Category: Other

Many companies can’t resist the urge to piggyback on the World Cup in Germany by launching PR stunts, the one crazier than the next. This press release from Svensk Köttinformation (Swedish Meat Information) seems rather desperate. The press release is a recipe for “klopse” or “German meatballs” and the selling point is “one ball for every player”. That’s the kind of argument you heard from your grandma when you were a kid: “why do they have to run after the ball, can’t they have one ball each?”.

Charging for content on the web can be a difficult task, especially if the story is not your own. Aftonbladet only lets subscribing members know who has the number 2-10 best cleavages in Hollywood (Scarlett Johansson is top ranked) according to a poll by In Touch magazine. The rest of us just use Google.

Update: There are more examples where Aftonbladet are charging for content that is free elsewhere, like this price list of used cars:

– For subscribers only at Aftonbladet.
– Free at Auto Motor Sport (pdf).

Journalisten (“the Journalist”) writes about how the magazine Land lets advertisers influence editorial content by creative co-operation. For instance, an article about singer Christer Sjögren had been initiated through a co-operation between the magazine and Sjögren’s event company BSC. And for 20,000 – 25,000 kronor the magazine includes advertisers in its crosswords so that the answer to “Makes good chocolate” is “Droste”. [Via Vassa Eggen]

Another example of blurring lines between editorial content and ads is today’s Metro. The Swedish free daily Metro has always been creative in integrating advertisers into the paper, for example by using the entire front and back for ads. Today Metro launches a co-operation with Canon called “Metro cities – the expert’s guide to Europe”. Nowhere in these two pages it states that this is an advertisment. What it does say is that all photos are shot with a Canon Powershot. The second page contains a half page ad for – Canon PowerShot A700. Not very credible.

Aftonbladet.se was named the best Swedish website at a gala yesterday evening when IDG publication Internetworld named the best websites in ten different categories.

The ten best media websites are:

1. Aftonbladet
2. SVT
3. SR
4. Expressen
5. Dagens Nyheter
6. TV4
7. SVD
8. Näringsliv 24
9. Dagen
10. NA

The top media sites are all complimented on interactivity and new tools like blogs (Aftonbladet, Expressen), pod-tv (SVT) and pod-radio (SR).

“Aftonbladet has finally taken a step back to interactivity. Now it’s here, on the web, that the follow-up discussions take place during the tv evening, and it’s here that the blog revolution seriously took off”

About Dagens Nyheter the jury writes:
“The only thing we are wondering about is why editor-in-chief Wifstrand persist in writing the blog that is the hardest to read in the country – and probably the most expensive.”

I agree that Aftonbladet is slightly better at implementing blogs on the site than Expressen, but it’s blog hosting service was launched about two months after Expressen’s. This was less than two months ago, back in April. So to say that this is where the blog revolution took off is a bit over-generous. Or was this a reference to Fredrik Virtanen’s blog?

Tags: media web, media, blogs, media.

The Swedish police closed down the bittorrent tracker the Pirate Bay on Wednesday and on Thursday hackers went after the website of the Swedish police. The website was closed late Thursday after a denial of service attack. Tonight hackers were able to put the website of the Swedish Government out of business. As of this morning the site is still not up. For a while a message to Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström was up on the site: “Thomas – we want our freedom back”. Aftonbladet has the screen dump here.

Tags: pirate bay, hackers, police, Pirate Bay.