DigitalSpritz

Apple's iBook Textbooks - Finally.

 

My daughter is a junior in high school.  She takes seven classes, the maximum her school will allow.  I believe she weighs 115 lbs.  Some days I think her backpack weighs 112 lbs.  Not to mention the fact that, on many days, she also lugs her laptop to school in a separate bag. 

Why has this taken so long? 

The obvious answer is that there is a lot of friction when it comes to change in our education systems.  My first gig in consumer technology was to market Brøderbund's vaunted software products to educational users.  While individual teachers were often enthusiastic adopters, their hands were just as often tied by bureaucracy and institutionalized SOP's.  The effect is magnified when it comes to something as basic as textbooks.  (I am proud to say that my fabulous alma mater, Duke University, has been using iTunes U - which is also getting an update today - for some time.)

Apple's step today is a rather small one on the surface -- high school texts only, and only eight books in total at present -- but as we all know, small steps at Apple tend to have giant reverberations in the marketplace.  Steve Jobs regarded this as "The Next Big Thing," and there is little doubt that he was right on the money.

Of course, the revolution will not be confined to iPads.  And eventually, it will not be confined to affluent kids whose parents can afford tablets.  If you need convincing, take a look at One Laptop Per Child's tablet initiative, which is producing a Marvell-backed tablet capable of running Android, Windows Mobile and Ubuntu, which also operates as a WiFi hotspot, and which is expected to cost $75 per unit. 

Personally, I'm looking forward to living in a portably literate world.  I hope JanSport is taking a look at some new markets, as those ever-present college-campus backpacks may soon become a thing of the past.

(Image from Gizmodo.)

SOPA Killed My Website ... Four Years Ago.

A Case Study for Innovation Aided by Less-Stringent Legislation

I was one of the early management team members for one of the first online video websites, called Revver.  The name tends to bring up pleasant memories for many early video creators, as Revver was the first site to actually pay artists, by attaching ads to videos as they were distributed through across the Interwebs, and then sharing the revenue with the video creators. 

For a time, Revver was flying high.  We had some notable success stories:  The Diet Coke and Mentos Guys, LonelyGirl15, ZeFrank, Ask a Ninja, French Maid TV.  But YouTube quickly overtook us, and then with their Google war chest, dominated us. 

Why?  Because Revver didn’t allow copyright infringement and YouTube, the company that broke through with a pirated “Lazy Sunday” clip, did. 

We scanned every single video that was uploaded to Revver, using a combination of technology and human eyes.   We built software tools to simplify the review process, and employed a team of people called “Video Patrol,” who worked 24/7.   There were some benefits in this process:  We were able to quickly tag and curate videos around content categories, and to straighten up the more egregious issues associated with fraudulent, opportunistic user tagging (“Britney Spears” attached to generic shots of wiggly women was a favorite).    This, BTW, is generally considered to be the recommended SOP if SOPA is enacted.  The obvious problem is that it’s not scaleable. 

Revver was also very vocal about our defense of copyright, becoming a standard-bearer in an exploding market that had the feeling of the wild west, with the potential for a gusher of oil if you staked out the right territory.   We were applauded by the studios.  But we found it difficult to make deals with anyone of any size. 

Why?  Because Revver’s audience wasn’t big enough.   We posted more than 5 million unique visitors per month, but YouTube, with its softer standards, was posting four times that many.  Guess who got the deals? 

But here’s the thing:  YouTube recognized that they needed to clean up their act a bit to keep their potential partners happy.   Revver realized that we were outgunned.  So, we helped YouTube build out and test the advertising technology that eventually became the standard for their site.  And they developed their “Partners Program” to revenue-share with legitimate artists, creating an ecosystem that is now poised to compete with more traditional entertainment development and distribution channels.  (Don’t believe me?  What’s Hulu up to these days?)

Granted, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act with its safe harbors helped goad YouTube into action, but it also provided a mechanism for dealing with copyright violations that didn’t require a wholesale blackout of the host site.  DMCA wasn’t generally regarded as good legislation at the time, but after some clarification through legal action, it was effective enough to provide enough stability to allow the market to evolve on terms that have been reasonably acceptable for both Hollywood and Silicon Valley.

My point?  Legislation may have been part of the motivation, but innovation generated the solution. 

