IPad at the Academy Awards

Steve Jobs had his hands all over last night's Academy Awards - with Pixar(Disney) winning for best animated feature with UP UP : Official Siteand Apple ads for the iPad capturing viewers in crisp 30 second spots.

I can see UP bundled as a feature film on the iPad just to show off the great video capabilities of the device.

From the Christian Science Monitor:

" The point is easily-understood: the Apple iPad is a Swiss Army knife device. It plays video, it plays TV shows, it stores photos from your last tropical vacation. And it does it in style.

TAke a look at the Academy Awards TV spot:

"

The drums are beating for the iPad launch on April 3.

Will you stand in line to buy one?

Presentation Research -Discovery through Google Images

In preparing for my second presentation for the eLearning Forum on the subject of Wikinomics I wanted to use the power of time-shifting and stored "memory" exemplified by TiVo.

My "ant-trail" 1. Search google images 2. select the image shown above 3. Follow the image link to find this 4 year-old post Church of the Customer Blog

"Student volunteers, who received free pizzas for their labor, helped with the assembly of the system, essentially an array of large refrigerators to keep the computers from overheating. Virginia Tech's president offered free football tickets to the technicians who were spending long hours on the project.

"'When you have a small budget," said Srinidhi Varadarajan, a leader of the project, "you have to take risks.'"

Voila! a perfect example of the principles of Wikinomics in action and another story for the Wikinomics playbook.

Time-shifted and stored in the "memory" of the Church of the Customer blog and discovered through google image search. Their tag cloud on the blog piques my attention. Maybe we should introduce them to ConversationBase .

Network Innovation - a lesson from Apple

Innovation | Lessons from Apple | Economist.com: "This approach, known as “network innovation”, is not limited to electronics. It has also been embraced by companies such as Procter & Gamble, BT and several drugs giants, all of which have realised the power of admitting that not all good ideas start at home. Making network innovation work involves cultivating contacts with start-ups and academic researchers, constantly scouting for new ideas and ensuring that engineers do not fall prey to “not invented here” syndrome, which always values in-house ideas over those from outside."

Network Innovation is well described in Wikinomics - with its core principles Open, P2P,Sharing, Global. - Apple appears to have its cake and eat it, violating the key principle of openness, but gaining innovative advantage through adopting other's innovations( think Xerox Altos) and focusing on sleek, sexy,fashionable design.

iTunes is the newest version of Apple's network innovation. Its almost hidden agenda is its insertion as a virus-like component on the Windows platform where, unexpected, it resides as a remorahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remora . iTunes and the soon to be shipped iPhone
are stealth invaders of the Windows platform - where any iTunes enabled device, MAC or PC is "recognized" and connected to share any iTunes content. It is a network innovation of mostly unseen and unexpected scope - imagine an Apple networking widget on every Mac and Windows PC. That's iTunes - and guess where iPhone will connect as a Network Innovation?

Who knew?

Ant Trail No.2 - finding information Architects!

This Ant Trail leads to Information Architects in Tokyo,a dynamite design resource for all things Internet.

The trail will be entirely visual, without associated links. It will give me a visual
platform for my meeting with Robert Scoble in early March. In meeting with Robert, I hope to help him overcome his problem of continuous partial attention. (CPA) that I mentioned in previous posts.

iA's interface design rules make great visual sense to me, and I am hoping to find a way to redesign this blog so that it follows the iA rules. I think they would be equally applicable to Scobleizer and the Scoble Video Show.

Let's start on the trail with Netvibes
dave davison's home page (22)
followed by the link to
which contains the link to iA which led me to this really powerful statement: The Interface is the Brand ( which relates to my prior posts on the iPhone and its need for radical simplification). iA gets it just right with this post: Information Architects Japan

and then finally a payoff for my meeting with Robert Scoble - this table rating popular blogs showing that Scobleizer has a way to go in its design.


Ain't discovery grand? I hope Robert will agree.

Another view of the MultiTouch Screen

You can click play here and get immediate "graphic gratification". Try it:

Each of these posts contains a different video - and I think it's worth watching both to get the full impact.

The Apple iPhone - Steve Jobs does it again at MacWorld

Take a demo listen here: Apple - iPhone - Phone

Here's the latest from MacWorld - the iPhone combining Internet browsing, highres camera and iPhoto- like picture management, integrated google map and search functions,and a whole lot of cool features for voice and email and call management. Bundled exclusively with Cingular service. Comes with 4 and 8 GB versions, retailing at $499 and $599, service plan included.

And look: No Keyboard! - all running on OSX and compatible with most MAC apps. This new generation phone may be to mobile communicating what the iPod was to music and the MAC has been to personal computing.

Significantly Jobs announced that henceforth Apple was dropping "computer" from its corporate name and will now be known simply as Apple Inc. - a consumer electronics company.

I think the iPhone will be as big a hit at the iPod and will dramatically impact the enormous mobile communicating/computing market. Who need as laptop for roadwarrior communicating? I want one!


If you didn't link to the demo above, do it now and be dazzled! Apple - iPhone - Phone