All problems of man can be dissolved into one of two categories: problems of time and problems of space. Wars are space-somebody's got something someone else wants. Death is time-yours is up. Bad hair days are time-there's not enough of it to properly customize your coiffure. The one exception is politicians. They're both; they take up too much space and no one has enough time to figure out why we really need them in the first place.
Online publishing is a problem of space.
Yes, it's yet another exciting buzz phrase of the '90s. For most online publishers, it's the messy business of porting their print publications to a new, dynamic, computer-based media.
Magazines and newspapers reveal their online presences everyday. Everything from People to Popular Mechanics to Playboy (you didn't get it from me) is finding a home on the web.
Smarty-pants academic types are writing long dissertations on the social implications of online publishing. Then they go on to charge $100/hour consulting fees to clueless publishers who think a mouse is something you step on. These big names talk about the 'enigma' of online publishing in a dynamic media. I'd say that what online publishing needs right now is more like an enema. There are so many new possibilities with online media that publishers need at least a swift kick in the butt to get on to them.
The biggest mistake that publishers make today in converting to online production is mirroring their print publication online. What's the point? At the most basic level, you can add links to the page. Every time you see the phrase 'Bubba Clinton', you make a link to The White House web page. Is this a revolution in journalism or what? Last week I said that what makes the internet significant is that it combines a lot of wires-cable, radio, 'electronic' print and phones. If you're just putting the text of the publication online, then you're online using one of the wires.
The words you are reading right now are a hot commodity. Newspaper publishers constantly battle between copy space and ad space. One satisfies their readers. The other satisfies their pockets. Journalists are trained to organize their stories in order of importance. The least important parts of their articles are left on the cutting room floor. Online, some problems of space disappear. You're not constrained by a x inch by y inch space. You can include graphics, video, et al. When you're publishing online, there's no floor in the cutting room.
Journalists need to be trained to provide extra content. For example, a transcript of a interview could be printed along with the article or pictures that didn't fit in print. By the same token, print publications need to take advantage of the space available online. By leading print readers to the online versions of their publications, they make their stories more intensive and interactive.
The problem of space that does appear is how much you can see on a monitor screen versus a printed page. Print is produced on paper with thousands of dots per inch. Monitors can display only a few dozen dots per inch. This means that you can't visually scan an online page like you can a print page because you just can't fit enough on a monitor.
A bunch of Wireheads at one software company, Adobe, came up with a solution that brings together the worst of both worlds called the Portable Document Format (PDF). It allows you to mirror your print publication exactly-you can now transport a document with all the pretty fonts and graphics you want at print resolution across the Internet.
The bad news for you is that it's like trying to read news through a microscope. Because of the discrepancy between monitor and print resolutions you might be able to see but the articles are too unclear to read.
The good news for publishers is that it's moron-proof. You print it to a file just like you were printing it to a laser printer. The other good thing about it is that it looks great when you print it. Now let's think about this: we're taking the potential for videos, sound, interactive applications, pictures with millions of colors of infinite dimensions and printing it out in gray print 8 1/2 by 11 inch paper. Great idea, guys.
The problem with Wireheads is one of time; after a while they short circuit.
Next week: Interface that isn't in your face.