Shares of Corning Inc. fell sharply on Tuesday after the specialty glass and ceramics maker said its fourth-quarter revenue would miss previous estimates.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=BgMHN"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=BgMHN" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=uNg3n"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=uNg3n" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=9YEzn"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=9YEzn" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ibtimes/tech/~4/457506412" height="1" width="1"/

Hewlett-Packard says it expects fiscal fourth-quarter results above Wall Street's expectations despite the bad economy. The news is sending the company's shares up sharply in premarket trading.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=UaVxN"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=UaVxN" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=iCEgn"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=iCEgn" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=BTMcn"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=BTMcn" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ibtimes/tech/~4/457177534" height="1" width="1"/

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/46495?ns=guardianpageName=Environment%3A+World+on+track+to+meet+Kyoto+targets%2C+says+UN+climate+chiefch=Environmentc3=guardian.co.ukc4=Poznan+%28environment%29%2CEnvironment%2CCarbon+emissions+%28Environment%29%2CPollution+%28Environment%29%2CUnited+Nations+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CBusiness%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29c5=Unclassified%2CClimate+Change%2CBusiness+Markets%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CEthical+Living%2CCharitiesc6=David+Adamc7=2008_11_18c8=1119698c9=articlec10=GUc11=Environmentc12=Poznan+climate+change+conferencec13=c14=h2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FPoznan+climate+change+conference" width="1" height="1" //divpThe world is on track to meet its greenhouse gas targets under the Kyoto protocol, according to UN figures released today. /ppEmissions by the 40 industrialised nations that agreed binding cuts in pollution are down 5% on 1990 levels — the target set under Kyoto. But the drop has little to do with climate policies: the bulk of the decline is down to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent economic decline in eastern European countries in the 1990s. Without these nations, with so-called "economies in transition", greenhouse gas emissions have grown by almost 10% since 1990, the figures show. /ppThe UN released the data ahead of a key meeting of environment ministers to discuss climate change in a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/poznan"Poznan/a, Poland, next month./ppYvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN climate secretariat, said the figures showed emissions have risen sharply since the turn of the century. /pp"The biggest recent increase in emissions of industrialised countries has come from economies in transition, which have seen a rise of 7.4% in greenhouse-gas emissions within the 2000 to 2006 time frame," he said. "The figures clearly underscore the urgency for the UN negotiating process to make good progress in Poznan and move forward quickly in designing a new agreement to respond to the challenge of climate change."/ppAmong industrialised countries, 16 are on target to meet their Kyoto obligations including France, the UK, Greece and Hungary, the UN said. Some 20 countries are lagging, including Canada, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand and Spain. /ppNations that miss their Kyoto target in 2012 will have a penalty of an extra 33% added to whatever cut they agree under a new treaty, de Boer said./ppEmissions reported under Kyoto do not include pollution from aviation and shipping, as these are classed as international activities not attributable to countries./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/poznan"Poznan climate change conference/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/carbonemissions"Carbon emissions/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/pollution"Pollution/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/unitednations"United Nations/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climatechange"Climate change/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a

Lower petrol prices pull consumer prices inflation down sharply from 16-year high and clear way for further big rate cuts

pspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010535fc252e970c-pi style=float: left;img alt=FS border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e2010535fc252e970c src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010535fc252e970c-800wi style=margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; title=FS //a Francis Schaeffer referred to our times, some thirty years ago. and asked, quot;How Then Shall We Live?quot; I head Schaeffer speak at Wheaton near the end of his life and there was an urgency in his manner and message that was quite striking. I think he saw something that disturbed him very deeply. He looked to the future with genuine concern. While I do not entirely agree with Schaeffer#39;s specific emanalysis/em about every point he made at the time I do believe that what he saw is increasingly self-evident to discerning Christians. Our culture, as we have known it in my lifetime of almost sixty years, is rapidly changing. The result is a new era that has been called post-Christian, or more to the point, empost-Christendom/em. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;I would like to propose a simple observation here.The church has passed through four major eras of development in terms of the socio-political (cultural) environment in which we have lived and witnessed to the faith that is found in Jesus Christ. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;The first era was that faced by the earliest Christians. In this period the congregation was sharply and clearly distinguishable from the culture around it. Indeed, the church was in a tiny minority status and was universally persecuted and hated. During the first three hundred years of Christian history congregations not only drew a sharp boundary between themselves and the world but the world was antagonistic and often persecuted the church. We still find this in some parts of the world; e.g. Muslim countries, China, etc./span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;The second era overlapped the first and developed almost immediately. It retained the strong boundary between the church and the world but it sought to push the frontier of mission into the hostile world through witness. This era continued, to varying degrees, until about the time of Constantine. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010535fc25c6970c-pi style=float: left;img alt=America border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e2010535fc25c6970c src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010535fc25c6970c-800wi style=margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; title=America //a The third era lasted for centuries. It saw the church become one with the empire and the social and cultural environment around it. Mission still took place but it was a matter of pushing mission and empire (culture) in tandem. The world outside the church/empire/Christendom still remained hostile (e.g.span style=font-size: 16px; Muslim lands) but the church sent missionaries to preach the gospel and establish the church in foreign lands. /spanThis mission often looked and felt like Americanism as much as Christianity. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;The fourth era is the one we began to enter in the late 20th century. This era follows a time when the parish-congregation had sought to engage the mission frontier and then minister to a culture where there was some hostility, some indifference and some supportiveness. I think this is where we are in America now, though the quot;supportivenessquot; component is fading away rather fast. I also think, all things being equal, that we will have to move closer to the fist two eras over the next forty years or so unless we see a major change in the the wider culture of America. We are entering an age in which we will no longer minister from Christendom but in the shadow of it, a shadow that may hurt us as much as help us. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;There is no question that Schaeffer rightly saw the church in America becoming more and more like the church in Europe. At the same time there are still far more people in the churches of America than any other Western nation. But the number is in decline and the evidence that we lack a solid, biblically-informed, world view is evident everywhere. Without Christians who think and live deeply we are one generation, or less, from becoming much like the church in the rest of the West. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;What does God see when he looks at the church in America?/span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;1. Large numbers of people who still claim to follow Christ./span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;2. Growing ministries and schools, though this is beginning to slow in recent years./span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;3. A failure to grasp the great truths of the faith and be deeply formed by them./span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;4. A decrease in emreal/em church growth./span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;5. A domesticated Christ and a privatized gospel crafted by marketers in ministry and tailored for individualism. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;6. Large numbers of Christians whose lifestyle is emnot/em radically different from that of non-Christians./span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;7. Racism, sexism, hypocrisy, hero worship, materialism, busyness, destruction of the family, abortion, self-indulgence and spiritual and intellectual mediocrity. /span/ppstrongspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Bottom line: Christ does not reign supreme in our churches! /span/strong/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010535fc2618970c-pi style=float: right;img alt=Hope border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e2010535fc2618970c src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010535fc2618970c-800wi style=margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px; title=Hope //a God sees all this and must judge it. He withholds blessing and most of us never notice. He sends quot;locustsquot; who eat away at our economy, our homes and our schools. And he sends this judgment first to the church because he always begins with us first. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Unless the church opens its eyes to the real dangers then we will see more and more of what Francis Schaeffer feared would happen near the end of his life. But remember this: the Lord always sends judgment to his people in order to wake them up so he can bless them again. strongHope, as I noted last week, is found in judgment./strong/span/p

Travel to the United States has fallen sharply as Britons tighten their belts in response to the economic downturn and slide in the value of sterling.

Travel to the United States has fallen sharply as Britons tighten their belts in response to the economic downturn and slide in the value of sterling.

Travel to the United States has fallen sharply as Britons tighten their belts in response to the economic downturn and slide in the value of sterling.

pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=4921e28e14b9b92f00425ce6maxX=200maxY=236" border="0" alt="steve-forbes.jpg" title="steve-forbes.jpg" width="200" height="236" /emForbes Magazine/em and Forbes.com -- disclosure: my former employer -- will merge their sales and marketing groups "over the next few weeks," according to an email from CEO Steve Forbes a href="http://valleywag.com/5091157/forbes-memo-confirms-print-web-staff-merging"obtained by Valleywag/a./p pMore interesting: The company is "in the midst of conversations" to figure out how they can merge the two publications' editorial departments -- which are in different buildings, and work together frequently, but not intimately -- "by sometime in early 2009."/p pMakes sense, but might not be pretty -- the newsrooms have different publishing schedules and cultures./p pLast week, Forbes.com laid off staff from its ForbesAutos.com and ForbesTraveler.com sites and a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/forbes-com-lays-off-autos-traveler-staff"shuttered its conference group/a./p pFull memo, as a href="http://valleywag.com/5091157/forbes-memo-confirms-print-web-staff-merging"obtained by Valleywag/a:/p blockquote pFrom: Steve Forbesbr / Sent: Mon 11/17/2008 2:20 PMbr / To: undisclosed-recipientsbr / Subject: News/p pWe want to let you know of a series of structural changes that will enable us not only to better weather the current economic torm, but to move ahead quickly and profitably when the global economies begin recovering. These moves will make our company highly competitive in an extremely tough environment./p pOne of the benefits of Forbes is precisely the ability to move nimbly and swiftly to respond to our clients and marketers in the way they want to do business. For these reasons we have decided to change the organization of our sales and marketing groups in the company. In making these decisions, we got enormous and valuable input from our own people, as well as the marketplace to best position Forbes Media./p pOver the next few weeks, the sales and marketing groups of Forbes magazine and Forbes.com will be combined into three specific units under the Forbes Media umbrella. The purpose is to enable us to more sharply and effectively focus our resources and priorities in response to our audiences and marketing partners./p pThe first newly organized sales and marketing group is the Brand Intelligence Group. It will focus on the senior-most levels of our marketing partners. We will create consultative engagements with these executives to better connect our highly valuable audiences with our advertisers' core communication goals. This vital enterprise will be led by Kevin Gentzel, as President and Group Publisher of Forbes Media. Bruce Rogers, Chief Brand Officer, will lead the marketing and research arms of this effort. The Integrated Solutions Group, another newly aligned sales and marketing unit, will work to create integrated and custom solutions to access our unique audiences. These original programs will be cross-platform, content-based, with broad marketability. The Integrated Solutions Group will be led by Mike Woods, as President./p pAs always, the core of our client outreach will be our geographically dispersed sales teams. Now, though, we will organize these teams in regional business centers, that combine the talents of the Forbes and Forbes.com sales staff in the newly created Forbes Media Sales and Service Group. This initiative will position the Forbes brand as a true multi-media vehicle. The marketplace increasingly recognizes the necessity to utilize -precisely and efficiently - several platforms to achieve their objectives. The group will be led by Avery Stirratt and Robert Pietsch, who will serve as Co-Presidents and Chief Advertising Officers. Debbie Himmelfarb will serve as Vice President, Marketing to support this group's marketing programs./p pThe leaders of the newly established groups will report to The Office of the Chairman, which will consist of Steve Forbes, Chairman and CEO of Forbes Media; Timothy Forbes, President and COO of Forbes Media; and Jim Spanfeller, President and CEO of Forbes.com./p pI want to thank the leadership of sales and marketing for their critical input in this valuable effort. We believe these bold moves will place us in a far stronger position to expand our historical lead in both print and on-line. In other areas of the company, the following changes will be implemented as well./p pConferences and events in the U.S. and Europe will now be part of sales and marketing programs./p pRecently, the name of the overall brand of web properties and affiliated properties has changed to Forbes Digital. Included under the Forbes Digital umbrella are: Forbes.com; Investopedia.com; RealClearPolitics.com; RealClearMarkets.com; RealClearSports.com; the Forbes.com Business and Finance Blog Network; and ForbesTraveler.com. ForbesAutos.com will be discontinued./p pWe are also strengthening and expanding the editorial integration at both Forbes and Forbes.com. There has been a program to exchange talent between the web and the magazine in place for some time. These efforts have been successful, and we are in the midst of conversations to discuss ways to truly integrate the great talent in both organizations by sometime in early 2009./p /blockquote pSee Also:/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/k6RYmkwnIuqe-K9GsurpaoTHOlE/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/k6RYmkwnIuqe-K9GsurpaoTHOlE/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=HD8WKpZg"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=HD8WKpZg" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=p6Yl5keZ"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=hkjhiXAx"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=80" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=CSOE4UDZ"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=CSOE4UDZ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=RcHaytWm"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=131" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=7X20bqCR"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=336" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=tHgVUKoe"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=LfzJtP3Q"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=50" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~4/lvlu3X5j298" height="1" width="1"/

