Curious Voyager - Live like you mean it!

The Future of Publishing Point of View

As most of those who read this blog know that I like to read most everything that Seth Godin writes, books, blogs, and his recent Domino Project. More on the Domino Project at the end. 

Now the real reason I started this post is it's always interesting when I find someone else who likes to comment on something Seth has written. Below I have linked to first Seth's blog on How the long tail cripples bonus content/multimedia and then I link to comments by Glyn Moody which I discovered via TechDirt this morning.

I think Glyn's post is as important as we go into the future. Quality will always win over quantity and this effect is going to work against all forms of publishing and media in the future. We are going to have more choices and I am in favor of that. I also believe that with our ability to have more information we will quickly put an end to quick-to-market bad replica's of today's great idea's. 

First Seth's blog:

How the long tail cripples bonus content/multimedia 

Well, the long tail has hit the book business, and hard. The number of ebooks published in 2012 is going to exceed a million, easily. That’s more than 8 times as many books as were published to the public a year ago, and many times the number twenty years ago.

Now for Glyn Moody's post.

Even In The Age Of Abundance It's Quality, Not Quantity, That Counts | Techdirt

Seth Godin is nothing if not prolific. As well as publishing a string of popular marketing books with catchy titles like "All marketers are liars", "The big moo" and "Small is the new big", he writes short but smart blog posts every day, some of which are rather obvious, but many of which contain real gems of insight.

via www.techdirt.com

From the Domino Project I purchased and just finished End Malaria by Michael Bungay Stainer on the Kindle - it was really good. Since I purchased it on the Kindle the total paid for the book went toward the End Malaria Project. You can read a small article on the project here at Wired Magazine and from Seth's blog another write up. 

Related articles

• Seth Godin's Advice For Creating Remarkable Content (hubspot.com)

Shawn Parr: The Power of Why — How Childlike Curiosity Can Inform And Inspire

I know it is Christmas and this story almost feels like a New Years Resolution that one should make. What a WONDERFUL Power! I consider myself a 'Learner' and I keep pursuing 'Why'. It is the only way to truly LIVE! 

Thank you Om Malik for sharing. Please read on.

Shawn Parr: The Power of Why — How Childlike Curiosity Can Inform And Inspire

Kids have an insatiable appetite for knowledge and an unapologetic curiosity for all things new and misunderstood. When they don’t know the answer they actively seek the truth. They have a natural humility without posturing, pretense or ego wrapped up in their questions; they fill up their knowledge bank by being open. Whenever I’m in the car with my 6 year-old daughter, she bombards me with “Why this Daddy, why that Daddy?” and if she doesn’t understand how or why something works, from the simple to the complex, she has no hesitation asking. It’s amazing how the power of asking “Why?” and the conversation that follows always leads to a deeper discussion around the subject and clarity.

via www.psfk.com

 

Related articles

• Curiosity (allzen.wordpress.com)

Prominent Rightwing Blogger Promises To Work Hard To Defeat Any Rightwing SOPA Supporters In Congress | Techdirt

One of the more interesting things about the whole SOPA/PIPA debate (and, as I've pointed out for many years, about any of the intellectual property policy fights) is how non-partisan they are. In fact, I think it's important that they're non-partisan, because when things become partisan, they become... well... silly (on both sides). SOPA/PIPA supporters keep touting how their bills have "bi-partisan" support, but I'd argue what's much more powerful is how the growing movement protesting these bills is almost entirely non-partisan.

via www.techdirt.com

This bill needs to be stopped for the sake of the future of the Internet. It is a real shame that the people in congress cannot think first about the people and secondly about the money. I will vote against anyone, any party, that votes for SOPA/PIPA support.

Survey says Apple on track to sell 190M iPhones, 81M iPads in 2012 — Apple News, Tips and Reviews

Apple could be on track for a much stronger year than most analysts predict in 2012, if a recent Alphawise survey of consumers in the U.S. conducted for financial services firm Morgan Stanley (via Fortune) proves accurate. iPhones and iPads in particular appear to be so in demand that the devices will easily smash records next year.

via gigaom.com

Tell me again Microsoft, HP, Dell why tablet sales won't amount to much?

I know user experience is not in your kin just look at the clunky equipment you have agreed to so far.

The bad news may be that the user is getting into control more and more. YOU have left the user out to please both the enterprise and your stockholders.

Now the user is getting set to turn on you.

Apple knows how to move people to the positive side of the product line. The rest of you move people also, but we won't go there.

Amazon’s Kindle Fire – A GREAT Device

I have just finished a NY Times negative review on the Kindle Fire and I wanted to have my say.

We purchased a Kindle Fire when Jeff Bezos finished his introduction, September 28, 2011. In fact we purchased it so soon that we really had to hunt on the Amazon site to find where we could order the Fire. An hour later you could find it real easy.

You can a short promotional introduction video here.

We received it a couple of days earlier than expected and here it is, weeks later, and the mystique has not worn off. We bought it expecting it to be as sold by Jeff Bezos and it is!

