Tag: digital
The Thrifty Traveler: Free And Frugal File Storage For Digital Nomads

The Thrifty Traveler: Free And Frugal File Storage For Digital Nomads

By Myscha Theriault, Tribune News Service (TNS)

Working from the road on a full-time basis brings its fair share of challenges. One of them is digital file storage. Whether you’re a constant content creator producing photos, videos and articles for a variety of clients, an independent publisher, online course developer or simply need to keep your vacation pics and critical documents accessible, figuring out how to ditch the hard copies is a huge piece of the puzzle. Accessibility is another. While the logistical choices will vary with your lifestyle, career choice and travel schedule, there are a few popular options that work for a wide variety of location-independent professionals.

Cloud Storage: In the interest of full disclosure, I should probably fess up that I’ve been paying far too much for cloud storage for far too long. When my husband and I first started looking for a service years ago, there were fewer options across the board. Even fewer of those were free or affordable. At the time, we found the best deal we could, put our systems on automated backup with scheduled monthly credit card payments and moved on to other concerns. A recent shift in some of the data we’ll be needing to store forced me to start looking at fresh alternatives. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the results of my research.

First of all, it turns out my Amazon Prime membership now offers me unlimited photo storage at no extra charge, along with a few gigs of storage for other files as well. We take a massive amount of photos when we travel, and digital images represent a large part of our current cloud storage bill, so this was great news for our bottom line. Amazon also offers super affordable unlimited cloud storage of all types of files for roughly $60 per year, albeit without some of the syncing capabilities and point-of-storage functionality offered by some of the other popular cloud storage services. Drop Box and Google Drive each have reasonably generous free allotments, with affordable upgrades and free apps available for true cloud computing junkies.

Portability: In addition to the peace of mind some urban travelers have from carrying around an extra backup of certain files, portable drives and on-device storage allotments can come into play with remote travel as well. Those who never leave the city may have a hard time comprehending it, but Internet access still isn’t available everywhere. This can make content production and entertainment problematic if every version of the files you need are stored with one cloud-based service or another. That’s where file access that doesn’t require constant Internet connectivity comes into play.

Collating notes from online research to use for some weekend writing at your favorite mountain cabin retreat, carrying your favorite playlists or bringing along a digital photo collection in dire need of purging are all things you can accomplish by packing extra photo cards, USB sticks and portable hard drives. Fresh electronic reading material can be downloaded to your tablet prior to departure, and hot spot capabilities available with some month-to-month cellphone plans can help bridge the gap in emergency situations.

For example, we are currently house-sitting in southern Florida at a condo with no Internet service. Our monthly mobile phone plan with T-Mobile provides unlimited data, but only 5 gigs of high-speed hot spot time. While this has virtually eliminated our nightly television program and movie streaming, it has enabled us to maintain our morning routine of email checking and content uploads while drinking coffee in our pajamas. Once we’ve both had a chance to wake up and jump on any early-bird earning opportunities, we pack up to hit our coffee spot of choice to take advantage of their free Wi-Fi.

(Myscha Theriault is a best-selling author and avid traveler. Having just finished a yearlong trip throughout the United States with her husband and Labrador retriever, Theriault is busy planning her next long-term adventure. Readers can keep up with her adventures on Twitter by following @MyschaTheriault.)

©2015 Myscha Theriault. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Steven Zwerink via Flickr

LA Times Names Internet Strategist Nicco Mele Deputy Publisher

LA Times Names Internet Strategist Nicco Mele Deputy Publisher

By Russ Mitchell, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

LOS ANGELES — Nicco Mele, the Internet strategist credited with pushing political campaigns into the digital era, has been named deputy publisher of the Los Angeles Times.

“We intend to be one of the great journalism organizations of the 21st century, not just the 20th,” Times Publisher Austin Beutner said Monday. “With Nicco, we truly have a digital native to help us reimagine our business and develop new digital revenue streams.”

Mele’s primary role will be to craft business strategy across all digital platforms, Beutner said.

“We have a brand that stands for quality and integrity,” Beutner said. Mele “believes in high-quality journalism. At an organization like ours, we need people who believe in the mission.”

Mele, 37, is co-founder of Internet consulting firm Echo & Co., a Harvard University faculty member and author of the 2013 book “The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath.”

Mele said he’s up for the enormous challenge the new job poses. “The basic business dynamics are a little scary and need to be reinvented,” Mele said. “Right now, overwhelmingly, the revenue is from print, but it’s clear that over time the future is digital.”

Above all, Mele said, he plans to ensure that the Times’ reputation remains intact as he helps guide the ongoing transition from print to digital.

“Nicco’s not a journalist, but he hears the music,” said longtime newspaperman John Carroll, who served as Times editor from 2000 to 2005, when the paper won 13 Pulitzer Prizes. Mele “believes in the social mission of journalism.”

The two met when Mele volunteered for the News Literacy Project, where Carroll is chairman of the board. The program helps middle and high school students sort fact from fiction and spin in the digital age. “He did it free and in good spirit,” Carroll said. “He’s not just a technologist or a guy who only wants to make money.”

