Yes, the video is in German, but you’ll still get it.
Tag: iPad
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Erik Qualman at ClickZ posted an article a while back entitled, “Steve Jobs: 10 Lessons in Leadership.” It’s a quick read and I highly recommend the post, whether you love Steve Jobs or hate him (or fall somewhere in between), there are some interesting concepts that will really make you think.
Now, it’s much easier to Monday-morning-QB Steve’s success after the fact, but since that’s all we have to go on, it’s not a bad place to start.
What the post by Erik fails to mention was that Jobs was not perfect. There were many failed products at Apple. The post points out that Jobs cancelled many products and that was okay, but do you think those failures tormented him? Perhaps… they may have also served as great motivators. After all, aren’t we supposed to learn from our mistakes?
Interestingly, people often forget to talk about Apple’s greatest mistake – the fact that it did not license its computing technology during the great home computer race in the 80’s. Instead, it kept the technology close to the vest and that allowed the PC market (dominated by IBM) to capture something upwards of 90%. Imagine if Apple had gone the other way? Where would we be today? Perhaps Apple would have had more innovative products or perhaps there would be no PC?
Regardless of the magnitude of that failed business decision one can argue it helped keep Apple products wholesome to Job’s vision without being muddled by inferior third parties. I would argue that while PCs got cheaper over the past 20 years, many of them got crappier too. After all, I am a firm believer of “you get what you pay for” in life.
I got my first iPod around 2003 or thereabouts, and am currently on my third one… I recently acquired an iPad for work, and after pleading incessantly with me, I purchased an iPhone 4 for my wonderful wife. I can tell you this, when I am awake, I have an Apple device with me nearly 100% of the time. My wife has yet to let go of the iPhone since December. I can’t really think of any other brand of technology that has become such a crutch in my household.
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In higher education, we all know that the cost of text books is significant. These days at American Public University, we estimate that on average, course materials will run between $125 and $175 per course. With a typical bachelor’s degree requiring 120 credits, that’s about 40 courses or about $5,000 to $7,000! The University realized early on that this can be quite a burden, so the school provides a Book Grant to degree-seeking undergrads which picks up most course material costs. Other students, including those in graduate programs can take advantage of purchasing books from discounters such as Chegg.com and Amazon.com, and can also purchases used books and sell their books back to various vendors when they complete courses.
However, there is innovation in the textbook industry, and it is coming mostly from outside the publishers.
There is a rumor that Apple will be hosting an event related to the publishing industry (possible textbooks) in New York in January 2012. Could it center around electronic editions of textbooks? Could it be new software for the iPad that makes etextbooks more like printed books? Could it be a sub-$100 text book ereader? Could it be related to iTunesU and making more texts available for purchase?
There’s certainly a lot of speculation, and you can read more about it here.
Only time will tell. One thing is for sure, with the heavy market adoption of ereaders and tablets, the migration of textbooks from the print to electronic will be sooner than we think. The impact will most certainly be greater than we imagined on the economy, industry, how we use and interact with texts and how we use tablets for our studies.
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If you are a Google AdWords advertiser, then you have the option of targeting tablet users with your ads. With the growing popularity of tablets, and the fact that studies show increasing home use for activities such as browsing, advertising is a huge opportunity.
On the Pingdom blog, they discussed a recent report about the increasing use of tablets and how they are generating CTR’s for ads that are performing 37% better than comparable ads in desktop/laptop targeting.
One hypothesis is the “fat-finger” problem. Simply put, on small screens, viewing a clutter website can be difficult – and interacting with it – especially click small links, can be quite a challenge. It is very easy to inadvertently click the wrong link. Similarly, if you are trying to scroll and there is an ad near the edge of the table, you may accidentally click the ad. I’ve done this many times.
The results is a click-through of the ad. I try to hit back as soon as possible.
The major search engines claim that they are able to filter out these types of clicks most of the time – clicks that result in an immediate bounce. However, I have not be shown definitively that this is indeed the case, nor provided any data to support this. Of course it is in their best interest to not charge advertisers for these clicks as it will erode their ROI and the advertiser will not continue spending on campaigns. So for now, I’ll have to take their word for it.
But, perhaps we are not far away from a scenario where on certain devices such as small-screens (tablets and smart phones), when you click an ad, perhaps you’ll get a quick prompt saying, “would you like to continue to view this link”. Maybe something like this is a good way to keep people from miss-clicking and to protect advertisers who ultimately pay the salaries of the search engine purveyors.
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Imagine shopping for furniture at a store like Pottery Barn and instead of going to the counter with the info of the couch you want to purchase, an associate comes over to you, scans the couch with their iPhone or iPad, orders it, enters your shipping info, and then swipes your credit card. No lines, no hassle.
Sandeep Bahanote at Mashable describes such an experience in a recent blog post: http://mashable.com/2011/01/12/social-mobile-retail/#
Dan Soschin 