Archive for November, 2006

Moderating Comments

November 30, 2006

The question of whether to moderate blog comments or not has met with some interesting discussion lately.  Robert Scoble, one of the internet’s most popular bloggers started moderating comments in August and caused quite a stir.  But many serious bloggers know where he is coming from and agree with his decision.

At The PressDisplay Club, we have been blogging for only a short while, but we’re learning quickly about spam and inappropriate posts.  So we’ve set up some guidelines on comments and will start moderating them daily.  This does not mean we are avoiding tough subjects.   It means we want to keep the blog working in the spirit for which it was intended – a forum to improve PressDisplay.com for our customers, publishers and partners.

Rest assured…we will read and review 100% of your comments, and all comments that fall within our “Rules of Engagement” will be posted – yes, even the tough ones.  We’re not going to ban negative comments or product support questions. However, for account specific queries we will forward those requests to our customer support team so they can help resolve your issue quickly.  However, I encourage you to contact customer support directly by clicking on the “?” icon at the top right corner of PressDisplay.com.

PressDisplay Support Icon

It will be much faster and more efficient for you than routing them through this blog.  Your comments and questions are important to us.  As such, Customer Support is committed to providing responses to all support inquiries within 48 hours, and during the work week, their performance is often faster than that.

Please remember that through the PressDisplay Club blog, we want to hear your specific ideas on things that need to be improved, as well as ideas on how to improve them.  Of course, we’re also happy to receive compliments too.  :-)

How to organize YOUR content on PressDisplay.com

November 30, 2006

Bookmarks are used to organize your content on PressDisplay.com (i.e. pages which contain articles of interest to you).  Any page in any publication can be bookmarked. Let me show you how easy it is…

Just open the page or article you want to bookmark and then click on the “star” icon at the bottom of the viewing window as shown below.

Bookmarking a page in PressDisplay

This will open up a dialogue box where you can select which page(s) you want to bookmark.  You can also add comments to the bookmark.  For example you might want to make a commentary on a specific article on the bookmarked page.

 Add comments to a bookmakr

 Once you’ve clicked on “Add”, you’ll be given an opportunity to send the bookmark to someone using email.

 adding a bookmark

Bookmarks are managed using your “Bookmark Manager” which can be accessed through the “My Services” menu item at the top right of PressDisplay.

Bookmark Manager
 

From the Bookmark Manager, you can incorporate text into your bookmarks, share your bookmarks, blog them and delete them.

Managing Bookmarks
 

You can also organize bookmarks in folders.  Notice in the above screen shot how PressDisplay keeps track of the bookmarks you emailed to a friend or posted on a blog. 

More on sharing bookmarks in a later post.  Stay tuned for a post on our new referral program coming up later today.
 

Top Stories versus Editors’ Picks

November 27, 2006

Welcome back everyone. Hope all of you in the US had a great Thanksgiving weekend. 

I wanted to share another cool feature of PressDisplay for those of you haven’t discovered it yet. 

You know how on other web sites you see “top stories” listed?  Well, typically those top stories are chosen based on how many clicks they received (even if they were abandoned right away) OR by what editors “thought” readers would find interesting. 

Well, we thought that neither of those was really a true measure of the value of an article, so we created an algorithm that ranks a story by how long people actually spend reading it.  And then every 10 minutes, we refresh the whole site to show you what the latest “top stories” are from our readers’ perspective.  Cool eh?  We call this feature ”article ranking”.

What we also offer is the ability for you to decide if you want to see all top stories from all 350+ sources OR just the top stories from your favorite papers or a mix of the two.  Don’t you just love being in control?

Check out the picture below.  You’ll see up on the top right corner of PressDisplay a scale above your Favorites list which says “All Sources__________My Newspapers” and has a little green slider above it:  

 Top Stories Selector in PressDisplay

Just move that little green slider from left to right and PressDisplay will update your display with the top stories based on where you leave the slider.  Take a look at this picture below. 