Although print circulation at the Times has stabilized, ad sales remain under pressure. Ads will long remain an essential part of the mix, Mele said, but “squeezing precious dollars from many revenue sources simultaneously” will be required to ensure the future success of the news operation. That means more emphasis on subscriptions, new products and services, and corporate sponsorships for events and “certain content.”

Mele was born in Ghana, the son of a diplomat for the United States Information Agency. After years overseas, he attended William & Mary College. He took his first job as a webmaster for Common Cause, an advocacy group that seeks greater transparency and accountability in government.

In 2003, at age 26, Mele became webmaster for Howard Dean’s presidential campaign. Dean was largely ignored by the national media until Mele and his team employed the Internet to fuel a grass-roots campaign that catapulted the former Vermont governor to front-runner status.

The campaign was the first high-profile political contest to use the Internet to connect supporters through early forms of social media and to raise significant donations from small donors. “He was the brains behind that,” Carroll said.

Publicist Hillary Rosen, who also worked on the Dean campaign, said “Nicco was the guru” for Internet strategy. “We hung on every word.”

Mele next ran Internet strategy for Barack Obama’s successful 2004 race for Illinois senator, and founded what is now called Echo & Co., which has worked with dozens of Fortune 500 companies and other institutions on Internet strategy. He also teaches at Harvard’s Kennedy School and sits on the board of the university’s journalism-oriented Nieman Foundation.

Mele is a computer programmer and Internet enthusiast, but he veers from the utopian view of technology popular in Silicon Valley and other tech centers. “The thesis of my book is that the end of big institutions is profoundly dangerous to our democracy,” Mele said.

Although he accepts that legions of Internet-powered Davids will continue to disrupt government, business, media and other large institutions, Mele also believes that big institutions remain essential for the smooth functioning of society and the economy — and that the need to adapt to new technology to stay alive and relevant is urgent.

“We can’t fetishize technology and say ‘to hell with our institutions’ without suffering terrible consequences,” he writes. If large media organizations like the Times falter, he said, “we might well leave ourselves open to corruption and abuses of power the likes of which we have never seen.”

Mele is married with two young boys and a baby on the way. A self-professed nerd and “maker dad,” he owns a personal 3-D printer on which he and the boys print toys.

His family will move from Boston to Los Angeles when he starts in January. He has roots in Southern California on his mother’s side, and called L.A. “one of the most exciting cities in America. It is culturally vibrant in a way that other cities just aren’t.”

Also, L.A. is “probably one of the only cities in America that (my wife) would get excited about moving to.”

Photo via GeorgeLouis via WikiCommons

New York Times To Slash 100 Newsroom Jobs In Streamlining

New York Times To Slash 100 Newsroom Jobs In Streamlining

New York (AFP) — The New York Times said Wednesday it plans to cut 100 newsroom jobs in the latest move by the prestigious daily to adapt to industry upheaval.

“The job losses are necessary to control our costs and to allow us to continue to invest in the digital future of The New York Times, but we know that they will be painful both for the individuals affected and for their colleagues,” according to a note to employees cited by the daily.

The note from publisher Arthur Sulzberger and chief executive Mark Thompson also said that a mobile app dedicated to opinion content was shutting down because it lacked enough subscribers.

The job cuts represent around 7.5 percent of the newsroom staff of 1,330 — which according to the newspaper is a record high. The Times has been adding jobs over the past year for online and video news initiatives.

The Times will be offering buyouts to journalists and will resort to layoffs if it cannot get enough people to leave voluntarily, according to the note.

The daily has been struggling to remain profitable in recent years and has been pushing harder to emphasize digital content as print subscriptions decline. The Times has also been selling off “non-core” assets including the Boston Globe newspaper and websites unrelated to its news operations.

But even as the Times shifts its focus, it is being challenged by a new breed of all-digital news operations with lower costs.

Executive editor Dean Baquet, in a separate note to the staff said he would use the opportunity “to seriously reconsider some of what we do — from the number of sections we produce to the amount we spend on freelance content.”

The news comes following a tumultuous period which saw the dismissal of executive editor Jill Abramson, who was replaced by Baquet.

Abramson’s dismissal in May unleashed a polemic in the media world amid speculation that she was fired for complaining about being paid less than her male counterparts — an allegation denied by the company.

In the most recent quarter, the New York Time Co. reported a sharp drop in profits as lower advertising revenues offset gains in digital subscriptions.

Net profit for the second quarter fell to $9.2 million from $20.1 million in the same period a year ago. Total revenues fell slightly to $389 million, with circulation revenues up 1.4 percent and ad revenues down 4.1 percent.

The bottom line was also hurt by higher operating costs, which the company attributed to increased investments in boosting the digital profile of the prestigious newspaper publisher.

Digital advertising revenues were up 3.4 percent but that failed to offset a 6.6 percent drop in print advertising revenue.

AFP Photo/Ramin Talaie

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