Every year Locus Magazine, "The Magazine Of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Field," publishes a year-in-review of the genre. This summation always includes a rundown of the circulation of the remaining speculative fiction magazines, sometimes referred to as the "pulps" because of the cheap wood pulp paper on which they used to be printed. In their heyday there were dozens of pulps -- ranging from the mystery to science fiction genres -- with circulations of 100,000 or more. But the medium steeply declined through the '80s and '90s, with magazine circulations for all the publications plummeting to well below six figures.

By the 21st century and the advent of the web, most of these once-great magazines -- Amazing Stories, Argosy, SF Age -- had died off, leaving only three speculative fiction magazines struggling to stop hemorrhaging readers: Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Asimov's Science Fiction, and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

The figures displayed in this year's Locus Magazine roundup were, as usual, not promising. Analog, the best performing of the three, had fallen to a paid circulation of 27,399, while Asimov's dropped 5.2% to 17,581. But the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction saw the sharpest decline -- 11.2% from the previous year -- to a paid circulation of 16,489. Countless science fiction convention panels and online message board topics over the last decade have tried to pinpoint the cause of such catastrophic declines and learn how to stop them. Such discussions often lead to at least one person predicting the eminent death of the short fiction magazines, always seen lurking just around the corner.

But these publications began experiencing turbulence well before the proliferation of the web, so it's apparent that their problems are in many ways different than the ones currently plaguing the newspaper industry -- a medium that thrived until it was suddenly met with vibrant competition from the web. But science fiction magazines are struggling to stay relevant in the Internet age.

Brave New World

Gordon Van Gelder worked in book publishing before taking over as managing editor of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (typically referred to as F&SF) in 1997, a position he kept even after he bought the publication in 2000. F&SF began publishing in 1948, making it one of the oldest of the pulp digests (Analog launched a few years earlier, in 1930).

In a phone interview, I asked Van Gelder how editors reacted once it became obvious that the web would become a major force in publishing.

"When I was the editor and Ed Ferman was still publisher, we saw the first big webzine rolled out," he said. "It was called Galaxy Online, I think. It came out January 1999; it was the first highly touted online zine, and I don't even think it lasted two months. It had real money behind it, supposedly. It had real professionals, and it came and went in the blink of an eye. And I remember Ed Ferman talking to me about what we needed to do online, and it was clear that he didn't know. I didn't know."

And like most print editors these days, he still doesn't know. Speaking to him, it was evident that he felt some frustration with the subject. Unlike newspapers and most other magazines, which mostly profit by selling advertising space, the short fiction digests make most of their revenue off copies sold -- think of them as miniature mass market paperbacks -- and so Van Gelder is even more nervous than most editors about giving away too much content for free online.

"It's so weird to talk about, because it's sometimes frustrating," he said. "The web is still so new, it's still complicated, and I adore it. I do what I can with it, but it drives me nuts, also."

The magazine has taken some perfunctory steps to court new media, most notably by sending review copies to selected bloggers, launching a blog on its website, and offering some of its archived fiction online for free. But Van Gelder told me he has sent review copies to bloggers only "three or four times" and that the site's blog is barely updated even once a month. Even the free fiction is only up for a month before being removed again, thereby draining away any potential that new readers could find the magazine via a search engine.

Van Gelder explained that his approach so far to the web has been scattershot, though some authors have figured out how to harness its power.

"I've been watching individual authors [promote online] and the three that have been successful at it are John Scalzi, Cory Doctorow, and Charles Stross," he said. "They immediately grasped what the Internet was about and they figured out that it makes much more sense to give stuff away and cause viral marketing than anything else. And it's worked great for them. In all three cases, though, they're writers whose work is very accessible to people who do spend a lot of time online. And you're not hearing about the people who have tried these things and the attempt flopped."

