tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6550455352488173142024-03-13T12:16:27.919-07:00Saul Hansell's BlogSaul Hansellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06203808120185349067noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-655045535248817314.post-83783340921333472552015-11-03T10:17:00.000-08:002019-06-04T09:22:38.723-07:00Meet Hacking TV, My New Podcast<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://hackingtv.news/" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><i><img alt="HT Square TV 2" border="0" height="200" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-0Fr6VWXw1Bw/Vjj4ZIW-p7I/AAAAAAAFRQE/nrpCZVJaK6c/HT%252520Square%252520TV%2525202.png?imgmax=800" style="float: right;" title="HT Square TV 2.png" width="200" /></i></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Watch and Listen at <a href="http://hackingtv.news/">HackingTV.News</a></i></td></tr>
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<i>Update: After a good two-year run, Steve and I decided to move on from HackingTV. His new podcast is <a href="http://fufwd.com/" target="_blank">Future Forward</a>. </i><br />
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“Let’s do a podcast,” my friend <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Rosenbaum_(producer)">Steve Rosenbaum</a> blurted out a few months ago.<br />
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We were shooting the shit, as we so often do, about the erratic path that television—the biggest and most powerful communications medium—is taking as it meanders from a handful of linear channels programed in the towers of Sixth Avenue and the back lots of Hollywood to the diverse galaxy of Internet video that puts Kevin Spacey a click away from Pew Die Pie.<br />
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Instantly, it was clear that this was exactly what we should do.<br />
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It had the just-for-us-because-it’s-fun feel of “let’s put on a show”. And I’ve been thrilled to see podcasting emerging as the vanguard of journalistic creativity. Sure, we’re not going to do the sort of reported in the field, edited and scripted podcasts that are the hallmarks of Alex Blumberg, Sarah Koenig and the others building on the NPR traditions. But podcasting, like blogging, is a medium that can be engaging in lots of styles.<br />
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So we’ve started by taping a weekly conversation in which Steve and I talk about our favorite topic—the transformation of TV by digital video—based on the week’s news and our own adventures. Steve came up with the name Hacking TV that embodies our thesis that the centralized establishment of networks and cable systems is being upended by myriad creators and entrepreneurs.<br />
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Obviously, we had to make a version of our podcast on video instead only on audio. This has proven to be much more of a technical challenge than we expected. But Steve, who has decades of experience as a filmmaker, TV producer and digital video entrepreneur, has tamed our unruly menagerie of software and hardware so now you can see us, hear us clearly and even have the sound sync up with the movement of our lips.<br />
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So give HackingTV a watch or a listen. The video is on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq6wuSqqrgSHBy8XxNiESrg/feed," style="font-size: 14px;">YouTube</a> and <a href="http://hackingtv.waywire.com/">WayWire</a> (Steve’s company). The audio is on <span style="font-size: 14px;"> </span><a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/hackingtv/id1024229455" style="font-size: 14px;">iTunes</a>. Both forms plus show notes and other links are on our site <a href="http://hackingtv.news/" style="font-size: 14px;">HackingTV.News</a>. Join the conversation and let us know what you think on the website or tweeting to <a href="https://twitter.com/hackingtv">@HackingTV</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/shansell">@SHansell</a> or <a href="https://twitter.com/waaywire">@waaywire (Steve)</a>.</div>
Saul Hansellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06203808120185349067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-655045535248817314.post-74714696148164211352011-11-08T13:58:00.000-08:002011-11-08T14:17:08.217-08:00Heading into the workshop<br />
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Two years ago, when I explained to my children why I left one of the best jobs in journalism—covering technology for the New York Times—I told them that I wanted to be an inventor. Since then I’ve had the thrilling
experience of being part of AOL, which is doing more than nearly anyone else to
rethink the way that news is gathered, presented and paid for.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Now it’s time to strike out on my own and seek my fortune as
an inventor. I’ve left AOL, and Monday I
started as an entrepreneur in residence at <a href="http://betaworks.com/">Betaworks</a>.
