<div id="popup_box_thanks" style="display:none" onClick="close_popup_thanks('popup_box_thanks', 'ts')"><br>Thanks for submitting your tip! All submissions are moderated by an editor before appearing online. We've reset the form so you can enter another tip. Or you can close the tip submission box. <div class="x_close" id="thanks_upper_right"><a href="javascript:void(0)" onmousedown="close_popup_thanks('popup_box_thanks', 'ts'); return true;">Close</a></div></div>
<div class="tbf_row"><div class="tbf_wide_extra_top not_bold">Please submit only technical tips that will help other TidBITS readers better use their Macs, iPhones, and related software and hardware. All product announcements should be sent to <a href="mailto:releases@tidbits.com">releases@tidbits.com</a>.</div></div>
<div class="tbf_left">URL</div><div class="tbf_right"><input type="text" value="" name="tip_link_url" tabindex="3"><span class="tip_description"><br>Enter the URL to a Web page that supports your tip.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="spacer"></div>
<div class="tbf_row">
<div class="tbf_left">Linked text</div><div class="tbf_right"><input type="text" value="" name="tip_link_label" tabindex="4"><span class="tip_description"><br>Enter the name of the page linked above.</span></div>
<div class="tbf_wide"><input type="submit" value="Preview Your Tip" name="preview_tip" onClick="fill_preview('tipbits_enclosure_preview', 'ts', this.form); return false;" tabindex="7"> <input type="submit" value="Send Us Your Tip!" name="submit_this_tip" onClick="handle_tip_submission('ts', '', this.form, 'tip'); return false;" tabindex="8"></div>
</div>
<div class="spacer"></div>
<div class="tbf_row">
<div class="tbf_wide"><span class="fine_print">When you submit a tip, you give us permission to use it. Read <a href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="generic_show_hide('tip_terms')">our terms</a> for more details. All submissions are reviewed before publication.</span></div>
<div class="tbf_wide"><span class="fine_print">Our terms: By submitting a tip, you agree to assign TidBITS Publishing Inc., a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual license to reproduce, publish, and distribute your tip in connection with the TidBITS Web site and associated products in any media. You agree that you created the content you submitted, and that you have the right to assign us this license. You give us permission to use your name, but your email address won't be publicly displayed or shared. We review all submissions before publication, and reserve the right to select which submissions we feel are appropriate for our readers and to edit those we publish.</span></div>
<div id="comment_thanks" style="display:none" onClick="close_popup_thanks('comment_thanks', 'comm')"><br>Thanks for submitting a comment! Please check your email for a link that, when clicked, will verify that you're a real person and cause your comment to appear immediately. <div class="x_close" id="comment_upper_right"><a href="javascript:void(0)" onmousedown="close_popup_thanks('comment_thanks', 'comm'); return true;">Close</a></div></div>
<div class="tbf_wide"><span class="fine_print">Our terms: We reserve the right to edit or delete any comment, so please post thoughtfully. We use your email address <i>only</i> to send you a one-time verification message confirming that you posted this comment. We also store your address to allow you to verify using other Web browsers in the future. For more info, see our <a href="http://db.tidbits.com/privacy.html">privacy policy</a>.</span></div>
<li><a href="/feeds/tidbits.rss" title="Subscribe via RSS" class="gettb">RSS <img src="/images/feed-icon-12x12.gif" width="12" height="12" border="0" class="nav_img" alt="Subscribe via RSS"></a></li>
<li><a href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=276986548" title="Subscribe to the podcast" class="gettb">Podcast <img src="/images/feed-icon-12x12_podcast.gif" width="12" height="12" border="0" class="nav_img" alt="Subscribe to the postcast"></a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.twitter.com/TidBITS" title="Get Article Updates via Twitter" class="gettb">Twitter <img src="/images/feed_icon_12x12_twitter.png" width="12" height="12" border="0" class="nav_img" alt="Get Article Updates via Twitter"></a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/TidBITS/195314925519" title="Go to the TidBITS Page at Facebook" class="gettb">Facebook <img src="/images/feed_icon_12x12_facebook.gif" width="12" height="12" border="0" class="nav_img" alt="Go to the TidBITS Page at Facebook"></a></li>
