Plotting Out a Year's Worth of Topics

Anyone who works for a magazine knows that this is the time when everyone puts their heads together to formulate a list of topics, features, and interviews that will appear in the following calendar year's issues. It's called an editorial calendar, and we're now in the final stages of putting together ours for both Marketnews and here's how! magazines. While the fast-paced nature of this business is always on our minds, you never really comprehend it fully until you sit down to perform such a task as this. It's difficult to try and slot applicable topics into various months of the year! How do you truly look to the future of consumer technology, where things can change literally from one minute to the next? It's almost impossible! Nevertheless, we do our best based on projections, expectations, and good ol' intuition.

There are seasons and holidays that dictate high selling times for particular products, for example. Back-to-school is logically during the July/August timeframe, while the holiday shopping season is November/December. Flat-panel sales often spike during the SuperBowl (February) and Black Friday (end of November after the U.S. Thanksgiving). Photo products do well during or just prior to the summer time, since people are either looking to buy digital cameras to take on their vacations, or printing photos like wildfire having just returned from a trip. As for the camera manufacturers; they typically save their major official product announcements for February/March (during the PMA trade show) and October, which is when they all hit like wildfire. Yes, there are enough new digital cameras coming to fruition to result in two major launch times per year! And Boxing Day? Ahh, every retailer of every gadget loves Boxing Day...that is if you're not working a 12-hour shift on the sales floor!

When it comes to highly-anticipated technologies for next year, we can attempt to predict when a few might hit it big. New cell phone carriers, for example, all anticipate having their services up and running by Q3. So it's safe to assume that a lot of attention will be placed on this space come that time; which is also when we can expect to see a flood of Google Android devices hit the market. CES, North America's largest technology trade show, takes place in early January, and naturally, every manufacturer will be making major announcements at that time. Ditto when it comes to the custom audio/video industry and CEDIA; the September-held trade show dedicated to that part of the technology space.

Then there are other "up-in-the-air" items that need to be considered. Will LED become a fierce competitor in the flat-panel arena next year? Can Blu-ray make it for the long-haul? Is Android going to take over the cellular world? Will WiMAX and NFC technology become commonplace? Can digital downloading overtake physical video media? We can speculate all we like, but the truth is that topics have to be reworked throughout the year to best accomodate what's happening. And let's face it: something always happens to shake things up.

In a way, this is a good thing. There is never a time where we have nothing to write about in the technology industry; and never a slowdown in product development. While TV manufacturing might slow down, cell phone manufacturing picks up. As cell phones slow down, PCs and digital content take off. There's always something. The other day, I saw a demonstration on TV of a head-worn device hooked up to a computer that could analyze brain waves and dictate letters of the alphabet that the person was thinking. Entire words would be spelled out on screen, letter by letter, until a full sentence was formulated. The point? It was being used by a man with ALS in order to help him communicate. Now that is truly amazing: there's so much more to technology than we could ever imagine.

What do you predict will be the big topics of '09?

IM For Facebook?

It's 5 p.m. on a Friday night, and I logged into Facebook from the office to post some details on our new photo contest (you could win a great Nikon digicam!) I noticed a tiny, icon on the bottom, right of my screen that said "online friends" but didn't think much of it. Perhaps it's a quick, one-button method of seeing who's currently online? Whatever. That was until a box magically popped up with a message from one of my colleagues.

"Working hard, I see," he said. What? Huh? How did THAT happen? For all you Facebook members, apparently instant messaging capabilities have now been added to the service, whether you've asked for them or not. I clicked on the link to discover a list of all my contacts that were currently online. Interesting.

So, as I entered our contest information, my colleague and I got to chatting. When I was done, he asked: "Did you just post that in here?" Post what in here? Without my asking it to, he received an IM letting him know what I had just posted in the Marketnews & here's how Magazines - About Tech group. Geez. Is it going to let him know when I take a sip of my coffee and get up for a bathroom break as well?

