Le Monde Diplomatique has put its monthly English publication online as a digital edition, along with a year of back issues.
Le Monde Diplomatique has opted to go with Exact Editions, which offers online replicas of print editions rather than emailing a digital version to the subscriber, which is what Le Monde the paper had done up to now. Exact Editions is building up an impressive collection of major print titles: it only launched in March 2006 but clients brands include the Spectator, Prospect and Red Pepper as well as various specialist lifestyle titles.
There are 36 titles on the site and MD Daryl Rayner said that is likely to reach 150 by the end of the year. Le Monde will bring other language versions on board in time. (Update: this is just the English-language version of the monthly Le Monde Diplomatique as distinct from Le Monde, though they are both part of Le Monde-Press Group.)
You'll need to subscribe to read Le Monde Diplomatique on the site, though a sample edition is available to view. Subscriptions are £19 for one year, but if you subscribe to other titles on the Exact Editions site you can cross-search. Those kind of cross-search functions are an advantage for advertisers too; a search for Volvo, for example, would bring up not just editorial but relevant ads. Another interesting gizmo is that phone numbers become click-able in the digital edition, which means Skype automatically opens when you click. Nice.
I'm not normally a fan of digital editions but I have to admit this is pretty slick. Much of the value is in the archive, of course.
• Baffled by computers?
We've got a piece today by Rebecca Smithers on a survey by Computing Which? that has found 50% of Britons are a bit scared by computers. Two main parts to this: firstly, that older people are "voluntary excluding" themselves from using the internet with 56% choosing not to go online because they feel overwhelmed by computers and jargon.
That'll be my Mum then, who hadn't noticed the address bar and thought you surfed by entering web addresses into Google's search box. "I entered all the dots and the slashes but it's not taking me to the right place. Is Google cracking up or something?" Unfortunately we were talking by phone, which meant it took about 15 minutes to work out what she meant. Bless.
Secondly, schools are hampering children's learning potential even though this is a generation that is online every day. Many limit children's online activity and ban sites like MySpace and YouTube.
Is it worth noting that the survey was conducted by post?
• Haymarket buys motoring community site
Hot on the deals of the revelation about the BBC developing its social nets, Haymarket has bought Pistonheads.com, a motoring community site. Founder Dave Edmonston (or Ted to Pistonheads) said in this statement to site users he had had several approaches for the business but wanted the site to sit alongside Haymarket's Autocar and WhatCar? magazines. He'll continue to oversee the site and said there won't be any radical plans to change the site: "it's a site and community that has proven itself and doesn't need big changes."
• CBS announces web deals
CBS is to put mobile TV channels on Verizon's mobile phone network in the US, which adds another new media stream to alongside its TV shows deal with iTunes and Google Video. At the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas this week he gave interviews to USAToday and to paidContent: "When you consider where we have come in 12 months--it seems like five years--it's only been 12 months, when you see the number of deals we've made, I think the perception of CBS as a company amongst this crowd at CES is very different than it was a year ago. I don't think you hear us referred to as an old media company very often."
