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Apple posts tools for building TuneKit iTunes LPs and Extras - Interesting read for those in media business

Apple posts tools for building TuneKit iTunes LPs and Extras

Apple has taken iTunes LP and Extras public, encouraging independent developers to begin work on interactive digital content for distribution in iTunes starting early next year. The new move signals a big move in taking on Adobe Flash, pushing the adoption of web standards, and creating an new business model for content that could impact how the company's forthcoming tablet is sold and used.

Fears that Apple would reserve iTunes LP solely for big music labels were alleviated by the debut of new templates and development guides to help anyone create the new digital interactive material. Apple is publishing the new information on its iTunes website, which notes that "Automatic, electronic submission of your iTunes LP or Extra is scheduled for the first quarter of 2010. Until then, the submission process is manual and limited. Please contact your label or studio rep for details and consideration. An existing iTunes contract is required. Your iTunes LP or iTunes Extras will be reviewed by the iTunes team for appropriateness of content and for technical quality."

Using the supplied templates and how-to guide, anyone can create interactive content that can be played back by iTunes 9 or Apple TV, including links to listen to album songs and view lyrics, liner notes, photos and videos (such as artist interviews). The virtually identical iTunes Extras format is designed to present a movie with interactive menus, bonus content, and chapter navigation, similar to those supplied by DVD or Blu-ray authors.

As AppleInsider was first to report, Apple's new interactive content formats are entirely open and based on web standards. Essentially, they're self contained websites that use special scripts and links within iTunes to present content from the user's library, along with bonus content, animated effects, and visualizations that can play along with the music. Apple refers to its JavaScript package of animations, controllers and other scripts as TuneKit.

The interactive content is linked to iTunes downloads, and is offered through iTunes to sweeten the deal when users buy albums or movies. Once Apple automates the upload process, any artist with an iTunes contract (or represented by a label associated with iTunes) will be able to submit the interactive content to enhance their music or video content. The iTunes LP and Extras formats can also link to other related material available for sale in iTunes.

ITLP and ITE files

The interactive packages are delivered as a folder of content which on Mac OS X appears to be a file (it can be opened up in the Finder by right clicking and choosing "show package contents"). Windows presents the package as a folder, as that platform has no concept of bundles (folders that look and act like a discrete file).

Within the iTunes LP or iTunes Extra bundle are folders of audio, video, and image files, as well as a standard index.html file that serves as its home page. The bundle also includes two files generated by the iTunes store during purchase: a standard jpeg or png file called iTunesArtwork that serves as an icon for the bundle, and iTunesMetadata.plist, which provides a listing of the bundle's description, genre, artist and XID mappings that iTunes uses to associate the interactive content to other media in the user's iTunes library.

A separate bundle file, manifest.xml, lists all the external content the bundle references, and describes its version number and platforms it is compatible with. This indicates that the format was designed to be extended in the future, with provisions to accommodate new types of devices. AppleInsider first predicted a tweak to make the content play on AppleTV, which was delivered within about a month of the format's release as part of Apple TV 3.0. It is also expected that the new format will be adapted to allow playback on a new tablet device released in the first half of next year.

Views, Controllers and CSS: a clean format for interactivity

Also within the package are folders of views, which represent all of the HTML pages that may be presented. Each view has a corresponding controller, which includes all of the action elements of each page as well as the navigation and animated transitions that play between page views. A folder of CSS files define the positioning of elements in each view, including buttons, images, blocks of text, and interactive elements and animations.

The regimented format of the iTunes LP and Extras packages makes it easy to create content that is virtually unlimited creatively, but which is also easy to author (particularly for anyone with even a basic background in web development) and simple to display. The new formats compete directly against convoluted DVD authoring and poorly performing Adobe Flash content. Rather than presenting a similar default structure of folders, the Flash format allows developers to create messy animation files that require lots of processing power.

Flash loads all of the individual content files (graphics and videos) into a single binary file, complicating delivery and de-optimizing performance, and mixes together content, presentation, and code. While minor Flash animations run acceptably on powerful PCs, they don't run well on platforms outside of Windows (the only platform Adobe has optimized its Flash runtime) and are particularly problematic on mobile devices where processor performance and battery life are very limited.

A business model for the web

Apple's new iTunes formats signal an intention to create an entirely new business of selling interactive content, in addition to the music, TV and movie, and iPhone mobile software that the company has incrementally built into a series of online market empires. Rather than just being a way to enhance album and movie sales, Apple's recent talks with newspaper and magazine publishers indicate that the interactive iTunes formats are really designed to allow traditional print publishers to enter the digital age with a business model that is more substantial than the web's current adware/spyware model, where users's preferences are tracked with cookies and relevant ads are shown in an effort to monetize content.

