By concentrating our efforts on our digital properties, we can continuously update our content and further expand the number of topics and the depth with which they are treated without the space constraints of the print set. In fact, today our digital database is much larger than what we can fit in the print set. And it is up to date because we can revise it within minutes anytime we need to, and we do it many times each day.

Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. is the publisher of 16 iOS apps (iTunes link), as well as publisher of several online encyclopaedias under the domain britannica.com. Neither of the apps offer fully free access to all the content published, the Encyclopaedia Britannica app costing a whopping $1.99/month subscription fee. It wouldn’t take long before online pundits, and people spending a majority of their time online every day, would object, even calling the publisher out of tune with the times. But this is wrong.

Encyclopaedia Britannica Broadens Its Targeted Audience Group by Charging

It would be wrong to say that the publisher charging for something limits their audience, and relegates them to the corner of the companies out of tune. The Belgian rightholders group SABAM, who want to charge libraries for reading books to kids, are out of time. Let me repeat that again:

The Belgian SABAM group who want to charge libraries for reading books to kids are out of time.

Charging public institutions to read books to kids is not only ridiculous but also out of touch with the world. And I’m not the only one who thinks so.

The Culture of Free™ is a fad, a fad which will soon disappear

Not subscribing to the culture that all content should be freely available does not equate to being out of time. Even not if there is a free alternative. Or a cheaper alternative. Nor are the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Financial Times out of touch for charging for access to their complete library. Nor is BMW wrong for charging more for its cars although cheaper alternatives are available.

What the Encycloaedia Britannica did was actually the opposite of what the online living people claim. Rather than being out of touch with the reality of the internet, the Culture of Free™, they broadened their targeted demographics. At $1,99/month versus $699 for a second hand 2007 edition on eBay, or $1,395 for the last ever print edition.

Instead all Encyclopaedia Britannica content, more than in the printed edition and with every day updates, is now available for the meager sum of $1,99/month. A subscription fee which can be ended and picked up at every time.

Picture stolen from Bogart The Explorer's FB page

A subscription fee many fans of the free Google and just as free Wikipedia vehemently oppose. The main problem with this ever growing group, who belief in the right to free universal access with a simple keystroke is that they will not pay for content. Even if this access commands a fee, if there is a way to gain free access, they will do so if no free alternative is available. A smaller group will not need the access and resist temptation.

Luckily a free resource with lots of knowledge is available and that niche is covered. Thanks to Google and Wikipedia. And blogs publishing freely available content. Not everyone refuses to pay for content they might find freely though.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., an institution which can count more than 100 Nobel Prize Laureats, multiple Pulitzer Prize Laureats and thousands of other respected specialists to its stable of contributors, is an organization which does not cost anyone anything. They do not receive any cent or dime of our hard-earned money. Taxes are not given to them. Instead the company prides itself in delivering lots of high quality content, knowledge, at an ever cheaper price. With ever more articles and corrections are errors are found.
They have the right to charge whatever they think is reasonable. Or unreasonable.

Instead they opted to command the meager sum of $1,99/month. Around 25% of the price of the average Starbucks drink in the First World. Less than the price of two Magnum popsicles in the Third World.

Let’s do the Math

1,395÷1.99/month = 58 Years and 152 Days

The last printed edition of the 32-volume Encyclopedia Britannica sells at $1,395. A one-time fee for over 65,000 articles, written by more than 4,000 contributors. The online edition (for iOS) costs $1,99/month or 701 months access for the same price as the printed edition. 701 Months, or 54 years and 152 days access.
Access to an ever growing archive, with an ever expanding multimedia library. With always more links to reference worthy resources. With articles not limited by the physical size of a print edition anymore.

58 Years and 152 days of access for the same price.

Charging for Content: It’s OK. Really

In one of the many blog entries by Encyclopaedia Britannica staff, Change: It’s OK. Really, the first ever publisher of an online encyclopaedia emphasizes that the end of the print edition marks the beginning of a new era, “to serve knowledge and learning in new ways that go way beyond reference works”.

A new way to serve knowledge, knowledge brought to you by Nobel Prize winners, Pulitzer winners and thousands of other respected authorities in their field. Some of the brightest people to ever walk our planet. 58 Years and 152 days of access for the same price of one print edition.

