Making Money Ebay

The latest to try is Ongo, a two-year-old start-up that will introduce its Web site today, with an iPad app to follow.

Ongo is backed by three major media companies: The Washington Post Company, The New York Times Company and Gannett, which publishes USA Today. Each has invested $4 million.

Ongo is for readers who peruse a variety of publications every day and want to read them all in one place. It shows articles from about 20 publications, and is in talks with dozens more.

The catch: Readers pay $6.99 a month for the service, while most of the Web sites whose articles it shows are free. In exchange, readers see no ads or cluttered pages, and can search for articles, save them and share them with friends — all from one site.

“The key thing is they don’t have to go to the other sites” to read the stories, said Kevin Skaggs, Ongo’s chief content officer and a former producer for The San Francisco Chronicle’s Web site.

Many publications generally flinch at that idea, because they want readers to visit their sites and see their ads. But in this case, they are sharing their content with Ongo because Ongo will share its revenue with them. And, Ongo said, it may attract new readers when its editors highlight stories that readers may not have otherwise seen.

Other apps, like Pulse and Flipboard, offer mobile news readers for free. And people turn to Web sites like The Huffington Post, Twitter and Facebook to see stories aggregated by editors or acquaintances.

Ongo is different because it gathers stories from a large number of publications, people can access it on the Web or on mobile devices,  and professional editors choose the top stories, said Alex Kazim, Ongo’s founder and chief executive and a former eBay executive.

“I just don’t think my friends are as good as professional editors in finding stories for me to read,” he said.

For $6.99, readers get all articles from The Washington Post and USA Today and some from The New York Times, the Associated Press and The Financial Times, along with stories from one more publication of their choice. Adding other publications costs an additional fee, between 99 cents and $14 a month, which the publisher sets.

According to Ongo’s research, just 12 percent of people read enough publications online each day that they would want a service like Ongo, Mr. Kazim said. But if it is successful, he hopes to include blogs, magazines and video, making it a one-stop shop for the news.

Ongo looks like a newspaper, with headlines that a team of six editors chooses to highlight and sections like sports, business and opinion. Readers can search a topic in the news and see articles from a variety of publications.

Like other sites, Ongo lets people share articles with friends through e-mail, Facebook and Twitter. But it also lets people set up groups — family members or colleagues, for instance — for sharing, and facilitates chats about articles. If someone who is not an Ongo member signs up after reading a shared story, the sender gets a free month’s membership.

First-time Ongo users can get a free one-day trial pass, and if they register within a month, the first month is free.

�It seems to me that what Michael Naimark is saying is that he is dissapointed that it takes litigation to get large companies to respect others Patent Property Rights.�

An interesting interpretation of someone else�s words. I�d be interested in hearing Mr. Naimark�s reaction to your interpretation� the reason will become clear in a moment�

�Mike Masnick constantly acts like he understands the economics of invention business when he is clueless. The fact that opportunities like Interval Research are rare is related to recovering investments. The amounts involved in Interval's litigations and many others demonstrate that large entitlement minded companies are stealing on a grand scale.

�and here would be the reason. Someone expresses an interpretation of someone else�s opinion that differs from your own, and you accuse him of being clueless. Interesting.



Further, you go on to claim that the monies involved in the litigation demonstrate �large entitlement minded [sic] companies are stealing on a grand scale�. Care to provide any evidence to support this? Or is that more of your opinion that we are free to disregard on the merits of its worth?

�It is a shame that it takes litigation in order for inventors and invention producing companies to be compensated. �

Yeah, because gods forbid that the market, in an open-market economy, be the deciding factor on which products prosper and which ones don�t. If your competitor offers a product better and cheaper than yours, why should the law dictate which I buy? That's a monopoly. And with a patent, it's a government-granted monopoly. If it's there to help you recoup for a limited time, fine. But if you're not even trying to recoup in the market (i.e. sitting on the patent and not doing anything with it or you bought the patent as a lawfirm), why should the law stop someone else from getting a product to the market that the consumers want?

The invention business is much like the wild west, and invention stealing large companies have forced inventors to have their own gunslinger in tow in the form of a litigator. Fault for the necessary to litigate lies completely with companies who act as if they have an inalienable right to to "innovate" through unauthorized use of inventors property.

Bullshit. They have a choice. There was an article not too long ago here that showed a company who found out their product was being counterfeited responded by saying �you know what, we�ll make ours better.� Instead, litigants that you defend here are choosing to spend time, effort, and money on fighting instead of improving their idea.



And you know what� I�m not saying it�s the wrong decision� not even most of the time� but it�s still a choice. You don�t get to assign blame as you see it and then absolve these litigants from their own responsibility for their choices. You're making some broad generalizations about 'idea pirates' and then blaming them for the actions of lawyers who are making a buck on the suit, not on the pursuit of innovation.

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