Online Forums Thrive

Sheila Williams, who has worked for Asimov's Science Fiction for more than two decades and became editor a few years ago, claimed that the Internet "has not affected our sales in any way negatively." Instead, she said, the downward trend can be ascribed to changes in distribution -- both how and where the magazines were displayed in newsstands and book stores -- which have effectively cut off the digests at the knees over the years.

Both Asimov's and Analog (along with mystery pulps Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine) are published by Dell Magazines, a company perhaps best known for its puzzle magazines. In fact, outside critics often complain that Dell has let its fiction magazines fall by the wayside because it has concentrated its focus on crossword puzzles and Sudoku.

One area where the remaining short fiction magazines have thrived is through their online message boards; for instance, Asimov's has an extremely vocal forum community. But the editor said that despite this large surge in science fiction fans, very little of the discussion on the boards is about the genre or the contents of the magazine.

"The forum is great," Williams told me. "We have one of the most active forums in existence for the science fiction publications. But mostly they get on there and argue politics; we call it the basement. There's a section at the bottom that consists of a big chunk that's very conservative and a big chunk that's very liberal and they go at it tooth and nail. And they hardly ever talk about the stories. There are a handful of dedicated readers that talk about the stories, but they are the minority. What I have seen in the past in the '70s and the '80s, there were dozens of letters coming in a month. We don't get the letters anymore. I think back in the '80s we had more correspondence coming in on the stories than I see in the comments on the forum."

Like F&SF, Asimov's has dipped its toes into the new media pool, often releasing its non-fiction or award-nominated stories online. Williams also mentioned diving into the magazine's decades worth of archives for content to place exclusively on the Net, and the staff has recently begun to experiment with podcasts, something that Williams said she wants to do more frequently. She asserted that the magazine has begun to expand through e-book sales, both with Fictionwise and Amazon's Kindle. Though she didn't offer specific sales figures, she did say that Asimov's often ranks high within the magazine category for the Kindle.

John Scalzi's Method

While speaking with these two editors, they both frequently cited the opinions of blogger and novelist John Scalzi. The science fiction writer is widely known for his success in using the web -- most notably his popular blog, The Whatever -- to promote his books. Scalzi has been outspoken on his blog about the state of science-fiction magazines, sometimes sharply criticizing their marketing strategies.

Scalzi told me the web wasn't really the main problem for the surviving pulp publications.

"The problems with the pulps -- the big three -- has very little to do with the advent of the web, though they could have done a much better job of positioning themselves when the web was younger," he said. "I think the major thrust of their problem has been that all the pulps have seemed to be content to work with what they have in terms of subscribers and readers, as opposed to being very active about acquiring new readers."

It's this constant state of defense, he said, that made them more vulnerable once the web had matured and publications across the board began to face increased competition online. Like Williams, Scalzi attributed much of the decline in speculative fiction magazines to changes in newsstand distribution, but noted that other publications had still managed to thrive despite these changes. The sci-fi mags, he argued, did not adequately adapt to the new landscape. He compared it to America Online in the '90s when it quickly began losing its market dominance.

"And then people started migrating to the web, and AOL started doing a bunch of me-too initiatives," he explained. "It was member retention. They were like, 'Look we're doing this too, so you don't have to leave us.' Eventually people went 'Yeah, there's other stuff out here, and it's cheaper or it's free or it's more interesting,' and they leave anyway. What eventually happens with those retention efforts is that perhaps they delay the inevitable for a little while, but eventually the inevitable is inevitable. It eventually comes."

And now that the economic recession means nearly all media outlets will have to struggle to bring in revenue, Scalzi said it may be too late to save the medium -- or at least save the print magazines.

Publishing Science-Fiction Online

Over the past year, Scalzi has been involved in two projects that are attempting to profit by publishing short fiction online -- Subterranean Magazine and Tor.com. Both sites fall under the umbrellas of print book publishers -- Subterranean Press, an indie company, and Tor, one of the largest publishers of science fiction. They have so far used the free content on their sites as a form of branding for their book authors. By paying for and posting quality fiction and non-fiction for free (they've published both by Scalzi) they are essentially acting as loss leaders to attract science-fiction fans into their communities.

Though Scalzi seemed uncertain whether this strategy would ultimately work, he said that it would take a long-term investment before such an endeavor could become a success. He noted that most publishers who tried to launch profitable short fiction e-zines in the past have failed because they expected immediate returns.

