I was honored to be asked to write an article for our favorite Chicago-family-focused website (and Astek client) Families in the Loop. Find out my top tech picks for parents in 2012:
Bob Dylan was righter than he knew when he warbled that the times, they are a-changin’ — and this was before the iPad. Nothing changes faster than technology, and as this new year dawns I can’t tell you how excited I am to see what the world comes up with next. Every year seems to bring… [read more]
I got a text message from a friend on New Years Eve, to myself and another friend. And then I got the other recipient’s reply. I didn’t think much of it until I got the above text message yesterday (from a friend with an Android phone) and went to reply that I couldn’t make the birthday festivities. Before iOS 5 such group texts didn’t show all the other recipients, which is another matter of concern perhaps. The sender of such a message might assume and want the same behavior as BCC’ing on an email. When I saw the difference in this text, I wondered if it would reply-all, and if so if there was a way to specifically reply only to the sender. Not seeing a way, I went ahead and replied.
No one else replied “Hey who is this?”, but researching my suspicion confirmed that all the other recipients would have received my text. The only way I can see to send a reply directly to the sender would be to draft an entirely new text. There is also a way to safeguard against this behavior entirely, but it’s annoying because it means that you have to disable MMS entirely. And I would rather not do that because I want to be able to send photos to people who don’t have iOS devices (iMessage lets you send photos to other iOS users without MMS). But if you want to do it yourself, you need to turn off both Group Messaging and MMS in your Messages settings (note here that I have left both on):
When I first heard our monthly topic was ebooks, I figured piece of cake. Then I thought to myself, I don’t own a Kindle, Nook, iPad or any other tablet device. How could I talk about ebooks when I’ve never read one. I began to think. What exactly was an ebook? I’ve read white papers on my laptop. I’ve read parts of a short ebook on my smart phone (for sake of working at Astek – a very Apple-friendly company – I dare say Android). But these aren’t what we all consider ebooks that we purchase on Amazon, are they?
I remember back to the days when I had an iPhone (pre-Android days). Josh Bernoff, who wrote the book Empowered, made his book available for free on Amazon, but only for Kindle and only for a few days.. So what did I do? I downloaded the Kindle app for the iPhone, purchased the free ebook version of Empowered, and began to read the book on my phone. Yet I ended up reading the hardcover, because trying to read on my phone just wasn’t convenient. Needless to say, I did in fact read an ebook in my definition of the word.
More importantly, I think those white papers, and any other electronic form of written words, compiled in a book format (short or long) can be considered ebooks. I’m curious, what do you think constitutes an ebook? Do you have to view it on a tablet device for it to be considered an ebook?
So I’ve been reading a lot about ebook apps as of late. And no, I’m not talking about apps within which you download and read books (i.e. Kindle and iBook). Many publishers are bypassing the Amazon Kindle Store or the iBook market, and are creating their own apps! The first one I discovered about six months ago was an app created by Moving Tales, Inc. entitled The Unwanted Guest – a well-known Jewish folk tale. It was the first time I’ve heard of the story, and was intrigued by the style of the app that included narration, animation, and really neat graphics.
Other apps are even going beyond the single ebook (which is probably smart considering I don’t want to download an app for each book that I want to buy). I read this article about the app Papercut that topped the charts in the App Store for a period of time. The app boasted to integrate narration, video, and text to tell its stories in a whole new way. And instead of publishing a single story or book, the app developer (London-based Ustwo) worked with Shortfire Press to interpret stories by selected authors under the publisher’s umbrella. As of now, you can enjoy stories from Richard Beard, Nadifa Mohamed and Laura Dockrill.
And by the way, it’s really darn cool! I’ve always been a “real book” kind of girl, but I don’t see why my bookshelf favorites can’t be accompanied by some really awesome interactive story-telling!
Amazon’s family of Kindle devices has been leading the pack of e-readers for some time now, currently followed by Barnes & Noble’s Nook. In previous breakdowns of device market share, the distinction has been made between e-readers and tablets, such that the iPad and Android tablets were not factored in as direct competition to Kindle and Nook. The main distinguishing factor for e-readers is the use of so-called e-ink technology, which allows for text to be rendered onscreen in a way that is easier on the eye, without backlighting. However, and although R&D is bustling in this area, there is no such thing as a color e-ink screen on the market yet today.
As far as I can tell, Amazon’s new color Kindle Fire doesn’t really seem like anything revolutionary. In fact, Barnes & Noble released their Nook Color a year ago, with the main difference in the Fire appearing to be more processing power and some new cloud storage offerings from Amazon. Barnes & Noble is now also about to release their Nook Tablet, which seems primarily like a hardware upgrade to the Nook Color. None of these devices are yet bringing color e-ink displays to consumers, but rather taking the booksellers’ existing e-book distribution technologies to their own proprietary tablet devices. They are starting to look almost like iPads or Android tablets, but especially the latter as they are all created from stripped-down versions of the Android OS.
