That would depend on whether a two-week jump on the the date of an OS release really counts as a "trade secret." Me, I think such a claim degrades the whole concept of what a trade secret comprises -- but I guess we'll see what the court ultimately concludes.
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
Given Think Secret's excellent track record and my own knowledge of the care with which Nick Ciarelli researches his reports, I personally believe that the site is in fact a "reputable news source," and this report is at least as plausible as an Apple-related scoop from any bigger outlet.
At my shop, we're certainly going to pursue this report with vigor -- largely on the strength of Think Secret's record for accuracy.
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
>>Rothenberg? Is that how Apple users pronounce Rosenberg?
LOL -- That's the first time I've seen my surname used as a punchline for Mac gay-bashing, but I have to admit that it's kind of pungent and snappy. (Like a sweaty jockstrap.)
Mulling T-shirt Possibilities,
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
Pharmboy: Fair enough! The corporate wheels always turn a little slower than I'd like, but here's my update...
We met today to review the events leading up to this incident with PocketPCTools, and I'm gratified to report that my superiors understood the issue and endorsed the statement I made here.
They also understand the importance of coming up with something more formal to forestall future problems and better support our commitment to the principles of the Web.
To that end, our VP of audience development and I spent the afternoon dotting i's and crossing t's on a policy statement about linking and reprint policy. It's now making the rounds of legal, PR, and the rest of the departments that need to endorse and support it going forward.
It'll probably take a day or two to make that public -- isn't it always the way? -- but in the meantime, I'm comfortable saying that the message I sent last night has the backing of Ziff Davis Media. If anyone here has any questions about how this impacts their personal relationship with us or our content, e-mail me; I'm standing by to field questions.
And please bear with me on the follow-through, which I'm lobbying to expedite!:-)
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
http://blog.ziffdavis.com/rothenberg
Antaeus: Nope, I can't blame people at all for that.
I just wanted to be clear that this kind of situation concerns me -- whether or not it makes Slashdot!
My e-mail box is always open if folks have issues about how well we're working and playing with other sites. And my team understands just how crucial doing the right thing is when it comes to our success. And anything that seems to impede doing the right thing will receive my immediate attention.
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
http://blog.ziffdavis.com/rothenberg
I certainly need to get a better read on what happened here before I sign up for that plan, but your comments are very well-taken.
There are a whole raft of interesting and contentious issues that BigMedia companies like ours continue to feel their way around. We chew over many of them every day -- and clearly, still more mastication is in order.
The bully pulpit of Slashdot certainly garnered my undivided attention this evening, but these are precisely the sorts of situations that make my job interesting (if not always relaxing). And yes, I think the issues they reflect are well worth exploring editorially.
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
http://blog.ziffdavis.com/rothenberg
It sounds like I might have gotten some of the circumstances wrong in my haste to respond here.
JKendrick: Want to e-mail me privately at matthew_rothenberg@ziffdavis.com -- maybe with a phone # -- so I can give you a call? I'm playing catch-up on this situation myself and would like your perspective... Looks like my Sunday night's shot already, so it'd be prime time to sort this out!:-)
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
Gene: No, this bears NO resemblance to "good ink"!:-)
Just to hedge my bets a bit: I might still be a bit confused about the chain of events that led up to this, since I haven't had time to find out what the legal department flagged as objectionable -- but from what I can tell, PocketPCTools was not out of bounds.
Suffice to say we're going to be following up vigorously.
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
http://blog.ziffdavis.com/rothenberg
Hey! I'm the executive editor in charge of eWEEK.com -- and before this situation unravels any farther, I need to make a couple of quick clarifications about our reprint policy, both here and on PocketPCTools:
This was a total screw-up involving an overzealous legal intern, not anybody on our online team. There's still some education that needs to happen within our company about what constitutes fair use on the Web -- and unfortunately, this warning went out without the knowledge or approval of our online team.
There are plenty of occasions when a professional media company needs to question the wholesale appropriation of its content. Nevertheless this is manifestly NOT one of those occasions!