Article Ranking

See how the top stories differ depending on whether the green slider is over “All Sources” or “My Newspapers”?  I love this feature as it allows me to customize my view of the news on the fly.  Why don’t you check it out and let me know what you think. 

NewspaperDirect and Associated Newpapers at the World Association of Newspapers Conference in Madrid

November 23, 2006

David Owen, Senior Vice President Publishing, NewspaperDirect

David Owen

Mike Newman, Group Circulation Director, Associated Newspapers (Hey Mike…I’m holding this spot in the post for your picture)

Daily Mail

joined forces today to talk about “Multi platform circulation in a digital age”  to over 350 attendees from 60 countries at the 9th World Editor & Marketeer Conference and Expo , 23-24 November 2006 in Madrid, Spain

They shared with the audience how today’s technology allows newspapers to follow their readers wherever they may be.  For UK newspapers, for example, there are 13.2 million British nationals living abroad, and 65 million tourists, representing a significant market for news from home.  Associated’s Daily Mail has gone after them in a big way — it is distributed in 51 countries and printed in eight, adding an average 108,000 circulation to the paper’s 2.4 million daily sales.  “No matter what part of the UK you live in, when you go abroad you expect to find your national newspaper,” says Mr Newman.

The newspaper’s partnership with NewspaperDirect, reduces costs and makes distribution easier.   “NewspaperDirect made me a global publisher,” he says. “I can afford to print locally, and on time. It’s had a psychological effect on my readers — they expect to see the newspaper everywhere.”

I’m sure David and Mike did a great job, but I have to say I’m just a little jealous.  Being a Hemingway fan, it would have been great to walk the Hemingway trail in Madrid and see his room where he wrote The Sun Also Rises.   I’d leave the bull fighting for the guys, while I sipped on one of Don Ernesto’s favorite cocktails and enjoyed the sites and sounds of the highest capital city in Europe.

Oh well…maybe next year.

Salud!
 

Happy Thanksgiving America!…. but….Who’s been eating my porridge?

November 22, 2006

Well, tis the season for being thankful and I for one am very thankful for many things. But I’m sure you don’t want to hear about that.

Instead, today I want to share with you an article I read that made me smile.

When I came into work this morning, I thought I’d check PressDisplay to see what newspapers around the world are saying about Thanksgiving this year. There were a lot of stories in the US papers about travel, history, etc, but the story I enjoyed the most came from the Daily Mail in the UK. I don’t know about you, but this brought back memories of the show “Gentle Ben”. Do you remember that or am I just showing my age. 

I can’t remember much about the TV show now, but it does bring back good feelings when I think about it. I even named my yellow lab after that bear – my “Gentle Ben” is a big loveable pup that never grew up. Even at 13 he looks like a puppy – a 100 lb puppy, but a puppy. I wonder if Brutus looks like a cub – somehow I doubt that :)

Anyway…Happy Thanksgiving America! I love it when you have this weekend off – our work in Canada slows down with all of you away from the office – it’s almost like we’re having a holiday along with you.  Cheers! 


Who’s been eating my porridge?
By Barry Wigmore
Daily Mail
22 Nov 2006

WITH Dad carving the turkey and Mom bringing the freshly-baked bread to the table, it is pretty much your typical all-American Thanksgiving scene. Apart, that is, from the 7ft grizzly bear patiently waiting for his dinner. Unlike his counterparts in… read more…Tech Tags:

Monitoring “Just” the News

November 21, 2006

Hi everyone.   Today I thought I’d talk about a feature you may not know about in PressDisplay.com as it is fairly new – Monitors.  Monitors are like alerts in Google.  You can search on a keyword or phrase in 350+ newspapers and magazines from around the world and have PressDisplay remember the search criteria and alert you via email as soon as a story hits the presses that includes it. 

Let me give you an example…

Say you are an executive in a small company and you have a limited budget when it comes to clipping services.  But you still need to know when you or your competitor hits the news.  With PressDisplay.com  you can monitor the news for those phrases/keywords and have stories sent to you as soon as they are published. 

