• Made it back into Ithaca on a rainy night. Classes begin tomor­row @cor­nell with the course I'm a TA for… #
• And rock on, there a cold PBR in the fridge. Some cue "Back in Black"! #
• Who in #Ithaca is using @foursquare? #
• (RT @RITOPL & @drac­cah) @andrewsavikas on Why Mobile Will Win: eRead­ers are Sus­tain­ing, Mobile is Dis­rup­tive http://​bit.​ly/​6​ksLRV #
• #jour­nal­ists: Anyone know of fund­ing for folks study­ing #jour­nal­ism and #news­pa­pers for aca­d­e­mics who are NOT in jour­nal­ism pro­grams? #
• start­ing spring semes­ter (@ Cor­nell uni­ver­sity) http://​4sq.​com/​4​tkhtu #
• @sarahg­grant Thanks so much for the sug­ges­tion! in reply to sarahg­grant #
• I guess I shouldn't be sur­prised that my TA role for this semes­ter boils down to being the "AV Geek" #
• SportyPal free 7.85 ml in 00:26:11 – http://​bit.​ly/​7​77PkR #
• Headed in for a day at the office… (@ Cor­nell Anthro­pol­ogy) http://​4sq.​com/​6​WebYT #
• Sort­ing through my fonts this morn­ing using Nexus Font a great free­ware font man­ager for Win­dows – http://​xiles.​net/​p​r​o​grams/ #
• Grrr… I hate MS word — I pulled a layout together and when it goes to print every­thing shifts! #fail #
• Crap! Today is my #fail day — there was a screw-​up and my domain expired… sigh #
• Just posted the latest essay on the tech­nol­ogy dri­ving the Future of eRead­ing – the inter­sec­tion of apps and hard­ware: http://​bit.​ly/​b​EDFif #
• Sweet. Waking Dream is back up…. #
• I don't want to be InDesign's bitch… I really want to like Open Source page layout pro­grams like Scribus… but they kinda suck… #
• At this point, the key thing that will deter­mine the fate of #iSlate is it's price and if that price will be sub­si­dized by a cell car­rier. #
• @mikeru­bits – Andriod tablets, sir. There'll be a couple WinCE tablets, but even Dell and HP are going 'droid for small touch slates. in reply to mikeru­bits #
• RT @shanakim­ball: Wow. RT @mdash: kind of in awe of the pos­si­bil­i­ties pre­sented by http://​the​six​ty​one.com #
• #the­six­ty­one is really addic­tive. Social Networking+Gaming+CC Songs like MyHope (is you forget about your MySpace Page) http://​bit.​ly/​6​xcSjA #
• I just woke up… has Apple changed the world yet? #
• @scott_ish – With the excep­tion of mul­ti­task­ing and addi­tional "mouse" con­trols (accord­ing to rumors), what else does the iPhone OS need? in reply to scott_ish #
• RT @pachecod: I'll be sur­prised if the islate is more than an incre­men­tal improve­ment on the iPhone and Kindle. <-xactly, but not the kindle #
• @scott_ish – There might be room for wid­gets and other refresh­ing apps (a live desk­top) but that's not a sig­nif­i­cant build on the os. in reply to scott_ish #
• I'm at Cor­nell uni­ver­sity (, Ithaca). http://​4sq.​com/​4​tkhtu #
• Office Hours are underway… (@ Cor­nell Anthro­pol­ogy) http://​4sq.​com/​6​WebYT #
• @eileen53 @ljc So far no real sur­prises. SNL and the Onion will have a field day"#iPad". Should have guessed the 3 stor­age sizes sizes. in reply to eileen53 #
• So one of my three ques­tions () from last night has been answered: iPad… meh. (crud WD is down again)… next big ques­tion is price… #
• All that really mat­ters about the #iPad is price. (Though the ques­tion of whether or not it's a phone is also impor­tant in the long run) #
• RT @indieau­thor: RT @kali­pho­nia: no Flash on iPad = #Fail [<--agree] <– this is a huge hit to the ebook market and news­pa­pers as well. #
• @iupress – nope it's a #flash #fail for the #iPad in reply to iupress #
• RT @whythe­mo­bile is giving away an Apple Tablet to one of their fol­low­ers http://​bit.​ly/​5​yyi0m #ipad #
• Again, the #iBook store is no surprise… the ques­tion is how much will the books cost? #
• RT @heather­shae: @mat­tBernius This would be an awful and hilar­i­ous phone. -> Not it's designed to work with a headset… #
• RT @ChrisKu­bica: The Kennedy bio in iBooks is $14.99. $9.99 on Kindle. Hm. (<– this is poten­tially why $ is impor­tant) #
• @dewitz it's ePub com­pat­i­ble. Now what else they will sup­port is really inter­est­ing — espe­cially 3rd party read­ing apps like #Blio in reply to dewitz #
• Ok… so some #islate models will have 3G access… can they be used as a phone or is it just net­work­ing? #
• $29.99 for unlimted data w/#AT&T for #iSlate? There goes the net­work unless there are some major infra­struc­ture improvements…. #
• RT @naypinya: oh noooooo. I have an AT&T phone. I'm doooooomed. <— thanks to #iphone + #iPad you'll never get a call out in a major city #
• RT @pachecod: RT @Wee_JNo1: The iPad will cost $499. <– that's a price point that will work… #
• $130 Pre­mium for 3G? That's a little rough… So $499 is the super­sized iPod touch and $629 is the iPhone… #
• RT @tun­a­bananas: fan­tas­tic: @zepho­ria – ethno­g­ra­pher @tri­ci­awang doing socio-​tech field­work in China writes on Google http://​bit.​ly/​5​R97HO #
• Ok… so first volley is launched inthe #Slate wars. Next up #Andriod tablets with sim­il­iar (if not better) specs & price but less hype… #
• RT! TWEET to WIN an iPad http://​teen​cas​tic.​com/​i​p​a​d​-​g​i​v​eaway/ (EPIC RT?) – @freei­phoneapps @AppIn­san­ity #
• Yes, I am will­ing to pimp my twit­ter account for the chance of free swag… #
• I wonder, if you get the 3G #iPad, if you have access to the SIM card? (more on sim cards at http://​bit.​ly/​6​gpg3x) #
• RT @rww: Apple web­page for #iPad is up: http://​www.​apple.​com/ipad/ … specs say that 3G is data only (no voice), all models have blue­tooth #
• Hey! Retweet this to win a new Apple iPad from @deal­splus. Details here: http://​bit.​ly/​b​h49zB #
• RT @Nic­Boshart: The Que is $649, no 3g, b/w eink. Amazon DX has 3g, $469.00. Apple win. <- why slates beat eReaders… #
• @cee­jayoz — the store & and data plan on the 3g models allow them to sell the ipad at a loss. Apple's really in the content/app busi­ness in reply to cee­jayoz #
• out to watch the state of the union… (@ Pixel Lounge) http://​4sq.​com/​7​AamPK #
• @pachecod the ipad works on other net­works if they use the right fre­quency. No 3G on TMo­bile. in reply to pachecod #
• If I WIN an iPad, I will take it to all the pub­lish­ing lec­tures I'll be giving to demo the future . http://​teen​cas​tic.​com/​i​p​a​d​-​g​i​v​eaway #
• RT @jayrosen_nyu: There's one thing–and only one–I find inter­est­ing about the iPad: it shifts back to "read only" from the read write web. #
• I'm at Cor­nell Anthro­pol­ogy (261 McGraw Hall . Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity, Ithaca). http://​4sq.​com/​6​WebYT #
• I just unlocked the "Local" badge on @foursquare! http://​4sq.​com/​a​1G6QJ #
• @Mat­ty­Rog While secu­rity is an issue with any built in cam, the same argue­ment could have been made against the iPhone – #noCamIni­Pad in reply to Mat­ty­Rog #
• @imkyleoneill thanks for the feed­back! in reply to imkyleoneill #
• man, it's a cold day in Ithaca. http://​is.​gd/​7iBM3 #
• I just became the mayor of Cor­nell Anthro­pol­ogy on @foursquare! http://​4sq.​com/​6​WebYT #
• I'm at Cor­nell Anthro­pol­ogy (261 McGraw Hall . Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity, Ithaca). http://​4sq.​com/​6​WebYT #
• RT @eileen53: Seen in #Roc: Why not dress like Lady Lib­erty & dance on a corner when it's 9 degrees? Duh. http://​tweet​photo.​com/​9​9​10251 <wow #
• Man it's a coooooold morn­ing here in Rochester. A per­fect day for hit­ting the books… #

