Robin Good's Latest News

From Communication Consultant To Independent Media Publisher: My Reasons For Moving From Secure Work To Risky Blogging - Robin Good Video

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:25:00 GMT

Why, after having worked for many years for several large international organizations did I decide to jump into the online independent publishing frenzy and make it my full-time activity? In this short video, I share with you the basic reasons and motivations that have led me to seriously consider abandoning my well paid corporate communication consultant job and to start an independent web publishing career. What were the reasons and triggers that sparked my decision?

Why Did I Leave My Former Job To Become An Online Independent Publisher

Duration: 6\'
Full English Text Transcription

Hi, this is Robin Good for MasterNewMedia, and I am going to answer one more of your questions. This one today reads: "With your background in... corporate marketing - well... I didn\'t know I had a background in corporate marketing - when did you first decide to become a web publisher... what went through your head when you were decideing to leave your cushy executive job for this endeavor... an endeavor that was fraught with uncertainty?"

Working for Security or Working for Satisfaction - That Is The Question
Well good question anyhow. I wasn\'t an executive corporate manager... but I was certainly helping and working and making life easier for lots of those executives out there, whether in advertising agencies or international organizations that supposedly \'helped\' people in the second and third world better manage their lives and their future. Yes, I did indeed abandon the corporate commercial world of work for an I-can\'t-tell-for-sure-if-we-are-going-to-be-here-tomorrow-or-not type of world. I know that those of you who have a solid seat in a company right now, are also thinking the same right now. But until yesterday it hasn\'t been so. So this type of work which involves putting everything at risk and just counting on yourself and producing your own content and having nobody checking on you but yourself, came out of the desire to have more opportunity to do more of something that I really liked. I mean that is what it really ends up being. I guess this is a common desire that is gradually numbed, suppressed, and pushed... and pushed... and pushed down underground until you forget about it. But for most people the idea that there is something that they like to do that is separate from the work has a very strong presence. Well my idea... my idea was to take something that I liked and something that allowed me to survive and make it the same thing.

The Infinite Loop
Why have a job for a company that I didn\'t care for... to make money doing things that I didn\'t enjoy.... to then save money to do something that I really liked? You could get trapped in this loop for years and years and years. It never ends. You are always needing more money to pay for this or that, and you never really have enough time to really get to do what you like. So it stemmed from this native desire to do what I really wanted. And from the coincidental missing satisfaction from the work I was doing commercially. It didn\'t matter how much money or prestige - international, widespread, or promoted - the work was after a while (at least for me) not enough.

Beyond The Money
You want something beyond the money. Especially when you see so much money being wasted. So many decisions being taken not on terms of objective value but because whoever is paying likes it to be more that way instead of the other way. There is no value being created in many cases. The moment that I saw that there was an opportunity to monetize my content online and to then write about the things that I really liked - sharing with others, helping them find out the same things I knew and use them for their own communication efforts, I went for it. ...and well, that by itself was much more rewarding, both intellectually and personally, than doing work for others who were just handing out orders. Definitely a lot more rewarding.

The Change Your Life Trigger - Learn To Recognize It
So the trigger was getting annoyed to the point that you get enraged with your clients about what they ask you to do and about your condition as their slave in executing and prostituting your talent to do something that you think is badly done, or is useless or is wasting lots of money. And so if there is a way, like there is now effectively, (and I am certainly a testament to that) where you can help other people research, write, create stuff, software tools in the field you like. I mean make this available to other people and even make money on this, you can work basically from anywhere you want, how can you not choose to go in that direction? I mean... it\'s hard (not to). Maybe you are scared about the internet and writing and the technical stuff but that is what made me choose to abandon that world for a world that is more risky. Because the advantages in terms of... personal freedom, personal expression, the ability to lead the life that I like, to work the times that I want, and to realize and execute things that I would never be able to do if I was working for a major corporation... is worth for me all of the risks that I am running. Thank you for asking this question. Ciao!

Do you have more questions you want me to answer? Post them here below inside the comments area. Do you want to learn a few more in-depth things about professional web publishing and what I discovered along the way? Check out POP, a new video blog site where I am gradually posting "in-depth" video tutorials about my key strategies in pro web publishing.

