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  • The Paradox of Consumer Choice
    A few years ago I read a book called The Paradox of Choice: Why Less is More by Barry Schwartz. His anecdotes were insightful and pointed to truths about the amount of choice the free market has laid on us as consumers. Of course free markets and consumer choice should be good things, but there are certainly experiences I have had where the overwhelming sense of having too many options made it difficult to actually make a decision. I related to much of what the book was saying, particularly with the experience of picking out a DVD to watch from my massive collection. I recall staring at a wall of DVDs and having the most difficult time deciding what to watch. The decision-making process when faced with so many good choices was simply immobilizing.  
  • The Future of PC and Mobile Processors

    I've spent a lot of time with a number of hardware manufacturers recently, trying to get a glimpse into the next generation of processors and the ways in which they'll impact future gadgets and PCs. In all my meetings, one term has arisen time and again: SOC, or system-on-a-chip.

    Traditionally, chips have been created independently and then coupled together to provide multiple computing features. For example, a manufacturer would create a core processor like an Intel Centrino with a built-in Wi-Fi radio, and then attach that to a systems board, perhaps linking it together with a separate graphics co-processor, in order to deliver enhanced PC graphics. Another might take an ARM core processor and then add on additional features like extended graphics to enhance device functionality.

  • Apple's iPad: Live up the Hype? It Will....
    It was interesting to hear all the chatter after last week's iPad launch. Most reactions I heard from other analysts and media were lukewarm at best...which was what I expected. If you think about it, how can anything live up to the kind of hype leading up to this launch? But there was a lot missed in the media about the event and the product that I hope to share in order to maintain our perspective on not only the iPad but on Apple and their products.  
  • Innovation Abounds - CES 2010 Post Show Analysis

    This year's CES was very interesting. I had felt for the past few years that CES was sorely lacking in the innovation department. But this year it looks like things have changed in the technology industry. Technology companies have realized that to reach the consumer the pace of innovation needs to accelerate, and this year's CES was a start in that direction.  Several things stuck out that I'd like to highlight:  

Tablets, e-Books, and the Rise of a New Creative (Writing) Class

Written by Tim Bajarin Thursday, 19 November 2009 17:39

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.

In order to make that happen, we're going to need some very rich tools for publishers so these manner of multimedia books can be read across a variety of devices. Since the Apple tablet is still pure conjecture at this point, the company will have to design its own development tools if it wants publishers to create multimedia books for its ecosystem. For non-Apple devices, Adobe's Flash and Air are poised to become solid tools for publishing these sorts of books.

Conventional wisdom has it that the publishing industry will benefit the most from this re-invention of the book, but while this may be true, the advent of such technologies may also lead to the emergence of a new creative class. Look at what happened when Apple created the SDK for the iPhone. It had a major impact on developers. When the company originallu showed it off, it brought five or six developers on stage to demonstrate the capabilities of these development tools. The developers showed off apps from the medical field, but what really awed the audience were the first passes at games for the platform. It wasn't until the SDK actually got into the hands of the public, however, that we saw development for the platform really explode. At last count, 100,000 apps have been developed for the iPhone, the majority of which were not designed by professional developers. Big name game developers like Electronic Arts and ngmoco did embrace the SDK to create professional looking games, but most of the titles for the iPhone actually come from one or two person shops.

I can forsee a similar thing happening with multimedia books....   Read the rest of the article @ PC Magazine.com

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