Next month Entertainment Weekly magazine will have ads shown on a 320×240, 2.7 mm thick LCD screen within the pages of the magazine. The device can store 40 minutes of video, and is powered by a mini-USB rechargable battery that will last for 70 minutes.

This had to happen at some point, but I’m wondering why we are still treating reusable media in the same way as magazines and newspapers? Instead of a disposable small screen, why not spend the money to make a larger screen, I’ll call it a Newscreed, that can reloaded with content from any publication/info source at all? Give readers an incentive to reload the device next month with content whose overall cost will be less for the lack of physical media involved in its delivery. I’m talking about a no-frills device much cheaper than Kindle, with basic functionality-ie legibility and portability-being the only real requirements. Newsprint had nothing more going for it for a couple of centuries…

Publishers’ costs decrease as the cost of creating the media upon which info is delivered falls over time, as adoption increases (assuming people keep their devices), and as the tech gets even cheaper in coming years. Maybe cost-reduction of this kind doesn’t save “news organizations”, but it wouldn’t hurt their viability either.

Hell, we’ve been dancing around with this idea for decades. Does anyone really see paper newspapers and magazines in 20 years? It will happen at some point. Now that it’s life or death for “news organizations”, who will step up and do this? As the technology becomes cheaper and better, companies will be doing end-runs around each other to get their devices into readers’ hands anyway, so the point here is to be early to market. Just give it to me for free and make the next-gen versions free too. That makes Newscreed a iPhone/Kindle-killer for certain types of media. Rather than whining about a dying paradigm, maybe Rupert Murdoch should consider something really disruptive like this.

If you want to convert ICO, PNG, GIF, and JPEG file formats and export to PNG or ICO, check out converticon. No registration, nothing to download, free–it’s a minimalist masterpiece, and handy for finally getting rid of that pesky cartoon silhouette in Facebook!

When it comes to implementing MVC, Jon Campos really, really wants you to proceed according to best practices. Here’s his clear explanation of the Model (your data), the View (what is seen), and the Controller (methods & functions which move data back and forth between view and model). Can’t be too proud to review the basics if you’re not entirely clear, can you?

My stats are telling me that the number of people who check Digital Media Minute on handheld devices is slowly increasing. Sooner or later we’ll probably all want to publish versions of our sites that fit better into less screen space, if for no other reason than to attract return visitors.
At any rate, a very fast way to do this is with Mobify.me, and this quick tutorial from Woork will make it very easy.

Shopping for a GPS device? Got an iPhone? Might want to take a look at the Tom Tom for iPhone GPS iPhone App, which might save save you a trip to the tech super-store. Well, OK you can still go, but you won’t have to buy a separate GPS device.
At US$99, the app also saves you money in the long run over similar apps with prescription-based pricing (although at the moment the MobileNavigator app is on sale until the end of August at US$69– I’d love to test these two apps side-by-side). No surprise that many people would build iPhone apps targeting the huge GPS market.
The dashboard mount offers better GPS performance, hands-free calling, voice instructions, and charges the iPhone too.
Here’s a great video review from Andrew Lim at recombu.com: (check out HIS custom dashboard mount!)

Website builders like Devhub won’t put developers out of work any more than prefabricated structures threaten carpenters. But there is room for a way to help non-tech types put up a site quickly. I’ve used a few site builders for niche sites and Devhub is the best I’ve used so far– in my opinion it’s way ahead of Weebly, for instance. Superb execution here: if you need a site, not a blog, Devhub will host it for free and give you a slew of monetization options and other visual and functional elements (local directory/news) that may be appropriate for what you’re building. Not only have they created a product that really delivers, they cut expenses/increased revenue right as the financial crisis hit and are just about viable financially now. Good story of success in hard times.

Digital Media Minute has posted about free mind map software before, but I have to say, for elegance and ease of use, Mind Node is unbelievable. I’m actually looking for reasons to use it! I’ve found the freeware version to be very adequate for my needs so far. Mac only, unfortunately.
I’ll spare you the details of my epic sock drawer rearrangement plan, and offer you this video instead:

From Tim Ferriss, here’s an excellent article on using Google Website Optimizer improve your homepage conversions.

Once reading this, you will know more about split-testing than 90%+ of the consultants who get paid to do it…

OK Tim, you’re on. Using a detailed case study, and including instructions for interpreting the data, this article is really excellent.

A designer friend is producing an iPhone app, his first, and he found this wiki on tips for ISVs, derived from The Business of Software Forum on the Joel On Software site. Very detailed and helpful on product promotion, pricing, Google Adwords Q & A, product SEO, product ideas, and lots more.
We’ve referenced the excellent Joel On Software several times before; man I remember reading Joel 10 years ago!

Wow–how is this for a monetization method?
1) Create a compelling free service.
2) Many, many people come to depend on it for what it does, and for what it will hopefully continue to do.
3) Say that you have to shut it down for lack of money.
4) Make money.

OK, I believe that tr.im put out the warning that it would shut down because of a lack of ways to make money. And it’s true that since Twitter has apparently designated bit.ly as the URL-shortener of choice, tr.im finds itself at a real disadvantage. But it didn’t take long to acquire the means to continue. Surely this wasn’t a case of backlinks held hostage…..