If you’re not familiar with it, Betaworks has started and invested in a number
of companies that are on the vanguard of real-time social experiences—several
of which relate to news and publishing—including Bit.ly, ChartBeat, TweetDeck,
and News.Me. It’s run by John Borthwick, who I first met in 1997 when he <a href="http://movies.nytimes.com/library/cyber/digimet/020397digimet.html">sold</a>
his startup, Total New York, to America Online. We’ve become friends, and I
couldn’t think of a more fertile environment in which to germinate a new idea
than the bustle of creativity bursting out of the Betaworks loft in the meat
packing district.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I know my friends in the technology press well enough to
suspect some of them will see my move as part of a broader trend at AOL. I’m
not sure the easy take is the right one. Based on my experience, I am more
bullish on Tim Armstrong’s clear vision of a company built from the ground up
for online journalism and the potential of AOL’s many assets to achieve that
vision. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I will always be grateful to Tim for giving me the chance to
prove that I had more to contribute to a journalistic organization than simply
articles and to Arianna Huffington for inviting me to join the HuffPost team. And
I’m in debt to so many who offered so much advice—some of which I ignored to my
own detriment—on the nuances of technology, product design, PowerPoint, and the
ways of big companies. What is now the AOL Huffington Post Media Group, is clearly emerging as a powerful and innovative source of news and information. Yet this success entails a continuous refinement of the AOL organization, and one of the inevitable reorganizations provided a logical time for me to try my hand at starting a
company.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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It’s too soon to say much about what I’m doing. But I think
there is a lot left to invent around both how to present news to people that
takes advantage of the technology available today. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I expect you’ll see a lot more soon.</div>Saul Hansellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06203808120185349067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-655045535248817314.post-83546788009646795522011-08-15T06:48:00.000-07:002011-08-15T13:06:37.409-07:00Six thoughts on Goog-Moto<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><i>Note: I posted an expanded version of this thought on <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/15/motorola-google-microsoft-cellphone-briar-patch/">TechCrunch</a>.</i></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><b>Sanjay Jha</b>: He is one of the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/technology/companies/29moto.html">best CEOs I’ve met</a>. A great addition to Google if he stays. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"></span><br />
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</div><div><b>Patents</b>: I believe Google when they say that patents are the reason they got into this. They see themselves in a legal war. But why buy patents when they could buy the whole company:</div><div><br />
</div><div><b>Goog Strategy</b>: This deal is not an endorsement of the Steve Jobs doctrine that the best way to make software is to control the hardware that runs it.</div><div>I think Google believes that, but only really for the hardware that runs its data centers. Google is to its core a cloud computing company. It sees hardware as little more than devices to run browsers of various sorts, which is a way to describe Android.</div><div><br />
</div><div><b>Cellphones</b>: This doesn’t really change the dynamic in the market. It’s hard to see how much different Motorola’s Android lineup will be because of the deal. Moto already offers phones with the Google name and deep cooperation with Goog engineers. It’s not like Google’s Nexus lineup has been much of a hit.</div><div><br />
</div><div><b>Television</b>: There is much more potential for impact in the living room. Moto is a very large cable box maker. Google TV has not caught on yet, and this could be the wedge to get it (a browser for the TV with a big search button) in millions of living rooms.</div><div><br />
</div><div><b>Future</b>: I’ll bet that Goog spins off the manufacturing business within the decade. It’s just not what they do, and it’s not what they need in the long run. </div><div><br />
</div>Saul Hansellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06203808120185349067noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-655045535248817314.post-14193648571733992482011-05-16T08:02:00.001-07:002011-05-16T08:02:48.362-07:00Big news for me: A new role in the Huffington Post Media Group<div class="MsoNormal">It was just after midnight on February 7 when the <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/06/armstrong-memo-aol-huffpo/">email arrived from Tim Armstrong telling</a> the AOL staff that the company had just agreed to buy the Huffington Post. I couldn’t restrain my excitement.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“This absolutely is brilliant,” I wrote to a friend at AOL. “Huffpost has so much that we need. A true understanding of how editorial voice can drive readership mixed with great analytics and so much more.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a perfect fit with AOL’s strengths—breadth of topics, powerful technology and a leading advertising network that can help pay for the sort of great journalism that I knew that both Tim Armstrong and Arianna Huffington want to provide. After a year spent working largely on the mechanics and organization of AOL’s complex turnaround, I saw that now we would be able to take the offence again, informing and entertaining a vast audience in ways no other company could. This was why I came to AOL at the end of 2009. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Today, I am delighted to say that <a href="http://paidcontent.org/article/419-aol-huffpo-media-group-on-editorial-hiring-spree-following-layoffs/">Arianna has offered me a new role</a> that will let me work elbow-to-elbow with the editors and engineers who have made the Huffington Post into the Edison laboratory of journalism innovation. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My title will be big news editor. That’s named after the Huffington Post’s Big News feature, pages devoted particular topics--<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/john-boehner">John Boehner</a> or <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/johnny-depp">Johnny Depp</a> or the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/foreclosure-crisis">foreclosure crisis</a>. My job is to help look after those pages and the others around the entire network of the Huffington Post Media Group, as AOL’s publishing unit is now called, that pull together information on a given event, person, product, idea, place or product.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">From Moviefone to Engadget, we already have information about a lot of what people are interested in. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t expect a big bang from the big news department though. The Huffington Post team operates on a very fast tempo. So we will be making lots of small changes very quickly to all these pages that should soon add up to big improvements. One area that we are going to dive into first is the pages that we have connected to the 2012 election, one of the core topics for the Huffington Post. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">What about <a href="http://seed.com/">Seed</a>, AOL’s freelance network that I had been running? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Seed is in fact thriving and will continue stronger than ever as part of AOL’s <a href="http://www.advertising.com/">Advertising.com</a> group, which is devoted to providing the best tools to online publishers and marketers. Seed and its sister company, StudioNow, can make high-quality articles, photographs and videos in a very cost effective way.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I am very proud of what we achieved at Seed over the last year. And I’m just as proud of what we didn’t do. Despite <a href="http://gawker.com/5421964/aol-news-borg-to-be-ruled-by-former-new-york-times-reporter">our reputation</a> as “hellish scheme” dedicated to “slapdash, disposable content churned out en masse,” we didn’t pollute the Web with millions of articles that would be embarrassing even in a high school newspaper. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather, we worked on ways to respect our creators and our audience by creating formats that delivered lively, useful and reliable information that writers can produce efficiently. You can see the results in articles like these: <a href="http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/10/26/what-is-christine-odonnells-religion/">What Is Christine O'Donnell's Religion?</a>, <a href="http://www.pawnation.com/pet-health/giardia-in-dogs/" title="Permalink to this article">Giardia in Dogs: What You Need to Know as a Dog Owner</a>, and <a href="http://www.slashfood.com/drinks/jack-daniels-drinks/#ixzz1MWXm9XwO">Jack Daniel's Drinks: 4 Drink Ideas From a Bartender</a>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">What you can’t see is all the work our Nashville-based engineering team put into building an entirely new platform for Seed that will enable us to create, assign and edit innovative, high quality projects very quickly. Nor can you see the incredibly talented group of editors who joined me at Seed, including Lance Gould, our project editor, Anna Wahrman, the production manager, and Gordon Hurd, who built our copy editing network (and sadly has moved on to another opportunity). Lance, Anna and Neel Chopdekar, the AOL vice president who is the real father of Seed, are refining this technology to serve advertising and publishing clients. And when appropriate, one client will be the Huffington Post Media Group itself.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">For me, this isn’t really as big of a switch as it may appear. When I first talked to Tim Armstrong about the possibility of joining AOL, he described a vision of having a page about everything in the world that people are interested in, every prescription drug, every make of watch, ever college campus. It’s an audacious goal, one that flows from Tim’s experience at Google. But Tim, unlike Larry and Sergey, doesn’t see this as a task just for engineers. He understands how a human being--with insight, curiosity and skill—can make any page more interesting and more useful than if it was just made by a machine. From the start, Seed was not a cynical attempt to cash in on the dark arts of search engine optimization. Our goal was to deploy many thousands of people to help create the smartest page on everything people care about.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As big news editor, I’m devoted to exactly the same mission. The mix of topics of topics will shift to include more politics, national affairs and breaking news. And we are very interested in finding ways for the Huffington Post’s vast community of commenters and bloggers to contribute their passion and expertise to the pages we build. We will also use both our growing stable of talented journalists and our portfolio of very interesting search and text analysis technology to enhance the pages. And any time we can serve our audience best by using a freelance writer, we’ve got the Seed network at our disposal as well.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Now, even more than that night in February, I am convinced that the big news about the combination of AOL and the Huffington Post is how we have all the pieces needed to thrive and innovate even in the very harsh environment of Internet news. <o:p></o:p></div>Saul Hansellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06203808120185349067noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-655045535248817314.post-17228113106958107782010-07-20T07:56:00.000-07:002010-07-20T07:56:23.028-07:00Need Freelance content data analysts (full time jobs too)Hello world.<br />
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I'm busy helping AOL build great websites on all kinds of topics. We're combining the best of editorial insight with an understanding of what our users really are interested in using all kinds of quantitative data.<br />
