Jan 31, 2011

You can help us raise money for Kiddoki on Kickstarter



Kickstarter, the site to help creative project to raise money, has selected Kiddoki. So, if you want to hep us launch this news site for kids, you can by contributing here.

If you like the idea talk about it, tweet about it, blog about it...


Thanks a lot for your help to create a great site for kids and help them to become informed citizen.

Jan 15, 2011

The concept of the embed article or "why not let everybody copy and paste your content"

(click on the image to access the full page)

Years ago, I remember having a conversation, around illegal content reproduction, with a media executive at a very large media company. He was worried because his content was all over the place on the net but often people were not paying to reproduce it.

I remember telling him: "You can see this as an issue. Or, you can take advantage of it. At least try. Be all over the web, at the end of the day, it's not bad news."

Yes, why not take advantage of it by "attaching monetization" to your content? How? As you can see in this page (some links are active) with The Huffington Post example, there are many different ways to do it:

#1- By driving traffic back to your site using links on:
- the headline
- the image or video
- the comments
- other headlines
- tags
- newsletter subscription

#2- By embedding:
- a banner at the top
- sponsored links on the side
- e-commerce carousel at the bottom

So, at the end of the day, why not let people embed any articles from your site on their website/blog? Why not make that very easy, like You Tube, for example, is making it very simple to embed any video on any site (while embedding advertising in the video)?

I am sure they are many other ways to "attach" monetization in an embedded article. What are your ideas? What do you think? Any SEO issue with this concept?

On our side, we are going to try the concept with our news site for kids: Kiddoki.

UPDATE: Why not share revenue between the source of the content and the site that reproduces it. Maybe there is a service to create around this concept. A service that would be in charge of advertising and revenue sharing.

Looking for free-lance writers to translaste infographics from French to English

Our team is looking to work with free-lance writers to translate informational graphics (infographics) from French to English. Native language needs to be English (not like me ;).
The graphics are targeting young students from 6 to 12 years old. So, your grammar needs to be perfect and you need to understand how to write for kids, with a simple and clear vocabulary that they can understand.
 If you're interested please send us an email at info(at)mignon-media.com. Subject: graphics. Tx

Jan 13, 2011

Here is the Home Page of our news site for kids 9 to 12: Kiddoki


As you know, we are working on the launch of our news site for kids: Kiddoki. We have been doing several designs of the home page for the 9-12 years old version. Here is the design we like.

Let's us know what you think about it.

We hope to be live in March. The site will be free for the basic edition. We will have a premium version. We are also looking at offering the site as a white label to create "junior news section" on local newspapers. If you are interested to talk about it shoot me an email.

In any case, teachers can already start to use our free classroom blog / site platform: neaclass. The platform will be linked to Kiddoki.

PS: The dinosaur image is used for design purpose only

Jan 8, 2011

Dan Gillmor's very interesting approach to publish his last book: Mediactive

I have been a firm believer, for years, that books should be published online using a website format. I proposed the concept years ago to a publisher in the US and another in France. I called it the "smart book". A sort of "digital shell" for books. Apps are okay. I'm using them. But, they have more limits, at least for now, in comparison with a regular website.
I want a live book. A book that never ends and that can be updated on a regular basis, by the author but also by the readers. I want to be able to share (Twitter, Facebook, etc), embed, link, geo-localize (google), learn a term that I don't know (dictionary), look at a bio (wikipedia), comment, search... and, yes, customize the content of the book that I'm reading.

Dan Gillmor has been using a very interesting approach for publishing his last book: Mediactive. The book is under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. It has been self published on the great self publishing platform Lulu. You can find it on Amazon as a regular and a digital book (Kindle). You can also download it as a PDF.

Then, you can read the full book (for free) online. Dan has created a website. In addition to the book, there is a blog and digital resources related to the subject of the book. Blog and resources are updated. You can buy the book. You can make a donation. I made a small one: $5.

Much more can be done, but it is a great step in the right direction to make books even more interesting.

I read the website version of the book and I really enjoyed it: content and format. What do you think about it? What functionality would you like to add on the site?