.)
The Financial Numbers Game: Detecting Creative Accounting Practices by Charles W. Mulford and Eugene E. Comiskey (Shows you how to find when companies are bending the truth about their numbers. Mulford is a frequent source of mine.)
END
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Q&A Part III: Interview with Michael Rapoport
Q5. Take one of the stories you mentioned above, explain how extensive was the reporting before you sat down to write? How many people did you talk to? Who were they? What kind of documents did you read?
A: Assuming that we're using the Freddie Mac column that we've talked about: A lot of the answer to this question we've already spoken about or should be in the answers to the previous questions, but basically that column came about because I had previously forecast that Freddie would have to write down its deferred tax assets, for the reasons we've discussed. When they did so, I noticed that there was a substantial chunk of deferred tax assets they WEREN'T writing down, and the reason they gave was that they were related to losses on securities that they expected to recover, and thus they thought they could still use the deferred tax assets; thus they still had value and the company wasn't required to write them down.
As it happened, I had also written about the issue of these securities losses that the companies thought would recover, and I knew that they were unlikely to recover - both because they'd already lasted a long time (more than a year) and because a lot of them are related to mortgage-backed securities and other bad assets that are unlikely to come back.
From there it was really just a matter of confirming my suspicions with a couple of accounting experts. As a columnist, what I'll often do is find something that I THINK is valid, but accounting is so complex that I like to run my hypotheses past experts in the field, to make sure that what I think I'm seeing is accurate. I also go back to the securities filings - in this case the company's latest 10-Q quarterly report - to get a fuller picture of their position, as well as the numbers that are critical to my argument. In this case they said, "Yup, that's it" - so that even though I didn't quote any of them in the story, I could put forth my opinions with the confidence that they were valid.
In the process of doing all this, I found that Fannie Mae, Freddie's fellow mortgage-finance giant, had done something much like Freddie, on a smaller scale. They had written off something like $21 billion in deferred tax assets. while keeping $4.6 billion, using the same reasoning as Freddie. (Again, look at the story itself for the correct figures; I'm just using the figures I remember off the top of my head.) So it was only fair to include them in the story as well.
From there, it was simply a matter of calling the PR spokespeople of the two companies to give them an opportunity to comment, and to write all this up in a way that would make it clear to the average reader - which can be pretty tough in itself sometimes when you're dealing with complicated accounting topics.
To be continued...
A: Assuming that we're using the Freddie Mac column that we've talked about: A lot of the answer to this question we've already spoken about or should be in the answers to the previous questions, but basically that column came about because I had previously forecast that Freddie would have to write down its deferred tax assets, for the reasons we've discussed. When they did so, I noticed that there was a substantial chunk of deferred tax assets they WEREN'T writing down, and the reason they gave was that they were related to losses on securities that they expected to recover, and thus they thought they could still use the deferred tax assets; thus they still had value and the company wasn't required to write them down.
As it happened, I had also written about the issue of these securities losses that the companies thought would recover, and I knew that they were unlikely to recover - both because they'd already lasted a long time (more than a year) and because a lot of them are related to mortgage-backed securities and other bad assets that are unlikely to come back.
From there it was really just a matter of confirming my suspicions with a couple of accounting experts. As a columnist, what I'll often do is find something that I THINK is valid, but accounting is so complex that I like to run my hypotheses past experts in the field, to make sure that what I think I'm seeing is accurate. I also go back to the securities filings - in this case the company's latest 10-Q quarterly report - to get a fuller picture of their position, as well as the numbers that are critical to my argument. In this case they said, "Yup, that's it" - so that even though I didn't quote any of them in the story, I could put forth my opinions with the confidence that they were valid.
In the process of doing all this, I found that Fannie Mae, Freddie's fellow mortgage-finance giant, had done something much like Freddie, on a smaller scale. They had written off something like $21 billion in deferred tax assets. while keeping $4.6 billion, using the same reasoning as Freddie. (Again, look at the story itself for the correct figures; I'm just using the figures I remember off the top of my head.) So it was only fair to include them in the story as well.
From there, it was simply a matter of calling the PR spokespeople of the two companies to give them an opportunity to comment, and to write all this up in a way that would make it clear to the average reader - which can be pretty tough in itself sometimes when you're dealing with complicated accounting topics.