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We're hiring a bunch of of full-time analysts with an passion for great news and information. Apply for these great jobs <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://sjobs.brassring.com/1033/ASP/TG/cim_jobdetail.asp?SID=^KExy9Ofrq8HR8KnoBr8778rf7JayiYWwfM89oSgW94dprYT_slp_rhc_GyrIkI_slp_rhc_EPNwOClUq7U21M3MvQD5M_C_R__L_F_lPvV8tdyJhrLeyQZ6j75uCF/heA3kS8=&jobId=551899&type=search&JobReqLang=1&recordstart=1&JobSiteId=36&JobSiteInfo=551899_36&GQId=0">here</a>.<br />
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And in the meantime, I need someone I can work closely with this summer to go through a bunch of data related to search engines, web traffic and other measures of behavior. If you've got interest and experience, please drop me a note at <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="mailto:seedjobs@seed.com">this email address</a>.<br />
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Thanks<br />
SaulSaul Hansellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06203808120185349067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-655045535248817314.post-27135690654784560702009-12-11T10:21:00.001-08:002022-01-05T08:18:58.365-08:00Video: My New Job as Master of the BorgI always found one of the hardest kinds of interviews was of someone on the eve of starting a new job. Mostly they don't know anything, and what they do know they don't want to say before they get to spend time with their new coworkers.<br />
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Peter Kafka of AllThingsD's MediaMemo did his best to get me to say something interesting in a <a href="http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20091211/aols-newest-hire/">video chat</a> at a coffee house in Chelsea Market Thursday. He mainly wanted to talk about "robot editors," which is how some have interpreted what Tim Armstrong, AOL's CEO, described in a recent <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703300504574565673001918320.html">interview with the Wall Street Journal</a>.<br />
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AOL may have an army of robot editors ready to unleash on the world, but no one mentioned it to me when I was interviewing for my new job. (I don't start work until Tuesday.) We did talk about using data from AOL's search service and its other windows on the pulse of the Internet to find out what people are curious about.<br />
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Some people worry that this might lead to what <a href="http://gawker.com/5421964/aol-news-borg-to-be-ruled-by-former-new-york-times-reporter">Gawker artfully termed</a> "slapdash, disposable content churned out en masse." I'm not worried.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #303030; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; line-height: normal;"> One thing that all journalists hope to do is tell people what they want to know. Most of us also want to tell people things they didn't know they wanted to know but nonetheless find interesting. AOL, including <a href="http://www.seed.com/">Seed</a>, will do lots of both.</span></span><br />
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The thing that most excites me about AOL is that it isn't devoted to one method of producing content. It has full-time journalists, wire service and syndicated content, bloggers, freelancers, input from the entire Web community, and <a href="http://www.love.com/">all</a> <a href="http://www.surphace.com/">kinds </a>of <a href="http://www.truveo.com/">automated </a>ways to find interesting stuff. Our challenge is to create right blend of information from all these sources for each page that will be the most interesting, accurate and engaging for readers and to do it at a cost that can be sustained by the revenue available to Internet media.<br />
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How do we do that? I don't know, and if I did I couldn't say. I do know that Seed is an important component because it can bring human intelligence into the mix at vast scale. <br />
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Here is the six minute video of my chat with Peter in which I try to vamp around my ignorance.<br />
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<object height="181" id="wsj_fp" width="320"><param name="movie" value="http://s.wsj.net/media/swf/main.swf"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><param name="flashvars" value="videoGUID={FEBBE74C-E869-4043-9243-E84C24C390F3}&playerid=4001&plyMediaEnabled=1&configURL=http://wsj.vo.llnwd.net/o28/players/&autoStart=false" base="http://s.wsj.net/media/swf/"name="microflashPlayer"></param><embed src="http://s.wsj.net/media/swf/main.swf" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"flashVars="videoGUID={FEBBE74C-E869-4043-9243-E84C24C390F3}&playerid=4001&plyMediaEnabled=1&configURL=http://wsj.vo.llnwd.net/o28/players/&autoStart=false" base="http://s.wsj.net/media/swf/" name="microflashPlayer" width="320" height="181" seamlesstabbing="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" swLiveConnect="true" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash"></embed></object>Saul Hansellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06203808120185349067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-655045535248817314.post-61701681812786832432009-12-08T13:46:00.000-08:002009-12-08T13:46:26.456-08:00Official Announcement: I'm going to AOL<em>I'll have more to say on this soon. Check back here. In the mean time, I'll let the official announcement give the who-what-where.</em><br />
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<strong>SAUL HANSELL, FORMERLY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES, JOINS AOL AS FIRST EMPLOYEE OF SEED, AOL's NEW CONTENT MANAGEMENT PLATFORM</strong><br />
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AOL has hired another prominent journalist to join AOL's full time editorial staff. <br />
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Saul Hansell, formerly of The New York Times, will be join us as Programming Director of AOL's Seed.com., AOL's first employee for the recently announced content management platform, expected to launch this month. Saul will be reporting to Mike Rich, senior vice president of AOL entertainment, and will be responsible for leveraging Seed across all of AOL's platforms.<br />