Originally shot and recorded by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on November 20th 2008 as "From Communication Consultant To Independent Media Publisher: My Reasons For Moving From Secure Work To Risky Blogging - Robin Good Video" ...]]>

Browser Compatibility Testing: Cross-Platform Cross-Browser Multiple Resolutions Compatibility Testing Tools - Sharewood Guide

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:35:00 GMT

To check the compatibility of your site across different browsers, operating systems, or screen resolutions there are a handful of little known tools which professional webmasters keep secretly inside their toolkits. I have gone out to find out what these are. Photo credit: BrowserCam edited by Daniele Bazzano As you probably know, you cannot take for granted how your web site will be displayed when called up on a computer running a different operating system than yours. In fact, there are at least three main issues that affect the way your web pages are displayed on other people screens:

The browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc) and the specific version your viewers use
The operating system (Mac, Windows, Linux) your viewers run on their machines.
The screen resolution your viewers have set on their monitors.

To make this straight, a page rendered in Firefox 2 on a Windows machine probably won\'t look the same when opened again in Firefox 3 on a Mac. This is why as an online publisher you have to go out of your way to make sure your site displays almost identically across different browsers, operating systems and screen resolutions. But how can you test such a broad variety of possible combinations? Install all the available browsers and operating systems out there, and then test your web pages at each one of the different screen resolutions your monitor can handle? If you want to maintain your sanity, don\'t even attempt the above. The sheer number of possible combinations you need to test is pretty scary: 15 basic setups that need to be tested at least at three different resolutions makes for positive extended nightmare. Trust me. In this guide, I have personally hand-picked the best browser compatibility testing tools out there to help you check rapidly your site across different browsers, operating systems and screen resolutions. Cross-platform browser testing tools generally all work in the same way. You provide the URL of the web page you want to test, and then select the operating systems, browsers, and (when available) the specific screen resolutions you want to test your page on. The browser compatibility testing service you choose will then proceed to take a screenshot of that very page according to the specifics you have chosen (operating system, browser model and version, etc.), so that you can immediately evaluate what are the key issues to be addressed inside your web page HTML code tags. Here below is a comprehensive list of all the browser compatibility testing tools and services out there as well as a set of key basic criteria I have utilized to compare them:

Price: Is the service free or does it require the payment of a fee to be used.
Free Trial: Many services allow a free testing period. Find out who does.
Browser: Which browsers (and browser versions) are supported by the service.
OS: Indicates which operating systems are supported in the compatibiliy test.
Screen resolution: Specifies whether you can test your web page across different screen resolutions.
Unique characteristics: Discover the key feature that makes every service unique.

To make your analysis and selection task even most effective, here below I have also prepared a comparison table showcasing all of the available cross-platform browser compatibility testing tools, along with a full set of mini-reviews introducing each one. Here all the details: Intro by Daniele Bazzano

Cross-Platform Browser Testing Tools Comparison Table

go to the table! *Please refer to services sites for additional pricing solutions.

Check The Compatibility Of Your Site Across Different Browsers, Operating Systems, And Screen Resolutions

BrowserCam BrowserCam allows you to test your site across different browsers, and operating systems. The service works on any browser you can think of running on Windows, Mac, and Linux Fedora Core 9. Testing of different screen resolutions is also allowed. A unique feature of Browsercam is the possibility of testing how your pages are rendered on a Blackberry smart phone running Windows Mobile 5.0. BrowserCam is priced at $19,95 for one day of use, but there additional pricing solutions if you plan to use it for a longer time. Free to try for 24 hours and 200 screen captures. http://www.browsercam.com/

Browsershots Browsershots is perhaps the best free solution to test the compatibility of your site across different browsers, operating systems, and screen resolutions. Browsershots compares the layout of your site on almost any browser and OS in the market. You can also test your layout at different screen resolutions. Unique feature is the possibility of testing color depth, as well as Javascript, Flash and Java codes, to see how these parameters may affect the way your site is displayed. http://browsershots.org/

Litmus Litmus is a web-based service that lets you compare the rendering of your site in different browsers and operating systems. Using the Basic (free) version you can run tests on IE7 and Firefox 2. By purchasing one of the additional pricing solutions you can access a wider choice of browsers and operating systems. Litmus offers no trial period nor the possibility to test your site at different screen resolutions. As a unique feature the service allows you to test the layout of your newsletters (only for MS Office 2003 and GMail in the Basic version). http://litmusapp.com/