<li><a href="javascript:void(0)" title="Sections" class="tabhead" onClick="return showhide('articleslist')">Sections <span id="articleslist_triangle"><img src="/images/nav_triangle_open.gif" width="9" height="9" border="0" class="navtriangle" id="articleslist_tri_image" alt="Click to show or hide the contents of this section."></span></a></li>
<li><a href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="return showhide('stafflist')" title="Staff" class="tabhead">Staff <span id="stafflist_triangle"><img src="/images/nav_triangle_closed.gif" width="9" height="9" border="0" class="navtriangle" id="stafflist_tri_image" alt="Click to show or hide the contents of this section."></span></a></li>
<li><a href="javascript:void(0)" title="Issues" class="tabhead" onClick="return showhide('issuelist')">Weekly Issues <span id="issuelist_triangle"><img src="/images/nav_triangle_closed.gif" width="9" height="9" border="0" class="navtriangle" id="issuelist_tri_image" alt="Click to show or hide the contents of this section."></span></a></li>
<li><a href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="return showhide('abouttidbits')" title="About TidBITS" class="tabhead">About TidBITS <span id="abouttidbits_triangle"><img src="/images/nav_triangle_closed.gif" width="9" height="9" border="0" class="navtriangle" id="abouttidbits_tri_image" alt="Click to show or hide the contents of this section."></span></a></li>
<div class="center_top">Thoughtful, detailed coverage of the Mac, iPhone, and iPad, plus the best-selling <a href="http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/?pt=TB-TAGLINE" style="color:yellow">Take Control</a> ebooks.</div>
<!-- begin centercolumn -->
<div id="centercolumn">
<!-- begin rightcolumn_container -->
<div id="rightcolumn_container">
<!-- begin rightcolumn -->
<!-- rightcolumn is embedded within centercolumn so featured text wraps around it -->
</div><!-- end tearoffbox_wide_container for watchlist items -->
<!-- begin tearoff box wide -->
<div class="tearoffbox_wide_container">
<div class="tearoffbox_wide_tips">
<div class="tip_display">
<div class="tips_sponsor_logo">
</div>
<h6>Launching Maps from Address Book</h6>
<p><p>Need fast directions to a contact's location in Address Book? By Control-clicking on the contact's address and selecting "Map Of" from the resulting menu, a Google map displaying the location immediately opens in your browser.</p></p>
<div class="tbf_wide_80" id="hc_rc_3949">To help us avoid automated posts and misuse of our site, please enter the words below.</div><div class="x_close_row" id="hc_upper_right2_3949"><a href="javascript:void(0)" onmousedown="HidePopupContent('hc_3949', 'hc', '3949'); return true;">Close</a></div>
<div class="featured_meta"><div class="meta_article">08 Feb 1999 | <a href="/article/5272?print_version=1">Print <span class="shift_up"><img src="/images/printer_icon.gif" alt="Printer-Friendly Version of This Article" border="0" width="9" height="10"></span></a></div></div>
<div id="article_box_3949"><P>Late last week, Mac Publishing, the parent company of Macworld, MacWEEK.com, and eMediaweekly, announced that it has ceased publication of eMediaweekly. It wasn't around for long: Mac Publishing first announced that it would be transmogrifying MacWEEK into the cross-platform eMediaweekly back in May of 1998, near the end of the recent Apple death spiral.</P><P><<A HREF="http://db.tidbits.com/article/04890">http://db.tidbits.com/article/04890</A>></P><P><STRONG>Market Timing</STRONG> -- In retrospect, eMediaweekly's timing was unfortunate. The plans to move from MacWEEK to a less Macintosh-specific publication had been in the works long before the May announcement, and although Steve Jobs had preemptively unveiled the iMac less than two weeks before, no one could have predicted that Apple would reverse its ailing fortunes so quickly. By the time eMediaweekly's first issue appeared at the end of August, the iMac had shipped to great fanfare and impressive sales figures, and the Macintosh industry was on the way back up. What started as a seemingly clever way to ease out of the failing Macintosh market suddenly looked like a soldier surrendering just as the tide of battle changed.