In fact, I didn't know that this hornet's nest had been stirred until it hit Slashdot. That's clearly a breakdown of communication, since I'm the guy running the site!:-)
We're moving to correct the situation now... PocketPCTools was obviously acting within the appropriate bounds of Web etiquette -- actually, doing us a favor by sending us the traffic -- and Ziff Davis was obviously mistaken in issuing this warning.
My personal apologies to anyone inconvenienced by this error, and I'm personally going to see that it isn't repeated in the future.
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
http://blog.ziffdavis.com/rothenberg
Hey! I'm the executive editor in charge of eWEEK.com -- and before this situation unravels any farther, I need to make a couple of quick clarifications about our reprint policy, both here and on PocketPCTools:
This was a total screw-up involving an overzealous legal intern, not anybody on our online team. There's still some education that needs to happen within our company about what constitutes fair use on the Web -- and unfortunately, this warning went out without the knowledge or approval of our online team.
There are plenty of occasions when a professional media company needs to question the wholesale appropriation of its content. Nevertheless this is manifestly NOT one of those occasions!
In fact, I didn't know that this hornet's nest had been stirred until it hit Slashdot. That's clearly a breakdown of communication, since I'm the guy running the site!:-)
We're moving to correct the situation now... PocketPCTools was obviously acting within the appropriate bounds of Web etiquette -- actually, doing us a favor by sending us the traffic -- and Ziff Davis was obviously mistaken in issuing this warning.
My personal apologies to anyone inconvenienced by this error, and I'm personally going to see that it isn't repeated in the future.
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
http://blog.ziffdavis.com/rothenberg
It sure looks to me like Apple's gotten ahead of its problems of last summer getting its hands on affordable LCDs. Apple announced that its future models would be LCD-based back in January 2002, but shortages forced them to back up a few steps. This pricing and the new range of laptop screens indicates that they're over the hump, I think.
QuarkXPress is pretty straightforward: It offers a nifty set of GUI tools that let you lay out pages for magazines, newspapers and books, as well as catalogs, brochures and any other kind of print publication beyond flyer-length.
You basically create boxes of different shapes and sizes and pour in graphics and text that you can then style to taste... You can format these items in all sorts of ways to create various effects.
Quark has also been working to promote XPress as a multipublishing tool that lets you transform those print layouts into HTML.
Most every print publication you see every day has been stitched together using XPress. PageMaker (now owned by Adobe) blazed the trail and allowed publishers to start assembling their wares on the desktop, but XPress has been the dominant player for more than a decade.
A few years ago, Adobe relegated PageMaker to the consumer market and came out with a whole new page-layout application called InDesign, which is now Mac OS X-native.
Adobe has been working hard to promote InDesign to the big publishing shops -- touting its compatibility with XPress files, among other niceties. Indded, some publishing houses are starting to standardize on InDesign -- but there's still a huge installed base that's used to XPress and has invested heavily in additional software that hooks into XPress to let you control color fidelity, style type, manipulate images and do all sorts of other necessary housework.
QuarkXPress has long been the Big Kahuna of page-layout packages (after overtaking Aldus' pioneering PageMaker app back in the early '90s).
Professional publishers have invested billions of dollars into desktop workflows built around the Mac and XPress and involving all kinds of software plug-ins required to make all the hardware and software in a publishing operation work almost seamlessly. (Older versions of those plug-ins won't work with a Mac OS X version of XPress.)
Publishers are very conservative about making sweeping technological changes, but the whole shift to Mac OS X is ultimately going to force them to make some serious choices -- especially if there's a serious temporal disconnect between the arrival of Mac OS X-only Mac hardware and a Mac OS X-native version of their centerpiece software application.
Once you fold in all the imaging peripherals, client-server solutions, fonts, graphics applications, color-calibration technologies and whatnot, it's a wonder that stuff gets published at all. And when you're trying to use the same content for various print and electronic media, it gets even nuttier.
Even in these tight times (maybe especially in these tight times), there's a lot of money riding on keeping the whole house of cards stable, and the prospect of some sort of disjunct between publishers' longtime preferred platform and their longtime killer app is daunting.
>>It is my guess the code it well hacked up and they are running into a lot of stumbling blocks in order to get it to work.
