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Why Zite Has Rocked My Content World

By Mark Evans in Apple/iPod, Blogs, Social Media 1 Comment Tags: , ,

First a confession: I was late to the tablet game. With several laptops at home and a job that requires a lot of mobile working, there just wasn’t much of a use case for a tablet. Time passed, a friend of mine at Carbon Computing got me a great deal on an iPad, and now I’m part of the tablet world.

While I haven’t spent much time pimping my iPad, one of the first apps add was Zite because there had been so much buzz about it, particularly after the Vancouver-based startup was acquired by CNN for a reported $25-million.

This may sound dramatic but Zite has dramatically changed how I consume content. As someone who sucks in a lot of content every day for market intelligence and information, and ideas for columns and blog posts, any way that improves efficiency and productivity is a wonderful thing.

With Zite, I can create categories that are interesting or relevant to my interests and needs. Then, Zite generates stories in a magazine format that can be quickly scanned and read. It’s also easy to save an article or blog post to read for later, or share it via social media or email.

Zite also lets you “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” a story to adjust your preferences, although it would be great if you could add a particular Web site or blog into the editorial mix.

Zite has been a productivity-booster because I can cover the content landscape in 10 minutes for ideas and information. At the same time, it has cut down on the amount of time on Twitter, which I use as a quasi-RSS reader.

More important, it has dramatically changed how much content I can consume and read and, in the process, saved me a lot of time, which is one of the most important considerations.

Is The Half-Baked PlayBook DOA?

By Mark Evans in Apple/iPod, Wireless 11 Comments Tags: , , ,

Would you buy car with no brakes or doors? Would you buy a pair of hockey skates with no blades? What about a laptop with no keyboard?

In what can only be a riddle wrapped up in an enigma, Research in Motion will be launching the much-anticipated PlayBook next week that is, at best, work in progress. From Walter Mossberg’s review, the PlayBook lacks many of the key features that would make a reasonable consumer consider purchasing one, let alone make the PlayBook a viable rival to the iPhone.

For one, the PlayBook lacks cellular connectivity, as well as built-in apps such as e-mail, a calendar, contacts and BlackBerry Messenger. To use these bread-and-butter apps, you need a BlackBerry, which then synchs using software called Bridge. For non-BlackBerry users, they have no choice but to use Web-based applications.

To be frank, the PlayBook’s shortcomings are stunning given RIM announced the PlayBook’s launch months ago. With so much lead time, it’s a complete head-scratcher as to why it would launch something that isn’t ready for prime-time.

RIM says the PlayBook will see many upgrades and improvements in a few months but the biggest danger is it may be too little, too late. High-tech consumers are fickle and not terribly patient so the PlayBook’s half-baked finish will likely see it dissed and dismissed long before RIM can push out newer, better versions.

RIM is clearly hoping consumers will give it the benefit of the doubt for putting out a product prematurely. RIM must believe it needs to move now, otherwise it will give the iPad even more time to dominate the market, and provide Android-powered tablets with the opportunity to stake out more ground.

As someone who has sat on the tablet sidelines to see if an alternative to iPad could emerge, the PlayBook’s launch is disappointing. There is no chance I would buy one, particularly at $499. In fact, the PlayBook’s launch may be the final push for me to finally purchase an iPad.

RIM has never been a terrific marketing company but if this will have to change dramatically if there is any hope for the PlayBook to recover from what appears to an inauspicious debut.

For more, check out Matt Hartley’s story in the Financial Post.

Why I Bought Skates Rather than an iPad2

By Mark Evans in Apple/iPod 6 Comments Tags: , , ,

Life is full of choices. You need to choose what to have for lunch. You need to choose how much of a retirement fund contribution to make. You need to choose whether that person you met at a party on the weekend is worth calling for a date. And for many of us in the digital sphere, you have to choose whether or not to buy an iPad2.

As anyone who reads this blog or my tweetsprobably knows, I’ve been deliberating about whether to iPad or not to iPad for several months. But when push came to shove, I decided to buy skates instead – Bauer Supreme to be exact. As much as I didn’t really need a new pair of skates, I needed them more than I needed an iPad.

At the end of the day, the decision was easy: I play hockey three or four times a week so the ROI on a new pair of skates is a no-brainer. I have a MacBook Pro so justifying the purchase of an iPad is more difficult. Getting an iPad isn’t going to make my digital experience or livelihood dramatically better or different. But buying new skates will make playing hockey more enjoyable, although it may not improve my game. :)

As much as I would like to have a new iPad, it’s not a must-have or even a nice-to-have. It’s an extravagance compared with other things. As important, an iPad would probably encourage me to spend more time online at a time when I’m actually trying to be more productive and spend less time online.

So for now, I am iPad-less. But the silver lining is I have a great pair of new skates.

Related links:
- Why iPad 2 Won’t Have Much Competition In 2011—Unless It’s From Amazon
- Media Content Drives Tablet Purchase Intent (eMarketer)

Do We Have to Share Everything?

By Mark Evans in Social Media 1 Comment Tags: , , ,

As smartphones get smarter and tablets make mobile computing more user-friendly, one of the offshoots is how technology is making it even easier to share anything and everything using social media services such as Facebook Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and Instagram.