Or what if you are a blogger and you are following stories about a politician. Just set up a monitor with their name and voila…all stories that include them are sent to you when you want to receive them. 

Here’s a good one….you are looking for a car and want to search the classifieds in newspapers in your area.  Well, as you know, PressDisplay offers the full replica of newspapers, which includes the classifieds.  So just set up a monitor in papers near where you live and see what pops up!  It’s really simple…let me show you.

In this example, I am using “Nancy Pelosi” as my search criteria over the past few days (that election has still got me going :) ).  As  you can see below, I have a number of options when doing a search.  I can refine my search by country, newspaper or language, author or by date.  I can also search just article titles or the body of a story.  The screen shot below of the search results was taken yesterday (Nov 20, 2006).  Nancy was a popular lady in the news…

Searching for Nancy Pelosi

Once I have performed my search, I can click on the link at the bottom of the page – Add “Nancy Pelosi” to my Monitors

Once you’ve done that, you can then decide when you want to be alerted – Once a day (pick your time), every other day or as it happens. 

Monitoring Nancy Pelosi

Once you decide how often you want to be notified, just click “Save Monitor” and it’s added to your list of monitors.

That’s all there is to it. 

As soon as Nancy shows up in the newspaper, you will receive an email with a link to the story.

And what’s even better….our free plan allows up to 3 monitors.  So why not give it a try?  Then tell me what you think.  I am always looking for ways to improve PressDisplay.com.

Enjoy!

Check out Bloggers using PressDisplay

November 16, 2006

Great to see bloggers using PressDisplay.com and creating a two way street between mainstream media and the blogging community!  Just noticed a couple out there this week – Creative Loafing’s Political Party  and Shiny New Toy Watch

Welcome bloggers!

Let’s hear more from you (and all you other bloggers out there) on what you’d  like to see to make PressDisplay even better for you all!  Tell us what you like, don’t like and need. 

To coin Fraser…”I’m listening”!

PressDisplay Goes Mobile!

November 15, 2006

Hello again everyone… I thought it might be a good idea to familiarize you on some new features of PressDisplay.com.  We recently announced that PressDisplay is now available on smart mobile devices.    Want to see how it works?   

Just go to PressDisplay.com and click on the Mobile PressDisplay link on the far left of your display.

Try Mobile PressDisplay 

You’ll see a mock up of a smart mobile device with PressDisplay running live inside it.  It’s very cool.  Scroll around, check out the features, click on stories from over 350 publications.  It’s running just like it would on your smart phone. 

Enjoy!  And let me know what you think.   We’re always adding new devices to support….which one would you like to see next?

NewspaperDirect delivers to Asian hotel chain (Vancouver Sun, 14 Nov 2006, Page D2)

November 14, 2006

Oh look…we’re in the Vancouver Sun!


NewspaperDirect delivers to Asian hotel chain
BY WENCY LEUNG
Vancouver Sun
14 Nov 2006

HEADLINES Richmond-based NewspaperDirect announced Monday it has signed a deal to supply print-on-demand newspapers for one of Asia?s largest luxury hotel chains, Shang ri-La Hotels and Resorts. As part of the deal, the digital newspaper distributor… read more…Tech Tags:

NewspaperDirect Announces Shangri-La Agreement at IHMRS in NYC

November 14, 2006

Did you know that NewspaperDirect not only offers PressDisplay.com for people who want to read newspapers online, but we are also very successful with our “Print on Demand” service as well.

Here’s a little bit about that….

The NewspaperDirect global Print-on-Demand network has grown to 80 license partners at over 800 print locations in 85 countries. This network includes distributors, luxury hotels, cruise ships, yachts, airlines, retailers, libraries and research facilities. In addition, NewspaperDirect prints and distributes newspapers at major business, political and sporting events such as the Olympics and the G8 Summits.

Some recent news….

NewspaperDirect just announced it has signed a preferred supplier agreement with Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, Asia Pacific’s leading luxury hotel group at the International Hotel/Motel & Restaurant Show (IHMRS) in New York City.  Well done Richard!  Read all about it…