"When you start a new magazine you work on the assumption that the first five to seven years you're going to be in the red," he said. "Because you're building an audience, you're building a subscription base, you're building advertising, so that 10 years down the road you're making money and it becomes a profit center...Now the question is, has anybody done something similar to that? Because everybody thinks that you put a website up and then suddenly it's going to be brilliant and everyone will link to it and it's going to make tons of money in advertising. That's just wishful thinking."

In this sense, he argued, if the print science-fiction magazines are going to manage to survive in the current climate, they can no longer just dip their toes into the water -- it's sink or swim.

When I brought up both Tor and Subterranean to Van Gelder, he didn't hesitate to acknowledge that these sites may be where the industry is heading.

"It's probably going to be a successful strategy; it's the only strategy that's worked in the last 10 years for launching a new magazine," he said. "If it winds up in the future that every magazine is funded by a book publisher, then it's not the worst thing in the world. And it could be that that's really the future of the digest magazines, or fiction magazines in general. I don't know, because I don't think we've figured everything out yet."

What do you think? Is there a successful way for science-fiction magazines to survive in the digital age? How? Should they transition online completely or publish in print and online together? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Simon Owens is a former newspaper journalist and an associate editor for MediaShift. He currently works as an online analyst for New Media Strategies. You can read more of his writing at his blog or contact him at simon[.]bloggasm [at] gmail.com.

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divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/43449?ns=guardianpageName=Politics%3A+Gordon+Brown+paves+way+for+tax+cut+announcementch=Politicsc3=guardian.co.ukc4=Tax+and+spending%2CPolitics%2CGordon+Brown%2CEconomic+policy%2CGeorge+Osborne%2CAlistair+Darling%2CBusiness%2CCredit+crunch+%28Business%29%2CEconomics+%28Business%29%2CRecession+%28UK%29%2CMarket+turmoil%2CMoney%2CTax+%28Money%29%2CUK+newsc5=Personal+Finance%2CCredit+Crunch%2CBusiness+Markets%2CNot+commercially+usefulc6=Deborah+Summersc7=2008_11_17c8=1119338c9=articlec10=GUc11=Politicsc12=Tax+and+spendingc13=c14=h2=GU%2FPolitics%2FTax+and+spending" width="1" height="1" //divpRapid, coordinated and concerted action is needed to combat the global economic downturn a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/gordonbrown"Gordon Brown/a said today as he paved the way for an expected announcement on tax cuts./ppIn a Commons statement on the weekend's first ever meeting of the G20 group of world leaders in Washington, the prime minister said there was an "emerging consensus" on the need for a broad and concerted international macroeconomic policy response to the financial crisis./pp"The more coordinated the action the greater the benefit to each country will be," he said. "But I believe the emerging consensus across the world – from the IMF itself and from government of left and right, and in developed and developing countries – is that we should take rapid coordinated and concerted action through the use of budgetary measures."/ppThe prime minister told MPs that the summit had agreed to reform global financial institutions and accepted that the recapitalisation of banks was the correct course of action./pp"The action taken in the UK to recapitalise banks has now been followed in every continent," he said./ppReporting back to MPs just a week before the pre-budget report - which is expected to contain a £15bn "fiscal stimulus" with increases to tax credits and winter fuel payments to those on low incomes - Brown set out the scale of the financial crisis facing the developed and developing world./ppBut he faced Tory jeers and protests when he again stated that the problem had "started in America"./ppBrown said: "These unprecedented global events call for unprecedented global action."/ppThe prime minister insisted it was vital that G20 leaders resisted all forms of protectionism and called for greater transparency and international cooperation./ppBrown also said there was scope for further action on interest rates./ppBritain, as the next chair of the G20, will lead the preparations for a follow-up summit in the spring, with an exact date and venue to be announced next week, Brown said. /ppDavid Cameron, the Tory leader, hit back at suggestions that the chancellor would use next Monday's mini-budget to announce sweeping tax cuts, warning: "Tax cuts are for life, not just for Christmas."/ppHe cautioned against short-term fixes that would saddle the country with years of debts. /ppCameron said that the prime minister had told MPs that the crisis had started in America so many times that "it's starting to sound ridiculous"./pp"If Britain is so well prepared can you explain why the IMF believes the British economy will shrink faster next year than any major economy in the world?" he asked./ppThat was why sterling had fallen in the last few months more sharply than any major currency, Cameron said./ppHe quoted: "A weak currency arises from a weak economy which is in turn the result of a weak government."/ppAs Labour MPs pointed at the Tory frontbench, Cameron added: "I don't know why you are pointing at me, that wasn't my honourable friend [the shadow chancellor, George Osborne] this week, that was the prime minister when he was shadow chancellor."/ppOsborne was accused of talking the economy down at the weekend after he warned of a collapse in sterling./ppCameron rejected Brown's claims that there was international agreement on the need for a "fiscal stimulus"./ppHe said: "The real international consensus is that it's only the countries that have been fiscally responsible that are best placed to act now."/ppBritain's debt was not sustainable because its borrowing was among the highest in the developed world, he said./pp"We need real tax cuts, not Labour tax cons."/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/taxandspending"Tax and spending/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/gordonbrown"Gordon Brown/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/economy"Economic policy/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/georgeosborne"George Osborne/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/alistairdarling"Alistair Darling/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/creditcrunch"Credit crunch/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/economics"Economics/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/recession"Recession/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/marketturmoil"Market turmoil/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/tax"Tax/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. economy fell into recession last spring and will contract sharply this quarter as more than 200,000 workers per month are added to the rolls of the unemployed, a survey said on Monday.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=FIpft4Rw"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=PTvl4eZc"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?i=PTvl4eZc" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=l10ZK8eg"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?i=l10ZK8eg" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/reuters/topNews/~4/P0pM6dkapcQ" height="1" width="1"/

pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=48063539796c7a8500b8ea78maxX=300maxY=200" border="0" alt="stormclouds.jpg" title="stormclouds.jpg" width="300" height="200" /Citi's Mark Mahaney attends the AdRevenue 08 Conference and returns with more bad news for publishers who depend on premium display ad revenue (Thank goodness we don't know any). CPMs are dropping because of the glut of inventory, and spending is shifting toward performance-based ads and away from branded display. Lastly, and most ominously, October plummeted relative to September./p ul type="disc" li class="MsoNormal"span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial , sans-serif ;"strongWe Attended The AdRevenue 08 Conference/strong - We attended the AdRevenue 08 Conference in San Francisco, held by PubMatic. We attended panels on 1) Differences between ad networks, ad exchanges and ad optimizers; 2) Publisher ad strategies; 3) Increasing value of ad inventory; and 4) How agencies buyers are changing strategies. Companies we spoke with/attended included, Federated Media, Meebo, Six Apart, ContextWeb, AdECN, PubMatic, Razorfish, Havas Digital and Media Math. /span/li li class="MsoNormal"span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial , sans-serif ;"strongDisplay Pricing Under Pressure/strong - Publishers, advertisers and agencies indicated to us that with significant increase in inventory, especially from social media sites, display CPMs have been and will continue to be under pressure. Furthermore, demand for premium display continues to soften as advertisers want to reach very specific and highly targeted audiences. We note that PubMatic's eCPM Ad Index showed a 21% decline in Q3 prices vs. Q2 prices. /span/li li class="MsoNormal"span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial , sans-serif ;"strongRecent Trends In Display Advertising/strong - These include: 1) strongOctober spend appears to have dropped sharply vs. September/strong; 2) Ad budgets continue to shift from offline to online, but away from premium display and towards performance based advertising; 3) '09 marketing budgets are still in flux as marketers are taking a wait see approach; and 4) all three parties expect to expand the use of ad networks and ad exchanges in '09. /span/li li class="MsoNormal"span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial , sans-serif ;"Incrementally More Negative for Branded Display Companies - We believe the conference takeaways are incrementally more negative for premium display businesses. /span/li /ul pstrongSee Also:/stronga href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/ad-share-shift-update-google-swallows-world" Ad Share Shift: Google Swallows World/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/64_0tTrd8euhP1GDXKyUbmjDDxU/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/64_0tTrd8euhP1GDXKyUbmjDDxU/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=X76ASgFZ"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=X76ASgFZ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=GrK3g4of"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=NUvvaRK0"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=80" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=PBCYbssX"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=PBCYbssX" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=cAIeXVk7"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=131" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=t69fTvGj"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=336" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=j0tg9pql"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=0pnqfr2o"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=50" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~4/HOP0EEoNaJI" height="1" width="1"/