To be continued...
Friday, December 18, 2009
Q&A Part II: Interview with Michael Rapoport
Q3. How do you look up statistics for companies? Which sources do you think are most reliable?
A: The SEC filings are the most reliable sources, and they're available through the EDGAR system at the SEC's website, sec.gov. These are the equivalent of sworn statements that the company's CEO and CFO have to certify are accurate - if they're found to have knowingly put false information in the filings, the SEC can sue them for filing false statements.
What used to happen, before the Enron scandal, was that many companies would, not outright lie, but skew things in their favor by reporting what they called "pro forma" earnings - their own measurement of their results, stripping out anything they wanted to. So they would say, for instance, "Our earnings for the quarter were 20 cents a share, but without bad things A, B and C, they would have been 50 cents a share, and we think that's the important figure." They ignored the fact that they couldn't simply wish away A, B and C, or treat them as unimportant. Because of Enron and the other accounting scandals, and because of the Sarbanes-Oxley securities-reform law and the regulations passed in association with it, companies have to be clearer in their press releases; they have to acknowledge when they're using measurements of earnings that aren't in accordance with accounting standards - known as generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP - and show how those measurements are reconciled to GAAP measurements.
Q4. How do you build your network? How do you stay in touch with your sources?
A: In the course of covering a beat regularly, and writing stories about that beat regularly, you're going to come into contact with people who are useful as sources - officials of the companies you're covering; major investors in those companies; representatives of other constituencies who have an interest in those companies, like labor unions or regulators; outside experts who have an interest in those companies or that industry, like academics and think tanks; and many others.
Any of those people who are in a position to know about things worth covering on that beat, or who can provide valuable perspective on issues and stories that come up on that beat, it's worth your while to cultivate. Even people with an ax to grind, like the analysts working for investment banks, can be useful, so long as you remember that they may have a bias. Call your sources every now and then to talk about what's happening on the beat; send them stories or other information you think would interest them (only publicly available information, of course); and when you include them in a story, send them a copy of the story.
In terms of professional PR people, they're official representatives of the company, and they're usually not going to give you a scoop on something that the company isn't ready to announce. But good PR people will work with you to get you the information you want for your story, even when that story isn't going to be favorable to the company. They have a job to do, in representing the company's point of view, but they'll recognize that you have a job to do too.
To be continued...
A: The SEC filings are the most reliable sources, and they're available through the EDGAR system at the SEC's website, sec.gov. These are the equivalent of sworn statements that the company's CEO and CFO have to certify are accurate - if they're found to have knowingly put false information in the filings, the SEC can sue them for filing false statements.
What used to happen, before the Enron scandal, was that many companies would, not outright lie, but skew things in their favor by reporting what they called "pro forma" earnings - their own measurement of their results, stripping out anything they wanted to. So they would say, for instance, "Our earnings for the quarter were 20 cents a share, but without bad things A, B and C, they would have been 50 cents a share, and we think that's the important figure." They ignored the fact that they couldn't simply wish away A, B and C, or treat them as unimportant. Because of Enron and the other accounting scandals, and because of the Sarbanes-Oxley securities-reform law and the regulations passed in association with it, companies have to be clearer in their press releases; they have to acknowledge when they're using measurements of earnings that aren't in accordance with accounting standards - known as generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP - and show how those measurements are reconciled to GAAP measurements.
Q4. How do you build your network? How do you stay in touch with your sources?
A: In the course of covering a beat regularly, and writing stories about that beat regularly, you're going to come into contact with people who are useful as sources - officials of the companies you're covering; major investors in those companies; representatives of other constituencies who have an interest in those companies, like labor unions or regulators; outside experts who have an interest in those companies or that industry, like academics and think tanks; and many others.
Any of those people who are in a position to know about things worth covering on that beat, or who can provide valuable perspective on issues and stories that come up on that beat, it's worth your while to cultivate. Even people with an ax to grind, like the analysts working for investment banks, can be useful, so long as you remember that they may have a bias. Call your sources every now and then to talk about what's happening on the beat; send them stories or other information you think would interest them (only publicly available information, of course); and when you include them in a story, send them a copy of the story.
