Digital Ministry US - Technology Champion Articles

Can the Apple iPad transform the digital publishing industry?

Digital Ministry — 2010-01-31

What is Apples objective here? Where are they going with this? Why isn't it more like a computer? blah...blah...blah... The one thing you can be sure of is that Apple has thought through everything. Every omission and every inclusion is there for a reason. I have a few thoughts on the strategy and where the iPad might be headed.

1. The Screen

This is not and cannot be a reading device. I imagine these type of devices replacing laptops in classrooms eventually but you cannot use a backlit device as a primary reader as it hurts to read for any extended period of time. Just try reading text on your laptop for more than 30 minutes straight.

If Apple is to compete in the reader space for personal, business and education reading markets it will have to develop some kind of new non-backlit technology that is easy on the eyes. Can a device have this and a screen great for watching movies and playing games as well? I am positive they are already working on it.

I think from looking at it in the hands of some people online that the screen may be a touch large. According to some who have tried it its not much fun to type on and its form factor is just a fraction too big. I can't wait to pick one up in the Apple Store and see how it feels in the hands though.

2. Content

The war for content is on. Amazon has already been in a spat with of its publishers about pricing with Amazon threatening to not only kick them off the Kindle but removing their physical books from Amazon.com as well. What this tells us that Apple is definitely serious about competing in the reader market and they must in that case be working on better screen technology.

Magazine and newspaper publishers have been looking for a way to monetise content and this is the future. They will be fully behind these devices. Will they be distributed as apps like the New York Times? Will there be a virtual magazine rack like the iBook store? Remains to be seen, however there is an opportunity for some bright spark to create an entire publishing platform here. In this YouTube video you can get an idea of the future.

Video and music are a little confused on the iPad, it cannot be a primary storage point with its small amount of memory an music and video can be watched and are more mobile on the iPhone. I think that its possible I would use the iPad at home instead of my laptop to access iTunes and the iTunes Store. I don't really like iTunes on the desktop. I prefer to control iTunes with the remote app on my iPhone. The iPad for me would become the place to buy, download, organise and direct media content to the home theatre.

Applications will be the maker of the iPad though. I can see already tons of real world possibilities in medical, education, stock management, mobile publishing and hospitality that can take the iPad to a whole new world of functionality. The price allows it to be affordable by small businesses. Couple that with games and social networking apps and we could definitely see a revolution with younger generations at home as well.

Will website publishers be praising or cursing the iPad. Does this mean we have to go and build yet another version of our site? I think the praise will be pretty unanimous here from everyone except Adobe. Steve Jobs has now publicly bagged Adobe as being lazy in its implementation of Flash for Mac and will not be supporting the format on iPhone or iPad. According to Steve the world is going HTML 5. I for one agree.

3. Operating System

One of the biggest initial shocks was the use of the iPhone operating system on this device. I was pretty convinced that we would see some kind of variant of OSX here. But after I thought about it, this makes complete sense. The iPad has to be targeted at people who don't own a laptop or desktop Mac at home. The primary audience for this device aren't early adopters or gadget geeks, this device is for the masses. For people who want to get into computing but are daunted by operating systems and file management.

In this case Apple may have shown its true genius, not only have they created a new category of device, they may just go and open up an entire new category of tech consumer. Those without the want or need for the complexities, those that want to enhance their lives and not make it more complicated. I think that if technophobes can get their hands on this device and see how easy it is they may just go crazy for it.

4. Connectivity

Wifi and 3G are the way forward. Wireless connectivity with this device is what Apple wants to see. Why would you want to have drives and dongles and rubbish tethered to it. Mass storage will be available via apps wirelessly for media and I am sure that some bright spark will invent a great file transfer app if they haven't already. The idea here is simplicity. Apple wants somebody who has never used a computer before to be able to just intuitively use this device. Too many ports and options confuses and scares people.

5. Camera or lack thereof

Your iPhone has a camera for taking pictures and video. The only real value camera would be a video conferencing camera. Now this may have been a cost equation on the hardware but more likely is that Apple doesn't consider mobile devices and associated networks ready for this yet. They maybe concerned that Skype has too much of a dominance in this area and is concerned that the experience of using Skype may not be up to Apple standards. Whatever the reason it will be there eventually.

