iPhone, Compaq and Nokia

My friend Elizabeth gave me temporary custody of her iPhone last week. It is an impressive piece of technology -- smart, fast, graphics, touchable and just plain cool.

As I was playing with it I flashed on my first portable PC.  It was the size of a small suitcase and could be carried anywhere.  I was younger then and spent more time at the gym.  I loved it!

I suspect that in a few years I will think about my current 20 inch laptop with the same sort of nostalgic half smile.  It is so very clear to me that the iPhone (or something like it) is the computing device of the future.

Which brings me to Nokia.  According to Reuters, Nokia, the biggest cellphone maker, is planning to produce laptops.

At first I was really taken aback.  It seems counterintuitive to me to try and leverage your mobile phone base into PC's.  Actually it seems downright backwards.

But then again, maybe not.  A lot of companies have been playing with a tablet computer, but so far, no one has really gotten it right.  Nokia is in a unique position to get it right. . .

Nokia smartphones have screen technology down to a science, integrate voice commands and intelligently integrate phone and computing functions. And they understand small tight operating systems better than anyone.  The Symbian OS is a marvel all by itself!

This picture from MobileLinuxInfo probably says it all:

del.icio.us Tags: notebook computers,iPhone,Nokia,smartphones

Smartphones in the Classroom

This morning, the New York Times has a great piece on smartphones in the classroom.

One one side is the cellphone industry saying that using a smartphone improves math skills. The claim is based on a study conducted in four North Carolina schools. The schools were all located in low-income neighborhoods; and 9th and 10th-grade math students were given high-end cellphones. The phone were each preloaded with special algebra learning programs.

The students used the phones to study -- recording them solving problems and even posting videos of their work for other students to watch. Evidently the school had set up a private network just for these students. Now how cool is that!

But there's more. . . the students were allowed talk and texting minutes to use during their off time. And just to keep things safe, the messages were monitored by teachers to make sure that they were appropriate.

At the end of the year the students were given an algebra exam and the results showed that students with the phones performed 25 percent better than those without the devices.

Of course, there is the other side. This side includes the usual suspects, teacher unions such as the American Federation of Teachers, school administrators and some individual teachers who believe that cellphones are just a distraction from the real business of learning. Which explains why many states and school districts ban cellphones on school campuses.

I would be willing to bet that most of these detractors have never even used a smart phone. . .

After watching the teens around me, I have to say that giving them a cellphone sounds like a winner idea. They are smaller and cheaper than computers; they can be insured for very little money and the kids love them.

Most of the teens I know remind me Charleton Heston -- you will have to pry the cell phone out of their cold dead hands. It seems to me a winning strategy to use their passion for the devices and leverage it into an educational tool.

The cost of a smartphone, especially when bought in bulk, can't be much more expensive than the outrageous amount of money spent on textbooks and supplies.

From what I have seen in our local school system there is a lot of room for experimentation. When you have one third of the children in the district "left behind", the status quo is clearly NOT working.

del.icio.us Tags: ebooks,e-books,cellphones in the classroom,education

eBooks in the News

It was busy, busy week for eBook news items. Here is a grab bag of the ones I found the most interesting.

Google Mobile

Google announced that it's library of 1.5 million scanned books is now available for the PC, the iPhone and the T-Mobile G1. These books are scanned so that there are no links but the image quality is pretty impressive.   Check out it out on the Google Book Search Blog.

Amazon Kindle 2.0 and Surprise Announcement

Rumor has it that Amazon will be releasing a new version of the Kindle next week.  More info and pictures can be found on the  Boy Genius blog

AND according to the New York Times, Amazon is now working on making Kindle titles available on a variety of mobile phones. Not surprising really. . . of course there is no time estimate but the idea has a lot of people watching this new development.

Computer World Predicts a Bright Future for eBooks

One of the most interesting articles I have read about the growth in the eBook market showed up over the weekend in Computer World.  Staff writer Mike Elgan makes a case for revolutionary growth in the eBook market.  He believes that six major trends will finally kick eBooks into the mainstream:

• The economy
• The environment
• Publishing revolution
• Aggressive eBook marketing
• A rise in books written for electronic reading
• The decline of the newspaper industry

An excellent and persuasive piece which is worth reading from top to bottom.  Click here to read it.

A Short History of eBooks

Another excellent piece is a rather long article by John Siracusa at ars technica.  He traces his experience with eBooks starting with his job at Palm in 2002 to the present.  My favorite quote:

Let me leave you with a quote from another Peanut Press founder, one which reflects his not-entirely unfounded optimism about the subtle seduction of e-books: "You know what we call people who finally try e-books after they've sworn they could never read on a handheld device? 'Customers.'"

It is an excellent history of eBooks and the story of his personal experiences with the content and the technology.  I actually laughed out loud a couple of time!

Cell Phones -- the Statistics

I know.  Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics.  I can not resist, however, quoting some statistics that back up my belief that cellphones are going to rule the world of eBook reading.  