In terms of professional PR people, they're official representatives of the company, and they're usually not going to give you a scoop on something that the company isn't ready to announce. But good PR people will work with you to get you the information you want for your story, even when that story isn't going to be favorable to the company. They have a job to do, in representing the company's point of view, but they'll recognize that you have a job to do too.
To be continued...
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Q&A Part I: Interview with Michael Rapoport
Next four postings will be a Q&A series with an award-winning business columnist Michael Rapoport, Dow Jones News Wires. How does he find story ideas, how to build and keep his sources, and what reporting tools he recommends to use.
Q1. Take one story you've done and describe how you came up with the story idea.
A: The most efficient way to come up with story ideas is to have a good grounding about the topics. It is important to know how to look at balance sheets and how to read financial reports because companies will always try to put things in the best light, with a spin favorable to them - they'll downplay bad news, or not frame it in a way that would allow investors to fully understand its implications.
For example, I did a story a few weeks ago on Freddie Mac's tax assets. Freddie Mac was saying the company didn't have to write down some of their assets because the losses were temporary and were going to be recovered. Therefore, the company will still be able to use the deferred tax credits in the future.
But I knew it was BS because they had already endured for long periods and because a lot of them were associated with mortgage-backed securities and other bad assets that are very unlikely to recover soon.
So when I heard it, I knew it was worth writing about. I knew Freddie Mac certainly needed to write down its $18 billion deferred tax assets even though it interpreted laws in their own likes.
Q2. What will be one piece of advice that you would give to business journalists?
A: Always be suspicious when you look at numbers. Three years ago, there were a lot of mergers in telecom industry. In a story I did on SBC Communications Inc. (SBC)'s acquisition of AT&T Corp, I was comparing the savings the companies were touting with their combined total annual operating expenses, and pointing out that it would be virtually impossible to save, say, $15 billion in expenses on day one after the merger when the combined companies' expenses were $62 billion - you don't cut nearly 25% of your expenses overnight.
So you had to do your own calculation. I do my own calculation a lot. Sometimes it turned out to be something, sometimes not. But my advice is always aware that the company is not going to tell you everything.
In terms of what "tools" I used in looking into it, I think all I did was note that the companies had said that their savings were on a "present value" basis, and start asking questions about exactly what that meant. As noted in the story, it appears to be something that sophisticated professional investors would understand and take into account, but not necessarily something obvious to the layman or the average small investor. I suspect that sort of thing happens a lot - companies speak in their own language and cut corners in their explanations, and gloss over things that are important for investors to understand. And average investors don't press them on it, which they should - it's the equivalent of needing to read the fine print before signing a contract.
The company is not going to tell you any more than it's required to, and when it's in a press release they will try to spin things to their advantage. They'll bury the negative stuff on page 19 of a 20-page press release, or tell you that a gigantic charge against earnings isn't important because it's non-cash. The more you know about how to read financial statements and what's important in evaluating a company, the better you'll be able to let them know that you're not falling for their BS and get to the real story.
To be continued...
Q1. Take one story you've done and describe how you came up with the story idea.
A: The most efficient way to come up with story ideas is to have a good grounding about the topics. It is important to know how to look at balance sheets and how to read financial reports because companies will always try to put things in the best light, with a spin favorable to them - they'll downplay bad news, or not frame it in a way that would allow investors to fully understand its implications.
For example, I did a story a few weeks ago on Freddie Mac's tax assets. Freddie Mac was saying the company didn't have to write down some of their assets because the losses were temporary and were going to be recovered. Therefore, the company will still be able to use the deferred tax credits in the future.
But I knew it was BS because they had already endured for long periods and because a lot of them were associated with mortgage-backed securities and other bad assets that are very unlikely to recover soon.
So when I heard it, I knew it was worth writing about. I knew Freddie Mac certainly needed to write down its $18 billion deferred tax assets even though it interpreted laws in their own likes.
Q2. What will be one piece of advice that you would give to business journalists?
A: Always be suspicious when you look at numbers. Three years ago, there were a lot of mergers in telecom industry. In a story I did on SBC Communications Inc. (SBC)'s acquisition of AT&T Corp, I was comparing the savings the companies were touting with their combined total annual operating expenses, and pointing out that it would be virtually impossible to save, say, $15 billion in expenses on day one after the merger when the combined companies' expenses were $62 billion - you don't cut nearly 25% of your expenses overnight.