The free web, supported entirely by advertising, has revolutionized the flow of information but has devastated traditional journalism by giving uniformed bloggers and astroturfing advertising campaigns an equal presence next to legitimate news sources, erasing any sense of journalistic integrity and reputation. It has also enabled widespread content theft, where news and information published by a reputable source at significant cost can be freely plagiarized by anonymous individuals who then get money from their own adjacent ad placements on their "splogs" or spam blogs, something that ad marketers like Google have quietly benefitted from and thus have made little effort to eradicate.

Apple's simple interactive content formats, paired with its very popular iTunes delivery system, is guaranteed to create a real market for web content independent from contextual advertising. This will enable the company to do an end run around Google's ad empire and Microsoft's belated efforts to copy Google, and offer content producers such as newspapers, book publishers, magazine editors, and other vendors of proprietary information a marketplace where they can sell their content directly to consumers, just as Apple provided a functional market to music labels, movie studios, and mobile software developers.

This new strategy appears to be the linchpin that will make Apple's forthcoming tablet a viable product, as consumers will be buying it not just to surf the ad-sponsored web, but also to navigate a new generation of interactive, animated digital content: newspapers and magazines that incorporate video and voice and hyperlinks just like the web, but without ads. Similar to premium TV channels, this will result in a market for premium content as an alternative to the puerile garbage that fills most of the space between commercials on free TV channels and the web.

By selling access to this professionally-created premium content to a large target audience, publishers will be able to charge very little per issue but still make sustainable profits, something that has been completely illusive on the web as traditional print publishers have failed to find web users interested in subscribing to their content, and as the scant revenues from ad placement evaporate as users find out how to block ads or simply ignore them. Additionally, as Google has monopolized the web ad market, the value of online advertising to content producers has plummeted.

Pulling off the futuristic digital newspaper has long remained a pipe dream, as traditional print publishers faced an uphill effort to convince readers to trade paper for far more expensive digital readers. Apple has the unique capacity to pull this off because of its existing iTunes business in selling high volumes of content via micropayments, combined with its unique position as the maker of the top selling iPod and iPhone and the Mac platform. Apple has attracted a loyal audience of customers who actually pay for content, in stark contrast to the torrent music and movie scene supported by adware, the hobbyist mobile software community, and the ad-supported web.

Rival content formats being promoted by Adobe, Amazon, Microsoft, and by groups of traditional publishers themselves all either rely upon ads to sell the content, or lack a hardware reader, or lack an online store to sell content, or lack the technology to deliver colorful, interactive, animated multimedia content.

Daniel Eran Dilger is the author of "Snow Leopard Server (Developer Reference)," a new book from Wiley available now.

via appleinsider.com

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My company laptop was upgraded to Office 2007 yesterday. Today I read about Office 2010 and Outlook 2010.

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Google outlines Chrome OS, browser is OS, since you spend 90% of your time in your browser. Do you agree?

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Innovation Is Back, Says Accenture—Or Is it? - BusinessWeek #yam #in

Innovation Is Back, Says Accenture—Or Is it?

Posted by: Michael Arndt on November 11

Nearly two years after the U.S. tumbled into a recession, business is starting to think about ways to grow again. And for many, this means spending more money on innovation, says a new study from Accenture. In a survey of 630 execs in the U.S. and the U.K., 48% said their companies had upped their innovation budgets from six months ago. A third said innovation outlays were flat.

There’s a gray lining in these numbers: One in every five companies is still cutting spending on the development of new products or services.

And there are other findings that suggest that companies really haven’t kicked their recession habits. While new products or services have the biggest potential to generate sales and profit, 74% of the respondents told Accenture that their companies were pursuing incremental advances, like line extensions. (How many varieties of Coca-Cola will we really drink?) Along the same lines, 66% said their companies were more interested in short-term gains than long-term ones. (Same question.)

In the U.S., at least, companies may not be getting better at innovation, either. Accenture said 73% of American respondents said their employers didn’t learn from mistakes. (In the U.K., only 30% were such slow learners.) Respondents blamed failed innovation mostly on inability to meet customer needs, being late to market, and incorrect pricing.

