LSQHA Blog Reviews

Thanks to a deal with Apple, books from Smashwords , the e-book self-publishing service for independent publishers and authors, will be featured in the new iBookstore on the iPad. There are already about 2,000 Smashwords books in the iBookstore today and as the company's CEO Mark Coker told us, the company plans to add another 2,000 to 3,000 books in the next few weeks. Interestingly, Apple - which is famous for strictly controlling the content of the App Store - seems to be more than happy to abdicate control over the inventory in the iBookstore to its partners. Sponsor Self-Published Books in the iBooks Store: Apple's Deal with Smashwords Authors and publishers simply have to follow a straightforward set of guidelines for making their e-books iPad read. All of these are related to the formatting of the books. It's worth noting that Apple will get the same feed of books from Smashwords as Barnes & Noble , Sony and Kobo . Publishers and authors will be able to set their own prices and after Smashwords and Apple take their cut, authors will get 60% of the digital list price. Other iBooks Deals Apple has made a number of direct deals with large publishing houses to supply their books to the iBooks store. Besides Smashwords, there are currently only a few other e-book content aggregators that work directly with Apple right now. One of these is LibreDigital , which Apple has certified as a trusted e-book aggregator for the iBooks store. LibreDigial works with larger publishers and has already delivered thousands of e-books from companies like Harper Collins and Hachette to the iBooks store. Who Controls the iBooks Store? Given the vast number of books on the market, Apple obviously can't control the iBooktore to the same degree as it controls the App Store. Censoring books, too, would create a far larger outcry than banning a few apps. As far as we know, Apple is currently only filtering a few "naughty" words out of some e-books' descriptions. It is interesting that Apple is taking a very hands-off approach here, especially with regards to a self-publishing company like Smashwords. While Smashword's catalog includes a number of great books from well known authors who simply decided that they wanted to bypass the publishing industry and publish their own books, it's worth noting that Smashword's requirements for including books in the iBookstore are currently just mechanical. Are Apps Different? While it isn't linked directly from the iBookstore's homepage, it is also worth noting that a large selection of erotica is already available in the store - some are from Smashwords, but quite a few are from larger publishers like Harper Collings and Penguin as well. Apps with similar content to these books would have never made it into the App Store. What About Parental Controls? Given that parental controls on the iPad don't apply to e-books and that there is no ratings system for these texts, it'll be interesting to see if Apple will decide to create its own ratings system and force publishers to adopt this if they want to be published in the store. Apple, after all, is notorious for trying to control every aspect of the user experience on its devices. Discuss

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E-Books on the iPad: Who Controls the iBookstore's Inventory?

You may or may not be excited by the acronyms OAuth and IMAP/SMTP, but the combination of them all together is very exciting news. Google Code Labs announced this afternoon that it has just enabled 3rd party developers to securely access the contents of your email without ever asking you for your password. If you're logged in to Gmail, you can give those apps permission with as little as one click. What does that mean? It means mashups based on the actual emails in your inbox. If you've given a 3rd party app secure access to your Twitter account, then you'll be familiar with the user experience. The first example out of the gate is a company called Syphir , which lets you apply all kinds of complex rules to your incoming mail and then lets you get iPhone push notification for your smartly filtered mail. Backup service Backupify will announce tomorrow morning that it is leveraging the new technology to back up your Gmail account, as well. Sponsor People are often wary about the idea of giving outside services access to their email, and well they should. OAuth is designed to make that safe to do. Combined with the IMAP/SMTP email retrieval protocols, it gives an app a way to ask Gmail for access to your information. Gmail pops up a little window and says "this other app wants us to give it your info - if you can prove to us that you are who they say you are (just give Gmail your password) - then we'll go vouch for you and give them the info." The 3rd party app never sees your password and can have its access revoked at any time. You can read more about OAuth, how it was developed and how it works, on the OAuth website . Why is this so exciting? Because it means that the application we all spend so much time in, where so much of our communication goes on and where you can find some of our closest work and personal contacts - can now have value-added services built on top of it by a whole world of independent developers, without your having to give them your email password. That's the kind of thing that the data portability paradigm is all about. It's the opposite of lock-in and seeks to allow users to take their data securely from site to site, using it as the foundation for fabulous new services. Google says it is working with Yahoo!, Mozilla and others to develop an industry-wide standard way to combine OAuth and IMAP/SMTP. See also: Rapportive - an incredible GMail contacts plug-in . Discuss