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As part of my PhD work at Cor­nell, I get to hang out with folks from Sci­ence and Tech­nol­ogy Stud­ies and Infor­ma­tion Sci­ence. Both groups are very inter­ested in how var­i­ous par­ties, and in par­tic­u­lar “users” affect the devel­op­ment of tech­nolo­gies. Case and point: the Model T.

When Ford intro­duced the Model T, a sig­nif­i­cant number of rural adopters found a novel use for the car – as a “mobile” engine for pow­er­ing farm equip­ment. As the illus­tra­tion above depicts, farm­ers would jack the car up, remove the rubber tire and attach the wheel to var­i­ous crank driven machin­ery. 3^rd party ven­dors even sold kits to help adapt the car for this type of use (in modern terms they were jail­break­ing the Model T) – at least until Ford Motors cracked down on this application.

The moral of this exam­ple: the way users use tech­nol­ogy can vary greatly from the way the cre­ators imag­ined it should be used.

So how does this tie into a dis­cus­sion on eReading?

As I’ve posted a number of times, pree iPad Steve Jobs, as late as two years ago, was hold­ing firm to the idea that people didn’t read any­more, and even if they did, the iPhone wasn’t a read­ing plat­form. In 20/20 hind­sight this may seem like an odd posi­tion, espe­cially with the launch of iBooks and the iPad. But at the time it made some sense. Seri­ously, who would read on a device with a tiny LCD screen that con­sumed a lot of power?

