B minor

I was quoted in a New York Times article about giving up cable TV this morning:

Bradley Lautenbach, 28, who recently moved to Los Angeles to work at Disney, found enough alternatives to allow him to turn back the technological clock on his TV.

“I’ve always had cable. It’s the thing you do when you move to a new place: call the company and set it up,” he said. Not this time. Instead, he got an antenna and now watches over-the-air news and sports, complemented by episodes of shows like “Entourage” that he buys from iTunes. “I don’t miss cable at all,” he said.

- Rabbit Ears Perk Up for Free HDTV [NY Times]

It’s been fun getting emails from friends all day. One of these days I will write a full post about my decision to quit cable and how I consume media now.

Every few weeks another person I know gets an iPad and asks me about apps for the device. I’ve already written my thoughts about the iPad as a product, but now, in anticipation of the iPad being a hot item this holiday season, I’m throwing together a list of 10 apps that I love and get a ton of mileage out of:

Productivity

Evernote – Evernote is a world-class note taking application. It is cross-platform (desktop, web, mobile, tablet), syncs over the air, supports tagging and a whole host of input formats – voice, text, photo, etc. It is my go-to place to record important information and non-task-oriented lists. There’s a reason its logo is an elephant – it is very hard to forget anything when you store it in Evernote. (free)

OmniFocus – I used to use Cultured Code’s Things for my task management/to-do lists. Unfortunately, they dragged their feet for too long on cloud sync, so I gave up and switched to OmniFocus over the summer. Couldn’t be happier. They make a great suite of products (tablet, phone, desktop) for managing your chores – and they are very heavily influenced by the GTD framework. They come in on the pricier side, but the peace of mind the product buys by freeing up mindshare for things other than remembering chores is well worth it. ($39.99)

iA Writer – This is a beautiful, distraction-eliminating, prose-writing application. If you write seriously, you must have this. ($4.99)

Social

Twitter – the web’s favorite micro-blogging platform, available in a beautiful iPad-native interface. (free)

Flipboard – Flipboard pulls the highlights from your social networks (Facebook, Twitter) and presents pictures, articles, and status messages in a compelling, digi-zine format. It’s a great way to dive deeper into the content your friends are sharing – perfect for end-of-day or Sunday morning reading and browsing. (free)

Entertainment

Netflix – The awesome of Netflix, tabletized. You can stream the same stuff you’d stream to your computer or set-top box to your iPad. The video quality is surprisingly good. Fair warning, though – Netflix can quickly turn into a black hole, sucking all your available time into it. At $7.99/month for unlimited streaming, it’s hard to remember why I ever paid for cable subscription. (free, subscription required.)

Travel

FlightTrack – If you travel even *somewhat* frequently, FlightTrack is a must-have. It has a dead-simple interface for tracking your upcoming flights, including separating the airline’s arrival/departure times from the FAA’s wheels-down/wheels-up times. You’ll have a much better sense of when you’re actually going to leave or arrive with this app. The Pro version integrates with TripIt to pull in your itineraries automagically – which is pretty awesome when you have multi-leg or recurring itineraries. (Unclear how long this lasts, though, as FlightTrack’s developer, Mobiata, was just acquired by Expedia.) ($4.99 standard) ($9.99 pro)

Communication

BeejiveIM - If you use multiple instant messaging services, this is a must-have. Even if you don’t, but are looking for a dead-simple IM client with push alerts for the iPad, this is a great find. I realized recently that IM was one of the reasons I wasn’t using my iPad as frequently, so I was pleasantly surprised to find the iPad version of this app I’ve used on my iPhone for so long. ($9.99)

Fun

StarWalk – One of those great “impress your friends” apps. A must-have if you are an outdoors person or have ever been fascinated by what lies out there in space. A should-have if you ever find yourself outside with friends at night. This app will use your location and give you a 3D rendering of the night sky, perfectly mapped to the current time. Makes identifying stars, constellations, and other nighttime phenomena a breeze. Packed with fun information about everything you might encounter in the night sky. ($4.99)

Osmos HD – The quintessential iPad game. It’s beautifully designed and skirts the line of maddeningly challenging. (You may find yourself googling how to solve certain levels.) But it’s fun and really brings the power of the iPad’s interface to bear. ($4.99)

I know I said 10, but this one’s too good not to include, so consider it a bonus:

Uzu – Trust me on this. Buy it. Your imagination will thank me, your productivity will hate me. [And remember when you use it, you have 10 fingers.] ($1.99)

If you have comments about these apps or want to add your own recos, please do so below!

