2023-12-29 - 1200+ Subscribers!, Print and the Digital World, Amateur Radio & Satellite Communication Promoted in MAPCON 2023 at Ahmedabad (Gujarat) INDIA
I think the CQ story hits the solution right on the head. I know if this model were implemented I would read it. I don't read it now, mostly because I haven't invested in a subscription to see if it's something I would like, and I didn't know about the free versions on the website until just now.
My one strong suggestion about this model would be to avoid PDF and use HTML instead. PDF is a great format for some things, but it is really designed around the idea of a printed page, and that's what we are trying to get away from. The reason for this suggestion is that reading PDFs on mobile is akin to reading a newspaper with a magnifying glass. The fact that horizontal scrolling is a bad user experience has been recognized for decades and is the origin of the tradition that text email and BBS posts don't exceed 80 columns.
Other major general-interest newspapers and magazines don't publish their content in PDFs, they use HTML sites that can be rendered appropriately for the size of the display in use. I have tried reading QST in their mobile app. It's fine in a tablet, but on a phone it's a mess of manually scrolling up and down each page 2 or 3 times to get to the content. I think the user experience is pretty terrible all the way around.
Ben - As a certified "old guy", my preference is for PDF because I've had most of my lifetime reading paper, and PDF is as close as I can get to paper in electronic media. But you make a very good point about using HTML. One of the selling points of Substack versus Typepad (the platform for my blogs) is that it renders the content appropriate for the device.
Came here to relay similar thoughts around PDF as a publishing format. All the clubs and organizations producing great content do themselves a disservice using PDF because the content can't be linked to or shared directly. (I'm less likely to direct someone to download a PDF and scroll to page 23 vs. share a direct link to an HTML based article.) From a technical perspective, PDF isn't compatible with other services like search engines and news aggregators that want to spread that content far and wide. Publishers should be releasing content as a slow drip over time via a standard HTML/blog (or email!) setup. That allows each article to be shared more easily on social media and other platforms via a direct link. Also reduces content overload by not putting a dozen articles out at once. /rant 😅
This discussion reminds me of a time about 15 years ago when the company I was working for built a new data center and we had to re-write our disaster recovery and monitoring documentation to match the new environment. The old documentation was MS Word docs stored on a SharePoint (shudder) site. One of the major issues with SharePoint was the total lack of searchability. If you didn't know what the Word doc was titled or where it was buried in the link structure you weren't going to find it. Why they paid for a SharePoint license and this wasn't just a file share, I have no idea...
Anyway, we ended up creating all the documentation in a wiki instead. Everything was easy with search, even if you didn't know the title and articles were much more readable since there weren't unnecessary pages breaks and white space due to screenshots.
Since hard copies are important for this kind of documentation we used the PDF Export feature to put the DR binders together.
Obviously a wiki isn't a great choice for this kind of content so this story was a bit tangental to the issue, but it's an example of a small success story for content modernization.
Good times. Yes, I'm all for a PDF version or export option for folks that want it. Just don't make it the primary delivery format if the primary audience is on the web.
Cale - Heard, understood, and agreed. While I really like PDF as I do most of my reading on bigger screens (laptop, big tablet, BIG screen on office computer)... yeah, HTML makes more sense as the preferred text format for the current generation / primary viewing on phones and other small screens. The trick is to lay out a document (like Zero Retries) in a neutral HTML format and find a delivery system that will deliver it in optimum resolution for the viewer - (mobile friendly).
Speaking of Hamclock... I run a persistent instance on one of my small Dell Wyse 3040 thin clients that also hosts an AllStarLink node (# 588411). I found that after starting Hamclock in an SSH terminal, and then closing the SSH connection, the Hamclock instance would die. To make it persistent, install tmux, then run tmux before starting Hamclock. When you close your SSH connection, tmux is still running and the Hamclock instance remains "up."
On my LAN, this Hamclock runs at http://192.168.1.147:8081/live.html. I just have a bookmark on the desktop and open up the running Hamclock whenever I want it on my screen. One of the beautiful things about this method is the Hamclock will generally resize whenever you resize the window Hamclock is running in.
If you wanted to run Hamclock in a kiosk mode (say, at a ham club meeting), then you may not want people changing things on your instance. You can run it without allowing others to monkey with it by initiating Hamclock with ./hamclock -c &
In closing, my non-ham spouse loves the Hamclock because she sees the day-night line on whatever globe projection I'm showing, plus I have the moon up so she can tell the phase of the moon. We also track the ISS just because. "That is so cool!" she says :-)
Tom - thanks for the tech tips. I have a few compute appliances, and too many monitors doing not much, so HamClock is going to find its way onto one of them as a near-term project.