Well, as it turns out, iPhone users, espe­cially those who had a daily com­mute, would.

Like the Model T and farm equip­ment, there were out­side fac­tors that influ­enced how people used the technology.

First, for most people, the iPhone was a replace­ment device; by that I mean that it prob­a­bly wasn’t a “gateway” cell­phone for most people. While it might have been their first smart­phone, the vast major­ity of users had already inte­grated a cell­phone into their daily rhythms. They were used to car­ry­ing that sort of device with them wher­ever they went. And, more impor­tantly, they were used to rou­tinely charg­ing it (we’ll get back to that latter point in a moment).

These same people had also grown accus­tom to the notion of using a phone to help pass down­time (wait­ing in line, at the doctor’s office, and, most impor­tantly, on com­mutes). In fact, cell phone providers have been tout­ing this as a “feature” of cell­phones since the early 2000’s (apps as a rev­enue stream pre­date the iPhone). So iPhone users did what you might expect – they used their phones to “kill time.” And the best way to kill time was to explore the App Store.

As men­tioned pre­vi­ously, ¾’s of the apps down­loaded from the store are free ones. And, not sur­pris­ingly, most (if not all) of the eRead­ers avail­able on the App store are free. So, people began to down­load read­ing apps. And, while pro­jected text (as opposed to the reflec­tive eInk sur­face of the Kindle) is “harder” on most folks the eyes, when con­tent is begin read for lim­ited peri­ods at a time (say on a com­mute), people didn’t notice the strain (espe­cially when there were con­ve­nient, multi-​touch zoom in and out controls).

Like­wise, while an LCD con­sumes far more power than an eInk dis­play, people had inte­grated rou­tine charg­ing of the phone into their daily rou­tine (see, I told you I’d get back to it – this, by the way is why, even though LCDs con­sume far more power than eInk, eInk isn’t going to win on its power effi­ciency). And they did it regard­less of if they had read or not.

Thus common wisdom about read­ing on an iPhone (or other smart­phone) was proved wrong.

The lesson here is that people use tech­nol­ogy in unex­pected ways. And the unex­pected ways that they use tech­nol­ogy have unin­tended con­se­quences on other tech­nolo­gies. Noth­ing oper­ates in a vacuum. As the cliché goes, a pebble dropped in one end of the pool can case rip­ples (if not waves) in the other end. So let’s dis­cuss a poten­tial down­side to these mobile technologies.

Data Strain

While smart­phone and the apps that run on them may change our expec­ta­tions about what “technology” should do, they have lost of unin­tended effects. In June of 2009 AT&T revealed that the aver­age iPhone user con­sumes upwards of 400MB of voice/data band­width a month. That is sig­nif­i­cantly more traf­fic than AT&T is used to pro­vid­ing. In fact, accord­ing to AT&T, 3% of smart­phone users, pri­mar­ily iPhone owners, are respon­si­ble for 40% of total data usage on the net­work. If you’ve been to a major US city and expe­ri­ence poor qual­ity on your iPhone, this is part of the reason.

This isn’t just a prob­lem with AT&T. As more fea­ture and app rich phones (and tablets) come online with dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies (for exam­ple the Nexus One and Droid on Ver­i­zon) net­works are going to become increas­ingly stressed by data demands. And, at least as of this writ­ing, US cell phone providers are not quite sure how to keep up with the demand.

Typ­i­cally smart­phones require sub­scribers to sign up for both a voice and a data plan from their cell phone providers. Cur­rent car­ri­ers offer a vari­ety of tiered data plans, rang­ing from a few megabytes a month to unlim­ited data trans­fers. Typ­i­cally cus­tomers are “nicely” pushed toward the more costly unlim­ited data plans. How­ever, car­ri­ers are begin­ning to dis­cover that con­sumers are more than capa­ble of con­sum­ing unlim­ited data and more.

The prob­lem that US car­ri­ers are facing is that their exist­ing infra­struc­ture is not pre­pared for load that unlim­ited data use puts on it. AT&T’s recent net­work issues in cities like New York have been directly tied to the over­whelm­ing amount of wire­less data trans­fers taking place. As more and more devices rely on mobile net­works for inter­net access, this prob­lem is only going to increase.

To date, the net­works have responded in three ways. First, new cell­phone plans require a larger amount of cell phone sub­scribers (includ­ing non-​smartphone users) to sign up for basic data plans. The second move is to create a number of tools to “politely” inform users of the amount of band­width that they are con­sum­ing. This is directly tied to the final move: AT&T and Ver­i­zon are begin­ning to float (or per­haps threaten) the elim­i­na­tion of unlim­ited data plans.

And that was before this:

Not only is there a ten­sion between users and cell providers, but, there’s also one between the providers and equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ers. Take for exam­ple Steve Job’s rhetoric during the announce­ment was that of a “break­through deal” with AT&T allow­ing unlim­ited net­work access for $29.99 a month. Thus Apple posi­tions itself as the good guy, fight­ing for better data rates. The ques­tion remains, how will the influx of new users tax the exist­ing net­works (and poten­tially lead to every­one else paying higher data prices to make up for the difference).