I lived in New York City for 8 years. My need for a GPS device other than my phone was virtually zero. Then, I moved to Boston for grad school. After some research, I popped over to Best Buy to pick up a Garmin GPS for my car. I don’t remember which unit it was now. Moral of the story is: the unit was great. It did everything it promised. I only encountered one minor problem during the device’s two year tenure. At some point in the first, harsh Boston winter, the screen went on strike. It still functioned, just not well – there were lines, weird coloration. After having the unit on for 20-30 minutes, the problem would usually drift to an unnoticeable level.

This summer, I relocated to Los Angeles. I decided that a “dumb” GPS wasn’t going to cut it in the traffic in LA and decided to upgrade. After doing more research, I again settled on Garmin, this time on the just-released 3760T. The “T” means Traffic. With the new device, I received an FM receiver which would pick up traffic signals over the air and display them on my device (and re-route me in the event of really bad traffic).

On my first drive with the new Garmin, I saw a yellow stripe along the highway shortly after I got on it. Almost magically, just as I hit the yellow strip on the screen, the traffic slowed. Sweet (when have I ever thought slow traffic was cool?!).

This carried on, and I was in love.

Then, one morning, no traffic. No colors, no warnings. According to the device, everything was smooth sailing (when it was not). Something was broken. Being the man that I am, I tried everything I could to fix it on my own. I reset it using the normal GUI. I then researched how to do a hard reset using a special/hidden control panel. No dice.

I finally conceded defeat, and began to think about contacting Garmin. The hours for their call center weren’t terribly convenient for someone who works all day and can’t really jump on an hour-long tech support call. (Also they operate on Central Time, which isn’t very helpful for users in Pacific Time). Mentally, I inflated this call to be such a hassle that I put it off for 3 months. For that time, I drove around with my Garmin telling me LA didn’t experience traffic. Ever.

One day I hit traffic that was so bad, I got frustrated enough to call Garmin from work. Much to my surprise, getting to a human being was a remarkably fast process (I wish they’d advertised that the support experience wouldn’t be incredibly painful – as it so often is elsewhere). I think I spoke with Wally, and he walked me through an FM receiver reset that I hadn’t been able to discover in my own research. The device came back to life, this time with traffic. Love all over again.

A few days later, I was stuck in traffic trying to do a re-route when an AD (!!) popped up on the screen as I was trying to adjust my route. Yes, an ad. It was for Red Lobster – a place I’ve never visited. This, I thought, was odd:

1. Why am I getting advertising on a device I spent several hundred dollars on? Isn’t Garmin’s business model to sell devices, why are they now also selling ads?
2. Why am I getting overlay advertising while I’m trying to interact with the device? This is a tragic user experience.
3. Ads appear to be triggered by non-motion. Meaning, when you’re stopped or moving very slowly, an ad pops up. Which is A) likely to be a time you need to interact with the device and B) an indication you’re likely stuck in traffic, possibly irritated.
4. From a brand advertiser standpoint, I wondered why you would want to be advertising in this channel in the first place. If the user is going to get the ad when stopped/slowed, there’s a high probability they are stuck in traffic and likely to be irritated or angry. Do you really want your brand becoming associated with that emotion?
5. Since they’ve started, the ads have been only for Red Lobster and Best Western – neither of which are relevant to me. If I have to suffer through advertising could I at least get some ads that are relevant to me? Which brings me back to…
6. I paid a lot for this device. Why do I have to be subjected to advertising? I would understand if there was a cheaper version with ads, but I paid full price for this. I don’t want ads in this experience. I just want directions.

I will likely look for an ad-free device next time I make an investment in GPS for the car.

I’ve now spent 24 hours with the iPad. Everyone keeps asking what I think of it, so I’m formalizing my thoughts and posting them here:

The device:

It’s pretty. This is no shock, coming from Apple, though I do find myself impressed with the quality of the display every time I fire it up.

The battery is good. Pogue said 12 hours of straight video play. Haven’t tried that myself but at the rate things are going, I’d believe it.

Downside: it does not charge when plugged into my mac (older machine) and the cord isn’t really long enough to plug into wall and continue playing with it, so you do have to take a break when you want to charge it. Fortunately the battery seems good enough that that shouldn’t be a problem.

The thing is heavier than a kindle and holding it for a while, while not painful, can get awkward. I got a case. I’d recommend it.