What’s going on at your companies? Are you seeing any lift in innovation allocations?

via businessweek.com

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When It Comes To iPhone In-App Purchases, Games, Social Networking, And Books Rule

Erick Schonfeld on November 10, 2009

Now that in-app purchasing for free apps has been live for a few weeks in the iTunes App Store, and Apple is now ranking the top-grossing apps, whether they start out as free or paid, we have some initial data on what kinds of apps are pulling in the most money from in-app purchases. (In-app purchases allow apps to offer a free version and then make money by requiring consumers to pay for additional features or content). Today, Distimo put out a report (download it here) which breaks down the top 40 grossing in-app purchasing titles by category (see chart below). Games, social networking, and book apps are doing the best job upselling consumers from free apps to paid enhancements. Music, news, and finance apps, not so much.

Games top the rankings of these best performing apps, with ngmoco’s Eliminate Pro (iTunes link) currently the No. 8 top-grossing app, validating ngmoco’s shift from a paid to freemium model. Mafia Wars (iTunes link) is another example. Seven of the top 40 grossing apps with in-app purchasing are games.

After games, social networking apps such as iRose (iTunes link), TweetPush (iTunes link), and Boxcar (iTunes link) are doing the best job convincing users to pay up after they download the free versions. Social networking apps take six of the top 40. Then comes books, with four of the top 40, including Comics (iTunes link)

It seems that apps which are addictive (like games) persistent (like social communications apps), or lengthy and easy to sample (like books) are doing the best with in-app purchases. It trickles down after that. There is one music app in the top performing apps—RJDJ (iTunes link), one news app, one finance app, and so on. People just don’t want to pay for songs, news, or stock quotes.

The Distimo report also compares the average price for the top 100 mobile apps in the iTunes App Store, the Android Market and the Blackberry App World. The Average price of an app in iTunes is the cheapest at $3.42, followed by Android at $4.30, and Blackberry Apps at $5.61. With more than 10 times as many apps as any of the other app stores, all that competition and proliferation of $0.99 apps probably explains why iTunes apps are the cheapest, even among the top 100. Also, Blackberry apps all have a minimum price of $2.99. Research in Motion just announced that developers will be able to include in-app transactions next year. It doesn’t appear that there is any official way to include in-app transactions in Android apps yet.

via techcrunch.com

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Blackberry Developer Conference: It's All about the Apps

Blackberry Developer Conference: It's All about the Apps

Written by Sarah Perez / November 10, 2009 7:16 AM / 0 Comments

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At yesterday's Blackberry Developer Conference, several companies announced major updates to their applications and services designed for Blackberry smartphones. From Blackberry maker Research in Motion (RIM) came new geolocation, advertising and push services in addition to other developer tools. Meanwhile, companies like Loopt, eBay, Xobni, and others took the opportunity to show off their latest Blackberry applications as well.

RIM Woos Developers

With all the news from the event, one thing was clear: RIM desperately wants developers to build for Blackberry and is now actively enticing them with a slew of new offerings designed to win them over.

One of the biggest announcements made yesterday involved the launch of new APIs (application programming interfaces) for third-party developers. The APIs offered include a new advertising service, a payments service, location services, and the general availability of Blackberry's own Push service, which had never before been made available to outside developers. What this means is that developers now have the tools to build applications that rival those already available on many other smartphones today, most notably, the iPhone. In some cases, the Blackberry APIs even offer something the iPhone doesn't such as is the case with the payments service which allows you to pay for apps on your next mobile phone bill.

The location services include a geo-location API that will use cell tower triangulation as a backup for when GPS fails, making location-based applications more reliable. There are also services for determining your phone's location on a map and another that helps estimate travel time for driving directions. It's obvious to see how these types of services could help build new and useful mobile applications for the Blackberry.

Also revealed was the new Blackberry Advertising Service, an offering designed to help developers generate revenue from their mobile applications. Through partnerships with ad networks, developers can easily integrate mobile advertising within their apps and track the ad's effectiveness with an included analytics package. It's even possible for these ads to access the phone's core features. For example, you'll be able to initiate a phone call from an ad or add a calendar entry from an ad. That's an innovation that many other mobile handhelds are not yet offering. These types of interactions should have a clear appeal to the many business-minded corporate Blackberry users who are often more interested in getting things done than they are with playing mindless games.

That being said, the game-playing crowd isn't being ignored either. Also announced was support for OpenGL ES, a graphics API for 3D games. While this doesn't quite put the Blackberry on par with what's available for iPhone, it's a move that's designed to keep Blackberry at least somewhat competitive in the field of mobile gaming.

