Weekly Research Index | January 22, 2010

Content Subscription | Containerless Education | Learning Distribution | DIY

Welcome to our Weekly Research Index where we list links and summaries of the salient articles we have bookmarked this week. This list is culled an edited from our ongoing Delicious feed, which is also available via this blog. This Index is divided into broad categories based on our Education and Technology Trends for 2010.

Content Subscription

Technology Review: Blogs: TR Editors’ blog: YouTube to Offer Video Rentals – This is an interesting proposition and one YouTube is likely to make successful. From the article: “Starting tomorrow, YouTube will offer video rentals, according to a post on the site’s official blog. The first available content will be five films from the 2009 and 2010 Sundance Film Festivals, and they will be online until January 31. Instead of taking on Hulu, iTunes, and Netflix directly with offers of high-profile Hollywood films, YouTube seems to be positioning itself for a different audience of moviegoers and filmmakers.”

With Tablet, Apple Sees New Money in Old Media | WSJ.com — Jobs believes he can revitalize worn out analog content like newspapers with a superior user experience on the tablet. It is certainly an interesting proposition, but it will fail unless those content publishers begin to think in a more digital manner. From the article: “With the new tablet device that is debuting next week, Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs is betting he can reshape businesses like textbooks, newspapers and television much the way his iPod revamped the music industry—and expand Apple’s influence and revenue as a content middleman.”

Hulu to Charge Monthly Fee for Access to Unlimited TV Episodes [RUMOR] — I think we’ve all been waiting for this to happen. From the article: “Hulu has always been free, but there’s long been speculation that would change. Now the L.A. Times is reporting that in six months Hulu may introduce a $4.99 per month subscription option that would give viewers access to TV show episodes beyond the five most recent already offered.”

Amazon Allows Some Publishers and Authors to Opt Out of E-Book DRM — This is a move that makes sense for small publishers and shows that Amazon is loosening up in turns of its vision. From the article: “Amazon quietly made a major change to its Digital Text Platform last week that went largely unnoticed: small publishers and individual authors who use the Digital Text Platform can now opt out of the Kindle’s digital rights management (DRM) program. While this change only affects a relatively small number of publishers and authors for now, this move could hint at a larger change in Amazon’s DRM policy. Right now, Amazon’s DRM policy means that its customers can’t transfer their books to a non-Kindle e-reader.”

Go To Hellman: Offline Book “Lending” Costs U.S. Publishers Nearly $1 Trillion — More on book piracy. From the article: “Apparently, over 2 billion books were “loaned” last year by a cabal of organizations found in nearly every American city and town. Using the same advanced projective mathematics used in the study cited by Publishers Weekly, Go To Hellman has computed that publishers could be losing sales opportunities totaling over $100 Billion per year, losses which extend back to at least the year 2000. These lost sales dwarf the online piracy reported yesterday, and indeed, even the global book publishing business itself.”

BookRenter Teams Up With Alibris to Offer Millions of Textbook Rentals — EMERYVILLE, Calif., Jan. 21 /PRNewswire/ — This is identical to the agreement that Alibris touted with Chegg earlier in the week.

Perhaps scientific publishing can change « A Man With A Ph.D. — A great post on innovation in scientific journals, how content is being displayed and shared, and how readers are evolving.

Amazon Raises E-Book Author and Publisher Royalties | Peter Kafka | MediaMemo | AllThingsD — “Amazon has two goals here. The company wants to push e-book prices down, which should help it sell more e-books and more Kindles. And it wants to keep business away from a growing list of rivals, which include Sony (SNE), Barnes & Noble (BKS), and, very soon, Apple (AAPL), which will be supporting e-books on its new tablet device.”

New York Times to Charge Frequent Readers of Web Site | NYTimes.com — I think metered use for the Times makes lots of sense. This is a smart move and will work if they make their content compelling and differentiated enough to justify the extra charges. “Starting in early 2011, visitors to NYTimes.com will get a certain number of articles free every month before being asked to pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the newspaper’s print edition will receive full access to the site without extra charge.”

Nine Questions: New York Times Goes Metered | paidContent — These are good questions regarding the Times’ decision to begin charging for content. The article uses these questions to explore both upside and downside related to paid content for newspapers.