So you had to do your own calculation. I do my own calculation a lot. Sometimes it turned out to be something, sometimes not. But my advice is always aware that the company is not going to tell you everything.
In terms of what "tools" I used in looking into it, I think all I did was note that the companies had said that their savings were on a "present value" basis, and start asking questions about exactly what that meant. As noted in the story, it appears to be something that sophisticated professional investors would understand and take into account, but not necessarily something obvious to the layman or the average small investor. I suspect that sort of thing happens a lot - companies speak in their own language and cut corners in their explanations, and gloss over things that are important for investors to understand. And average investors don't press them on it, which they should - it's the equivalent of needing to read the fine print before signing a contract.
The company is not going to tell you any more than it's required to, and when it's in a press release they will try to spin things to their advantage. They'll bury the negative stuff on page 19 of a 20-page press release, or tell you that a gigantic charge against earnings isn't important because it's non-cash. The more you know about how to read financial statements and what's important in evaluating a company, the better you'll be able to let them know that you're not falling for their BS and get to the real story.
To be continued...
Monday, December 14, 2009
Video: Garrett Popcorn Shops - Once You Pop, You Cannot Stop
Find out whether it is the different way of making popcorn, the interesting mix of flavors, or the mention by Oprah in her favorite list, has made Garrett Popcorn special.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Video: The Moth - A Fun Night Out
Looking for a cheap and fun night out in New York city? Try the old-style story telling.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Video: Americans Weigh In On UK Bank-Bonus Tax
What does Main Street say about the UK's 50% tax on bank-bonus pay? Americans have a wide range of sentiment. While some say the tax is too lenient, others think it is a stupid move altogether.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Data Aggregation The Next Big Thing For WSJ Graphics Team
Who goes to work thinking how to put himself out of work? The Wall Street Journal’s graphics editor Jovi Juan says that’s what gets him up every morning. Juan who oversees the graphics design team of the Wall Street Journal’s online edition says: “We are spending more time designing simple software for reporters to do graphics themselves instead of having us do it for them,” so that his team can be freed up to start build the next big thing: data aggregation.
But after three years on the job, Juan is nowhere closer to the goal.
The problem is not the technology. Over the years, the team has built an photo editor software called “cropper”, a simple gadget that lets reporters who want to post photos with their online posts crop the photos to a standardized size and pixel for the WSJ.com. Another software Chart Builder was created for reporters to build flash. “We've made it a lot easier to use, but a number of reporters do not want to learn it.”
He said it is the toughest part of moving forward: the old mindset. But majority of the reporting team would eventually have to move on. And only then can Jovi's 8-person team start to aggregate Dow Jones data and make it sharable.
Eventually, everyone will be able to access to the data and visualize it. The idea is to build WSJ's own Many Eye program, an online data visualization tool.
Two or three years down the road, there is a distinctive possibility to get paid through WSJ's data site, Juan says.
Is Hulu's Business Model a Pet Rock?
I love Hulu.com. Many news media publishers love Hulu, too, for different reasons. The free online TV provider seems to be offering everyone else in the online media industry a successful business model but itself. Read the story here.
The Big Money After A Year
When Slate.com decided to start a new business site, The Big Money, it couldn't have picked a more ominious start date: Sept. 15, 2008, the day that Lehman Brothers, one of the biggest American banks, collapsed. A year later, James Ledbetter, the site's editor-in-chief, can only marvel at the timing and consider one big question: Will the The Big Money ever make money? The site had orginally plan to launch as general interest business news site, but changed gears to focus much more on the market crash. Today, readers will see a site that has made yet one more turn---to its original plans, covering more technology and social media. As a result, AIG articles have given way to Google stories. Apple's advertising strategy led the home page recently. The Web site also stepped up its effort to adopt social media itself. In the first week of December, the fans of its Facebook fan page has nearly tripled.
Recently, it also launched The Big Money Facebook 50, a ranking of the brands that are currently making the best use of Facebook. The Web site plans to make the list an annual feature, its own verision of the Fortune 500 but for companies that are social media savvy. “I think it will turn into something like that, but the difference is our list is more subjective,” said Ledbetter.
