-
Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
Who’s Your Audience and What’s Their Word?
Thursday, April 14th, 2011 by Butch WhitmireThe latest data from Experian Hitwise shows that the number of keywords typed into search engines is declining. Longer searches, those of 5-8 words, were down last month 3%. As the data table shows, 1 word searches comprise a full 24% of all searches. 2 word searches are a close second.
When it comes to people finding your business or organization organically on the web, understanding who your potential customers are, how they think, and what they may type into their favorite search engine is essential.
At Force 5, we help clients determine their customer’s “word” as part of our Soul Searching™ brand development process and in our free SEO consultation services included in their web development packages.
Is Your Mobile Website Ready for a Caveman to Use?
Monday, April 4th, 2011 by Butch Whitmire
Mobile browsing is here and now. With estimates that over 50% of all mobile phones sold this year will be smart, preparing your website to become an amazing internet experience on these devices can be challenging. As mobile technology continues to evolve into tomorrow, keeping it simple today is a must. How simple?
Think Cave Man simple.
Here some things Cave Men are thinking about when it comes to web site mobile optimization:
“Finger Big. Phone Small.”
Call if fat fingers, butt dial, or human factors engineering, there are physiological limitations that must be considered to ensure a great user experience. So, even if your Cave Man shaves his knuckles before visiting your site from his smartphone, making mobile web pages with BIG buttons and easy to discern icons, fonts and colors schemes will keep him from hitting you with a club.
“Want Fast. Phone Slow.”
Visitors to your site expect fast page downloads. From a desktop or laptop with a high-speed internet connection, a considerable percentage of users will abandon your site if a page fails to load in under 6 seconds. Mobile download speeds are most often significantly slower. So, keeping your mobile landing page lean and fast will keep your visitors from becoming extinct.
“Want Easy. Life Com … pli…cate …dud.”
Keeping it simple; this is a challenging exercise that will benefit marketers and their customers. I believe, as a general rule, most websites are too complicated: lots of links, lots of Flash, lots of buttons and popups. With limited real estate for the interface and a slower pipeline, marketers are going to have to focus. They’ll have to anticipate who will visit their mobile site and what are the 3 to 6 (that’s about as many buttons that will fit) most important things they’ll want to do when they get there. And that translates into understanding customers and their needs at a deep level. And when that happens, customer relationships start to evolve.
Black Hat SEO will git you run out of town Pardner
Monday, March 28th, 2011 by David MorganJust like in the ole West, or at least as our Western movies tell us, Black hats are villains – and usually up to “no good”.
The New York Times recently noticed something odd when performing Google searches on terms as diverse as bedding, skinny jeans, area rugs and grommet-top curtains. “You could imagine a dozen contenders for each of these searches,” writes David Segal. “But in the last several months, one name turned up, with uncanny regularity, in the No. 1 spot for each and every term: JCPenney.” The retailer’s ranking even bested manufacturer Samsonite.com in Google searches for Samsonite carry-on luggage.
They discovered the strikingly unsubtle use of “black hat” optimization—including an array of phony sites that appeared to exist for the sole purpose of linking to the store’s website.
“There are links to JCPenney.com’s dresses page on sites about diseases, cameras, cars, dogs, aluminum sheets, travel, snoring, diamond drills, bathroom tiles, hotel furniture, online games, commodities, fishing, Adobe Flash, glass shower doors, jokes and dentists—and the list goes on,” noted Doug Pierce of Blue Fountain Media, a firm hired by the New York Times to investigate. He found an array of phony sites that appeared to exist for the sole purpose of linking to the store’s website.Though not illegal, black-hat tactics are strictly verboten in the Google rulebook. “The company draws a pretty thick line between techniques it considers deceptive and ‘white hat’ approaches, which are offered by hundreds of consulting firms and are legitimate ways to increase a site’s visibility.
Google retaliated with a “manual action” against JCPenney. In the space of two hours, for instance, the retailer’s No. 1 ranking for Samsonite carry-on luggage plummeted to No. 71. Rankings for other search terms underwent similarly dramatic demotions.
The Po!nt: In the end, cheaters never win. Sure, everyone’s trying to boost their search-engine rankings. Just make sure you follow Google’s ground rules when you do it.
Source:The full (and very interesting article) The New York Times.Tags Give Starcraft Marine a Place in the Sun…
Tuesday, March 15th, 2011 by Christian MattixIn the dreary days of January and February, many of us find a boat show on the weekend—letting us dream of warmer days, sand and sun filled holidays, and hours on the nearest lake.