</P><P>It's easy to think that the MacWEEK folks weren't being loyal to the Macintosh cause. But as I've tried to say in the past, there's a big difference between the individuals who make up a company and the company as an entity. I know that many of the people on the MacWEEK staff, though as shaken as the rest of us by Apple's problems, still believed in the Macintosh. On a business level, though, Mac Publishing simply couldn't afford to lose money on MacWEEK for long. The move to eMediaweekly was a business decision, and though it looked bad for Apple to have MacWEEK go away, replacing it with eMediaweekly was a softer blow. Ironically, even if Mac Publishing had doggedly continued publishing MacWEEK at a loss, it's entirely possible that the magazine would still have had to cease publication. Having that happen <EM>now</EM> would have been far more damaging to Apple than the loss of eMediaweekly.</P><P><STRONG>Who Was Reading?</STRONG> eMediaweekly targeted digital media professionals using the Mac, Windows, and Unix, a somewhat vague audience consisting mainly of previous MacWEEK readers. Although eMediaweekly sported a circulation of 85,000 and obviously met the needs of some people (judging from testimonials in the magazine), our informal surveys found readers somewhat confused about the focus and generally uninterested in the Windows and Unix content. Granted, we're deep in the Macintosh industry, but so were many of eMediaweekly's readers who may have found the content less compelling than when the masthead read MacWEEK.</P><P><STRONG>Show Me the Money</STRONG> -- Although the magazine's content was cross-platform, eMediaweekly's advertising-based revenue stream was not. I recently spent a few minutes counting the advertisements in eMediaweekly's 11-Jan-99 issue. I created three categories: Macintosh-specific, platform-independent, and Windows-specific (I would have included Unix ads, but there weren't any.)</P><P>There were <EM>no</EM> ads aimed purely at Windows users, which implied eMediaweekly hadn't managed to attract advertising dollars from the Windows industry. For a controlled circulation magazine aimed at a cross-platform audience, that failure alone may have proved fatal.</P><P>Using a loose interpretation of what was a platform-independent ad (printers, memory, data recovery services, etc.), I counted 12 Macintosh ads and 27 platform-independent ads. With a tighter interpretation of "platform-independent" based on the wording and focus of the ad, I counted 23 Macintosh ads and only 16 truly platform-independent ads. Although I haven't gone back to an old issue of MacWEEK, I'd be willing to bet that ratio didn't change much from MacWEEK to eMediaweekly.</P><P><STRONG>The Online Upshot</STRONG> -- The question that remains is what will happen to MacWEEK.com, the heavily trafficked online arm of MacWEEK that survived the print publication's transition to eMediaweekly. Over the last few months, MacWEEK.com has relied less on content from eMediaweekly, and has started to create partnerships with other sources of Macintosh content, TidBITS included.</P><P>MacWEEK.com has eked out profits online, which (as we know from long experience with TidBITS) isn't easy and can be done only with a small dedicated staff, tight control of costs, and a focused online approach. It's possible that the elimination of the unprofitable eMediaweekly will free up additional staff or operating capital for MacWEEK.com, although it's equally possible that Mac Publishing will decide to concentrate solely on its main publication, Macworld.</P><P><STRONG>Bon Voyage</STRONG> -- In the end, the people who lose the most are our friends and colleagues at eMediaweekly, many of whom were laid off. With a limited number of journalism jobs in the Macintosh industry, many will have to search further afield. When MacUser and Macworld merged, we were impressed at the jobs many of those writers and editors managed to find, and we wish the eMediaweekly staff the best of luck as well.</P><!-- eMediaweekly Folds After Five Months Adam C. Engst --></div>
<!-- end article text -->
<!-- PayBITS -->
<p> </p><div class="sponsorbox">
<div class="sponsortext"><A HREF="http://www.usefulfruit.com/tb"><IMG SRC="http://db.tidbits.com/images/badges/pear-note-icon50x50.png" ALT="" HEIGHT="50" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0" ALIGN="left"></A>Pear Note 2: More complete, understandable notes on your Mac.<br />Typed notes are blended with recorded audio, video, and slides<br />to create notes that make more sense when you need them most.<br />Learn more at <<a href="http://www.usefulfruit.com/tb">http://www.usefulfruit.com/tb</a>>!</div>
