Murdoch's iPad-Ready The Daily Debuts: 5 Things to Know

Get ready for your daily dose of Rupert Murdoch. News Corp.'s iPad-only newspaper, The Daily, is set to debut Wednesday morning during an announcement at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Company chairman Murdoch will be on hand to make the announcement along with Eddie Cue, Apple's vice president of Internet services. The digital newspaper is Murdoch's attempt to prove that the world is still willing to pay for journalism in a world awash with free news from traditional news sources and independent Websites and blogs.

Murdoch has sunk an estimated $30 million into the new venture, and hopes that a number of the world's nearly 15 million iPad owners will be willing to pay a reported 99 cents per week for the privilege of reading The Daily .

If nothing else, Murdoch's attempt to translate traditional newspaper journalism to the iPad has garnered a lot of interest. It's anybody's guess if this new venture will succeed, since little is known about the newspaper. But here are five key things we do know about The Daily to keep in mind as we wait for News Corp and Apple to unveil the new venture.

If you want to follow along with the announcement, you can point your browser Macworld's live blog coverage of The Daily launch starting at 11 a.m. Eastern.

Image Credit: Wikicommons. Seen here is Rupert Murdoch attending the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos Deep Bench

The Daily looks like it is going to have a solid roster of experienced and well-known journalists. Jesse Angelo from The New York Post will be The Daily's executive editor. Elisabeth Eaves, a former Forbes columnist and editor, will head up the Op-Ed section. The New Yorker's pop music columnist Sasha Frere-Jones will be culture editor for The Daily.

Poynter.org recently did some digging on LinkedIn and Twitter to come up with a list of another 52 staffers at The Daily . Reporters and editors include Bill Bradley

(reporter) contributor to Vanity Fair ; Benjamin Carlson (investigative reporter), formerly at The Atlantic ; Heather Havrilesky (staff critic), formerly at Salon.com; and Peter Ha (technology editor), formerly at Time .

Target Audience

The Daily is reportedly targeted at younger, tech savvy readers. News items will reportedly be short, pithy articles designed to let you quickly get your morning news fill.

New Forms Of Storytelling

The Los Angeles Times discovered a few tidbits about the newspaper from speaking with "a person who has worked on The Daily ." Murdoch's newspaper will reportedly take advantage of the iPad's capabilities with "new forms of visual storytelling." One such example is an immersive 360-degree photograph that you will be able to manipulate and examine.

The idea of taking advantage of the iPad's capabilities is something we've already seen such as Virgin's iPad-only magazine, Project.

Project is a fun magazine to read and often uses gimmicky features such as a cover page that includes video or a photograph covered in virtual dirt that you have to wipe away to see what's underneath. The problem, however, is that this magazine has so many interactive features that the app often crashes and can at times be unusable. If The Daily is going to succeed it will have to be careful to deliver a consistent, crash-resistant experience every day of the week.

Competition Unclear

It's still not clear which newspapers Murdoch's The Daily is supposed to be going up against. Most analysts are pointing to newspapers such as USA Today and local tabloid-style rags as examples of what The Daily will be like. But the more I read about The Daily, the more it sounds like a deluxe version of free commuter papers you can find at subway stations and bus stops around the country.

If that's the case, then The Daily has a good chance of succeeding. People who have a daily commute of 30-45 minutes or more often use that time to read the news whether it's a hard copy of The New York Times, a smartphone app or more often free papers such as Metro. If iPad users can grab a cheap and somewhat better version of a free commuter paper then Murdoch's newspaper might find its niche audience.

Subscription

The Daily is rumored to have a subscription price of 99 cents per week. It's not clear if there will also be a price for single issues of The Daily. Currently you have to buy iPad magazine and news subscriptions outside of the app, and then you download content to your device from within the app. This set-up is supposed to change with The Daily, so look for Apple to announce a new in-app subscription service on Wednesday.

This post was originaly post by Ian Paul, PCWorld

Get ready for your daily dose of Rupert Murdoch. News Corp.'s iPad-only newspaper, The Daily, is set to debut Wednesday morning during an announcement at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Company chairman Murdoch will be on hand to make the announcement along with Eddie Cue, Apple's vice president of Internet services. The digital newspaper is Murdoch's attempt to prove that the world is still willing to pay for journalism in a world awash with free news from traditional news sources and independent Websites and blogs.

Murdoch has sunk an estimated $30 million into the new venture, and hopes that a number of the world's nearly 15 million iPad owners will be willing to pay a reported 99 cents per week for the privilege of reading The Daily .

