Digital Music in 2007

Filed Under media, social media

Hot on the heels of his Internet TV in 2007 roundup, Last100’s Steve O’Hear has written a good roundup of digital music in 2007. He talks about DRM, mobile music stores & services, and the other alternative models for online music distribution that were used in 2007.

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Taking Notes

Filed Under courses, life, mba

[Note: Cross-posted from my personal blog]

I take a lot of notes. And I mean a lot of notes. I take notes for things like:

I like to think I take good notes and, since I’m a bit of a perfectionist (some would say I’m obsessive), over the years I have actively refined my note-taking technique. Here’s how I take notes these days.

Note-Taking Tools

I start by making sure that I have good note-taking tools. These days I take notes with a mechanical pencil with 0.5 or 0.7mm 2B lead (i.e. softer but darker than the typical HB or #2 pencil; see Wikipedia entry on the pencil for details on gradation) on white, good quality, narrow-lined file paper. I also use a good quality eraser.

I use a pencil and eraser because I like clear and neat notes and diagrams (i.e. dark lines and no cross-outs). I use file paper because that gives me more flexibility in terms of storing, organizing, moving, and re-writing notes within subject-indexed, tab-separated file folders (’binders’ for Americans).

May I geek out a bit? These days I’m using a Faber Castel Grip Matic pencil, the 2B lead that came with it, and a Staedtler Rasoplast eraser. The pencil’s pretty old now so I need to buy a new one. I generally prefer Staedtler over Faber Castel — I’ve been using the former’s pens, pencils, lead, and erasers for about 16 years now — but I haven’t been able to find the right products in Australia so far. I guess I need to look harder. Oh, and Pilot and Uni products are good too; particularly the Uni SA-S fine ballpoint pen which I have been using exclusively for about 3 years now.

Note Organization

I organize my notes rather thoroughly: listing on each page the date, subject, page number, and, if in a meeting, the names of the participants in that meeting. To organize the notes themselves I use a series of headings and nested bullet points. Here’s an example:

Note Taking 1

 

More recently I’ve started to take notes on my laptop. For that I use Microsoft Word with 12pt Georgia font and the same sets of headings and series of nested bulleted lists as I do on paper (except that those are now defined as MS Word Styles so they look a little different). This is what my electronic notes look like:

image

 

The Actual Notes

Then come the actual notes themselves. Since I write a lot, I’ve had to develop my own, mostly intuitive, shorthand to write things down quickly. For example: “this func. says nothing abt. price lvl.; dep. only on tech, labour & capital.” Since I type quickly, I write full-ish sentences when typing notes, though. They may not be entirely grammatically correct, but I don’t usually abbreviate words.

In the actual note-taking I try to write down as much as I can while still listening to the lecture/discussion, not missing anything going on (even at a deeper level), and participating in the discussion as well. It’s not easy but I’ve been doing it for years so I’m used to it by now. Taking notes this way gives me a pretty accurate recording of what went on during the class (since that’s what I developed my note-taking for) and, even if something isn’t quite clear to me at that time, I can usually follow the logic and work it out later.

At the end of every note-taking session (e.g. at the end of every class) I try to review the notes to make sure I haven’t missed anything. Then, usually while preparing for an assignment or just before an exam, I do one of two things. I either extract what is important from my notes (and in parallel from lecture slides and assigned readings) by re-writing them on a new sheet of paper or on my laptop. That is, I take notes of my notes. If not that, I make an index in which I identify what I’ve written and on which page that topic is located. The former helps me prepare for closed book exams and assignments. The latter helps me get ready for open book exams and meetings during which I might need to refer to my notes.

I don’t follow any specific note-taking system like the Cornell system that the good folk at Student Tablet PC use [1], though that sounds like a really good methodology. Nor is my system as elaborate as Tim Ferriss’ (via Kevin C. Tofel). I am interested in getting into mind maps like James Kendrick, but my note-taking style has always worked well for me so I haven’t yet found a reason to change.

I do, however, use a mind map-type construction for breaking down complex problems. But, since I’m a stickler for writing things neatly, I use lists instead of diagrams. For example:

Board Notes 1

 

And that’s about it. Oh, one last thing: storage. Since I have craploads on notes, I generally have a crapload of file folders to store all my notes in as well. And since I’ve been using, for the most part, the same system for about ten years now, my old notes still come in handy every now and then. The only problem is: I can’t take all my old notes with me.

