November 2011

5 reasons e-reader sales will nearly triple by 2016

Sales of dedicated e-readers aren’t growing as fast as those of tablets, but are still expected to nearly triple in the next five years. Juniper Research estimated that 67 million e-reader devices will be sold in 2016, as compared to 25 million this calendar year. That may pale in comparison to the 55.2 million tablet sales forecast for 2011 by Juniper — especially when e-books can be read on tablets — but the e-reader market is still showing solid growth.

Why? Here’s five reasons:

E-ink displays are still preferred by many and will keep improving.
Prices have fallen and may continue to drop.
E-readers are generally single-purpose devices allowing people to simply read and not worry about e-mails, social networks, app notifications or other activities that take away from the experience of curling up with a good book.
Owing to the e-Ink displays, standalone e-readers have run times measured in weeks and months, not hours or days like tablets.
Reading a book for any extended time on a 9- or 10-inch tablet gets tiring — especially if you hold the device while reading, just as you would a traditional book. E-readers are smaller, lighter and more portable than traditional tablets, and even than many books.

iPads in Oregon Election a Success, Official Says

Oregon’s primary special election last week marked the first time a state used iPads to assist in the voting process.

The iPads were made available in all or part of five Oregon counties: Washington, Columbia, Multnomah, Yamhill and Clatsop — all located in the state’s northwestern region — to help voters with disabilities fill out their ballots. The pilot was led by the Secretary of State’s Elections Division. Eighty-nine voters among the five counties used the iPads to mark their ballots, according to Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown. She said she considers the project thus far to be a success. “I thought [the pilot] went fabulously,” Brown said Monday, Nov. 14. “I was overwhelmed with the success; we received a much higher usage on this technology than all the years combined we’ve [been] doing accessible computer stations.” But in at least two counties where the iPad was available, citizens didn’t use them. No one requested it in Columbia County, according to County Elections Supervisor Pam Benham. Eric Sample, a spokesman for the Multnomah County Elections, said his county didn’t have a chance to use the iPads. The special election covered Oregon’s First Congressional district, but only a small part of Multnomah County is included in the first congressional district. Although the iPads were used to fill out the ballots, they were not used to actually vote. Once a voter completed a ballot, it was printed out by a portable printer, Brown said.

Employees' smartphones among biggest government cyber menaces

In 2012, agencies should worry about hackers attacking the growing number of federal employees toting their own iPhones and Droids to work, according to a forecast of next year's greatest cyber dangers compiled by M86 Security Labs.

The network security firm is expected to release its annual predictions of the top computer threats to business and government organizations. At federal agencies, the biggest targets are likely to be employee-owned devices, a department's own public website and cloud services. "The Android is very much a victim of its own success" because any developer can publish innovative -- or malicious -- software applications to Google's Android Market, Bradley Anstis, M86 vice president for technical strategy, said in an interview. Apple is more selective in vetting programs for its App Store. Most government agencies that M86 works with, including NASA, have a bring-your-own-device policy, he said.

Authors Guild: Kindle Owners’ Lending Library Is “Nonsense”

The Authors Guild is taking a stand against the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, Amazon’s new initiative allowing Kindle-owning Prime members to borrow free e-books. Amazon is “boldly breaching its contracts” with publishers, the Guild contends, in “an exercise of brute economic power.”

The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library contains over 5,000 titles, many of which are being included without publisher permission. In those cases, Amazon is simply buying a copy of the book at the wholesale price any time a Prime member borrows it (hence no “big six” publishers’ titles are in the program, since they set their own e-book prices). When the program first launched, many publishers did not even know that their books were included. The Association of Author Representatives and others have raised questions over how authors whose books are included will be paid. The Authors Guild contends that the publishers who willingly included their books in the lending library (and were paid a hefty sum by Amazon to do so) are in the wrong: “While these publishers generally have the right to license e-book uses for many of their authors’ titles (just as most trade publishers do), our reading of the standard terms of these contracts is that they do not have the right to do so without the prior approval of the books’ authors.”

My Own Private Internet

Trapit, a discovery engine for Web content from the group behind Siri, launches to the public.

The company describes itself as “Pandora for everything else,” and believes Google searches and news delivery through social networks fail to offer users content that is actually important to them. Trapit follows on Siri’s heels as the second company to launch out of SRI International’s $200 million CALO artificial intelligence project. It has been in private beta since June. Users begin with a search, which can be a word, phrase or URL of a piece of content they like. They can save it as a “trap” and improve its recommendations by giving feedback—clicking a “thumbs-up” or “thumbs-down” and selecting the reason they don’t like a piece of content—and the results become better and more personalized over time. In addition, Trapit chief product officer and co-founder Hank Nothhaft says, the content that Trapit turns up is more interesting and varied than content found on Google or through social networks. “Search is dominated by SEO, and social is the same set of 200 sources that dominate the Twittersphere,” he told me. “It’s very hard for a lot of the great content published on smaller blogs by professors, hobbyists and long-tailers to be found.” Trapit tracks around 100,000 sources, each ultimately vetted by a human analyst before being included. While initial discovery, content-gathering and filtering is automated, actual people check the most “highly probable” sources to make sure they are original and not aggregators. These employees are basically checking to make sure “the content is of minimal quality,” said Nothhaft in response to my concern that, say, a pro-Obama piece could be deleted by a Republican vettor. “We are just making sure this is not content farm crap you might find on Google.”

