The iPad as a "bedtime computer"

The creator of the "A Story Before Bed" iPad app discusses tablets and the reading experience.

Jackson Fish Market, developer of the innovative A Story Before Bed service, is one of the few companies to fully combine video and web technology into a book-like product. Adults record themselves reading a bedtime story selected from the service's library, and children can then play the story back through a computer anytime they like.

It's not an exact replacement for books or in-person storytelling, that's true. But A Story Before Bed is in the same ballpark as the intimate and personalized experiences print book lovers vociferously defend. And now that the service has gotten the thumbs-up from Apple for its iPad app (iTunes link), the technological divide between reading a digital story and actually experiencing that story could narrow.

Given all this, I got in touch with Jackson Fish Market co-founder Hillel Cooperman to get his thoughts on the iPad's possibilities.

Mac Slocum: Why did you opt to develop an iPad app before an iPhone app?

Hillel Cooperman: We just didn't have time to ship both at once. We also think and hope the iPad is the ultimate form factor for watching stories recorded on A Story Before Bed. We love our laptops, but the iPad is the first real bedtime computer.

MS: How will the iPad app differ from the service you offer through the website?

HC: Our website lets you record and view stories. There's no front facing camera on iPhones, and no camera at all on iPads. Our iPad app lets you view the stories you recorded on your Mac or PC.

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What brand of freedom would you like?

Apple's restrictions and Google's openness have more in common than you might think.

There's been a ton of criticism, including from me, over Apple's restrictions on the App Store. How it restricts the freedom of developers by blocking applications users definitely want to use, or yanking apps that fail to meet a changeable standard of appropriateness or legitimacy. I originally thought I would never buy an iPhone because of that policy alone, and I felt like quite a hypocrite when I decided to buy one anyway. As many people have pointed out, the iPad, if successful, will further extend Apple's control over the code its users are able to run.

One of the main pitches for Google's Android platform, in contrast, is that it is more open, freer, more consistent with the principles that the open source world (and this blog, and I) espouse. For the code, and applications running on it, that certainly seems to be true. I can go to source.android.com and download the Android source. The Apache license applied to most of the project is very liberal in the use of that code. As a developer, I can publish applications for Android at www.android.com/market, where, Google says, "developers have complete control over when and how they make their applications available to users." How much more free could you get and still call it a platform? The Android stance is nearly 180 degrees from the iPhone's. One is free and the other is closed.

And yet, I don't think the contrast is as clear as that. Freedom means different things to different people. Hence Richard Stallman's quip, "Think free as in free speech, not free beer." While there's no question the code is much more free on Android, I think Steven Levy's point in his piece on the iPad is worth repeating:

While Apple wants to move computing to a curated environment where everything adheres to a carefully honed interface, Google believes that the operating system should be nearly invisible. Good-bye to files, client apps, and onboard storage -- Chrome OS channels users directly into the cloud ...

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APIs launched at Where 2.0: a pocket guide

Where 2.0 has become a launch-pad for new geo products. As a sign of the times, these announcements focus on APIs rather than the usual feature-increments or partnership propaganda (we geo folk always prefer the Walk over the Talk). Here's a handy reference list in no particular order:

Placecast Match API

The free service "simplifies the process of de-duplicating and matching content like business listings, reviews, check-ins and events to their true location"; it is the first of what will certainly be many Local Disambiguation platforms we see that attempt to generate concordance between how Places are called. With this product Placecast appears to be moving out of the ad-world and into the geo platforms space. Details are few as the API is not yet out the door, but you can sign up in advance at the link above.

Skyhook Local Faves

An all-in-one iphone SDK that brings location to social sharing applications: "in a Local Faves-enabled wine app, users could check-in to a restaurant via the wine they are drinking, giving the app developer the opportunity to broadcast user location" or allow users to "see where around the world their favorite song is playing, or view all songs playing locally". I'm not yet convinced that the overly broad use cases demonstrate anything otherwise unavailable to developers, but this product (and the company's recent launch of SpotRank) shows how Skyhook is positioning itself in the center of the geoweb to become a critical provider of location context. The API comes out 'mid April'; register in advance here.

