While I’ve been involved in a lot of start ups, I’ve never started one of my own. Frankly, I don’t think I’m really the entrepreneur type. Which is okay, because not everyone can (or should) be. That said, I do believe there is a lot to learn from the entrepreneur mindset and process.
Apple has released a new digital user guide for the fifth-generation iPod touch, which was announced alongside the iPhone 5 back in September. The 138-page eBook covers “everything you need to know” about the device, and is available to download now — for free — from the iBookstore.
In addition to this, the new iPod touch has now received its first benchmarks, which reveal it’s packing an 800MHz dual-core A5 processor.
I have a million ideas for great apps. I bet you do too. Here’s the problem—I couldn’t program my way out of a paper bag. I don’t think I’m alone in this quandary either. So…
Cheaper e-books would be great, right? According to industry executives, that may just happen in the next one to three months after a federal judge entered an approval of an antitrust settlement between several e-book publishers and the Justice Department itself.
In the final settlement today, publishers Lagardere, Hachette Book Group, Simon & Schuster, and HarperCollins have the next 10 days to notify e-book retailers like Amazon that any previous agreements regarding e-book pricing are no longer valid. The deal gave publishers only seven days to notify Apple, interestingly enough.
According to the report in the Wall Street Journal, one executive, who asked to not be identified, said, “It could be pretty fast.”
The publishers have to let retailers out of any agreements that prevent discounting, and the retailers are also able to terminate said contracts within 30 days.
In a somewhat ironic move, the U.S. government has entered into an ebook deal with Apple that will see a range of government reports, documents, and ebooks published in Apple’s iBookstore. The partnership, which was announced earlier this week, coincides with the Department of Justice’s latest legal filings in its anti-trust suit against Apple.
The deal with the Government Printing Office (GPO) will make a wide swath of documents and ebooks available through the iBookstore. While some government documents are available for free, a number of documents and full-length ebooks are not.
Although Apple pitched iBooks Author as a tool for educators, the company fully supports anyone who want to create an ebook using iBooks Author to do so. Apple also lets anyone that creates an ebook with iBooks Author to distribute it through the iBookstore – the catch being that the iBooks Author edition of an ebook can’t be published using another company’s store (though the text of the title can be repackaged using other apps and sold elsewhere). As usual, Apple will take a 30% cut of any sales.
There are, of course, plenty of non-education uses for iBooks Author.
You need to read more. It’s just a fact. Everyone could stand to read a few more books a year and watch a few less GIFs on the internet. Isn’t that why you bought your iPad? Because you said you’d read more if you had an “eReader”? No? Well you should anyway.
To inject your life with more literature you’ll need to buy a lot of books. They’re not cheap, and they kind of suck to buy because, depending on which digital store you buy them from, they’re laden with DRM. Don’t let that get you down though because there’s some really great news today on the eBook front. Storybundle.com just launched their cool new website, and it’s pretty much the neatest thing to happen to eBooks this year.
Amazon is now selling more electronic books than all paper books combined – in the UK at least. The Kindle went on sale in Blighty just two years ago, and now “Amazon.co.uk customers are now purchasing more Kindle books than all printed books – hardcover and paperback – combined,” says Amazon PR.
And of course the Kindle itself is far from the whole story. The Kindle’s presence on pretty much every device ever, including the iPhone and iPad, makes the Kindle store a much more compelling place to buy books that the iBooks Store, whose offerings will only work on Apple devices. And it doesn’t hurt that it’s trivially easy to strip the DRM from Kindle books, making people like me a lot happier buying them.
The TED organization, which sponsors a range of conferences and talks on cutting edge topics recently launched an ebook series known as TED Books. Like the non-profit’s other initiatives, TED Books are “designed to spread great ideas.” Sticking to that ideal, the organization is making the ebooks, which will be released every two weeks, available across a range of ebook platforms including the new TED Books app for iOS devices.
The move highlights one of the challenges about ebooks – the choice of merchant and platform. That’s a particular concern when it comes to Apple’s iBookstore because purchases can only be read on an iOS device.
