Blurts

I just read an interesting post from 9to5 Mac that offered a perspective on a topic of personal interest that I had not considered. The post notes that Apple has purchased Texture – a service that allows users unlimited access to a large number of magazines for a monthly fee – and should do the same for books. My wife and I have a Texture account so we are familiar with the product.

My interest was less on Apple having a way to compete with the Kindle/Amazon “all you can eat (read)” option and more on the potential of Apple finding a way to escape its own walled garden and offer a superior reading/learning format that is cross-platform. I have a couple of books available from Amazon and I know well the limitations of the Kindle model. I am not putting Amazon down for its formats (the book and textbook approaches are slightly different) because Amazon is so open to hardware options that it must provide formats for the Kindle which is ill-suited to multi-media, but great for reading and carrying around pure text. Apple iBooks is a great platform, but limited for authors because it is Apple specific.

What if Apple would take advantage of the Texture-based content sophistication, but would repurpose it as an option for textbooks?

BTW – I am not a user of the Amazon all you can read format because I value the opportunity to access my notes and highlights from the books I have read. Continued access to the integrated book and content I add is important to my work style. I don’t read enough to pay for both the all you can read and the book by book models.

I have another “thought leader” recommendation. Triangulation (one of the This Week in Tech podcasts) offers interviews with technology steeped individuals from different fields. This post’s recommendation is John Battelle – technology journalist probably best known as one of the individuals who developed Wired magazine. There is something for everyone in this interview – educators, individuals concerned with social media, individuals interested in politics. Battelle describes a new world in which industry, technology, and politics are inexorably interconnected. Since this future is a done deal, it is important to try to direct how this collective will operate. Educators can play a role in setting the course.

“… anyone weary of black-box algorithms controlling what you see online at least has a respite, one that’s been there all along but has often gone ignored. Tired of Twitter? Facebook fatigued? It’s time to head back to RSS.”

Although I may not have the writing skills nor the connections in the industry, I should be a tech journalist. I have anticipated several topics that tech journalist are addressing of late (RSS-still relevant, RSS and RSS readers). I have wanted thoughtful consumers of online content to have a better approach to locating content they can trust. RSS allows you greater control that Twitter or Facebook’s suggestions.

RSS is undead is the title of a TechCrunch post suggesting there is value is RSS feeds, but the present versions lacks innovation. The author proposes the problem of RSS is the same issue that resulted in the privacy problems of Facebook – a business model. RSS does not have one and presently has no obvious way to encourage innovation. Facebook, Google and Twitter have a way to make money (information about you).

The author proposes:

I would gladly pay money for an Amazon Prime-like subscription where I can get unlimited text-only feeds from a bunch of a major news sources at a reasonable price.

I think I saw something like this a couple of years ago. You paid a monthly fee and there was some kind of matching that went on between you and sites that signed up for the service. Whatever you contributed was divided among the sites you visited. I wish I could remember the name of the service. I am certain I wrote a blog post about it, but I cannot seem to generate a search term that will find that post.