If nothing else, Murdoch's attempt to translate traditional newspaper journalism to the iPad has garnered a lot of interest. It's anybody's guess if this new venture will succeed, since little is known about the newspaper. But here are five key things we do know about The Daily to keep in mind as we wait for News Corp and Apple to unveil the new venture.

If you want to follow along with the announcement, you can point your browser Macworld's live blog coverage of The Daily launch starting at 11 a.m. Eastern.

Image Credit: Wikicommons. Seen here is Rupert Murdoch attending the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos Deep Bench

The Daily looks like it is going to have a solid roster of experienced and well-known journalists. Jesse Angelo from The New York Post will be The Daily's executive editor. Elisabeth Eaves, a former Forbes columnist and editor, will head up the Op-Ed section. The New Yorker's pop music columnist Sasha Frere-Jones will be culture editor for The Daily.

Poynter.org recently did some digging on LinkedIn and Twitter to come up with a list of another 52 staffers at The Daily . Reporters and editors include Bill Bradley

(reporter) contributor to Vanity Fair ; Benjamin Carlson (investigative reporter), formerly at The Atlantic ; Heather Havrilesky (staff critic), formerly at Salon.com; and Peter Ha (technology editor), formerly at Time .

Target Audience

The Daily is reportedly targeted at younger, tech savvy readers. News items will reportedly be short, pithy articles designed to let you quickly get your morning news fill.

New Forms Of Storytelling

The Los Angeles Times discovered a few tidbits about the newspaper from speaking with "a person who has worked on The Daily ." Murdoch's newspaper will reportedly take advantage of the iPad's capabilities with "new forms of visual storytelling." One such example is an immersive 360-degree photograph that you will be able to manipulate and examine.

The idea of taking advantage of the iPad's capabilities is something we've already seen such as Virgin's iPad-only magazine, Project.

Project is a fun magazine to read and often uses gimmicky features such as a cover page that includes video or a photograph covered in virtual dirt that you have to wipe away to see what's underneath. The problem, however, is that this magazine has so many interactive features that the app often crashes and can at times be unusable. If The Daily is going to succeed it will have to be careful to deliver a consistent, crash-resistant experience every day of the week.

Competition Unclear

It's still not clear which newspapers Murdoch's The Daily is supposed to be going up against. Most analysts are pointing to newspapers such as USA Today and local tabloid-style rags as examples of what The Daily will be like. But the more I read about The Daily, the more it sounds like a deluxe version of free commuter papers you can find at subway stations and bus stops around the country.

If that's the case, then The Daily has a good chance of succeeding. People who have a daily commute of 30-45 minutes or more often use that time to read the news whether it's a hard copy of The New York Times, a smartphone app or more often free papers such as Metro. If iPad users can grab a cheap and somewhat better version of a free commuter paper then Murdoch's newspaper might find its niche audience.

Subscription

The Daily is rumored to have a subscription price of 99 cents per week. It's not clear if there will also be a price for single issues of The Daily. Currently you have to buy iPad magazine and news subscriptions outside of the app, and then you download content to your device from within the app. This set-up is supposed to change with The Daily, so look for Apple to announce a new in-app subscription service on Wednesday.

This post was originaly post by Ian Paul, PCWorld

How to copy songs from your iPod to your PC?

A reader points out a straightforward way for Windows users to transfer music from an iPod to your hard drive, without extra software:

1. Connect the iPod to your PC. If iTunes starts syncing (ie erasing) your music automatically, hit the X in the upper right hand corner of iTunes display, to the left of the search box, to stop it.
2. In Control Panel, Portable Media Devices, double-click your iPod.
3. Navigate to the Music folder.
4. Select all the music folders, and drag and drop them into a folder on your hard drive, or directly into iTunes.

And you’re done! The iPod music folder structure is strange and inexplicable, but once you move your files into iTunes you can set it to automatically organize your folder by artist and album to clean that up. (To do this, in iTunes Edit menu, choose Preferences and in the Advanced tab, check “Keep iTunes Music Folder organized.”)

If you give this a go, lemme know how it goes. I’ll ammend the instructions with any additional info for other versions of Windows and iPods.


Just for the record, I did not write this article, but I would have known how to do this. But one thing I ahve noticed is that you do not need to go into the control panel. Instead just make explorer.exe show hidden folders. Then, navigate into the iPod directory, go into iPod_control, and follow step four of the article.