CrossBrowserTesting CrossBrowserTesting allows you to check the compatibility of your site on a large number of browsers including IE, Safari, Firefox, Opera, Camino, and some more. Operating systems available for testing are Microsft Windows, Mac OSX 10.5, and Ubuntu 7.10. Cross-BrowserTesting does not offer the option to switch between different screen resolutions, but Javascript and Ajax testing is available. Pricing solutions start from $1 for 5 minutes of testing with no limitations. You can test the service for a free trial period of 5 minutes. http://www.crossbrowsertesting.com/

Browser Photo Browser Photo is a web-based solution that takes screenshots of your web pages across different browsers and operating systems for layout-testing purposes. The service works with main browsers on the market (IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera) running on Windows, Mac and Linux. Browser Photo allows you to test browsers at different screen resolutions as well. No trial period is available. Priced at $15 for a one-time use, Browser Photo offers additional pricing plans to suit your needs. http://www.netmechanic.com/products/browser-index.shtml

BrowsrCamp BrowsrCamp is a web-based service that allows you to check the compatibility of your site across different browsers but only on Mac machines. Working on almost all the browsers you can run on OSX, BrowsrCamp also allows you to test your site at different screen resolutions. Starting at $3 for two days of utilize, the service offers additional pricing solutions for longer testing periods. Free testing on Safari 3.12 only. http://www.browsrcamp.com/

IE NetRenderer IE NetRenderer is a free web-based service that lets you compare how a web site is rendered across different versions of Internet Explorer (from 5.5 to 8 Beta 2). Screen-resolution testing is not allowed. An useful and unique feature of IE NetRenderer allows you to compare at a first glance any difference in the way your page is displayed on the screen between IE6 and IE7 . http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer/

Multi-Safari Multi-Safari is a free browser testing service that allows you to check the rendering of your site across different versions of the Safari. The service is designed to avoid different installations of OSX to test the your site on older releases of the Safari web browser. Multi-Safari does not allow any test on different screen resolutions. http://michelf.com/projects/multi-safari/

Originally prepared by Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia and first published on November 19th 2008 as "Browser Compatibility Testing: Cross-Platform Cross-Browser Multiple Resolutions Compatibility Testing Tools - Sharewood Guide".

Content Monetization: Fighting Unlicensed Content Republication Via Distribution Networks And Ad Sharing

Attributor Team — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:50:00 GMT

As content can be copied indefinitely and distributed instantaneously across the web, web publishers need to cooperate and partner with their peers to create free content distribution networks - collections of blogs and web sites where they can freely syndicate and republish their original content. Why? Photo credit: simonkr and Max Gladwell mashed up by Daniele Bazzano In the rapidly changing online publishing landscape that exists today, the old mantra "If you can\'t beat \'em... join \'em" seems to ring truer than ever. Publishers, large and small, have long tried to find effective ways to fight against those who re-use and re-publish their content without permission. But finding site editors, webmasters who hide under a barrage of protective layers, takes lots of time and it is often as ineffective as sending out DMCA or takedown notices. Smart web publishers are beginning to realize how ineffective and time-consuming is to continue to send these draconian cease-and-desist letters to those republishing their content, especially if they want to survive and thrive in the future. This problem is not limited to independent web publishers however. The video game and movie industry have been fighting this same loosing battle for years. Even today there is a report that the Sony Blu-ray DRM has been broken and Chinese pirates are moving unauthorized copies of HD discs. If DRM doesn\'t stand a chance while scraping and RSS republishing become easier by the hour, what chance do web publishers have in hoping to control the unlicensed distribution of their content? None. But... The time has come for publishers to embrace change. The creation of new online content distribution networks, through which content can be easily shared and freely re-published, may be the possible road to their salvation. If you think about it, sharing online ad revenue between content publishers can create new monetizing opportunities / revenue streams and partly recoup the revenue loss caused by the above listed unauthorized content republication practices. Sharing online ad revenue through partnerships with other publishers... bloggers... and others, who would take their content and re-publish it anyway, could indeed be for many, the very best course of action. Here all the details: Intro by Andre Deutmeyer

