Amazon Whispercast Controls and Broadcasts Stuff

Amazon has announced a free service that is about making it easy to distribute ebooks to groups. The immediate question many may ask is ‘so what, groups don’t buy ebooks’, but they do and today can’t achieve that mass distribution or broadcast.

 ‘Whispercast for Kindle,’ will allow purseholders and stakeholder to buy once and send with one click. Teachers can send to students not just ebooks but also set up and manage access policies on school equipment effectively blocking undesirable access. An enterprise could also benefit for the same controls, but it is schools and that lucrative education sector that Amazon appear to be focused on today. It effectively brings Whispernet out of the closet and to the front enabling it to be used to manage and control estates not just of Kindle ereaders but also Kindle Fire Tablet.

Amazon report that Clearwater High School used 2,000 Kindles for over two years and now is using them in 122 schools within their district. Also a third world education provider, Worldreader, have been using the technology to deliver over 200,000 e-books to children in sub-Saharan Africa. Amazon claim that the technology is now being tested widely in hundreds of schools.

So we find ourselves stepping back to understand how Whispercast could become a real asset top Amazon and win over not just schools, institutions but commercial organisations who are all looking for better ways to distribute ‘stuff’. We are not just talking about books but in principle anything that is supported over the network. Today we have services such as Dropbox who have made a healthy business out of doing the same in a cloud. We all have document, PDFs and stuff cluttering up emails which now are mobile.

Its interesting to reflect that the Blackberry redefined email by making it mobile, perhaps Amazon are redefining the document world and broadcasting of digital stuff and don’t forget they also have the cloud to allow them to do even more. If they do extend the service to cover Kindle apps running on other devices it certainly could become a real differentiator and leave some behind.

Apple Education Plus iPad?

Before his death Steve Jobs had already targeted textbooks as the next opportunity His idea was to hire the best textbook writers to new create digital versions that were complimentary and exploited the iPad. Importantly he wanted to make them free so they would obviate the US state adoption and certification process, which he thought was “corrupt.” In chapter 38 of his biography he says “ if we can make the textbooks free, and they come with the iPad, then they don’t have to be certified. The crappy economy at the state level will last for a decade, and we can give them an opportunity to circumvent that whole process and save money.”

Apple have now announced a special event at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City on Jan. 19. It is widely reported that Apple will announce partnerships with textbook publishers aimed at positioning Apple at the heart of the multi billion dollar market. Apple will launch their new digital textbook business. We don’t know the plan, but expect that in a market dominated by a few large publishers such as Pearson Education, Cengage Learning, McGraw-Hill Education, John Wiley & Sons and Macmillan that some will be looking for that Apple magic to rub off on just on their sales but their share values.

A report, "Simba Information's 2011 National Textbook Adoption Scorecard and 2012 Outlook," claims that almost all adoption states now are either promoting or permitting the inclusion of digital textbooks and other digital resources and importantly this includes hardware. It states that "Texas jettisoned the term textbook and replaced it with instructional materials, expanding the adoption process…Recent changes have also allowed districts to acquire hardware using the adoption funds." With respect to Florida it reports that the state’s Board of Education has overhauled its instructional materials adoption process and placed a greater emphasis on the approval and spending for digital materials, By the 2015-2016 school year…districts are required to spend at least 50% of their funding on digital materials."

If Apple were to secure a significant foothold in the market and deliver a seed change in how textbooks get adopted and bought they could well see significant revenues both in devices and in collecting 30% commission on each textbook sale.

So apart from the industry stalwarts such as Follett who are some of the leading digital textbook players today and can they adapt top any disruptive change?

CourseSmart.
The company was founded by a consortium of higher education textbook publishers to both offer digital inspection copies and full titles. It currently has iOS app for reading textbooks and with the backing of the major publishers is a force in the market. It is questionable whether this is used as the content repository and vehicle and so bolster its position further, or is sacrificed by its publishers and will now find itself competing with Apple.