Other announcements included new support for mobile developers looking to build applications with the languages and tools they already know and use. Java developers will get a new GUI builder that lets them create mobile interfaces using a WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) editor with drag-and-drop capabilities. Adobe developers will be able to use the company's Flash Platform technology and Adobe Creative Suite tools to build rich, mobile apps as well. This is another area where Apple falls short - Flash still doesn't work on the iPhone. Instead Flash developers have to use special Adobe software to convert apps written in Flash to a format that's iPhone-compatible. Also, designers can now use Adobe Photoshop and Dreamweaver to build both themes and widgets using the new Blackberry Theme Studio 5.0.

Apps, Apps, Apps!

In addition to the RIM-specific announcements, a number of companies also used the Developer Conference as the launching pad for new Blackberry applications and related announcements.

Ebay, for example, unveiled a brand-new mobile app that lets you search for items, view descriptions and photos, bid, watch items, and more. It will also tap into Blackberry's now open Push services API to deliver real-time alerts as to when you're outbid on an auction. Considering that the company has already generated $400 million this year using eBay's iPhone application, this new Blackberry app should be a big hit among mobile users when it launches next month.

The popular location-based social networking service called Loopt also revealed a major update for Blackberry which includes something the iPhone can't offer due to the nature of the device: it runs in the background to continually update your location in real-time. This is one of the iPhone's biggest flaws according to critics, since so many mobile applications take advantage of always-on connectivity to track your location for the benefit of specific mobile apps. In Loopt's case, the app knows where you are in order to show you nearby friends and local businesses which you can rate. It even offers mobile coupons for the retailers and restaurants in your vicinity.

Finally, Xobni, the Outlook email search plugin that discovers social connections in your inbox, revealed their new Blackberry application, too. As with the desktop software, Xobni for Blackberry will let you find contacts in your address book quickly using Xobni Rank technology which returns results ranked based on frequency and freshness of your communication. The application will be made available sometime early next year.

The Blackberry Developer Conference continues until Thursday, so stay tuned for even more news over the coming days.

via readwriteweb.com

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Emerce - Business nieuws: Uitgevers hanteren ander prijsbeleid per app-winkel

Uitgevers hanteren ander prijsbeleid per app-winkel

10 november 2009 16:00 - Door Jannemiek Starkenburg   Ontwikkelaars die mobiele applicaties uitgeven, hanteren in de verschillende downloadwinkels aparte prijzen. BlackBerry-gebruikers zijn over het gemiddeld genomen duurder uit dan iPhone-bellers. Dezelfde applicaties krijgen in de BlackBerry App World een hoger prijskaartje dan in Apple's App Store. De prijzen voor de applicaties in Google's Android Market zijn minder duur dan de tegenhanger bij de BlackBerry, maar duurder dan dezelfde applicatie in de App Store. Dat blijkt uit een maandelijks onderzoeksrapport van Distimo over de mobiele downlaodmarkt. De mobiele softwareprogrammaatjes in BlackBerry's downloadwinkel moeten minimaal 2,99 dollar kosten. Toch is de hogere prijs niet alleen aan deze voorwaarde te danken. Gekeken naar verschillende voorbeelden blijkt dat dezelfde applicaties in verschillende downloadwinkels vaak andere prijzen meekrijgen. Het grootste verschil is te zien bij IM+ voor Skype van SHAPE Services. In de App Store kost deze applicatie 4,99 dollar, in de App World 29,99 dollar. De gemiddelde prijs van de 100 hoogst genoteerde applicaties per dag kwam de afgelopen maand uit op 5,33 voor de BlackBerry en 2,50 dollar voor de iPhone.  Voor Google Android was dit 3,26 dollar. De prijzen van alle applicaties in de winkel van BlackBerry zijn sinds half oktober met 9,6 procent gestegen van gemiddeld 5,11 naar 5,60 dollar. Prijzen in de downloadwinkels van Apple en Android bleven nagenoeg gelijk.

via emerce.nl

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Open Source CMS market share report 2009

Open Source CMS market share report 2009

The 2009 Open Source CMS market share report was released a couple of weeks ago. The report concludes that WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal maintain a large lead on the rest of the pack, and that they are the dominant players in the market.

Despite the rather lengthy nature of the survey, more than 600 persons completed the question set. The demographic data gathered shows the survey group to be primarily composed of senior IT professionals working for smaller organizations of 1 to 5 people. More than 80% of the participants had heard about Joomla!, Wordpress and Drupal, though most of them were more familiar with Wordpress and Joomla!.

© 2009 Open Source CMS market share report by Water & Stone and CMSWire.