We ran a story about that on eWEEK a couple months back... From what Quark's been saying at Seybold San Francisco and other gatherings, XPress 6.0 will represent a whole new code base, not just an upgrade optimized for Mac OS X's Carbon APIs.
>>But hey the site's run by ZDnet so whaddaya expect? Comprehensive tests?
Slightly off-topic point of clarification: ExtremeTech is run (and owned) by Ziff Davis Media, not ZDNet.
Back in the day, Ziff and ZDNet were part of one company, but they were split apart a few years ago, and ZDNet was ultimately acquired by CNET. (I worked at Ziff, then spun out with ZDNet, rolled into CNET and came back to Ziff, so I've seen the whole process unfold from a number of angles.)
>>But hey the site's run by ZDnet so whaddaya expect? Comprehensive tests?
Slightly off-topic point of clarification: ExtremeTech is run (and owned) by Ziff Davis Media, not ZDNet.
Back in the day, Ziff and ZDNet were part of one company, but they were split apart a few years ago, and ZDNet was ultimately acquired by CNET. (I worked at Ziff, then spun out with ZDNet, rolled into CNET and came back to Ziff, so I've seen the whole process unfold from a number of angles.)
Matthew Rothenberg
Online editor
Ziff Davis Media
>>Matthew Rothenburg wrote an editorial entitled "Let My People Go" (or something like that) saying that these so-called "rumor" sites should be allowed the same privileges as the "real" press.
James,
Actually, I wrote that "rumor and speculation" was a silly yardstick for Apple to apply to press access, since all the mainstream press sources that cover Apple (present company included) happily employ both:
I also said that Apple has a right (and a need) to establish a method for differentiating between the press and enthusiasts when it comes to allocating press badges. However, applying this particular measure to the small fry and not the big fish smacks of intimidation.
Press access is a privilege that Apple can extend or withhold, but if they're not going to apply it fairly or consistently, I reserve the right to call them on it.
Slashdot Mirror
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
Given Think Secret's excellent track record and my own knowledge of the care with which Nick Ciarelli researches his reports, I personally believe that the site is in fact a "reputable news source," and this report is at least as plausible as an Apple-related scoop from any bigger outlet.
At my shop, we're certainly going to pursue this report with vigor -- largely on the strength of Think Secret's record for accuracy.
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
LOL -- That's the first time I've seen my surname used as a punchline for Mac gay-bashing, but I have to admit that it's kind of pungent and snappy. (Like a sweaty jockstrap.)
Mulling T-shirt Possibilities,
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
Actually, no. "A whole bunch" is a major overstatement.
Just saying ...
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
MacWEEK alum 1989-2000
We met today to review the events leading up to this incident with PocketPCTools, and I'm gratified to report that my superiors understood the issue and endorsed the statement I made here.
They also understand the importance of coming up with something more formal to forestall future problems and better support our commitment to the principles of the Web.
To that end, our VP of audience development and I spent the afternoon dotting i's and crossing t's on a policy statement about linking and reprint policy. It's now making the rounds of legal, PR, and the rest of the departments that need to endorse and support it going forward.
It'll probably take a day or two to make that public -- isn't it always the way? -- but in the meantime, I'm comfortable saying that the message I sent last night has the backing of Ziff Davis Media. If anyone here has any questions about how this impacts their personal relationship with us or our content, e-mail me; I'm standing by to field questions.
And please bear with me on the follow-through, which I'm lobbying to expedite! :-)
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
http://blog.ziffdavis.com/rothenberg
I just wanted to be clear that this kind of situation concerns me -- whether or not it makes Slashdot!
My e-mail box is always open if folks have issues about how well we're working and playing with other sites. And my team understands just how crucial doing the right thing is when it comes to our success. And anything that seems to impede doing the right thing will receive my immediate attention.
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
http://blog.ziffdavis.com/rothenberg
In the interim, viz. my statement up top ...
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
http://blog.ziffdavis.com/rothenberg
Pharmboy: Thanks for the reasoned response. I don't have all the facts yet, either -- although I assure you, that's Priority One tomorrow morning!