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Saul joined The New York Times in 1992 and most recently was covering the telecommunications beat, including wired and wireless communication of voice, data and video, including companies involved in telephone, Internet backbone, cable TV, Internet video, cellphone handsets, and other devices connected to networks, as well as communications policy and privacy. Launched in 2007, he was the founding editor of Bits, a blog on nytimes.com covering a wide range of technology topics with particular interest in Internet media, digital marketing, consumer electronics and the evolving business models for music and video.<br />
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Bits was named best blog among larger publications in the 2007 Best in Business awards by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. His September 1989 story on computerized trading, ``The Wild, Wired World of Electronic Exchanges,’‘ won the Overseas Press Club's Morton Frank award for best magazine business reporting from abroad. He has also received awards from the Deadline Club of New York and the American Society of Business Press Editors. Saul received his Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies/Economics from Columbia College in 1984.Saul Hansellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06203808120185349067noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-655045535248817314.post-26871179549757427232009-09-20T14:25:00.000-07:002009-09-21T05:44:05.084-07:00Bigger Than BitsAs some readers of the Times may have noticed, I’ve got a new role. I’m now covering telecommunications, both for the Bits blog and for what we refer to as “the paper,” which really means longer articles both in print and online. <br />
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The immediate reason behind the switch was simple and common enough: The Times needed a body, and I was there. Matt Richtel, who has been covering telecom (with Jenna Worthham who continues to do so), is now working on some special projects. So someone needed to write about telephone, cable and related companies.<br />
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When Damon Darlin, the technology editor, asked if I was interested in filling in for Matt, I leaped at the chance. That was a change for me. A few years ago, I had turned down an offer of the telecom beat. I thought that the companies were too big and slow. I had already spend enough of my life covering banks.<br />
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But over the past two years editing Bits, I have come to become very interested in so many issues related to communications networks and the devices that connect to them. Apple’s <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/iphone/">iPhone</a> and everything spawned has been the single most frequent topic on Bits. I also wrote about last year’s <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/going-oncegoing-twicethe-700-mhz-spectrum-is-sold/">auction </a>of the radio spectrum now abandoned by analog television, giving me an introduction to covering the Federal Communications Commission. And earlier this year, I got fed up with people hearing about how <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/broadband-gap/">broadband </a>was faster and cheaper in other countries, and I wrote a series of posts explaining what is and isn’t different about the United States.<br />
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I’m defining the telecommunications beat as business that moves information from here to there, whether by wires or radio waves. That includes cable and satellite TV companies, many of which increasingly resemble phone companies. <br />
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I’ve long been interested in the rise of <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/video/">Internet video </a>and how that is disrupting the existing television business. My new beat lets me keep covering all that. <br />
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I’m not going to focus on the content of communications. We’ve got lots of technology and media reporters to ferret out which iPhone App helps you pick restaurants best or which cable cooking show has the biggest audience. But I am going to keep an eye out for economic arrangements that underlie how content of all sorts is distributed on networks. <br />
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I am going to look at the devices that connect people to the networks. The contest for dominance of the cellphone handset market is one of the most hard fought and interesting battles in business these days. And I think that we’re just seeing the beginning of gadgets like Amaon’s Kindle that fit the guts of a cellphone into a very different package.<br />
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I will do some of our coverage of the Federal Communications Commission and other telecom policy issues. And I'll continue to watch a couple of my long term interests, including Internet <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/privacy/">privacy</a>. <br />
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People keep asking me if I’m happy with this switch. I very much am. That’s not to say that I didn’t love Bits. It has been a great platform to explore a very wide range of topics related to technology and to meet interesting people in every corner of the industry. And it allowed me to write with more expression and variety than the 150 year old conventions of newspapers permit. <br />
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But that flexibility stopped with anything more ambitious than about 800 words (500 words, if my editors had their druthers). And the people I met were those who had come to New York. <br />
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By agreeing to limit myself to the (fascinating) telecom industry, I get a license to explore it in depth. I can climb telephone poles, wander cell phone factories, and (much more commonly) sit in the offices of people involved in this business wherever they are. And I can write what I find as profiles, features, hard news stories, Week in Review essays, as well as blog posts. <br />
