I own Apple stock, but I’m not lining up at my local Apple store this weekend or waiting with bated breath for the UPS or FedX guy to show up at my door. Why not? Read more…

AFP reports that the Wall Street Journal plans to charge $17.99 a month ($216/year) for an iPad subscription. This pricing model is hard to explain, given other WSJ subscription plans. And I worry that such extreme subscription plans could cloud the iPad debut and doom product adoption.

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It’s been a bonanza for public relations folks who can dream up zany stunts that feed the our news media’s thirst for “man bites dog” stories. Google reported Friday that they had received more than 1,100 community responses to the broadband fiber request for information (RFI) and more than 194,000 responses from individuals.

The company dashed a bit of cold water on those hopes when it reminded us that the goal of this experiment is to “reach a total of at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people with this experiment.”

But what city/cities should really win Google’s broadband challenge?

Greenville, SC Creates Google Logo With More Than 2,000 People Holding LED Glow Sticks; Photo by Michael Bergen, AidJoy.org

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Over the past 13 years, Eat the State! (ETS) has provided Western Washington with left-leaning political commentary as a free bimonthly print journal. However, the weak economy has forced the paper to rethink its business model, and many other small publications are in the same boat.

Last month, after having difficulty meeting a $6,000 fundraising goal, ETS recognized that its current publication model is not sustainable. In the future, ETS will only print endorsement issues around elections. The paper’s last regular print edition will be released April 1. Read more…

The money quote from Hal Varian’s presentation to the Federal Trade Commission, according to TechCrunch, was this: “newspapers have never made much money from news.”

But for me, the kicker is this data point from slide #3:

Subscriptions account for 3% of revenue on average

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I’ve been thinking about business models for online content (text and images), given Apple’s introduction of the iPad and Amazon’s infamous battle with Macmillan. I’ve argued that digital subscriptions should be less than their analog counterparts, basing my argument in large part on the fact that traditional print is vastly more expensive than digital distribution.

I’ve been wrong. At least in the short run. Read more…

I wasn’t too concerned about missing the Opening Ceremonies from the Vancouver Winter Olympics, as I figured I could catch it online afterward.  NBC was keen to showcase its cool new Silverlight plug-in by streaming a considerable amount of the Beijing games in 2008.

But when I tried to watch Part 1 of the Opening Ceremonies, up came this message, along with a sign-in screen:

“You have selected a premium video (e.g. live stream or full-event replay).” Read more…

There has been a lot of discussion about the somewhat blatant omission of Flash from Apple’s newly introduced tablet, the iPad. Many of the technorati see the exclusion of Flash as Apple flexing its muscle as a kingmaker. They argue that Apple is using its influence to deprecate a technology it dislikes. While there has been some interesting talk around what this means for standards, web technologies and the future of Flash in particular, people may be missing the point. Apple’s decision to not include Flash on the iPhone OS platform (also used on the iPad) is likely a business decision and not an engineering one.

Those who support the decision argue that the inclusion of Flash would make the limitations of the hardware more obvious; as a CPU hog, Flash would slow down the browsing experience of the iPhone and the iPad and drain battery life. But businesses (Apple included) make engineering trade-offs all the time. Flash’s issues in Safari hardly seem like deal breakers and would be worthwhile trade-off for the value that it brings to a media consumption platform.

I don’t think Apple decided to pick a public fight with Adobe—arguably its most valuable third-party developer—because supporting Flash was too technically challenging. Rather, it likely has to do with Apple’s relationship with the content industry. Flash is verboten on the iPhone OS for the same reason that saving MP3s is verboten. So Apple can placate content owners and maintain the viability of its iTunes business.

If Flash were enabled on the iPhone OS, how long would it take for someone to put a streaming, Flash-based player in front of a new music service? Apple is the leading retailer of music in the United States. Why should it enable competition in a business where it has no peers and on a platform it has no reason to cede?  It simply doesn’t make sense for Apple to undercut its iTunes business and jeopardize its special status among content owners. It’s even possible that Apple’s agreements with rights holders expressly forbid it.

If user experience were the sole consideration, I’m sure Apple would gladly provide a Flash-enabled browser. While Apple may have some valid engineering concerns, they strike me as a convenient cover. Disabling Flash helps Apple control content on the platform by forcing it through iTunes or other approved software. This has to be clear to a firm who’s CEO sits on the board at Disney.