Gawker: valleywag, infoworld

PC World steals ex-Infoworld editor

Paul Boutin — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:20:00 EDT

Further proof that the print world isn't like the Internet: Eighteen years after he first took a job at monthly service mag PC World, Steve Fox has been brought back by magazine publisher IDG to replace outgoing editor and Internet hero Harry McCracken, whose Technologizer site is nearing an official launch. The unapologetically nuts-and-bolts PC World, with covers like "72 Ways to Make Software Do More," is generally considered the largest-circulation tech magazine in the world. It outsells both Wired and Fast Company by a small margin.

No wonder the smarter-than-your-average-trade-journalist Fox returned from going-nowhere startup Affinity Labs, which he joined after helming fading star Infoworld, an IDG monthly for IT professionals that no longer publishes in print. How will Fox get modern computer enthusiasts, both excited and jaded by the Internet, to buy a magazine? Just a suggestion, Steve: "Summer Glau's 72 Ways to Terminate PC Problems"(Photo by Dealmaker Media)

Reviewer nearly kills self testing iPhone loaner, then loses it

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:40:00 EDT

Credit InfoWorld's Tom Yager this: He's open with his failings. Perhaps too open. In his latest column "In memory of iPhone 3G," a review of Apple's mobile device, Yager writes, "Well, this is embarrassing but I might as well blurt it out: The iPhone 3G that Apple loaned to me was stolen." But Yager needn't fear Apple. They'll certainly let him test future devices after the warm review he gave this one. Instead, its the rest of us — or those of us that drive — that should fear Yager's testing method:

I opened myself to my iPhone 3G epiphany during a seven-hour road trip (it should have been five, but that's another story) to AMD's headquarters in Austin, Texas. I spent that trip with a BlackBerry 8800 and an iPhone 3G resting on my passenger seat, playing "anything you can do, I can do better" with each other the whole way. It was a delight. I was not a paragon of highway safety that night, but I learned more from that trip than I did from a solid week of lab testing. During the trip, the handsets' attention, and mine, were divided primarily among email, browser (news.yahoo.com and phone bandwidth tests on dslreports.com), and real-time navigation.

InfoWorld making 37 percent profit margin one year after ditching print

Jackson West — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:00:00 EDT

International Data Group, the tech publisher, was losing money every time it printed signature title InfoWorld. After kicking the paper habit, the title is now making $1.6 million per month in revenue, and approximately $592,000 net profit, the Times reports:

In 2002, 86 percent of the revenue from IDG's publications came from print and 14 percent online. These days, 52 percent of the revenue is from online ads, while 48 percent is from the print side.

Sure, it serves a technology niche with a well-connected audience and advertisers inclined to turn to the Web. But where technology publishing goes, general interest content is sure to follow, goes the thinking. Only one hole in that theory: CNET.

Google News run by idiots, please write that down

Nick Douglas — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 14:01:04 EDT

Google's always had a weird relationship with the press — the CEO blacklisting CNET.com, a senior VP telling reporters they should thank him, that kind of stuff.

But Google News lets the company piss off the press in new and exciting ways. For example, Google counts journalist Jon Udell's blog as news, but not his actual journalism on InfoWorld.com. So he blogged about it.

As my tipster says, "Jon extracts explanations from Google spokesbots about their editorial and technical workings and in that patient, wonky InfoWorld style spells out how they can't possibly be true."

News about Google News [Jon Udell]