Kno.
Kno has moved from being a device company to a platform and software one and is reported to have some 150,000 textbooks from 45 publishers. Kno textbooks are already viewable on Apple devices and the company was the top-downloaded educational app in Apple’s App Store at the end of last year .

Inkling.
Inkling has an iPad textbook app), which combines reading school texts with social and interactive ways to study with others with links to external and authoritative sources. McGraw-Hill and Pearson have both invested in Inkling.

Vitalsource.
Is part of Ingram Content Group also has its own app, with 60,000 digital textbook titles available for download to any iOS device. Vitalsource now has two million students using its platform worldwide and providing feedback to tell a publisher, “Nobody is reading Chapter 8,” as well as enabling enhanced multimedia applications.

Then there is the wonderfully branded site http://www.appletextbooks.com/ . A few challenges here we think.

The iBookstore hasn’t lived up to the expectations that many had and the Apple agency model is subject to a number of fair trading reviews. Will textbooks fair differently and make the difference and how will impact others already trading digital content?
We then have the Appleworld rule against running apps on iOS devices that direct the user away from Apple's ecosystem to buy competing products without using Apple e-commerce engines to handle the transaction. Apple has imposed a 30% tool both and made it harder to buy from the likes of Amazon, Barnes and Noble and others. However as demonstrated by Amazon’s latest ipad optimized website its relatively easy to provide a clean and touch-friendly for iPad-based browsing experience for readers without a 30% toll booth. With increasingly powerful Web-based solutions using technologies like HTML5, Apple won't be able to keep its ecosystem as closed as it might like.

Amazon’s touch-optimized Kindle Store for iPad allows readers to purchase or read Kindle e-book selections via Safari. The HTML5-based reading app is available via amazon.com/cloudreader and provides access to e-books through the browser, offline and online, with no downloading or installation required. Cloud Reader automatically syncs with other Kindle apps.

The AAP (American Association of Publishers) estimates that the college textbooks industry was worth $4.58 billion last year. Student Monitor, a private New Jersey student market research company claims that autumn etextbook acquisitions where up over 100% on spring and accounted for some 5% of sales. Simba Information, estimates that etextbooks will rise by 44.3% and generate $267.3 million US sales this year and they also estimate that, sales generated from state textbook adoption programs in Texas totaled $660 million in 2011.

However, we have to be also mindful of Job’s intent was not just to shake up the ‘corrupt’ textbook supply chain but to make them affordable if not free! Whatever the outcome Apple appears determined to shake the tree and collect the fruit.

Pearson Adds Schoolnet Its Platform Offer

Pearson, has acquired US digital education service Schoolnet for $230 million.

Schoolnet was founded in 1998 and helps teachers in student assessment and teaching in schools serving K12 students. It is a data-driven education database that matches individual student needs to the appropriate content and uses social networking, user-generated ratings/rankings, tagging, user-generated content to achieve this. The deal is subject to regulatory approval and will dovetail with Pearson’s existing digital learning products, such as PowerSchool and AIMSweb and offer schools a significant digital platform to support schools, teachers, parents and students.

Whereever you look you find the publishing education sector is dominated by a handful of companies and it is often no longer good enough to provide just the textbook. Like others, Pearson has long recognised this and are now building a significant business platform to support their educational offer to schools, which is not only relevant in the US, but globally and has moved them from a schools content business, to a full digital education service provider. It effectively is creating a compelling platform offer to meet all the educational needs through a one stop shop and the approach is very relevant given that the content itself is often commoditised by curriculum demands by the various educational authorities.

OLPC: Needed for the UK?

The recent Minimum Income Standard report in the UK proposed that computers with internet were ‘ essential for households with working-age adults’ but not for pensioners. Now we read in a report from the e-Learning Foundation, which based on data from the latest Government Family Spending Survey, claims that more than a million school children in the UK do not have any access to a computer at home and approximately a further 2 million do not have internet access. . It also concludes that children in the lowest income households were two and a half times more likely to be without an internet connection than the wealthiest.

Valerie Thompson, CEO of the e-Learning Foundation said, ‘Without the use of a computer and the ability to go online at home the attainment gap that characterises children from low-income families is simply going to get worse.’