So what’s the attraction? Well, they are significantly cheaper than iPads and popular Android tablets like the Galaxy Tab, although you can find other Android tablets closer in price. Other than that I’m having a hard time seeing the value. I would personally rather have an older Kindle with e-ink, or a more fully-featured iPad. Or, perhaps someday, a full color e-ink Kindle.
Whether you are publishing content or selling products, you need to make it as easy as possible for your customers to get to your goods on their terms. Mobile usage is growing exponentially and will be an increasingly essential part of your toolkit to keep your customers coming back for more.
But if you’re just starting to think about how to go mobile, it can be hard to know where to begin. Two of the key things you’ll need to research are what mobile devices your customers are using now and what they want to use in the future. This information will help you make the right decisions when planning how to allocate your valuable resources.
Review your analytics. You should have Web analytics running on your website. Google Analytics is a top-notch free tool that will tell you a lot about how people are accessing your content. While analytics are useful, they don’t tell you the whole story. You also want to know how people ideally would view your content, which isn’t completely revealed until you’ve created an optimized mobile experience.
Send a survey. The best way to find out what your customers want is to ask. There are numerous survey tools available, which you can use to send a Web-based survey to your email list. Regardless of how you deploy the survey, it’s important to keep it short to increase the number of responses. Here is a suggested set of questions to find out your customers’ mobile preferences:
1) What type(s) of mobile phone do you have?
a) iPhone
b) Android
c) Blackberry
d) Windows
e) Palm
f) Other
2) What type(s) of mobile phone do you expect to have 1 year from now?
a) iPhone
b) Android
c) Blackberry
d) Windows
e) Palm
f) Other
3) From where do you typically view our website?
a) Work
b) Home
c) On the go
4) From what type of device would you prefer to view our website?
a) Desktop computer
b) Laptop
c) Tablet
d) Mobile Phone
5) On a mobile phone, how do you prefer to read content?
a) Apps
b) Mobile Web browser (e.g., Safari)
c) RSS Reader
6) If you own a tablet, what kind?
a) iPad
b) Android
c) Windows
d) Blackberry
e) I don’t own a tablet
I spent the weekend with my new iPhone 4S, having gotten it delivered on Friday. It is indeed pretty cool, but unlike Siri I won’t just direct you to Apple’s website to read about it. I first had to endure months of waiting, after first expecting it to come in June as the last few iPhone models had in years past. I couldn’t help but be tantalized by the rumors of a magical iPhone 5 with a thin, teardrop form factor, full-face screen, and myriad other features that, in the end, proved to be COMPLETELY MADE UP! It’s amazing to me that people actually went to the trouble to build mockups of these imaginary iPhone 5. And in the end, we got the 4S, as I originally expected, and was looking forward to anyway.
As an improvement on the iPhone 4, it made sense to me to upgrade to it from my 3GS, as I upgraded to that from my 1st generation iPhone. I’m a sort of 5 minutes early adopter (except for that 1st gen. iPhone, which was a hand-me-down). I’d rather let others experience the problems with a brand new technology, then get it on the first revision. In the case of the iPhone 4, there was at least one clear and significant problem: that of the antenna. Which I can’t say I’ve done any intense first-hand testing for, but my experience so far is positive. And I’ll take the Apple literature and other reviews’ word that the “death grip” problem is done away with, and that the smart antenna switching technology actually does improve internet bandwidth over the same 3G network.
So what have I experienced so far that I can specifically highlight as points of awesomeness in the 4S?
Battery life – I left my house at 1PM on Saturday with a full charge, and used it sporadically over the following 13 hours, included a little voice use, some texting, email and Facebook, and a little Pandora at the end of the night. It only got down to 20% battery at about 4PM on Sunday, when I finally plugged it in again. WAY better than how my 3GS currently fares. I’m curious how much this current performance on the 4S will degrade over time.
Camera – So I haven’t totally put it through its paces yet, but I’m very pleased so far. Partly due to the responsiveness when starting the camera app, and between shots. That’s mostly due to the increased processor speed, which I’ll touch on in concert with the screen. The video quality very very good. For some reason playback in Quicktime on my Mac looks a little jerky, but I’m thinking that might be an independent issue. I’ve got one example of a really nice looking photo here. Low-light quality I’m not yet very impressed with, but there are more settings I have yet to explore.
Siri – A lot of the buzz of course is about Siri, the built-in voice recognition software that can contextually parse your questions and commands, and really does just work remarkably well at understanding what you’re saying. The old voice command feature on the iPhone was almost useless in terms of interpreting your voice, so it was refreshing to see this actually come together. You can also have some fun with it, as evidenced by my screenshot above, and the ones others posted here. What’s great about it to me, is that I can use it to dictate emails and text messages while I’m driving.
Screen/Processor – Having come from a 3GS, I’m just wowed by the image quality on the screen. This is nothing new to iPhone 4 users, but it’s still amazing to me. However, that combined with the increased processor speed (up to 73% higher than the 4, by some evidence) means that apps can now render even more stunning graphics. I found a game that purported to have new version with graphics only supported by the new 4S (Real Racing 2), and it does indeed look really really cool. Fun game too.