A reader points out a straightforward way for Windows users to transfer music from an iPod to your hard drive, without extra software:

1. Connect the iPod to your PC. If iTunes starts syncing (ie erasing) your music automatically, hit the X in the upper right hand corner of iTunes display, to the left of the search box, to stop it.
2. In Control Panel, Portable Media Devices, double-click your iPod.
3. Navigate to the Music folder.
4. Select all the music folders, and drag and drop them into a folder on your hard drive, or directly into iTunes.

And you’re done! The iPod music folder structure is strange and inexplicable, but once you move your files into iTunes you can set it to automatically organize your folder by artist and album to clean that up. (To do this, in iTunes Edit menu, choose Preferences and in the Advanced tab, check “Keep iTunes Music Folder organized.”)

If you give this a go, lemme know how it goes. I’ll ammend the instructions with any additional info for other versions of Windows and iPods.


Just for the record, I did not write this article, but I would have known how to do this. But one thing I ahve noticed is that you do not need to go into the control panel. Instead just make explorer.exe show hidden folders. Then, navigate into the iPod directory, go into iPod_control, and follow step four of the article.

How much BandWidth your website want?

BandWidth Explained

Most hosting companies offer a variety of bandwidth options in their plans. So exactly what is bandwidth as it relates to web hosting? Put simply, bandwidth is the amount of traffic that is allowed to occur between your web site and the rest of the internet. The amount of bandwidth a hosting company can provide is determined by their network connections, both internal to their data center and external to the public internet.


Network Connectivity

The internet, in the most simplest of terms, is a group of millions of computers connected by networks. These connections within the internet can be large or small depending upon the cabling and equipment that is used at a particular internet location. It is the size of each network connection that determines how much bandwidth is available. For example, if you use a DSL connection to connect to the internet, you have 1.54 Mega bits (Mb) of bandwidth. Bandwidth therefore is measured in bits (a single 0 or 1). Bits are grouped in bytes which form words, text, and other information that is transferred between your computer and the internet.

If you have a DSL connection to the internet, you have dedicated bandwidth between your computer and your internet provider. But your internet provider may have thousands of DSL connections to their location. All of these connection aggregate at your internet provider who then has their own dedicated connection to the internet (or multiple connections) which is much larger than your single connection. They must have enough bandwidth to serve your computing needs as well as all of their other customers. So while you have a 1.54Mb connection to your internet provider, your internet provider may have a 255Mb connection to the internet so it can accommodate your needs and up to 166 other users (255/1.54).


Traffic

A very simple analogy to use to understand bandwidth and traffic is to think of highways and cars. Bandwidth is the number of lanes on the highway and traffic is the number of cars on the highway. If you are the only car on a highway, you can travel very quickly. If you are stuck in the middle of rush hour, you may travel very slowly since all of the lanes are being used up.

Traffic is simply the number of bits that are transferred on network connections. It is easiest to understand traffic using examples. One Gigabyte is 2 to the 30th power (1,073,741,824) bytes. One gigabyte is equal to 1,024 megabytes. To put this in perspective, it takes one byte to store one character. Imagine 100 file cabinets in a building, each of these cabinets holds 1000 folders. Each folder has 100 papers. Each paper contains 100 characters - A GB is all the characters in the building. An MP3 song is about 4MB, the same song in wav format is about 40MB, a full length movie can be 800MB to 1000MB (1000MB = 1GB).

If you were to transfer this MP3 song from a web site to your computer, you would create 4MB of traffic between the web site you are downloading from and your computer. Depending upon the network connection between the web site and the internet, the transfer may occur very quickly, or it could take time if other people are also downloading files at the same time. If, for example, the web site you download from has a 10MB connection to the internet, and you are the only person accessing that web site to download your MP3, your 4MB file will be the only traffic on that web site. However, if three people are all downloading that same MP at the same time, 12MB (3 x 4MB) of traffic has been created. Because in this example, the host only has 10MB of bandwidth, someone will have to wait. The network equipment at the hosting company will cycle through each person downloading the file and transfer a small portion at a time so each person's file transfer can take place, but the transfer for everyone downloading the file will be slower. If 100 people all came to the site and downloaded the MP3 at the same time, the transfers would be extremely slow. If the host wanted to decrease the time it took to download files simultaneously, it could increase the bandwidth of their internet connection (at a cost due to upgrading equipment).