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iPad and ebooks: Lots of unanswered questions

An iPad simulator isn't the same as the real device, and that's going to slow things down

Right now people are conflating the whiz-bang demos from Wired, Penguin and the magazine world with the iBooks offering. In fact, no one can say anything right now other than that iBooks uses the EPUB format. Will books from iBooks be able to include custom fonts? Video? Audio? All unknowns.

If it's true that books in the iBookstore can include video, for example, what kind of video? Adobe promotes Flash video for use in EPUB, but of course there's no Flash in the whole iPad/iPhone ecosystem. So yes, EPUB is a standard, but the kind of content that would really showcase a tablet versus an E-Ink reader -- like video -- seems to have already fragmented before the device even hits the marketplace. That kind of fragmentation is going to deter publishers from doing much more than what they're already doing: making text-only EPUB for wide distribution, and doing the occasional book-as-app experiment (at a premium price point).

We're already seeing the tension between Apple's own interests and their control of the App Store with the announcement that many apps (notably the Kindle) won't be available in the App Store on release of the iPad because they haven't been able to test on a real device. And then ... how long until they release? That's totally up to the Apple approval process.

In our development of an HTML5-based web app, we've found that hardware profiles are key to making web apps really compete. Ibis Reader isn't nearly as compelling on an older iPod Touch as it is on an iPhone 3GS. By providing what is apparently a really sexy tablet that's capable of running video and games fluidly, Apple also widens the playing field to let web apps shine too. As the hardware increases in capacity, web apps become increasingly attractive as an end product, not just as a way for web developers to play in the app space.

Four short links: 2 April 2010

REST Data, Copyright Hell, iPhone Web Apps, HTML5 Quake

1. OData -- REST protocol for accessing datasets, based on Atom, JSON, and some XML formats for metadata.
2. Thinking about Monkeys and Engineers and Copyright -- short read, but makes you realise how tortuous the current remix possibilities make copyright law.
3. How to Make an HTML5 iPhone App -- walks and talks like an iPhone app, but is made entirely of HTML. (via Hacker News)
4. Quake 2 for HTML5 -- In the port, we use WebGL, the Canvas API, HTML 5 <audio> elements, the local storage API, and WebSockets to demonstrate the possibilities of pure web applications in modern browsers such as Safari and Chrome. (via waxy)

Check out C3 cities: your eyes will thank you

The practicality of 3D content is often overstated; I've not yet found an example in the geo world where 3D genuinely compliments, rather than hinders, usability. The high-resolution city models produced by C3 attracted significant attention at this year's Where 2.0, and may in time prove to be the exception to the rule.

The C3 team dropped jaws with a few sneak previews of their product at last year's Where 2.0, and their CEO Mattias Åström spoke yesterday; I followed up today with C3 PM Ludvig Emgård who provided me with a few shots of their local Bay Area work that I can share here:

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Where's the map?

Guest blogger Tyler Bell is a geotechnologist with broad interests in open source and place-based information systems He is currently managing Platform technologies at AlikeList, a Sunnyvale-based Social/Local start-up, where he designs disambiguation systems, geo technology platforms, and syndication APIs. Until recently Tyler led the Geo Technologies product team at Yahoo!, conceiving and launching the Placemaker and GeoPlanet geo-enrichment platforms.

This year's Where 2.0 has sold out, pushing the San Jose Marriott's fire code into the red with over 900 attendees. With assured kudos to the conference team, it speaks more loudly as a bellwether for the Geo Sector itself, because the so-called Year of the Map is finally here. However the Map is playing only a supporting role, and will continue to be relegated as "Local and Geo" becomes less about Mapping and more about Local Experiences.

Take Foursquare: Opening his keynote today with a curiously genuine "have you heard of Foursquare?", Denis Crowley recounted in congenial staccato his founding premise: how can we make Life more like a game? The recipe for success was simple: take an existing behavior (going out and doing stuff), enrich it, and make it fun. Crowley and his Team have managed to twig onto something so elegant and popular that the big players have vocally wished they invented it (a dancecard full of eager VCs is further reason, should any be needed). But what started as a game is now "driving users to lead a more interesting life" as Foursquare players compete for Fitness and Pizza badges -- rarely both, I assume -- and vie for Mayorships that translate virtual accomplishments into real-world rewards.

