June 25, 2010
by donkasprzak
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Want to confuse customers? How about taking the “if ya can’t beat`em, join`em” approach….
I wonder what Bezos thinks about when you pull this type of capitulation. I cannot help but wonder about Amazon’s own statement: NO KINDLE REQUIRED. If anyone sees this add and is deciding which to choose, this move by Amazon cements the iPad as the choice.
BTW: Did you catch the color image in the book?
Tags: iPad, Kindle, ebook, price war, ebook sales, reading, trends
June 24, 2010
by donkasprzak
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Last year Google announced it would provide industrial strength email anti-spam & anti virus (Postini) to K12 schools for FREE. Act Now – Deploy later. Google’s offer ends July 2010
As budgets have been cut across the country for education, this is a smart move for many financially strapped school districts. Does it pay for a District to force taxpayers to pay for expensive, legacy email programs like FirstClass and Novell when cloud based solutions with robust feature sets are being embraced by K12 and Colleges around the country.
Tags: Google, Google Apps for Education, education, Postini, anti-virus, K12, trends
June 24, 2010
by donkasprzak
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In January Time Inc., the publisher of Sports Illustrated showed off their own tablet highlighting a future issue of SI for tablet users. I immediately questioned their “announcement” to produce their own tablet.
Clearly the business model for ANY publisher to develop a tablet is a mistake with the marketplace is its infancy. The internet forced computer companies to move faster in transforming their business. Its simply smarter to drop SI into the iPad Store inside iTunes. The RIO is much better.
And just six months later….SI has announced its coming to the iPad for the same price as the print version. So much for their own hardware eh?
Time Inc, holds major content providers in business/finance, international, luxury/portfolio, lifestyle and style/entertainment media categories and with the initial wave of eBook publishing just beginning to hit a business sweet spot it should not be long before popular titles begin to appear alongside SI.
Tags: Sports Illustrated, Time, Inc., iPad, Tablet, design, wireless, magazine, trends
June 23, 2010
by donkasprzak
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So what happens when Apple’s $500 iPad sells like mad? Well a price war of course between the Nook and Amazon’s Kindle.
It appears that Apple has produced a product that consumers have been wanting and are willing to pay quite a premium. But at the same time Apple has cut into Amazon’s ownership of eBook sales. The problem with both of the above devices – they are not color. Think about purchasing a dedicated eReader that cannot produce color, and is only available for, well….reading….despite Amazon’s attempts to open the Kindle platform with an API and goals of an iTunes-like store.
Amazon left their newer Kindle DX at $500.00
Tags: iPad, Kindle, Nook, price war, ebook sales, reading, trends
June 22, 2010
by donkasprzak
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I believe Sorkin’s Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System–and Themselves is a great read. Its the best book I have read this year. Sadly this book reads like a intense thriller, yet reveals the truth about how Wall Street’s greed and the “old-boy networks” were too dumb to act in time to save the country from falling into a great recession.
Sorkin’s revelations about those so called financial titans are more accurately described as clueless. Ego was their chief reason for making so many horrible financial decisions.
I cannot think of a more striking example as Sorkin described the board members of Bear Stearns, voting to send the firm into Chapter 11 bankruptcy with one member choosing not to participate….he was in Detroit playing in a professional card game tournament.
Titans? Sorkin paints a more accurate picture of these guys closer to the attitudes of the out-of-touch imperialist British monarchy. Defined by The Dictionary of Human Geography, Imperialism is “the creation and maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural and territorial relationship, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination.” Sorkin’s reinforces this definition about the failed Wall Street Empire.
I was amused to learn of a photograph of Mitsubishi’s $9Billion check for Morgan Stanley….yea NINE zeros making it probably the biggest check ever written. Simply amazing.
May 26, 2010
by donkasprzak
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Wired Magazine has arrived for the iPad. Initial reports indicate each issue is ~500MB and will be $4.99/episode app via iTunes. Wired will be shipping additional tablet formats in the coming weeks.
As initial reports are indicate this is a new, in depth re-birth of magazines for the digital world. By exploiting the iPad’s technologies the premier issue is loaded with interactive multimedia extras simply not available in print.