We now face a situation were computer and internet access is seen not just a must for the classroom but the home as well. We also find an increasing drive both by government and companies in services, such as banking, phones and utilities to move adults online. But when is a computer an access essential and when does it determine one’s wealth?

We believe in the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project and its educational aspirations in the developing world but wonder if it now needs to be realigned to all. Should we provide computers to schools or computers to students. When we see OLPC programme it begs the question why education authoristies still expect parents to pay for what they now deem as essential kit and then in effect spend twice by supplying the schools as well. Why not adopt a cheap cheerful and practical OLPC and stop this emotional blackmail to parent’s who may not be in a position to respond.

When Is Tablet and eBook?

We all know that there are a number of players focusing on the textbook market and Apple is about to join them. So it was refreshing to see a new Californian start-up called Kno that is aiming to make a splash with a new tablet aimed at the same textbook, academic reference and educational space. The tablet is a clamshell style tablet and folds together just like a book and the device has also been specifically developed for the educational market. The question is whether it can it compete with Apple, Amazon and the rest or will fade like others before them into oblivion?

The Kno has dual touch screen 14-inch LCD displays which are obviously larger than the competitors screens and which are joined convienantly at the hip. It will support Flash, HD video, audio recording and playback along with HTML5, and users can multitask between email, text the Internet and offers a stylus for handwriting recognition, and up to 8 hours of battery life. The tablet will be powered by an Nvidia Tegra processor and has either 16 GB or 32 GB of storage The device can also fold in on itself to turn into a one screen tablet.

Kno was founded by Chegg founding CEO Osman Rashid and Dr. Habib, a Semiconductor physics recognized authority in electrical engineering and the design of integrated circuits. They already claim to have entered into early partnerships with McGraw-Hill, Pearson, Wiley, and Cengage Learning
The tablet which is scheduled for release at the end of this year is no lightweight weighing in at 5.5 lbs and is expected to be ‘well under $1,000’.


The trick is to get the content and then get the devices seen as a must have. One maybe relatively easy, but the other a lot harder.

The $100 Tablet Cometh

Would you buy a tablet if it cost $100 US? What if it was powered by a 1GHz Maxwell Armada 610 application processor that could encode and decode video at resolutions of up to 1080p and speeds of 30 frames per second using the H.264 codec? It supported live video conferencing, had a built-in camera and supported multiple simultaneous viewing screens? Throw in WiFi access supporting up to 8 concurrent users connected via a mobile broadband. Now lets start to wind it up further and have it supporting Flash 10, and Operating platforms such as Android, Ubuntu and Windows Mobile. Finally lets give it Bluetooth FM radio and GPS. Yes the price was $100.

It may not look like the iPad but for under 20% of the cost it delivers more than the iPad is likely to deliver for some time and like most of the real world it can multi task,doesn’t suffer from Flash denial and their are no gatekeepers saying what applications can and can't be used or even written in.

We have long supported the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. What we previously covered as a rumour was announced last week. OLPC has partnered with semiconductor manufacturer Marvell to offer children everywhere a real bargin that will surely make the difference and unlock classrooms and education around the world. 'Classrooms without walls' isn’t exclusive to the third world but applies to all kids everywhere.

OLPC’s next-generation tablets will be based on Marvell's Moby reference design and are focused on developing "a range of new educational tablets" for developing and US markets. The OLPC XO tablet will have a multi-lingual soft keyboard with touch feedback and access to more than 2 million free ebooks.

Many cynics will point to mistakes made by OLPC in the past. It's as if OLPC is fair game to be knocked whilst others just bask in the media glow. Whatever the past, if OLPC and Marvel can deliver the specification at $100 or lower, they will potentially create the biggest step change possible and meet the aspirations of offering children affordable technology and education. The prize is equally as big as the dream but if they succeed, their impact may be even greater than Apple’s and we hope the big educational publishers get behind this great opportunity.

We wish OLPC success in their mission and their XO tablet. There are many children who sorely need it.