Category: Design

Categories
Design Education Globalization Innovation Network Reading Rich media Tablet

Sports Illustrated on the iPad ?

ipadIn 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

Categories
Design Globalization Network Reading Rich media Tablet Technology

New eReader price wars

So what happens when Apple’s $500 iPad sells like mad?  Well a price war of course between the Nook and Amazon’s Kindle.

nookkindleIt 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

Categories
Design Education Innovation Network Reading Rich media Tablet Technology

Wired magazine for tablets

wired_miniWired 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,

Categories
Design Education Google Innovation Network OpenSource Technology

Google’s Learning Management System

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
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

Categories
Design Education Globalization Google Innovation Network Rich media Technology

Keep it simple Google

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