Last year’s report found little to differentiate the three systems, at least in terms of market share. This year it appears that Joomla! gained a lot of market share relative to WordPress and Drupal. For example, the report shows that Joomla! has more books in print than Drupal or WordPress, and that Joomla! is used more than WordPress and Drupal -- at least by the participants in the survey. The results also show that Drupal has the highest abandonment rate of the three, that is, the rate at which systems are tried, then abandoned in favor of another system. The survey concludes that while the race is far from won, it does seem like Joomla! is starting to take the leadership position. On the flip side, the survey participants seems to more positive about Wordpress and Drupal, than they are about Joomla!. All things combined, the data suggest we should be able to win over many users if we improve the Drupal experience.

© 2009 Open Source CMS market share report by Water & Stone and CMSWire.

All in all an interesting report that matches my perspective on the market. It is great to see Drupal come out strongly, but it also suggests that we have a lot of work to do. I'm very bullish about Drupal's future -- I think Drupal 7 can change the game for Drupal, especially combined with other successes like Whitehouse.gov using Drupal, Drupal being promoted to Gartner's 'visionaries' quadrant, as well as important initiatives as the Drupal.org redesign, Drupal Gardens, Buzzr and more. Exciting times!

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Will Microsoft become the General Motors of software? Does Windows equal Opel?

Will Microsoft become the General Motors of software?

November 6, 2009 9:01 AM

It has near-monopoly status and nimble, disruptive competitors. We’ve seen this movie before.

By Jay R. Galbraith, president and founder, Galbraith Management Consultants

Galbraith questions Microsoft's resolve to change. Image: Galbraith Management

The more I learn about the current situation in software, the more Microsoft’s position seems to mirror General Motors’ position in the auto industry a few decades ago. Like Microsoft (MSFT) today, GM was an icon in its industry, held a quasi-monopoly, produced eye-popping profits and was often distracted by antitrust lawsuits. When a company experiences this kind of environment over a couple of decades, it eventually loses its competitiveness. Of course, Microsoft would vigorously deny any such comparison. The top executives in Redmond, Wash., claim to be on top of the trends in the industry. They are confident they can develop all the software they will need to be competitive.

My concern is not with the leadership of Microsoft; I am sure Ray Ozzie, the chief technical officer, will stay on the cutting edge of the technology. But its 15,000 to 20,000 middle managers have never been through a downturn (assuming they’ve worked only at Microsoft). And to me, you are not a real company until you have been through a downturn. Growth and high margins are very good at covering up a company’s bad habits and unresolved issues. When a downturn hits, all of the flaws come to the surface and the company purges itself of its bad practices. A  3% decline in sales in 2008 – Microsoft’s first ever – during the worst recession in decades will not wake up Microsoft. The bad habits will persist.

Microsoft’s Options

The best thing that could happen to Microsoft would be successes by Apple (AAPL) or Google (GOOG) that cause a significant loss of sales and market share. The shock would create a sense of urgency and cause the leaders to clean house. The worst thing that could happen is a success with Windows 7, which would reinforce management’s focus on the desktop. Then, as customers move away from the desktop to smartphones and other devices, market share will decline. But if share declines slowly, maybe a point or two a year, the drop will not be enough to overcome the pride that comes with high margins and high profits. Over time, the desktop mafia will experience a shift from pride to hubris. Welcome to the General Motors scenario.

I am not concerned about Microsoft developing the software. They always have. My question is whether they will develop the new business models. As computing moves away from the desktop and onto small mobile devices, the industry moves away from Microsoft’s strengths. Consumers are driving computing now, though, and customer-centricity is not a Microsoft competence. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, will have to give a lot of his famously YouTube-worthy stage performances to convert the middle managers who are currently enjoying monopoly profits.

Microsoft’s Path Ahead

Microsoft also suffers from the incumbent’s curse during a technological transition. The curse is well described in Clayton Christensen’s research. Cloud computing, in which software and other applications are housed in a central location and delivered over networks to end users, could lead to a shift away from desktop-based computing and from complicated operating systems. As Microsoft adapts to it, will it promote cloud computing or protect Windows? Will the team leading Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing business have the freedom to cannibalize the desktop? Or will it be integrated into Windows, where the desktop mafia will slow, modify and dilute the efforts to convert to a new business model?

The General Motors scenario does not have to happen. Ballmer can focus inward on transforming the desktop mafia to the new computing paradigm. Or, better yet, appoint a hands-on, change-experienced chief operating officer who can do it with him.

Galbraith is founder and president of Galbraith Management Consultants, an international consulting firm that specializes in solving strategy and organizational design challenges.

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