Sitting on a boat inside a convention center doesn’t quite fill the bill—does it? This year, Starcraft Marine decided to help boating enthusiast get to that “happy place” in their mind a little quicker… with the help smart phone technology and QR codes. When the Starcraft marine marketing staff planned their new product launch and winter show activities, Peter Barrett, Executive Vice President of Marketing wanted Starcraft customers to experience the joys of boating by showing them beautiful video footage of their boats on the water while highlighting the numerous Starcraft features that had received high marks in independent tests. To convey the most current videos and information to their customers, Starcraft decided to use smart tag codes in their promotional materials. Steve Huber, Marketing coordinator at Starcraft considered QR codes and Microsoft tags as potential ways to do this. Steve asked Force 5 to help investigate the viability of the code/tag process.
In our investigation, Force 5 web developers found that both QR codes and the Microsoft tag manager have their pros and cons. The tag manager has a very nice reporting feature built into its application that steered them towards using this system. However, any tag/code system is limited to doing only a few things—direct a viewer to a web site, dial a phone number, or send a text response. The interactivity with the viewer is limited beyond that. In order to fully engage the consumer and capture as much information as allowed, Force 5 decided to enhance the interaction by developing a small, web-based app that enables Starcraft to customize the customer options based on the application.
This interface allows for a very robust customer experience. With the help of Microsoft tags, Starcraft lets their boat show attendees, those viewing a brochure, or even reading an ad in a boating magazine watch fun and informative video about their favorite boat—then take action.
- Starcraft BoaTAG™ in Action
Force 5 directs the Microsoft tag to a URL which is customized per the requirements of that particular tag. As a part of general functionality, the viewer can watch a video, then share that with a friend, continue on to a web site, look up a marine dealer, or order a brochure. Additional interactions can be added as needed. Through Force 5’s administration, the viewer can be allowed to have any or all of the interactions. For example, someone scanning the tag from a magazine ad could see all the options—someone scanning the tag on a boat may only be given the video, brochure or web option – someone scanning the brochure will see the video, but will not need the link to the brochure, etc.
- Starcraft BoaTAG™ being Scanned
The analytics/metrics for the Force 5 combined system are phenomenal. Microsoft offers hits and geo tracking per tag, and because Force 5 serves the videos and the additional pages, they can track video views, directs to form pages, etc.—this acts as a verification of the Microsoft reporting accuracy, and provides Starcraft with excellent metrics for ad efficiency and conversions.
Here are the details:
System Architecture
The Smoker BoaTAG™ system is comprised of three primary parts on the server side (the 2d-barcode interface, the landing page manager, and the reporting and analytics engine) and the tag scanning software on the mobile device.
2-D Barcode Interface Engine
The team at Force 5 found that the Microsoft TAG system (http://tag.microsoft.com) proved to be the most robust and elegant solution for Starcraft The ability to administer this portion of the system by novice users; generate and print tags in multiple formats, change the URL of the target of a tag; coupled with the non-invasive tracking of mobile devices; and the excellent metrics and reporting were all key in Force 5’s decision to recommend it as the barcode management system.
Each BoaTAG™ is defined within the Microsoft TAG system. The Microsoft system is very easy to administer, providing the user with many options for generating both black and white as well as color Tags.
Rendered in Color
Rendered in Black and White
Microsoft has been very generous in the free functionality that the system provides. Anyone with a Microsoft LiveID can log into the Microsoft system and start creating TAGs.
- Microsoft TAG Admin
From the administrative interface, the user can select a variety of ways to render and download the TAG image. The options cover both color and greyscale renderings as well as a variety of raster and vector image formats.
The Microsoft system allows for a variety of TAG types. The most common are dialer (used to tell the phone to dial a certain number), vCard (used to store a contact entry to be used as a digital business card) and the URL. The URL tag provides the system builder with the most power. From within the Microsoft interface the user can assign the tag to target any URL. This allows for a large amount of customization for the system designer as well as the ability to make modifications as needed as the system evolves (without having to reprint the TAGs themselves). Within that URL Microsoft exposes a token that allows that particular device to be uniquely identified within this system.
Editing Microsoft TAG details
Microsoft has included privacy controls which allow the device to be uniquely identified only within a single Tag account. This means that different organizations cannot share or sell identifiable information to other organizations using the identifier defined within the TAG system. More information about the Microsoft TAG system can be found at their site at: http://tag.microsoft.com.