I owe a lot to Steve Jobs. My family got an Apple IIc computer when I was in the 1st grade (thanks Mom and Dad!) and it defined my entire career. I was an early card-carrying member of the cult of Apple. It wasn’t just about being cool or different. There are hundreds of tangible reasons why that platform was and is superior. Not just for artists, but for everyone. An evangelist was born.
In the 2nd grade, my 1st grade teacher came to get me out of class to help her “fix” her Apple IIe. Remember those guys with the green and black monitors? Turns out she just didn’t have the monitor on, but I found it remarkable that she came to me rather than any other adult in the school.
That was my first consulting gig.
I often don’t write about “big news” since I figure everyone is doing it and the world probably doesn’t need one more blog post. But in this case, this isn’t just news. This is the end of an era.
But it’s not all sadness. Steve’s legacy is so strong, inspiring, and lasting that his untimely passing also marks the beginning of a new era — for Apple and all technology companies and geeks.
We’ve seen social media take hold in the past few years, and I believe we have yet to realize the true potential of that technology. In its infant state of exploration, experimentation and fundamental learning, social media remain anyone’s game.
Apple fueled the growth of new technologies such as social media by exploding the potential of open mobile app distribution. I clamor to ideas like this — philosophies, frameworks, and factories working together to empower everyone and level the playing field.
At the center of all this was Steve, whose singular vision and demanding standards merged artistry and technology into some of the most empowering devices and software ever created.
Being a life-long Apple fanatic means I’ve been there in good times and bad. I saw Steve get booted from Apple, and then triumphantly return to save the company from disappearing altogether. I painfully tried to help my college buddies with their late-90’s Mac’s that just weren’t very well-built.
When the Mac came about in 1984, I became mesmerized by desktop publishing and later PageMaker. The Mac made that world possible at the time, and once again I found it easy to dazzle people by doing what I enjoyed most – using the things that came out of Steve’s mind to solve problems and create.
This lead me to pursue journalism through high school and college. I was also an Apple Student Rep at Northwestern, which is the only time I received a paycheck from Apple. While I didn’t specifically pursue journalism as a career, my life has led me along the path of the new journalism in the form of social media and communication technologies. I apply these lessons on behalf of my company and clients every day.
And yes, I still use a Mac. Now I have several. I feel like much of the world has come to understand what I’ve known all my life. Vision like this is rare and deserves to be revered.
Steve would be the first to tell you that his path was not without mistakes. Whose life isn’t? But his journey is an extraordinary one worthy of reflection. He had a unique way of bringing teams of varied talent together to create something profound around a singular vision. It’s no surprise that Pixar is one of most successful film studios and business success stories in any industry.
Five years ago, who would have thought that thousands of executives would be walking around with an Apple logo on their phones?
If you’ve never seen it, take a few minutes to watch Steve Jobs’ address to Stanford graduates in 2005. These words continue to inspire me.
Thanks Steve for all you’ve given me and the world. We’ll never forget what you did and we’ll do our very best to carry your torch of innovation.
Update:
I was going through some old Apple memorabilia (yes, I have a lot of it), and found this photo of the rock we painted at Northwestern University in April 1997 before they changed to a single color logo. We made the student newspaper, The Daily Northwestern, the next day. However, the article was titled “Macintosh Misery” due to our decision to create hopeful art during a dark chapter in Apple’s life. Steve’s return and recovery of the company shortly thereafter thankfully make these mere anecdotes of history.
In April of last year Steve Jobs published an open-letter on Apple’s website explaining why Adobe’s Flash technology cannot run (by design) on Apple’s iOS devices (iPod Touch, iPad, iPhone.)
Flash has become an inseparable part of the Web as experienced on desktop computers, achieving almost complete saturation (99% by Adobe’s own accounts) and, until recently, it’s been the most frequently utilized technology for playing back video and producing animated content including ad-banners and web-based games. The reasons that Jobs gave for excluding Flash boil down to the fact that Apple keeps a famously tight-control of the user experience on their products and Flash takes that control out of their hands. Flash is: 100% proprietary, a band-width/battery/system resource hog and notoriously insecure. Jobs also points out that Flash is simply not as essential as it once was given that most video on the web is available now in open-source and HTML5 compatible formats like H.264.
Last week Adobe proved that they still capable of adapting with the release of Flash Media Server (FMS) 4.5. FMS has traditionally been used to stream video to Flash-based media players but as of version 4.5 the Media Server is now also able to target protocols compatible with Apple.
This just covers video, interactive content still isn’t supported, but it’s a step forward.
Exit question: How much does Flash still matter these days? Does any part of your web-presence still rely on it?
2012 Tech Picks for Parents 
This post was featured in ePiphany, Astek’s Monthly Newsletter | 
Haven’t experienced an ePiphany yet? 