Either way, there’s a mes­sage from Apple and Google to USE THAT 3G NET­WORK­ING at the same time AT&T and Ver­i­zon are taking actions that say “but not too much.”

http://​www.​funky​space​mon​key.​com/​w​p​-​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​u​p​l​o​a​d​s​/​2​0​0​8​/​1​2​/​s​t​a​n​z​a​_​i​p​h​o​n​e.png

After watch­ing bits of the iPad announce­ment simul­cast and fol­low­ing the “live tweets” my reac­tion to Apples tablet is, … well …

Meh…

It didn’t live up to the hype. Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s an impor­tant step towards the future of media con­sump­tion and eRead­ing. But was it equal to the hype? No. Did I expect it to be equal to the hype? No. Could any­thing short of the second coming in 3D live up to the hype? Nope.

For folks who have fol­lowed the leaks/speculation on the tablet for a while, there wasn’t much news in the announcement.

So quickly, here are my thoughts:

• It’s a ter­ri­ble name.
  Not sur­pris­ingly #iTa­m­pon was a rising trend on twit­ter after the announce­ment. The jokes write them­selves. In fact, they wrote them­selves years ago on MadTV. While this isn’t a Chevy Nova, it’s a bad name for a product.
• Is it going to be a sucess? Yes.
  The price point works. Will it be over­taken by Android slate format tablets? Yes. But they won’t get as much press. Nor will a single com­pany con­trol as much of the market share.
• Its run­ning a build on the iPhone OS
  The iPhone OS has done more for Touch than any other Moble OS, so it’s not sur­pris­ing that Apple stuck with what works.
• What’s sur­pris­ing by its absence (camera, mul­ti­task­ing, flash)
  The lack of Mul­ti­task­ing and Flash are legacy issues tied to the iPhone. The fail­ure to imple­ment both is dumb and will need to be cor­rected. No Flash is espe­cially trou­bling when imag­in­ing the future of cross plat­form enhanced books. I’m curi­ous about why no camera was included. It couldn’t have affected the chipset that much…
• $12.99-$14.99 for eBooks?!
  I’m uncon­vinced that Apple will be able to get away with charg­ing on aver­age $2 more for eBooks than Amazon, B&N, and other eBook resellers.
• How will 3rd party read­ing apps do?
  Like­wise, I’m very inter­ested to see how 3rd party eReader apps per­form on the iPad, in par­tic­u­lar the Amazon Kindle Reader and Blio.
• 3G for Data Trans­fer only
  The 3G models are data trans­fer only. I had been hoping that they might handle voice as well. Still the tablets have blue­tooth capa­bil­i­ties and built in micro­phones, so Voice over IP is a possibility.
• Clog­ging a clogged net­work
  $29.99 a month (no con­tract) unlim­ited 3G inter­net access isn’t going to help AT&T’s net­work load or pric­ing prob­lems. But when Apple says “jump” they ask “how high.”
• Unlocked doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily mean unlocked
  Having unlocked 3G doesn’t mean that you have 3G. Accord­ing to reports the tablet won’t get high speed inter­net access of T-Mobile’s net­work as it doesn’t use the cor­rect 3G fre­quency. So you’re not quite as free as you might expect.
• Pric­ing and the “premium” option of 3G
  I’m a little curi­ous as to why the addi­tion of the 3G and SIM card results in a $130 pre­mium. My gut (and expe­ri­ence with prod­uct devel­op­ment) tells me that Apple is taking a hit on some if not all of these devices… not a ter­ri­ble one (espe­cially if AT&T is sub­si­diz­ing), but a hit none the less. Given that the cur­rent 8GB iPhone costs approx­i­mately $175 to man­u­fac­ture and that doesn’t include devel­op­ment costs, I have a hard time believ­ing that the 16GB iPad can come in at $499. If any­thing, I sus­pect that they’re making the loss back on the 3G models.
• Who wins in Apple v. Amazon?
  I’ve seen tweets from folks in pub­lish­ing who seem giddy about Apple chal­leng­ing Amazon. I’m not sure if this is a win:win sce­nario, espe­cially given Apple’s across-​the-​board appli­ca­tion of a 30 (Apple) / 70 (Publisher/Developer) profit split. I sus­pect this is more like one Empire versus another with pub­lish­ers, cre­ators, and read­ers caught up in its wake.

As far as the over­all effect on the market and on user practices…. Well, rather than writ­ing my own account, I’ll turn it over to Berk­man Fellow Doc Searls who wrote the fol­low­ing, incred­i­ble artic­u­late overview of the pros and cons of the iPad plat­form for users:

“I got a ride home tonight from Bob Frankston, who was guided by a Nexus One vocal­iz­ing direc­tions, serv­ing as a better GPS than my dashboard’s Garmin. Ear­lier in the evening Bob used the Nexus One to do a bunch of other stuff the iPhone doesn’t do as well, if at all. More impor­tantly, he didn’t need to get his apps only from Google’s (or anybody’s) “store”. And if some­body else wants to make a better Android phone than this one, they can. And Google, I’m sure, hopes they do.

