Fast Company

eGrandPrix Launches Electric Vehicle Race

Ariel Schwartz — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:30:11 EST

What better way to attract mainstream interest to electric cars than with a good old fashioned race? EMXGP, a new auto series spun off from the TTXGP electric motorcycle grand prix race, will launch in June with a race through Paris.

EMXGP hasn't revealed too many details, but we do know that the race will take place on regular streets along the Seine river in the Parisian borough of Levallois. The 1.8 mile track will border the Neuilly area, and a local bus depot will be converted into a pit garage. EMXGP expects over 100,000 at the free event, which may also feature an electric go-kart track for onlookers who want to get involved in the action.

TTXGP plans to run an electric motorcycle race in Levallois at the same time. No word on what that might look like, but last summer's TTXGP race on the Isle of Man featured an array of souped-up electric bikes, with the winner (Team Agni) averaging 87 mph.

The EMXGP series probably won't spell the end of NASCAR anytime soon, but at the very least it will remind the public that EVs can be just as sexy as their gasoline-powered counterparts. Want to keep up with news on the EMXGP race? Check out the website here.

[Via Autobloggreen]

Live from Copenhagen: Comedian Eugene Mirman Takes on DONG Energy

Ariel Schwartz — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:25:56 EST

Concerned that the Copenhagen climate change conference has been all for nought (even with Hilary Clinton swooping in to offer developing countries lots of cash)? At the very least, comedian Eugene Mirman has provided us with some much-needed comic relief, courtesy of Grist.

DONG Energy, Denmark's leading energy company, produces power from wind, coal, and according to Mirman, dongs. The company received kudos this week in Copenhagen from some German climate pirates for backing out on a plan to build a new coal-fired plant in Germany. And apparently, the climate pirates are building a giant dong to celebrate. Ok, not really, but Mirman won't let any of us forget that a very serious energy company has a very ridiculous name. Kinda NSFW.

[Grist]

Brains On Fire: How Do You Think About Failure?

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:46:45 EST

Japan Turns the Toxic E-Waste Problem Into a Jackpot

Ariel Schwartz — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:31:36 EST

Our ever-increasing reliance on electronics for everything from communications to alternative energy has left with a serious e-waste problem. At the same time, the market for gadgets has resulted in a shortage of the precious materials necessary to meet our demands. Some Japanese companies--including electronics giant Panasonic--have come to the brilliant yet obvious realization that an easy way to get these materials is from the growing e-waste stream.

In the Panasonic Eco Technology Centre, located outside Osaka, workers dismantle everything from flat-panel TV screens to refrigerators in an attempt to scrounge up useful parts. Overall, 90% of everything dismantled is reused--including precious materials like copper. At the same time, toxic heavy metals and gases are isolated. Japanese camera company Canon is also a fan of mining the waste stream for precious materials, with 90% of all components in its photocopiers reused in some way.

But what of all the e-waste that ends up in landfills? There is still plenty of room for enterprising treasure-hunters to gather up resources. For some perspective, one metric ton of circuit boards contains between 80 and 1,500 grams of gold. That's 40 to 800 times the concentration of gold available in gold ore mined in the U.S. And North American landfills contain more aluminum than we can produce by mining ores.

For its part, Dell is setting up a pilot plant in India to provide people with a safe way to extract precious materials from e-waste. Expect to see plenty more of these plants in the coming years as precious material prices skyrocket along with demand for electronics.

[Via PhysOrg]

Zaha Hadid Turns From Potato Chips to AC Vents for Inspiration

Cliff Kuang — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:29:52 EST

Hadid gets the construction go-ahead for an eccentric new museum.

This week, Zaha Hadid got the go-ahead to begin constructing her latest big building: The Eli and Edyth Broad Museum, on the campus of Michigan State Unversity. To mark the news, they've just released a nice fly-through animation of the building:

As you can tell, the building is a bit of a departure for Hadid. Where many of her big recent works look like Pringles potato chips, this one looks exactly like a pile of air conditioning vents. It works like one too: The facade's metal and glass "pleats" will be adjustable, allowing museum staff to adjust them for lighting levels. Inside, the pleat motif will carry over, creating patterns of overlapping zig-zags.

Hadid won the job in 2007, in an international competition that pitted her up against Thom Mayne, of Morphosis, and Wolf Prix, of Coop Himmelb(l)au.