Guess What? E-reader Owners Buy More Books | GigaOM — This is good news for the media publishing industry. Now, if they can just get politicians to promise an e-reader in every pot. “E-reader owners also said they were reading more newspapers than before (59 percent) and more magazines (44 percent). According to L.E.K., 36 percent of the books read by people with e-readers are ‘incremental consumption,’ representing new books rather than books the owner would otherwise have read in print.”

Amazon Cracks Open the Kindle – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com – Another response from Amazon with regards to the upcoming Apple release of the iTablet. “Amazon says it has already released the Kindle Development Kit to a select number of partners, including the video game giant Electronic Arts, and will make it more widely available when a limited beta period starts next month. It anticipates formally adding what it calls ‘active content’ to the Kindle store sometime later this year.”

With Rival E-Book Readers, It’s Amazon vs. Apple – NYTimes.com — Competition will only drive more e-books and e-content sales, which is great for the market. “Will Kindle pricing trump Apple sex appeal? Isn’t that the question, really?” said Richard Charkin, executive director of Bloomsbury Publishing in London, who has been watching developments in e-book sales with keen interest. “I haven’t the faintest idea. All I would say is, great. The more people that are out there marketing books in digital or any other format, the better.”

10 more universities join the African Virtual University « Tony Bates — Tony Bates points us to this news about the African Virtual University. “The African Virtual University (AVU) in partnership with the African Development Bank (AfDB) is launching Open Distance and eLearning Centres (ODeL) in ten African countries over the next five months. The first launch took place at the University of Zambia in October with subsequent launches in Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Senegal, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe, the effort continuing until early 2010.”

Amazon Announces New 70% Royalty Option for its Kindle Digital Text Platform — Amazon has launched itself directly and aggressively into the digital publishing space with this move. I wondered what their response to the Apple tablet would be, and now I know. This is big.

How The New York Times Should Charge For Content | paidContent — The New York Times has 15 million active monthly visitors. James McQuivey from Forrester provides his plan for how the paper can convert these users into improved fiscal health via premium content subscriptions.

Report: 44% Of Google News Visitors Scan Headlines, Don’t Click Through — Some interesting information from the most recent Outsell News Users’ report. “Interestingly enough, the research also talks of what is referred to as the ‘dramatic effect’ aggregators like Google and Yahoo have had on print and online readership. Says analyst Ken Doctor: ‘Though Google is driving some traffic to newspapers, it’s also taking a significant share away. A full 44 percent of visitors to Google News scan headlines without accessing newspapers’ individual sites.’ Outsell says that for ‘news right now,’ which I’m presuming are the most current news items, 57 percent of users now go to digital sources, up from 33 percent a few years ago.”

Wired Campus – The Chronicle of Higher Education — Overall trend growth in e-textbooks is exceeding 100% annually and will do so for at least the next five years. From the article: “The nation’s leading e-textbook seller reported a 400 percent increase in sales for 2009 from the year before, the company’s executive vice president said Tuesday. CourseSmart does not disclose exact values, but Frank Lyman said students who have used the company’s e-textbooks number in the hundreds of thousands. ‘It has enormous value to students not to lug a printed textbook around,’ Mr. Lyman said. ‘They can log in anywhere and access their textbooks, and for a lot of students, that’s a better solution.’”

Apple Tablet: Content Will Be Key – PC World — Couldn’t agree more.

Alibris and Chegg.com Team Up to Expand Textbook Selection and Lower Prices for College Students — From the press release: “In order to drive growth and strengthen their supply chain, Chegg.com has completed an integration project with Alibris that enables it to give students and other shoppers access to 100 million items—including new and used textbooks, reference guides, literature, and other college books—offered for sale by Alibris’s independent sellers. Books consigned by Alibris independent sellers to Alibris Distribution Services, a solution enabling sellers to outsource their inventory control and fulfillment needs to Alibris, are accessible to Chegg.com to help fuel their amazing growth. Chegg.com also leverages Alibris technology that allows them to access Alibris’s seller network to purchase lower-priced new and used textbooks for their back-to-school customers.”

Publisher in Talks With Apple Over Tablet – WSJ.com — This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone. Apple does not roll out products without major partnerships to back them up. This may be its biggest product launch to date and it has to come to the table with a truly convergent device. I would expect several partnerships of different kinds.