Indeed, the Big Money list uses various metrics—including fan numbers, page growth, frequency of updates, creativity as determined by a panel of judges, and fan engagement—to decide the ultimate rank on the list, according to the explanation on the site. Readers can send in suggestions and comments on how to rank the list, too, either through its Facebook fan page or directly from the Web site.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
New Media Re-tweet: How Google Will Help Newspapers
Eric Schmidt: In 2015, what is it like reading online? Mi_Kuhn Google's Chairman & CEO in the #WSJ on a new, digital business model: How #Google Can Help Newspapers. http://bit.ly/895j8L #Media
A Tin For News
It wasn't a business Newstin planned to get into originally. But an incident turned out to have become a service that endeavors to provide Internet news readers the first experience in global news reading.
Using its patented Cross Language Data Retrieval technology, Newstin started its business in 1998 to create IT solutions for business clients. But the technology's great potential in arranging all types of online information inspired its business development director Jeremy Lopez to use it to organize Internet news.
"We've enabled our readers to get news tailored to their unique needs. It goes beyond key words search," said Lopez, who joined Newstin in 2006 to start this global news aggregation project. For example, a reader can type in a search phrase such as “technology” and the site is able to pull out stories not only contain the key word “technology,” but related articles on IT and inventions.
Newstin subscribers can search for stories on selected topics retrieving from hundreds of thousands of sources from around the world such as the U.S., Czech, and China. The Web site pulls in stories from main stream media, blogs and press releases from each country and list them either by relevance or time. What's better: Everything is free.
Newstin also encourages its members to play an active role in the site. Any member can suggest new sources to the existing 700,00 categories. New sources are subject to be reviewed by the Newstin editorial team before being added to the list. But the result of this Wikipedia-like approach is a soaring number of sources. As of today, the site has 15,000 sources from around the globe and it is growing daily.
The concern of the ever-growing online sources including blogs is their viability. “Every moment, all the data has been piled. But to determine the authority of the sources is one of the most difficult thing,” Alan Mutter, an independent media investor and veteran media watcher.
The key word is “reliability”. For that, Newstin seems to have some way to go. “Its content stretches too widely that it's not clear to me whose needs it is serving,” said Mutter. “It needs to be more focused.”
Using its patented Cross Language Data Retrieval technology, Newstin started its business in 1998 to create IT solutions for business clients. But the technology's great potential in arranging all types of online information inspired its business development director Jeremy Lopez to use it to organize Internet news.
"We've enabled our readers to get news tailored to their unique needs. It goes beyond key words search," said Lopez, who joined Newstin in 2006 to start this global news aggregation project. For example, a reader can type in a search phrase such as “technology” and the site is able to pull out stories not only contain the key word “technology,” but related articles on IT and inventions.
Newstin subscribers can search for stories on selected topics retrieving from hundreds of thousands of sources from around the world such as the U.S., Czech, and China. The Web site pulls in stories from main stream media, blogs and press releases from each country and list them either by relevance or time. What's better: Everything is free.
Newstin also encourages its members to play an active role in the site. Any member can suggest new sources to the existing 700,00 categories. New sources are subject to be reviewed by the Newstin editorial team before being added to the list. But the result of this Wikipedia-like approach is a soaring number of sources. As of today, the site has 15,000 sources from around the globe and it is growing daily.
The concern of the ever-growing online sources including blogs is their viability. “Every moment, all the data has been piled. But to determine the authority of the sources is one of the most difficult thing,” Alan Mutter, an independent media investor and veteran media watcher.
The key word is “reliability”. For that, Newstin seems to have some way to go. “Its content stretches too widely that it's not clear to me whose needs it is serving,” said Mutter. “It needs to be more focused.”
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Advertising A Hope For The Big Money
James Ledbetter, editor of The Big Money, says reader involvement remains a central mission for the site. With that open-arm attitude, the site's traffic has responded positively, with 6.8 million unique visitors globally, according to Quantcast, a service that tracks online metrics.
Critics, however, doubt whether traffic means bucks for The Big Money. "I believe it has readers since it offers interesting stories," said Alan Mutter, an independent media investor and a veteran media executive. “But the question is whether it is attracting advertising and able to become self sustainable.”
Such concerns have definitely hit home; last year, two big advertisers, American Express and Infinity Ads, pulled out. “That just said how bad our advertising industry has became in the crisis,” said Ledbetter. Later in the year, the Web site re-established relationship with American Express to cooperate video projects on the site. Dell, meanwhile, exclusively sponsors its current Facebook 50 list project.