• 1.18 Billion new mobile phones were sold in 2008 (IDC 2009)
• There are 4 Billion mobile phone subscribers
• The world has about 6.7 Billion people, so this means that 60% of the world population has a cell phone

Admittedly some people own multiple phones but even so, that might take the percentage down to 50% (extremely low).

Tomi Ahonen and Alan Moore explore this phenomena in great detail on their blog. Check it out!

That's it for this week -- my top five stores.  Stay tuned for news and updates and follow the links to read the items mentioned here.

del.icio.us Tags: ebooks,e-books,amazon,google,google book search,kindle ebook,digital reading

eBooks, eNovels & ePublishing for the cell phone

I admit to having an almost morbid fascination with the whole reading on cell phones thing.  So of course, this Galleycat title grabbed my attention:

86 Percent of Japanese High Schoolers Read Cell Phone Novels

Cell phone novels, called keital in Japanese are hot sellers with Japanese youth (particularly young women). The headline is just the beginning.  The article goes on to say that 75% of middle school and 23% of grade school girls read cell phone novels.

Last year ten of Japan's best selling paper novels started out as cell phone novels and sold about 400,000 copies each.  And in fact most of those sales were for expensive hardcover books.  The buyers had almost all read the novel on their phone before buying the book.

Japan is a country where a great portion of the population commutes on trains. Commuting and text messaging have become almost synonymous.  Talking on cell phones in a crowded space is considered rude and texting is cheaper than voice service. 

Get on any rush hour train and you will see literally hundreds of people peering at their phones.  It makes sense that the young have found their own form of entertainment -- evidently games for guys and cell phone novels for girls. 

These cell phone novels are usually written for the young by the young.  The novels text standard techniques:  short lines, simple vocabulary, and lots of mobile symbols (abbreviations).

But it is it literature?  Not according to the older generation or academics! 

But the older generation and academics are only a small portion of the Internet/cell phone population.  And in this day and age good ideas jump oceans and continents in a single bound.

Consider textnovel, the first English language cell phone novel site.  The site offers free subscriptions to serialized cell phone novels.  Last month cellphone novelist, Saoirse Redgrave, won $1000 for her novel 13 to Life: a Werewolf's Tale. 

It has started!  Stay tuned.

del.icio.us Tags: ebooks,e-books,cell phones,keital,cell phone novels,ebooks about fiction

eBooks on the Cell Phone/PDA (the 2009 version)

When I was younger I never went anywhere without a book.  Besides commuting there were two other basic reasons:

• I was so enthralled with my book I could barely put it down
• I never knew when I would get stuck somewhere and (Heaven forbid) I would have to just sit there. . . waiting

I am sure that some of my back problems as an adult come from years of lugging a heavy book in my shoulder bag.  But that is another story.

Life is different now!  Instead of a book, I carry my PDA with me (usually in a pocket). I am not exactly unique!  Walk down any city street, almost anywhere in the world, and you will see that almost everyone has a cell phone or PDA.  You see iPods, Blackberry''s, Pocket PCs, Palms and too many Smart Phones to name.

The other thing you see is people peering at their screen; reading. 

You might think they were actually reading a book, until you notice their fingers flying over the keys as they answer the text, twitter or IM. 

Seems that for those under 30 there is much more peering than talking going on.

I am not a big texter or twitterer (no patience with those little buttons) and I rarely do IM, so it would seem logical that I would be reading more books.  Right?  Well, not exactly. I find that books have a lot of competition these days!

Now when I have to wait I have so many choices!  Most of them infinitely more interruptible activities than reading.  So, I usually opt for something easier:  do a sudoku, talk on the phone, answer email, surf the net, watch TV or (even occasionally) text. Reading has become something I do when I know I have a long stretch of time ahead of me -- like on a train or a plane.

I never carry a book around with me anymore.  And I find that reading on a handheld device has subtly changed my reading habits in other ways as well:

• I read faster and with better comprehension when the text is in smaller chunks.
• I actually look up words I don't know or want clarification on because I can do it easily and immediately.
• I am reading the classics again.  They are almost always free (www.gutenberg.org)
• I buy books I would not have ever bought before because they are relatively cheap

Which makes me wonder about you. 

Has reading on a digital device changed your reading habits?  And if so, how? 

del.icio.us Tags: ebook,e-book,digital reading,ebook devices,pda,palm

As I Live and Breathe the Cell Phone is Taking over the Center

Henri has been doing some thinking about kids, cell phones, open systems and the PC.  Here are his reflections. . .

Nothing has given me greater pleasure in life than the birth of my children. My youngest daughter turned thirty two this month. The next events in line have all had to do with the birth of revolutionary ideas in the world that I have lived in for sixty five years so far.

Let’s see, there was the birth of computing as a business support system. Then there was the ongoing revolution in electronics. The development of the human genome from the first days of the shape and form of DNA to the publication of the first actual readout of the genome itself was as fundamental a breakthrough in human knowledge.