It’s not an iPad killer, it’s an entertainment device. We share it knowing that the other can see what each has to read. Actually I understood it to be a ‘personal’ device that you could share.

We read books on the Kindle Fire, we read magazines on the Kindle Fire, we watch movies. We also surf the web when necessary and we can check email if needed as well as play games. Mostly we read on it. I say we, my wife takes it to work for her lunch hour, I get to visit it at night.

I would like to say that in reading a Fortune magazine article on the Kindle Fire I was really impressed. When I got to the end of the article and there was an interview. I clicked on the interview link and was able to watch and hear the interview as in video. I am hooked. This is the future of magazines.

I have an earlier Kindle (2nd generation) and I have enjoyed that for some time. I would be happy to have the Kindle Fire any day. I am a ‘reader’ and it is great.

True, there is a learning curve, but there is with anything. Yes the on and off button can be hit accidently but we learn not to do that. The volume can be controlled however it is a digital device and you learn how to do that. We are capable of learning. I learned to put the brake on when stopping the car.

If I were visiting a dating site I sure wouldn’t be doing it on a device that I share with the family – Kindle Fire, computer, or smartphone (I don’t do that anyway – right honey?). I may not be the brightest but that is plain stupid.

Some of the complaints sound like someone opened up the Kindle Fire and turned off their brain.

In conclusion the Amazon Kindle Fire is a wonderful entertainment piece of equipment and the price is really good – $199. It will not be everything for everyone. Even God cannot do that!

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Our Digital World: A Two Way Transaction For The Good.

I had a great conversation yesterday with our Son. Part of it revolved around the his use of a Motorola Xoom tablet. How fascinating it was to be able to have this slim device with him everywhere he went. His family could access what they wanted and needed and the device was shared.  How they quickly accessed the web from anywhere (Verizon connection - it's a family thing), could check Google Maps, email, and whatever. It is truly an Information device. It is also a great communication device. 

This is a two-way communication that has both positive and negative benefits. 

The following article that I have linked takes our connection and gives another side to that. As we connect our connection is being noted and logged. We are using these tools and in return the tools are using us. 

Example: On my way home Thursday night from teaching out of town I was stuck in what appeared to be a major traffic problem on the highway. While stopped in the backup I took out the phone (HTC Thunderbolt), accessed Google Maps and checked the traffic. I was able to see a major blockage on both sides of the highway (solid red lines) a couple of miles ahead. As people started to cross the median to head in the opposite direction and get off the highway I followed. One problem; I was not familiar with the area. I used the Google Maps to find another route around the roadblock and get myself back to the office. I could not have done that 5 years ago. What will I be able to do 5 years from now? 

Read below - as I said very interesting. 

Larry Smarr - An Evolution Toward a Programmable World - NYTimes.com

Already billions of processors are embedded in our smartphones, cars, appliances and buildings and the environment. These sensors can send out streams of data about their surroundings, and more and more it is anonymously transmitted to remote data centers — the “clouds” of Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple.

via www.nytimes.com

 

Can We Break From Microsoft Office?

Over the last few months I have been wondering about my obsessive attachment to Microsoft Office. I tell everyone it is the one product you must have on your desktop/laptop/whatever. Truth is not being able to use MS Word or Excel (even PowerPoint) is one reason I had planned to stay away from the iPad.

Times are changing!

A little history. I have been an MS Word user since it was first released (I believe 1983) and I consider myself a ‘power’ user. I even lived through the ridicule during the WordPerfect days. MS Word and I were tight.

Next add to the above by saying that for the last 10 years I have been teaching all products of Microsoft Office to users from all aspects of business. I get excited about all the new releases and the POWER they bring to the table.

The Office 2010 package is tremendous. Word should almost be considered competition for Adobe’s InDesign product. All the rest of the office products are phenomenal .

Now the conundrum.

Do I really need that power? In fact; does the average user really need that ‘Power’? The answer to needing that power is no – not for the average user. So what other options do we have in this day and age?

I have started using Evernote for all my initial writing and all note taking. I had been addicted to OneNote (Microsoft) for years but broke away from it with Evernote. OneNote would not sync on all my devices so no brainer.

Evernote is on all my computer’s as well as my phone. I can type a note, get as elaborate as I want, take a picture, or make a voice note. It all synch’s automatically via the web, no muss, no fuss. It does not matter if I am online or not. When I connect it sync’s.

Evernote is available on all devices as far as I know; iPad, Android, all PC’s, Mac’s, even the Kindle Fire. Both access and Synchronization is easy. More importantly the cost to get started is FREE. Once you are a user you can upgrade to a Premium user for $5 a month, less that $60 a year (actually $45 on an annual basis).

Once I have made my notes there are a number of other products out there that you can use to complete you final document and some of those are FREE also. Google Docs for one, iWork for the Mac, MS Office lite on Skydrive and so many others. Some will require and email address such as Google or Skydrive (Hotmail).

As for the other Microsoft products you can get online replacements – REMEMBER without the power. If you do not need the power then save your money.  This is becoming the real world of cloud computing.