Landing Page Management System
Once the user scans a tag, and the Tag management system has registered it, the user needs to be directed to a location. This is where Force 5’s Landing Page Management system comes into play. In order for the tag to be interesting and interactive for the end user, there has to be good content on the “other end” of it. This can be a webpage, video, or any other type of media. Force 5 recommended that Starcraft offer a variety of options available to the customer. They also suggested that when a user scans the tag, that they be given the opportunity to view the media (a video hosted on the Smoker YouTube channel), share the media page (via email), click a link to be able to request more information, and click a link to request the location of the nearest dealer. In order to support this functionality, Force 5 created a dynamic, database driven, system to provide landing pages depending on the tag that was scanned, and the options selected to show the viewer for that tag.
BoaTAG™ Landing Page
When a TAG is set up within the barcode management system, the URL field of that tag points to a single landing page. That page URL contains the tag “ID” and the unique device ID, as query string parameters. From that information a landing page is built and rendered for the user on their mobile device.
The selected information provided to the user is easily understood. The user can view the video (optionally in full screen mode) as well as select the operations like sharing and requesting more information. Additional “buttons” are easily added from within the administrative interface, as they are simply database records tied to that tag “ID.”
The Landing Page Management system also includes more detailed analytic information that is not provided by the 2d barcode system. The unique identifier is stored and associated data can then be reported on based on the unique ID or in aggregate.
BoaTAG™ Heat Map
Reporting and Analytics
Now that customers have been scanning the tag and data has been collected, how do you know if your campaign has been a success and how much “traffic” has been generated? This is where the reporting side of the system shines. Both the 2d Barcode Management system from Microsoft as well as Force 5’s Landing Page Management system includes information that can be used to measure success. Microsoft has provided several reports with their TAG system. These reports include the scan “hit counts,” both by day and category defined within the system. It also includes a “Heat Map” that can report to the campaign administrator where, geographically, the most number of scans have been accessed.
BoaTAG™ Scan Chart
The Landing Page Management system includes other metrics as well. Since the customer is simply accessing a webpage, the full suite of web analytic tools is at the system designer’s disposal. This allows reports based on device types and unique identifier to be generated. For example, the administrator can see which users are the most active in the system, what devices they should target, as well as the click rates for the additional “buttons” on the landing page.
QR codes and other scan-able tags are here to stay- at least for a while. Better, faster types of interactive codes are on their way. Digital invisible watermarks for ads and digital audio tags are being developed as you read this. All of these will provide a rich media experience for the viewer and allow the advertiser to obtain better viewer metrics. Tags are enhancements to the experience. The key is to formulate workable marketing solutions using these tools. We at Force 5 would love to help you achieve your vision. For more information, visit www.discoverforce5.com, and fill out the contact form. We would love to hear from you.
Google Chrome OS CR-48 First Impressions
Friday, January 28th, 2011 by Christian MattixThe day before yesterday I got home from work and was greeted by a plain brown box, correctly addressed to me, on my front porch. I thought this was rather curious, as I had not ordered anything. I brought the box in from the cold (it was about 12 degrees outside). My kids were with me and they were just as curious as I was, asking “What did you order?” “Nothing that I’m aware of,” I answered, but it was certainly addressed to me. The return address didn’t have a company or name on it, just an address. Well, since it did have my name on it, I opened it, to be greeted by another box, this one less plain.
Google ChromeOS CR-48 packaging
Now I was incredibly curious. As you can see, the box has no brand, label, or even words. At this point, my curiosity was completely piqued. After taking that box out, I notice the back of it has the “Lithium-Ion” battery warning on it. And judging from the shape and the weight I though, “ok, is this a laptop?”
It is indeed. It seems that I was one of the people chosen to take part in the Google ChromeOS Pilot program. I opened the “mouse box” to find a “shiny” new Google CR-48 Chrome OS Notebook. Now this was an incredibly surprise to me. I watched the announcement of the pilot program back in December as it was happening. As soon as they announced that the website was up to sign up, I did, and then didn’t think about it again. I figured I was among the 32897298346734678346 other people to sign up for the same program. Well much to my surprise, I was chosen to take part. (Maybe it was because my previous blog post about using Chrome, but I doubt it). I un-boxed the notebook, and followed the (very brief) instructions on how to get started, and within 5 minutes, I was online, connected to my wireless network and able to have access to the web.
