A recent Ipsos Reid Poll that shows Canadians lagging their American neighbours in reading makes me feel a bit like the way I did when the Dallas Stars or the Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup—come on Canada let’s practice more!
Geekfest 2008
I seem to be one of those not-so-early adopters who live vicariously through my friends who either don’t have kids so have toys or have kids but also have an addiction to the latest gadgets. At any rate I can’t wait for one of them to start using….
“The Livescribe paper-based computing platform—a smartpen, paper, software applications, and development tools—will be available online beginning in Q1 2008. The smartpen will be less than $200. Additional dot paper will be available at prices comparable to standard paper products.”
China's Sustainability Crisis
Without paper, no books. Without books, no supply chain. And without a supply chain, there’s no source of the revenue China needs to clean up the printing industry and make its way to a sustainable model.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the proverbial canary in the mineshaft for Chinese book buyers who are facing list prices nearly double that of the sixth book in the series.
Go vs. No-Go: Evaluating New Ideas
evhead has a great post on evaluating new business opportunities. We think about these issues a lot with when it comes to new features and functionality: How hard will it be to launch? How obvious is the benefit? How wide and deep is the value we can provide? How wide is the possible user base? How are people going to find out about it? How does it pay for itself? Is it something we personally think is exciting?
Kindle and DRM? That Sounds Like a Challenge...
Google Tweaks Apps
After many moons of mash-ups, Google Maps has been steadily adding more socializing features. The latest offering allows comments and ratings to be added to user-created maps by other users.
Not the Babel Fish, but Close
American Prices, Canadian Prices, and Don't Forget... E-Book Prices
ACAP Launch: Implement Now?
If you’re keeping track of the Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP) project, then check out the page for their Final Conference which happened last week before they launch into full implementation.