FastPencil Expands into E-Books – 1/18/2010 7:33:00 AM – Publishers Weekly — FastPencil is a social, self-publishing platform, and “with the new format process, writers can generate content and store it in a format that will work on Kindle or any other e-reader, and as new formats for e-readers are introduced, FastPencil will offer its writers the ability to publish in those formats as well. The announcement is the latest in a recent string of new initiatives from the company, which launched a beta version of its self-publishing platform in July 2009.”

Become a Kindle author! « HeyJude — Judy O’Connell discusses the opportunities available for anyone worldwide to become a Kindle author via Amazon’s self-publishing digital text platform. Authors keep 35% of the royalties.

Wholesale eBook Sales Statistics — eBook sales statistics for November 2009 have been released from the Association of American Publishers (AAP) who collects these statistics in conjunction with the IDPF. Trade eBook sales were $18,300,000 for November, a 199.9% increase over November 2008 ($6,100,000). Calendar Year to Date sales are up + 185.2%

Student blogs take on campus newspapers | Innovation in College Media — This is not surprising and journalism departments will need to find a way to embrace the blogging phenomenon if they want to stay relevant.

New York Times Ready to Charge Online Readers | Daily Intel — While the announcement to move in this direction will likely come very soon, users won’t actually have to start paying for metered access to content for several months. Some think this announcement will coincide with an Apple tablet partnership but there is no confirmation of that yet.

BISG Press Release | New BISG Survey Tracks Book Consumers’ Behavior Toward and Preferences for E-Books — The Book Industry Study Group, Inc. (BISG) has just released consumer data collected directly from book readers that addresses how print book buyers access, purchase and use e-books and e-readers. From the article: “1) Roughly 1/5 of survey respondents said they’ve stopped purchasing print books within the past 12 months in favor of acquiring the e-book editions. 2) Most survey respondents said they prefer to share e-books across devices. Only 28% said they would “definitely” purchase an e-book with Digital Rights Management (DRM); men were more likely than women to say they would not buy an e-book with DRM. 3) Survey respondents indicated a clear preference for e-reader devices used as of November 2009, with computers coming in first (47%), followed by the Kindle (32%), and other e-reader devices at roughly 10% apiece. 4) Although certainly growing, 81% of survey respondents say they currently purchase an e-book only ‘rarely’ or ‘occasionally.’”

Attributor Study Finds Pervasive Online Book Piracy | Publishers Weekly — From the article: “Publishers could be losing out on as much as $3 billion to online book piracy, a new report released today by Attributor estimates. Attributor, whose FairShare Guardian service monitors the Web for illegally posted content, tracked 913 books in 14 subjects in the final quarter of 2009 and estimated that more than 9 million copies of books were illegally downloaded from the 25 sites it tracked. Although Attributor needs to make some projections to arrive at total numbers, the hard figures the survey uncovered are disturbing to any publisher worried about the possible impact of piracy of e-books.”

Scribd Adds Optical Recognition Capability to Copyright Filter – 1/14/2010 1:45:00 PM – Publishers Weekly — This is an important step in Scribd’s move to attract more traditional publishing. With OCR of their print fidelity content, Scribd can address piracy issues more proactively.

Containerless Education

Kaltura Releases Open Source Video Extension for Moodle ~ Stephen’s Web ~ by Stephen Downes – “Kaltura, an open source video hosting and management site, now has a Moodle extension. This adds to a list of other extensions to open source platforms, such as Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, Mediawiki and Rails.”

openness and monolithicity — A nice image by D’Arcy Norman that provides a kind of quadrant for viewing the openness and efficacy of technology types.

The World is Open – Watch the streamed video | EDUCAUSE — “ELI 2010 Featured Session: The World is Open – shout out “WE ALL LEARN” with Web Technology – Lively presentation looking at ten key trends in technology that are “education openers”! Curtis Bonk, Professor, Instructional Systems Technology, Indiana University System and author of The World is Open: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education. His talk includes 15 predictions for the future as well. Available at http://educause.mediasite.com/mediasite/SilverlightPlayer/Default.aspx?peid=b718b05e52224357b32a96d07d591720″

Kindles in the Classroom: Theories, Practices, and Results in a Lower-Division English Course (Innovative Practice) | EDUCAUSE — A great PowerPoint deck and video of the presentation. “Theoretically, the Kindle is a promising teaching and learning device for the mobile generation now attending institutions of higher learning. In piloting subsidized Amazon Kindles, however, Princeton University, Case Western Reserve University, Reed College and other institutions have been primarily interested in sustainability benefits, cost savings, and ubiquitous access to resources and only secondarily in how e-readers are impacting student learning. By contrast, our CLU (unsubsidized) Kindle pilot project’s main focus was to explore and to identify the practices that would best optimize the Kindle’s teaching/learning potential-a potential we recognize as promoting deeper student engagement in critical reading and writing.”