Book fetishists often cite the smell and feel of a book as a reason to keep chopping down trees and wasting fuel to ship the pulp around the world. But what about something that we probably all value, whether we are paper-sniffers or we have entered the modern age – signed books? Specifically, how does one get a digital book signed by the author?
I love writing about giveaways and freebies because there’s no risk, you have nothing to lose, and you just might as well grab it if you’re even remotely interested in thing.
Like today.
It’s a free 130 page ebook on turning Photoshop files into websites/pages. Maybe it’s not up your alley, but I think it’s one of those things that could just be handy to have around. You might learn a tip or trick or be able to work with a designer/developer a little better on your next website project. Regardless it’s just this simple…
Led by the iPad, tablet sales are now expected to overtake laptop sales within four years. Given how disruptive the iPad has already been to many industries, it’s almost impossible to read reports like that without wondering which industries the iPad will topple or transform over the next five to ten years.
A new Morgan Stanley report identifies some of the likely winners and losers in an iPad and tablet dominated world. The industries expected to succeed include a couple of surprises – at first glance.
There’s no question that the iPad is incredibly popular and revolutionary. As the device continues to become part of our daily lives, we’re beginning to see the iPad take hold in schools, workplaces, and our homes. What’s the most common task performed on an iPad(or other tablet)?
According to research firm Gartner, the most frequent task is checking email.
In a new report, Gartner used survey data from consumers in the U.S., U.K. and Australia that was recorded in a diary-style format at the end of last year. Email was the most common task performed on a tablet but a more interesting observation from Gartner is that people are largely using tablets as a way to replace tasks that previously involved printed and paper in one form or another.
The report stopped well short of saying we’re going to become a paperless society in the near future, but it did identify some interesting trends.
The Wall Street Journal today has a report on how the e-book industry is paying close attention not only to what books people read, but how they are reading them. Do readers skim the intro, skip around in the chapters? Do they read straight through? What are readers’ favorite passage to highlight and share? This kind of data mining is happening now, even on your iPad.
Erica Sadun writes at TUAW about a new, possibly first of its kind ebook, one that includes American Sign Language (ASL) videos embedded along with the electronic text and pictures.
While bilingual education has been around for a good long while, the concept of prepackaged ASL translation is a relatively new one, as the tools to embed quality video in an eBook haven’t been mainstream enough. Until now, of course, with iBooks, the iPad, and iBooks Author.
Author Adam Stone released his new book, Pointy Three, on the iBooks store last week. From the iTunes description:
Presented in American Sign Language (ASL) and English! The story of a fork who’s missing one of his prongs, but not his brave spirit. Follow Pointy Three on his journey through the land of Dinnertime as he meets characters left and right and looks for a place where he belongs.
Sadun interviews Stone and talks with him about his motivation to do such a book. “I want to show everybody that it can be done easily, quickly, and cheaply,” he said on his blog. “You don’t need to talk to a publisher; you are the publisher.”
Stone works as a first grade teacher at an ASL school in New York. He was inspired by the introduction of iBooks Author and came up with the idea for the story with ASL elements on the way home one day. He typed up the treatment on his iPhone in the Notes app, he says.
When asked why he hadn’t created an app, Stone reveals that he has no skills as a programmer. With iBooks Author, anyone can create an interactive story for their unique audience and situation.
This is the disruptive success of Apple, one that hearkens back to the original computer club and Steve Wozniak. Apple devices are all about empowering people to actually create and do things – wonderful and unique things – with the powerful technologies inside.
You know what it takes to step up your game on your Mac? Apps. Great apps. This isn’t really news to you, is it? And one of the reasons that Cult of Mac brings you deals is so you can get a great deal on a great app. Recently we’ve had great-app-one-offs, you know one great app at one great price. Today we’re bringing you a slew of great apps at a fantastic price.
The Mac Productivity Bundle comes with 7 apps, two sets of icons & graphics, 6 ebooks on web development, and 4 WordPress themes for $50. I’ll understand if you don’t finish reading and go buy it.
One of the ironic twists about the anti-trust lawsuits against Apple and the major publishing companies is that Apple’s entrance into the ebook market actually broke Amazon’s virtual monopoly on the ebook business. In the process, publishers gained the ability to control ebook pricing, which can be seen as actually encouraging competition in the industry.