So now comes the business end of the release: $5 an for each app issue while you can get a full year print subscription for just $10.
–Since I have a print subscription — can get all my back issues on the iPad? Doubt it. Lets not be foolish – publishers are setting elegant revenue models for their print to iPad app conversions…..
Reviews:
Wired’s internal review (duh) – Wall Street Journal review – Business Insider review – Gizmodo review
Tags: iPad, publishing, design, trends,
May 24, 2010
by donkasprzak
0 comments
Google has released their internal learning platform, CloudCourse under an open source license. Built entirely on Google’s own App Engine, CloudCourse is a new entry into a crowded LMS arena. CloudCourse provides calendaring, waitlist management and approval features.
Google CloudCourse LMS
To no surprise CloudCourse is fully integrated with Google Calendar. Google has also made CloudCourse customizable for schools by supporting service provider interfaces:
Sync services – Sync CloudCourse data with school’s internal systems
Room services – Schedule classes in school locations
User info services – Support for school profiles (employee title, picture, etc)
CloudCourse was built in Python and uses Django (web application framework) and the Closure Javascript library.
CloudCourse code site and wiki link
Tags: CloudCourse, open source, Learning Management System, LMS, education, python, django, trends
May 3, 2010
by donkasprzak
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I was looking forward to George Friedman‘s The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century. I found this to be a very compelling read due to the simple nature that predictions in general are always horribly incorrect.
Friedman’s background provides a true global, military view of the world’s future and his role at Stratfor, a global intelligence service provides direction to his book.
Yet I could not help but think twice about some of the aspects of his work. I agree with his points that in the future countries including Poland can become a superpower, but at the same time to predict in 40 years America will be at war with Mexico after fighting Japan and Turkey are a bit…on the surface, a stretch.
For the strangest reason Friedman seems to be able to tie some of his predication today. Following the fall of the USSR and the Orange Revolution not many would predict that Ukraine and Russia would sign a joint agreement in April 2010 to keep Russian Naval forces in their former communist republic in Sevastopol.
At the same time his prediction of Poland’s coming success as a global power could not have taken into account the April 2010 tragedy in Katyn. I do not believe this will stop Poland from gaining power in the future, but it appears to be slowing down (potentially) the process by a decade.
I do feel the first half of the book hold chapters that are solid and well written:
Chapter 1: The Dawn of the American Age
Chapter 2: Earthquake: The US – Jihadist War
Chapter 3: Population, Computers and Culture Wars
Chapter 4: The New Fault Lines
Chapter 5: China 2020: The Paper Tiger
However Chapters 6 – 13 layout the world order from 2020 to 2080. Again the further out the more difficult to predict IMHO. Interesting reading for sure since most today would never foresee Mexico winning a war against America.
Tags: The Next 100 years, George Friedman, 21st Century, America, Japan, Turkey, Mexico, future, reading, trends
May 3, 2010
by donkasprzak
0 comments
On top of introducing a new YouTube channel for Google’s Wave solution, Google is taking the “keep it simple stupid” approach to talking about Wave. Their first go-round was a two hour video….and in today’s short attention span economy – who had the time?
Tags: Google Wave, beta software, Collaboration, real-time, communication, test audience, limited preview, trends
April 28, 2010
by donkasprzak
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Imagine that! In the “what took so long” category Google has finally released a series of good video training session all about their real-time communication and collaboration tool Google Wave. I posted last month (read it here) Google is missing a real opportunity surrounding Wave acceptance due to limited access to Wave in groups.
As many have shared on twitter — a lot of people with Google Wave accounts simply “don’t get it” and the new channel on YouTube will provide a great single repository for Wave fans to learn about their real-time collaboration solution. Wave is a web-based service, computing platform, and communications protocol designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and social networking.
As many have accomplished, Waves around the world have proved to be excellent communication opportunities for individuals. If Google wants to reach out to small groups and large organizations, they must provide mass accounts to really kick the tires and integrate this promising tool into their infrastructure…..BTW it can help revolutionize a number of outdated ‘workflows’ that are in use today in non-profits, education and business.
Tags: Google Wave, beta software, Collaboration, real-time, communication, test audience, limited preview, trends