“I’m in favor of anything that brings traffic in the store,” said Ms. Reidy of Simon & Schuster. “If it’s toys or games that brings a family into the bookstore, then I say fine.”
Ms. Reidy from Simon & Schuster echoes to the New York Times what is happening with major bookstore chains. The e-book is here to stay whether most nostalgic book readers like it or not, driven by lack of knowledge – kids are growing in an e-book/pdf world – and the economy – e-books are on average cheaper.
I think the bookstores are playing the game the wrong way. The way to play it is to make you *want* to go to the bookstore. The way you get people to want to is by having something there you don’t have anywhere else: knowledge about books. What you should get at a bookstore should be what you can’t buy anywhere else on the web. You can read reviews and opinions on books online, but what you want to deliver is someone that custom tailors book suggestions for you.
The icing on top of the cake would be for each bookstore worker/helper to have a card with a code on it. Independently of where and when you buy the suggested book, if the code was entered, the employee got 1% of the sale and the bookstore another 1%. This would shift bookstores more and more away from the physical delivery of books to a service oriented product relying on (hopefully) highly skilled employees whose life long experience in the business has inherent value.
Besides Iceland, which will show no increase in their renewable energy source share, Portugal is only behind Denmark in Europe. This is great news for Portugal as long as big profitable oil reservoirs aren’t found :-) One comment out of the over two hundred about the article rightly points out that unfortunately the companies exploring these energy sources are tightly linked to the government and not very open to competition. This is called having the monopoly. This shows that even after the year 2000 the governments have a high propensity for controlling more than they should have.
Ever since the iPad was released it has been controversial. One of the biggest claims a lot of naysayers cling onto is that it is not a creative device: It is a device that dumps information/data on you, does not push you to be creative.
I believe this idea has stemmed from two sources: (1) People are more narrow minded than they believe so. They are normally afraid of something new and different and by default, new things aren’t as good as the old ones (2) The operating system that originally shipped on the iPad was not as open as people would like to. This got perceived as Apple wanting to control everything that the device can do and imposing limits on being creative.
I won’t delve much into point number (1) as you can buy some books and read studies about all that. As far as (2) goes, a little bit of history can get us a long way. When the iPhone came out it had a very limited and crippled OS. I mean, there was no API. Apple themselves did not realize at the time what they had created and how to fully exploit in the apps that shipped with the original iPhone. They had no idea that developers would just make the iPhone what it is.
With this in mind, I think Apple also decided to thread lightly on the iPad front. They released the iPad – with a very mature API compared to the original iPhone mind you – but still don’t really know how to go at it as far as opening up the system to the outside. This is why there’s not a mature way to interface a bunch of external gadgets. This imposes limits on how much you can interface the iPad to other well known and established tools in the market.
My main interest on the iPad is two fold. Productivity: email anywhere, semi decent typing and ok sized reading for technical books and scientific papers. Creativity: I am always curious about the interplay between technology and creativity. I am specially curious when it comes to music. Music apps is where I’ve spent over 70% of my money on Apps.
As far as music goes, the iPad is now starting to become very interesting. There are native apps for it that are just mind blowing for anyone that has played with music and computers for last two decades. That is all good but what will catalyze the new wave of innovation is how you can interface it to not only already existing formats such as MIDI and Audio interfaces but also how to you can change the way to interface with them. My first example is interfacing a full blown software such as Max for Live Ableton and using the iPad to control it:
One can make the argument that it’s only a controller with virtual knobs and sliders. I would argue that first and foremost, it’s not one but many. Notice how he switches between different possible ways of controlling notes. My second line of argumentation would be that this is the first stage of using an iPad. We will very soon get rid of virtualizing instruments and controllers. Have a look at Jordan Rudess having fun with MorphWiz:
My last example (use headphones or a good sound system to appreciate the bass) is how you can control Electrify using an external controller, the APC 40 from Akai. This is the sort of interface ability that will push the iPad to a new level. It will stop being seen and perceived as a limited controller – it is after all, not very big. It won’t be anymore also just a target for simpler and more limited software beat boxes/synth but hopefully as serious target of software developers since you can now interface it with professional controllers ranging from Performance controllers like the APC 40 or custom made ones but also professional keyboards, drum modules, etc.
I’ve shared my ideas of what the iPad can currently do and some of the cooler and newer possibilities laying ahead. I’ve also shared some examples of the iPad in three different situations: As a pure controller (first), as a new way to create music using using a new way to interface with an instrument (second) and as the the brain of a music software being controlled by a hardware controller (third). This shows how versatile it is. If this can’t get you to be creative, then I’m not sure the iPad is the problem in anyone wanting to do music using new approaches.
Not the biggest Ansel Adams fan but CNN has a story on some negatives that were believed to have been destroyed in a fire in 1937 have now turned up. Great news for photographers around the world.
After playing again on friday with a friend’s iPad for 20 minutes I started thinking about simplified computing. Sure I love my command line, matlab, perl, python, you name it. But I also love to pick something up and not have to figure out stuff I don’t want to. I want to be productive. Quickly.
As a full blown computer nerd, it’s not easy. It’s a paradigm shift. I used Gentoo at a point for byte’s sake. Maybe I’m getting old. Maybe I’m getting smarter.
