Register   Login
Home  

Subscribe

To register for a complimentary subscription to Inside Mobile, published weekly on Wednesdays, fill out the form below.  If registering muliple email addresses, separate with commas.

* Email
First Name
Last Name
  * = Required Field
 
  

Mobility Awards

 

Call for Nominations Announced

Deadline:  January 31, 2012

Winners of the 2012 Mobility Awards will be announced at the Mobility Awards banquet, held Wednesday, May 9th, during CTIA Wireless 2012 in New Orleans, LA.

Contact Dr. Purdy at gerry.purdy@mobiletrax.com if you are interested in speaking or sponsoring the Mobility Awards banquet.

For a full list of the 2011 Mobility Award Winners click here 
  

 
Inside Mobile is written by J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D., Principal Analyst with MobileTrax and is published each Wednesday.

 




 

Dr. Purdy writes a weekly column via eWeek, a leading online & digital publisher with millions of readers. Some of these columns are distributed via Inside Mobile with approval from eWeek.

 

“iBooks Textbooks: 
Apple’s New Billion Dollar Business"

By J. Gerry Purdy on 1/25/2012



According to the U.S. Census, there are 55.5 million kids in K-12 and another 11.5 million students in two-year or four-year colleges.  With an average of four textbooks per student, that’s close to 268 million textbooks sold a year.  At an average of $20 per book, that’s a nice $5.36 billion a year market.  For more than a hundred years, they have all been printed on paper and have all been ‘static’ – what you see is what you get.  No animation.  No embedded video.  No way to interactively test and check your answers.

Then, in 2009, Apple launched the iPad.  They have sold over 30 million of them with over 1.5 million into education alone.  The first textbooks that came out on the iPad were simply digital versions of the same ‘static’ textbooks.  The only real advantage was that the digital textbooks weighed less than printed ones.

In order to make textbooks become more valuable in the education system, they had to migrate from ‘static’ to ‘active’ in which authors could embed graphic animation to show, for example, factoring in algebra or a video to explain the solar system.

Some attempts to create ‘active’ educational materials have been made online, but access has always been limited to what was available in the class room.  Many students (actually millions of them) didn’t have (and still don’t have) easy access to such active content online when away from school or at home.


Click HERE to read the full article.

Click HERE to view Inside Mobile articles.

 
  

  Minimize

Mobile Musings

Mobile Musing is written  monthly by Tom Wheeler, Managing Director at Core Capital Partners in Washington, DC.  Tom was the past CEO of the CTIA.  Dr. Purdy and Tom are professional friends and agreed to post Tom’s column on the MobileTrax web site each month.

 

 

 

 

"Re-ordering the Universe"

By Tom Wheeler on 1/1/2012
 

2011 certainly went out with a bang!  The discovery of the “God Particle” and a challenge to Einstein’s Theory could re-order quantum physics.  But, if you want to talk about really re-organizing the universe, consider the December announcement of an unprecedented consortium between Verizon and the major cable operators.

The heretofore unidentified “God Particle” (formally the Higgs boson) turned from theory to reality in December at the Large Hadron Collider.  By smashing protons together the collider simulated the universe a hairsbreadth before the Big Bang.  Lo and behold, the test appears to have identified the force that gives shape and substance to everything we know.

Einstein’s Theory fell apart twice (or at least appeared to).  Once in September and again in November:  extremely low mass particles called neutrinos appear to have broken the cosmic speed limit by moving in excess of the speed of light between the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland and a receptor 730 km away in Italy. What if E doesn’t equal MC²?

But those developments only hold the potential to re-order quantum physics (!).  At the same time, the basic assumptions of science were being challenged, Verizon and the cable MSOs began to transform the physics of program content and delivery.

Click HERE to read more of this article.

Click HERE for a list of recent articles.
  

 

Disclosure Statement:  From time to time, I may have an equity position in a company that is mentioned in this column. Also, vendors occasionally provide mobile and wireless products & services via editorial loan so that I may gain some personal experience with them. However, I am never obligated nor do I guarantee saying positive things about such products or services.  I always try to give a fair and honest appraisal of all mobile and wireless products & services that are covered in this web site.
  

Copyright 2010, Mobiltrax Terms Of Use   Privacy Statement      Top