Google ChromeOS CR-48
I have now been using the notebook for a couple of days. I would like to have been able to use it more fully for my work as well as entertainment. Unfortunately, not all of my work translates well to a device like this. There are a few things to keep in mind with this computer.
First, EVERYTHING is based in the Cloud. In order for this device to function it needs to have a network connection. On first thought, this seems like a significant limitation, but with the fact that Wi-Fi is becoming more and more ubiquitous (you can get wireless access anyplace from your Starbucks, to McDonalds, to even my kids’ school now), it is much less of a problem than you would think. And for those times that you are not within range of an access point, and you NEED to get online, Google has thrown in 100MB/Month of Verizon Wireless 3G access for the first two years. That isn’t a ton of data, but if you need to get your email, or find directions, it is enough for a casual user. If you need more than that, then there are other options to purchase more data.
Second, EVERYTHING is based in the Cloud. This means no local storage. No flash drives. No CD drives. No software installs. Everything comes from the web. Software is installed via the Chrome Web Store. From there you can install a variety of apps, from things that you would expect like Google Docs, to utilities like Quick Note, to HTML5 based games. There are even some development tools, such as PHPanywhere (a completely cloud based PHP development environment that has support for in browser FTP). The user experience of installing the apps is great. There is very little to do other than just click “install” within the store. There are not a ton of apps built for ChromeOS yet, but I can imagine the quantity rapidly increasing as the pilot program continues. There is one thing that I don’t like about this environment: printing. In order to print from the device you have to use the Google Cloud-Print service. While the idea sounds good (the ability to print from any device, any place, to your printer) it just doesn’t seem very elegant. I don’t necessarily like the idea of having to send my print jobs to the internet in order to print to a printer that is 2 feet away from me, and connected to the same network as my notebook. This may be more of an “in my head” complaint, however, as I have net had to need to print anything.
The notebook hardware has a very solid feel to it. It doesn’t feel “chincy” or “Plasticy” like some inexpensive devices feel. The keyboard has very good “action”. You will notice that there are some changes to the “normal” keyboard though. Along the top, where the function (“F”) keys normally are, there are operation keys.
Also, instead of the Caps-Lock key, there is the the “Search” key. This opens up a new tab and puts focus on the “Magic Bar” (the address bar that also acts as a search box).
There is 1 VGA port, for connecting external monitors/projectors, 1 USB port (primarily for external mice), 1 headphone jack, 1 SD Memory card slot (for uploading files to the Cloud), and the power adapter connector. Also embedded in the display bezel is a webcam and microphone.
I have yet to fully test the battery life, but others have reported that the battery life is about 8 hours.
I plan on continuing to give my impressions of both the device and the software on it as I use it for my own and Force 5 work. Check back later for more!
Switching to Chrome or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Ads
Friday, January 21st, 2011 by Christian MattixA few weeks ago I was reading the usual list of technology sites and came across an interesting debate on how Microsoft is planning to embed ad blocking technology into its browser, while Google and Mozilla will not. The items that were discussed got be thinking about what I use and how that relates to the Web as a whole.
I have been using ad-blocking software since it because available. According my my perception it sped up my browsing experience, and improved my security. (Not to mention I didn’t have to see a million ads asking me to punch a monkey or lower my mortgage interest rate). To me this was great! It was like being on a freeway or limited access highway: I didn’t have to worry about interruptions, or other people getting in the way of my car causing an accident. However, I didn’t think about one thing: LOTS of the websites that I rely on as a developer for technical resources, tools or documentation rely on ad revenue for operations. This is especially true for open source software.
Now I use many tools and reference sites while I am working and I started thinking: what if they went away? Would I be willing to “subscribe” to the site? What is the value of the information? Those questions, as well as the release of the new-er versions of Chrome led me to the decision to switch to Chrome as my primary instrument for browsing the web.
This took a few days to get used to, as one can imagine. Some of the sites that I go to regularly suddenly got a lot more “noisy”. I had to deal with a few pop-under ads (which I hate). I have had to learn to deal with the “creepy” factor of getting custom ads delivered to me across multiple sites based on my browsing history or email contents. Overall, however, my “web” experience has not been significantly hindered.
Now I do still use AdBlocking software when I am doing research into some of the more “grey” areas of the internet (security research, etc), but overall for 90% of my web usage now, I am free and open to be marketed to. In many ways it has been beneficial, as I am getting informed of products or services that I may actually be interested in.
