The Professor's Notes

Real Tech for Real People 110 .  This was a fun episode.   My son, Matthew (known as @Spreadhdgfx on Twitter for his graphics work) joined us to share his first thoughts on his new Samsung Note. The comments might surprise you!  Check out the rest of the show notes below… and apologies to the Senate Sergeant at Arms office, but we didn’t talk about the Senate this time, or any particular Senators… not even U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, but we encourage you to all listen to our show! Read the rest of this entry »

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I realize I haven’t cross-posted many of our shows lately, but I wanted to let my readers know that we are up to Episode 111 at Real Tech, and I will be cross posting the past few episodes to help catch you up!  If you haven’t been listening, you can find all our episodes over at Tony’s site GetTheNext.com (or simply get there through RTFRP.com)

Episode 109 (Scroll to the bottom of the post after the break to listen): Read the rest of this entry »

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I have many thoughts on digital textbooks, and you have all had an opportunity to read them here.   Apple has made their “big move” and I am both pleased to see digital moving forward, and also a bit concerned about what could become the “only” platform on campuses.

I actually presented a paper on the challenges of digital textbook pricing at the Western DSI (Decision Sciences Institute) conference in 2011.   You can read the paper here.  In that paper, I point out that by driving the logistics costs of moving, handling, and returning paper products out of the system, along with other costs such as maintaining a bookstore, one can drive the costs down to about (surprise!) $15.00 while maintaining the 2 year profits of the publisher. And by withdrawing the pressures of the resale market, the profits only go up from there.

First thoughts that led to that paper were written about here  and here.

Most recently I wrote about  consumer driven markets. Who should make the  choice? Digital textbooks are able separate the content from the medium, and allow flexibility–unless we are locked into a hardware platform.  I also wrote about this in this post.

I would welcome other thoughts on those posts and on the paper.

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Anyone reading my blog for any period of time knows that I love the Kindle’s highlight and notes features.  I wrote a macro for the original Kindles (that works on the Kindle 2 as well) to take the text file and make it a very nice readable document in Word.

One drawback had been that Amazon never explained how to get to the highlighted texts or notes when you were using a Kindle app–whether iPhone or Android.

Luckily others have deciphered this for us, and have developed a program that will generate a text file from the data file.  (The information in the apps is stored in *.mbp files, because they, like the core Kindle format, are based on the MobiBook standard.) Read the rest of this entry »

You know someone who is a photo-bug? Photo JoJo store has some really cool gifts for the photo gadget lover, or just the lover of photography. My favorites include: The elastic Macro Lens band for phones, lens screw-on adapters for both fish-eye (0.35x) and telephoto (2x) zoom, and 90 degree “Super secret spy lens” for seeing around corners, or just taking pictures sideways.

Check these, and the other gift ideas out–and don’t forget your favorite Professor! (Even if it isn’t me!)

Who are the consumers of textbooks? And how do you define a consumer? We had this discussion recently on the podcast Real Tech for Real People episode 97. We were discussing the increasing use of tablets, and specifically iPads, in primary and secondary education. Of course, this led to a discussion of the use of tablets in higher education. The conversation was wide ranging in a couple key points emerged that I wish to write about here.

The primary and secondary schools systems are selecting a specific device and the books are content to go on that device. In this case, the system purchases the devices and the content and then delivers that to the student. So who is the consumer in this case? Setting aside for the moment the argument that the taxpayer is always the consumer, let’s focus on whether the consumer is the school district or the student. We can all agree that there are many stakeholders in this arrangement: the school board, parents, teachers, students, taxpayers, and I’m sure many others. But when I consider the consumer, I am considering their role in consumer plays in shaping the marketplace. In this case, while the students consumed the content, the school board by virtue of the purse string is the consumer. We can hope they are making wise decisions as they select the best combination of hardware, software, and support infrastructure.

Given this scenario the selection of a specific hardware platform makes sense. As a consumer the school district is selecting an all encompassing solution for all to use. This approach will undoubtedly balance the educational needs with the technological abilities, and of course the fiscal reality is the school board faces. The district will be able to leverage their scarce taxpayer dollars to get the best benefit possible. Are there limitations to this approach? Perhaps. There might be better solutions that only run on a different platform. But those are the tradeoffs one makes when one selects a technological platform on which to base decisions. We must satisfice.

Not consider the higher education model. As professors and students alike start to look towards digital textbooks as a valuable and viable alternative to the costly new-used-new book cycle we find a new challenge. Read the rest of this entry »

Must content and delivery be inextricably entwined?

For centuries our ability to gather content and disseminated wirh tide is not just to the content but to the media and the physical media that was used for delivery. If you wanted to read a book you would buy both the content and the delivery media simultaneously. The words in the paper on which they were printed or written were forever enmeshed. Even in recent decades with books on CD or tape you were still purchasing both the delivery media and the content as an inseparable unit.

We have an opportunity to day with the development of digital content and robust data exchange standards to forever separate the content from the media, or at least that will we use to receive the content. We’re at a crossroads. We can choose to follow the path of standards allowing users to decide on the delivery mechanism they prefer, or we can continue to develop content for delivery in specific devices and tools.

We’re currently entering a world where we have a wide variety of choices for the personal technology we use to access media. For instance, we have both been nearly ubiquitous iPad and now more and more android tablets on the market. We’re also seeing the early stages of windows eight tablets being previewed. If we take a device centric approach content will be developed and delivered as operating system specific applications. This will enable content creators to leverage the unique creative aspects of each of the operating systems and the devices. Read the rest of this entry »

Lots of stories have made the news lately about hackers getting in to Sony, and Nintendo, and NPR and…. the list goes on.   In addition, we have continuing stories about personal computers getting hacked, including the (impenetrable) Mac! ¹

I just want to quickly point out a few things, as I prepare for tomorrow night’s Real Tech for Real People podcast (listen live at 9PM ET).

1.  It’s not just computer security–it’s your personal security.  Sony unfortunately stored way too much information about you on their site and in the clear meaning that the hackers got people’s passwords, and credit card numbers, as well as other personal identifying information.  Talk about “bad juju.” Read the rest of this entry »

Continuing on my recent vein of discussing Presentations, I wanted to share with you my latest find.  (Bottom line: I highly recommend it.)

I used to use a Targus Wireless Presentation Remote for presentations.  I love the sleek design, and the fact that the USB wireless connector would fit inside the remote.  It was easy to use, and flawless in execution.

And alas, easy for me to lose the USB dongle.

I recently attended a conference where I presented my paper on eTextbook pricing (more to come on THAT later) and I found myself in desperate need of a remote.  Nothing is worse than wanting to be able to roam the room to connect with the audience, and yet become trapped to the front of the room hitting the “ENTER” key.  My first thought was that I would need to walk a mile or two to the closest office equipment store.  But then I realized that I had a IOGEAR Bluetooth dongle already on my computer.  It was a simple matter of finding the right software to run on my android phone.

Enter PPT Remote Control.  I searched the Google Market and found a number of options.  I read the reviews, and then downloaded the “free” version of the application (limited to 15 slides.)  I liked it, so I went ahead and bought the full version.

So what did I like?

First, it did exactly what I needed it to do.  It controls my PowerPoint presentations, but there is more to it. The app downloaded the slides to the phone so I could look at my phone and see where I was in the presentation, and it also downloaded any notes.  I was able to have my crib notes right there in my remote control!

Some of the additional details (after the break): Read the rest of this entry »