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.

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.”

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.

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.