Atomized Content: The New Reality

Publishers today face a changing online landscape, one in which users are taking control of how and where they view content. Rather than going directly to the destination sites of specific publications, users discover content through blogs and other non-traditional sources. These new publishers often re-purpose and sometimes completely republish content without attribution. Industry observers have called this development the "atomization" of content, and many believe it poses a significant challenge to publishers. "It is potentially more disruptive to big traffic sites than Web 2.0 was," says Steve Rubel, SVP and Director of Insights at Edelman Digital. "If almost all content can be lifted from one spot and placed somewhere where it's more convenient to the user, just how will it be monetized? The ramifications reach far and wide." With these new realities come new opportunities. Forward-thinking publishers are already embracing the trend, freeing up their content to be distributed off of their destination sites. This strategy allows you to increase offsite ad revenue, drive more traffic to your site, and find new opportunities for licensing and syndication. This whitepaper looks at the ongoing changes and suggests ways you can survive and thrive in this evolving content landscape.

Extracting Value From Offsite Content Distribution

The rise of atomized content requires fundamental changes in how you deliver content to your consumers. "The challenge is that [publishers] will lose control of their distribution systems," explains a recent report from Jupiter Research. "But… those who try to retain control of their distribution will likely fall behind their competitors." Still, letting content "go free" does not mean giving up ownership or copyrights. Nor does it mean that you will be creating articles, images, and videos, only to have third parties benefit from them. Instead, you have merely relinquished control over where your content appears. To compensate for this, you need new ways to profit from the offsite appearance of you content. These include valuable editorial insights and innovative monetization strategies, such as link building, licensing, and ad revenue sharing.

Gaining Insights From Web-Wide Visibility

The first step in developing an offsite content strategy is to find out who is re-using your content and in what context. With technologies available today, you can closely track the republication of articles and other assets, wherever they appear the Net. One advantage of this increased visibility is a deeper understanding of what your customers want. This is particularly valuable for publishers that syndicate their content. For the first time, near-real time metrics on how your licensees are using your content are available, enabling you to tailor your content offerings, identify upsell opportunities, and increase revenue. For example, Reuters recently reported that content tracking enabled it focus on more popular styles of articles. "We have been a little surprised [online readers] are moving more toward fluff stories, infotainment," says Reuters' Maria Molland, SVP and Global Head of Strategy and Business Development. "As a result we are putting a lot more editorial resources behind sport and lifestyle."

Links As The Currency of The Web

Traditionally, links have been considered a method of attribution or branding your content. While this still holds true, a process called link building offers a significant opportunity for increasing traffic and revenue. Simply put, link building involves getting other sites to link back to the original appearance of an article, image or video. For leading web sites, link building is one of the most powerful traffic-generation tools available on the Internet today. The reason is not merely because readers click on links and bring your site direct traffic. Far more important is the effect that links have on search engines. Most publishers today receive a substantial portion of their visitors from keyword searches on sites like Google or Yahoo. A great example is The New York Times, where search drives more traffic to its site than any other source. To understand the role link building plays in increasing such traffic, it is necessary to understand how search engines work. Search engines continually scan the Internet cataloging the content for leading web sites. For each set of key words search engines return a list of results. These results are based on complex algorithms to assess how important or relevant each site is. The sites the search engine deemed most valuable by the search engine are ranked first. The number of inbound links to a site is a very important factor in determining this ranking, mainly because links help search engines assess how authoritative a site is. Experts in the field often refer to this quality as "domain strength." While there are many contributing factors, sites that have many links to them, in general, have greater domain strength than those that do not. By tracking the use of your content off your destination site, you can identify opportunities for link building. Many bloggers and other non-traditional publishers are not as careful about providing attribution as they should be – reports indicate that 50-65% of all republished content does not link back to the original web site. By securing a link whenever your content is re-purposed, you can increase the authority of your site. That, in turn, can drive additional search traffic and increased revenue.

Unlimited Licensing Potential

As a publisher you are almost certainly interested in reselling content to other media outlets. But finding potential partners in this field can be a challenge. How can you identify sales leads? Which ones are potentially valuable, and which are not worth the effort? By gaining insight into who is republishing your content, you may be able to discover publications or media outlets who are good potential partners. An additional advantage of offsite tracking comes after licensing agreements have been reached. By learning how your licensed content is being used, you can optimize your content offering.

