Journal 3, May 31

http://beta.technologyreview.com/computing/22705/page1/
Plastic Logic, a company based in the U.K. has just announced the creation of a new e-book reader that will be debuting on the market next year. The e-reader which has many new features compared to e-book readers currently on the market weighs less than a pound as about as thick as six credit cards.

The e-book reader from Plastic Logic claims to hold many new innovations while still working off of the base E-ink as the method of display technology. The new product offering from Plastic Logic however will include a touch-screen interface, and will use a plastic backplane instead of glass that the company claims provides the light-weight enhancement of their product and increases durability. Users can also alter documents by making notes and underlining items and then save these changes which will be retained even if documents are transferred to another platform. Plastic Logic wants to target the business person by providing applications to read newspapers and Adobe Acrobat files. This would allow for less paper and a de-cluttering of office space.

In an article by Fast Company, The Plastic Logic e-book reader is compared to the Kindle and is found to have a more manageable size (with Kindle at .33 in. deep compared to PL e-book reader at .27 in deep), and the Qwerty keypad of the PL e-book reader seems to better integrate and creates more ease of use the actual keypad of the Kindle.

Analysts estimate that the Kindle, the most popular e-book reader on the market currently, has sold between 300,000-500,000 copies in 2008(actual sales data have not been released from Amazon). Although, as Plastic Logic has released the name of publishing partners signed on for its product including USA Today and the New York Times, the question looms if the new offering will take market share from the Kindle upon release.

Another debate currently about the e-book market is price. Currently, the Kindle is priced at $369 and Plastic Logic has not yet revealed its price point for their e-book reader. As Mary Tripsas, a professor at Harvard who studies the e-book industry points out, "The primary factors for the e-book reader market have been content availability and device price," she says.

The emerging creation of the e-book technology is intriguing to say the least but has not caught on in mainstream appeal. I believe when e-book offerings become more affordable, and more publishers begin offering more titles as e-books, you will definitely see an increase in purchases of e-books. I feel it is a remarkable technology that could cut down on de-forestation by saving paper and spare kids back problems from wearing heavy book bags improperly. It also would allow for extreme saving of spaces in schools, office, and basically anywhere where reading materials would have to be stored. I see e-book readers being a valuable tool for our educational system but who will be the first to market an appealing, economically feasible e-book reader is still waiting to be seen.

Other Sources:

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090528-713758.html

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kit-eaton/technomix/plastic-logics-e-reader-could-beat-kindle-dx

Journal 2, May 31

This article touches on the fact that as technology has made it so you can stream radio via the internet, more legal restrictions are being imposed on companies offering free streaming or streaming at low subscriber costs, enabling listeners to obtain music at a marginal or no cost compared to in the past. Pandora, which is currently an online leader in internet radio streaming market has over 7 million listeners in the United States. However, as the article points out, as more and more listeners are finding online radio more appealing, record and publishing companies, especially overseas, have pushed for regulation that mandates internet streaming radio to begin paying royalty rates per every song streamed. This new regulation of online radio stems from the music industry trying to cope with the fact that as a decreasing amount of people are listening to conventional radio and have certainly decreased their purchase of cds, technology has created a frenzied bleeding industry in search of ways to re-capture their revenue channels.
This is why Pandora had to pull the plug on offering its service to listeners outside of the States. In order to verify US listeners, users who were interested in signing up for the service had to enter their area code to verify their residence as stateside, and eventually had to verify the location of using IP addresses.
This is because the royalty regulation enforced outside of the United States was too high for Pandora to justify in their revenue models. For instance, when trying to enter the U.K. market in 2007, Pandora came up against a steep royalty rate of .08 cents per streamed song played.
Coincidentally, Pandora in 2007 launched Pandora Everywhere which allowed their services to be streamed globally through partnerships with Sprint, and later AT&T. Through alternative information technology, Pandora found a way to still offer its streaming service.
The argument is bittersweet as far as the implications of the ingenuity of such companies as Pandora who find ways around regulation to still “legally” provide music to millions of listeners for free. While it is argued that the service Pandora provides helps combat the illegal downloading frenzy devouring the bottom line of many entertainment conglomerates, technology also allows for the free dissemination and application of online radio, allowing listeners to enjoy music for free, at the cost of online advertisers. Therefore, as technology develops and evolves, who really will carry the burden of paying for the increasingly money-conscious yet augmenting appetite of the global consumer?

Other Sources:
http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T6671873194&format=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T6671873197&cisb=22_T6671873196&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=5545&docNo=10

http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T6671873194&format=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T6671873197&cisb=22_T6671873196&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=161541&docNo=18
Feature Article:

Journal 1, May 31

http://www.govtech.com/gt/case_study/581407

In this article posted on Government Tech, Ohio based company Hyland Software, Inc. and Westlake City Schools(which is the school district located right outside of downtown Cleveland ) have started an initiative called the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics)program. Initially, the program was a grant-based initiative targeted toward middle school students to encourage development in the fields of focus within the grant and provide real-world experience before graduation. However, the newest initiative was a database creation project proposed by Hyland that would involve high school students. Therefore, the project, which will involve eight high school students at Westlake High School, and will give the opportunity for the participants to create an add-on system to the current OnBase management system that will automate the process of creation and distribution of meeting information and minutes. OnBase, which is an enterprise content management system is currently integrated throughout the school system in various forms and has created better efficient operations for the school district.
Students will have the opportunity to work hands-on and become highly involved in project management, system analysis, and experience in tracking business processes for assessment in order to create better efficiency within an organization.
OnBase, currently a software with numerous awards including 2009 NeOSA Best Software Product, OnBase has been integrated into the Westlake School District since 2002. The software The brainchild of the software, Hyland Software, Inc., is the largest software company in Northeast Ohio and specializes in document and information management softwares. While the school superintendent and Dan Keenan and Mayor Dennis Clough have been building relationships with Hyland since deciding on using the software to create better efficiencies within the school district, the relationship developed into an educational partnership through the extension of the STEM grant in 2008.

Allowing students to get a hands-on opportunity to create something and channel intellectual and creative energy through these efforts, Hyland is viewed as a business firm that truly is displaying corporate responsibility and willingness to contribute back to its community.

I am pleased to see that corporations in these fields are taking opportunities to insert knowledge into the future technological leaders of tomorrow. It will take more than just our school system, but continued partnerships as these to keep the next generation competitive in this growing global community of knowledge and innovation. We are cultivating the next leaders, CEO's, government officials, and revolutionary innovators. Companies like Hyland seem to see that it very important to expose our future leaders to the challendges of the real world as well as give opportunities to release the infinite potential our youth have to face these problems head-on.


Sources:
https://www.onbase.com/English/NewsEvents/Awards
http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T6671800081&format=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T6671800086&cisb=22_T6671800085&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=146155&docNo=1