Still, The Big Money relies financially on its mother company, the Slate Group. “We are very dependent on the network to get advertising. Without Slate, there is no Big Money,” Ledbetter said. In the next few years, the Web site's revenue might not grow big enough to self sustain, but its editorial group believes advertising is going to become the main revenue stream in a long term. And that, Ledbetter believes, relies largely on the quality of content. "Yes, we will be irreverent if we need to be,” said Ledbetter. “As long as its witty and intelligent, and continues to attract advertising.”
Monday, November 30, 2009
Tell Me How The Web Feels
Since we have the Web, people have become lazier. People spend increasing number of hours ordering things online, searching for things online, and meeting friends online. Now the Web is using a technology called sentiment analysis to tell us how the Web feels.What it does is it gathers the feedback from people and let you know what the mass thinks of a piece of news item, a restaurant, a dish, etc. For example, if you search for a restaurant when you are out with friends, it doesn't just tell you the list of restaurants nearby and what types of food they serve, it also tells you what the overall sentiment people have about this restaurant.
So the Web has become smart enough to decides for us.
Another Web site that uses this technology is Newstin.com, a news aggregator that measures the sentiment for each piece of news it has on the site. When a news article shows up on the site, it also shows a vertical bar that colors either green or red, with green meaning positive sentiment and red meaning negative.
For instance, if you search for Obama on Newstin, thousands of news items will show up in the search result, each with a different color bar beside it. With a quick glance, readers can get a rough idea of whether the majority of the news about Obama recently is complimentary or derogatory.
One sentiment analysis provider in San Francisco Scout Lab said the technology has become advanced enough for it to not just decoding numbers, but also decoding feelings on the Web.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Inside eReader: Paper-Like Display Technology
We have to talk about E Ink Corporation to fully understand today's eReader market and technology.Scan through all the competing eReaders in the market, Kindle, Sony's eReader, Nook, eSlick, Cybook Opus. They all share one thing: the same display technology.
The technology is called Paper-like display. The developer is E Ink Corporation, which has been mentioned in this blog a couple of times.
Who is E Ink?
E Ink was founded in 1997 based on research started at the MIT Media Lab. It is the leading supplier of low-power electronic display technologies. The technology is indispensable for a digital book reading device that requires extremely low power consumption, allows long hours of reading without repeated charging, and protects the eyes from backlight blast.
The Lab is on the frontline of display technologies. Recently, it talked about future ePaper:
“I believe that the killer application will be eTextbooks for students. This trend has already started and with the arrival of flexible displays and color ePaper in 2010, that market is likely to ramp quickly. Flexible Active Matrix (because the segmented SURF displays are already flexible) and Color ePaper are the future trends.”
Friday, November 27, 2009
Translation Is The Bottleneck For News Aggregators
Started with six staff in Prague, capital city of Czech Republic, in 1998, Newstin.com was initially funded privately by its CEO and founder, Frank Vrabel, and a group of angel investors, affluent individuals who provide capital for business startups. Right now, it is in the process of a new round of fund raising, according to Lopez. And it is also in talks with advertising agency Double Click (http://www.doubleclick.com) for partnership.
The site provides English translation from ten languages such as Spanish, Japanese, and Arabic. For many Web sites, language is the barrier in creating a global online community. Even Facebook has language limitations. Its members have to speak the same language to be able to communicate. "We are jumping across these differences to lay a foundation to interconnect all the editions," Lopez said.
But media experts say the site still faces challenges. Besides being able to further verify its sources, the other challenge is its translation quality, a universal bottleneck for translation services.
The site uses Lingual World (http://www.lingual-world.com/), a third party translation services. Based on a recent poll, readers are generally happy with the translation, Lopez said. But translations between certain languages are tougher. "It's much harder to use machines to translate from Chinese into English," Lopez said. "But you get the gist of the story."
Critics doubt whether readers are getting the accurate gist because even Google's translation tool is said to be distorting the meanings of the original languages.
The next big thing for the team of 30 in central Europe is to build an interactive platform for readers to leave comments on the site. Translation to English will also be available to enable readers around the world to read comments in different languages and communicate with each other.
