FCC chair magically discovers the AT&T T Mobile really is anti free market after the public outcry becomes deafening. With his unpopular boss’s re-election prospects dimming, this is one crony deal that may not make the cut.
High debt and the promise of more new competition inspires Wall Street to lose it’s enthusiasm for Netflix. The short term winners to watch for are big media companies that own large content libraries as demand for their product grows.
Penguin nixes library lending of eBooks. On self inflicted bullet to this publishers right foot, with five more to go.
Protect IP filibuster planned by Senator Wyden. It will include the reading the names of citizens who oppose it. Is your name on the list? If not you can add it here.
Core wars: 144 CPU chip goes into production.
Amazon’s recently announced ebook subscription service could threaten public libraries. In an extremely supportive gesture, the company providing free Kindle selections to public libraries. Will it make a difference? I’m always the skeptic, but I hope it does.
Google denies evidence of rigging search in Senate hearings. The extreme variations in the referrals this blog has received from Searchzilla leads me state the obvious: denial of rigging is ludicrous.
Another CEO shakeup at HP? Could be. If Yahoo has it right, the new candidate is possibly the worst possible choice to date. It’s high time HP shareholders dump the incompetent board while their stock still has some value.
The troll me, sue you stupidity continues: Samsung sues to keep Apple out of Korea. Apple needs to bury the hatchet before the collective universe joins forces to kill it. Congress needs to bury the patent system it’s deliberately perverted into a trolling tool and start over.
Is Microsoft trying to “boot” Linux off new PC’s?
There are many benefits to leading a cult. Cult members rarely complain about paying high prices for commodities inside your walled garden. Sheeple rarely question cult leader claims that other sources for these commodities have been walled out to protect them from the shoddy and unsafe. That all works until a competitor tunnels under the garden walls. When loyal cultists discover the world outside has more to offer, the majority will flee.
Apple’s done very well for itself using it’s strong position in portable devices to squeeze both consumers and content providers. While the company makes it easy to buy apps, media and content through it’s company store the fact remains it is limiting consumer choice by doing so. But these are also connected devices, and with open internet access, competitors will find a work around.
Amazon had its reader app nixed by Apple this year. The reason is obvious: Apple wants the book and periodical sales. In response, Amazon has released a cloud based reader that is accessible from any Internet connection. Look for similar work arounds for other media from many a competitor. To stop this, Apple will have to redact capabilities that its devices currently provide. If that happens the loyal cultists will tout whatever line the company feeds them while the balance will be much less likely to buy the cult leaders wares again.
The marketplace will soon be awash in portables from every corner. Those who have not yet become accustomed to Apple’s UI will find alternatives that are equally capable, and in a growing number of cases preferable. An open internet will makes it impossible to build walled gardens without severely limiting the utility of any connected device. Consumers will become increasingly less willing to tolerate limits on their devices. Apple and others who have chosen to emulate it’s business model probably won,t even notice that shift for a couple of years. When they do, it will be too late for most of them to recover.
Could Amazon turn the portable media biz on its ear with a new business model?
A who’s who of the fine folks who are tweaking the copyright laws.
Facebooks pays large for eBook tech.
The legal system vs technology or the murky business of Photoshopping ad images. Companies could be sued for doing too much or not enough.
Verizon’s FiOS is still king of the US broadband hill. Too bad so few of us can get it, and even sadder that the company has pretty much stopped growing its footprint.
Free city wide WiFi coming to London.
Is Google playing chicken with DOJ? Or, is the current DOJ action just theater to cover a hands off policy?
Digital Publishing is taking the world by storm. Indie publishers are crawling out of the woodwork. Fact it looks like a veritable Oki Sooners YeHaw! to stake a claim. There will be some losers, both big publishers and indies alike as it plays out. But it sure looks healthy.
But there is a problem and it has nothing to do with the content providers generally. It has to do with ePub and its sister .mobi. But before we get to the smack-down lets run around the carousel and what they got right. –
Its a reasonable list. But the real world is going to cream ePub pretty severely. So the question is why? One simple answer –
The world does NOT want another etext standard!
ePub has been successful to date as there has not been a viable alternative and that the whole web world was in flux with the infighting for-against-around HTML5. Well that battle is about done. What is left is minor skirmishes about viable container formats for video. Even Adobe seems consigned to the outcome. Only Google battles it.
The second reason for survival has been the divergence in the devices themselves. Most of the primary eReaders have been pushed by publishers. Principally Amazon with Kindle and Barnes and Noble with Nook. They essentially being walled garden affairs. Amazon going to the point of having their own .mobi format for their devices. So long as there were no competing devices, all was well.
Well that will disappear this year. This Christmas I suspect will be the Year of the Tablet. The likes of the Xoom and Toshiba are selling quite well. Carriers are loving the data stream revenues all the way to the bank. Enough that they are subsidizing the purchase price with a contract. Mfrs out of China are cranking out more. The base line cost of a tablet will be in the $99 bracket at Christmas and with capabilities that the $399 models have today. If you are still with me at this point you smell the word I am going to use next is just around the next paragraph.
Convergence. Both in software and hardware. Fact the hardware side will be driven by the software only to be reflected back. You see, a great many of the current Mfrs are using some variant of WebKit. Its the preferred development engine to design browsers. And ironically several eReaders. Android has it, Kindle has it, Feel the Force Luke…. [snap] The point is, if I am a tablet hardware dude am I going to listen to BS that I have TWO layout engines in my converged design?! Perish the thought. The Suit is going to side with the hardware dude and tell the software dink to come up with some CSS code or other to use one layout engine for both the browser and the ePub reader. So the next generation of tablets come eReaders will be using a HTML5 aware layout engine. The base difference of many will be a link rel swap of what base CSS suite they are using for the display. All handled very nicely in a javascript call.
Once that happens its curtains for ePub the standard. Long live ePub the container! Which brings us to the end game. The whole .epub is nothing but a .zip file with a different name. It acts as the bucket for all the subcomponents contained within. Ironic when you think about it. .epub files being implemented like .mht files are today for containing full website volumes. Once the content providers see that they can access the full capability of the layout engine the restrictions will be ignored. That is where we are headed. In a converged future .epub will contain it all, text, sound, video using HTML5 wrappers with the necessary javascript, AV codecs and yes DRM. Which at that point is it an .epub file or an enhanced .mht file? Go further. Is .epub on steriods the perfect way to deliver a video game? Or a combined book + movie package?
You be the judge.
Recent Comments