Publish2's News Exchange offers great promise for journalists

I'm happy to be among the beta testers for Publish2's News Exchange, which was formally announced to the world today at TechCrunch Disrupt.

After using News Exchange for a few days -- and quite a bit today -- I can safely say it brings a whole new mindset to how media organizations can share, pursue and purchase content. I've worked with Associated Press content and tools since I was a college student in the 1980s and my first impressions of News Exchange last week were, "Wow, this is a game changer."

News Exchange is a simple but powerful rethinking of traditional content-sharing networks like The Associated PressThe Associated Press ought to be very worried because the News Exchange tools, while rough in spots, have the possibility of being a very powerful yet much less expensive alternative to more traditional services like AP. In short, Publish2 sees News Exchange as a better, livelier and cheaper middleman between media providers and customers.

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Bakotopia.com relaunches with new look, new platform

Five-year-old Bakotopia.com has just relaunched with a long-overdue redesign that emphasizes the site's strengths in blogging and social interaction around local entertainment and whacks dead wood that built up over the years.

Some of the highlights:

• A greater emphasis on what you want to read. We pruned some of the stuff that just wasn't getting traffic and put more focus on the things people were using.
• A livelier logo.
• Dozens of different wallpapers that change regularly with each new page. Our long-term goal is to let our readers and artists in the community design future wallpapers. 
• A widget that pulls in entertainment stories from bakersfield.com.The new design pulls in a PDF of The Californian's Thursday Eye on Entertainment section We know Bakotopia is something of an alternative to The Californian, but we also know The Californian delivers local entertainment news Bakotopia readers are interested in.
• More promotion for the weekly Bakotopia Radio show on KRAB 106.1 FM, which features local music and exclusive live performances.

We're publishing the site with the open-source Drupal publishing system.

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FeedBrewer taking Printcasting into the future

Updated on Friday, October 15, 2010 at 8:23 PM by Logan Molen

It’s exciting to finally be able to talk publicly about the launch of FeedBrewer Inc., a new company created to provide custom publishing services utilizing the Printcasting tools that have their roots in Bakersfield.

FeedBrewer is the next evolution of Printcasting, a self-publishing venture funded by the Knight Foundation and Participata LLC, a subsidiary of The Bakersfield Californian. Participata, which provides staff and other funding for the two-year Printcasting project, is a minority shareholder in FeedBrewer.

The goal with FeedBrewer is to continue Printcasting’s mission of simplifying the concept of “publish once, distribute multiple places” by providing custom services. By spinning off a new company, we think we’ll be better positioned to find the outside investment that can ensure the project’s long-term success. Printcasting will remain a free service at its core, but we envision FeedBrewer as a business that provides a variety of "freemium" services.

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