Related articles

• The Cloud, Day 4: Checking Out Google Docs (pcworld.com)

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Loyalty Now Includes Consumer Interest In What Companies Stand For

I found the article (linked to below) from a daily newsletter, reveries, and discovered it quite fascinating. It brings to light another advantage of the growth in Social connection that we are experiencing. A social connection that perhaps businesses dealing directly with the consumer market should be interested in. 

More and more people are connecting and learning - in one form or another. It may be via a personal email but more likely from Facebook or some other online connection available today. 800 million members on Facebook is a wide audience. Each one of that 800 million will connect with or contact others not on Facebook with what they see and hear on Facebook. Now that is reach.

From a research report, "How many people do you know?: Efficiently estimating personal network size" at the Department of Statistics, Columbia University, April 2009, one could estimate that ages 25-64 male connections average 482 and female connections 461. Now how many of those are on Facebook and how many are not? It could be said that you have powerful reach, a force to be contended with.

From another perspective add to this force to the journalist of today who is following many more resources than ever before. They can search Facebook or Twitter, look for what is trending, as well search the blogosphere for information, and there is plenty of information out there. 

With all of these social media connections one could get a pretty good handle on the potential for the changing consumer concerns - and there are many. If you are selling to a given market are you watching? Listening? Reading? Someone should be! 

Perhaps we are becoming an "us" society of importance rather than a the "me" generation of a few years ago. That could be a welcome change for some. It just might be that more and more people are concerned about what is happening to "us", to our society, and to our environment and (importantly) they are willing to talk about it. 

Times change and perhaps that is a good thing for the world and the people in it. It could be a bad thing for incorrigibly profit only interest business who don't give back or care.

Follow the link below to get an interesting perspective on all this. 

Return on Purpose or Cultural values are now critical to consumer loyalty.

The advent of social media, social responsibility, personal interests in causes beyond oneself — and just, generally, care for others — has suddenly and dramatically catapulted the whole subject of loyalty to a new and significantly more important plateau. Few would argue that “loyalty” has been more than overworked: as of this writing, a Google search turns up more than 6.5 million pages on the subject of brand loyalty and Amazon lists more than 600 books on the subject. However, no one has come close to equaling or bettering Frederick Reicheld’s brilliant foundational trilogy on loyalty, beginning with The Loyalty Effect, in 1996.

via hubmagazine.com

Related articles

• Facebook's Brand of Loyalty - WSJ.com (herbprof.wordpress.com)
• Facebook's Brand of Loyalty (allthingsd.com)

Khan Academy Blends Its YouTube Approach With Classrooms - NYTimes.com

He can see that a girl sitting against the wall is zipping through geometry exercises; that a boy with long curls over his eyes is stuck on a lesson on long equations; and that another boy in the front row is getting a handle on probability.

via www.nytimes.com

This is an interesting read from the NY Times (may have to join) on Online Learning. We use it at my company to teach computer technical and application classes. I think maybe we should look at the methodology used by the Khan Academy.

Thoughts on Newspapers, Magazines & Their Future

I just posted regarding an app out of Switzerland that allows one to share printed content digitally to friends. I wonder if newspapers & magazines (and other print content) took this seriously if it could not help their future.

Leather makers that made the buggy whips turned to making the new automobile interiors and kept on making a living. In fact their work may have grown.

I know that leather making and printing are not the same. The analogy was meant to show one industry reframing itself to go into the new world.

I do not regularly read newspapers anymore (quit in 1997) however I still read magazines – those that have content aimed at what I want to read. I often will follow a QR code that is embedded in the magazine to learn more.

Now I said I do not read newspapers however my wife does and occasionally she will show me a QR code that is in the newspaper and both of us can follow up on it.

What a great way to extend the print ad – a simple QR code with more information. Perhaps a video, your web site, or a reference to greater information. The cost is another square inch and the thought about what that QR code should link to.

You can try this one to a Fortune magazine article.

I share links all the time, either on Facebook or via an email. That is the problem with print material – one has to clip the article and use snail mail to get it to someone.

The key here is the word someone – some – “one”. When I send the link to Facebook or Twitter more than “one” will see it. Even if that is two it is still more than one. When I link to an article in my blog potentially more than “one” will see it. At least I hope that.

I did the clipping thing for years when selling. Today snail mail? Yes, that is the problem the United States Post Office has, we just don’t do it.

I do have a scanner app for the phone, CamScanner. It is available for both Android as well as the iPhone and I am sure it will be available for other smartphones.

The app will scan the articles (or most anything else) and I can send that picture to the person of my choice. On the other hand I think it would be best for the print provider (newspaper, magazine) if someone actually send a link to their article which would both provide the article as well as take the receiver back to the original source. Anyone who is really interested will want to see the original source.

This should be important to the original source. On the other hand perhaps being defensive of your previous methods may not be in your best interest for the future.

If in one of my magazine subscriptions I find something I want to write about, I will generally go to the magazines web site, find the article, and use that link in my writing. I want the source credited.

This is a connected world whether you believe in it, like it, or not - IT IS! Your job is to take advantage of the tools to connect with as many people as possible. That can make your product reachable.

Maybe for once it would be nice to be on the leading edge.

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