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Firefox New York Times Ad, Soon
An anonymous reader submits "CNet has an update on the status of the New York Times Firefox ad. According to the article, the delays are largely because of the decision to go with 10,000 names rather than the original 2500. The amount of content means each change to the ad requires 15 minutes of rendering. They also must be careful in crafting the ad, so that stay on the advocacy side of things. As a non-profit, they can still qualify for the under $50,000 rate, but if the ad is too commercial, they would need to pay the $130,000+ business rate. They say they're close to finishing, and the ad should run by mid-December, or at the latest, by Christmas. Firefox is also close to 10,000,000 downloads in the first month of release."
If they mention using Firefox then it's going to be commercial. Although the author of the ad says they have a special guarantee about the pricing, so New York Time's standard pricing may not matter.
Just because they're a non-profit doesn't make them a good cause. If they advocate using more standard compliant browsers rather than just Firefox or Mozilla browers they're more likely to qualify as an advocacy group rather than commercial entity. But based on the promotional drive I don't see how they can not mention Firefox directly.
Joseph Elwell.
My company does pre-press work for marketing campaigns. If they need 15 minutes to render a postscript file (or PDF) they need better hardware. We use off-the-shelf gear (PC and Mac, none of it SMP) and nothing we do that is full-page size takes 15 minutes, even at 300 dpi.
What're they using, a PII-400???
Generally the wholesale price of a newspaper just barely covers the cost of paper, ink, and distribution. Advertisers (like the firefox project) cover the costs of content and infrastructure -- newsgathering, layout, printing plants, plus a healthy profit margin for the publisher.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
I love Opera and I would still be using it (if only for that gorgeous "I'm still loading the page and this is how fast I'm loading it" bar). The only gripe with opera is it doesn't support plugins or nice stuff that firefox can (such as external toolbars), nor can you customise things like the search list. Otherwise, Opera would be top of my list.
Get paid to search..It's geniune and
Momentum. If they wait until January the rapidly tapering buzz around 1.0 will be gone. Strike while the iron is hot.
Being a non-profit has nothing to do with being commercial. Non-profit companies provide commercial services every day (that's what cooperatives are all about). They just can't make too much money at the end of the year without loosing their non-profit status (even that has *some* leeway).
The Times' is just trying to give charitable organizations a break on price, and their criteria seems to be very subjective. If it were set in stone they wouldn't have misused phrases like 'non-profit'.
> so Windows users will start developing multi-platform apps Since when do users (especially Windows-users) develop something? But I get your point. But remember, there's Wine, Mono & Java as well as lots of X-plattform-enabled development libraries like GTK, lots of stuff in Cygwin etc etc. X-plattform development is possible and IMO fairly easy these days.
--
http://www.ontographics.com/
Roman Kennke
I don't understand why Firefox is blowing 50K to put an ad in the NYT.
1. The ad itself has already gotten $50K worth of coverage across the internet.
2. Firefox is not spending any money. People donated over $250,000 to Firefox because they wanted their name in an ad. So they spent the $50K on the ad, as promised, and held onto $200K for other ad campaigns.
As a "thank you" to the community it is pretty weak as well. It thanks only the NYT bottom line.
This was never offered as a thank you to the community. This ad was paid for by the community. Why would we thank ourselves? This ad is meant, pure and simple, as a way to get NYT readers to wonder how in the hell a program can be so good that it got 10,000 people to donate money to advertise it.
It has already worked, and it hasn't even run in the fucking paper yet!
A well-hyped $50K 1.0 launch party would be a better way to generate press and motivate people to switch to the browser.
This is why you are posting to slashdot instead of handling marketing for any products.
It would get far wider coverage than a single page in one edition of the NYT.
You mean like multiple postings on slashdot, CNET, and other highly trafficked internet sites? Oh wait... that's what has happened with this ad campaign.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
I heard that the design of the ad will be intended to resemble the Declaration of Independence. Therefore, 10,000 names should fit suitably, even at half the page. There should be room to have all the blurbiness they need.
The New York Times has an advocacy ad review board. An advocacy message (save the whales) is seen differently than a commercial message (buy caffeinated soap). The review board provides feedback, etc.. it's not a hard and fast line.
Rob
We thought of that and the problem has been addressed.
Rob Davis
They will be outputting to offset printing plates using a digital direct-to-plate process. Resolution will probably be 2400 dpi or slightly higher.
... paper quality, the fact that it's cold-set printing, which means the web ink soaks into the paper so it "expands" on the page ever so slightly -- put droplets of water on a bone-dry sponge and you'll see. This is called "dot gain" in the printing world.
... add leading and multiply that times the area of a broadsheet page. 3-pt with 1-pt leading would fit 18 lines of type per inch.
Of course other things affect legibility
I would think that something in the neighborhood of 3 point type would still be legible
Whoa, thanks for the info! World of Warcraft is fully supported, and Shattered Galaxy and FF XI may work! I may be able to switch to Linux after all!
Last time I checked (which is about a month ago), Opera would choke on xml documents using xslt transforms that both Mozilla and IE (duh!) rendered just fine. Maybe I'm just a corner case, but that's one 'less compliant' instance for Opera.
Now, quite a lot of people tried to post this on Slashdot, but for some reason, these stories seem to have been rejected wholesale. I fail to see the reasoning behind this: Being U.S. centered is one thing, trying to supress the first example of an ad that the world has been holding its breath for quite another. It would be nice if the editors forced themselves to give a reason when they rejected postings or at least created a section where people can look at them.
I know it's not from the Mozilla Firefox team, but here is the msi you're looking for.
No it isn't.
I still use Opera in Win&Linux on fast&slow machines for three big reasons:
The only thing I use FireFox for is web development and viewing flash and other embedded media (w/ the MPlayer plugin).
Power to the Peaceful
Huh. Where'd you hear that? That's a pretty good idea, but not one that I considered while designing the ad. :)
Chris
The ad is 13" x 21". The font I'm using is Univers 67 Bold Condensed for the names. They're set at 4.5pt/4.6pt, tracking set to -25. I have enough room for 1.75" of white space on the page.
Since I'm designing it, I didn't do exactly what you would do, but you've got the right idea.
Chris
In addition to the MSI mentioned, there's also this:
http://firefox.dbltree.com/