Indianapolis Public Schools Replace Textbooks with Digital Content | THE Journal — Interesting development in which a district replaces textbooks with non-publisher content. “In a pilot program announced at FETC 2010 in Orlando, 12 schools in the Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) system will replace traditional textbooks with digital content from Discovery Education. The program also includes curriculum alignment services, professional development, and hardware.”

Weblogg-ed » No Choice — Great quote from Will Richardson. “We may not feel comfortable in a world filled with technology. We may not like the way it’s changing things and, even more, how fast it’s changing things. We may not like the way it pushes against much of what we’ve been doing in schools for eons. But our kids don’t have a choice. And if we’re going to fulfill our roles as teachers in our kids lives, neither do we.”

Open Source In Education – Tech&Learning Conference Presentation ‘09 — This is a nice overview of open source technologies being used in education.

Online, Higher Education Models – Enter the New York Times | Open Education — Thomas Hanson writes about New York Times content and the paper’s decision to try again at the education space with its new plan to start offering certificates (in conjunction with actual universities) to students who take its online courses.

The End in Mind » The CMS and the PLN — Jon Mott breaks down the differences — strengths and weaknesses — of traditional learning g management systems and PLNs or personal learning networks. What Mott gets at here is the possibilities for open learning networks and social learning.

Has Google developed the next wave of online education? | eSchoolNews.com — Google Wave is good as an aggregator of information — coming and going — and communities. It lets you mash those us and, to some extent personalize them. The problem with Google Wave is its “generic” nature and the burden it places on users to figure out the right context for using it or giving it value.

Who’s Joining Steve Jobs for the Tablet Launch Next Week? | Peter Kafka | MediaMemo | AllThingsD — We will see a lineup of media folks (video, newspapers, magazines), as well as partners for “enhanced” e-books. Personally, I see Steve Jobs doing his best to completely stick it to Amazon and the Kindle, both of which he has criticized repeatedly in the past two years with regards to content strategies and user experiences.

Intel Classmate PC is not forgotten, gets Pine Trail and WiMAX overhaul | Engadget –The alternative OLPC project from Intel is still going strong. “Coming later this year, the new netbook models will offer Atom N450 and N470 Pineview CPUs as well as integrated 3G and WiMAX connectivity. Yeah, that’s pretty decent gear by anyone’s standards, so it’s no surprise that Argentina, Brazil and Turkey have signed up for a total of 426,000 units between them, adding to the two million devices already shipped globally.”

STRIDE Handbook 8: E-learning — This looks to be a great resource for educators. It contains five good conceptual overviews followed by twenty technology-specific chapters.

SocialLearn » Blog Archive » SocialLearn 2010 — It seems that SocialLearn is moving into a new model — open source and open architecture.

How Online Learning Is Revolutionizing K-12 Education and Benefiting Students — Article abstract: “Virtual or online learning is revolutionizing American education. It has the potential to dramatically expand the educational opportunities of American students, largely overcoming the geographic and demographic restrictions. Virtual learning also has the potential to improve the quality of instruction, while increasing productivity and lowering costs, ultimately reducing the burden on taxpayers. Local, state, and federal policymakers should reform education policies and funding to facilitate online learning, particularly by allowing funding to follow the students to their learning institutions of choice.”

Top 10 eLearning Predictions for 2010 : eLearning Technology — Tony Karrer gives his e-learning predictions for the coming year. I agree with him about “more, lower-cost learning solutions.” Users and institutions are looking to low-cost, Web alternatives to help them get more out of their e-learning initiatives for less money. Also, I agree that social learning will become a major component of e-learning initiatives in the next year.

Views: Accreditation 2.0 | Inside Higher Ed — This is a good article on the evolution of accreditation in Higher Ed within the U.S. My question, however, is this: will accreditation become less relevant in the next ten years with the changing nature of education and learning?