Those who think this fee is too high can always fall back on Wikipedia and the knowledge which can be found via Google or other search engines. For many others the Encyclopaedia Britannica suddenly became more affordable and more accessible than ever.

Less is More. Simple is Beautiful. What is Simple?

Everyone who likes to design knows the challenge: designing for yourself is the hardest task there is and we all love to ignore that task. Because no matter what we do, no matter how awesome the design is, there will always be something which could do with a little more tweaking. No design is perfect, especially not when it’s made for yourself.

iFranky, and it’s predecessor Am I Famous Now, has gone through many design iteration over the last 5 years and never have I been really happy, until recently. Really recently.

Version 1047

The last design iteration of Am I Famous Now was probably the design I have enjoyed most of all. Just like the quotes I have used ever since I had a blog, the whole concept of the design was to mock modern standards, more precisely to mock the whole Web 2.0 design.
As Angelo described here the whole design was a stab at semantics, gradients, pink and lime-green, greek letters and dropshadows. The blog also was offensive at times.

‘Am I Famous Now’ nevertheless validated and made use from Microformats in Cutline as well as several conditional cases to use different backgrounds for different categories. Post types before post types. Simplicity was nowhere to be found.

iFranky, the Tale of Cluttered Simplicity

After I had mainly worked with k2 before I designed the above mentioned Cutline modification for iFranky, working with Chris Pearson’ theme was a breeze. I really enjoyed Cutline and would again modify the theme for the newly used iFranky domain. The new modification became more a Cutline 2.0 than a child theme. This boy of course had to push custom further and soon almost every file was modified. Cutline became gridified and it looked OK but something was missing. Part of me couldn’t stick to simplicity either and I had a smooth gallery header, as well as every possible thumbnail sidebar option: flickr, last.fm. Simplicity cluttered.

My focus was more on having the perfect grid than what really mattered: a perfect use of whitespace and today it is hard to understand why I liked this theme at some point, but I did and Cutline 2.0 has been in used on iFranky and for a personal blog for almost a year.

Sue Me Because My Parents Called Me Franky: The Quotes

When I started this domain, there was a classic entry along the lines of Veni, vidi, bibendum. I, Franky, I came, I saw and I had a drink. And of course the stab at Steve Jobs.

My Cutline modification and some more typical online stuff had taken away the desire to blog and I started a quest for a new platform. Sadly since then some entries have been lost, mainly due to deleting older backups and not bothering about backups at all. Even not although I’m automated backup boy. Chances these entries can be found in an archive folder are high but such was my interest in blogging at the time. Movable Type, Chyrp and then back to WordPress. Internet fatigue was the best way to resume the state I was in.

The interest in blogging had disappeared but I still wanted to somehow stay in touch with my domain and the quotes, which had been dropped from the latest Cutline design, made a return. Pretty much without blog updates though, but at least when opening the homepage, there was something I could relate to. The continuous stab at the world around me: the blog scene and design world.

…A Wise Man Knows Himself To Be A Fool
…Diatribe Of A Cyber Suicide
…Give Me A Job And I Will blog About
…Freshly Baked, Self-Proclaimed A-Lister
…What About The Chicken You Just Saw
…Creator And Destroyer
…I Am So Coordinated
…Many Authors Go Crazy
…I Am Perfect Except When I Lie
…Fashion Assassin
…Sue Me Because My Parents Called Me Franky
…The Most Insignificant Blogger
…I Have Ataraxia
…The Hemingway of the 21st Century

I Still Design and Blog. Just Not for Myself Anymore

No matter what I did, somehow I always would continue to be active online and maintain websites, just not mine. I recently had discovered Mimbo and my style had gone to something along these lines: better whitespace, still grid-anal and complete customisation of WordPress. Add custom fields to the mix.

Simplicity still was a far shot off but slickness was on it’s way and I needed a ‘new’ online presence. A new visual concept. Mimbo had led me to the world of magazine themes for WordPress and I loved to showcase lots of content on one page. Enter ‘The Morning After’. Add some customisations to the mix and born was what I think a cool showcase of lots of content on one page but a totally cluttered mess.
With only 6 excerpts of main entries on the home page this was way too long and I doubt that anyone ever clicked any of these entry excerpts or links. But the quotes had made their return and I had a new way to display content related tumblings.

