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Just over a week ago, I produced a video for Annex Products — the company that brought us the Opena Case & QuadLock. Playa Case is an iPhone 4/4s case that ‘discreetly’ holds up to two condoms on the back of your iPhone. The video launch on Sunday, April 1st, and was quickly picked up by the popular technology blog, Gizmodo Australia. Since then — just over a week later — the Playa Case video has been featured on hundreds of websites including CNET, Mashable, Gizmodo US and Huffington Post.
It seems my predictions of 2011 being the year of streaming has official begun, with the introduction of Australia’s first on-demand music service available on Sonos. In a lot of ways, Australia has been a few steps behind in media streaming. Services like Netflix, Pandora, Rhapsody and Spotify being unavailable in Australia, has highlighted the problems with licensing media streaming internationally. Companies are having to individually negotiate licensing deals with each country and frankly, Australia hasn’t been number one on the to do list.
This is why, I am happy with the introduction of Anubis.fm to Australia. Search, browse and play anything from Anubis.fm’s catalogue of more than 2 million songs, as often as you’d like, throughout your entire home—no computer required. Create your own playlists and program your own channels. All new and existing Sonos customers will receive a free 30-day trial to the service. Anubis.fm on Sonos is part of the ‘Music on Tap’ plan and costs AUD$12.99 per month.
I was a little worried when I saw Anubis.fm was operated by Sony Music Entertainment Australia Pty Ltd, but am happy that they have incorporate all the big labels into the service including; Sony Music, Universal Music, EMI Music, Warner Music, and key independent labels.
“Our goal at Sonos is to provide music lovers with access to all the music on the planet,” said John MacFarlane, CEO, Sonos, Inc. “By adding popular music services to Sonos, like Anubis.fm, we can continue to give our customers the ability to discover and enjoy unlimited music possibilities in any or every room.”
With hardware companies focussing on streaming in their products, we should expect to see many more services coming to the Australia market.
What would you do for five dollars? Well, from what I can see, a lot of people will do a bit for the cost of a coffee and donut. A couple of days ago, I was listening to the Small Business Big Marketing Podcast. Host Tim Reid spoke about his recent addiction to Fiverr.com. A service where people can submit tasks that they are willing to do for five dollars. It got me thinking about outsourcing, particularly the things I had read in 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss.
There are a lot of thought provoking ideas in 4HWW, but my main problem with the book was implementation. I tried using Elance, which he had recommended, but I found that it wasn’t suited to me. It was a little too time consuming dealing with proposals and a bit counter intuitive. I was spending more time finding someone to do a job, than just me doing it myself. This might be my own fault, although I have found a couple of fantastic services I have used in my business throughout the years which i’ll get to later.
After hearing Tim Reid speak about Fiverr, I decided it was time to check it out. I spent an hour or so on the website. There were so many people willing to do stuff! From video testimonials to dropping 30 business cards in a random city in the US. A lot of the ‘service providers’ on fiverr were well spoken and I found it surprising that they were doing things for $5! It even made me feel a little sad when I thought that these people had families and kids to feed. Then I thought about it a little more ‘hey, they aren’t doing too badly! They have a house, a computer, a HD Mino and an Internet connection! They’ll be fine.’ Read more
Whenever the Apple iPad is brought up in conversation, it doesn’t take long before people begin to compare the device with ebook readers, namely the Kindle 3.
As an iPad owner, these comparisons have never bothered me for one big reason. I have always bought books on the iPad using the Kindle App. It makes a lot of sense to buy books within the Kindle App, rather than the iBooks app for these two reasons alone:
Multiple device reading – It doesn’t matter what device i’m using at the time. Whether I am on my Laptop, Desktop, iPad, iPhone or Kindle, I can continue to read a book.
You can not currently buy books in the iBooks store in Australia! – I am glad apple was slow in doing this, as it forced me to kindle book buying. It makes a lot more sense when using multiple devices.