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Yes, I’ll be writing a lot for Bits. Indeed, the reason why Bits no longer requires a full-time writer is that all the technology writers are contributing to it regularly as part of a balanced diet of reporting. For me, my experience on Bits, gives me new ideas about how to use blogging as part of covering a beat. <br />
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The blog format gives me more colors in my crayon box to draw pictures of the telecom industry. I can simply point to articles on other sites with interesting facts, adding whatever perspective comes to mind. I can extend features written for the paper, with additional information. <br />
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Most important, blogs have become our best tool for bringing a community of readers into the inquiry that is journalism. It’s already become a cliché to talk about blogs as a conversation with readers, but it’s also true. As people write comments to posts and send me e-mail, I’ve learned a lot, and shaped my reporting by what readers are interested in. <br />
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I hope to do this all the more in my new role. So please join our inquiry the rapidly transforming networks that connect us and how they are changing our lives. Please <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="mailto:hansell@nytimes.com%20">e-mail</a> with questions, information and ideas and add your comments to Bits.Saul Hansellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06203808120185349067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-655045535248817314.post-39559762980215652572009-09-17T14:46:00.000-07:002009-09-17T14:51:04.413-07:00All Saul, All the TimeLike lots of people, I express myself in lots of places online--Twitter, this blog, and the various formats on NYTimes.com. To make give my loyal fans (both of you), a way to keep up with my every peep, I've created the All Saul Feed. You can see my tweets, posts and contributions to the Bits "What We're Reading" feature, on <a href="http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user%2F13533083692024984311%2Flabel%2FAll%20Saul">this page</a>. You can subscribe to the All Saul Feed with an RSS reader <a href="http://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user%2F13533083692024984311%2Flabel%2FAll%20Saul">here</a>. You can ignore my various rants everywhere else.<input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Saul Hansellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06203808120185349067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-655045535248817314.post-66373574205000562782009-04-20T06:35:00.001-07:002009-05-02T12:37:34.918-07:00Widgets at the Times<img style="visibility:hidden;width:0px;height:0px;" border="0" width="0" height="0" src="http://counters.gigya.com/wildfire/IMP/CXNID=2000002.0NXC/bHQ9MTI*MDIzMzY*MzkwNiZwdD*xMjQwMjM*NTIxMDkzJnA9MTg*MTcxJmQ9Jm49YmxvZ2dlciZnPTEmdD*mbz1hODg2MDVhZDkyZmU*MGQwYjA2MzI1NTdlZDFiYThjZCZvZj*w.gif" /><div>Times Widgets is a new feature that lets several feeds from Times content be displayed. It looks much like the Most E-mailed list we have on the site. Here is a widget I made of our tech coverage.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><iframe id="widget" width="100%" height="300" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" frameborder="0" src="http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/widgets/widget.html?widgets=%5B%7B%22name%22%3A%20%22rss_tw%22%2C%20%22title%22%3A%20%22Bits%20Blog%22%2C%20%22source%22%3A%20%22http%3A//bits.blogs.nytimes.com/%3Ffeed%3Drss2%22%2C%20%22maxItems%22%3A%20%2210%22%2C%20%22displayType%22%3A%20%22hs%22%7D%2C%20%7B%22name%22%3A%20%22rss_tw%22%2C%20%22title%22%3A%20%22Technology%22%2C%20%22source%22%3A%20%22http%3A//www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Technology.xml%22%2C%20%22maxItems%22%3A%20%2210%22%2C%20%22displayType%22%3A%20%22ho%22%7D%2C%20%7B%22name%22%3A%20%22rss_tw%22%2C%20%22title%22%3A%20%22Personal%20Tech%22%2C%20%22source%22%3A%20%22http%3A//www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/PersonalTech.xml%22%2C%20%22maxItems%22%3A%20%2210%22%2C%20%22displayType%22%3A%20%22ho%22%7D%5D"></iframe>Saul Hansellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06203808120185349067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-655045535248817314.post-64465292594083005322008-11-07T10:02:00.000-08:002008-11-07T10:06:19.848-08:00For PR Pitches: Think about Gmail SEO<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Every now and then I have a dialog with people in the public relations industry about how they can do their job better by helping reporters do our jobs better. I had a thought recently, and sent this e-mail to a few folks who are thoughtful about PR. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><br /></div><div>I've got an idea that may be worth getting into the PR community. I don't have the time or forum, but one or both of you might be interested. </div><div><br /></div><div>I was responding to a pr pitch about a widget company, and i wrote this back:</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Keep me posted on what these folks are up to, with an occasional e-mail. Don't worry if I don't respond. The way my life seems to work, suddenly something happens, and then I'll be interested in, say widgets. I'll remember you sent me something on a cool widget company, search my e-mail and get on the phone. </div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>When I sent it, I realized that I'm probably not alone in how gmail and other e-mail search is changing how I find information. And I wonder if PR people should think about what tools of search engine optimization apply to pitches:</div><div><br /></div><div><ul><li>If a reporter was working on a story and needed to talk to your client, what terms would they search for, and are those the ones you use in the pitch?<br /></li><li>How would the headline and first paragraph of the pitch tell them the areas in which your client has unique knowledge? <br /></li><li>Is there contact information that will allow them to find your client very quickly on deadline?