Advertising That Follows Content

There is little doubt that the Internet is being propelled by advertising. According to IDC, U.S. online advertising totaled over $25 billion in 2007, representing a 27% increase over 2006. Savvy publishers are demanding that the commercial sites repurposing their content also share ad revenue. This approach can be particularly useful when dealing with smaller sites that lack the traffic and resources to qualify for a licensing agreement. The technology to share revenue exists today on platforms such as Google AdSense that allows you to receive ad revenue automatically, regardless of where your content appears. In this model, you would set your content free, but attach an ad sharing agreement to it that follows the content whenever it is used. The result will be a new and vibrant content marketplace, where publishers benefit regardless of where their content appears.

Originally written by the Attributor team and first published on March 1st 2008 as "Set Your Content Free (and Monetize It)" - Reprinted with original author permission

Photo credits: Atomized Content: The New Reality - SSilver Gaining Insights From Web-wide Visibility - vacuum3d Links as the Currency of the Web - Danabeth55 Unlimited Licensing Potential - logos Advertising That Follows Content - vacuum3d ...]]>

MasterNewMedia Joins The Federated Media Advertising Network: John Battelle Video

Robin Good — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:20:00 GMT

As passion, integrity and authority are among some of the key selection criteria used, it is with great pride that I can officially announce that MasterNewMedia has become part of the Federated Media Publishing and advertising network. Federated Media, headed by John Battelle is the premiere online advertising agency for author-driven sites and the pragmatical avant-garde of conversational marketing made reality. The Federated Media network is a fantastic ring of independent, author-driven blogs and sites - such as TechCrunch, Digg, Search Engine Land, GigaOM, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, Boing Boing and many other great ones. "An FM site has influence not because its author is well known, but because the author has earned the trust of an influential community." And this is why I am so happy to make this announcement: as John Battelle mentions in the short video here below, MasterNewMedia has been selected among 4000 sites that have applied in the last year to become part of the FM network. MasterNewMedia is also among the elite group of four sites not based in the US (only another one is based in Europe). I feel very excited by FM choice to select this site as one of its network advertising partners and I like to think of this success as a reward for the hard work in publishing and sharing quality content that me and my team have been bringing forward. To celebrate this new partnership, I have a very special present for you: John Battelle, CEO and founder of Federated Media has allowed me to get an exclusive video sneak-in inside his office to record a 4-min video where he explains to you what Federated Media is and what makes it so unique for independent online publishers. FM has also kindly asked me to ask you, my readers, a few simple questions to help Federated Media find the most relevant potential advertisers for the MasterNewMedia community. This will help both Federated Media learn more about what kind of readers I have but also help them identify the best possible matches in terms of advertising brands that may have something really relevant to bring to you, the MasterNewMedia audience. I know surveys are never the most appealing thing to do, but I have taken two steps to make this one as sweet and approachable as it can get: a) it is very short - you can go through it in a couple of minutes b) As a thank you, I am giving away to each survey respondent my own complete list of RSS new sources. Yes, I am making available for all MasterNewMedia long-time readers and supporters my original OPML source file, containing all of the RSS news sources my newsroom taps into daily, to hand-select the very best news you see daily on the front page of MasterNewMedia. So, if you are a Robin Good\'s passionate reader and want to give a little contribution to my publishing efforts please share your views about MasterNewMedia here: Federated Media / MasterNewMedia short-survey. Here below John Battelle exclusive mini video interview for MasterNewMedia readers:

MasterNewMedia First Italy-Born International Site To Join The Federated Media Network

John Battelle CEO and founder of Federated Media explains 1) What is Federated Media, 2) What makes FM so unique to independent web publishers. Duration: 3\' 57"
Full English Text Transcription

Intro
John Battelle: Hey Robin, and Robin\'s readers and viewers, it\'s John Battelle here, welcoming Robin to the FM family. I wanted to answer a couple of questions that Robin had for me about Federated Media. Two questions:
What is FM? Why did you make it?

What makes Federated Media unique for independent publishers like Robin Good?

What Is Federated Media
John Battelle: First of all, what FM is, it is a media business leveraging technology and leveraging shifts that are happening in the ecosystem of the media business over the past ten years. Toward a conversational form of media like this. Leveraging the Web as a platform. A couple of big trends that FM has built in:
The cost of distribution, which is to be the largest cost in all media, has been mitigated by the Internet.