The Broads have donated $18.5 million to the construction of the museum, and construction is slated to begin next March and last for two years. The grand opening will be in 2012--precisely when her Aquatic Olympic Stadium will be drawing billions of eye balls during the 2012 London Olympics.

[Via Chicago Tribune]

iRobot Founder Brings High-Tech to Bridge Inspection

Erica Westly — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:26:48 EST

You probably know iRobot for inventing the Roomba. But like most robotics companies, iRobot has always worked on more serious government projects, such as military reconnaissance, too. Now Helen Greiner, one of the iRobot co-founders, has received more than $2 million in government grants for CyPhy Works, a new company that is building unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) for search and rescue missions and, wait for it, bridge inspection. No, it's not as glamorous as, say, floor-cleaning technology, but modernizing bridge inspection techniques is extremely important.

Despite all our technological advances, bridges are still primarily inspected by hand. It's a process that can be both dangerous and ineffective. Several researchers have been working to develop automated bridge inspection systems over the past decade or so, but, for the most part, the process has remained pretty much the same for a hundred years: A guy with special pliers pries apart bridge cables and looks for damage, such as corrosion. It's about as high-tech as door-to-door mail delivery.

Given the crumbling state of America's bridges (more than 25% are structurally deficient, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers), CyPhy Works definitely deserves points for good will. But they might want to consider another name change. The company's original name was The Droid Works, which they ostensibly changed to avoid confusion with Motorola's Droid phone. (Isn't the Nexus One going to kill that soon, anyway?) But between this and the newly re-branded SyFy channel, geeks are going to be confused about how to spell their favorite word. Droid Works, er, CyPhy, stick to bridge maintenance and leave spelling alone.

[Via Technology Review]

Architects Turn a Public Square Into a Giant TV Room (Almost)

Cliff Kuang — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:27:37 EST

A beautiful LED wall on the side of a building--some 1,550 square feet--is the ultimate boob tube for pedestrians in Madrid.

Langarita--Navarro Arquitectos recently created a stunning LED facade for the Medialab-Prado, in central Madrid.

Comissioned by the Madrid Town Council, the display was rigged to show specially commissioned "psychaedlic" animations--rather than commercials of the sort you'd see in Times Square.

What's remarkable about it is the size--some 1,550 square feet--and the resolution. With 35,000 LED nodes, it's able to show moving images in medium resolution--which would be better than a Youtube video, but still shy of your TV:

I can't imagine a better place to watch videos of Maru. Shame it didn't come with an xBox hookup!

[LED Action Facade via We Heart]

IBM's 5 in 5: Smart Grids, Living Buildings, and Smart Water

Ariel Schwartz — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:34:24 EST

IBM's annual Next 5 in 5, a list of five innovations that will take off in the next five years, is ready. And in our humble opinion, it's probably pretty accurate. The theme this year is "cities," and according to IBM, our major urban centers are about to become a whole lot smarter.

More specifically, IBM predicts that cities will have healthier immune systems (read: a "health Internet" that gathers information to prevent the spread of disease), buildings will act like living organisms with help from sensors that monitor things like temperature, occupancy, and light, cars and city buses will go electric thanks to renewable energy-powered smart grids, smart water systems will cut down on water waste and improve purification technology, and cities will use analytics to stop crime before it happens (Minority Report, anyone?).

Many of these predictions are already coming true. Smart meters are being deployed across the country, EVs are being unveiled at a rapid rate, and IBM has begun to install water-monitoring technology in Europe. It's optimistic to think that the technologies described in the 5 in 5 report will all be in their advanced stages by 2015, but they are more realistic than some of IBM's predictions from 2007--i.e. 3-D Internet and mind-reading cell phones. As much as we would love to "virtually walk the aisles" of our favorite stores, most Internet users will probably be using shopping Web sites in their current form in the next few years.

[Next 5 in 5]

Infographic of the Day: The NFL All-Criminal 1st Team

Cliff Kuang — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:35:39 EST

The assorted crimes and professional accomplishments of players still on the field.

The NFL playoffs are almost here! The New Orleans Saints and Indianapolis Colts might both go undefeated and meet in the Super Bowl! Also: There are criminals all over the field! Still!

To that point, Infojocks created these fantastic infographics detailing the "All-Criminal 1st Team" for offense and defense. Unlike previous attempts to make such lists, this one includes only players from recent years--and it shows both their crimes and professional awards. Many of them are still playing now. And if actually assembled these teams, they'd be pretty good--particularly the defense.