Blogging for money soon took over again and although I would not venture in good old-skool punditry yet, I noticed that more and more I started to develop my own voice, brand again. Less punditry but cleaner prose. And I needed a cleaner design to reactivate my own blogging because no matter how nice and solid ‘The Morning After’ is, there’s more wrong with the design than anyone can imagine.

Simplicity, It’s on Its Way, But Please First Slap Me in the Face With It!

Over at frankylicious I had been sporting a barely modified Notesblog Core since several moths already because the theme did not get in the way and focused on what’s most important: the content. Of course when I decided to use Notesblog Core here on iFranky, I had to ruin that. Immediately. Royally.

As I was planning a remake, a remake within the first weeks I considered stepping away from WordPress. Once more. Even though I had the biggest plans to use different sidebars and footers for different sections of the page, I did not understand why I would need bloatware engine WordPress. Funnily enough I even considered static pages for a while, focus on content not on design.

On the Way Home I Got Hit in the Face

Then it hit me straight in the face. Who cares about all that clutter? If I had already deleted the search form because when was the last time you used a search form on a blog?

Some sections such as the tumblings and writings elsewhere have entirely lost their display on the home page. The fixed bottom navigation needs to be improved but the result is… simplicity.

The main focus of the lecture was the importance of blogging for computer scientists for their future career. I briefly touched the history of the modern internet and blogging, mentioned the difficulty of making money with blogs online before pointing out the importance of a blog for programmers, developers and designers.
I decided not to release the podcast but publish a slightly more in-depth entry instead

Short History of the Internet and Blogging

Blogging started almost as soon as the ‘modern internet’ was created and people started to web log what they discovered online, mainly as an aid for other surfers to find interesting sites. In these times there was no Google, Yahoo (Directory), DMOZ Project, Technorati or Eaton Portal yet helping us to discover what was great, funny and/or interesting. We entirely relied on what others discovered.
The history of blogging is a very discussed topic but a brief version can be found at The Blog Herald.

When in 1996 the MSM started to discover the World Wide Web and online magazines such as Slate were created, the WWW still was a small world where most people knew each other. It was a thriving and helpful community.

The World Wide Web was an invigorating, compelling and, frankly, amazing place in 1996. Innovations were fast, furious and quickly adopted. Clever people did clever things and pretty much everyone noticed, because “everyone” was a rather small and curious community. [...] The Internet of 1996 was certainly nothing like today’s experience. But to suggest there wasn’t much to do is to ignore everything that was being done.

As online magazines started to grow and channels such as BBC Online emerged more and more, the online publishing sector was pioneered in these years. Together with the evolution of open source CMS it became easier and easier to publish online.

The Web As A Publishing Ground for Amateurs

With the growing popularity of CMS platforms such as *Nukes and Mambo in the early years of the 21st Century, many students and other geeks started to publish on a regular basis, often more than 5 times/day, on their favourite topic. Online communities became really big and many a freetime author, citizen journalist, started to earn a buck from their website. Several communities were multi-authored and the software platforms were huge, resource hungry and often heavily SEO’d. This was the period when I started to publish on a semi-professional basis myself and ran one of the bigger German Windows communities. We fought an eternal battle for page views and usually were hours, sometimes even days, earlier with tech news than the established news sites. The financial factor of running a popular online community was highly rewarding. The technical site of running a website and trying to stay on top of SERPs was a rather difficult battle and many webmasters become online mavens, learning much about server optimization, SEO and waded for the first time through code, modding their platform constantly.

Blog Software Emerges

It was around this period that the first blogging software applications started to be written and released, with Movable Type. WordPress, today’s most popular blogging platform, was first released in May 2003 as a fork of the not longer maintained b2\cafelog and would soon become more popular than the MT after Mena Trott announced changes in the MT licensing structure. Blogging software, itself also a CMS platform, could be defined as a ‘stripped down’ version of the popular PostNuke, Mambo/Joomla platforms and became popular because of the ease of use. You only needs to compare the simplicity of the admin backend of WordPress to the backend of the still popular Joomla! to understand why platforms such as WP and Movable Type became popular.

Different Types of Blogs

There are three kind of blogs which I will discus and also have a look at their future and importance now.

Personal diarrhea diary

There is not much further explanation needed about these blogs, we all know the ‘OMG my cat just had a poop!’ blog and love to hate them. There is little future in these blogs, in the words of the wise and snarky Paul Boutin:

Writing a weblog today isn’t the bright idea it was four years ago. The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge. Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths. It’s almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers. And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.