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
http://blog.ziffdavis.com/rothenberg
There are a whole raft of interesting and contentious issues that BigMedia companies like ours continue to feel their way around. We chew over many of them every day -- and clearly, still more mastication is in order.
The bully pulpit of Slashdot certainly garnered my undivided attention this evening, but these are precisely the sorts of situations that make my job interesting (if not always relaxing). And yes, I think the issues they reflect are well worth exploring editorially.
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
http://blog.ziffdavis.com/rothenberg
You go out for Sunday night supper, and the next thing you know -- BAM! You're up to your armpits in angry e-mails.
Slashdot is indeed a fine attention-getter!
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
http://blog.ziffdavis.com/rothenberg
JKendrick: Want to e-mail me privately at matthew_rothenberg@ziffdavis.com -- maybe with a phone # -- so I can give you a call? I'm playing catch-up on this situation myself and would like your perspective ... Looks like my Sunday night's shot already, so it'd be prime time to sort this out! :-)
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
Besides, if we seriously wanted to prevent linking:
a. We'd be kinda DUMB; and
b. We'd have to expect that people would take umbrage, right?
So tell me again, what would be the percentage in engaging in this behavior, even if they didn't post their concerns to Slashdot?
Unless making people mad and losing traffic were part of our business strategy, it sounds like kind of an asinine plan to me! :-)
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
http://blog.ziffdavis.com/rothenberg
Just to hedge my bets a bit: I might still be a bit confused about the chain of events that led up to this, since I haven't had time to find out what the legal department flagged as objectionable -- but from what I can tell, PocketPCTools was not out of bounds.
Suffice to say we're going to be following up vigorously.
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
http://blog.ziffdavis.com/rothenberg
Hey! I'm the executive editor in charge of eWEEK.com -- and before this situation unravels any farther, I need to make a couple of quick clarifications about our reprint policy, both here and on PocketPCTools:
This was a total screw-up involving an overzealous legal intern, not anybody on our online team. There's still some education that needs to happen within our company about what constitutes fair use on the Web -- and unfortunately, this warning went out without the knowledge or approval of our online team.
There are plenty of occasions when a professional media company needs to question the wholesale appropriation of its content. Nevertheless this is manifestly NOT one of those occasions!
In fact, I didn't know that this hornet's nest had been stirred until it hit Slashdot. That's clearly a breakdown of communication, since I'm the guy running the site! :-)
We're moving to correct the situation now ... PocketPCTools was obviously acting within the appropriate bounds of Web etiquette -- actually, doing us a favor by sending us the traffic -- and Ziff Davis was obviously mistaken in issuing this warning.
My personal apologies to anyone inconvenienced by this error, and I'm personally going to see that it isn't repeated in the future.
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
http://blog.ziffdavis.com/rothenberg
My sincere apologies to PocketPCTools for this misstep by our legal department.
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
http://blog.ziffdavis.com/rothenberg
Hey! I'm the executive editor in charge of eWEEK.com -- and before this situation unravels any farther, I need to make a couple of quick clarifications about our reprint policy, both here and on PocketPCTools: This was a total screw-up involving an overzealous legal intern, not anybody on our online team. There's still some education that needs to happen within our company about what constitutes fair use on the Web -- and unfortunately, this warning went out without the knowledge or approval of our online team. There are plenty of occasions when a professional media company needs to question the wholesale appropriation of its content. Nevertheless this is manifestly NOT one of those occasions! In fact, I didn't know that this hornet's nest had been stirred until it hit Slashdot. That's clearly a breakdown of communication, since I'm the guy running the site! :-)
We're moving to correct the situation now ... PocketPCTools was obviously acting within the appropriate bounds of Web etiquette -- actually, doing us a favor by sending us the traffic -- and Ziff Davis was obviously mistaken in issuing this warning.
My personal apologies to anyone inconvenienced by this error, and I'm personally going to see that it isn't repeated in the future.
Matthew Rothenberg
Executive editor
Ziff Davis Internet
http://blog.ziffdavis.com/rothenberg
Centrino Is a Showstopper
Centrino Special Report
It sure looks to me like Apple's gotten ahead of its problems of last summer getting its hands on affordable LCDs. Apple announced that its future models would be LCD-based back in January 2002, but shortages forced them to back up a few steps. This pricing and the new range of laptop screens indicates that they're over the hump, I think.
