News International, MySpace-Murdoch’s newspaper enterprise yesterday launched a new, free newspaper and Web site for London.
We’re not going to bore you with the version that’s stampted on to dead trees, we’ll take a quick look at the site and see where Murdoch may be taking his empire with his re-found enthusiasm for the Internet.
The design of the site, is clear – blog-like, and in his opening comment page, the editor, Stefano Hatfield, writes on the launch of the site (my bold)
thelondonpaper.com also launches (as a beta site) today. In addition to breaking news, competitions and opportunities to contribute and vote, our website takes a broadband look at life in London with daily video coverage of news and entertainment across the city.
As we’ve seen already, Murdoch is applying cross media promotion to MySpace, the selling episodes on the TV program 24 by his Fox television.
This continues on at thelondonpaper.com.
No real surprise that Sky (his satellite TV biz in the UK) features large. Well … he’s just trying to help his son make his projected subscription figures isn’t he? Any media company-owning dad would do they same wouldn’t they?
Besides the centrally placed Sky adverts, there’s a competition to win Sky Broadband (his UK broadband service).
The release date of thelondonpaper was brought forward, and in the lower sections of the site, it starts to show. Going to the competition submission pages, we’re told (my bold)
Please email your answer to [email protected] along with your full name, address, daytime telephone, date of birth and your email address. Please do not use the submit button below.
Of course we did, expecting the whole of News International to come crashing down … it didn’t.
The other point of interest? Google text ads on the site. Them chucking $900m on the table to advertise on MySpace, clearly extended beyond that single property.
As to the video taking a ‘broadband look at London,’ well it’s pretty thin on the ground currently, but we found a couple of pieces including an interview with Fear of flying, which by remarkable coincidence, also has a link to …. their MySpace. What a lovely self-referential world it looks like we’re moving to.
We’ve already told you about the electronics-focussed and very blokey Make: magazine, but they’ve now got competition in the shape of a soon-come sister publication called Craft:, which is aimed at the “new alternative craft movement.” 
In line with its hip Web 2.0 aspirations, the magazine comes with an interactive website offering tons of links to ‘craft mafia’ clubs, an online blog, projects, magazine features and a clever idea to deliver knitting patterns over iTunes. 
The magazine are trialling the service now, so mad-for-it crafters can download a pattern for a stretch tube top with drawstring bottom, hipster shorts with scoop sides (whatever that is) from 
Fun, funky and painfully hip, the Craft: website is already a great resource for DIY types looking for inspiration and ideas, and makes a pleasant change from the usual corporate homogenised dreck that we keep getting press releases about. 
Sky TV has a strong market presence in providing big screen football to the drinking public in licensed premises in the UK. This virtual monopoly has long been a bone of contention for ‘Mine Hosts’ keen to encourage soccer imbibers to their premises for the big games, but over a proverbial barrel in terms of the price they have to pay. 
Greek, Czech and Arabic satellite TV channels have signed up with the UK’s Premier League for coverage of the UK’s beautiful game, and the deal they have is at a much better price (as we’d expect), than the one Sky negotiated, in what is a competitive market for commercial coverage of the national game. 
The UK’s national leading left newspaper, The Guardian, has been looking at what it thinks is the future of the daily newspaper. Since the successful launch of its Berlin edition in 2005, which rolls out of the presses somewhere between the size of a tabloid and the more traditional ‘quality’ broadsheet, it’s done a pile of blue sky thinking. 
Since the 
Today, a rather old book from the late 11th century England (1086 to be precise) will be brought online to be searched. The Domesday Book, is the earliest surviving survey and valuation of the King, his senior supporters, the land they owned and their resources. 
You might think that there’s a little difficulty in using it, as many of the surnames used by people and names of areas have changed substantially over the last thousand-odd years. Luckily they thought of that one. Simply enter the modern name in the Place Name box, if you’re a boffin with knowledge of ye-olde world, you enter the old name in the Other keywords box. 
There’s a couple of theories as to why it’s called the Domesday or Doomsday Book (depending on your preferenece) – Biblical Day of Judgement or when some bloke called Christ will return to judge the living and the dead. Neither of them particularly jolly. 
The Long Tail is an important manual for the new economics of the Internet and digital culture. As well as demystifying the numbers it provides an essential guide to how to navigate a world where everything is available, all the time. Score: 95% 
The Long Tail effect is not limited to buying and selling, the process by which the book was written is a case in point. Anderson (editor in chief of Wired magazine) published the 
Some have taken this to mean that Anderson is sounding the death knell for blockbusters, something which he was at pains to counter on his blog, “Hits Aren’t Dead” he said, “I never said they were. What is dead is the monopoly of the hit. For too long hits or products intended to be hits have had the stage to themselves, because only hit-centric companies had access to the retail channel and the retail channel only had room for best-sellers. But now blockbusters must share the stage with a million niche products, and this will lead to a very different marketplace.” 
If you thought that YouTube was going to rule the roost forever in delivering videos over a Browser, think again. 
Every two or three videos that you watch will trigger the showing of a video advert. They’re currently running at 30-seconds, and I’d imagine that they’ll stay at that or less. Anymore and people will see it too much as a barrier to seeing the content they want. Most of the ads I’ve seen today have been for the Library of Congress 
Movielink, a service which delivers films over the Internet, will soon be offering the ability to burn the downloaded films to DVD, complete with DRM protection, reports ZDNet. 
Sonic Solutions signed a similar deal with video CoDec company DivX back on 20 June to use Sonic’s AuthorScript disc-burning engine, although it was unclear if DRM would be transfered to the burnt disc. 
The online video sharing Web site YouTube, has, in the space of just a year, become the leading online video resource with up to 100 million videos being watched every day. 
When we checked out the homepage (only in the interests of research, of course), there was a “Chipotle Burrito Parody,” a short clip of a “Giant Humbolt Squid,” “Cat Robot” and the always popular, “Zidane Headbutt Attack” for our viewing pleasure. 
Curiously, the company says that it is “still working” on developing advertising and other revenue generating services to support the business. 
OK, you’re used to us breaking news here, but here’s one that slipped through without us noticing. We think it’s sufficiently important for us to swallow our pride and report it anyway.