Mediaboss Marketing

By Victoria Thieberger

MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Australia's Fairfax Media (FXJ.AX), publisher of some of the country's leading newspapers, will overhaul its top mastheads and slash almost one-fifth of its staff, the beginning of a widespread shakeup of Australia's media sector.

The media industry's old guard is struggling with a massive shift online, declining advertising revenues for newspaper and TV, and shrinking market share for free-to-air TV as consumers' choices multiply for news and entertainment.

Fairfax - which publishes the 181-year-old Sydney Morning Herald, Australia's oldest newspaper, as well as the Australian Financial Review and Melbourne's The Age - said it will cut 1,900 jobs over three years from its staff of 10,000.

It will also shut two printing plants and reduce broadsheet newspapers to tabloid formats as it refocuses towards online distribution.

"All the world's newspaper companies are experimenting with what sustainability looks like," said Margaret Simons, the head of the University of Melbourne's Centre for Advanced Journalism.

"There is no business model that can support the hundreds of journalists that are employed by companies such as Fairfax," she said.

In the United States, the Times-Picayune in New Orleans made headlines last week when it cut its print editions to three days a week, and in a conference call with analysts Fairfax said its options include a digital-only future if revenues continue to slide.

Trends in the United States point to even tougher times ahead, as the newspaper industry's efforts to boost digital revenue and cut costs fail to keep pace with declines in the print business, a Moody's report said this month, while online advertising sales growth is stalling.

Fairfax is considered vulnerable to a break-up or takeover, possibly by private equity, after its shares this month hit a record low below A$0.60 for a market capitalization of A$1.4 billion ($1.4 billion), down from A$7 billion five years ago.

Excerpt from:
Australia's Fairfax to slash newspaper jobs as media landscape shifts

SINGAPORE--(Marketwire -06/17/12)- Signiant, the market leader in intelligent file movement software for the media and entertainment industry, announced today at BroadcastAsia2012 that Future Reality, a leading supplier of creative technology and services, will resell Signiant solutions to film, broadcast and post-production customers in Australia.

Under the new partnership agreement, Future Reality will add Signiant's secure media file transfer solutions to its extensive portfolio of software and service offerings. Experts in production systems for editing, content creation, digital intermediate workflow and film-resolution shared storage solutions, Future Reality also provides a range of system design, installation and integration services; hardware and peripherals; and high-speed international network connectivity. Future Reality's customers include Animal Logic, Deluxe, Digital Pictures, Nine Network and XYZ Networks.

"Increasingly digital production environments require more efficient ways for content owners and creators to ingest, move and distribute media," said David Edgar, Managing Director at Future Reality. "Signiant gives these organizations the level of security, acceleration, automation and enterprise control they need -- together with flexibility and ease of use -- in a suite of compatible software solutions. We are delighted to add this powerful file transfer software to our technology offerings."

Used today by many of the world's top broadcasters, studios, media service providers, sports networks and game developers, Signiant's products include Managers+Agents, optimized for automated batch file transfers, advanced resource management and workflow integration; Media Exchange, featuring desktop, Web and mobile interfaces for moving file-based media between internal and external users; and Media Shuttle, offering enterprises of any size the convenience and ease of use of cloud-based file-sharing services without the file size limits or security risks associated with storing media assets in the cloud.

"With years of success serving the needs of broadcast and post-production customers in Australia and New Zealand, Future Reality truly understands the requirements of media enterprises," said Michael Burnie, Managing Director for Signiant Asia-Pacific and Japan. "The partnership between our companies allows Future Reality to address growing market demand in the region for more cost-efficient and reliable file-based media transfer solutions, and also enables Signiant to further increase its ability to secure media exchanges within and between organizations worldwide."

For a complete list of Signiant resellers, visit http://www.signiant.com/partners/channel-partners.

Editor's Note: Visit Signiant in stand 4U2-04 at BroadcastAsia2012, June 19-22, Suntec Singapore. For more information on this event, go to http://www.broadcast-asia.com.

About Future RealityFounded in 1993, Future Reality provides technology and services for broadcast television, video post-production and film special effects companies in Australia and New Zealand. The Future Reality brand is well-known and trusted by customers for quality and professionalism. With extensive industry knowledge and nearly two decades of experience selling and supporting software-based systems across a broad range of platform and operating systems, Future Reality has a proven track record of strong technical pre-sales and post-sales support for the products they carry, which include Apple, Assimilate, Avid, Bright Technology, Codex Digital, Da Vinci, EMC Isilon, HDS and Sohonet. For more information, visit http://www.future.com.au.