<br /></li></ul></div><div>This is a self serving thought. My biggest problem with pitches is that at least half the ones I get, I can't understand what the company does that the pitch is about. Often, the pitch is so wound up trying to define some sort of cute trend the company fits into that they don't actually give the who-what-where-when. And too many pitches use such obscure jargon, that they are impenetrable. Allow me to vent on this for one second, with a the first paragraph of a pitch I got yesterday:</div><div><br /></div><div><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote>Hope you're well. I'd like to introduce you to xxxx , a new, place-based out-of-home digital network that delivers relevant, localized media within the rhythm of consumers' daily rituals, like afternoon coffee or sandwiches at lunch. </blockquote></div><div><br /></div><div>It turns out that the company puts video billboards in delis. My hope is that if people realize that a reporter is much more likely to search for "video billboard" than " place-based out-of-home digital network" this may be an incentive for PR people to brush up on their English a bit. </div><div><br /></div><div> </div>Saul Hansellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06203808120185349067noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-655045535248817314.post-6890448915647317552008-11-07T09:12:00.000-08:002008-11-07T09:37:01.091-08:00<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">I've decided to add some occasional posts here, in addition to Bits.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div>I saw Frank Shaw <a href="http://glasshouse.waggeneredstrom.com/blogs/frankshaw/archive/2008/11/07/the-evolution-of-journalism-and-the-business-model-challenge.aspx">comment </a>on an <a href="http://rosenblumtv.wordpress.com/2008/11/03/darwinian-journalism/">blog post,</a> talking about the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Darwinian</span> pressures on the news business. Yes things are changing, but I find much of the talk about <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">MSM</span> to be overstated and not so <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">precise</span>. I left this comment on Frank's blog:</div><div><br /></div><blockquote><div>Frank you still overstate the change.<br /><br /></div><div>Big picture: There is a modest evolution in the content model for news media (More competition and distribution options, more interactivity and user involvement, faster time frame). For newspapers certainly, the advent of the Web is far easier than the advent of television. All this other stuff is hooey. <br /><br /></div><div>Most media have the same business model: attract an audience and sell it to advertisers. Subscription revenue is harder to come by. <br /><br /></div><div>The only real revolution, I'm sorry to say, is with newspapers, which made so much money from advertising (classified, etc) that was related to their distribution, not their content. <br /><br /></div><div>All that really means is that newspapers will have to get smaller until their news budget matches the ad revenue from the content they produce. </div><div><br /></div><div>Cheers <br /><br />Saul</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div>Saul Hansellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06203808120185349067noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-655045535248817314.post-91047132144879666932007-07-13T14:40:00.000-07:002007-07-13T14:48:02.419-07:00A new blog for me<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://nytimes.com/bits"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 446px; height: 97px;" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/bits/bits2.png" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />After posting just a few times here, I've gone pro.<br />My blogging work can now be seen on <a href="http://nytimes.com/bits">nytimes.com/bits</a>.Saul Hansellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06203808120185349067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-655045535248817314.post-63139146964530761402007-05-10T10:32:00.001-07:002007-05-10T10:32:31.909-07:00Replicators: The Next Generation<span xmlns=''><p>I received a lot of e-mail about <a href='http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/07/technology/07copy.html'>my article on 3D printing</a> in Monday's Times, including some interesting meditations on the possible good and bad uses for such machines. I've posted a few of these e-mails below. (There was also a fair bit of discussion on <a href='http://digg.com/tech_news/3D_Printers_Could_Be_Coming_Soon'>Digg</a> and <a href='http://www.blogrunner.com/snapshot/D/5/4/463E85D70715AD4D/'>other blogs</a>.)<br /></p><p>Of course, there was discussion of what I left out, such as laser mills and other ways to fabricate objects. I got a nice note from the people behind <a href='http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome'>RepRap</a>, a 3d printer project at Bath University.<br /></p><p>Several people pointed out that as with ink jet printers, the materials that go in to 3D printers may well cost far more than the printer itself over a lifetime. This is true, and desktop factory says it plans to use that razor/razor blade business model. It says the cost of material may be several dollars for a small object, not trivial but perhaps competitive for the Wal-Mart price for a napkin holder or whatever. <br /></p><p>A few zoologically inclined pointed out that we wrote that "Mr. Gross even downloaded a model of an octopus to print out for a project on vertebrates in his daughter's eighth-grade biology class." Octopi, in fact, are invertebrates, as I'm sure Mr. Gross's daughter knows. <br /></p><p>But by far the biggest comment was on my Star Trek reference.<br /></p><p>I wrote: "It's not quite the transporter of "Star Trek," but it is a step closer."<br /></p><p>This dates me, I'm sorry to say, to the 23<sup>rd</sup> century, when the original Enterprise travelled the universe. While I can throw around references to Tribbles and tricorders, my knowledge of the technology of Captain Picard, Data and the 24<sup>th</sup> century voyagers is rather sketchy.<br /></p><p>So while I was thinking of a transporter materializing an object (yes I know sent from somewhere else). Little did I know that a major feature of later Star Trek was the Replicator , which from which Captain Picard orders his "Tea, Earl Grey, hot" out of thin air.