While many may discount the importance of Apple's new service - it may dramatically change how our children learn and and the tools they learn with. When the Kindle launched - I wondered how long it would be before consumers would migrate to digital - Then the iPad arrived and I thought how long would it be before I would have to purchase a tablet as a required tool for my children's education. Apple's announcement may hold the answers for the education market. I already have colleagues who have been asked by their schools to purchase iPads for their children - I have a problem with purchasing a $500 iPad for a 6 year-old. So I hope Apple's announcement includes the "iPad Student Edition" @ $199.
On a media note, it will be interesting to see how this service will affect publishers like Pearson Education. Be sure to tune in around 10 a.m. ET as we discover whether the guesswork pans out and how — if at all — Apple adds a dash of flavor to a seemingly plain topic. Read more at gadgetbox.msnbc.msn.com |
Never mind taking over Wall Street - how about shutting down one of the most used resources on the web.That's what Wikipedia plans to to due in protest of the Stop Online Privacy Act.
Just this weekend, new tweeter, Rupert Murdoch attacked President Obama (when the White House expressed concerns about SOPA) and Google for profiting from piracy This fight will pit film studios/media companies/music studios against technology giants like Google/Facebook/Wikipedia. Jan. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia where users contribute and edit entries, will shut the English version of its website for 24 hours tomorrow to oppose proposed U.S. anti-piracy legislation. |
The move is a protest against pending legislation including the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, bill, according to a statement by Wikimedia Foundation Inc., the non-profit organization that operates the encyclopedia |
"If passed, this legislation will harm the free and open Internet and bring about new tools for censorship of international websites inside the United States," Wikimedia said in the statement. Read more at www.sfgate.com |
Tablets have created new opportunities to generate revenue from old magazine content, which 5 years ago didn't exist. I led a number of magazine conversion projects, the first one was for American Heritage Magazine and the publisher had difficulty generating revenue from quality content. The tablet has been a game changer for archived content. Tablet users will continue to want to find that old copy of Time for old times sake....! At Hearst Magazines, 30 percent of the single copies sold on tablets are back issues. |
And Hearst isn't the only company to be benefitting from the sale of archival issues. Over at Popular Science, AdWeek reports, back issues have accounted for a whopping 40 percent of the single digital copies the mag has sold this year. And at Popular Photography, the single-copy number jumps to 41 percent. |
Those stats aren't just good news for a magazine industry that's always on the lookout for new ways to make money from old content Read more at www.theatlantic.com |
As the different parts of our lives become more electronically intertwined via social networks - Mercedes brings it to their car. Some people may be thinking great and others may be thinking how dangerous. Mercedes-Benz on Tuesday expanded its in-vehicle Internet offerings by incoporating services like Facebook, Yelp, and Google into the dashboard via a service dubbed mbrace2. |
Powered by Hughes Telematics, mbrace2 is the second-generation of Mercedes-Benz's cloud-based services. Updates will be provided over-the-air, and mbrace2 works with iOS and Android devices. With it, you can check your Facebook updates, get information from Google, hear about the latest news, and tap into services provided by a real-time concierge service. |
CES - If you can hold off on buying a tablet for a few more weeks - you'll be pleased to find sub-$200 tablets that will run ICS. Expect prices to drop like stones and for consumers to migrate to non-iPad models once they discover that they can play angry birds on them. LAS VEGAS – Google's new Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, can bring new features to even the least expensive tablets. The new Viewsonic Viewpad E70 costs only $169—and while it doesn't run ICS at blazing speed, it definitely runs ICS adequately enough. Read more at www.pcmag.com |
I sure hope that this is true. A $299 iPad would likely cause a shock wave throughout the tablet market. Consumers who were on the fence about spending $500 on an iPad would only have to justify spending $100 more than on a Kindle Fire. More than just grabbing a few customers from Amazon -- Apple will remain the tablet market leader -- that is unless Google unveils something special later this year. The new take from Taiwanese industry publication DigiTimes offered on Tuesday projects that Apple will keep its current iPad 2 available after it launches a third-generation iPad in the coming months. At most, it projects that the iPad 2 price will drop to $399 for the entry-level model, which would be $100 less than the current cheapest model, and would be a strategy similar to what Apple has employed with its iPhone lineup. |
But Apple could be even more aggressive and price the iPad 2 even less, potentially at $349 or even as low as $299, the analysis concluded. Read more at www.appleinsider.com |
While most media deals involve digital technologies - print deals are still happening. Not to long ago Google became a print publisher by purchasing Zagat. Fortunately for the NYTimes, its paywall is paying off, according to Ryan Chittum of http://www.cjr.org and this deal will help fund their online activities. The New York Times Company announced on Tuesday that it had reached an agreement to sell the company’s Regional Media Group to Halifax Media Holdings, of Daytona Beach, Fla., for $143 million in cash. |
which consists of 16 regional newspapers including The Gainesville Sun; The Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, Calif.; The Sarasota Herald Tribune; and The Tuscaloosa News |
The company, in a statement, said it estimates net after-tax proceeds from the sale will be approximately $150 million. |
“That’s saying basically each title is worth about $10 million” on average, he said, “which is just breathtaking when you consider what kinds of profit machines these newspapers used to be.” Read more at mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com |
There is room for others in the tablet wars - Google, unlike others, has an established mobile platform that contains products and services - At the right price point, this Future-Tab has the potential to become a major disruptor. It seems like Google may no longer be content to simply watch from the sidelines as the likes of Apple and Amazon go from strength to strength in the tablet market, with executive chairman Eric Schmidt telling Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera this week that “in the next six months we plan to market a tablet of the highest quality.” He added that introducing such a device would be guaranteed to increase the “brutal competition between Apple and Google Android.” |
Can't say that this one is to far-fetched, since there are people living on The World. But this idea, while intriguing, may face some legal obstacles. You've heard of tech companies starting in a Silicon Valley garage. What about on a ship? |
That's the idea being floated by a California startup that wants to dock a vessel off the coast to house foreign entrepreneurs who have dreams of creating the next Google but can't get visas to work in the United States. |
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Apple to announce new digital textbook service?