While the U.S. Department of Justice and attorneys general from many states are pursuing lawsuits around the matter, not every country would see the situation in the same terms as the U.S. government. In France, for example, publishers can legally control pricing and are protected from booksellers undercutting their business as Amazon had been doing with its power over the ebook market. It’s even possible that France’s laws protecting publishers may have served as inspiration for the agency model that Apple used in building the iBookstore.
How many 7th Graders can say they best selling authors? Well this group of kids from Woodlawn Beach Middle School in Northern Florida can thanks to their teacher Andrea Santilli and iBooks Author.
Ms. Santilli, a self-professed “die-hard Mac girl”, was looking for a new way to not only challenge her Advanced Life Sciences class, but also leverage technology to make learning fun. Not to mention get some practical experience in the real world of writing, photography, video, and ebook publishing. Just a few minutes with this free ebook and you can see how much potential there is for iBooks Author and iPads in the classroom. Not to mention you’ll probably learn something interesting.
The Justice Department’s anti-trust suit and the accompanying class action suit brought by various states (totaling 31 plus the District of Columbia) on behalf of consumers against Apple and the major publishing houses has always been tinged with more than a little irony. After all, the alleged price fixing and collusion actually broke Amazon’s monopoly-like hold on the ebook market. In doing so, it opened the door for products and platforms to compete with Amazon’s Kindle.
The idea of Apple as a sort of digital age Robin Hood is a powerful one in the narrative and one that could give Apple a viable case in the anti-trust suit if the actually goes to trial. Unfortunately, new evidence in the class action suit throws a bit ice water on Apple’s attempt to cast itself as the good guy (or at least as the better guy than Amazon).
Barnes & Noble’s announcement that it was spinning off its Nook business and that Microsoft would be a significant stakeholder in the new company raised a lot of eyebrows. The partnership seemed unnecessary in order to meet the goals of settling a patent dispute and ensuring a Nook app for Windows 8 tablets.
It turns out that Barnes & Nobel will be shifting its textbook business to the new company along with the Nook and that Microsoft’s $300 million investment will likely be centered around creating an e-textbook initiative that will likely compete head-on with Apple’s fledging iPad-based e-textbook business.
Microsoft has teamed up with Barnes & Noble with a $300 million investment that will create a new subsidiary focused on accelerating “the transition to e-reading.” Microsoft will take a 17.6% equity stake in a subsidiary, which is yet to be named, while Barnes & Noble will own the remaining 82.4%.
The move will provide Microsoft with its own answer to iBooks, with plans for a NOOK application that will run on Windows 8, and it’ll give users an alternative to the Kindle Store.
The U.S. Department of Justice recently accused Apple and 5 large book publishers of conspiring to raise e-Book prices in the iBookstore. Experts said that it would be unlikely for Apple to be found as guilty of collusion, and now the Cupertino company is wanting a trial to defend itself against the DoJ’s accusations.
With its iBooks Author software, Apple has made it incredibly easy for almost anyone to write and publish their own e-book. And it hopes to make it just as easy to create iOS apps. One patent application shows the Cupertino company has been working on a tool that would allow users without any programming knowledge at all to build their own iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch software.
It’s long been rumored that the Department of Justice would file an antitrust suit against Apple for e-book price fixing, but now it’s happening, as the United States DoJ just filed such a suit against Apple, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan and Penguin.
At issue here is Apple’s attempt to overthrow Amazon’s hegemony on e-book selling by collaborating with publishers ahead of the iBookstore launch to standardize how much is charged for e-books, not just through Apple, but through Amazon as well.
Apple’s e-textbook initiative, which the company launched in January along with iBooks Author and a revamped iTunes U service is aimed at K-12 schools rather than higher education. Higher education has a different set of needs when it comes to textbooks, study, and reference materials. There are also big differences in device/platform selection between K-12 and the college market.
In fact, these differences are probably a big part of why Apple decided to focus the majority of its e-textbook (and, by extension its iPad in education) effort on the K-12 market. It’s a market that yields Apple more growth opportunities now and down the road.