[Infojocks via SimpleComplexity]

Meet the Winner of Our Sonos Sweepstakes, and Find Out About the Next Challenge

Noah Robischon — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 12:30:46 EST

More than 900 people spotted the minute differences in a series of slideshow images we posted to the site last week (man, slide number 5 was tough--the complete list of answers is below). The randomly chosen winner of the Sonos Wireless Sound System is... Dayna Orione-Kim, a jewelry maker whose work can be found in several books including The Art & Craft of Making Jewelry--and if you find yourself in Rochester, NY, you can see Dayna's work for yourself at the funky-cool Craft Company No. 6.

The typographic riddles and conundrums challenge has already been answered by over 500 people--did we make it too easy this time? No matter, because the Nook e-reader is still up-for-grabs until midnight tomorrow.

And stayed tuned next week because we have one more late holiday present for you: The chance to win a digital DSLR camera with all the trappings. Keep your eyes peeled -- because this challenge will require it.

Here are the answers to the Spot the Difference challenge from last week:

1. The glasses next to the radio are missing in the right photo. 2. Red and White centers on the white numbers are switched 3. There is an extra tent in front of the building in the photo on the right. 4. There are 3 tennis courts in the bottom photo as opposed to 2 on the top (one is orange). 5. Extra light on photo to the right. Left façade of the building, 3 columns back bottom window. 6. The digital screen on the top photo shows 14 and 19 in the other 7. There is an extra dome/tower in the left photo on the right side. 8. The bar code in the right photo is different. (We changed with one of the highly designed Japanese Barcodes)

Is the Nook Officially a Tablet?

Gizmodo Staff — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:35:21 EST

The NookDevs just got a full web browser up and running on the Nook, alongside Android Twitter/Facebook apps. At what point does the Nook cease to be an eBook reader and start to be something more? [Twitter via Android Guys]

In partnership withGizmodo is the world's most fun technology website, focused on gadgets and how they make our lives better, worse and more absurd. Source: Is the Nook Officially a Tablet? [Hacks]

Here Comes Sani-Claus: Tech Gifts for Germaphobes

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:07:40 EST

Influenza nesting on an open pore, e. coli nipping at your tongue... ah the holidays, a terrifying time of year for germaphobes. All those parties and potlucks, handshakes and hugs--it's a veritable H1N1 smorgasbord out there. That's why we've gathered this hygienic gift basket full of cutting-edge products that will sterilize the fear gripping the germaphobe in your life.

With New CEO at Design Within Reach, Is Redemption Within Reach?

Stephanie Schomer — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:32:40 EST

Design Within Reach, the modern furniture retailer that developed a nasty habit of knocking off famous designs, has taken one more step toward reviving its ailing business and repositioning itself as a trustworthy brand with authentic products.

(Read Fast Company's recent account of DWR's rise and fall here.) The company just announced the appointment of John Edelman (left) as CEO and John McPhee as COO. Prior to joining DWR, both men held the same titles at Edelman Leather, and before that, both worked at Sam & Libby, the shoe brand best known for affordable ballet flats.

The arrival of these two new execs--both will start on January 3--would seem to signal a welcome change for DWR. In the press release announcing his hiring, Edelman said that he and McPhee look forward to "helping shape the new future of DWR." "When you're trying to take a business from where it's been to something new, fresh blood is definitely a way to do that," says Neil Stern, retail analyst with McMillan Doolittle.

The question, of course, is where the fresh blood is coming from. Forget the fact that both Edelman and McPhee used to sell ballet slippers; their more relevant experience came from leading Edelman Leather, a company started by Edelman's parents to supply high-quality leathers to the fashion industry in the 1950s. Eventually, the company won the Coty award and the Neiman Marcus Award--and even hired Andy Warhol to do their graphic design. In the 1980s they began focusing on leather upholstery, and in 2007, Knoll Inc. purchased the company.

Edelman and McPhee obviously already know how to work as a team, and coming from a company that is respected throughout the industry leads us to hope Design Within Reach is getting back on the right track. What do you think? Success ahead, or more doom for DWR?

YouTube Becoming a Social Net, Google Becoming Humble?

Kit Eaton — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:33:04 EST

Google's continuing to refine the way YouTube works, and the latest move echoes something I hinted at yesterday: YouTube is becoming a social net. It now has a tie-up with Facebook so you can see what vids your friends are watching.