No one running a major online business today would argue that content creators shouldn’t be paid for their work.   After all, Silicon Valley and Hollywood are now melded in ways no one thought possible (well, maybe Steve Jobs did) even five years ago.   SOPA is clearly targeted to take down less-than-legitimate operations.  But it also, unfortunately, doesn’t appear to leave much room for legitimate partners to rectify problems. 

The current situation is not perfect.  But it’s somewhat workable.  And with the creativity inherent in the California valleys, both foggy and smoggy, it might be more effective to legislate softly and carry a big technology stick.

Or, to torture another metaphor:  we’re now in a marriage in a community property state.  Even if one side wins, at most they’ll only get half the spoils, so it might be better just to work things out without getting all the lawyers and judges involved. 

The Real "Plus" of Google+

Facebook? Twitter?  No, with G+, Google is targeting … wait for it ... wait for it ...

Microsoft.  By making social sharing via the cloud the defacto path for everything, including business. 

Google’s introduction of Google+ into search results set Twitter all, well, a-twitter yesterday.   And while Facebook has yet to show its, er, face on the issue, the pundits populating the blogiverse seem to think that this is merely the next step in Google’s plan to master the social networking environment.

Except this pundit begs to differ.

A competitive footprint in social networking would seem a worthy goal.  Analyses conducted by some very smart folks have put the near-term value of the social networking market anywhere between $5B and $27B, depending on how you measure things.  Deloitte goes a step further to predict that fully one-half of the world’s wired community – a cool 1B people – will be members of social networks in the very near future.   And while social network advertising revenues currently suffer from some weaknesses relative to traditional media, the opportunity presented by cracking the code on social search is sizeable – an opportunity that Google is very well-positioned to take advantage of.  This, of course, is the source of Twitter’s very public angst, economically expressed in 140 characters (or less).

But let’s take a look at the market for cloud-based productivity applications.  It’s already a very nice $13B, with huge room for expansion given that current market penetration is low – unlike pure social networking, cloud-based productivity tools users number in the tens of millions, not billions.    Google has established a robust presence in this area with Google Apps, as well as its online productivity tools.   And guess what?  Both are already integrated with G+, and activity is reported and available for action via Gmail.   As well as accessible from your Android mobile device.     

Google’s second – and ultimately perhaps more important – announcement in the past two days attracted relatively little attention:  G+ updated Hangouts, adding screen-sharing to its list of features.  Microsoft-owned Skype also offers screen-sharing, but only on 1-to-1 calls, unless you have a Premium Skype account, which costs money.  Hangouts is free.  And with past participants like the Dalai Lama, it’s also very sexy.  

In short, with G+, Google has laid the groundwork for group communications and information-sharing in a well-integrated, low-cost-to-the-user framework that doesn’t require a bunch of expensive IT guys and an Exchange server.  It also just happens to be a framework that you can also use to share pictures with Grandma or debate 4K vs 3DTV's  with Robert Scoble. 

In June, USA Today reported that the launch of G+ had added $45B to Google’s market cap – nearly twice the value of the highest estimate for the entire social networking market quoted above.  Does anyone really think that taking on Facebook is the reason for this huge leap?   IMHO, the game’s afoot.  And the winner will do more than help you share lewd jokes with your college friends – it will also help you design a breakthrough drug protocol with your coworkers in Duluth and New Delhi, or hold your annual earnings call with analysts via Hangouts.  Dalai Lama optional.  

The Day Twitter Broke the News: Update

NPR reports that an Abbottabad resident live-blogged the whole event via Twitter, not knowing what was happening: http://n.pr/iMy4qd A new form of public record.

The Day Twitter Broke the News: Bin Laden's Death

This month's issue of Fortune carries a cover story on shenanigans at Twitter -- claiming rotating executives, Board power struggles, and a flattening growth in users.  Those things may be true, but they're irrelevant, as tonight's events have proved.  Because, once again, the big news was not broken by traditional media outlets in traditional broadcast mediums -- it was broken by Twitter. 

