April 2010 Archives

Looking at an example of an ebook like Alice in Wonderland on the iPad immediately makes me go "duh". 

In the early 90s I covered ebooks and wrote an article that said, at that time, that ebooks wouldn't go anywhere. The technology was, to put it bluntly, lame. And I was right. It went nowhere. I mean who'd give up a book to stare at a computer screen? 

But the times have changed. Or more appropriately...the technology has grown in leaps and bounds. eInk is nothing short of a great leap in the right direction. 

And while I think the iPad is too heavy for what I want in an ereader (I'm still embarking on the path and after reading my first three ebooks on my my iPhone I have my Kobo on pre-order. I'll see how it goes.), where it excels, and I hope the publishing industry is on this....is those bloody kids' books for preschoolers that are 20-50 bucks due to the pretty illustrations and minimal words. 

I hope the iPad wipes out the market and replaces it in the next five years. Cause it should.

(Sorry, I had tone there...probably cause of flashbacks to working in a book store and shelving and shelving, and reshelving, and reshelving again, and then sorting and reshelving again and again and again all those mismatched and oddly sized hardcover books.)

Why again would anyone ever produce a hardcover book for preschoolers? Get an iPad and download the best of illustrated stories...with action. It's a no-brainer. Kids will love that shit. It's brilliant. 

And I'm guessing they can deliver the hardcover monstrosities for a lot less than the going rate today. Print runs are small in hardcover kid books and pricey. Kids Can Press...are you listening? Do it. Do it now. 

Even better, as an Aunt, I can just send off ebooks as gifts to my far-flung nephews and nieces and be done with it. I like it. I like it a lot. 

Of course please remember that we need to find a way to make them have the smallest footprint possible....the challenge is on.....publishing companies...go forth and conquer......

It's easy (particularly for those of us who live in urban centers) to believe that the wireless world will continuously allow bigger, better, more. 

In the early days of the Internet, and the pain of dial-up, the focus was on making access easier and faster. But nowadays with high speed access, it seems like websites are trying to outcompete for how much they can ramp up the content...and often this acceleration in graphics and gizmos is also correspondingly rich in resources. Add to that the proliferation of mobile users who are accessing the Internet and it's no surprise. We're eating up our broadband infrastructure (figuratively) by breakfast. 

This is not unknown. The FCC Chairman today announced that the Mobile Broadband was a priority (and its current status a concern). And the U.S. is certainly not alone. The proliferation of users has created a high-level of traffic congestion and seriously strained the existing infrastructure. 

I am sure that many countries are talking about building up their infrastructure and the push is on for technology to fill the gap: by adding better data transfer capability, blah, blah, blah. But they're should be, and can be, a double pronged solution to the problem. 

Consider roads. Initially it too was a good idea. Zipping along from A to B was brilliant. And unlike the Internet, you could even laugh at the losers who didn't have cars as you blew past them. But then a whole lot of people started driving. Zipping around became a thing of the past, and in urban centers congestion became the norm. 

The answer? Well....we'll just build more roads. And then again more roads. And again. Why? Because building roads is a temporary fix. Congestion returns. And with it a nasty side effect: pollution. 

Now, many urban centers are starting to look at alternate solutions. They're pushing mass transit and considering building communities not around the car, but around other means of transit. One of the biggest reasons? They can't afford the infrastructure costs. And thankfully, people are trying to scale back. Minimize use and footprint. Companies are responding and developing options: hybrid vehicles, smaller vehicles. 

We need to consider the same thing with the broadband infrastructure. Rather than blindly following the technological answer that is a bigger, better, more infrastructure to match our over-use, we need to consider being sustainable and responsible. 

This includes being responsible in the development of Web applications. The Internet is an environment too. And we need to think about it in a sustainable manner. If we focus on developing Web solutions that keeps one competitive eye on how small of a footprint we can make....we're being ecologically responsible towards our Internet.

Of course, we as humans can't seem to manage sustainability for important things like clean water, clean air, clean food.....so it's hard to imagine we'll approach the Internet any differently than we've approached the rest. We may wait until things are so bad and perhaps even at a complete standstill/breakdown before we make a change. 

But one can hope. 

So....Web developers....it's our Internet Environmental Future. Why not show the rest of the world what sustainability means?