YouTube has long had its own friending network for logged-in users, but it's not really gained much traction, and the "Recent Activity" window for your friends will have been empty for most logged-in users who never befriended anyone (and probably only had a YouTube account to gain access to the firewalled adult content anyway.) But the powers that be at Google are wise to the explosive social networking phenomenon, and have decided that the best way to proceed is to tap into the social status sharing powers of Facebook instead.

From yesterday there's now an opt-in scheme for YouTube members that lets you see what YouTube clips your Facebook friends are sharing. For sure, you can just do this by looking at your Facebook newsfeed in Facebook itself, but that requires picking the videos out of all the other nonsense that the newsfeed contains. If you're up for a whiling away casual lunchtime chortling at the same clips of cats falling into boxes that your pals are viewing, then the new system would seem ideal.

That seems like I'm pooh-poohing the whole idea, but actually there are some bigger implications of this move. Firstly there's a whole massive pile of YouTube sharing going on on Facebook--the company notes up to 46 years worth of footage are watched via Facebook links every day. If YouTube can attract all these people to its own site for preference, then it'll be able to sell them advertising more efficiently. It's also a signifier that Google really wants YouTube to capture the role of the on-demand TV channel for Web users--by injecting a social element into the mix, it's trying to turn YouTube into a more complete experience...a little like the idea behind live Twitterfeeds on regular TV.

And finally, it's another sign that Google is admitting it can't do social networking/lifecasting by itself, so it's co-opting the successful competition in to the system. In this case it's Facebook, which no one would deny rules the social network world, but previously it was Twitter's live Tweet feed which really adds a sense of real time urgency into Google's new real time search powers. To be honest, the Twitter tie-up really was better for Twitter than Google, whereas you can almost see the Facebook tie-up as being bad for Facebook...

But the significance is still there: Google, giant mega-machine that tries to do everything, is beginning to admit that actually it's not good at everything. Quite a promising sign for a better, smarter Google in the future.

[Via The Wall Street Journal]

Third Magazine Publisher Introduces Hand-Wavy Tablet PC Format

Kit Eaton — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:29:20 EST

This is one very unexpected trend: Yet another magazine publisher has demonstrated how it thinks its future might look as a digital edition on a tablet PC. This time it's Swedish publisher Bonnier, and their video is clever. But wrong.

Check out the clip below--it's a fictional CGI number drawn up for Bonnier by London designers Schulze, Webb and Jones. The whole point is to demonstrate "one possible vision for digital magazines in the near future" and it's pretty slick, from a geeky eye-candy point of view.

What did you see there? Among the corporate speak and incredibly hand-wavy and ill-defined sense of what kind of actual digital coding system a tablet-edition magazine might adopt, there was at least one gem. And it's the same thing that lies behind the digital makeovers that the other big-name mag publishers have been touting recently: The digital versions will be enhanced tweaks of the existing magazine format. And by that, I mean they'll make the most of the graphical and user-interactivity powers of a computer-based edition but they'll essentially remain more or less the same from a user viewpoint. The Bonnier video even makes special note of the iconic nature of some magazine covers, and comments on how comsumers love the existing format. That may be all very true, but isn't there a massively missed opportunity here?

I mean the tablet editions offer the chance to invent an entirely new system for presenting features, articles and advertising compared to paper magazines--a level of graphical, video real-time, audio feed, and interaction that magazines haven't ever had. Think of the cleverest Web-tech, and imagine it squeezed into your favorite mag, laden with custom graphics and Flash, and hooked up to Twitter and Facebook.

It's not easy to do this. It'll require massive rethinking, re-staffing and some very fleet-footed maneuvers inside magazine publishing houses, I agree. But surely the way to tackle a disruptive tech that looks set to completely upset your current business model is to reinvent, reimagine, and grasp the nettle? I don't even expect the early e-magazines to be all that clever, but these video clips are future concepts for devices that as yet are only vaporware. And they seem (particularly this recent one) to be more like the usual paper and ink magazine jazzed-up with mere Powerpoint-esque animations for the imagery and body text. Where's the raw imaginative creativity, hey chaps?

