The debate over mobile Apps and why they make no sense...

So let me get this straight. Mobile Apps developed simply because mobile screens where too small to accommodate all the functionality of a webpage and needed their own UI. So, instead of simply creating intelligent web services that better recognized mobile devices in order to serve up the best experience necessary we have become slaves to apps that are simply facades of webpages with the same data calls.

In other words Apps are simply mobile bookmarks with a customized UI. But, unlike my bookmarks I cannot organize them as well as I can within a browser and to add insult to injury we have to pay for them too! Imagine that..paying for bookmarks!

There is a good reason that we have to pay. We have to pay because someone has to pay for all of the added developers and QA teams that are now needed to produce Apps that support multiple mobile platforms instead of simply executing for a mobile browser. And there are millions of them too. Like shiny little bits of candy ready to rot our minds. Insanity all around!

Now many mobile Apps are stand-alone services and I do exaggerate to make a point. Games are fun too. Love my Doodle Jump. I even wrote this on the mobile Evernote app (what a hypocrite I am!).  But we need to stop and think about how this new world of Apps is creating millions of fragmented silos akin to when we lived within the walls of AOL or MSN. They shut out the next generation from the possibilities of a broader experience.

Oh, and I almost forgot, the good news is that some of these Apps will now be free because Apple is going to sell advertising against them. Ads on my bookmarks....fantastic! Who thought of that one? Give them a raise!

Posted via web from Jared Hendler

Digital advance for education with Textbooks rewritten...literally!

Having lectured at universities over the years I was always amazed at how pedantic and backward the content of most textbooks were vs. the actualities of our fast-paced communications industry. How many times I longed to change the curriculum to better reflect reality. Often hard to do with scholarly auditors watching from the back of class as you hand out poorly copied xerox's of more recent industry material from a school copy machine that groaned like an old man walking up his last flight of stairs.

Now it seems Macmillan (one of the largest textbook publishers) is jumping at the opportunity to allow educators the chance to customize and change the text and construct of a curriculum to best suit their style, the industry or overall approach of the institution.

The opportunity for better, more updated information is obvious, but marry this with digital textbooks at the fraction of the cost and we may have an even better use for those Kindles and iPads.

More from Fast Company here...

Posted via web from Jared Hendler