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"AT&T announced on Tuesday that customers in Atlanta could get a type of compact PC called a netbook for just $50 if they signed up for an Internet service plan — an offer the phone company may introduce elsewhere after a test period. This year, at least one wireless phone company in the United States will probably offer netbooks free with paid data plans, copying similar programs in Japan, according to industry experts.
"But this revolution is not just about falling prices. Personal computers — and the companies that make their crucial components — are about to go through their biggest upheaval since the rise of the laptop. By the end of the year, consumers are likely to see laptops the size of thin paperback books that can run all day on a single charge and are equipped with touch screens or slide-out keyboards."
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Even though they mention "periodicals" here, textbooks makes more sense as a primary market for larger-screen Kindles.
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Great rundown of old v. new thinking — how news orgs would think/act if they were "more Googley"
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"Big-city newspapers should be giving away netbooks. They should have teams of people walking up and down the rowhouse streets of a city like Philly, giving these newfangled devices away to people who've been left behind by the Computer Age, and perhaps also offering them at reduced prices to people who can afford them and simply want easier or more convenient online access.
In return, these news organizations would reap enormous benefits, including a community-relations coup and a closer bond with newfound online readers, a golden opportunity for branding their website (the Web address could, and should, be advertised on the new device), and the chartitable operation could even lead to a new news-gathering eco-structure (more on that in a second.)"
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This is way cool, I might want one for the Bay Area, to take on BART, bus…
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This is the famed Nielsen research that has everyone claiming the Twitter "fad" is over. It fails to take into account people who access Twitter via SMS and 3rd-party clients.
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Heard about this from Mur Lafferty. Interactive storytelling environment that uses elements of gaming, AI linguistic analysis, and narrative generator.
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"My view is that Twitter is changing from a personal service to a marketing channel."
…I disagree with that. Because the value of Twitter, I think, lies not in how many accounts the service gets, but in who gets followed there, and for what purposes. The spammers attract fewer followers.
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A bigger-screen Kindle "smacks of what newspapers were thinking and trying to do in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Rather than integrate with the devices that people already have and use for multi-tasking — cellphones, laptops, etc. — newspapers want people to pay for a separate device where they have more control over the content and the flow of information, and they can once again demand that people pay money for the content.
"There already is a such a magical device, and it's available for the low cost of just 75 cents a day or less. It's called a printed newspaper, and every year fewer and fewer people are buying it, because they prefer the free-flowing ways of the World Wide Web. I don't see how any kind of closed-loop device — no matter how gizmo-y — fixes that. I think it's better to go where people are happy now — like the Internet or their phone service — and come up with "apps" (there's a word that's not in the newsroom vocabulary) that people are willing to pay for."
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Andrew Hyde just told me about this — real time blog analytics, $10/mo. Pretty cool!
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Useful tool for protecting files on your hard drive.
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"So why go back to Namibia, Gavin? “You know, when I dance in Namibia, people laugh – I’m a source of entertainment. The white guy who dances badly. When I dance badly in Boston, I’m just a dork.”
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"Electronic display of the same old newspaper page is not going to be anyone's savior. It's still the same content in the same broadsheet-page package with the same old limitations and entirely the same faltering business model underlying it.
"Anyone who won't pick up a printed newspaper for 50 cents is not going to buy a $500-$600 (estimated) big-screen kindle so they can read the newspaper. This will be a bridge technology adopted by some upper-middle-class baby boomers who already read the print newspaper and can afford a new toy. But the Kindle-like devices will not reach any of the markets that newspapers are losing to other online competitors."
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It'll be interesting to see whether this is a real product or a prototype, and when it would actually hit the market.
"The last time Amazon (AMZN) held a press conference in New York City was in February, when it introduced the Kindle 2.0. Now it is scheduling one for Wednesday morning at Pace University in lower Manhattan. Expect a new, large format device that’s optimized for reading newspapers and magazines."
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Good advice, I totally agree. My comment: Being in the midst of a current revolution of one, I totally agree with this. I’d just add: Don’t expect the revolution to be fun ALL the time. Right now, a lot of mine sucks… but the goal is being able to have more fun and engage in broader revolutions in the future….
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