Here's Time Inc.'s vision of the tablet magazine of the future:

And here's the one from Wired publisher Conde Nast:

[Via Paid Content]

The Gene Bubble: Curing Cancer, One Misleading Article at a Time

David H. Freedman — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:19:27 EST

Great news for the cancerphobic, by which I mean everyone: Scientists have cracked the cancer genome! Or at least they've done it for lung and skin cancer, two of the scariest varieties. This is an enormous breakthrough for cancer research that's going to lead to prevention and treatments--indeed, it ushers in an entire new era in the fight against cancer.

I learned all this from a Reuters article ("Gene maps to transform scientists' work on cancer") describing newly published research from a team of scientists. Unfortunately, the article is stunningly misleading, so please put everything I said above right out of your mind. Sure, some really fine science took place here, and some day we may get something from it. But it's fundamental research that is of little or no foreseeable relevance to your or my prospects for getting lung or skin cancer, or for having much luck with treatment if we do.

So-called "gene maps" of cancer tumors are old hat. The idea is to identify which genes differ between a cancerous cell and a normal one, in the hopes that the results will help scientists figure out how to target these villainous genes with drugs, or at least to spot them in people early on as a trigger for preventive action or fast treatment before the cancer spreads. These maps have been done for many different types of tumors, and they always end up disappointing from the point of view of practical advances, and for a simple reason: Cancer turns out not to be a matter of a few clearly identifiable genes going bonkers ("mutating"), but rather involves misbehavior of dozens or even hundreds of genes out of rogue's gallery of as many as thousands of genes. In other words, there isn't one simple way that genetic insults bring on cancer--there are a bewildering number of ways, leading scientists, when they are being ingenuous about it, to despair of being able to look at a non-tumor cell and tell if it's likely to become a cancer cell, or to figure out which genes to target in a cancerous one. In the case of the lung and skin cancer study, some 23,000 and 33,000 gene mutations turned up, respectively. Oops!

But the Reuters article, apparently based on a press briefing provided by the scientists, provides the impression the gene maps are just the ticket scientists have been looking for when it comes to beating back cancer. I'm sure a lot of other publications will get it at least as wrong, and it's a real shame--this kind of hype raises false hopes, distorts our view of our own health and of how research works, and ultimately leads to what we might think of as "science-advice burnout": We hear of so many bold breakthroughs that ultimately fail to impact our actual health prospects that we eventually stop paying attention to what scientists are doing. In this case I put much of the blame on the researchers and that briefing, in which they apparently not only encouraged the press to see their work as being of enormous practical import, but offered up the silly but very reporter-tasty suggestion that each cigarette a person smokes can now be linked to a specific number of gene mutations. Sure, it's literally true that smoking a cigarette can in theory trigger mutations that can in turn help trigger a cancer, but we've known that for decades. (For a more balanced take on the research, which will be appearing in the journal Nature, see Nature's own news report.)

The fact is, the only clear thing the research really did, in terms of news you can use, was provide irrefutable confirmation that smoking and exposure to sun lead to gene mutations that sometimes lead to lung and skin cancer, respectively. So now you know: Don't smoke, and don't fry yourself in the sun. Isn't medical progress wonderful?

David H. Freedman's next book, Wrong, about why expert opinion is often flawed, will be published by Little, Brown in 2010. He also wrote about The Gene Bubble in the November 2009 issue of the magazine.

NASA's AIRS Returns From Space With Valuable CO2 Measurements

Ariel Schwartz — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:27:21 EST

It will be hard to make good on the climate negotiations currently being worked out in Copenhagen without readily-accessible information on carbon emissions. One day, the Planetary Skin Institute may provide all the info we need, but until then, newly-released data from NASA's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) will have to suffice.

The data, collected aboard NASA's Aqua spacecraft, is based on 7 years of observations about CO2 levels, carbon monoxide, water vapor, methane, and temperatures in the mid-troposphere (an area located 3 to 7 miles above the Earth's surface). AIRS has already revealed some surprises--namely by bucking the conventional assumption that CO2 is evenly distributed when it rises from the ground. Instead, AIRS shows that CO2 distribution is lumpy, with the southern hemisphere acting a virtual garbage dump for the emissions released from the northern hemisphere. So while the north produces up to four times more CO2 than the south, winds are actually blowing all the emissions to cleaner parts of the world.

There's a bright side to NASA's seemingly-depressing data: it can help us figure out how to best use carbon capture and storage (CCS), and may one day assist in the deployment of geoengineering technologies. While geoengineering (read: planting synthetic CO2-absorbing trees, sending off cloud-spraying ships) is incredibly controversial, it may be our best shot if talks in Copenhagen break down.