Florida Virtual School Takes Courses Across State Lines | THE Journal — Florida Virtual School is teaming up with Agillix and their BrainHoney learning platform to take online courses to a broader market.

Hybrid Education 2.0 ready « Tomorrow’s Professor Blog — This is a nice, detailed summary of the hybrid education work going on at Carnegie Mellon. From the article: “Carnegie Mellon is not about to replace all its professors with computer programs. But with $4 million in private grants and perhaps more to come from the federal government, the university is currently exploring how the open-learning software could be used in conjunction with classroom education to speed up the teaching and learning process — a prospect that some involved think could help solve overcrowding in America’s community colleges and realize the Obama administration’s goal of boosting graduation rates.”

NMC to Officially Release 2010 Horizon Report at ELI | NMC — The Horizon Report is an important document each year that projects trends for technology in Higher Education. This year, open content makes the list.

Twitter’s Answer To Facebook Connect — In response to Facebook, Twitter is coming up with its own set of APIs and integration tools. This is good news for all the people who want to integrate with Twitter.

Learning and Content Distribution

Amazon Turns Kindle Into a Platform – GigaOM — This is a good overview of Amazon’s new “app” program for the Kindle that the company hopes will turn the device into a true publishing platform through which it can shape the e-book market.

Seesmic Look Is A Tablet-Friendly Twitter Client For The Oprah Crowd — This is a nice look for Seesmic and a good example of how UX is trying to adjust to massive amounts of information coming at users.

iSites Will Let Publishers Simultaneously Build Apps For iPhone And Android — “iSites is a new service launching today that allows publishers to quickly build applications for the iPhone, allowing them to create a customized and branded app in as little as 10 minutes. And soon, you’ll be able to use the platform to simultaneously publish Android apps from the same platform.”

Apple, Microsoft Discuss Giving Bing Top iPhone Billing | BusinessWeek — An interesting possibility and part of the fallout over recent friction between Apple and Google.

Simple Tools to Create Mobile Apps « EMIT – A nice post from Chris Morgan pointing our available tools for creating mobile apps. Good stuff.

Higher Education Trends « EMIT — A listing of current trends in Higher Education and Ed Tech with associated reports and studies.

Apple Dominated With Nearly 100% of Mobile App Sales in 2009 – mobile apps | Gizmodo — From the article: “…Apple’s App Store absolutely pwnd the paid mobile app space—selling 99.4% of the $4.2 billion market single-handedly, according to ars technica. All this data is based upon research by Gartner, who claims that, should sale trends continue, Apple could retain 2/3 of the paid mobile app market into 2010 (amidst growing competition from Android, Palm, RIM, etc). Of course, if Apple releases an app-wielding tablet, market share could error greatly in their favor again.”

Apple Could Sell 1.4 Million Tablets At $600 Next Year: Munster — Sales of the Apple tablet will still cross 1 million in 2010 if it is launched by March, estimates one analyst. From the article: “The tablet, if on sale by the end of March, will deliver a 2% increase in sales next year, writes Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray in a note today. Munster estimates Apple will sell 1.4 million units at an average of $600 per device in 2010.”

Tablet computers will sell in their millions this year claims Deloitte |Telegraph — Some are predicting really big things for tablet devices over the next 12 months. “Deloitte’s annual Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) predictions said the tablet computer or NetTab – smaller than a netbook, larger than a smartphone and boasting wireless connection with a touchscreen display – will have its ‘breakout year” over the next 12 months. ”NetTabs will be purchased by tens of millions of people in 2010,” Deloitte’s TMT report said. ‘NetTabs are expected to meet specific consumer needs compared to smartphones on the one hand – which are still a bit small for watching videos or even Web browsing – and notebooks, netbooks, and ultra-thin PCs, on the other – which are too big, heavy, or expensive.”’

iPhone add-on connects to ‘Internet of things’ | The Boston Globe — One of the ways we will see folks extending mobile devices is through add-ons, like “the iCarte (www.icarte.ca), an RFID reader attachment for the iPhone 3G and 3GS, which can report the thread count on a set of silk sheets, for example, or skim the show times off movie posters, by reading the RFID (radio frequency identification) tags embedded in those items.”