“One big lesson here is that the market’s ecosys­tem includes both the ver­ti­cal silos and the hor­i­zon­tal land­scapes on which those silos stand, and where all kinds of other things can grow. Joel may be right that “the aver­age consumer” will have no trou­ble being locked inside Apple’s silo of “simple, closed Inter­net devices”. But there are plenty of other people who are nei­ther aver­age nor con­tent with that prospect. And I’m bet­ting that, in the long run, they com­prise a bigger market. Not because their num­bers are larger, but because the room for growth is so much bigger.”
http://​blogs.​law.​har​vard.​edu/​d​o​c​/​2​0​1​0​/​0​1​/​2​8​/​u​p​-​t​h​e​-​c​r​e​e​k​-​w​i​t​h​o​u​t​-​a​n​-​i​p​addle/

Aside: Between twit­ter, blog­ging, and eMail lists, I’ve had a lot to write about the future of eRead­ing and the iPad. Lest anyone think that I’m get­ting too big for my britches, let me assure you that I don’t assume anyone is read­ing any of this. Part of my goal is to simple get my thoughts straight on most of this since I’ll have to talk intel­li­gently about it at two upcom­ing con­fer­ences. I fully acknowl­edge that despair.com is right in saying:

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First, what’s it’s actual name?
Second, how much will it cost and will a sub­si­dized by a cell car­rier?
Finally, if I can buy it through a cell car­rier, can I make calls on it?

Beyond those three ques­tions, every­thing really doesn’t matter at this point. Every sign points to the fact that the tablet will be “honey I blew up the iPhone/Touch.” And that’s not a bad thing at all. Essen­tially Apple’s been work­ing on a tablet since the release of the Touch and there’s no need to rein­vent the wheel or the UI. It would be shock­ing if the UI/experience stunk. The name though… that could pos­si­bly stink.

Price, though… that’s crit­i­cal. The ques­tion really is how much and it costs and whether or not we can get it sub­si­dized (via a cell com­pany). It seems to me that Apple would be making a huge mis­take if they actu­ally release it at $1000. The cur­rent rumors of ~$400 (with a con­tract) to ~$700 (unlocked and unsub­si­dized) are far more sen­si­ble. Any­thing much more than that and the tablet would suffer from “I paid between $99 & $299 for my iPhone. I know this slate is bigger and badder, but $1000??!!!” The sim­i­lar­i­ties (form and func­tion) between the iPhone & the iSlate would be far too close to allow for any sig­nif­i­cant pric­ing dis­par­ity (at least if they want it to be a suc­cess). For more on the rea­sons for this, see the last few posts.

Beyond the name and price, we pretty much know what it will do (again, it’s a big iPhone). It will handle apps, it might have a second video camera (not a big thing, inter­na­tion­ally many smart­phones have a second camera). What will be worth watch­ing is if it can make calls on a tra­di­tional cell net­work (as opposed to inter­net call­ing) and if it’s opti­mized to use a head­set (blue­tooth or teth­ered). The reason that the ques­tion of tele­phony is worth asking is if it can be used as a phone, then it may be a step towards a re-​conceiving of what a cell phone is and how one works. It may also have an effect on whether upcom­ing Android slates will incor­po­rate calling.

One more thought on price: it will be inter­est­ing to see Apple can sus­tain the rumored $12.99-14.99 for a book. Stanza will have pre­pared part of the intended audi­ence (hmm, hope­fully you’ll be able to take your books across device). That said, it may be tough sell when com­pared to Amazon and B&N’s eBook pricing.

Either way we’ll know in a few hours.

Oh, my twit­ter friends remind me that there is a fourth ques­tion: whether or not it will cure cancer while taking on Chuck Norris in a fight to the death.

http://​www.​blogcdn.​com/​w​w​w​.​e​n​g​a​d​g​e​t​.​c​o​m​/​m​e​d​i​a​/​2​0​1​0​/​0​1​/​t​o​p.jpg

This is part of a series of articles about the technologies that are changing eReading. For those who have been following them so far, it’s probably becoming clear that like O’Reilly’s Andrew Savikas, I see mobile devices as the mainstream future of eReading. Previous articles have touched on the GMS mobile telephony standard and how the iPhone has changed the expectations smartphones and other screen based consumer electronic devices and mobile OS’es On the eve of the announcement of the iSlate, it’s a discussion on how Apps transform expectations.

How Smartphone Apps will change our Experience/Expectations about Computers

Over the past few articles, I made the argument that smartphones have changed our expectations about the availability of touch and downloadable 3rd party apps on similar devices. These expectations are because of similarities in visual appearance, functionality, and price point. Put another way, because my Kindle costs roughly the same amount as my (subsidized) iPhone (or Droid, etc), is mostly screen (like my smartphone), and is used for the display of digital information, I expect it to have the same features (touchscreen, color, apps). If I paid more for the Kindle (or other eReader) than my phone, then it definitely should have those features.