[NASA via Greentech Media]

iPhone Gaming Grows Up With EA's Big Franchise Games

Kit Eaton — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:26:17 EST

It's been suspected, and Apple itself hasn't missed the marketing opportunity, but it looks like the iPhone and iPod Touch are turning into serious gaming systems. The latest confirmation of this? EA's releasing a bunch of big-franchise games.

EA's upcoming games are Need For Speed Shift, Spore Creatures, and The Simpsons Game--titles that are among the company's upper-tier offerings on other gaming systems. As noted over at VentureBeat, these are titles that could be called second-generation iPhone games, coming after the initial wave of simple, casual games that were quickly written (or were classics that ported across from other platforms) in order to make the most of the App Store gold rush.

Those first iPhone games were by no means a bad thing--they quickly established how powerful the iPhone really was, and demonstrated the prodigious power of the App Store. And that then attracted the bigger names in game writing. Which is where EA enters the scene. The notion that these three new big titles are "second generation" comes from the time and investment EA has made in optimizing the games' software to squeeze even more out of the iPhone's processing and graphical powers, and in adjusting the game play to suit the touchscreen and accelerometer systems in the device.

Hence Need For Speed Shift has much better graphics than an earlier Shift title, with shadows and lighting effects made possible by the OpenGL 2.0 ES capabilities of the phone, and has tilt-control steering. And the cash investment EA has made is demonstrated by the 20 car options licensed from real car makers. Spore Creatures is a prequel to the successful Spore, with simpler 2-D graphics than Shift, but with the same sort of complex creature editing that makes the full Spore title so clever. The Simpsons Game speaks for itself, and is a neat tie-up of the iPhone's touchscreen, purported e-comic powers and a highly prominent title.

What's the bigger picture though? It's an interesting one: The App Store has seen an explosive growth, and the biggest slice of the app pie consists of games. So far the titles have mainly been new, or simple classics with the odd big-name game thrown in. But with EA spending the kind of money they seem to be on the new games, it's an undeniable sign that the App Store is maturing, and turning into a big enough market that the billion dollar gaming industry is sensing opportunities. If more and more big-name games make their way onto the platform, that's going to radically change the landscape--it'll be harder for mom and pop games to get noticed, for one. And it'll really highlight the iPhone/iPod as the future for portable gaming...especially when the next iPhone comes out in mid-2010 with even more impressive graphics and processing powers.

I have just one complaint: These three games may be sweet, but where the heck is my iPhone version of SSX. Surely the accelerometer and touchscreen are just built for this sort of fast-paced snowboarding title, hey EA Sports?

[Via VentureBeat]

Hard-Up Miami Herald Virtually Begs for Charity Micropayments

Kit Eaton — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:25:49 EST

Ruh-roh...this sounds like a very sour note at the end of a year that's seen many traditional newspapers and magazines hit trouble: The Miami Herald is so strapped for cash it's soliciting charitable Web donations on a per-story basis.

Obviously the paper isn't completely out of cash as it's operations are ongoing after layoffs and cutbacks, but its management has seen the writing on the wall, er, the Web, and knows that its income from sales of the print version is likely to dip lower. Hence the request to spend a little cash supporting the paper's future--which is exactly how it's being spun by the Herald on its donations page.

"If you value The Miami Herald's local news reporting and investigations, but prefer the convenience of the Internet, please consider a voluntary payment for the Web news that matters to you," runs the plea, and it's charming for its absolute honesty. To that end it might actually work, as readers who click on the "Support ongoing news coverage" button at the bottom of each post may be tempted to tap in their credit card data to hand over a dollar or two.

The paper sees this as an experiment, and there're no plans to erect a pay wall for paid content. But the most attractive part of the experiment, from the publishing world point of view, is that it's a totally different payment model to the Berlin Wall closed-access payment systems that Rupert Murdoch and his Net-fearing cronies would love to fence their content off with. It's even simpler than the bonus content "member's clubs" that some publishers are proposing.

And it's got a precedent on the Internet. Because of systems like donationware (where users can get a 100% working bit of software, and send however much money they think it's worth to the author if they like it) and even the "pay what you like" scheme that Radiohead championed with their album In Rainbows.

[Via NBCMiami, @JimMacMillan]