It seems a bit too invasive, if you ask me. Mind you, my posting in the All About Tech group would have eventually appeared in everyone's News Feeds anyway. Shortly after, I received an IM that told me he just posted two notes himself. Gotcha! It's sort of like Big Brother is watching. Scary stuff.

Spam Scams Continue to Make Billions

Even after the many TV specials I’ve viewed, and articles I’ve read, I still can’t believe that so many people have become victim to online scamming. Sure, viruses, spyware, and the like will find their way to unsuspecting computers fairly easily. But I’m talking about the arguably more serious “phishing” scams that request personal information, like banking passwords or account details. Can you believe that Consumer Reports says American consumers have lost more than US$7 billion in the last two years alone from phishing scams, viruses, and spyware? It's sad, but true.

According to Consumer Reports’ survey of more than 2,000 households with access to the Internet, 8% admitted to having submitted personal information in response to a phishing e-mail. Over the past two years, Consumer Reports’ suspects that one million customers in the U.S. lost in the billions of dollars from these types of scams alone! And although the median cost of a phishing scam is US$200, scammers are actually getting better at what they do. Instead of strange, so-called prominent people from overseas countries asking you to cash a cheque for them in order to receive a one-million dollar gift in return (I'm still flabbergasted that anyone would fall for this one!), e-mails now appear to come from companies you actually deal with, like your bank or PayPal; an even people you know!

I receive e-mails on a weekly basis that appear to originate from a slew of different banks: TD, Royal Bank, CIBC, Scotiabank, you name it. Eventually, the “phishers” will finally get the right bank, and I’ll silently laugh as I delete the e-mail. I don’t buy it. But many unsuspecting, technophobic people aren’t so lucky.

For tips and tricks on how to avoid being the victim of an online scam, check out vol. 6 no. 3 of here’s how! magazine (check back to http://www.hereshow.ca/ later this month for the full issue in digital format).

[Photo: Shown here is an e-mail that appears to be from RBC, but is actually a phishing e-mail. The scammer is telling me that my account has been blocked due to suspected fraudulent activity (funny, isn't it?), and asking that I log in to re-instate it. If I hold my cursor over the URL given in the e-mail that looks to direct to RBC’s online security centre, I see that it actually directs to a bogus address. This is just one tip offered in the here’s how! article called Spams and Scams. Readers might also want to note that my Microsoft Outlook had actually flagged this e-mail as a potential phishing message, and filtered it automatically to my junk mail.]

Judging the Photo Contest: How Do We Pick the Winners?

This week, we convened like we do every two months to judge the latest photo contest in our consumer magazine, here’s how! Every issue, we offer fantastic prizes for the top four photos, which we require to be digital in some respect, either taken with a digital camera, and/or manipulated on the PC in a program like Photoshop. We get hundreds of entries; some gorgeous, and others, well, my three-year old niece could take a better pic! Editor Gordon Brockhouse weeds them down to about 100 of the best, at which point, we gather to duke it out and select the winners.

Here’s how it works: the panel includes myself, Gordon, John Thomson, Associate Publisher, Robert Franner, Editor of Marketnews, and Erik Devantier, Creative Director. As we scroll through a widescreen slideshow of the pics, the personality of each judge becomes very apparent. Robert and Gordon are self-professed photo geeks, having studied the art for 30-plus years. Needless to say, their comments are more often than not based on the technical aspects of the photo: exposure, difficulty of getting such a shot, etc. A close-up photo of a bug on a leaf appears on screen and I automatically think “b-o-r-i-n-g”. But then these guys point out that getting such a shot is extremely difficult. OK, now I understand its appeal, and I’ll give the entrant a little more credit.

John, who’s also a major photo buff, tends to look more at the composition of the photo. Why didn’t he remove this distracting pole in the background? He/she should have cropped the picture like so in order to make it more powerful.