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Gmail Becomes an App Platform: Google Adds OAuth to IMAP

I believe you have already heard of Chatroulette , the new video chat platform that has attracted the attention of millions. In February there were 30 million unique visitors to the site. That's 1 million new users each day. The site made quite a buzz on the news media, blogs , and Twitter . Comscore reports 1 million U.S. visitors in February with a predominance of 18- to 24-year-old males. The platform looks premature (it might be part of its charm) as it comes with one feature only: the next button. (By clicking it you are skipping from one user to another.) The next feature is vital as it gives the user a sense of control. I would even consider naming the hype around its users the "Next" Generation. Sponsor Guest author Dr. Taly Weiss is a marketing trends researcher with a PhD in Social Psychology, a digital research expert, and the founder of TrendsSpotting trends agency. Her digital trends insights are presented at The TrendsSpotting Blog and she follows consumer trends at TrendOriginal.com. Taly's academic work contributes to the field of Behavioral Economics. TrendsSpotting offers customized and syndicated research reports, published at top market research databases. She can be contacted at talyweiss@trendsspotting.com . What a powerful (yet dangerous) tool that can be for people who seek to experience the control they lack in their personal life. The Next Effect is well embedded in the whole Chatroulette random experiment. What social needs does such a platform serves? Psychologically speaking, these random experiences can teach us on few important needs about social interactions. the crave for peeking (online) face to face control (and at the same time - lack of control) The no commitment effect. Combine the four together and you understand the power and the addiction potential of Chatroulette. We are all well familiar with the above needs: Peeking into strangers' lives is what brought popularity to the reality TV shows. We humans receive instant gratification from the arousing feeling that comes when we are allowed inside private personal places. Face to face interactions are certainly not new experiences on the Web. But they are getting to an extreme when you personally encounter strangers in their natural surroundings. As to control , Chatroulette can well imitate an act of meeting strangers on the street. You can choose between two acts: you can play active or passive. They are both highly addictive. You can actively approach, and they might not get interested in you. You keep on trying. At the same time, you can choose to be the one who turns down interactions. That can be satisfying don't you think? The no commitment part is achieved by users' anonymity. Chatroulette doesn't require any identification or user subscription. You don't have to work hard and fake your identity. Finally, there is something new in these sets of random acquaintances that leaves you unprepared. This surprise element can never be achieved offline. While Twitter and Facebook let you follow strangers you choose to, Chatroulette adds more dimensions to these interactions. It is no longer about your friend's whereabouts or images, nor about reporting what's going on now. It's live and you get a chance to play with an imaginary sense of control. While in real life you hardly talk to strangers, here you get it as a social norm. The future of random interactions: I can think of several ways of making these interactions more intriguing - mobile interactions on the move (following people wherever they go) would definitely be hot, as well as the option to filter the people you meet by their location, age or gender. But forget that for now. If Chatroulette were to succeeded in controlling immoral and pornographic activity, what a great human experiment it would open! Discuss

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What Social Needs Does Chatroulette Fill?