I don't know what got into me--since I'm a dyed-in-the-wool CW guy--but I downloaded fldigi and made my first Olivia contact less than an hour before reading this issue of Zero Retries. My initial impression is that it's PSK-31 with error correction. That is to say it's pretty slow. Of course, I was using the basic 8/250 mode. There are modes with faster data rates. At any rate, it was a nice change of pace, and I'll probably try it again.
As far as CQ goes, I hate to say it, but I think it's a lost cause. I just don't see how CQ can compete with all the online content that's out there for free. CQ would have to offer something really unique to get enough people to pay for it.
Dan - As a "Glass is Half Full" type of person, I'm able to imagine a future for CQ IF it makes the decision to change some key aspects of its business such as N2IRZ suggests. But, that will be hard medicine to take for an organization with the lifespan (and thus, intertia) of CQ.
It's hard to remember that the magazine business model is an accident of history (which the Clay Shirkey article that is cited in N2IRZ's article explains very well) - the combination of few alternatives for distribution of Amateur Radio content, cheaper inputs (postal rates, paper prices, printing cost), lots of companies willing to pay to advertise, and most of all a mass audience willing to pay to read the content.
I would hate to lose CQ from Amateur Radio, but then we've already lost 73 (which I continue to mourn, and celebrate), Ham Radio, A5, Packet Radio Magazine, and so many other media.
I wonder about the economics of a $6/year subscription model. Virtually every subscription publisher wants that or more PER MONTH. I read things from so many sources, I could never justify subscribing to them all at that kind of rate. It could easily be hundreds of dollars per month. If any of them were down around $6 a year, it would be easy to justify, but I suspect that they don't because it doesn't work as a business case. Happy to be wrong on that.
I think it depends on the cost of the business. If expenses are cut as I described, I think it could happen. Is $30k enough to run such an enterprise? Perhaps. That's just 15k supporters at $6 a year. But the behavior of advertisers is a big variable. Sadly, I do doubt this experiment will ever get tried.
I think the CQ story hits the solution right on the head. I know if this model were implemented I would read it. I don't read it now, mostly because I haven't invested in a subscription to see if it's something I would like, and I didn't know about the free versions on the website until just now.
My one strong suggestion about this model would be to avoid PDF and use HTML instead. PDF is a great format for some things, but it is really designed around the idea of a printed page, and that's what we are trying to get away from. The reason for this suggestion is that reading PDFs on mobile is akin to reading a newspaper with a magnifying glass. The fact that horizontal scrolling is a bad user experience has been recognized for decades and is the origin of the tradition that text email and BBS posts don't exceed 80 columns.
Other major general-interest newspapers and magazines don't publish their content in PDFs, they use HTML sites that can be rendered appropriately for the size of the display in use. I have tried reading QST in their mobile app. It's fine in a tablet, but on a phone it's a mess of manually scrolling up and down each page 2 or 3 times to get to the content. I think the user experience is pretty terrible all the way around.
Ben - As a certified "old guy", my preference is for PDF because I've had most of my lifetime reading paper, and PDF is as close as I can get to paper in electronic media. But you make a very good point about using HTML. One of the selling points of Substack versus Typepad (the platform for my blogs) is that it renders the content appropriate for the device.
Came here to relay similar thoughts around PDF as a publishing format. All the clubs and organizations producing great content do themselves a disservice using PDF because the content can't be linked to or shared directly. (I'm less likely to direct someone to download a PDF and scroll to page 23 vs. share a direct link to an HTML based article.) From a technical perspective, PDF isn't compatible with other services like search engines and news aggregators that want to spread that content far and wide. Publishers should be releasing content as a slow drip over time via a standard HTML/blog (or email!) setup. That allows each article to be shared more easily on social media and other platforms via a direct link. Also reduces content overload by not putting a dozen articles out at once. /rant 😅
Oh, yes, searchability!
This discussion reminds me of a time about 15 years ago when the company I was working for built a new data center and we had to re-write our disaster recovery and monitoring documentation to match the new environment. The old documentation was MS Word docs stored on a SharePoint (shudder) site. One of the major issues with SharePoint was the total lack of searchability. If you didn't know what the Word doc was titled or where it was buried in the link structure you weren't going to find it. Why they paid for a SharePoint license and this wasn't just a file share, I have no idea...
