Comments on: Belgian women’s magazine launches mobile edition

By: How to make money and influence people… « Safety in Numbers

How to make money and influence people… « Safety in Numbers — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:07:55 +0000

[...] A recent post contributed to Paul Bradshaw’s excellent Online Journalism Blog detailed the launch of a mobile edition of Belgian women’s magazine Flair. Something powered by the cost of a text message does have potential, perhaps, although it would [...]

By: John Freeman

John Freeman — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:37:56 +0000

@ dorien: yes, widgets do seem to be generating quite a head of steam. We’re investigating those, too!

By: Dorien

Dorien — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:29:34 +0000

@john freeman: you are right about downloading applications on a mobile phone: it’s quite difficult, especially for people who aren’t really into mobile technology. Nevertheless, dowloading widgets etc gives more possibilities in my eyes. And once downloaded mobile internet becomes more userfriendly, like the iPhone interface for example.

@nils geylen: indeed your point stands. And even more: point taken. Thanks for the criticism, otherwise I would never have known!

By: Nils Geylen

Nils Geylen — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:23:07 +0000

Apologies for the late reply. I’m sorry if my comment sounded harsh. Objectively, I feel my point stands, without a doubt, but the fact that your responses were swift and acknowledged my criticism to an extent, makes up for that.

It may come as a surprise that I do subscribe to the OJB precisely for articles that cover more than the mere Valley tech news and in that, I haven’t been let down. In this case, it certainly isn’t the subject matter that was a disappointment, merely the fact that the story had very little ‘journalistic’ value and that its perspective seems too narrow, as far as I’m concerned.

Either you report an online/mobile initiative in general or you make it a case study of a local service. Here, it felt as if I was reading a letter in a school paper.

Of course, as you say, it’s a good thing that young writers get a chance to publish here and that you apply the network of correspondents to break the mold too often imposed by other tech and news blogs.

By: John Freeman

John Freeman — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 12:08:18 +0000

Interesting post although mobile magazines aren’t that new – several UK publishers are doing them. There’s even web sites such as http://www.feedm8.com that will turn your bloig into mobile-readable format. (I’ve done it with my own blog – http://downthetubescomics.blogspot.com/)

The issue here for some of your readers might be “are the original writers getting a revenue share for this re-use of their work” which I suspect they won’t, as publishers seek to land grab all rights.

Compatibility is a major issue for mobile-ready content providers. Keeping things simple works. Once you start to require a mobile user to download an application to read your magazine on their phone, unless it’s pre-installed on it already, you’re in trouble. I work on a comics to mobile site – http://www.rokcomics.com — and we made a conscious decision not to go that route to maximise delivery to phones that can accept visual data, still an issue in many countries.

I’ve just found this blog — interesting reading. Thanks.

By: paulb

paulb — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 08:53:37 +0000

Nils, what specifically do you subscribe to OJB for? Like many blogs, I try to do a number of things – some analysis, some playing with tools, some experiments, some showcasing/linking and some news, particularly from countries which do not receive enough exposure in the Anglo-American journo blogosphere. On the last aspect I’m very happy that Dorien can contribute regarding innovations in Belgium – the quality of the language is down to my editing, and I’ll re-edit it.
I am looking at ways to produce more specific RSS feeds so readers can drill down to the content of most interest, so I am genuinely interested in your answer.

By: Dorien

Dorien — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 06:52:34 +0000

Sorry to read this Nils. Even though the Belgian mobile internet market is kept so closed because of (amongst others) the operators asking terribly high data fees, media players are trying to do projects with this medium anyway. And they even chose women as their target group. Which is quite some news, don’t you think? But this answer is probably written in terrible Anglo-Flemish

By: Nils Geylen

Nils Geylen — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:17:43 +0000

Terribly sorry, but this is not why I subscribed to the OJB.

This “article” is puerile, dumb and ill-construed. Your readers demand a modicum of standards, both in style and content.

Nothing in this post works – it’s written in terrible Anglo-Flemish, it contains no news-worthiness at all, and none of the hyperlinks are of any relevance…

Please keep the OJB worth our while; don’t allow for the publication of this nonsense.

By: Journalism.co.uk Editors’ Blog » Blog Archive » links for 2008-07-10

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:32:16 +0000

[...] Belgian women’s magazine launches mobile edition | Online Journalism Blog Flair magazine has created an interactive mobile magazine compatible with a range of handsets. (tags: belgium magazines mobile) This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 2:31 pm and is filed under delicious links. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. [...]