About SigniantUsed by the world's top content creators and distributors, Signiant is the market leader in intelligent file movement software for the media and entertainment industry. The company's powerful software suite optimizes existing enterprise network infrastructure and media technologies to ensure secure digital media exchanges, workflow efficiency and superior user experiences. Headquartered in Burlington, MA, with offices around the world, today Signiant connects tens of thousands of media professionals in more than 50 countries. For more information, visit http://www.signiant.com.

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Future Reality to Resell Market-Leading Signiant Media File Movement Solutions in Australia

Social networking has a dark side for a younger audience.

NEW allegations of sexual predators raping and abusing minors found on social networks raise an elemental question: can any such service be made safe for kids?

This week, The New York Times reported that three under-age users of the San Francisco dating app Skout were allegedly sexually assaulted by adult men in recent weeks.

Skout added its teen-only section last year after realising that kids were using the app, the Times reported. It included additional safeguards, including parental controls, but clearly it wasn't enough. The incidents suggest a dating service for teens is tantamount to a honey pot for paedophiles, whatever the precautions.

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On Tuesday, Britain's Channel Four posted a scathing report on Habbo Hotel, a children's game site owned by Finnish company Sulake. A producer for the station posing as a young girl said users immediately tried to steer her onto webcams and urged her to strip.

More troubling, the station found that two paedophiles had been convicted for ''sexually abusing dozens of kids who they befriended'' on Habbo. One was jailed for seven years after persuading children to expose themselves on webcams in exchange for gifts. He then used those images to blackmail them into committing additional sexual acts on camera.

Predators have long used the internet to find young victims, but online safety experts say social networks and mobile apps that roughly indicate the location of users simplify the task.

''It just makes it easier for the predator to make contact, to be undetected by law enforcement and to get information,'' said Donna Rice Hughes, chief executive of Enough is Enough, which offers parents information about keeping children safe online. James Steyer, chief executive of California's Common Sense Media stressed that the lesson applies to Facebook, too. The Menlo Park social-networking giant has steadily dropped its age requirements and recently acknowledged exploring ways to make its network available to children under 13.

''They don't understand this market well enough to create an age-appropriate experience, nor can they provide the protections that teens and children need,'' Steyer said.

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Stalkers casting an evil net for children

At first, social networking was a novelty, a fun thing you did for your social life.

Then businesses came on board, seeing how everything from Facebook-like interactivity to Twitter-y updates could help get their messages out.

Now, social networking has become so much the norm that businesses are trying to figure out how best to use it within their own companies and networks to drive results.

Indeed, social networking for businesses is seen as a next big thing.

"It's going to be something like email that's going to be ubiquitous and that people are going to expect to use in combination with a lot of different applications," said Rob Helm, an analyst with the independent research firm Directions on Microsoft.

Look no further than Yammer, a San Francisco-based company that offers social-networking and content-collaboration tools for businesses. It's one of several such companies, including Jive and Socialtext.

Microsoft is reportedly in talks to acquire Yammer for $1.2 billion, according to several media accounts.

Microsoft declined to comment and Yammer did as well.

Though seen as a next big thing, Microsoft "has missed the market" in terms of providing easy-to-use Facebook-like features as part of its business-collaboration offerings, said Kevin Conroy, president of Blue Rooster, a Seattle-based tech and consulting firm that specializes in building collaborative social-business websites for corporations.

Collaborative tool

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Yammer acquisition would boost Microsoft's social-business tools

June 17, 2012, 6:42 AM PDT

Takeaway: Change a few key default settings in Word and you wont have to make the same tweaks over and over.

Word does a good job of assuming how the average user works, but some of Words default settings can be annoying and inefficient. Some users dont know they can permanently change these settings, so they continue to reset them for each new document or just struggle along. Users should consider resetting the following defaults to work more productively. Of course, there are more defaults to set; feel free to share your suggestions in the discussion below.

The default line spacing setting in Word 2007 and 2010 is 1.15, not 1, as it is in 2003. Microsoft believes 1.15 is more readable online. If youre not generating Web content, adjust the style(s) you use in Words template (Normal.dotx), as follows:

If you generate Web content or other published material, you probably have to undo Words smart quotes in favor of straight quotes. You can do so quickly enough by pressing [Ctrl]+Z, but that becomes tedious after a while and you might forget. If you use straight quotes more than smart quotes, disable smart quotes as follows:

Words paste special feature retains the source formatting. If youre pasting from foreign sources, you probably reformat it once its in your Word document. If you do this a lot, change the Paste Special default as follows:

This feature is significantly different in Word 2003. From the Tools menu, choose Options, and click the Edit tab. In the Cut And Paste section, click the Settings button to display the options shown in Figure D.

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10 Word defaults you can customize to work the way YOU want