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Archives for November 2006

Times to keep Globe

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It looks as if the Boston Globe will not be sold after all.

Fox 25 (Boston) reported the Times Company “spurned” an offer from local investors to buy the broadsheet, which is valued at nearly $600 million.

Times Co. Chief Executive Janet Robinson wrote in a letter dated Nov. 17 that the Globe remains an important asset and the company was not interested in pursuing the sale, two executives who have seen the letter told a Globe reporter.

The Times Company paid $1.1 billion in 1993 to obtain The Globe.

Blast Update

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Blast Magazine is off to a great start so far. I want to keep everyone advised of what’s been going on lately:

  • B Media Ventures, LLC was born on Nov. 14 and will publish Blast Magazine
  • Blast Magazine will launch its first issue on 1/1/07
  • It will focus on the 18-35 demographic and be feature-heavy and design-intensive
  • The current dedicated staff is approximately 40 and new writers and journalists are welcome to contact me to get involved

The magazine will be something completely different in online journalism. The design and layout will be just like a real magazine only living and breathing and updated constantly. It will have periodic “issues” and new “covers” but we’ll be added new content daily as new issues, product reviews and news rises.

Stay tuned for more!

Mid-week market rag: Video games galore

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The Market Rag took a little election-week vacation, but it’s back now and ready to talk shop.

We have entered the age of Playstation 3 and Wii.

Sony will sell its 400,000 American units promptly and unleash 6 million units by March, according to a CNNMoney article. The same coverage also points out a glitch in backwards compatibility rendering dozens of previous Playstation and Playstation 2 games unplayable. Sony does plan to fix the problem though. Almost 90,000 units of Playstation 3 left store shelves bare in Japan after its launch there last week.

The Nintendo Wii launches on the 19th to high anticipation and one of the better backward compatibility options which enables users to obtain and play games from the NES days.

Interestingly enough, both companies have been quiet with advertising lately. CNN noticed this too:

While there’s been plenty of talk about the PS3 and Wii, television ads have been scarce. Sony (Charts) started running some unusual PS3 ads in the past week, but Nintendo has been silent. Fils-Aime said that’s very deliberate.

Both companies have poured their coffers into development and the hype is certainly there, but something is missing for the PR guy in a useless yet entertaining advertising sweep; a cola-wars commercial battle between Sony and Nintendo with Microsoft scarily coming in as RC Cola just hasn’t been there. Wouldn’t you have loved to see a commercial where a Playstation 3 eats a Wii, or a Wii moves it’s magic “nun chuck” wand and makes a Playstation 3 disappear?

Alas, nobody does it like Coke/Pepsi and Bud/Miller.

The advertising clearly wasn’t a necessity, however, as even Ebay has to put limits on how much the Playstation 3 can be sold for.

Shares of Sony and Nintendo had been mixed today with Sony finishing slightly down and Nintendo finishing slightly up today in trading.

Is it Zune season?

Microsoft’s iPod killer came off its leash today. The WiFi-enabled personal music player enables users who are in close proximity to share their media with one another. The line looks promising with equivalent Microsoft versions of Apple’s Nano and Shuffle expected with flash media storage and Internet compatibility anticipated. Zune may also become a VoIP phone eventually, and CNNMoney reported an iPod phone is in the world. Zune also has an FM tuner on board if you’re feeling saucy.

Both companies will fare well with their computer and portable media products this season, however. Neither looks like they’re throwing a death blow quite yet, and the explains why both companies stocks were flat today. Apple was down slightly on anticipation of Microsoft’s Zune taking some kind of a swing at iPod’s virtual lock on the portable media market.

That’s the Rag for now. Now get out there and spend. If you need early gift ideas, CNN has a few ideas.

For immediate release: Blast Magazine to Launch

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Blast Magazine
Well this is the start of something good. If you want to get involved or write for the magazine, e-mail me.

Boston, Nov. 13, 2006

A new style of journalism is set to rise. Blast Magazine is set to launch January 1 with a New Year’s Eve kickoff!

What is Blast Magazine?

Blast (https://www.theblastarea.com) is an Internet magazine focused on what’s hot right now, including the latest fashion, cultural issues, new technology, sports, gaming, music and entertainment.

Blast is the fusion between traditional print journalism and online media. It combines the quality and nostalgia of print periodicals with the timeliness and convenience of the Internet media.

The secret behind Blast is “Hybrid Edition Content Delivery,” developed by the magazine’s three partners; Editor-in-Chief John Guilfoil, Chief Technical Officer Andy Whelan, and Design Editor Andrew Khan. The technology and method combines traditional “budgeted” journalism with up-to-the-minute updates, dynamic news stories and fresh daily product reviews.

The weekly online publication will feature new full-length stories and feature columns. The actual magazine will, however, consist of more than just the weekly issue. It will be updated several times each day with new content, making it a living, breathing piece of journalism. It also offers new value to advertisers by offering permanent advertisement that appear in issues and feature stories forever as part of Blast’s virtual library archive system.

“We are not an ‘e-zine,’” Guilfoil said, “we are a print magazine that has been literally thrown into cyberspace, given a heart and lungs and brought to life.”

Blast has an 18-35 demographic distributed evenly between males and females in market research. Features will include a weekly sex column and reviews of current trends in the world of poker, music, video games, movies and technology. Blast will cover the hottest fads!

The magazine will also be professionally designed and optimized so users with widescreen monitors can enjoy an enhanced experience and those with smaller monitors can still have an optimized viewing experience. The publication has a staff of over 30, including writers, photographers and graphic designers from all over the East Coast. They are a mixture of young professionals and talented students.

Preview content and news will come online in the coming days at https://www.theblastarea.com, but for the next 50 days the staff is focusing on the launch of a major marketing campaign to promote “Blast Off,” which will occur on New Year’s Eve when the full website launches.

John Guilfoil has worked in public relations and is a 10-year veteran of Internet journalism. He founded The Review Center (https://www.reviewcenter.com) in 1999 and has written numerous articles and product reviews.

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