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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The 99-cent question

It's been about 6 weeks since the launch of the 661411 iPhone app, a downloadable version of 661411.com, Kern County's most popular mobile website.

The app is produced by Verve Wireless, the same company that created the award-winning Associated Press mobile app. Verve also provides the news, entertainment, weather and sports alerts we send out through the 21321 text-message short code.

Since launch, more than 600 mobile-phone users have paid 99 cents to download the app from the iTunes store. I'm pretty happy with those numbers, and can't wait for the pending launch of our 661411 Blackberry app, to be followed by apps for Android and WindowsLive, among others.

Unlike most other media outlets with mobile apps (CNN being the most prominent exception), we opted to charge for our app, even if it was a nominal 99 cents.

So, I was surprised to read a one-star review in the iTunes store for the 661411 app that read, in part: The 661411 app features some content available only to our mobile customers

"I can't believe I just paid a buck for an application that has advertisements in it. I want my dollar back. Shame on TBC [The Bakersfield Californian] for being completely out of touch."

Completely out of touch? Really?

Here's who's completely out of touch: Clueless people who think that a dollar should buy them their own personal nirvana.

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