Secondly, the tools of production are no longer an impediment to the creation of media allowing for talented individuals to create platforms to allow audiences to aggregate and have conversations around the individuals\' passions, like what Robin has done.
This is a trend that has been happening for ten years, we really took off in the last five. Federated is a business that has developed around those trends to support independent publishers. Not unlike what happened with music business, in the 50s, 60s and 70s, as musicians began to get tools of production in their own hands: in other words, the organ wasn\'t just in the church. You can have a guitar, and playing in your garage and get really good, but you needed a music label, a band manager and a talent agent, distribution people, to get you records out and all that stuff. You needed this all infrastructure for the musician to get to the point of making money. Similarly, independent web site publishers need a business around. Big difference of course is we don\'t control, own, or try to exploit the intellectual property. We actually work as partners with the publishers in finding ways to get brand revenue to those publishers mainly through working with top nudge, top five-hundred brands, in the United States, and increasingly globally.

What Makes Federated Media Unique
John Battelle: Second question: What makes FM unique? It\'s our approach to working as partners with publishers, and working as partners with marketers and bringing the marketers and the publishers together in conversations that add value to the audiences. I think what makes us unique is that we are very selective about who we bring on, and we\'re very selective about how we bring these conversations together, and actually keep marketing in this new environment. We\'re not a pumped-up banner ad, punch-the-monkey, ram-it display network, we try to bring high quality to everything we do. Sure, we run typical ads but we run a lot of different kinds campaigns that try to get the community involved in conversations, around the greater themes that are contributed toward to a brand. And there\'s a lot of examples of those on FederatedMedia.net site, so encourage anyone interested, given that I know most of the audience here is interested in new media and marketing, to go to FederatedMedia.net and check it out. I think you\'ll see our difference there.

MasterNewMedia Becomes Part of The Federated Media Family
John Battelle: That\'s like a good summary I think, of everything that we do, looking forward to engaging with you and your site as you become member of the family. Welcome! I guess I should say congratulations, 4.000 people applied last year to be part of the family and it\'s very rare that we let someone through the door, so I hope we can have a great partnership together with not just you Robin, but your audience in particular. Thanks very much!

Share Your Opinion about MasterNewMedia

If you like MasterNewMedia please help me and Federated Media better understand your needs and expectations as a MasterNewMedia loyal reader. I am providing as a kind compliment to all who fill out this short survey my own complete list of news sources, the same one my newsroom utilizes to hand-pick every few hours the most relevant news for web publishers from the ocean of news that is out there. Go share your views about MasterNewMedia

Originally shot and recorded by John Battelle for MasterNewMedia and first published on November 17th 2008 as "MasterNewMedia Joins The Federated Media Advertising Network: John Battelle Video" ...]]>

From News Publishing To Newsmastering: Learn, Understand And Experiment How To Create Your Own Newsradars - Sharewood Guide

Robin Good — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 10:22:00 GMT

In news publishing, newsmastering is the content production process, first evangelized by Robin Good in 2004, that involves collecting, filtering and selecting topic-specific news stories, resources, tools from all of the relevant content sources out there while delivering the resulting highly focused news channels, the so-called newsradars, across multiple media such as the Web, RSS feeds, or email-based newsletters. Photo credit: Alberto Perez Veiga mashed up by Robin Good When newsmastering works, you can save yourself a great deal of time otherwise spent browsing tens of web sites, or RSS feeds lists, on your specific topic of interest. The newsmaster is a news publisher who acts as a news DJ, picking, selecting and offering the very best and most relevant content items on the selected theme-topic. In this guide I have personally brought together for you the full selection of Robin\'s best articles on newsmastering to help you make greater sense of what becoming a news DJ and creating a newsradar is all about. This is the high-quality, non-automated, news gathering and republishing approach which could change completely the way you keep yourself updated while generating a publishable stream of highly focused news. Something that could prove to be very valuable for those many passionately interested in your topics of interest. Here all the details: Intro by Robin Good

Newsmastering: A General Overview

What Is Newsmastering And What Are Newsradars? RSS News Aggregation And Re-Publishing For Beginners
Newsmastering is a new and emerging skill that involves gathering, filtering and selecting from the chaos of information that saturates the Internet, and delivering the resulting news feed to niche-targeted audiences.

Web Content Formats - Links Posts: How To Convert Your Link Posts Activity Into Effective Niche News Publishing

From

Steve Rubel

Sepp Hasslberger

News Aggregation Is Online Independent Publishers Natural Next Step
If you have mastered the blogging paradigm, have made your blog an authority and a reliable source of information, commentary or news in your selected field(/s) of interest, it is about time to "scale yourself up" - Work Less and Look More At The Bigger Picture (= See the Future).

