Wednesday, February 3, 2010

What I Learned 2/3/2010

1) Google and Apple are having a hissy-fit at one another. Google is implementing multi-touch into their Nexus One despite a supposed "gentleman's agreement" that they would not be implementing this technology. Apple meanwhile is locking out Flash, ChromeOS, and other "unsoftware" from the iPad, continuing their trend of controlling their content as much as possible. Also there is rumor of a Google Tablet device in the works. As I've mentioned I am a Google fanboy so I obviously have a clear preference, on the whole though, competition is good for the consumer.

2) It is apparently Social Media Week which makes me wish, not for the first time, that I was in New York right now. There was an interesting panel at JWT in NYC which contained a couple of names from my Twitter feed that I was looking forward to hearing from. The panel was on crowdsourcing, which can be briefly defined as letting consumers come up with advertising/marketing messages for ones brand (Think of it as a "Design our new logo" contest on a larger scale.) The panel was quite interesting to watch (the video can be found here for those who are interested. It can best be summed up with this quote from Michael Liebowitz "I like the wisdom of crowds, I don't like the output of crowds."

3) RPG Publishing company White Wolf, who make some of my favorite TT role playing games, seems to be transitioning to a pdf based business model. They have not released many new physical books the last few months but there have been a plethora of more narrowly targeted pdfs being put out, with the newest one today being a pamphlet given out for fictional soldiers in their Exalted setting. There's some debate as to whether White Wolf is pioneering the future of the RPG industry or merely floundering and unable to put out the products they were once known for. The optimist in me leans toward the latter. TT RPGs are a niche industry to begin with and putting out pdfs is a hell of a lot less overhead than a print run of physical books would be. It also lets them produce these narrow-focused products that would be too expensive and risky to do as physical books. The fact that this is another brick in the foundation of digital books being the future is purely coincidental I am sure.

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