In the past two years, Newstin staff grew from six to 30. It also opened its first international office in Silicon Valley of San Francisco.
Industry watchers think the site has its fingers on the problem. But it will take a long time to solve it. Whoever figures out how to build a fast, convenient, and reliable way to find what readers want will have a successful business.
The site provides English translation from ten languages such as Spanish, Japanese, and Arabic. For many Web sites, language is the barrier in creating a global online community. Even Facebook has language limitations. Its members have to speak the same language to be able to communicate. "We are jumping across these differences to lay a foundation to interconnect all the editions," Lopez said.
But media experts say the site still faces challenges. Besides being able to further verify its sources, the other challenge is its translation quality, a universal bottleneck for translation services.
The site uses Lingual World (http://www.lingual-world.com/), a third party translation services. Based on a recent poll, readers are generally happy with the translation, Lopez said. But translations between certain languages are tougher. "It's much harder to use machines to translate from Chinese into English," Lopez said. "But you get the gist of the story."
Critics doubt whether readers are getting the accurate gist because even Google's translation tool is said to be distorting the meanings of the original languages.
The next big thing for the team of 30 in central Europe is to build an interactive platform for readers to leave comments on the site. Translation to English will also be available to enable readers around the world to read comments in different languages and communicate with each other.
In the past two years, Newstin staff grew from six to 30. It also opened its first international office in Silicon Valley of San Francisco.
Industry watchers think the site has its fingers on the problem. But it will take a long time to solve it. Whoever figures out how to build a fast, convenient, and reliable way to find what readers want will have a successful business.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
eReader: B&N Nook Has A Huge Book Database
Few can compete with the number of books that owned by Barnes & Nobles. This is a very reason why it makes sense for the bookstore to produce its own eReader --- the Nook.With over a million titles ready to be downloaded, Nook was born with an advantage.
B&N's boasts on its Web site: The #1 feature of Nook: Over One Million Titles. "Readers can easily get bestsellers and new releases, your favorite eNewspapers, and eMagazines all delivered fast and free via 3G wireless or Wi-Fi. Browse the vast Barnes and Noble eBookstore and sample any eBook for free," the site wrote.
Okay, so you have a million titles, the next question is how many Nook can store. B&N has the answer. Feature #2: Endless Shelf Space!
“Store as many as 1,500 eBooks, eNewspapers, and eMagazines on your nook’s 2 GB of internal storage, so you'll never be without your favorites. Need more space? Just add a Micro SD card,” the site says.
Except that Kindle has 360,000 titles, which are still far fewer than what Nook has, other eReaders in the market either have deals with Barnes and Nobles, or they have very limited number of resources.
Think about it. If B&N owns the copyrights of so many books, it will become the market maker of the eReader market. As a result, the best technology is likely to follow the most powerful player in the market. So Nook is going to advance much faster than the rest of the eReaders. As a customer, you want to own the company and its product that has much room for growth.
Still not convinced? Let's throw some icing on your cake. Nook has a set of designer cases that will make you look so cool.
See some designs:
Monday, November 23, 2009
The Lightest eReader On the Market
The Cybook Opus weighs 5.3 ounces, almost half of the weight of the smaller Kindle that weighs 10.2 ounces.But its slim figure holds a big memory. Its standard 32 MB memory can be expanded to 1 GB. Although Kindle has a larger memory, 1 GB which can store over 1,000 books might be much larger a collection than the books on most people's book shelves.
Cybook Opus, not as well marketed as the Kindle Reader, has an owner that pioneered the ebook reading device market since 1998 - Bookeen.
The gadget which greatly resembles Kindle also uses the same display technology that Kindle uses --- Paper-like display made by E Ink Corporation.
It comes a little bit smaller in size 6” x 4.2” x 0.4” than Kindle's 7.5" x 5.3" x 0.7". Its screen size is 5”, one inch shy of that of Kindle's.
Surprisingly, there wasn't much market excitement at the introduction of the stylish Cybook Reader earlier this year. Blog Obsessable mentioned that the product has only “teased the eReader market, few other details are available.”
Selling at $249, the nicely-designed Cybook seems to have a strong competitive edge in the eReader market if it promotes itself a little more aggressively.