Hosting Bandwidth

In the example above, we discussed traffic in terms of downloading an MP3 file. However, each time you visit a web site, you are creating traffic, because in order to view that web page on your computer, the web page is first downloaded to your computer (between the web site and you) which is then displayed using your browser software (Internet Explorer, Netscape, etc.) . The page itself is simply a file that creates traffic just like the MP3 file in the example above (however, a web page is usually much smaller than a music file).

A web page may be very small or large depending upon the amount of text and the number and quality of images integrated within the web page. For example, the home page for CNN.com is about 200KB (200 Kilobytes = 200,000 bytes = 1,600,000 bits). This is typically large for a web page. In comparison, Yahoo's home page is about 70KB.


How Much Bandwidth Is Enough?

It depends (don't you hate that answer). But in truth, it does. Since bandwidth is a significant determinant of hosting plan prices, you should take time to determine just how much is right for you. Almost all hosting plans have bandwidth requirements measured in months, so you need to estimate the amount of bandwidth that will be required by your site on a monthly basis

If you do not intend to provide file download capability from your site, the formula for calculating bandwidth is fairly straightforward:

Average Daily Visitors x Average Page Views x Average Page Size x 31 x Fudge Factor

If you intend to allow people to download files from your site, your bandwidth calculation should be:

[(Average Daily Visitors x Average Page Views x Average Page Size) +
(Average Daily File Downloads x Average File Size)] x 31 x Fudge Factor

Let us examine each item in the formula:

Average Daily Visitors - The number of people you expect to visit your site, on average, each day. Depending upon how you market your site, this number could be from 1 to 1,000,000.

Average Page Views - On average, the number of web pages you expect a person to view. If you have 50 web pages in your web site, an average person may only view 5 of those pages each time they visit.

Average Page Size - The average size of your web pages, in Kilobytes (KB). If you have already designed your site, you can calculate this directly.

Average Daily File Downloads - The number of downloads you expect to occur on your site. This is a function of the numbers of visitors and how many times a visitor downloads a file, on average, each day.

Average File Size - Average file size of files that are downloadable from your site. Similar to your web pages, if you already know which files can be downloaded, you can calculate this directly.

Fudge Factor - A number greater than 1. Using 1.5 would be safe, which assumes that your estimate is off by 50%. However, if you were very unsure, you could use 2 or 3 to ensure that your bandwidth requirements are more than met.

Usually, hosting plans offer bandwidth in terms of Gigabytes (GB) per month. This is why our formula takes daily averages and multiplies them by 31.


Summary

Most personal or small business sites will not need more than 1GB of bandwidth per month. If you have a web site that is composed of static web pages and you expect little traffic to your site on a daily basis, go with a low bandwidth plan. If you go over the amount of bandwidth allocated in your plan, your hosting company could charge you over usage fees, so if you think the traffic to your site will be significant, you may want to go through the calculations above to estimate the amount of bandwidth required in a hosting plan.

BandWidth Explained

Most hosting companies offer a variety of bandwidth options in their plans. So exactly what is bandwidth as it relates to web hosting? Put simply, bandwidth is the amount of traffic that is allowed to occur between your web site and the rest of the internet. The amount of bandwidth a hosting company can provide is determined by their network connections, both internal to their data center and external to the public internet.


Network Connectivity

The internet, in the most simplest of terms, is a group of millions of computers connected by networks. These connections within the internet can be large or small depending upon the cabling and equipment that is used at a particular internet location. It is the size of each network connection that determines how much bandwidth is available. For example, if you use a DSL connection to connect to the internet, you have 1.54 Mega bits (Mb) of bandwidth. Bandwidth therefore is measured in bits (a single 0 or 1). Bits are grouped in bytes which form words, text, and other information that is transferred between your computer and the internet.

If you have a DSL connection to the internet, you have dedicated bandwidth between your computer and your internet provider. But your internet provider may have thousands of DSL connections to their location. All of these connection aggregate at your internet provider who then has their own dedicated connection to the internet (or multiple connections) which is much larger than your single connection. They must have enough bandwidth to serve your computing needs as well as all of their other customers. So while you have a 1.54Mb connection to your internet provider, your internet provider may have a 255Mb connection to the internet so it can accommodate your needs and up to 166 other users (255/1.54).


Traffic

A very simple analogy to use to understand bandwidth and traffic is to think of highways and cars. Bandwidth is the number of lanes on the highway and traffic is the number of cars on the highway. If you are the only car on a highway, you can travel very quickly. If you are stuck in the middle of rush hour, you may travel very slowly since all of the lanes are being used up.