You basically create boxes of different shapes and sizes and pour in graphics and text that you can then style to taste ... You can format these items in all sorts of ways to create various effects.
Quark has also been working to promote XPress as a multipublishing tool that lets you transform those print layouts into HTML.
Most every print publication you see every day has been stitched together using XPress. PageMaker (now owned by Adobe) blazed the trail and allowed publishers to start assembling their wares on the desktop, but XPress has been the dominant player for more than a decade.
A few years ago, Adobe relegated PageMaker to the consumer market and came out with a whole new page-layout application called InDesign, which is now Mac OS X-native.
Adobe has been working hard to promote InDesign to the big publishing shops -- touting its compatibility with XPress files, among other niceties. Indded, some publishing houses are starting to standardize on InDesign -- but there's still a huge installed base that's used to XPress and has invested heavily in additional software that hooks into XPress to let you control color fidelity, style type, manipulate images and do all sorts of other necessary housework.
Assuming you're not just kidding ... :-)
QuarkXPress has long been the Big Kahuna of page-layout packages (after overtaking Aldus' pioneering PageMaker app back in the early '90s).
Professional publishers have invested billions of dollars into desktop workflows built around the Mac and XPress and involving all kinds of software plug-ins required to make all the hardware and software in a publishing operation work almost seamlessly. (Older versions of those plug-ins won't work with a Mac OS X version of XPress.)
Publishers are very conservative about making sweeping technological changes, but the whole shift to Mac OS X is ultimately going to force them to make some serious choices -- especially if there's a serious temporal disconnect between the arrival of Mac OS X-only Mac hardware and a Mac OS X-native version of their centerpiece software application.
Once you fold in all the imaging peripherals, client-server solutions, fonts, graphics applications, color-calibration technologies and whatnot, it's a wonder that stuff gets published at all. And when you're trying to use the same content for various print and electronic media, it gets even nuttier.
Even in these tight times (maybe especially in these tight times), there's a lot of money riding on keeping the whole house of cards stable, and the prospect of some sort of disjunct between publishers' longtime preferred platform and their longtime killer app is daunting.
We ran a story about that on eWEEK a couple months back ... From what Quark's been saying at Seybold San Francisco and other gatherings, XPress 6.0 will represent a whole new code base, not just an upgrade optimized for Mac OS X's Carbon APIs.
Slightly off-topic point of clarification: ExtremeTech is run (and owned) by Ziff Davis Media, not ZDNet.
Back in the day, Ziff and ZDNet were part of one company, but they were split apart a few years ago, and ZDNet was ultimately acquired by CNET. (I worked at Ziff, then spun out with ZDNet, rolled into CNET and came back to Ziff, so I've seen the whole process unfold from a number of angles.)
Matthew Rothenberg
Online editor
Ziff Davis Media
>>But hey the site's run by ZDnet so whaddaya expect? Comprehensive tests? Slightly off-topic point of clarification: ExtremeTech is run (and owned) by Ziff Davis Media, not ZDNet. Back in the day, Ziff and ZDNet were part of one company, but they were split apart a few years ago, and ZDNet was ultimately acquired by CNET. (I worked at Ziff, then spun out with ZDNet, rolled into CNET and came back to Ziff, so I've seen the whole process unfold from a number of angles.) Matthew Rothenberg Online editor Ziff Davis Media
James,
Actually, I wrote that "rumor and speculation" was a silly yardstick for Apple to apply to press access, since all the mainstream press sources that cover Apple (present company included) happily employ both:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,338330,00.a sp
I also said that Apple has a right (and a need) to establish a method for differentiating between the press and enthusiasts when it comes to allocating press badges. However, applying this particular measure to the small fry and not the big fish smacks of intimidation.
Press access is a privilege that Apple can extend or withhold, but if they're not going to apply it fairly or consistently, I reserve the right to call them on it.
Matthew Rothenberg
Online editor
Ziff Davis Media