Conclusion.

Will the iPhone transform the publishing industry? With this version of the device, no. Then again I am not convinced that this device was developed to transform the publishing industry, I think this device has been released to appeal as an alternative to the low cost computing market. Those of us who can't afford a laptop at home and are sick of using cheap Windows machines that are far too difficult to use and maintain. Open standards pundits say there is not enough control over the device. I say this is the whole point, not all of us want control, we just want stuff to work. Open standards haven't really helped develop and real polished, useful tools. Look at Google, they have some amazing ideas and technologies, most of it however is half baked. This is because there are too many cooks and not enough control over direction.

Apple controls the direction, they control the hardware and software to create the best possible experiences. At the end of the day this is what it is all about. If I can get experiences that help my life become easier and more fun then I am willing to relinquish that control to Apple.

Entertainment in the Next Dimension.

Digital Ministry — 2010-01-20

The aforementioned scenario is an advanced picture of what 3D TV will deliver once it has been engineered to intelligently interact with the internet. Once this is achieved, there's nothing stopping it from providing clever advertising messages and prompts based on the internet activity of its household members. Searched for a used car online recently? Expect to see an unusually high number of commercials for low budget cars that are directly targeting you. Frequently visit a spoofing news site? Anticipate getting a lot of comedy movie trailer pop-ups and other interactive promotions. You get the idea.

Before we get here, a couple of key players need to come to the party. Although production companies have already arrived, television manufacturers and broadcasters are set to be next, with game developers quickly following suit. On the manufacturing side, Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, Mitsubishi and LG have all confirmed that they have 3D production in the pipeline, with Sony expected to be the first to put TV's into mass production this year. As with most 3D formats, Sony's television sets will come with compatible glasses; the difference being that these ones use active shutter technology or a flickering method as opposed to the classic red and blue polarising method we have known until now. Without officially putting a price on these sets analysts have predicted that the first models will come with a ten to fifteen thousand dollar price tag. As we probably all expected, it's a bit pricey - unless you regularly dine on caviar or worry more about your home entertainment system than your lack of friends, receding hairline and overdrawn credit card put together. But enough about me...

On the broadcasting side, Foxtel is leading the 3D charge in Australia. Having already carried out significant in-house testing of set-top boxes that are capable of receiving 3D broadcasts they look on track to provide an overview of product details by this time next year. While there's a strong possibility that they might be able to sign up 3D subscribers by mid 2011, a number of questions remain over the affordability and compatibility (ie - will people need new 3D screens or will regular TV screens be able to reconvert the signal?). No doubt that until this is finalised they'll be a team of boffins working on this, trying to convince potential customers that there's more to Foxtel than a programming ethos of quantity over quality and a music channel that offers five different songs played on a continuous cycle. Like many, I don't think there is but credit to them if they can change this common perception.

Was the success of Avatar just sporadic behavior in the 3D cycle? Well, according to the head of Dreamworks: Jeffrey Katzenberg, 3D films represented 10 of the 170 major films released in 2009. At the same time, they also represented 4 of the top 10 revenue earners over the same period. Sure, this figure is biased towards animation and action adventure films as well as movies backed by premium levels of investment, but the recent earnings of Avatar and the ability for it to nullify the effects of piracy in the short term mean that 3D is only going to get bigger, very quickly from here.

Eric Schmidt the CEO of Google tells us what to expect

Digital Ministry — 2009-11-11

He points out that searching UGC in real time will be Googles biggest challenge. We are entering the age of real-time search people. For me, this means the ability to find material that literally has just been published. Whats the impact on twitter and breaking news? How does impact the semantic web?

The cropped 6 MINS version for you busy types HERE made usine YouTube Chop an excellent development, thanks to Digital Buzz Blog

Full version 45 mins with a coffee thanks to Gartner

In case you need to know what Eric looks like and it give me a photo for the article

Screen domination

Digital Ministry — 2009-06-10

The research, commissioned by the US media measurement company Nielsen Media and its US Council for Research Excellence, followed 372 Americans in two full days of live media observation.