<br /></p><p>Eva was kind enough to point me to the Wikipedia article on <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicator_(Star_Trek)'>Replicators</a>, which helpfully explains the (faux) <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_and_Star_Trek'>physics</a> of all this, and the differences with <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transporter_%28Star_Trek%29'>transporters</a>. If ever we needed a demonstration about what Wikipedia has over Britannica, it's the care in which readers have crafted the hundreds of <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek'>Star Trek entries</a>. (Reading the Chronicles of Narnia to my daughter, I found similarly extensive Narnian guides.)<br /></p><p>Jason Warriner, an Oakland, California artist, pointed to the <a href='http://art.jaywar.com/gallery.php?id=11'>work</a> he makes using 3D printers. <br /></p><p><br /> </p><p>Below are a few comments from my e-mail bag. <br /></p><p>In regards to your article on 3d printers, I found the possibilities to be immense. While you concentrated on the positives, consider some of the risks. The technology is still at its infancy. However, what is to say that years from now, people just won't print up a ceramic or plastic gun? Or even simpler, how about a disturbed teen in a hs printing up a knife? the potential for good from this technology is immense. However, to not consider all of the ramifications, would be foolish.<br /></p><p>-----<br /></p><p>That's gonna be very trippy: - China loses its manufacturing advantage - Much easier and cheaper to meet everyone's living needs around the world (you can manufacture what they need on the spot, including equip, water, food) - evil people can make lots of bad stuff easily... Thanks for the interesting read!<br /></p><p>-----<br /></p><p>Anything can now be made and that can be a problem. How about the slide of a gun or some other weapon parts? So there is a huge plus and a bit of a dark side to this emerging technology. In a few years, we will be able to do just about anything.<br /></p><p>-----<br /></p><p>A couple years ago, when i went to the design expo in nyc i went with an interest in seeing how the 3d printing world was coming along. and i did a sort of intellectual exercise. i wondered, what would it be like if everybody had access to these machines. for one thing, there would get to be a really popular public domain trade in trinkets like toothbrushes, and chess pieces. a few years ago, somebody designed a 3d public domain chess set. one of the fascinating things about the set was that it contained things like a rook that had open windows, people inside, and a double helix spiral stairway, which is completely impossible to make with standard injection molding techniques. i first saw the rook at one booth in the show, where a company was showing off their laser sintering machine. the rook was made from brass. Of course i was taken by the fact that there was an object, which looked just like something conventionally manufactured, that was impossible to make that way since it could not be divided in half and put together, as injection molded things are made. They were also showing off another example of this idea with something called the 'brain gear,' which had a bunch of interconnected gears that would be impossible to actually put together without breaking some. before 3d printing such a thing was merely a thought exercise. i noticed a trend starting, when upon walking the show, i noticed these exact same objects in other booths, made from various different materials. furthermore, there were also some examples of times that people took a photo of something they thought was interesting, like a stained glass detail in a church, then they took those into 3d software, embellished, then 'printed out' metal amulets made from that design for a wedding party. One company had scanned in a ken doll, and was printing, in sections, a six foot high version, made from plastic. Here was, in microcosm, a taste of the future, where people have unlimited access to these machines (in this case the small community of employees working for the various printer companies). I could easily see a future where various 3d objects are conceived by random people, or pirated, or just shared by the masses. Then people download that and print it out, just like they do with little pieces of software and art today. This is, of course, part of the logical progression that goes from being able to create something and share it online. its why we don't really have to worry too much about chinese manufacturing. after all, not too far in the future, we'll just print out whatever it is we need in our house. then recycle used or broken things, back into the printer. and once we get to full blown nanotechnology, this whole process will finally bring us to a stage where no good is 'manufactured' in a plant, but merely home grown. <br /></p></span>Saul Hansellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06203808120185349067noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-655045535248817314.post-23906216467247550502007-05-06T18:02:00.000-07:002007-05-06T18:09:58.913-07:00Download and print a BarbieEvery now and then, when I'm in Los Angeles, I stop by <a href="http://Idealab.com">Idealab </a>to see what Bill Gross is up to. About a year ago, in between talking about solar energy gizmos, he mentioned he was working on a 3D printer--a device that could actually make solid objects. He had bought one for his machine shop for $40,000. But he wanted to build one cheap enough for home use.<br /> At the TED Conference earlier this year, Bill was showing a prototype and some of the objects it made. So I decided to look at this more closely. I spent a day with his company, <a href="http://desktopfactory.com">Desktop Factory</a>. I also also visited the <a href="http://www.artcenter.edu/">Art Center College of Design</a>, which has several 3D printers for use by its indistrial design students.<br /> The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/07/technology/07copy.html">article </a>I wrote on this is in Monday's Times.Saul Hansellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06203808120185349067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-655045535248817314.post-66975677737412134142007-04-09T13:35:00.001-07:002007-04-09T13:35:34.872-07:00Hello worldThis is my first postSaul Hansellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06203808120185349067noreply@blogger.com0