Multi-authored blogs, AKA Online Magazines

Some of the most popular blogs such as TechCrunch, Gawker and Engadget are multi-authored and rather lucrative online sites. Personally I do not tend to consider these sites ‘blogs’ but rather the perfect example of the web being recursive: they are professional online magazines. Often these blogs have been created by one person, who tried to be a journalist with a carte blanche for snark. Citizen journalism. For many of these sites the main mottos are publish often, publish fast and We’ll fact check later.

These blogs often are mentioned as New Media and A-Listers have fought for several years to receive the same credits as more traditional, MSM, journalists.
Now the MSM have accepted and endorsed blogs, it makes little sense to start a new Web2.0, tech , games, car, movie, whatever blog and hope to become rich. The combination of both classic media endorsing blogs and classic media using similar SEO strategies as bloggers will result in a renewed fight for page views, especially in these financially bad times online. Unless you have PR you can bleed and you can push traffic to a new site you have no chance to rank well in the SERPs. Quality does not matter if no one reads.
The jury still is out on the Long Tail and whether you invest in the Long Tail. Chris Anderson’s Long Tail recently even came under criticism from his own editors.

Your Blog as Your Online Brand

Your blog can also be used as an extended online curriculum. Your blog is your online presence, a hub to your other online profiles. Your own online column.

Why It Is Important to Grow and Maintain Your Online Presence

Times have changed and Computer Science continues to grow in popularity. 20 Years ago there were only few computer specialists and those who were literate in this science could easily get a job. Nowadays everyone thinks they can program, code, design and manage networks/systems and the value of a CV has largely been reduced to some more sheets on the stack of applicants. Your blog can help you stand out from the masses!

In times when companies such as Google screen applications you want to have an extra to your CV. This extra should be your blog, your central hub.
Your blog will link out to other online presences expressing your interest in computer science and related topics, such as your:

• Social Bookmarking profile (fe. Delicious or iterasi)
• Your ‘coding archive’: if you use platforms such as Github you have to link to these.
• Your LinkedIn profile
• Your photo sharing profile/Flickr. More than you can imagine the pictures you take, publish are an expression of your interests.

Programming is much more than knowing a certain language, programming is a way of thinking and your blog offers you the possibility to show off your knowledge. Every time you make an interesting edit to public code, use pastie or have discovered a bit of slick and clean code, you should write about it and explain the reason behind your edit. Your blog offers you the opportunity to show that you can think as a programmer, understand code and are bleeding edge, interested in learning always new things and improve your code.
Many software engineers employed by the major online and IT companies share code, return to the community and if your writing and thinking is great they will discover your entries and start following you. This might even result in companies offering you a position. In our modern age even several open source applications have received venture capital and they also hire people. Your blog is where you can prove how good you are. Much more than by doing a practicum at a company, a company which much not allow you to share your code.

Tought Palace by Jens Alfke is a perfect example of how to use your blog both personally and professionally. In the period after Jens had left Apple and before he accepted the position at Google, he blogged regularly about an idea and for and the thought pattern behind an iPhone application he planned to create, Cloudy. Other great examples of blogs landing people lectures and consulting jobs in their specific areas are Merlin Mann, from 43folders fame, and Chris Garrett a famous British social media consultant. Other examples include Swedish Campground by Caius Durling, Brightbox developer, Veerle Duoh‘s blog, designer extraordinaire and Expression Engine evangelist, 456Bereastreet by Roger Johansson, accessibility guru par excellence, and the blog of MySQL guru Jeremy Zawodny.

The challenge is simple: make a blog popular (subjectively), without whoring the blog out in comments or on traffic platforms. Just rely on the ability to write passionately, opinionatedly and know some keyword stuff SEO have a popular topic.
Both blogs enter an already overcrowded area and target a passionate and active community, which actually makes things harder, but could also be an advantage.

In one month I will report here about the first weeks and how stats have grown (or not).
Both URLs will not be used in comments on more than 2 other blogs each.

Update: Life has come in between the challenge and the reality. I still believe in the concept and several blogs are in the planning. One more actually: Bloggers Turn Me On, a return to the good ol’ (JOAB) times, just a little more high profile and less obligatory as then. See you soon in a blog coming to a browser on your monitor.

One rule of thumb:

Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.

It’s Franky, b*tches. I’m back.