As recently as this past December, Jeff Bezos touted the fact that the Kindle only did one thing well:

And then for the Kindle device, we want that to be the world’s best purpose-built reading device. It’s not a Swiss Army knife. It’s not going to do a bunch of different things. We believe that reading deserves a dedicated device, and we want Kindle to be that device. It’s like a digital camera. I like having the digital camera on my smart phone, but I also like having a dedicated camera for when I want to take real pictures. (Jeff Bezos, Newsweek Jan 4, 2010)

Unfortunately, the problem with uni-functional/dedicated devices is that the average consumer isn’t willing to pay a heavy premium for them. Take his example of the digital camera – unless someone is a gadget person or an aspiring photographer, chances are that they paid less for the camera than they did for their smartphone. In fact, it wasn’t until the price of a digital camera dropped below $200 that they truly took off as a category. (Side note: I’m unsure if consumer digital cameras will survive in the long run given the increasing quality of cellphone cameras.)

The same is true for eReaders. If the Kindle cost less than $150, I think people would have an easier time treating it as dedicated device. For the moment, that isn’t the case. And, not surprisingly, last week Amazon announced that they are bringing apps to the Kindle platform.

But what happens when you start to bring apps to a given device? As I mentioned last post, one thing that can happen is that the applications lead to a reinterpretation of the “purposes” of that device. As previously mentioned, even though in 2008 Steve Jobs didn’t think people would read on the iPhone, 3rd party app developers and iPhone didn’t see things that way. Taking advantage of the iPhone’s mobility/portability, its multi-touch interface, and its ability to easily access content from the internet, apps like Stanza turned the iPhone into an eReading platform.

Note that we shouldn’t forget the users in this account, as they are as much a part of the story as Apple and the App developers. They had to discover the reading application (either by browsing the app store or via word of mouth) and figure out a way to integrate them into their own routines.

I’ll get back to the role of the user in a future post. For the moment though, I’d like to think about the intersection of hardware and software. Returning to smartphones, I want to discuss how their ability to combine “contextual” information with a constant connection is going to change our expectations about what both devices (including computers), and perhaps even books, can do.

By context I mean that the smartphone is constantly “aware” of its position in the world. Between GPS and cell tower triangulation, it’s possible for the phone to locate itself down to a few meters. The accelerometer within the phone can judge its orientation (landscape vs. portrait) and if it is in motion. Newer phones even include magnetometers (or digital compasses) to provide information about which direction the phone is pointing. Finally, specific environmental information can be conveyed through the phones recording devices (camera and microphone). Add that all up and mix in constant internet access and the result is a device that not only knows where it is, but it’s able to share that information with outside services.

This “awareness” is the foundation of applications like the popular Foursquare. Foursquare is a location-based social networking game. Users gain points by checking-in at venues using text messaging or a smartphone apps application. Acquire enough points and you become the “Mayor” of a specific venue. In some locations, venues have partnered with the service to make special offers to subscribers. What’s important to note is that this type of application would be difficult to execute, let alone build a significant following, using laptops or other portable computing technologies. The success of the Foursquared platform is directly tied to the specific capabilities of smartphones.

Looking to the future…

With recent increases in the processing and graphic power of smartphones, lots of interesting things can begining to happen. Rather than talk about new chipsets that are just becoming available from companies like Nvidia (btw, at this moment their stock is severely undervalued – hint hint), let’s go to video evidence:

This is an HTC HD2, a currently available smartphone, acting as a Playstation emulator. While gameplay is a little slower than on the PS1, it’s still an impressive leap. As these capabilities become standardized on smartphones, it will allow for Augmented Reality interactions. Augmented reality is used to describe a live direct or indirect view of a real-world environment whose elements are merged with (or augmented by) virtual computer-generated imagery – creating a mixed reality. Here’s an example of an ARG developed by grad students at Georgia Tech. Using a smartphone and a specially designed gameboard, the students have created a unique zombie shoot-em-up game:

The interaction with the game board is based on the QR Code (3d Barcode) technology. The software recognizes the image of a static graphic matrix and decodes information orientation information from that matrix in order to render the building structures. Here’s a similar example, using a desktop computer, where a print ad for the Mini was enhanced by an AR rendering of a Mini.

In the case of the Zombie game and the Mini ad, the majority of the information about the graphic code is contained within the app itself. The graphic simply provides positioning information. However, that doesn’t always have to be the case. A QR Code, for example, can encode up to 4,296 characters of alphanumeric data (30x the limit of a twitter post). Already there have been a number of interesting experiments with QR code enhanced reading:

These are all examples of hybrid projects that rely on the capabilities of a smartphone (or technology commonly found within a smartphone) to function. Each integrates with print to deliver an enhanced reading experience. It’s also possible to think about how cell phone technologies could enhance an ebook experience. Imagine for example a constantly updated electronic Zagats guide that uses a phone GPS technology to find nearby resturants, provides walking/driving maps to your dining location of choice, and actively solicits you for feedback on the location you just visited.