div class="rxbodyfield"p page="1" class="ArticleBody"The dramatic fall in spam traffic reported last week after alleged rogue ISP McColo was taken offline will only be a temporary reprieve and could actually generate a new wave of Trojans, experts have warned./pp align="right"a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" target="_blank" /img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" width="336" height="280" border="0" alt="" align="right"//a/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"ISPs disagree on the global percentage drop caused by the shuttering of California-based McColo last Tuesday, with estimates given by those contacted by Techworld ranging from 50 to 80 percent, but even the lower figure is still an unprecedented fall in such a short space of time. It appears that even those who were aware of its use as a hosting port had not guessed that a single ISP could be behind such a huge chunk of the world#39;s spam./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"b[ Learn how to secure your systems with Roger Grimes#39; a href="http://weblog.infoworld.com/securityadviser/?source=fssr"Security Adviser blog/a and a href="http://www.infoworld.com/newsletter/subscribe.html?source=fssr"newsletter/a, both from InfoWorld. ]/b/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"quot;Our servers haven#39;t been so relaxed for months,quot; said Richard Cox, CIO of respected spam-fighting organisation, Spamhaus, ruefully. quot;This proves how important it is for the law to get at this sort of criminality.quot;/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Nevertheless, Cox doubted that the improvement would last long, and could actually lead to a rise in Trojan attacks as spammers using McColo to host botnet control infrastructure, attempted to reconstitute their networks elsewhere in the coming weeks./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Paul Wood of MessageLabs said his company had also seen spam dipping sharply, which had hit specific troublesome botnets hard./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"quot;We documented a massive drop in spam volume to levels, eight times less than typical volumes for a period of 12 hours, immediately following the takedown before spam levels began to rise again,quot; he said./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"quot;Further analysis of our metrics would suggest there has been an 80 percent drop from Mega-D and 60 percent from Srizbi; Rustock is down by 50 percent and Asprox down by 80 percent. Overall botnet traffic has reduced by approximately 30 percent in the 24 hours following the takedown.quot;/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"In fact, McColo was the third ISP of significance to the criminal world to face disruption in a matter of weeks, he said, referring in particular to the de-peering of Intercage by ISPs in September./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"How the botnet controllers reacted in the coming weeks would depend on how easily they could regain control of compromised, #39;zombie#39; PCs. If that proved hard, it was possible that new PCs would need to be hit with Trojans in order to start new botnets from scratch./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"quot;It depends on the botnet in question and whether the bad IPs at McColo can be re-activeated by another rogue ISP sooner or later,quot; he said./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Adam O#39;Donnell of Cloudmark was less convinced that the reduction in spam volumes held much significance for the average user, especially business users sitting behind filtered connections./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"quot;We have seen a drop in IP connection attempts that would have been dropped anyway,quot; he said. quot;This is not like cleaning up a mess in the street,quot; and the problem would return once the botnetters had found new hosters. quot;I give it two weeks,quot; he said./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Despite the relentlessly upward movement in spam volumes over time, the occasional fall is not unheard of, with a single botnet going offline reportedly reducing traffic in early 2007./pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"According to Ed Rowley of recently-merged spam filtering outfit Marshal8e6, McColo could have a positive long-term effect in at least one way, that of convincing the authorities that tacking spam was now possible. In the past, the industry had been reluctant to shut down other ISPs, regardless of evidence of wrong-doing, but this might now change./pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"quot;There is a strong feeling that this [closing problem ISPs] is not a bad thing,quot; he said./p/divbr style=clear: both;/ img alt= style=border: 0; height:1px; width:1px; border=0 src=http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=f9a58414884fc1bbd1c8c57658d915fb height=1 width=1/ img src=http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=f9a58414884fc1bbd1c8c57658d915fb style=display: none; border=0 height=1 width=1 alt=/