Along the way there have been many gratifying moments and more than a few terrifying discoveries. The Ozone hole, global Warming and other threats to the ecosystems that sustain us all are among the scariest. Of course even the greatest gains in knowledge can be perverted by misuse or abuse. The idea that scientists are responsible for their creations is still gaining traction. Codes of ethics and other means of controlling misuse of great ideas are still in their infancy.

Meanwhile the Personal Computing revolution has given birth to the Internet and the Cell phone revolution has been playing around with the power that network offers. Now we are about to watch the birth of a new stage in that set of gains in human communication.

The PC King is dying and a new Queen is about to take over. Open systems are coming to cell phones. Taken together with the still growing power of handheld devices this will end the reign of King PC. Cell phones are the new center of Personal Computing. The iPhone is the earliest prophet of this revolution but the next wave will blow away all doubt.

You can start with the Android Operating System contributed by Google and end with the ever evolving nature of handheld devices themselves. It has been years since anything like the vitality that exists in the competition for market share in Cell Phones existed anywhere else in the electronic world.

There are reasons to believe that this next revolution in Personal Computing will bring on revolutions in education, publishing, government and too many other human institutions to mention here.

I am hoping to watch and continue to work to help those revolutionary times achieve the best possible results for the most people possible. There are millions of people who like me see these changes as positive. I hope you are among them.

del.icio.us Tags: ebooks,e-book,cell phone,android,google android

Literacy and eBooks on Cellphones

Over the last couple of weeks I have come across these interesting factiods:

• Half of the best selling novels in Japan last year were originally written on cellphones.   
• In the first eight months of last year Goma Books sold over 1,000,000 copies of it's two most popular titles: The Red Thread by Mei and If You Could by Rin. 

• The New York Times reports  that many cellphone novelists had never written fiction before, and many of their readers had never read novels before, according to publishers.
• According to the novelist Rin:  “They  (young Japanese readers) don’t read works by professional writers because their sentences are too difficult to understand, their expressions are intentionally wordy, and the stories are not familiar to them.”
• The CIA World Fact Book reports the rate of literacy in the US is 99%.
• The NEA reports that the percentage of 17-year-olds who read nothing at all for pleasure has doubled over a 20-year period. Yet the amount they read for school or homework (15 or fewer pages daily for 62% of students) has stayed the same.

I use the word literacy often but if you asked me to define it I would probably stumble around and make a vague statement that about reading. I really think about it vague and somewhat academic terms. 

On impulse I went to the dictionary and looked it up.  My Dad would be so proud!.  Here is what I found:  Literacy is the ability to read, write, communicate, and comprehend words. 

Interesting. 

I don't see one word about reading books in that definition.  What I see is that literacy is about communication. 

There are millions of teen who text message every day.  Even my aunt tells me that her eight year old granddaughter texts her so often that she has had to learn how text back. 

These messages are written communications using words.  If you think about it, the text messagers are  by definition literate.  Who knows, that might even be as literate as a PhD who writes a thousand page tome on Henry James. 

Which brings me to the conclusion that the problem for publishers is not reading ability or lack of it.  It is more simply a case that most of the books produced aren't doing the job of communicating.

Technorati Tags: ebooks,e-books,cell phones,literacy,ebooks writers,japan

O'Reilly, Google Phone and Open Access

  I read an excellent article in the NYT (New York Times or www.nytimes.com for those of you who like links) by Tim O’Reilly.  O'Reilly opines that cell phones and the Internet are on a collision course.

Tim is a person who has always put his money and effort where his mouth is; in service of an open Internet.

Even more, he has spent a large amount of personal time working in the market to develop tools to make an open publishing environment became a reality. There are few people who have been more instrumental in helping develop open standards in the digital publishing world.

Open standards does not just mean free access. It also means open access; anyone can access any carrier on any device no matter where they buy the that particular device.

As ubiquitous as cell phone technology is; no one phone will let you access more than one carriers. A Motorola phone bought at Verizon only works on the Verizon network and you cannot access ATT or Sprint.  This is a unnecessary  layer of stupidity in system design that no one needs! 

The article discusses the much anticipated Google phone-like device.  Google is working with their partners to assure access will be open.  If they accomplish this we will soon have a world where cell phone service will no longer require some of us to carry two or even three phones.

But the most interesting statement he makes is one that is almost lost in the article. He states the obvious -- cell phone connectivity is so important to the future that soon all computing devices are going to be built around open cell phone technology.

That all computing devices need to be connected from anywhere at any time is such an article of faith with those of us who are working at planning the future that Tim tossed that comment off without stressing the point.

In other words, the value of any computing device, be it a cell phone, a personal digital assistant, a portable computer or an eBook reader is so enhanced by universal connectivity that it will become a requirement for all such devices in the future.

This should serve as a warning to people like Amazon and Sony.  The stupidity of an eBook reader based on proprietary technology that cannot be kept proprietary.  Like it or not -- the future is barreling towards us.  And  in that future we will have an open publishing environment.  

Technorati Tags: tim oreilly,google phone,open access,verizon,cell phones