What is the future for newspapers?

TechRadar has reported that UK based Liquavista is developing technology which could usher in an era where newspapers can finally combat declining circulation by repackaging their website content and delivering it, either through RSS or over Wi-Fi/3G with video and flash embedded right in the article.  In effect, they will be building a full-colour interactive e-paper reader that will resemble an A4 piece of paper and will feature audio and video content. 

The Guardian’s Richard Wray continues: Newspaper editors, grappling with declining circulation and the migration of advertising spending to the internet, have been hoping for years that e-paper will move beyond the drawing board into reality.  The dream is of a device allowing readers to upload a newspaper in the morning, then update editorial content as the day goes on, perhaps using a mobile phone or wireless connection.

However, one rather obvious setback to this devise was highlighted on the Press Gazette by Patrick Smith “Just think of the time and cost of downloading all those hi-res imagines – and videos – clogging up the airwaves.”

Could this be the killer piece of technology that takes e-book technology to the next step or are we just not ready for it yet?

Google blog search update

Jack Schofield at The Guardian has reported that search engine king Google is launching technology that will have technology PR agencies searching for news content on blog posts. Nothing new I hear you say, but this time the optimized Google Blog Search will find and arrange the 900,000 blog entries that are added each day. Previously the service only let users type keywords into the search engine.   Blog entries will be categorised and placed into clusters on the left side of the site, with categories such as feature politics, technology, business, science, sports, entertainment, movies and television.

Although it is cool that they are looking to track this medium more, Jack makes some strong points about the service which are hard to not agree with.  “Why doesn’t it pack in as much info as Google News? Why does Google Blog Search use a single-column display instead of the far superior double-column template that works well for Google News?”

The next issue Jack raises looks at the fact that Google News rates stories on popularity and the Google Blog Search works in exactly the same way.

Google News has a fatal flaw, which is that its news is mostly stale. Stories get “voted” to the top of the heap as more and more sites cover them, but Google has no way of finding and displaying the one or two brilliant items you actually want to read. Instead you have to wait until another 50 (or whatever) sites have picked up and repeated a story, making it “popular”, by which time the original has been buried in the morass.

All in all, a step in the right direction but it would seem a little work still to go.