Traffic is simply the number of bits that are transferred on network connections. It is easiest to understand traffic using examples. One Gigabyte is 2 to the 30th power (1,073,741,824) bytes. One gigabyte is equal to 1,024 megabytes. To put this in perspective, it takes one byte to store one character. Imagine 100 file cabinets in a building, each of these cabinets holds 1000 folders. Each folder has 100 papers. Each paper contains 100 characters - A GB is all the characters in the building. An MP3 song is about 4MB, the same song in wav format is about 40MB, a full length movie can be 800MB to 1000MB (1000MB = 1GB).

If you were to transfer this MP3 song from a web site to your computer, you would create 4MB of traffic between the web site you are downloading from and your computer. Depending upon the network connection between the web site and the internet, the transfer may occur very quickly, or it could take time if other people are also downloading files at the same time. If, for example, the web site you download from has a 10MB connection to the internet, and you are the only person accessing that web site to download your MP3, your 4MB file will be the only traffic on that web site. However, if three people are all downloading that same MP at the same time, 12MB (3 x 4MB) of traffic has been created. Because in this example, the host only has 10MB of bandwidth, someone will have to wait. The network equipment at the hosting company will cycle through each person downloading the file and transfer a small portion at a time so each person's file transfer can take place, but the transfer for everyone downloading the file will be slower. If 100 people all came to the site and downloaded the MP3 at the same time, the transfers would be extremely slow. If the host wanted to decrease the time it took to download files simultaneously, it could increase the bandwidth of their internet connection (at a cost due to upgrading equipment).


Hosting Bandwidth

In the example above, we discussed traffic in terms of downloading an MP3 file. However, each time you visit a web site, you are creating traffic, because in order to view that web page on your computer, the web page is first downloaded to your computer (between the web site and you) which is then displayed using your browser software (Internet Explorer, Netscape, etc.) . The page itself is simply a file that creates traffic just like the MP3 file in the example above (however, a web page is usually much smaller than a music file).

A web page may be very small or large depending upon the amount of text and the number and quality of images integrated within the web page. For example, the home page for CNN.com is about 200KB (200 Kilobytes = 200,000 bytes = 1,600,000 bits). This is typically large for a web page. In comparison, Yahoo's home page is about 70KB.


How Much Bandwidth Is Enough?

It depends (don't you hate that answer). But in truth, it does. Since bandwidth is a significant determinant of hosting plan prices, you should take time to determine just how much is right for you. Almost all hosting plans have bandwidth requirements measured in months, so you need to estimate the amount of bandwidth that will be required by your site on a monthly basis

If you do not intend to provide file download capability from your site, the formula for calculating bandwidth is fairly straightforward:

Average Daily Visitors x Average Page Views x Average Page Size x 31 x Fudge Factor

If you intend to allow people to download files from your site, your bandwidth calculation should be:

[(Average Daily Visitors x Average Page Views x Average Page Size) +
(Average Daily File Downloads x Average File Size)] x 31 x Fudge Factor

Let us examine each item in the formula:

Average Daily Visitors - The number of people you expect to visit your site, on average, each day. Depending upon how you market your site, this number could be from 1 to 1,000,000.

Average Page Views - On average, the number of web pages you expect a person to view. If you have 50 web pages in your web site, an average person may only view 5 of those pages each time they visit.

Average Page Size - The average size of your web pages, in Kilobytes (KB). If you have already designed your site, you can calculate this directly.

Average Daily File Downloads - The number of downloads you expect to occur on your site. This is a function of the numbers of visitors and how many times a visitor downloads a file, on average, each day.

Average File Size - Average file size of files that are downloadable from your site. Similar to your web pages, if you already know which files can be downloaded, you can calculate this directly.

Fudge Factor - A number greater than 1. Using 1.5 would be safe, which assumes that your estimate is off by 50%. However, if you were very unsure, you could use 2 or 3 to ensure that your bandwidth requirements are more than met.

Usually, hosting plans offer bandwidth in terms of Gigabytes (GB) per month. This is why our formula takes daily averages and multiplies them by 31.


Summary

Most personal or small business sites will not need more than 1GB of bandwidth per month. If you have a web site that is composed of static web pages and you expect little traffic to your site on a daily basis, go with a low bandwidth plan. If you go over the amount of bandwidth allocated in your plan, your hosting company could charge you over usage fees, so if you think the traffic to your site will be significant, you may want to go through the calculations above to estimate the amount of bandwidth required in a hosting plan.