ASUS DR-950 9-inch touchscreen e-reader brings text-to-speech and internet browser | Engadget — From the article: “The ASUS e-reader [is] a 9-inch Sipix panel with 1,024 x 768 pixel resolution pushing 16-levels of gray just like the Jinke reader unveiled at CES. The touchscreen DR-950 features text-to-speech (based on Svox engine supporting 26 languages), a web browser that works in portrait or landscape modes, a virtual keyboard and handwriting input, a RSS reader, and dictionary (with expandable database) with real-time translation. Spec-wise, the 222 x 161 x 9-mm / 370-gram reader packs WiFi and HSPA (WiMax is optional) data radios, 3.5-mm headphone jack and stereo speakers, with 4GB of internal memory and SD Card expansion. Supported formats include PDF, TXT, Audible, MP3, and unprotected ePub.”

Android Usage Increased 200% Over Past Three Months — This is just another statistic snapshot pointing to the growth of Android in the mobile space. Within the education market, this means that Android is a platform that needs to be supported by major platforms by fall, 2010. From the article: “According to new data from ChangeWave Research, both usage and consumer sentiment towards Google’s mobile operating system Android has increased over the past several months. As of December 2009, the research firm’s survey shows that 4% of all smartphone owners now use a phone running some version of the Android OS. That’s an increase of 200% since the previous survey released in September.”

Snapdragon Lurks Inside Dell’s Mini 5 Tablet, According to Video Teardown – Dell mini 5 tablet | Gizmodo — A little more information about Dell’s forthcoming mini tablet. Fast enough for video and big enough for better reading. Even more important is all the built-in connectivity for true mobility. This could be a solid competitor for Dell.

Digital Audiobooks, Assistive Technology and its Effects on Literacy « The Mobile Learner — The reality is that learners can get the type of content they need or want anywhere, on practically any device. This article explores the implications of that reality on literacy. From the article: “The proliferation of mobile handheld devices coupled with complex assistive technology software is pushing the concept further. Digital audiobooks and assistive technology software such and text-to-speech software is not new. What has changed are the formats, costs and mobility of these tools. Where once one needed a cassette player to listen to an audiobook or where once one needed a computer to use text-to speech or speech-to-text software, one can now access these audiobooks and assistive technology software on devices that one already carries around with them. The cost? Cheap or free.”

Gartner forecasts phones overtaking PCs as most common web browsing device by 2013 | Engadget – “Gartner expects the number of browser-equipped phones to exceed 1.83 billion, compared to 1.78 billion old fashioned computers in use” by 2013. The trend is obvious and it is really only a matter of time. Web platforms not designed from the ground up with a clear mobile app and Web strategy will fail.”

Torn Between Two Phones: Nexus One vs. iPhone | Bits Blog | NYTimes.com –The point here is that we will move to a world very soon where almost everyone, except for some business users, has either an iPhone or an Android phone. The differences will be in philosophy, carriers, etc. The benefactors of this evolution and competitions will be, naturally, the consumer.

The Ultimate Guide to Ebook Readers We Care About | Gizmodo — If you want a great side-by-side comparison of the major contenders in the e-reader market, look no further. This article lays out the pros and cons of all the hopefuls and does a good job of highlighting what differentiates each one.

5 Industries an Apple Tablet Could Revolutionize — You will notice, of course, that at the top of the list is publishing and media. From the article: “While the Kindle has done a lot to bring print into digital form, a tablet could be far more suited for reading the newspaper, opening up your textbook, and even sharing notes. Hell, Wired’s already preparing for the tablet. The simple point is that it’s easier to carry a smart tablet than 300 hardcover books and 20 newspapers with you. Apple’s tablet will almost certainly have a focus on bringing all of print into the digital world, whether the industry is ready for it or not.”

DIY

First YouTube, Now Vimeo: How HTML5 Could Finally Kill Flash Video | Gizmodo — “Vimeo’s new HTML5 system is just like YouTube’s, in both execution and technical details, in that it’ll only work with a few browsers—Safari and Chrome, for now—and that it’s compatible with most, but not all, of the company’s video libraries. It’s something that most people won’t bother to try at this point, and if they do, they’re probably be underwhelmed, since HTML5 video playback is almost indistinguishable from Flash video playback. (Moving pictures!) But it’s primed to be something that everyone ends up using, and that would be a Very Good Thing. Flash video performs terribly on Mac OS X and Linux, and on the few mobile devices that do support it, playback is uniformly terrible. And generally speaking, it’s a plug-in. We whine about having to install Silverlight to use Bing Maps or watch some kinds of video, but it’s a plugin the same way that Flash is.”