For other ways that the eReading experience might be enhanced, we turn to an interesting project from Japan. Nintendo Japan and Harlequin are teaming to release Love Stories for Adults: DS Harlequin Selection for Nintendo’s portable DS game system. Each of the 33 eBooks released for the DS will feature a character relation chart which is updated as you progress through the stories, view summaries of what you’ve read so far glossaries of terms and names, and background music. There is also a social reading component. Readers can record impressions of the works by simply selecting keywords, and will be linked to online columns about the work.

We’re just beginning to beginning to see what enhanced ebooks might look like. Clearly social reading (like social networking) will fit into the experience.

• I wonder why Hort­ense Powdermaker's ethnog­ra­phy "Hollywood The Dream Factory" went out of print? It seems so ahead of its time. #
• RT @maud­new­ton: The #AppleTablet cometh next Wednes­day: http://​bit.​ly/​5​TuLqY (via @cte­icher) #
• New post: smart­phones and eRead­ers (part 1) http://​bit.​ly/​6​fB2He #eRead­ers #
• Attend­ing a talk on wikis at Lib­erty H #
• @rach­barn­hart One of the @wegmans' tweet­ers is mar­ried to Kodak's Chief Blog­ger! <- Those two are build­ing a social media dynasty #
• Gawker media is run­ning a survey sweep­stakes: the prize is a Apple Tablet (when it comes out) – they won't spam : http://​bit.​ly/​4​sODuq #
• Check out the *beta*of our #QR code based social net­work­ing game for #drupal – It's great for live events – http://​bit.​ly/​5​14HOs #
• Sit­ting in my very cold apart­ment in Ithaca. Brrrr! #
• RT @andrewsavikas: 3MM read­ers of ebooks on smart­phones http://​bit.​ly/​5​iqee3 1 out of 5 new iphone apps are #ebooks http://​bit.​ly/​6​suvbk #
• RT @Grant27: cul­ture quiz: wht's the movie whr rstrnt servers talk abt their badges that show their enthu­si­asm 4 the job > Office Space #
• #Amazon announces a SDK for the #Kindle (for read­ers, iphone and desk­top). Zagats and Sonic Book announce kindle apps. http://​bit.​ly/​5​GJerx #
• RT @design­re­lated: RT @bri­anslaw­son: Neato… RT @pucpuggy: Check out Organic Typog­ra­phy at MIT. http://web.media.mit.edu/~rthe/type/ #
• @ljc … have I men­tioned recently how much you and the Kodak social media crew rock?! #
• RT @doc­torow: Gen'l interst news­pa­per pay­walls will only work if every major paper does it at once. One refus­nik makes the strat­egy a loser #
• RT @doc­torow: News is a sub­sti­tutable com­mod­ity, so's opin­ion. Inves­tiga­tive reportage is valu­able, but its facts can't be owned #
• RT @doc­torow: It's not news if you tell people they're not allowed to dis­cuss (ie blog) it. We call that a "secret," not a "story" #
• crud… classes haven't even started and I've already gotten my first home­work assign­ment from #cor­nell #
• This makes per­fect sense if you know Japan: Enhanced Har­le­quin romance novels pub­lished in Japan­ese for Nin­tendo DS : http://​bit.​ly/​8​Cssy2 #
• Ok, off to my last mar­tial arts class for a while… #
• I just unlocked the "Newbie" badge on @foursquare! http://​4sq.​com/​7​QymEc #
• to talk eBooks (@ tap & mallet) http://​4sq.​com/​5​n0t7p #
• Finally got Dre onto face­book. The world will never be the same…. #
• @laerm sorry 'bout that. Next time you can join us for beer and eReaders… in reply to laerm #
• Onto work­ing on a pro­posal to bring @ritopl to the Open Knowl­edge Conf. (#okcon2010) to dis­cuss Open Source Pub Research and aca­d­e­mic labs. #

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This continues an exploration of the technologies and trends that are influencing the future of reading. Previous posts have discussed the GMS mobile telephony standard and how the iPhone has changed the expectations smartphones and other screen based consumer electronic devices. As always, crossposted at the OPL)

As mentioned previously, one of the things that smartphones did was to highlight the value of the Operating System. Beyond the user interface of the phone, the key place that the OS created value was through app delivered via App Stores. There is no question that the undisputed leader here is Apple. Gartner Research recently reported that Apple accounts for 97.5% of all applications downloaded from all app stores.

Let’s spend a moment with that number. First note that it includes the download of paid and free applications. The research group Gigaom has calculated that approximately ¾’s of the applications downloaded from the store are free applications (please, visit that link for a beautiful visualization of this information). Still, the results of people paying for a quarter of those applications is nothing to dismiss. In December of 2009, the quarter of the downloads from the App store that were paid for accounted for $250 Million in revenues of which 30% goes to Apple and 70% goes to the developers.

Also, it’s important to note that not all of those downloads took place on iPhones. Many purchases were made via the iPod Touch, which also runs the iPhone software. This tends to lend some credence to the possibility that the upcoming Apple tablet will run iPhone software, or at least have access to the Apple App store. It’s in Apple’s best interest to make sure that as many devices of their devices as possible can buy from the store.

