Keeping in line with the biblical metaphor started with the release of the iPhone that some people called the Jesus Phone, the new Apple iPad was unveiled today in a worldwide simultaneous nerdgasm followed by softly weeping and feelings of regret. Chiropractors around the world rejoiced as hundreds of thousands of nerd’s heads all cocked to the left much like a dog when you call it’s name as Steve Jobs reveled that iPad was the blessed name of his new creation.
So to me it seems that there are two camps of thought on the iPad. There is the its just a big iPhone and then they begin a sting of maxi pad and tampon jokes and then there is the camp that sees the potential uses for the iPad and are somewhat disappointed that it didn’t have all the features that people like Jason Calacanis purported it to have, but are still setting aside the at least 500 bucks for the iPad. I am somewhere in the middle; I can see how the iPad almost destroys the rest of the ebook device market, and I’m more excited to see what developers do with the larger interface and I will be waiting for future releases to see what new features that Apple might add.
I think a big market for the iPad is in doctor’s offices where doctors already living the Apple lifestlye will want to move their office to Apple as long as developers are there with the software side of the solution. Also there are the possible uses in education but that will have to wait for a later post.
Tomorrow is the day that like Moses, Steve Jobs comes down from the mountain and unveils the next great thing from Apple that will change our lives and the way that we interact with media and the internet. McGraw-Hill’s CEO Harold McGraw while being interviewed by CNBC, confirmed that they were working with Apple to bring their e-book materials to the Apple tablet.
This brings an interesting angle hinting at possible markets for the new tablet like device. Some other bloggers have brought up the potential uses for such a e-book like device to hopefully make a huge dent in the textbook market, hopefully lowering prices. Apple already has a stranglehold in higher education as the glowing apple logo lights lecture halls around the world and iPhones are almost required materials for learning. Another potential market for the Apple tablet device is in healthcare, where PC tablets have seen fairly wide adoption and I think the right hardware with thoughtout software could be a huge success in the healthcare industry with the greater push toward electronic medical records.
Everything is mere speculation and hopes made with fingers crossed with little more than 12 hours till the big reveal, but I had to join in on the Apple speculation fun.
Yesterday Wordpress released an early Christmas present for all us bloggers with the update to 2.9. The update is mostly chocked full of bug fixes and improvements to the wordpress code. Below is a breakdown.
1. It’s faster: Although not a listed improvement, many users, including myself, are seeing that sites are running faster with the 2.9 upgrade.
2. Built in Image Editor: Wordpress now includes a basic image editor including crop, edit, flip, rotate and scale images all available through the media library and when uploading/inserting images into posts.
3. Batch plugin updating: Now more updating each individual plugin site wide, under tools, in the update tab, a new option to update all plugins at once makes managing multiple sites more easy and the updater checks to make sure the plugin updates are compatible with your version of Wordpress.
4. Oembed support: no more embed codes for inserting videos. Just paste the url for the video on its own line inside your post and the video will automatically be embedded. Currently all the major players like Youtube are supported with more providers coming.
5. Sitewide Trashcan: No more accidentaly deleted posts or comments; the new trashcan saves the posts for thirty days.
Below is a Wordpress video highlighting some of the new features.
Below is a post I wrote for discussion in my Mass Media and Behavior class about Stupidity and the Internet.
The topic of stupidity and its suspected growth has become a topic for conversation in the culture. Movies like Idiocracy and the documentary titled “Stupidity” have investigated the roots and imagined the possible future world of idiots. I think what lies at the root of the issue is a lack of critical thinking about our lives and the world around us.
In Idiocracy, Mike Judge shows us his vision of the future we’re headed for as people become mindless zombies and are beholden to the large corporations that infiltrated the government. I personally would enjoy having a Brawndo-esk energy beverage piped into my home, but not replacing water as in the movie.
I hate to go on a education bashing rant as I aspire to become a teacher, but I feel that there is a lack of using critical thinking skills as a way to examine the world. In school we are taught the scientific method as a way to test our hypothesis about a science experiment but that valuable analytical process isn’t applied to other arenas.
Everything we’ve learned and discuss in class involves looking beyond the first glance and analyzing the issues and motives of the people who bring us the news and entertainment.
I think the internet and the growth of new media can lessen the brain drain of TV with the larger variety of content the reaches targeted audiences and engages audiences better. Certainly spending countless hours watching cat videos on YouTube isn’t going to expands one’s horizons, but it is the interaction through the internet that engages people. A recent study from the University of Stiriling showed that avid facebook users had an increase in working memory capacity versus control and social networking and youtube study participants.
It was in colleges where the internet was born and raised and academia as a whole has a vested interest in seeing knowledge spread and the internet not become a vast wasteland. Most teachers dislike Wikipedia, but I see that as a missed opportunity for academia to open the gates spread the knowledge for the betterment of society. Projects like MIT’s open course ware are all about sharing the mountain of accumulated knowledge. Sir Isaac Newton was famously quoted as saying “If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.” He was referencing the great minds that had come before him and their learning making his discoveries possible, and I think that the internet can be a tool to help others jump up on our backs and see farther.
Below is a post I wrote for discussion in my Mass Media and Behavior class about newspapers and their role in the digital age.
Newspapers like other old media formats has had to find ways to coexist and continue to be profitable in the digital age. The subscription and classified revenue models that newspapers subsisted on for decades is in rapid decline as subscriptions continue to drop because more and more people are getting their news from internet and TV.
With the growth of ebay and craigslist the money that newspapers would get from classifieds ads has been drastically decreasing as well as more and more advertisers are finding better success and higher engagement with internet advertising putting more strain on newspapers.
Today it was announced that the New York Post is going to close its bureaus in New York, Chicago and Las Angeles; another strike for newspapers. With the growth of the internet the number of news outlets has grown and the pace that information travels is something that Gutenberg could have never guessed. Even now the 24 hour news networks are having trouble keeping up with breaking news and more and more people are using twitter where breaking news can travel the globe in seconds. MSNBC has recognized this shift and partnered with a leading twitter account, “BreakingNews”, to share content and assets with each other.
The way that people access the news has also changed, RSS readers and search engines are huge sources for new content and News Corp has recognized an opportunity to profit. News Corp signed a deal with Microsoft and their new search product Bing.com that will give Bing exclusive access to indexing News Corp content. News Corp has been vocal in their opinion that search engines should be paying newspapers for access to their content and the deal with Microsoft told to be worth one hundred million dollars could be the first in a wave of print publications that begin to limit access to their content. Several newspapers have tried subscription models with minimal degrees of success.
There has been a rash of newspapers going out of business or consolidating, reducing competition and consumer choice in print, but blogging more a viable reality than ever. It’s odd, colleges are reporting an increase in the number of journalism majors yet regular jobs in the media are on the decline. There is a twitter account called “themediaisdying” all about reporting the painful death of old media. The opportunity is for journalists to dive deep into topics that interest them and they can become their own boss. A battle that has yet to be tried out in the courts is in matters of freedom of the press, where reporters need to keep secret their sources and the court system will someday have to create the water test of what nowadays can be counted as the press.
photo credit: mattbuchanan
