Apple’s Textbook and Education Plans: Part 2
Posted on February 7, 2012
Part 1 concluded that the fundamental disadvantage of conventional books is their limitation as isolated information silos. In contrast, e-books are simultaneously both (1) information repositories, and (2) portals into the nearly infinite resources of the Internet. For example, not only are definitions of unfamiliar words easily obtained in an e-book by highlighting the applicable word to summon a digital dictionary, but more context is conveniently available by “Googling” the term, or connecting to Wikipedia.
Download eight minute audio narration to iPad, iPhone, and iPod.
Apple’s iTextbook emphasizes a couple of additional features that conventional books cannot match. First, it encourages authors to mix media. Second, it permits interactivity. Read more…
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Apple’s Textbook & Education Plans – Part 1
Posted on February 3, 2012
A couple of months hence shall mark the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster. In response, I’ve been reading several books including Charles Lightoller’s memoirs, purchased from the Kindle store for ninety-nine cents. Lightoller was the ship’s senior surviving officer. His story is so incredible that fiction editors would likely reject the plot as too improbable. As playwright Oscar Wilde put it, “(audiences) will believe the impossible, but never the improbable”. More to the point, the experience of reading the e-book on an iPad via Kindle’s App hints at the potential for Apple’s iTextbooks and iTunes- U initiatives.
Download six minute audio narration here.
At age thirteen Lightoller apprenticed aboard a four-masted “three-skysail yarder.” Being an unfamiliar term, I put my finger on “skysail” to summon iPad’s dictionary which described it as “a light sail above the royal”. The definition was not useful since I was also unfamiliar with the meaning of “royal” sails. Fortunately, iPad’s dictionary also provided links to Google and Wikipedia. The Wikipedia link connected to a full explanation including photographs and diagrams identifying all the sails of a clipper ship. Read more…
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Internet Threat to Satellite TV
Posted on January 31, 2012
Before “cord-cutting” became a popular term we predicted almost five years ago consumers would use the Internet to bypass conventional Cable TV. Later when Wall Street dismissed the practice as an urban myth in 2009, we concluded Cable operators may ultimately divest CATV service in order to concentrate on high-speed Internet.
Download 6-minute audio narration to iPod, iPhone, and iPad here.
Presently, “cord-cutting” is the Pay TV industry’s foremost concern. Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, and Amazon.com are pioneering alternate ways to acquire popular programming over the Net as opposed to Cable systems. Equally important is “Long Tail” content on YouTube and other Internet video sites. “Long Tail” theory implies that while we share interest in popular content, we also have more narrowly defined interests shared with viewer-groups too small to justify mass market distribution. But the Internet shatters such limitations enabling video content to be made available for vanishingly small audiences. Arguably, cultural programming has already migrated to the Net. Read more…
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Explaining the Wikipedia Blackout
Posted on January 19, 2012
“Gee, Granddad (or Granny), tells us again about the day the Wikipedia went dark!”
Today’s 18-minute audio interview is with Jim Burger who is a copyright attorney with Dow, Lohnes in Washington, D. C. He’s specialized in copyright law for thirty years and prior to Dow, Lohnes was on the legal staff at Apple.
Wikipedia turned out the lights yesterday to protest two bills in Congress. Proponents claim the bills need to be enacted in order to protect movies, recorded music, and other “intellectual property” from piracy. Opponents assert enactment of the bills will, (a) censor the Internet, (b) obstruct innovation, and (3) place expensive burdens on innocent third parties.
To download 18-minute audio interview to iPod, iPhone, or iPad, click here.
The House Bill is termed the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The Senate Bill is called the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA). Most Internet-centric organizations object to the bills, but Wikipedia is the paragon for three reasons. Read more…
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First Certified White Space Radio
Posted on January 6, 2012
Today’s sixteen minute audio interview is with William Koos, Jr. who is the Chief Executive Officer of KTS Wireless. For the past 30 years his company has been a specialty-maker of high performance radios for both military and commercial markets. Presently, KTS produces the only TV Band White Space transceiver certified by the Federal Communications Commission.
“Billy” discusses the earlier trials that KTS did with White Spaces under experimental licenses. He also shares his thoughts regarding how the White Spaces market will evolve in both the United States and abroad.
Download 16-minute audio interview to iPod, iPhone, and iPad here.
One of his conclusions is that municipal Wi-Fi markets will benefit considerably from TV Band White Spaces. He reasons that the FCC envisions White Space technology as encompassing the best of both licensed and unlicensed networks. While they will be able to provide the interference protection of licensed networks they simultaneously offer the innovative free-market access characteristic of licensed-exempt networks. Read more…
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Future Unlicensed Wireless Networks
Posted on December 23, 2011
Today’s nineteen minute audio interview is with Lior Shemesh who is the Chief Financial Officer of Israel-based Alvarion. His company is a maker of WiMax and WiFi equipment.
Future unlicensed wireless Internet access networks will use a variety of standards to provide large zones of coverage. Such standards will include WiMax, WiFi, and White Spaces. As users, we won’t know, or care, which standard is being used. All we’ll care about is how well and how fast we are connected wirelessly to the Internet within a wireless coverage zone.
Download 19 minute audio interview to iPod, iPhone, or iPad here.
Wi-Max discussions can be confusing because there are two standards. Read more…
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Future Wi-Fi Networks
Posted on December 15, 2011
Today’s podcast is a thirty minute audio interview with Rory Conaway who is the CEO of Triad Wireless Engineering. He is also the author of a constantly growing online book entitled Tales From the Tower which is an excellent source on The Wireless Internet.
Triad is a radio engineering consultancy with two basic services. One is to help equipment vendors and wireless operators bid for, and build, economical wireless communications systems, typically not involving cellular carriers. A second function is to advise equipment vendors on future designs.
Download thirty minute audio interview here.
Rory believes that unlicensed Wi-Fi networks are poised to handle a considerably larger-than-historical share of Internet traffic for four reasons.
Read more…
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Let’s Retire the iPhone Smartphone
Posted on December 13, 2011
The iPhone resembles a smartphone less than a BMW does a horseless carriage.
As noted five years ago in this Inside Digital Media video podcast, the device is more accurately labeled a “teleputer”. (The podcast is so old it was done in Windows Media Video). George Gilder originated the concept about twenty years ago when he envisioned a hand-held unit providing convenient wireless access to a global computer network. It was kind-of the evolutionary destination implied by a popular computer industry slogan at the time, to wit, “the network is the computer.”
Download five minute audio narration to iPhone, iPad, and iPod here.
Each day Gilder’s concept becomes increasingly obvious to a growing proportion of iPhone users. Today everyone realizes telephone conversations are only one of many useful iPhone functions. More significantly, iPhone users are progressively learning that computer applications are becoming the unit’s raison d’etre. In short, the phone’s digital capabilities such as photography, geo-location, audio & video playback, and especially Internet access, are the defining characteristics. Applications like Skype and FaceTime portend an era when cellular telephony per se, becomes irrelevant to iPhone owners. Read more…
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