Monday squibs

A few to start the week:

• Norrkross Movie. This is an interesting, cheap ($59) piece of video-making software, built for ease of use. It appears to be basic, but there are some powerful click-of-the-mouse transparency and key-framing features. Fine editing tools are pretty much non-existent, though: it’s strength seems to be in compositing. For Macs.
• U.S. media face troubling 2008. According to a Reuters report in the Globe and Mail it’s that whole economy/technology thing. The lede: media is “on the brink” of a second downturn in the last decade, “one that could accelerate the divisions between fast-growing targeted advertising and traditional formats aimed at mass audiences.”
• Books versus documents: what’s wrong with so-called “e-books”. Jon Stokes says the single-page view and the lack of annotation features are the stumbling blocks. He’s talking about books, but there are implications for newspapers. Will readers adopt a portable, convenient e-reader that doesn’t reflect the elegance and sign-posting of good newspaper design?
• Tucson Citizen newsstand price $1.50 Thursday only. They upped the price, by a whopping 428 per cent (35 cents to $1.50) to reflect “the value of the giant-sized advertising load that day’s newspaper will carry.” I am really at a loss as to which column this goes under, innovative or arrogant. And does this mean they’ll reduce the price on day of lighter-than-average “advertising load?” Via Jim Romenesko.
• Notes on breaking news. I’m beginning to get my head around Twitter, and the fact it’s not just some micro-blogging format for egotists, thanks to posts like this one from Ryan Sholin on the use of Twitter and similar services to serve breaking news and information to readers.