Samsung Wins The Right To March Trial In Bid To Ban iPhone 4S In Australia

One more development in the legal fight between Samsung and Apple: a court in Australia has granted a March date for a case being brought by Samsung against Apple for patent infringement, with Samsung’s aim being to get the iPhone 4S banned from sale, unless the two sides reach a licensing settlement.

Samsung has been banned in Australia from selling its 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab, an Android tablet, after Apple successfully got an injunction on the device in October on the grounds that it infringed its patents. Before that, the device had already been held back from sales voluntarily by Samsung until the case got resolved. That case is still making its way through the courts, but it looks like Samsung will have missed the crucial holiday sales season for the tablet. Samsung is hoping to gain some leverage in what looks like a grim situation for the company in Australia by counterattacking Apple with its own claims of patent infringements. The justice presiding over the various Samsung/Apple suits in the country, Annabelle Bennett, agreed to a March date for Samsung’s trial. That doesn’t sound like it’s coming very soon, but it is significantly earlier than August, which is when Apple hoped the case would be heard. That will also mean that the Australian case will come before the judges before a similar case gets heard in the United States, likely in May.

Sprint slashes mobile data prices

Sprint may be axing its unlimited 4G plans for most devices but at least it's making sure you pay less for what you use.

Sprint announced new rates for its 3G/4G data plans that were substantially lower than the rates it had previously offered. Users can now pay $20 a month for 1GB of 3G/4G data, $35 a month for 3GB, $50 a month for 6GB and $80 a month for 12GB. Sprint's previous 3G/4G plans offered $45 for 3GB, $60 for 6GB and $90 for 10GB. But while these new rates are indeed cheaper than the old rates they do come at the expense of unlimited 4G data usage for tablets, notebooks and laptops connected to the Web through mobile hotspot devices.

E-gov on the chopping block

White House officials are urging House and Senate lawmakers to maintain a separate funding account for high-profile Gov 2.0 and “eGov” initiatives such as Data.gov, Federal IT Dashboard and Challenge.gov rather than merging them with other funds as currently proposed.

Under the House and Senate budget bills for fiscal 2012, the flagship Electronic Government Fund would be combined with another fund. Both bills also would maintain recent dramatic cuts to the electronic government fund. In a statement on Nov. 10, Office of Management and Budget officials argued that combining the eGovernment and Federal Citizen Services funds into a single pool would introduce uncertainty about how the funds would be allocated, given the different purposes of the funds. Furthermore, White House officials urged Congress to provide “adequate funding” to maintain the initiatives, saying they enhance transparency and oversight and “yield a high return on investment through cost-saving efficiencies.”

Samsung becomes biggest smartphone vendor, as Android's market share grows

Samsung became the biggest smartphone vendor in the world during the third quarter, and Android's market share has surpassed 50 percent for the first time, market research company Gartner said as it reported on phone sales to end-users.

Worldwide smartphone sales totaled 115 million units in the third quarter of 2011, up 42 percent from the third quarter of 2010. However, smartphone sales slowed compared to the second quarter, a consequence of the economic situation and of consumers holding out for new models, including the iPhone 4S, according to Roberta Cozza, principal analyst at Gartner. Android and Samsung were the big winners among smartphone operating systems and vendors, respectively. Samsung became the worldwide No. 1 for the first time, selling 24 million smartphones, three times as many as it sold during the third quarter last year. Samsung's support for Android, and the availability of a wide variety of low-cost smartphones running the OS, helped Android grab a 52.5 percent share of the market: 60.5 million smartphones based on the various versions of the OS were sold, according to Cozza.

Why Americans use social media

Two-thirds of online adults (66%) use social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or LinkedIn.

These internet users say that connections with family members and friends (both new and old) are a primary consideration in their adoption of social media tools. Roughly two thirds of social media users say that staying in touch with current friends and family members is a major reason they use these sites, while half say that connecting with old friends they’ve lost touch with is a major reason behind their use of these technologies. Other factors play a much smaller role -- 14% of users say that connecting around a shared hobby or interest is a major reason they use social media, and 9% say that making new friends is equally important. Reading comments by public figures and finding potential romantic partners are cited as major factors by just 5% and 3% of social media users, respectively.

Benton

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