At Foursquare (and Gowalla, Yelp and similar services) every check-in is a small advertisement for a place, and this really is where the magic lies: Foursquare connects SMBs (Small and Medium Businesses) to their customers, and rewards both: "if you give our users deals", Crowley says to SMBs "we give you data". Because Foursquare can provide vendors welcome insight into their users' behavior (who shows up where, when), they are positioned to become a "Google Analytics for bricks-and-mortar businesses", and releasing the data back out through the API: a winning, virtuous, and undoubtedly profitable, circle. Compare this approach to something like (for example) Groupon, where the SMB-to-Customer contact is interdicted and owned by the facilitating company.

But back to the map - it's not in evidence. Geo Technology is critical to Foursquare; but its map is only a casual convenience. Nor can the Map be found in what is increasingly incorrectly described as 'Local Search'.

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Location in the cloud (part 1)

I’m a guest blogger this week at the 2010 Where 2.0 conference. I’ve been working with mobile location services and systems since 2000. In lieu of a heavy focus on mobile at Where 2.0 this year, Brady Forrest invited me to write a few words and offer insights into a theme around two emerging areas of mobile location data access—Wireless Location in the Cloud and Social Location in the Cloud. This post is the first in a two-part series.

Wireless Location in the Cloud

Wireless location data and access to it has been a highly coveted wireless network asset since the early days of e9-1-1 in the late 1990s. To support 9-1-1, wireless carriers in the US made large investments to deploy life-saving emergency services location infrastructure capable of pinpointing the location of any wireless 9-1-1 call, on any phone, as mandated by the FCC. Today, these systems have been augmented to support a separate commercial service delivery capability designed for commercial applications and services, and as with short messaging services, these services are now becoming available through cross-carrier aggregators supported by most tier one wireless carriers such as AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless. Attendees at Where 2.0 today got a glimpse of what’s now available.

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OSCON 2010: Open source in a world of new defaults

Registration is now open for the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, July 19-23, Portland, OR.

This year's revolutionary technology frequently becomes the accepted norm a few years down the line. Every so often the revolution is big enough, and a noticeable shift in the technology landscape occurs.

We're at such a point in 2010. At OSCON 2010 in July, we'll be talking about the new environment that developers, businesses and open source projects find themselves in, and how they can navigate and get the best from it.

Cloud by Default

For many years at OSCON we called out "web applications" as a distinct topic. This year it became a useless demarcation, as just about everything is a web application. Cloud computing is in a place similar to web applications a few years ago.

Your next application will probably run in a cloud setting, whether public or private. The cloud brings with it concerns of designing for scalability, replication and failure, presenting new opportunities and techniques. In a few years, these will be second nature, taken for granted. For now, we're learning the ropes, agreeing on standards, pushing forward with developing new tools.

The consequences of the move to the cloud can be felt throughout the OSCON program, but especially in the cloud computing and database tracks. Keynote speaker Stormy Peters will be exploring the challenge that software-as-a-service presents to traditional open source.

One of the interesting spinoffs from cloud computing is that the disciplines of system administration and software development have merged to some extent, as systems management becomes more programmatic and development needs to account for systems architecture. In line with this we've retitled our system administration track Operations and will cover topics such as configuration management, scalability and monitoring.

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Imagine a world that has moved entirely to cloud computing

For April Fools Day I'm offering a short story about a future world that has moved entirely to cloud computing: Hardware Guy. The cloud still scares as many IT managers as it attracts. But the advantages of cloud computing for maintenance, power consumption, and other things suggests it will dominate computing in a decade or so. Meanwhile, other changes are affecting the way we use data everyday. Movements such as NoSQL, big data, and the Semantic Web all come at data from different angles, but indicate a shift from retrieving individual facts we want to looking at relationships among huge conglomerations of data. I've explored all these things in blogs on this site, along with some other trends such as shrinking computer devices, so now I decided to combine them in a bit of a whacky tale.

