Google has announced that it will shut down its News Archives project, an initiative aimed at digitizing the world’s newspapers and making them available online. In an email sent to numerous partners including the Boston Phoenix, Google said it would no longer accept, scan, and index archival material from newspapers. The search giant will instead focus on “newer projects that help the industry, such as Google One Pass, a platform that enables publishers to sell content and subscriptions directly from their own sites.” Google’s News Archives project began five years ago and currently…

Print is dead. It isn’t dying. There is no chance of a resurrection. It’s done. Gone. Save the trees! Or is it? While many still believe that technology will save all, there’s still something that can be said about picking up a newspaper and reading long-form articles or books without the use of electricity (other than lighting in the room). While there may never be a need or ability for print media to make a full recovery, there will (likely) always be a need to chop down more trees and squeeze for squids for their ink. Thanks to our friends at GetSatisfaction, we can compare newspapers, magazines,…

Games go social, computers go mobile, and communication goes online, but many newspapers and magazines still haven’t made the connection; Or as the old saying goes: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” It hasn’t ever been more relevant than today when New Corp failed to convince many of its publishers that an online subscription-based newsstand was worth their while. Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp, is always on the hunt to find new ways to make people pay, even if that means pissing people off. The concept of an online subscription newsstand sounds like a fair middle ground;…

Got a world class newspaper you want to keep publishing as tastes go digital? The LA Times has, and so it has introduced its rather marvelous and all brand new Los Angeles Times News Reader iPhone app. A $1.99 app which delivers a nice and easy route into all the influential newspaper’s editorial content. There’s no half measures here, no attempt to give readers a tiny morsel of the content to hook them into expensive monthly subscription fees. Not from the LA Times — instead you get news, commentary and photography. Oh, and it has an offline mode so you can read it on the subway. Better yet, the…