Creative Strategies - Innovation and Vision
Tablets, e-Books, and the Rise of a New Creative (Writing) Class
Thursday, 11 March 2010 12:10
A couple of weeks back I explored the potential impact of the burgeoning mini-tablet space. If predictions are to be believed, these devices will sport 9.7-10 inch screens optimized for music, games, movies, and Web browsing, all with a highly portable form factor. These devices will also likely have a major impact on publishing, offering multimedia books and leading to what some have deemed the "reinvention of the book," with titles that include text, images, and video. We've already seen multimedia books—or "Vooks" (short for "video books")—on the Web, but once the mini-tablets arrive, they will let people enjoy them pretty much anywhere. I can definitely see publishers embrace this technology in a major way.
If you own an iPhone, I recommend purchasing one of these Vooks from the Book section of the App Store. These apps should give you a rough idea about where this technology is headed. The Vook, The Breakway Japanese Kitchen, is a cookbook featuring video introductions to the ingredients featured in the book's recipes. The holy grail for this technology is the ability to integrate this rich media into the book in a manner that makes it critical to the way the story is told.
Disruptive TV - How Streaming TV is Close at Hand
Thursday, 11 March 2010 12:10
In March of this year, I canceled my service with DISH Network to embark on a simple experiment. The question was did I need my television service provider, and the experiment was to see if streaming shows from the Internet could satisfy my television habits.
The TV shows they are a-streaming...
In the first few weeks of this experiment, I came to find out that 90% of the TV shows my wife and I watched on a regular basis were available online from either the networks' websites themselves or from Hulu.com. What suffered however was live sports and shows for our kids, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Since I am a die-hard San Francisco Giants fan, it was very difficult for me to not be able to watch a single game the entire season from the comfort of my own home. I tried connecting to hacked streams; I tried watching them through my dad's SlingBox; I even tried MLB.TV, but since I am in the Giants local market the games were blocked out. Nothing came close to watching the game in HD on my big screen. My conclusion with live events is that they still have a long way to go when it comes to an equally or more compelling offering through the Internet.
The Coming Technology Explosion
Thursday, 11 March 2010 12:10
Not until Intel released and pushed their Atom processor architecture did the world wake up and realize that the vast majority of consumers have enough processing power. The latest and greatest is often more than enough when it comes to CPU’s. A product like Atom, which is a lower cost CPU, packs enough punch to become attractive to those who seek to put more capable “computing class” CPU’s in their products. This would include products like TVs, GPS devices, next generation mobile devices, cars, etc.
Atom for Intel is a product roadmap that eventually gets smaller and draws very little power, something that is important for battery conscious devices, devices that currently don’t run Intel processors. Even though we don’t see an Atom processor in many of these devices yet, I believe very powerful “computing class” silicon is around the corner at price points that will allow for a great deal of experimentation and innovation.
The Dawning of Digital Reading
Thursday, 11 March 2010 12:10
For a while now we, at Creative Strategies, have been involved in projects within the digital reader ecosystem. We have been talking and working with both publishers and hardware OEM’s who either have a presence or want a presence in this market.
Regardless of where we are now in the adoption cycle of e-readers one thing is now clear; The shift from analog to digital in books is happening rapidly.
Although we acknowledge that the E-reader market is early we also acknowledge that it is loaded with potential.
Have we done innovation a disservice?
Thursday, 11 March 2010 12:10
Over the past few years our firm has done a great deal of research and thinking around this new category of computers called Netbooks. Netbooks are, we believe, the beginning of a larger trend around classes of computing devices that have enough processing power to do a few specific things well, but not enough to do everything that a full- blown computing device is capable of—, HD video editing for example.
These devices are quite capable of going online, checking email, and creating word documents and, spreadsheets, etc. Quite frankly, they are good at doing what most folks do the majority of the time with their computers. A point in which is making many in the computing industry very uncomfortable.