Four short links: 1 April 2010

Copyright Economics, RDF, Linked Data Faith, and Douglas Adams

1. Extending Copyright Duration in Australia (PDF) -- economics of copyright extension. This proposal in the "let's dream" section at the end caught my eye: The potential trade-off between production and distribution of intellectual property can be addressed in a number of ways. Australia could offer a system of graduated copyright protection with differing durations and differing fees. If an individual truly believed that their intellectual property would be valuable seventy years after their deaths, they should pay for that privilege. This is a Coasian solution to the copyright monopoly problem — with property rights being allocated to the public domain. In essence, creators are renting a portion of the public domain. It need not constitute a barrier to invention and creative activity because, in any event, there are few copyright materials that are valuable after such a long period of time and further, if the individual’s beliefs are correct they could either raise the necessary funds by means of a loan or by selling the idea on the secondary market. If, however, they thought their intellectual property were only valuable for ten years then they would pay far less, and so on. (via wiselark on Twitter)
2. Heart Proposal (Apache) -- a planet-scale RDF data store and a distributed processing engine based on Hadoop & Hbase. (via Hacker News)
3. Collections Trust: 10 Principles for Linked Data -- they read to me more as articles of faith than as proven statements of fact. 4. Linked Data can help us achieve more efficient practice. 5. Linked Data can help us deliver on our commitment to Public Access. 6. Linked Data is the next phase in our adaptation to the Web. 7. Linked Data should become an embedded function of the software we use (via PeoplePoints)
4. Parrots, The Universe, and Everything -- 1981 University of California talk by Douglas Adams. (via BoingBoing)

Thoughts from the front lines of payment's big shift

The CEO of Rentalic, winner of the the PayPal X Developer Challenge, looks at the future of payment

There's a lot brewing in the payment space and much of that activity traces back to developers. You can get a sense of the seismic shift by looking over the winners of the recently concluded PayPal X Developer Challenge.

The big winner in that competition was Rentalic, a service that uses PayPal to let regular folks rent out their gear. And by "gear" I mean virtually anything -- sporting goods, electronics, tools, toys, etc. This video and the company's FAQ spell out its process.

Rentalic CEO Punsri Abeywickrema has a unique vantage point in the payment world. He's in that interesting spot where code is turning theory into application. I asked Abeywickrema for his take on the current and future state of payment and the role startups will play in shaping that landscape.

Mac Slocum: What have been the most important recent innovations in payment?

Punsri Abeywickrema: An important change is that companies like PayPal and Amazon are opening up APIs to provide more flexibility for the developers to build their payment solutions. This will result in a big wave of innovation and a whole new line of payment apps in the months and years to come.

Also, as a result of more flexible APIs, companies will figure out new ways to monetize their features and technology. That will result in more innovation and revenue growth while providing convenience and better security to the users.

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Recent Posts

• Play on the iPad: the Magic Circle and a marketplace | by Justin Hall on March 31, 2010
• Four short links: 31 March 2010 | by Nat Torkington on March 31, 2010
• Where 2.0: The Big Conversations | by Brady Forrest on March 30, 2010
• Is the "e" in ebooks the new blink tag? | by Brett McLaughlin on March 30, 2010
• Four short links: 30 March 2010 | by Nat Torkington on March 30, 2010
• The State of the Internet Operating System | by Tim O'Reilly on March 29, 2010
• Where 2.0: Ignite & NAVTEQ's LBS Challenge Tuesday Night | by Brady Forrest on March 29, 2010
• The iPad needs its HyperCard | by Dale Dougherty on March 29, 2010
• Four short links: 29 March 2010 | by Nat Torkington on March 29, 2010
• News from Appland | by Marc Hedlund on March 28, 2010
• Some Highlights From This Year's Adas | by Nat Torkington on March 28, 2010
• Base Map 2.0: What Does the Head of the US Census Say to Open Street Map? | by Brady Forrest on March 26, 2010