All of that, I guess, goes some way to demonstrate why the obsessive note-taker in me wants so desperately to get a tablet PC. I mean, seriously, how could I not want to get the ultimate note-taking tool? But, since I can’t afford one now, I am so looking forward to getting one later and then scanning all my MBA notes into it so that they’re ready for use any where, any time. In fact, I’m getting all excited just thinking about it now! Yes. I am a geek. I wrote a whole blog post on note-taking (with pictures and all), didn’t I? :)

[1] The Student Tablet PC website has a whole category on note-taking. 

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Dell Talks Tablet Pricing

Filed Under technology

You’ve got to love the Internet; specifically, blogs. When tablet PC users, enthusiasts, and evangelists expressed their disappointment with Dell’s pricing of its newly released Latitude XT, Glenn Keels from Dell responded on the Direct2Dell blog. He said:

So here’s what I have to say on the issue. Probably the most important thing to note about tablet PCs is that we are talking about cutting-edge technology here. If we just released the exact same technology as our competitors, we would be missing opportunities to drive this market to the next level - and this is an opportunity we did not want to miss. The result is that our product does carry a slight premium to our competition (emphasis on the word “slight”).

We believe that when you take a look at like-to-like configurations AND the incremental technology (that customers have overwhelming told us they want to have), the value equation for the Latitude XT far exceeds that of competitive systems.

He then went on to compare the Latitude to HP’s 2710p and Lenovo’s X61t, pointing out the areas in which Latitude outperforms the other two. Keels however conveniently skips over the bits where Dell is specifications-wise at par, and yet more expensive, than its competitors.

James Kendrick from jkOnTheRun did the maths for that and he wasn’t impressed. Nor was Paul Miller from Engadget who had this to say:

Sure, we love the capacitive touch, and the build and size are great, but the machine is way underpowered in its $2,500 base configuration, and prices get astronomical — nearly twice that of Lenovo’s — when you try to spec the XT up to the X61t’s level.

Miller promises to “be back” with a response.

Thinking Strategically

As we’ve learnt in the MBA — and as people in new product development will tell you — in order to introduce a new product that you want to charge a premium for, you have to give your customers (a) the features they want and (b) the features they are willing to pay extra for. It helps if those features aren’t already being offered by your competitors. That’s what Keels was trying to point out in his blog post. Dell has four things in the Latitude XT that no other manufacturer has in its tablet PC offerings:

  1. The brightest display (in both its indoor and outdoor versions); and it helps that it’s a high-resolution wide screen
  2. The most powerful graphics card
  3. Dual touch capabilities with the additional benefit of capacitive touch
  4. Dual input (i.e. both a trackstick and a touchpad)

All four of these are things that consumers have previously complained to OEMs about (i.e. that they are missing from current tablet PCs). Dell, on its part, has given consumers exactly what they wanted and asked for. What it seems to have underestimated, though, is that in order to get these four items in a tablet PC that costs the same as a current top-end tablet PC, you have to compromise in other areas. Specifically, you have to settle for a slower processor, a slower/smaller hard drive, and less RAM. And these are things that a lot tablet PC users aren’t willing to give up. They’ve fought long and hard for OEMs to make tablet PCs that are both powerful and affordable and they don’t want to go back to having to choose between price and performance.

The thing is, though, that Dell’s pricing makes much more sense if you segment the market correctly. Corporate customers with large, existing Dell install basees should really be fine with this price. Companies don’t necessarily want to get their mobile employees very powerful tablet PCs because an overwhelming majority of those employees don’t need powerful computers. And for those who do need powerful tablet PCs, it’s okay to pay extra because the benefits of a company-managed Dell outweigh the risks of buying an unsupported HP or Lenovo. The same is true for most students and professionals since they don’t really need all that extra power.

It’s only the people who want the best of both worlds — such as engineering students or people like me who really do use computers to their fullest extent — who have to make the price vs. performance choice (or, instead, choose a different OEM). The problem for Dell is that it’s often these people who are the loudest. Let’s see how Dell responds and how this plays out over the next few weeks.

