Jason Thibeault's Blog: From My Pen, page 71

Apple’s Tablet and Textbook Strategy: Is it Inherently Flawed?

Apple has made a lot of noise recently about the new version of iBooks that provides interactive features for textbooks. But as I’ve written about previously, there’s a lot involved in what will be a totemic shift from physical to digital in the classroom.

One of the critical issues involved in that shift is price.

From the school perspective, the price of an iPad isn’t that much of an issue. Through educational and enterprise licensing, schools can get very good pricing on these devices. But w...

Understanding Mobile Behavior

I see a lot of startup companies right now focused on two types of mobile activities: content consumption and content interaction.

What I haven’t seen successfully implemented (or implemented well), though, is an integration of these activities into mobile behavior.

If we all believe that users are going to want to access content when they are away from their PC (check out this picture) then the first question we must ask is, “how does that access work?” Is it through a browser? Is it through a...

Photo: The Art Hidden Amongst Us

Great photo on NatGeo of a person walking in front of a famous mural in New York on Houston Street. Just makes me realize how much art is out there and around us at all times. Guess you just have to think about what makes it art.

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http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/photo-of-the-week/#/new-york-city-art-mural-graffiti_33596_600x450.jpg

Gaming 2.0

There’s more to what Zynga is exposing in their S-1 than just differentiation:

http://gigaom.com/cloud/zynga-s-1-highlights-cloud-big-data-as-competitive-advantages/

The use of cloud-based services in the gaming industry will herald a new paradigm for gaming itself. In most cases, games largely rely on the user’s computer. In this model, users install a huge file (sometimes 10gb in size) that provides most of the graphics, backgrounds, and the engine itself. But this is cumbersome and the exper...

Pay With Your Phone? NFC 101.

It seems that MC is finally getting in on the game with NFC payments:

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/27/exclusive-csi-virtual-mastercard-app-bringing-more-mobile-payme/

I know that for most Americans, this may seem like quite a bit of sci-fi and, what’s more, something inherently prone to security problems. But, quite the opposite, NFC is no less or more secure than providing credit card information online (in fact, with the recent spats of break-ins by notable hacking groups, perhaps more sec...

Review: Hands-On With StarWars the Old Republic (SWTOR): Part 2

As a participant in the SWTOR beta program, I wrote a review that covered some of the highlights in game play, interface, and game experience. Of course, it was somewhat limited given that the beta was not full-fledged. The game has been out now for about 2 months and I have been playing it steadily so I thought I would return to do another, more indepth review covering a lot of the stuff that I did not get a chance to address in my first review.

Single play. Bioware has done a fantastic job o...

Review: Hands-on With the Kindle Fire

ZDNet posted a great review of Amazon’s new device:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/amazons-kindle-fire-snappy-consumption-impulse-purchase-device/63274

In short,

It’s worth noting that there’s only one button on the Kindle Fire, an on-off switch. The Kindle Fire was separated at birth—actually the contract equipment manufacturer—from Research in Motion’s PlayBook. The PlayBook is bulkier, but the screen and profile is almost identical to the Kindle Fire.
With that email note, it’s worth noting wha...

Is the “Cloud” a Misnomer?

Reading this recent article on taking the interface/experience for controlling television out of the set-top box (http://gigaom.com/video/cloud-set-top-box/) makes me really think about why we are calling this new wave of Internet-based services “cloud-based.”

As a metaphor, it doesn’t really work as it would suggest that the entire planet is covered by a giant cloud. That would be depressing.

But we can’t simply call them web applications (as that implies through a browser) and using SaaS is j...

The Evolution of Evolution

We sometimes talk about the theories of Evolution in a very matter-of-fact way. But what you may not be aware of is the heated discussions within the evolutionary theorists circles. There is a lot of conjecture about just how evolution works, when it works, and the levels it works at.

The BBC recently hosted a half-an-hour radio show with many of today’s leading evolutionary theorists all representing a lot of different perspectives:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012fr7p

Whether you subscrib...

Sneak Peek at Amazon’s New Website

Although Amazon is only letting a few, select users in to see the new website, it appears that they are actively working on a new design that will coincide with their tablet launch in October. The site, as evidenced below (more pictures at TheNextWeb), will be focused on providing a more tablet-friendly experience.

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http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/08/30/amazon-is-testing-a-slick-new-site-design-built-with-tablets-in-mind/