Users of the gadget seems to be happy, too. One customer left a review saying:
“I'm soooo glad I found this device. Its light and stylish, perfect for my commutes and travel. I find the booksonboard.com for downloading books a very good source for my ebooks, so thank you Bookeen for getting me going in such a positive direction with my new reading experience. I struggled with deciding on a Kindle but hated, hated - the design - this is soooo much more stylish. I recommend any women who needs her electronics to match her stylish lifestyle to get the opus.”
Well, just by the number of “o”s that the reviewer put behind “so”, we know Bookeen's Cybook makes at least one customer very content. And there, “sooo much more stylish” is definitely a big selling point among women readers.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
eReader Battle: eSlick vs. Kindle
eSlick is a digital book reader developed by Foxit Software late last year and has been on the market since this year. When it was first introduced, it had a significant advantage over Amazon's Kindle which at that time was sold at $359. eSlick undercut the price by introducing it to the market at a promotional price of $229 and then $259 later on.The eReader uses an electronic-paper display designed by E Ink Corporation, the same company that makes the Kindle's. The light reflects off the images and words on the screen instead of lighting the screen up with a backlight. That makes it a lot less strained on the eyes and provides a sharp, black-and-white screen that reads just like it would on real paper.
So now you can read text just as easily in bright sunlight as you would in your own living room, says on its Web site.
Based on the E-ink technology, the eSlick does not use any power to maintain a page display while only using power when an image is changed, says its Web site. This means that no matter how long the page is displayed, it uses no additional power.
eSlick and Kindle come close in size, eSlick Reader has a dimension of 7.4" x 4.7" x 0.4" which Kindle is 8" x 5.3" x 0.36". So Kindle is a slightly larger but a tiny bit thinner. Both have 6-inch screens. But eSlick weighs a lot less than Kindle, 6.4 ounces versus 10.2 ounces.
The big drawback of eSlick is it doesn't have wireless connectivity like Kindle does. So readers will not be able to think of a book and download it on the go. That requires more planning and to be less spontaneous.
But "at least that process is free," according to a gadget blog. "Automatic newspaper delivery to a Kindle costs at least $10 per month--each. Blogs cost $1 to $2 per month--each. At least with the eSlick, you don't have to email your own documents to yourself, as you must with the Kindle," it says.
Over 64,000 eBooks are now available for eSlick, including new releases, best sellers and classics, with new ebooks added weekly to the eSlick eBooks store. It is only a small fraction comparing to Kindle's access to more than 360,000 books. This is an area Kindle is likely to have an absolute advantage in the market for a period of time, thanks to its owner Amazon.com.
So far, the eSlick device menus are only available in English. But it allows you to read any document or eBook written in any language.
Now the price of Kindle has now gone down to $259 since, which one would you go for?
(All the comparison in this article is to Amazon's Kindle, not Kindle DX)
To see a video about eSlick, click here.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
eReader Battle: Sony vs. Kindle
Sony's eReader marketer seems to have a clear idea in mind: Target different group of customers with its 3-tier price level from $199 to $399.Compared to the prices of Kindle $259 and Kindle DX at $489, it's clear that Sony is targeting a much wider group. The lowest range of the product line Sony PRS-300 Pocket Edition, which sells at $199, is sold at ToysRUs, a kid's market that Kindle might not be interested in yet.
Sizes of the two eReaders come in very close to each other. Sony's PRS-600 Reader Touch measures 0.4” thin and weighs 10.1 ounces. Kindle is 0.36" think and weighs 10.2 ounces.
The display technologies are identical. They both use paper-like display system made by E Ink Corporation. The technology doesn't light the screen using a backlight, instead, the light reflects off the words and images on the screen. This causes a lot less strained on the eyes, according to the Web site.
But one customer complained in the Sony's Reader site:
"I've had this product for less than a month. The reader is nice but as a traveler like I am it is a waste of money since most of my reading time is in areas with low light. I travel on planes at night time hours and do not like to use the lights on the air craft. The reflection it gets in brighter areas makes it hard to read. I think it is a waste of money for continuously traveling person like myself and will not recommend it to anyone."
Well, that said, Sony's eReader does give a chic look. It also offers in three colors, white, red, and black. Again, a design that goes along with its market, a younger and less tech-savvy group.
I think Sony at least has an advantage in its price compared to Kindle.
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