I started doing my free Online Strategy Roundtables for entrepreneurs in the fall of 2008. Based on this work, I've been able to draw a few conclusions. First, a good percentage of entrepreneurs don't bother validating their ideas. Another percentage are immediately interested in raising money. Raising money without validating the business is pretty much impossible. If we can address some of these patterns we have a chance at significantly reducing infant entrepreneur mortality. At this morning's roundtable I worked with four new entrepreneurs, and this is what I learned. Sponsor Sramana Mitra is a technology entrepreneur and strategy consultant in Silicon Valley. She has founded three companies and writes a business blog, Sramana Mitra on Strategy . She has a masters degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her three books, Entrepreneur Journeys , Bootstrapping, Weapon Of Mass Reconstruction , and Positioning: How To Test, Validate, and Bring Your Idea To Market are all available from Amazon. Her new book Vision India 2020 was recently released. Mitra is also a columnist for Forbes and runs the 1M/1M initiative. Mel Marten presented ClaroConnect , described as being like a match.com for financial advisors and clients.  There was a discussion about the best way to monetize the business, whether charging an annual fee is preferred to monetizing every lead. Then the conversation turned to affiliate marketing. Albert Santalo with CareCloud was next.  This Internet-based service simplifies the many tasks of the modern medical office. While this business has been validated by a growing list of clients, the positioning of their service needs to be more sharply defined in order to scale the business.  Through much give and take, the importance of segmentation and focusing on the strongest segment of their market was emphasized.  Martin Linkov presented Favit , a product aiming to personally curate and simply present online content.  As a blogger and potential customer, I said I am looking for a service to curate and prioritize what other bloggers are saying about a topic I am blogging about to give my readers a fuller perspective.  But Martin is not looking to answer that need.  He demonstrates how difficult it can be to explain a complex service, while being pressed to succinctly define who the user is for this service, and what is the value proposition for the bloggers who are the stated channel.  The most valuable selling proposition for this service still needs to be defined and validated.  Mark Hernandez pitched his business, After COOL Fitness .  I liked this business idea, there is clearly a need to fill in as physical education and recreation programs are being cut from school budgets.  Currently they are paid by grants and parents.  When I learned of the lopsided ownership structure of the business, I felt Mark's main priority should be to rework the capital structure of the business while continuing to organically grow the business regionally. The roundtables are the cornerstone programming of a global initiative that I have started called One Million by One Million ( 1M/1M ). Its mission is to help a million entrepreneurs globally to reach $1 million in revenue and beyond, build $1 trillion in sustainable global GDP, and create 10 million jobs. In 1M/1M, I teach the EJ Methodology which is based on my Entrepreneur Journeys research, and emphasize bootstrapping, idea validation, and crisp positioning as some of the core principles of building strong fundamentals in early stage ventures. You can find the recording of this roundtable session here . Recordings of previous roundtables are all available here . You can register for the next roundtable here . Photo by Laurent Cottier . Discuss

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Startup Strategy Roundtable: Validate Your Ideas

The arrival of Apple's App Store in 2008 changed the marketplace for mobile developers and mobile carriers alike. The App Store changed the perception of what an app store for mobile devices should look like and started a new arms race among mobile carriers and handset manufacturers. According to a new survey by market research firm Nielsen , however, Apple is still ahead of its competitors. Apple's customers install more applications on their device than users of any other platform and Apple's customers are also more satisfied with Apple's app store than the users of any other app store. Sponsor Apps Installed Per Device iPhone users have installed an average of 37 applications on their devices - more than the users on any other smartphone platform - while Blackberry users only use 10 apps on their phones. Android users have around 22 apps on their phones, followed by Palm users (14) and Windows Mobile users (13). Unsurprisingly, feature phone users don't install a lot of apps on their devices. Only 12% of cell phone users with feature phones downloaded an app in the last 30 days. In contrast to this, about 46% of smartphone owners installed an app in the last month. App Stores With regards to the popularity of different app stores, Nielsen's data isn't that interesting, as most users don't really have a choice. Apple's App Store is the most used mobile app store and has captured 25% of the market, followed by Blackberry's App World Store (16%). Carrier stores run by AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon are also still very popular and have a market share between 8% (T-Mobile) and 15% (Verizon). The Android Market only had about a 2% market share by the end of 2009, but given the small number of devices on the market at that time, this number will surely grow in 2010 as more device manufactures add Android devices to their lineup. Customer Satisfaction When it comes to customer satisfaction, Apple's App Store and the Android Market are far ahead of their competitors. 84% of Apple's users are satisfied with the user experience in the iTunes store and 81% of Android users are happy about their experience. All the other stores, however, still have a lot of catching up to do. In Nielsen's survey, the Windows Marketplace ranked the lowest (56%), followed by the Blackberry App World store (58%). Discuss

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Apple's App Store Still Ranks Highest in Customer Satisfaction, Android Close Second