It was was designed to simultaneously observe and measure media exposure, life activities, locations for media use and where people spent their day. The mass observation study took place in six geographically disperse cities across the US. The final sample included 952 observed days and over three-quarters-of-a-million minutes of observation. A not insubstantial study.

The study found US consumers spend on average, 67 percent of our total daily media time with live TV screen-based media (including DVRs, DVDs and games), about two minutes a day watching video via the Internet, and only a fraction of a minute watching mobile video. Even among 18-24-year-olds, the average amount of time spent watching live TV (209.9 minutes) surpassed even computer screen time (169.5 minutes).

If, as the study identifies, our total concurrent media consumption across all forms of media runs to eight and half hours per day, it also confirms our lives are now more tuned to screen time than first thought.

The research shows concurrent media use and exposure is almost the same for all age groups, media choice so rapidly changing that computer-based activities have replaced radio as our number two media. US consumers now spend on average two hours and thirty-three minutes on a computer, but only one hour and 49 minutes with a radio.

Contrary to current thinking, young demographics are not the biggest consumers of media. While the average adult spent 309.1 minutes watching live TV and 14.6 minutes playing back programming via DVR, the biggest consumers of media were in the 45-54 demographic or what the study called a “digital boomer.” Digital boomers spend nine and half hours per day using all four screens (TV, computer, mobile and out-of-home such as kiosks) compared to eight and half hours for all other age groups.

One of the most interesting findings was that on average live TV users were only exposed to roughly an hour a day of advertising and promotions. If proven by subsequent studies, this debunks much of what is claimed around the level of brand message exposure per day (at around 3000). As most live television advertising runs at 15 minutes per hour or so, on the basis of figures quoted in the study, these should be two hours on television alone or around 240 messages on live TV at 30 seconds per message). What’s difficult in this measure was “exposure” remains undefined and so do they mean a viewer actually watching advertising or just appearance? My assumption is they are defining it as active participation. For example, during the live TV commercial breaks people were observed shifting their primary attention to media such as print, phone and computing. This data seems to prove a widely-held but strongly debated view that consumers are avoiding most of advertising in programming when they view live TV. The long held view that consumers still “follow” a brand message as they shift from one media to the next also seems to be questionable.

The study now ranks computer-based time as the number two media category after live TV. Including web use, email, software and internet messsaging, computing time exceeded broadcast radio average duration by 40 per cent. The study suggests computing has now replaced radio as the number two media activity. Radio is now number three and print number four. Print covered major US newspaper and magazines with use around 22 to 41 minutes per day. Claims for the death of print are no longer an exaggeration.

The Council for Research Excellence study shows our typical daily media consumption goes beyond TV to a growing prevalence of new digital screen-based channels. One of the by-products is the finding that suggests we may actually be seeing far less advertising than first thought. Indeed, high levels of media exposure and our attentiveness to advertising may be seemingly unrelated and those oft cited high levels of advertising exposure, possibly no more than a frabrication by media planning and advertising agencies.

While the screen and our fascination with the images upon it have been around for centuries; the variety of screen-based communication channels, our use of their content continues to expand and grow at speed.

Watching Web TV through PS3, 360, or Wii

Digital Ministry — 2009-03-02

For a while now I’ve had my Playstation 3 and Wii set up to my wireless broadband connection and to be honest I haven’t fully explored their web potential.

So I decided to test out their functionality as web browsers and to my surprise they were very sufficient. The Wii runs Opera, while the PS3 has it’s own browser and both are updated regularly with all the mandatory plug-ins.

However the more you use them, the more you remember how much you love the old PC/Laptop.

The PS3 browser, for example, has the latest shockwave technology but no pop up blocker and can only view around 8 windows at once.

Streaming video your favourite web shows on your HD LCD TV is a nice feature, but with the lack of a keyboard I found myself using the onscreen one, along with the joypad for browsing functionality.

It was frustrating to say the least, so I won’t be getting rid of my laptop anytime soon.

The point with videogame consoles is that they are becoming more powerful and cheaper, than lesser spec PCs.

Maybe one day we’ll have a PS4 that will do our spreadsheet expenses and ebay bids, but it’s not going to be anytime soon.