The Human News Aggregator: An Interview About NewsMastering With Robin Good
Marshall Kirkpatrick, the official online interviewer at NetSquared.org, took the time to cal me up and find out more about this emerging new practice and about the tools and processes required to make it all work.

What Is RSS: A Guide To Really Simple Syndication Benefits, Best Uses And Applications
This is a guide explaining what RSS is and how to best use it. It is targeted at the non-technical user who has not had yet the opportunity to fully understand what RSS is all about and how to best put it to use.

The Network Second Layer: RSS Newsmastering
Read slowly and with maximum attention what Stephen Downes says right here:
"What should happen, what is already happening, is that a large network of sites like Edu_RSS should emerge, forming in essence a second layer in the network. The result of this second layer is that the internet will self-organize, that information generated in a thousand or a million places will cluster, become composite, interpreted, specialized, and produce highly targeted, highly specific resource feeds at the output end."

What Public Relations Professionals Could Do With RSS: Newsmastering, Newsradars And Personal Media Aggregators
If you have been wondering how RSS could be of use and benefit to PR work, this good audio conversation (38\' minutes) with Sally Falkow, renowned PR and branding expert, should shed some new light on these interesting issues.

Content Aggregation And The New Curators: Podcasting Newsmasters
Unless we start to leverage the filtering ability of talented content curators, editors and newsmasters with the efficiency and speed of new tools which allow them to find, monitor and spot key relevant content bits, we are doomed to be either drowned in this chaotic cloud of content available to us or to miss a great deal of the very best of it.

RSS Newsfeeds Aggregation: My Business Experience
RSS newsmastering, or the ability to aggregate, filter and compile topic-specific news digests, has opened up several interesting opportunities to create quality new services while extracting good revenue from them. The same goes for feed sponsorship and ads integration. While I am not particularly in favour of this last one, there are specific instances and formats of RSS ad integration that will yield certainly good results.

How To Create NewsRadars: Rok Gets The Good\' Steps
With inexhaustible energy Robin has been promoting the benefits of public and private News Radars to researchers, information professionals, corporate knowledge workers and independent publishers. See the Related Articles section at the bottom of this post for references to these articles. Before Robin adopted and refined the term, the concept of News Radars was mentioned by others, notably Rok Hrastnik and the people at MyST Technology. The latter company is currently using the term BlogSite Briefings.

Newsmastering Tools and Services

The First RSS Newsmastering Engine For Search Professionals: MySyndicaat
Targeted at "professionals" researchers, information librarians, competitive intelligence analysts, information scouts and specialized news editors, the new technology makes it finally rather straightforward to create topic-specific newsradars (news feeds) on just about any selected theme.

From RSS Reader To Direct Online Publisher: Newsmastering Away With Blogbridge
Making use of a good RSS feed reader is essential to the daily routine of most bloggers. Feeds give you a way to quickly seek out the latest hot news for your niche audience from across the web. Wouldn\'t it be nice, though, to be able to read your feeds and publish your blog posts from a single application?

Beyond NewsMastering: Yahoo! Pipes Is The Internet RSS Remixer - Overview And Reports
Yahoo! Pipes, is essentially a very powerful RSS feed remixer, which goes well and beyond the original newsmastering concept I described a few years ago. Potentially, Yahoo! Pipes is a highly disruptive visual programming environment that puts in the hands of many people the ability to create web mashups and web-based applications that combine data from different sources with much greater ease and effectiveness.

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Robin Good Shares His Top100 News Sources For Free

Do you want to access Robin Good news feeds lists? This may be a first initial step to become a newsmaster and provide your readers with niche-selected topics tailored to their needs. To celebrate the recent partnership with The Federated Media Network, Robin is giving away his Top100 news sources list, the same one Robin and his newsroom use everyday to compile the MasterNewMedia daily breaking news selection. To get this unique OPML file just spend two minutes of your time and share your feedback in a short survey about MasterNewMedia.
Originally prepared by Robin Good and Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia and first published on November 16th 2008 as "From News Publishing To Newsmastering: Learn, Understand And Experiment How To Create Your Own Newsradars - Sharewood Guide". ...]]>