I’ve written before about the struggle between Sony and Amazon over formats for eBooks and the eBook reader market.  Increasingly, this is becoming a three-handed game as the battle moves over onto other platforms and Sony is sneaking up in stealthy, if not entirely mysterious, ways.

When you talk about the future of computing, there are generally three schools: those who focus on the TV merging with the computer, those who focus on laptops becoming slightly smaller and more powerful and those who focus strictly on handhelds and mobile devices taking over.  While we haven’t seen the television-meets-computing device yet (let’s face it, WebTV was lame), those laptop and mobile devices are around, and all three schools of thought are focused on the convergence of media consumption and computing. (more…)

You may have heard of a Morgan Stanley research piece called “Media & Internet How Teenagers Consume Media.”  If you haven’t, you can pop over to the Financial Times and have a look at the actual research.  This has caused a bit of a stir, partially because it’s based solely on interviewing a 15-year old intern.  Some people agree with it, some people disagree with it, some people merely grouse that nothing coming from a single 15-year old ought to be taken that seriously, but it has gotten some digital ink.

For the last four years, I’ve been teaching a college course on e-Business and while the students coming through my class tend to be 20-22, not 15, I’ve talked to considerably more than one person about many of the topics in this paper.  While observations from classroom discussions aren’t any more scientific than interviewing a lone 15 year-old, I think there’s a case to be made that kids may be kids, where digital media is concerned. (more…)

I may have been a little detached compared to the average attendee at last weekend’s Chicago Media Future Conference.  Then again, the last time I wrote something for print that wasn’t a book, was early 2005.  People were genuinely getting worked up, relative to what you normally see at a tech-related conference.  In many ways, it reminded me more of the interaction that goes on between the panel and audience at a comic book convention (I’ve been on a few), in terms of emotion overcoming order and, to a degree, common sense.

People were so wound up, as everyone started to sit down, somebody passed out fliers about what the topics were and what he thought the panelists ought to say.  He wasn’t part of the event.  Maybe he was just mad he wasn’t asked to be on the panel.  I really don’t know, and I can’t decide whether I think it was funny or psychotic.  It was a good indicator of how riled up people were going to get, though. (more…)

The Geek Atlas, subtitled “128 Places Where Science & Technology Come Alive,” is an odd hybrid of a book.  One part of it is a travel guide for people of a scientific bent, once part is a history lesson regarding the places it lists, and a third part is a short science lesson about whatever was discovered or practiced at the place in question. (more…)

As you may have heard, the FTC has been floating some possible updates to their “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising” and the Internet has been buzzing about it for quite awhile. There’s been a lot of undue whining about bloggers being expected to be honest, but the potentially troubling parts of these guidelines speak to what appears to be an FTC belief in some sort of communications caste system, wherein disclosure requirements differ, depending on who you are. Alas, they don’t really define these differences very well. While a great deal of the coverage getting hype seems to involve “mommy bloggers” hyping their sites and being outraged, let’s take a look at the actual language being used in the “material connections” section of these guidelines without getting into individual personalities. (more…)

The ITA’s CityLIGHTS awards are Thursday night, so in the spirit of entertainment awards, let’s try and handicap the contest.  (Note: this year, ITA members are allowed to vote on all the awards except the CityLIGHTS award.  It remains to be seen if this creates a different pattern of winners from years past.)

CityLIGHTS Award: Given to an individual that has made a significant impact on the Illinois technology community.

• Jerry R. Mitchell, Midwest Entrepreneurs’ Forum
• Linda Darragh, Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship
• Anna Belyaev, Type A Learning Agency
• Shelly Stern, Microsoft Corporation (more…)