Creativity is, no surprise, Erik’s main concern. "This photo tells a story, and it keeps me interested," he says while observing an entrant’s photo. Given Erik’s expertise in creative direction and photo editing software, he can often times look at an image and tell exactly what the person did to alter it. "There’s no way that picture could have been taken with those items in the boat,” he instructs. “It looks like he Photoshopped them in.” Knowing how a photo was created, and the story behind it, makes it much more interesting to all of us.

And me. Well, I like to think that I bring a different perspective in many ways, not only by being part of another generation, but also of another sex. My main concern is how the photo makes me feel? If it doesn’t evoke some sort of emotion, whether laughter or sadness, or even intrigue, it’s not a winner in my books. Is it too cluttered? Confusing? Boring? Of an overplayed subject (if I see another shot of a flower or bird, I’m going to puke!)

It’s obvious that subjectivity plays a big role in the decision-making process for everyone, no matter how much the technical aspects do come into play. If you’re an animal lover, you’ll likely find a cute puppy pic endearing; whereas someone with severe pet allergies might shrug it off. If you have young kids, you’ll likely see a bit of your own son or daughter in a cutesy shot, and gravitate toward it as a favourite. Nevertheless, having a panel of five people deciding on the winners allows for many different perspectives, and for every aspect of photography to be taken into consideration.

Once the majority agree on the top 25 or so pics (which typically takes an hour or two, and a few words of disagreement), we each rank them in our order of preference. The results are tabulated, and there arises the two grand prize winners, two runners-up, and a few honourable mentions.

And I bet you thought we just picked them from a hat!

To see the winning images from our latest photo contest, check out the upcoming June issue of here’s how! magazine. You can also browse through all past content winning photos on our Website (scroll to the bottom of the page).

[Photo: The photo depicted above was one of two winning photos from our April 2007 photo contest. Taken by Tony Seaward of Bonavista, Nfld., the image depicts Bonavista Harbour on a calm, March night. Seaward told Gordon that he used a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi and 50mm f/1.8 lens; and shot the scene with a 10-second exposure at f/6.3 and ISO 800. Once transferred to PC, he used Noiseware software to crop it, and Photoshop CS2 to make adjustments to the lighting.]

Introduction

Welcome to the Marketnews blog! For those who don't know me, my name is Christine Persaud, and I work for a Company called Bomar Publishing, which operates two technology magazines: Marketnews (www.marketnews.ca) and here's how! (www.hereshow.ca). I like to say we're a small group that does big things. It's definitely a fun industry to be in. We constantly have cool and fun products coming in and out of the office to try out, review, and introduce to the industry and consumers.

Playfully called "gadget girl" in the office, I'm a relatively rare breed of female that doesn't just enjoy using technology, but loves to learn about it and try out new, and sometimes complicated, devices. I review personal electronics for our consumer magazine here's how: MP3 players, cell phones, headphones, you name it. If it can be carried in your hand or shoved in your pocket, I've likely taken it out for a test ride! So I'm always get excited when a new gadget arrives in the office for our evaluation.

Right now, I have 5 really neat portable messaging devices in my possession, as I'm working on an article that asks "can anyone compete with the Blackberry?" Let me tell you, having played around with these nifty things for the past month or so, I can completely understand where the term "crackberry" comes from. I used to think it incredibly rude when talking to someone and they'd constantly be checking their e-mails under the table while nodding approvingly at what I was saying, as if they were actually listening. Now, the second I jump in my car to head to the office, the first thing I do is grab the smartphone out of my purse and start checking e-mails. Sure, I'm well aware that I'll be in the office within 20 minutes, but why wait when I can see what's going on now? We've evolved into a culture that simply can't wait for anything. I'm not sure how I'll be able to part with these 'phones once the evaluation period is over. But it might be a good thing to get back to normal life where I concentrate on driving instead of replying to notes and surfing the 'net!

Stay tuned for more on what's going on at Marketnews Mag, and the tech industry. We'll give you the scoop!