Interesting feature in the New York Times on Macrumors.com founder and senior editor, Arnold Kim, and his decision to stop practicing medicine and pursue blogging full time. The kicker: his popular blog now nets him a hefty six figure income (the same amount he made as a doctor):
Stepping away from medicine felt somewhat strange, he admits. Dr. Kim was bringing home a six-figure income as a doctor, but he recognized that blogging was becoming more lucrative. He says the site also yields a six-figure income for him.
About three years ago, through a combination of Google text advertising, banner ads and commissions on product sales, MacRumors started turning a substantial profit. While Apple is obviously not an advertiser, other technology-oriented companies are, including Verizon, the online audio-book store Audible.com and the information technology products company CDW.
Still, he hesitated to make it a full-time job because he enjoyed medicine — and he had invested almost $200,000 in his education. But he finally concluded that “on paper, it was an easy decision.”
Just goes to show you that content (plus traffic) is king!
MagCloud enables you to publish your own magazines. All you have to do is upload a PDF and we’ll take care of the rest: printing, mailing, subscription management, and more.
It costs you nothing to publish a magazine on MagCloud. To buy a magazine costs 20¢ per page, plus shipping. For example, a 20-page magazine would be four bucks plus shipping. And you can make money! You set your issue price and all proceeds above the base price go to you. Shipping is a flat $1.40/copy (USPS first class mail) for quantities 1-9, or a flat $13 for quantities from 10-100 (per box of 10-100).
I really wish this service was around way back when the idea of Gureala first entered my mind. Back when I wanted to bring the vision to life in the form of a monthly or bi-montly arts & culture mag, but settled on Moveable Type after peeping the costs of printing and distribution. I really have to tip my hat to HP on this one (yep-yep, MagCloud is an HP Labs creation). Lots of possibilities here. I’m really excited to see how bloggers will take to this service, as well as the types of publications that we’ll begin to in the MagCloud library (there’s already a nice little collection forming) over the next several months. Call me corny, but I’d really like to see some blog year in review-type pubs come out of this…crazy possibilities. What say you?
Finally! After months of speculation and tons of leaked photos hitting the web almost daily, Steve Jobs & Co. officially introduced the 3G iPhone to the world during today’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference in San Francisco.
Aside from a thinner profile, solid metal buttons, and a glossy plastic back panel (which will be available in black and white colorways), everything on the outside looks about the same. Unfortunately, there’s no front facing camera for video conferencing as many had predicted.
The real magic, however, is on the inside: faster web speeds (twice as fast as the first gen. iPhone), push email, GPS, improved battery life and support for tons of 3rd party apps available via Apple’s App Store at launch. Speaking of which, the officially launch date is set for July 11 (current iPhone owners will receive the 2.0 software update on that day). That’s a little disappointing considering the way we were teased with all the awesome app demos during the keynote. In the meantime, start stacking your chips ($199 for the 8GB model, $299 for the 16GB model) and plotting your launch day plan of action.
Lots of major announcements coming out of the Apple camp today, which means that I’ll be glued to the following sites live blogging today’s WWDC events:
The only issues that threaten to blow The Netflix Player off my radar, and keep me from being an early adopter:
1.) Only a fraction of the Netflix library is available for viewing (”Instant Watching” titles only).
2.) Although the player itself is HD-ready, titles in the “Instant Watching” library are only available in near-DVD quality at the moment.
The near-dvd picture quality I can handle, especially since Netflix plans to make HD movies and tv shows available in the future (peep: faq’s). But the limited, and rather sub par quality of the Netflix “Instant Watching” library is a whole ‘nother story. Right now I’d compare it to one of those bargain DVD racks found in some your favorite big box stores–a few gems here and there, but lots of filler in between. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m just catching the news about Grand Theft Auto IV’s first week sales, and while I expected the game to do damn well in its first week, the official numbers being reported are downright insane!
Just to put things into perspective here, *your favorite rapper* doesn’t do those kinds of numbers in two weeks. Ha! Just kidding. But seriously, this smashes previous records set by Microsoft’s Halo 3 ($300 million during its first week in stores last September), and the movie Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End ($401 million during its first six days in theaters). Pretty major, right?!
As far as the game itself, I’ve had it for a few days now and all I can say is that it’s an experience. I mean, I’ve played (and thoroughly enjoyed) the previous GTA editions, but GTA IV takes it to an entirely different level. From the music (celebrity stations with just about every genre available), the characters, the missions, and even the new multiplayer capabilities…Rockstar went all out. I’m leaving out many of the details here (don’t want to leak too many spoilers), but the comments are open for discussion and *cheats*. If you’re an Xbox Live member make yourself known. I think I may put my gamertag out there if there are enough of you guys around.
It sounds like Netflix is halfway open to the idea:
Online movie rental company Netflix Inc has surveyed its subscribers to gauge their interest in streaming movies to their televisions using Microsoft Corp’s Xbox 360, a Netflix spokesman said on Monday.
Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey declined to say whether the survey indicated a soon-to-be announced partnership between the two companies, but said Netflix was interested in getting its movies to consumers’ TVs “in as many ways as possible.”
As a current Netflix subscriber and proud Xbox 360 owner (one of the few MS products that I ride for), this would certainly be a match made in heaven! Unfortunately, I wasn’t surveyed (what’s up with that?), but I’m hoping that those who were did their part to move Netflix in the right direction with this. We’ll find out soon enough, I’m sure.
Engadget and Boy Genius Report are just a few of the cool kids on the scene that are already spending quality time with the iPhone’s 2.0 firmware update–and they’ve got some pretty decent preview coverage too. Peep:
Well, maybe not HD exactly, but by adding &fmt=18 to the end of YouTube urls you’re directed to a version of the video with higher image and sound quality. It’s a slight increase, but it’s definitely noticeable in some cases. Try it out for yourself with the video below, and see what you get.
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