The content:

The Apple apps (mail, calendar, etc) are top notch. They feel like they are the full incarnation of what the iPhone version wanted to be. Disappointingly, Apple does not provide a native chat application (still) which feels like a missed opportunity for the device – perhaps that will come in the next OS.

The third party apps I’ve tried so far are also quite impressive. There does seem to be a thinness around the offerings at the moment though, particularly among the free ones. Also, there is no Facebook app, which seems weird to me. I’ve been much less active on Facebook because of that.

File handling is an annoyance. I can’t download a PDF from the web to view later (I can bookmark it and view it in safari – but there is no way to get the file in an offline state – and no way to mark up the PDF unless it’s imported into Pages – which I can only do if I email myself). Access to Mobile Me iDisk (available on the iPhone) is also noticeably absent.

One would presume the apps will catch up as they begin approving in the iTunes Store again this week.

The experience:

The thing moves fast. I imagine that the next iPhone will also process this quickly and finally we will have a powerful smartphone instead of just a smartphone. The apps all load quickly, video runs beautifully, the speaker is good enough quality to watch tv shows with.

Most importantly though, is the lack of multitasking. This will upset power users, but I found myself consistently more relaxed as I was doing only one thing at a time instead of the usual 4 or 5. I wonder if this will help combat ADD overall – I doubt it.

(I should also add, that while typing is obviously not as good as with a keyboard, it is lightyears better than with the iPhone. I can type at near keyboard pace on the iPad screen.)

So what?

Ya, I agree with the sentiment that this device is more about consuming than creating. But I’m okay with that. It’s been a pleasure to consume with it so far and I do now understand the middle zone between the phone and the laptop that this device will serve – I was skeptical about it before.

The verdict: if you like toys and consume a lot of media, it’s worth the add. But yes, there will likely be a slightly cheaper, better one in 12 months. (That said, this does not seem to suffer from the bugginess or rough first outing effects that iPhone 1 did – so don’t make that the excuse.) I like mine, and it’s been an excellent couch companion for the past day.

This post was written from the iPad.

Feel free to ask specific questions in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer.

In corporate strategy, theorists like to talk about the “wedge,” or the gap between cost of goods and a customer’s willingness to pay. This means that the company with the most sustainable strategy has the lowest cost of goods and the customers with the highest willingness to pay. (That’s a simplification, but bear with me).

The same could be said of content, if it weren’t for a complicating factor called quality. Whereas other industries have found ways to reduce the cost of goods without reducing the quality, content quality is still tied very closely to cost. (If you give a film student a prosumer camera and a modest budget, the discerning audience will still be able to target the work as sub-par when screened alongside a professionally produced film involving 35mm film cameras, etc.)

Recently, though, things have started to change. Technological advances have enabled the creation of high-quality content that rivals that of Hollywood. The question then remains, how long before a new system, a new content producing apparatus, springs forward to break the old-standing business model?

You can see some of this type of work happening around the web already. My friend Nathan Heleine of Crush + Lovely has been involved with this project called Fifty People, One Question. The videos are pretty astounding both from an editorial perspective and from a physical quality perspective. The photography is done by Benjamin Reece of The Deltree and it is just astounding (more of his stuff on his site). Worth checking out any of the links if you have time.

Projects like this are the future of moving image content.

This article on Bloomberg this week caught my attention for its claim: “Morgan Stanley Intern Says Teens Don’t Twitter, Prefer Events”

For those that might not know, large financial institutions publish large amounts of research as part of their product offerings (they both sell this research and use it internally to inform invesment decisions). This report, published on a topic I care about, purports (according to the article):

Teenagers spend money on game consoles, movies and music concerts while ignoring newspapers, a Morgan Stanley report said, citing Matthew Robson. Robson should know: He is a 15-year-old intern at the securities firm.

The schoolboy was asked by the bank’s European media analysts to report on what he and his peers look for in the information-entertainment industries. What they got was one of the “clearest and most thought-provoking insights we have seen,” the analysts said.

“Teenagers are consuming more media, but in entirely different ways and are almost certainly not prepared to pay for it,” Morgan Stanley analysts Edward Hill-Wood, Patrick Wellington and Julien Rossi said in a note, citing Robson.

Call me crazy, but I had two reactions to this:

1. duh. (on the last part. not sure I buy that “teens don’t twitter”)
2. are banks in the habit of publishing research that is anecdotally single sourced?