E-Readers and Tablet PCs Are About to Get Screen-Tastic | Science Inc. | Fast Company — A good update/overview of upcoming screen changes with regards to screen technology and e-readers/tablets/netbooks. We will see a move away from eInk to Pixel Qi, Mirasol and others.

Study: Internet radio reaching 32% of households, e-readers are hot — “L.E.K.’s Media Consumption Survey polled over 2,000 consumers, asking them about their general media ‘diet,’ from ereaders to online video. The results? Ereaders are big, older folks are into the Internet, and online radio is finally reaching the mainstream.”

ViVu Launches Video Collaboration Plug-In For Skype — From the article: “ViVu’s ‘video as a service’ lets anyone create a live video webcast that can be used for online meetings and events, sales presentations, demos or training sessions. ViVu’s cloud-based technology can be enabled via a PC, Mac or smartphone and provides an auditorium like-view within the browser making it ideal for large conferences or meetings. Once VuRoom is downloaded, the host simply selects the Skype contacts they want to join the conference and calls the entire group. The participant joins clicking the URL provided in their text chat window. Call participants, other than the host, need not have the ViVu plug-in installed to participate in the video conference. During the call, the presenter and participants can share their presentations and desktop to other participants.”

YouTube Begins to Support HTML5 – This is really big news, particularly for upcoming mobile and distributed developments. “An HTML5 video player will allow videos to be viewed without Adobe’s Flashplayer plug-in, videos will load faster and developers will be able to build all kinds of other intriguing features into a media delivery scheme based on the next version of HTML. For now users will need to sign-up the HTML5 preview on Test Tube and they’ll need to be using either Chrome, Safari or the Chrome frame in IE.”

Week 2 Lecturecasting with Ustream, Blip.tv and MPEGstreamclip » Moving at the Speed of Creativity – More from Wes Fryer on how he does lecturecasting in his classroom with Ustream and Blip.tv.

A Third of Adults Now Post to Sites Like Facebook, Twitter Once a Week – Digits | WSJ — The real interesting information for me isn’t in the title but toward the end of the post. “Nearly 60% of Web users visit social networking sites or maintain profiles there, a number that Forrester blogger Josh Bernoff says is ‘growing rapidly.’ About a quarter take things a step further, actually publishing blogs, video or other creative content. But that number is increasing slowly, rising only to 24% from 18% two years ago. Only 17% of Internet users don’t participate in any social networking at all.”

If Your Kids Are Awake, They’re Probably Online | NYTimes.com — Smart phones are definitely not cheaper than the old fashioned babysitter. From the article: “Those ages 8 to 18 spend more than seven and a half hours a day with such devices, compared with less than six and a half hours five years ago, when the study was last conducted. And that does not count the hour and a half that youths spend texting, or the half-hour they talk on their cellphones.”

Learning Score | dougbelshaw.com/blog — Doug Belshaw is right — this is a great tool for planning lessons!

Apple launching 22-inch touchscreen iMac this year? | Engadget — If you’re serious about designing products these days, there are two things you have to keep in mind: 1) mobility; 2) touch screens.

New projectors make any wall an interactive whiteboard | eSchoolNews.com — These new projectors are part of the natural convergence cycle in technology. A niche, unique market is defined and early participants produce hardware/software aimed narrowly at that market (think of classroom polling devices, for example). Next, larger companies produce variations of existing market hardware/software that extends into the niche (as these projectors do in the IWB space). The bottom line is that successful niche markets will eventually become targets of convergent devices that allow customers to accomplish multiple tasks (including the niche task) with a single piece of hardware/software.

Video Game Statistics At A Glance | Kotaku — A great infographic that captures current video game statistics. The one I like best os that Microsoft has 10X the failure rate Nintendo does for its consoles within two years of purchase. Ouch.

Waiting for Flexible Displays and Flexible Devices | Bits Blog | NYTimes.com – Good information here on flexible screen technology, when we are likely to see it in the market place, and the progression of devices in which it will appear.

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