All in all, I’m now a Chrome user. Of course, we at Force 5, design our solutions to be used by all technologies, but for me personally I’m enjoying the speed and other features that Chrome gives me.
Top 5 Game Changing Tech Stories of 2010
Friday, January 7th, 2011 by Nevin McElwrath2010 was a big year for the tech industry. New markets became relevant, Facebook reminded us no one is anonymous, web technologies were given a second look, and TV was rethought.
5. Old Spice “I’m On A Horse” campaign finds a new way to promote.
The campaign had legs from the beginning. Remember this?
And this ..
Old Spice later used social media sites like Twitter and YouTube to communicate with fans and respond with quick witted and hilarious responses from questions asked on Twitter.
4. Apple ignores Flash With It’s iPad
Why? Apple’s reasoning is they were not pleased with the stability and performance of Flash as a browser plugin. The new HTML5 spec that is currently being ratified provides some overlap to Flash. While I somewhat agree with Apple and it’s stance against Flash on the web, Flash still has it’s place – just not where we are used to it living. I dive a little deeper in my blog post from earlier in 2010, “Adobe’s Flash in the Pan?”.
3. Success of AppleTV, Roku, Netflix, XBox Live and GoogleTV show hopes of a new “Cable Killer” market.
A la carte television may be the wave of the next few years. Content providers still have to jump on board. Top television network executives are slow to jump on what they say is just another trend. Increasing success of these new Internet TV boxes show what consumers are hungry for. An interesting wrench we may see in 2011; the conflict between ISPs that are also cable providers. Ahem, Comcast,Time Warner, DirectTV and Dish.
2. Facebook’s Privacy Woes Bring Privacy Into The Spotlight
Facebook’s “opt-in” approach to privacy struck a nerve with the paranoid. Rightly so, Facebook makes more money by sharing more information with advertisers for targeted ads. It is beginning to be a tug-of-war between a large percentage of users and Facebook’s own business model. A study found that 60% of Facebook users were thinking about quitting the service. – IT security firm, Sophos PC World Article – May 2010 2011 should show this struggle continue.
1. Emerging Tablet market grows wings – and soars
Apple didn’t invent the market, but they made it relevant. Apple’s own sales estimates were 10 million units in 2010. I don’t think they were far off. Sales numbers have not been released quite yet but I expect close to 10-12 million. The iPad gained a ton of ground early in the tablet race but more competition is coming. Watch next year’s CES in January 2011 for a ton of new tablets to make their appearance as well.
How-To: Use Wget to Automate the Karamasoft UltimateSearch Indexing Process for Your Website
Wednesday, January 5th, 2011 by Christian MattixAlmost every modern website has a “search my site” module of some sort added to it. In this How-To I’m going to explain how to set up Karamasoft UltimateSearch to automatically rebuild its index on a repeating scheduled basis in a Microsoft Windows hosted environment.
First, you will need to obtain the UltimateSearch software from the Karamasoft site, found at: http://www.karamasoft.com/UltimateSearch/Features.aspx. Follow the directions provided to get the tool installed into your particular hosting environment. For this How-To I’m going to assume that you have a website www.example.com that you have the tool installed in. The process for starting the indexing process is as simple as accessing a particular webpage on your site and passing it a particular operation code in the query string. To start the full indexing process for our example site you would navigate to:
http://www.example.com/UltimateSearchInclude/Admin/UltimateSearch.admin.aspx?cmd=IndexFull
We want to be able to call this process via a script, so we will need something lightweight and easily used from within a scripting language. A perfect tool for this is the Open Source GNU Wget utility. From the GNU Wget site:
GNU Wget is a free software package for retrieving files using HTTP, HTTPS and FTP, the most widely-used Internet protocols. It is a non-interactive commandline tool, so it may easily be called from scripts, cron jobs, terminals without X-Windows support, etc.
Download and install the GNU Wget utility. The Windows port can be downloaded from http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/wget.htm. Download the setup program, follow the setup wizard, and install the utility to your server. After the installation process has completed, add the directory that you installed wget.exe into to the PATH environment variable.
Once you have UltimateSearch and Wget installed on your server you are now ready to set up the indexing job. In order to have the site be indexed based on a schedule, the admin link needs to be visited on a scheduled basis. In order to do this, we are going to use the Wget utility that we just downloaded in a batch file. That batch file will then be called as a scheduled task by Windows.