Given the relative “newness” of the Blackberry/RIM, Android/Google, and Microsoft App stores, it shouldn’t surprise us that Apple is so far ahead. We can expect that as those stores mature, and as the number of devices that can access these stores increase, Apple’s share of the download market will decrease.

The greater point in all of this is that users see smartphones as a platform for apps and that they are willing to routinely download and even pay for apps, if the installation process is “one click” easy. Those apps in turn, are expanding people’s expectations about what a smartphone can do. And as we have seen expectations are often carried over to similar product categories – especially if the products are in similar price ranges. Just as people have come to expect that eReaders have touchscreens, similar expectations may develop around downloading and running apps. Take for example the Amazon’s announcement of a Kindle Software Development Kit. Also note that such a move isn’t just about keeping up with the ApplesJones, it’s also the hope of developing their own app store (you know, it’s not like Amazon has experience handling eCommerce).

The Smartphone Mobile OS

As people expect more and more from their phone, the line between the smartphone category and the portable computer category will begin to blur. Based on products shown or rumored at CES, it’s clear that said blurring has already begun. Smartphone OS’s have begun to “invade” other devices. Google’s Android OS has made its way onto netbooks and eReaders. And while Microsoft currently has different operating systems for mobile phones (Windows Phone) and other mobile devices (Windows CE), there is much speculation that these will eventually fold into the same platform. Finally,as mentioned above, in addition to driving the iPod Touch, there is much speculation that the upcoming Apple iSlate will also run the iPhone OS.

Beyond including access to apps, there are a number of reasons why Mobile OS’s are on the rise:

• They are (in theory) designed to run efficiently on lower powered processors. While the capabilities of mobile CPUs continue to increase, they still lag far behind their traditional computer brethren. So mobile OS’s have to do more with less and while balancing functionality with heat discharge and power consumption (you don’t want to have to recharge your device more than once a day).
• Touch (either finger or stylus) is the primary interface device. Unlike traditional OSes which focus on mouse and keyboard, these platforms were designed from the ground up to be touch first and keyboard second.
• Telephony and mobile networking is built into the OS. Since they are designed to work as (smart)phones they have to be able to connect to a mobile phone network. This means that when a manufacturer chooses to implement a given mobile OS they know that they have the software capability for mobile networking.
• And in addition to telephony, there are a number of other “bonus” features enabled by the OS including support for built in cameras, accelerometers (motion sensors), magnetometer (digital compass), and GPS.

Where manufacturer/developer choice comes in

For manufacturers, choosing one of these OS’s means that you don’t have to program your own custom OS for your device. However there are a range of decisions and, in some cases, restrictions that influence the decision of which OS to use.

Of the major OS’s:  Apple Iphone, Google Android, Microsoft Phone, RIM Blackberry, and Nokia/Sony Ericsson/Samsung Symbian – only Android and Windows Phone are licensed so that any manufacturer can incorporate them into their devices.

Apple, Nokia, RIM, Sony Ericsson, and Samsung tightly control their respective OS’s, placing them on devices that they manufacture. The advantage to this, from a manufacturer’s standpoint, is that they can tightly control the hardware that the platforms run on. The argument for this control is that it provides users with the best possible base experience: You never have to worry about encountering iPhone software on a device with a slow processor.

Microsoft and Google take a different approach. By allowing anyone (or at least anyone who is willing to pay the development licensing fee in Microsoft’s case) to develop hardware for their platforms, the hope is to capture the market through volume. The recent proliferation of Android devices is a great example of this. It’s hard to say “no” to a free OS that provides all the advantages listed above.

On one hand, this flexibility means that these OS, in Microsoft’s case Windows CE, find their way into a wide range of devices including eReaders and tablets. However, there are potential dangers to this strategy. Microsoft attributes part of the problems that they have had with their Mobile OS to inconsistent user experiences due to variation screen sizes and processor power across devices:

Our fragmentation issue is primarily around screen resolutions and assuming a minimum CPU and storage. So it has been a little bit challenging, because that choice, that flexibility, that freedom that people have to build any kind of device and use any kind of device: touch, non-touch, keyboard, soft key, has required a little bit extra effort in some cases for developers to target apps that run across a wide array of devices…” ~ Microsoft’s Greg Sullivan, Senior Marketing Manager

For app developers, there are different costs to be weighed. If developers choose to program for Android, it means learning a new OS. Microsoft, on the other hand, markets their OS by highlighting the advantage that programming for the OS is very similar to writing a standard Windows program, which helps keep costs down. Apple makes a similar claim about the Cocoa programming language for the iPhone – if you can program a Mac, you can program an iPhone.

Obviously market share and platform popularity influence choice as well. But, returning to the beginning of the article, distribution through App stores may be the biggest factor. By signing on with Apple, for example, a developer knows that if they can get their application into the iTunes App store, then they have the greatest audience exposure and a “turn key” infrastructure for getting paid.

The question that we’ll tackle next is how Smartphone Apps are changing our expectations about what programs (and computers) can do.