The New York Times has published the details:  A tweet from the White House communications director set off a firestorm of speculation online, which was eventually confirmed by Keith Urbahn, Donald Rumsfeld's former chief of staff, also on Twitter.  The news kicked off what, for me, became the latest iteration of the multi-screen media experience:  Cable news (in my case, CNN), augmented by Seesmic desktop loaded up with Twitter and Facebook feeds, and text messages on my iPhone. The resulting stream of details, analysis and humor more than made up for the fact that CNN's commentators were forced to blather on to fill up airtime until the President finally appeared to make his masterful formal statement.  (AAMOF, I put the TV on mute while I was waiting; Twitter was infinitely more interesting.)

After the President appeared and gave his statement (which no doubt will be the leading video on both broadcast and online outlets for the next 24 hours), I got word that there was already a Facebook page called "Bin Laden is Dead" with 120,000 "likes." 

My point:  In just a few short years, we are no longer able to imagine a world without Twitter, smartphones and Facebook. They've become our collective unconscious, and our conscience, capable of alerting the world almost instantaneously to events both big and small, and in their power, also forcing corrective behavior.  Particularly with Twitter, it's becoming harder for the bad guys to get away with stuff.  It's become so ingrained that, even if Twitter in particular fails, some other service will rise in its place, uniting us in a world-wide network of instant information. 

By the way, kudos to the White House communications team for continuing to beautifully manage news in the age of fluid information.  I may have to tweet about that. 

Content Curation: The Big Boulder in the Digital River

Big news in the entertainment world last night:  YouTube (Google) is finally entering the world of video-on-demand  (VOD) in a competitive way.  “Competitive” means by offering contemporary movies near their DVD release dates, rather than only catalog titles, which have actually been available on YouTube via an innovative variable pricing model for some time.   Now YouTube has apparently inked a deal with several major and independent studios to offer movies for download about the same time the DVD’s hit retail. 

However, none of this news is official, and the deal is apparently incomplete, as rumor has it that Paramount, Disney and Fox are currently holdouts.   The reason?  Well, there are two:  1) Google continues to point traffic towards and provide advertising services for sites that practice piracy, and 2) Viacom (Paramount’s parent company) has been locked in a lawsuit with YouTube over copyright infringement for several years. 

All of this is the result of fundamental mistrust centered on one principle:  content curation.  For those who may have forgotten recent history, YouTube sprang to prominence on the back of a single piece of content – Lazy Sunday – that was recorded from a broadcast of NBC’s Saturday Night Live, setting the stage for the explosive growth that followed, much of it driven by what traditional media considers illegally-uploaded entertainment.    However, non-traditional media doesn’t see it that way:  digital presents an unparalleled opportunity that should be mined.  If the situation doesn’t fit old paradigms, bend the paradigms.  Hence, YouTube applies advertising against content that belongs to studios and shares the revenue, and Google supplies services to sites that promote piracy. 

However, the world has evolved, and traditional media practitioners are now skilled at serving their content over the internet and via mobile devices – often leaving Google and YouTube out of the equation.  The problem has evolved from one of content deficit to what Seth Godin calls attention deficit  -- someone needs to aggregate all this content and point people to the good stuff.  YouTube, with its audience and bandwidth, bolstered by Google’s traffic skills and deep pockets, is well-positioned to perform this role, and is ready to a bend a few of its own paradigms to do so.  However, the friction remains:  Can studios come to believe that the online network famous for cat videos and bootlegged TV show clips will evolve into a premiere VOD destination?   And can YouTube honor the concerns of its studio partners without blowing apart its own ecosystem, which is built on the philosophy of wholly independent media?    

Brains in Our Pants

When I first acquired my iPhone, I had two jokes I liked to tell.  The first was that I loved my phone more than some people I knew.  The second was that the phone had actually become an extension of my brain.  Like all good jokes, these little asides were humorous because they contained a seed of the truth.  Just how big a seed didn't become shockingly clear until recently.

First, there was the story about Stephen Furber, who is building a synthetic brain -- dubbed "Spinnaker" -- out of thousands of smartphone chips.  He's estimated that he will need about 50,000 chips to simulate 1 billion neurons, which should be enough to control a robotic arm.  He has already built a small 50-neuron version of his proposed brain, which can control a Pac-Man style video game.  If a version this small can do what many beer-fueled college students did for four years during the late 80's, imagine what the 1 billion neuron version will be able to do.  Solve global warming (or, for the conservatives among us, prove that it exists)?  Keep Wall Street bankers from manipulating the economy?  Send a man to Mars? Send a man to the grocery store and have him return with the right item? 