The batch file that I created is named
USearchIndexTask.bat. In it is the following:@echo off wget -O - http://www.example.com/UltimateSearchInclude/Admin/UltimageSearch.admin.aspx?cmd=IndexIncremental > nul 2> nul
I have saved this file in
c:\Program Files\Force5\USearchIndexTask.bat. You can save it where-ever it makes the most sense in your hosting environment.Once the batch file is saved, then you need to create a scheduled task to run the batch file. In our environment I used Windows Task Scheduler to create the task. Use that tool to create a task to run the
USearchIndexTask.batfile. Choose a frequency that makes sense for your environment, based on the quantity of changes for the site. If there are very few changes made on a daily bases, then having it run once a day at midnight is an appropriate setting.Manually run the scheduled task to verify that it completed successfully, and then go get lunch. You are done!
To see more bright ideas from the Left and Right brains of Force5, check out the rest of our blog as well as our work!
How Digital Content Consumption is Shaping Tech Innovation
Tuesday, December 28th, 2010 by Nevin McElwrathOur Digital Crossroads
Over the past few years, we’ve seen a shift from what we know as your typical computer. A few years ago (heck all the way back to the Apple II), computers, more or less, took the same form; A monitor, CPU, with a mouse and keyboard. Recently, with the onslaught of touch screen smartphones, we’ve seen a convergence of computers and mobile phones. This blurs the all-to-familiar lines, effectively creating a separate market for each. How we are consuming content is changing just as much.
The Digital Content Road We’ve Travelled
It started when the web became (semi)mainstream back in the late 90’s. A new form of ever-changing content was available and quickly caught on. People were consuming content in a whole different way. But it was the Wild West, there were very little standards to utilize. Everyone was now a legitimate content creator on the world wide web. But the only way for people to consume this new content was either sitting in front of a desktop or with a wired connection to a laptop. It wasn’t a solution that was convenient or on their terms.
Then came the introduction of wireless routers. This was just a taste of freedom, a “taste maker” if you will. It offered people the ability to consume content more on their terms, but not completely. Enough to make them hungry for more.The latest hurdle comes in the form of legislation threatening Net Neutrality, letting companies price and tier the internet depending on your location and sites you visit. While the bill is worded carefully to seemingly close a lot of holes, it opens plenty more loopholes for companies to take advantage of. A few responses to the bill: Steve Wozniak’s Response to the FCC. Al Franken’s declaration to not support new FCC bill.
Importance of an Open and Mobile Internet
Being connected abroad is much more important today than it used to be. What you can do with that connection is changing every day. New markets are emerging and new content and services are taking different forms to accommodate. Innovation is taking over with the freedom to create in a wider space.
Where Are We Headed?
We are beginning to see the niche split already. Down the road, smart phones, tablets and desktop computers will separate their niches even more, to what degree is debatable. Clearly defined niches will appear: one more for content creation, the other for content consumption.
Current Trends – Intimacy
Current trends can be telling as well. We are seeing much more intimate ways of interacting with content. We can now touch our content and have it recognize us when we step in front of our television. Some great touch interfaces come in the form of Apple iPhones & iPads, Motorola Droid X, HTC Evo, etc. This year Microsoft responded to the Wii’s success with Kinect, a camera accessory for it’s Xbox that tracks your movements and allows for interactions based on body movement.During the D8 conference this past summer, Steve Jobs defined PCs as trucks, relating the PC industry to the Auto industry. “All cars were trucks because that’s what you needed on the farm,” he said. Now trucks are one in 25 to 30 vehicles sold, he said. “PCs are going to be like trucks. They will still be around.” He added, “This transformation is going to make some people uneasy.”
Proof of Influence
How we consume our content and it’s influence can be seen in recent events. Emerging markets, market shifts, and disappearing markets are proof that change is happening. An example of an emerging market can be seen in Apple’s iPad. The increase in ebook and e-reader sales now encompasses 15% of total book sales can be viewed as shifting markets. The slowly dying netbooks industry shows the overlapping devices tend to fall in the canyon first as the markets separate.
Midst of Change
There’s no doubt that we’re in a period of change in how we consume our content. Factors in the tech industry that influence change can be ever changing. One thing is for sure, consumers have the end say with their wallets. As dedicated content creators in this space, Force 5 will be watching closely.