I have had my new Kindle 3 for about a week now and have to say, it really does beat the iPad for reading! One of the big shocks with the Kindle 3, was integration with audiobook service Audible. Actually, it makes sense, due to the fact that Audible is now an Amazon product. Using the Kindle to listen to audiobooks, when my eyes are tired, is amazing. In fact, listening to an Audible book on a Kindle beats my experiences I have had on every other device (iPad, iPhone, iPod, Laptop, Desktop).
Yes, that right, as an iPad and Kindle owner, I can safely say that reading books on the Kindle wins, in my books (pun not intended). There are a number of reasons for this. The Kindle does two things really well. It plays audiobook and it lets you read books with ease.
The biggest issue I had with the iPad was the fact that there were so many other applications in the background, waiting to take my attention. It was way too easy to become distracted by playing Angry Bird, check Twitter, or play Words With Friends.
When I am reading a book on the Kindle, I am immersed in the book. It is the closest experience to reading a book you are going to get, before you have to…. pick up a real book!
Its biggest positive is also its biggest negative. No backlit screen! It so nice to be able to take your eyes away from looking at an illuminated screen, though it is annoying when you are in a dark room!
Its really easy to say, “Screw you iPad, you cost ten times more than the Kindle AND your reading experience isn’t even as good!”. But the fact is the iPad and Kindle cannot be fairly compared. Its like comparing apple and oranges. Oranges aren’t good for making apple pies, because they aren’t apples, although, you can make some pretty awesome meals with oranges. The iPad can be put in the ebook category, but I think its not its best use. The iPad is a swiss army knife. The device I use to quickly check my Twitter, read some RSS feeds and play some games.
The Kindle is great for reading books and in an age where we are all coming down with a case of ADD, focussing on one thing, isn’t so bad.
Just recorded a quick bit of audio of my brother Jake playing guitar and singing. He has a nasty cold, so he wasn’t massively happy with his performance. I can’t believe how good the quality of the h4n internal microphones are!
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I was think the other day, why do I love the Internet so much? After a lot of thought, I have come up with the answer. It feeds my obsessive personality. Whether I am going through a phase of obsessing about package design, photography or screenwriting, the Internet never lets me down. When I am obsessing about design, here are the four blogs I love to visit. Here they are, described by them.
Established in early 2007, The Dieline is dedicated to the progress of the package design industry and its practitioners, students and enthusiasts. Its purpose is to define and promote the world’s best packaging design, and provide a place where the package design community can review, critique and stay informed of the latest industry trends and design projects being created in the field.
The Dieline has quickly grown into the most visited website on package design in the world, and has become the voice of the industry. The Dieline’s first book on Package Design, “Box, Bottle, Bag” was released by HOW Books in early 2010, and has quickly become the top selling package design book on Amazon. The Dieline has also recently launched The Dieline Awards, a worldwide package design competition devoted exclusively to the art of brand packaging, further promoting the field. Winners were announced at the FUSE Conference at Trump Tower in Chicago on April 14th. http://www.thedieline.com/
I have recently read a number of books around the subject of business, corporate culture, customer service and entrepreneurship. Books like Rework by Jason Fried and The Four
Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss. These books, in particular, challenge the way
Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh
in which we work and the amount of time we spend doing it. Although I have found them useful, they do make some outrageous claims. Jason thinks learning from mistakes is rubbish, because apparently we shouldn’t be making mistakes and Timothy thinks its viable for us to all outsource our life and check our email once a week.
Unfortunately, we are not all so experienced that we don’t make mistakes and we don’t all have the finances to pay other people to do the work we could be doing.
Here are some of my thoughts on the iPad after using it for a week.
Josh with his iPad
RSS READERS MAKE READING AND SHARING EASIER
I have tried a few RSS readers on my computers in the past, but haven’t found them useful. Now with the iPad I spend a good majority of the time using one. NewsRack is my iPad RSS reader of choice at the moment. I love that I can easily share interesting blog posts and articles with friends on Twitter, as well as star/favourite articles for later use.
I DON’T NEED FLASH
I have never really liked flash, probably because it has always crashed for me. I hear a lot of people saying a con of the iOS is that it does not support Flash. I have not yet had an experience on the iPad where I have wished it had Flash support. Read more
