Jan
28
iPad, you ponder
Filed Under Blog, eBook, Education, Industry Analysis, internet, Publishing, Uncategorized, Workflow | 2 Comments
Well, OK , I haven’t actually got an iPad, or been in the same room as one, but I did see the launch and the demos and I am left wondering. At the same time, the annual Gartner predictions reached the top of the pile. And since I still had the thought that, given the truth of jokes, it was at least possible that Steve Jobs would launch a revolutionary digitally-enhanced running shoe called the iRan, I clearly have not been paying nearly enough attention to the Press (or buying enough repetitive articles).
In my briefcase I have a netbook – ideal for hotel internet access – and a Sony eBook Reader, plus of course the ubiquitous Blackberry. Each of these devices was bought to save weight, since as I have got heavier I want the world that I carry around to get lighter. The next device that I want to buy is one that combines the functions of all of these three at the weight of the heaviest. So how does the iPad match my demand curve? Well , it sort of …doesn’t.
Colour is not my high demand, since most of the sad things I read are in black and white. Price is not my issue , since while I want the cheapest and most effective I can point to a long career of buying over-priced innovation in a triumph of hope over experience. New functionality is not my issue either: I am now inured to the fact that with any device, including my highly computerized car and the digital controller on the heating system and the new hands free phone installation here, I will never live long enough to understand and implement all of the functionality that cleverer men than I have built in, so innovation and replacement cycles are designed to stop me worrying about that, and bring me to a new device, newly replete with all the things that I shall never learn to use.
Which brings me to Gartner and my ardent wish for the iPad to succeed. Gartner’s range of projections is as impressive as ever, since long gone are the days when pure wishful thinking was the only fix we had on these markets. Today, the talk is far more sober and grounded, but no less startling (http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1278413). For example, the realization here that by 2014 more than 3 billion people on the planet will be able to transact electronically (“transact” , not use a phone) is critical to our understanding of the global networked society. In that year we are on target for a 90% mobile penetration rate (56% Africa, 68% Asia), and 6.5 billion mobile connections. By 2013, mobile device connections, at 1.82 billion units, will overtake PCs at 1.72 billion as the primary connection to the network. If you are thinking now of preparing your web presence at a future point for mobile optimization then you are almost too late: this is the last call for legacy conversion. The people who succeed in 2013 are running hard now, and are probably not carrying the burdens of legacy web publishing, let alone legacy print publishing.
But the paragraph that caught my eye began ” By 2015, context will be as influential to mobile consumer services and relationships as search engines are to the Web”. And, later on “context will provide the key to delivering hyperpersonalized experiences across smartphones” and “context will center on observing patterns, particularly location, presence and social relationships…. Whereas search was based on a pull of information from the web, context-enriched services will, in many cases, prepopulate or push information to users”.
What phases me is having Gartner write digital publishing strategy, but in a vital sense they are quite right. Push and Pull were central to the debate in the early web days, but faded out in the great Age of Search. In the post-Google world, where search is just another tool, Push returns, wrapped in the guise of personalization. Will My iPad, or its elaborations, do that for me? This is the key question.
There is a sting in Gartner’s tail. I will quote it in full:
“The most powerful position in the context business model will be a context provider. Web, device, social platforms, telecom service providers, enterprise software vendors and communication infrastructure vendors will compete to become significant context providers during the next three years. Any Web vendor that does not become a context provider risks handing over effective customer ownership to a context provider, which would impact the vendor’s mobile and classic Web businesses.”
Any Web vendor ? If you are a content or information service provider, This Means You. The competitive struggle for survival in network publishing intensifies, and the only recourse is to hybrid models and full service solution provision. There is no ” Just Content” position anymore, unless you want to be a supplier to the sub-contractors of the people who supply the services.
Jan
10
Viva, Las Vegas!
Filed Under Blog, eBook, Education, news media, Publishing, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
I have never really enjoyed Las Vegas very much. Too much glitter and artifice. I always think of broken gamblers dying in lonely bedsits. But I must say that I have really enjoyed my day in the desert today. Perfect antidote to the foot of snow around my Hut. And going to CES without ruined sleep, jetlag, tired feet, or the endurance test of having yet another demo from yet another salesman without being able to break in to ask the only question that I really wanted answered.
Instead I have had demos of everything I wanted to see. The aisles have looked fairly crowded but no-one jostled me. I have asked my questions , and even had sensible answers to some of them. I started by working out exactly what I wanted to see: always a good move at a huge trade show but one that I seem to rarely accomplish. I settled on a day of looking at Readers: Copia, the Liquidvista prototype, MSI eReader, PlasticLogic QUE (one of the most impressive – and a Cambridge UK development!), the Skiff, Spring Design’s Alex, the Booken Orizon, the Entourage Edge and the Microsoft Courier dual screen digital codex (why are we suddenly into that word “codex”? – it produces Leonardo da Vinci in my mind).
Then I thought, if I had time after all those stands, I would like to look at the Samsung display and evaluate the E6 and the E10. And I missed Steve Ballmer of Microsoft using the HP Slate at the opening press conference (I didn’t have a ticket!) so I would rather like to catch up on that, as well as previewing the Dell Streak and Cydle M7. Well , I did get to see the Ballmer demo, and I also visited those other stands.
And I had a ton of help. Hats off to Matthew Bernius and his colleagues at the Open Publishing Lab at RIT for gathering all this stuff up in one place for me. And three cheers for the great people at Engadget , Gizmodo and Teleread for doing the videos and demos and evaluations of all these things, and for answering my fool questions for all the world as if I knew what I was talking about (and to their communities, who spotted a sucker immediately). And to Bobbie Johnson and the Guardian for getting me in to the Ballmer session and then restlessly videoing the crowded aisles and fevered sales pitches: quite beyond the call of duty.
So I am off to bed now. A little tired but quite energized by what I have seen. But there is just one thing I cannot work out. If I was CES , wouldn’t I put all of these links and demos and ideas on my own site, and run it year round, and offer to continually update punters like me, and create a community which includes all who went to Vegas, and those like me who stayed at home. The current CES site is a good news site but hardly an eCommerce, 365 days a year community experience. In the past year I have spoken to two of the greatest business event operators in the world about this, and while they talk the talk of network connectivity they do little more. One day the physical event will be the satellite activity, and the web will be the core: I hope they transfer their brands successfully before that happens.
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