The goal, of course, is to build something that can be planted in a humanoid body.  If you read the comments in the linked article, they immediately begin referencing Skynet, Isaac Asimov and, for some reason, duct tape.  (Oddly, no Cylons.)  When faced with the prospect of synthetic people, most humans think only of violence and murder -- "us" against "them."  I prefer to posit a more warm and accepting future:  what if, finally, my iPhone (or 50,000 iPhones) actually became my companion?  Then I wouldn't have to feel guilty about liking it more than some humans I know.  

The second story is the theory that human brains actually function like smartphones:  Apparently, we have multiple "apps" that control different activities, and the act of running two apps at once is likely to produce inconsistent behavior.  (In my case, that behavior would be continuing to eat Ben & Jerry's Phish Food despite an active case of lactose intolerance.)   Unfortunately, our wetware apps don't come with exit buttons.  But there are some groovy behavior-modification apps for the iPhone (and probably Android phones) that can help you out there, resulting in a situation where interaction with your smartphone is clearly modifying your brain. 

For now, I remain happy in my loving relationship with my iPhone, safe in the knowledge that, even in the wilds of New York City, that little extra set of brains in my blue jeans will help me find a subway stop, order movie tickets, take a message, or even let me play some Pac-Man.  If, later in its lifespan, a larger version emerges that can do all that while folding my laundry and making dinner resies, well, bring it on. 

BROADCAST ENGINEERING | 3ality Digital Develops New 3-D Camera

BURBANK CA – Angela’s favorite company, 3ality Digital, has developed a fully automated, remotely aligned camera rig for stereoscopic 3-D production.  The lightweight (approximately 22lbs) TS-5 camera rig accommodates a pair of box-style HD cameras and can be mounted on a Steadicam rig for complete flexibility.  (Yes, Angela’s marketing chief at 3ality!)  [ READ MORE ] 

The Deepening Digital River

 
Two big pieces of news about digital content delivery in the past two days:  The Digital Entertainment Group, a Hollywood-based consortium dedicated to the home entertainment market, announced that for the first time ever, digital delivery outpaced Blu-Ray discs in consumer spending.  Indeed, digital delivery (including video on demand) posted year-over-year gains of 23% for the first half of 2010, topping $1B for the first time.  During that time, Blu-Ray sales rose 83% to $733M, but sales of packaged media overall (DVD + Blu-Ray) declined by 7%. 

The second surprise came from Amazon, which announced that, for the first time, digital book downloads outsold hardcover books - by 80%.  Amazon's Jeff Bezos was quoted thus: "Astonishing when considering that we've been selling hardcover books for 15 years and Kindle books for 33 months."  Granted, Amazon a price cut on Kindles that coincided with Apple's iPad launch may have contributed to this amazing lift, but the trend is clear:  Digital content delivery is NOT the future -- it's the status quo.   

Granted, this is not big news to Millennials who've been consuming their TV on Hulu, downloading their games from torrents, and loading movies on their iPods and iPhones for some time.  What is a surprise is the speed at which the rest of the rest of us are catching up:  witness my digital partner Tom Goff, clearly not a Millennial, who admitted this morning that he now streams all his movies on Netflix, with infrastructure courtesy of Time Warner.

Studios, networks, cable and satellite operators, CE manufacturers-- even Google and Apple -- are all over this "trend."   A hodge-podge of boxes, delivery systems and formats make for confusing sledding for consumers.  But somehow, we've muddled through the madness enough to vote with our scarce dollars for options that award us with timeliness and portability. 

Where are you placing your bets?  How about Apple?  The iPad is a pretty revolutionary device -- simple idea, incredible execution.  If Apple vertically integrates filmed home entertainment and literature the way the company streamlined digital music ... well, let's hope that a few folks give them a run for their money.  (I'm talking to you, Big G.  And you, Verizon and AT&T.)  

Photo by Flickr user Natha1308

CTV News | How to surf the 3-D movie wave

TORONTO - Burbank-based 3ality Digital is a maker of 3-D cameras that industry sources also peg as an IPO candidate.

“Business is growing at an extraordinary rate and we expect to be profitable in 2010,” 3ality CEO Sandy Climan said ... [ READ MORE ]