Frankly, the problem is there’s already too much being shared so we’re just encouraging the masses by expanding their sharing arsenals. We share how we feel, what we’re doing, where we’re going, what we’re eating/drinking, personal and professional news, and, of course, lots of content such as blog posts, online articles and videos.

The buzz about Instagram, which lets you share photos using an iPhone on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, is being hailed as one of the most exciting new social media applications. It wasn’t like there was a lack of photo-sharing applications but Instagram makes it even better and/or easier. And you know what that means: more sharing!

The upside of all this sharing is it provides intimate details of what your friends are doing. A friend of mine, for example, is travelling through South America. He’s not only documenting his journey on Twitter but providing a play-by-play account of what he’s eating. Given my love of South American food, I now have a craving for asado.

The downside to sharing is there are few surprises anymore when friends are disclosing publicly what they’re doing, seeing, eating, reading, watching, etc. And the amount of information being broadcast is only going to climb as the tools become more widespread and user-friendly. If you think sharing is bad now, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

The other issue raised by the growth of sharing is why people feel so compelled to share so much. It isn’t enough to just enjoy the moment. Instead, it needs to be documented and share with everyone, which means that while you’re doing, eating or watching something with one part of your brain, the other part of your brain is trying to figure out the best way to share things. Should you put it on Twitter? No, this would be better using Instagram. Or maybe I should do a Facebook update.

Whatever your social poison, the need to share also takes away from what you’re doing and who you’re with. You can argue whether this is a good or bad thing but it’s a fact.

Now, there are benefits to sharing but the question is do we really have to share so enthusiastically and so much?

The Power of Paper in a Digital World

By Mark Evans in Social Media 5 Comments Tags: , , ,

A funny thing happened to me in 2010 amid the flurry of social media, tablets, smartphones and online services: I fell in love with paper all over again.

While I’m probably as enamoured with the Web, gadgets and hardware as the next guy or girl, paper has started to play a key role in my personal and professional world. It wasn’t by design but simply that paper made more sense.

For example, my consulting business has become really busy, and one of the ways I managed to get a handle on projects is using large sheets of paper to do mind-minding. In my office, there’s a growing pile of paper that features a variety of colours – paper that contains the plans and directions for the work done for many clients. I have tried online mind-minding services but find the tangibility of paper to be more effective and valuable.

I have also become a big fan of Moleskin notebooks. I always carry a small Moleskin in my jacket pocket to write down ideas for blog posts, presentations, and interesting people, books or people. The notebook isn’t particularly organized but the act of writing things down somehow makes them resonate or stick in my brain. Moleskins aren’t particularly sexy but from what I can they still have staying power.

In the past months, I have also embraced paper to create daily to-do lists – in addition to information that exists in iCal and DayLite. It was something that happened because I started to forget phone calls that I had to make, which is not a good thing when your business is all about customer service. Creating a paper-based to-do list somehow makes it easy to remember everything.

And I’m still reading newspapers in the morning at a time when my Google Reader account is collecting dust. Maybe it has to do with my roots as a newspaper reporter but, to me, newspapers are still an elegant and effective way to consume a lot of information, which can then be shared digitally via Facebook or Twitter. For all the talk about the iPad and how it could save the newspaper and magazine worlds, “real” newspapers are a very functional vehicle even if the financial model isn’t as lucrative.

And if you wanted to stretch the paper argument, maybe we could bring whiteboards into the mix. I have several whiteboards in my office, and plan to install IdeaPaint on a wall in the next couple of weeks. If I had the money, I would probably buy a Smart Board to marry the digital and whiteboard worlds.

Maybe paper continues to be part of my world because part of me is still analog in a digital world. At the end of the day, paper still works for me so there’s reason to jump off the bandwagon. How about you?

Still Not Lovin’ the iPad

By Mark Evans in Apple/iPod 8 Comments Tags: , , ,

When it comes to the iPad, I’ve flipped more times than a hamburger on a BBQ grill. But after spending some time over the past few days playing with an iPad, I’m firmly in the not-getting-one camp.

The iPad is cool, it’s sleek, beautifully designed, and has some great features, particularly the ability to multi-task and check e-mail and surf the Web. The problem with the iPad, however, is it’s not enough. You really can’t work on it, you can’t make phone calls, take photos or videos, or plug in a USB. In other words, it feels like a mini-Mac.

As a result, it is difficult to justify splashing out $750 to buy one because there doesn’t seem to be a fit with my computing landscape, which includes a MacBook Pro and an iPhone 3. If I commuted or travelled, an iPad could make sense. But working from home means I don’t commute – unless riding my bicycle to a clients counts.

Yes, I understand that the iPad is leading-edge, and that as someone who counsels clients on what’s over the horizon, I can justify buying an iPad as “research” but that seems excessive.

So rather than buy an iPad, I’m more interested in an iPhone 4 when the antenna problems are fixed and my contract with Rogers lets me upgrade without suffering a major financial hit.

Why the iPhone 4?

Well, the iPhone offers me tremendous utility as a mobile device that complements my MacBook Pro (I’m a huge fan of tethering). The iPhone 4′s features, smaller size and design are personally far more appealing and relevant than an iPad. But that’s just me as opposed to all the new iPad aficionados.

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