I’m stumped as to why smart people like this, this and this are surprised that Apple delivered a high level tool to support Apple and have a EULA that says as much?

Apple is not Adobe, a company making generic authoring tools. Apple did not announce “iBooks/Android/EPUB3 Author“. If a content creator or publisher wants to create and ship a generic EPUB book — and have it delivered on multiple platforms — there are plenty of other tools to enable them to accomplish it.

With respect to the bullshit about Apple’s “walled garden” and how iBooks Author “locks in” people, I also push back on that too:

• Did these same people notice that iOS development tools (i.e., XCode) won’t compile Android apps? Gee…wouldn’t that be nice if their great mobile tools enabled a code-once, deliver-anywhere scenario for app developers?
• Did they notice a decade ago that iTunes wasn’t created to manage music for all MP3 players on the market?

Apple’s tools support their hardware…just like Amazon’s “near-forking” of Android does to optimize and position the Kindle Fire as a front-end to Amazon’s store (and I don’t hear any cries from these same people that they can’t buy from the iBooks store on their Kindles or Kindle Fire).

So to suggest Apple is somehow “locking in” publishers or subverting EPUB3 standards is ludicrous. One can still opt to use generic EPUB tools and publish everywhere, including the iBooks store, or use this optimized-for-iPad tool and publish to the overwhelmingly dominant tablet on the market.

Google and American Express have announced a new contest that has several things you can take advantage of: You can win $5k in advertising; get press by a feature on YouTube; learn how to tell your story in 20 seconds (a discipline we ALL need to learn!); and learn how to use the new YouTube video editing feature.

The contest details state, “Google and American Express want you to share your business story. So we’re offering you the opportunity to win one of 36 online ad campaigns worth $5,000 and be featured on the YouTube homepage on November 25th in honor of Small Business Saturday.” The full rules are here.

Of course, we believe that every small business, non-profit and startup needs a strong web presence, especially before you embark on a campaign which may likely get you A LOT of online attention. To show you how widespread the lack of an online presence is, Google’s Minnesota representative, Ben Theis, dropped a startling statistic on us during this Minnov8 podcast: 58% of Minnesota’s small businesses have ZERO WEB PRESENCE!

So make certain you have a good website and that you take advantage of highly visible contests and offers like this one. We are…

The 'new', and still inadequate, Comcast DVR channel guide

Like so many others, I’m fed up with Comcast/Xfinity and am constantly seeking developments that will allow me to cut-the-cord and do away with cable TV. 

Comcast in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul acquired TimeWarner’s Roadrunner service. Here in my hometown of Eden Prairie, Comcast claims a “legacy millstone” hangs around their necks and that’s why their HD DVR interface is so horrifically bad. I’ve talked to Comcast technicians, VPs in the business group, and cable analysts and all say that, “It will change at some point soon.” I’ve been hearing that now for three years.

I’ve been looking at my bill and decided to go out and buy my own DOCSIS 3 modem for the Comcast internet service. Instead of paying $7/month, I bought it for $109 and my connection is about 25% faster! Think Comcast would’ve notified me and encouraged me to upgrade months ago? Nope.

Besides the HD DVR interface being so horrible, the ‘Comcast On Demand” service is a joke (from an interface standpoint…the content play fine once you get to it). Turns out that HD TV content is buried within nested categories which means it’s tough to find and tougher to find again once you want to watch something. Since Comcast has invested heavily in three new data centers for this service, one would think they’d spend some time in the human interface that THEIR CUSTOMERS TOUCH, wouldn’t you?  [Read more...]

Like many, I’m constantly trying to optimize any time invested in social media lest it suck up more than it already does. One of the more useful apps for aggregating my social is one I have on my iPhone, iPad and now Mac (Mac version is in beta but you can download it here) is called Boxcar.

Once you download the app you can configure your accounts (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, email, and many others) and receive instant notifications in one place, the app itself. It’s incredibly efficient since it enables one to respond in a timely fashion without having to launch and respond within multiple apps or on multiple websites.

That’s the upside and I use it often for just those purposes. The downsides?

1) Notifications still appear within each app and you have to deal with them when you open ‘em up. Even though I view, for example, a DM in Twitter within Boxcar, the Twitter app on my iPhone and iPad (and now Mac) each show a “non-viewed notification”. So I have to tediously open the app, view the notification, and close the app to make that specific notification go away. What a pain.

I wish for an API from all of these social services that allow a notification service to toggle-off a notification once it’s been dealt with by a user. I suspect no services do that since they want you to login to them and use them directly.

2) Credentials, and their security, are another issue. Since the key to my digital life is my email repository within Gmail — everything from site passwords to application licenses to sweet somethings between my wife and I — I’m using Google’s 2-Step Verification to harden the security surrounding my Google related accounts (especially email).   Though it was a pain to setup (especially to authorize all the apps that require Google logins like RSS reader apps) the peace-of-mind I have knowing there’s one more layer of security to protect it is an imperative so I can sleep at night.

So do I want to login to any aggregator and authorize their app to with my Google credentials? Nope. I don’t care what they say about their use of OAUTH, that they “pass-through” credentials, or anything of the sort. It’s too valuable and, of course, if someone attempts to change a password on Facebook, Twitter or any other social site, I’ll get email notification unless that’s been hacked too!

If you want to enjoy a one-stop-shop for all your social media interactions, give Boxcar a try but (in my opinion) don’t aggregate your email in there too.