Anyway, we ended up creating all the documentation in a wiki instead. Everything was easy with search, even if you didn't know the title and articles were much more readable since there weren't unnecessary pages breaks and white space due to screenshots.
Since hard copies are important for this kind of documentation we used the PDF Export feature to put the DR binders together.
Obviously a wiki isn't a great choice for this kind of content so this story was a bit tangental to the issue, but it's an example of a small success story for content modernization.
Good times. Yes, I'm all for a PDF version or export option for folks that want it. Just don't make it the primary delivery format if the primary audience is on the web.
Cale - Heard, understood, and agreed. While I really like PDF as I do most of my reading on bigger screens (laptop, big tablet, BIG screen on office computer)... yeah, HTML makes more sense as the preferred text format for the current generation / primary viewing on phones and other small screens. The trick is to lay out a document (like Zero Retries) in a neutral HTML format and find a delivery system that will deliver it in optimum resolution for the viewer - (mobile friendly).
Speaking of Hamclock... I run a persistent instance on one of my small Dell Wyse 3040 thin clients that also hosts an AllStarLink node (# 588411). I found that after starting Hamclock in an SSH terminal, and then closing the SSH connection, the Hamclock instance would die. To make it persistent, install tmux, then run tmux before starting Hamclock. When you close your SSH connection, tmux is still running and the Hamclock instance remains "up."
On my LAN, this Hamclock runs at http://192.168.1.147:8081/live.html. I just have a bookmark on the desktop and open up the running Hamclock whenever I want it on my screen. One of the beautiful things about this method is the Hamclock will generally resize whenever you resize the window Hamclock is running in.
If you wanted to run Hamclock in a kiosk mode (say, at a ham club meeting), then you may not want people changing things on your instance. You can run it without allowing others to monkey with it by initiating Hamclock with ./hamclock -c &
In closing, my non-ham spouse loves the Hamclock because she sees the day-night line on whatever globe projection I'm showing, plus I have the moon up so she can tell the phase of the moon. We also track the ISS just because. "That is so cool!" she says :-)
Tom - thanks for the tech tips. I have a few compute appliances, and too many monitors doing not much, so HamClock is going to find its way onto one of them as a near-term project.
I don't know what got into me--since I'm a dyed-in-the-wool CW guy--but I downloaded fldigi and made my first Olivia contact less than an hour before reading this issue of Zero Retries. My initial impression is that it's PSK-31 with error correction. That is to say it's pretty slow. Of course, I was using the basic 8/250 mode. There are modes with faster data rates. At any rate, it was a nice change of pace, and I'll probably try it again.
As far as CQ goes, I hate to say it, but I think it's a lost cause. I just don't see how CQ can compete with all the online content that's out there for free. CQ would have to offer something really unique to get enough people to pay for it.
Dan - As a "Glass is Half Full" type of person, I'm able to imagine a future for CQ IF it makes the decision to change some key aspects of its business such as N2IRZ suggests. But, that will be hard medicine to take for an organization with the lifespan (and thus, intertia) of CQ.
It's hard to remember that the magazine business model is an accident of history (which the Clay Shirkey article that is cited in N2IRZ's article explains very well) - the combination of few alternatives for distribution of Amateur Radio content, cheaper inputs (postal rates, paper prices, printing cost), lots of companies willing to pay to advertise, and most of all a mass audience willing to pay to read the content.
I would hate to lose CQ from Amateur Radio, but then we've already lost 73 (which I continue to mourn, and celebrate), Ham Radio, A5, Packet Radio Magazine, and so many other media.
Hey, please note that it was not M0LTE that wrote freedvtnc2 - it was @xssfox - https://github.com/xssfox
Mark - Thanks for pointing that out. The web version of ZR 0131 is now updated with the correction - https://www.zeroretries.org/i/140153972/kiss-tnc-using-freedv-data-modems.
Great article and I agree with your analysis and proposed solution.
I wonder about the economics of a $6/year subscription model. Virtually every subscription publisher wants that or more PER MONTH. I read things from so many sources, I could never justify subscribing to them all at that kind of rate. It could easily be hundreds of dollars per month. If any of them were down around $6 a year, it would be easy to justify, but I suspect that they don't because it doesn't work as a business case. Happy to be wrong on that.
I think it depends on the cost of the business. If expenses are cut as I described, I think it could happen. Is $30k enough to run such an enterprise? Perhaps. That's just 15k supporters at $6 a year. But the behavior of advertisers is a big variable. Sadly, I do doubt this experiment will ever get tried.