Defining the Market a Little Better

Oh, and since I am doing my MBA, I sometimes get this overwhelming urge to explain things through pretty diagrams. In this case, though, that approach seems to make sense. If you plot price against performance, the five largest tablet PC vendors are placed in the tablet PC market as follows:

Tablet PC Comparison Chart

 

HP, with its 2710p, has the cheapest and least powerful tablet PC. Toshiba has two offerings — the R400 which is low-powered but very expensive and the M700 which is high-powered and very decently priced — and hence two spots on the map. Lenovo, with its X61t, is by far the most configurable so it’s all over the place. Fujitsu, with its numerous sizes and configurations, overlaps with Lenovo quite a bit.

At the most powerful end, then, Dell is the most expensive, followed by Lenovo and then by Fujitsu and Toshiba. What Dell is trying to do is make its tablets more powerful — that is, move further to the right which, according to this diagram, it is doing to some extent. It is trying to do this without making the tablets too much more expensive — that is, move higher up which, unfortunately, it isn’t managing to do very well (as Kendrick and Miller point out). If, however, I am underestimating how much more to the right Dell’s oval is, then I guess the price premium is justified.

From a strategic point of view, though, Dell is following the typical tablet PC OEM strategy of targeting the corporate segment first. The advantage it has — which Keels demonstrated in his blog post when he compared his product to only HP and Lenovo’s products — is that Dell in the U.S. doesn’t really have to contend with Toshiba and Fujitsu in the corporate segment. And if you were to remove Toshiba and Fujitsu from the diagram above…well, you could then see where is Dell is trying place itself in the market, can’t you?

Will it succeed with that market placement? Let’s see how things pan out.

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Tablet PCs

Filed Under technology

I just realized something: here I am, incredibly interested in the convertible tablet PC form factor, but I haven’t once mentioned tablet PCs on this blog of mine. I’ve discussed them only my personal blog. For example: I’ve talked about one of the main benefits of using one (that too with examples from one of my MBA courses); the new Dell Latitude XT and Toshiba M700 models; how I think a tablet PC will benefit my life and work style; and which tablet PC I will purchase as soon as I have the money for it (though I am currently rethinking that decision in light of Toshiba’s latest model).

Of course, with tablet PCs accounting for only 3% of the fast-growing laptop market [1] — though that number is expected to rise to 7% in the next few years — this form factor isn’t really on most peoples’ radar. That’s due to two reasons. First, tablet PCs are more expensive (at least 10-20% more) than regular laptops. Second, OEMs haven’t really marketed them to general consumers, choosing instead to focus on the corporate segment or the professional (think: doctors with electronic clipboards) and educational (think: engineering students and their complicated technical drawings) segments.

Market Changes

What was about to change all that — or so we thought — was Dell’s entry into the tablet PC market. Tablet PC users and enthusiasts expected Dell to offer lower-cost tablets (comparable almost to regular laptops) to the corporate, consumer, and educational segments and to, basically, put tablet PCs on the map as far as the general public was concerned. Dell, however, didn’t quite do that. In fact, it priced its Latitude XT about $1,000 higher than its competitors.

What appears to be happening here is that Dell is playing catch up to Fujitsu, Lenovo, HP, and Toshiba (among others) — all of which already have tablet PCs offerings, and all of which are in at least their third generation. That is, Dell hasn’t come into the market to break new ground. It’s here to protect its own turf by, for now, targeting only the corporate segment. Roger Kay of Endpoint Technology Associates, as quoted in BusinessWeek’s article on Dell’s market entry, explains why:

“When someone says they need 20,000 notebooks, 2,000 desktops, and 100 tablets, Dell couldn’t bid on that business. Now it can.”

And Dell does indeed have a large corporate segment to protect.

What Then of the Consumer Segment?

What has happened instead is that Lenovo routinely gives 25% discounts on its tablet PCs if you order one online and Toshiba has just come out with its M700, which is a real powerhouse of a machine that is pretty reasonably priced as tablet PCs go. Of course, Fujitsu has always been there with its excellent — and powerful — tablet PC offerings in lots of different sizes. Will this help bring about the widespread use of tablet PCs in the consumer segment? Probably not. But don’t get disheartened just yet.

What Now?

So what will happen to the tablet PC segment in 2008? Well, 2007 was an awesome year for tablet PCs, with lots of new models — of all shapes, sizes, and performance capabilities — being released. 2008 promises to be even better. Why? For two reasons.

First, I suspect the consumer market will start to wake up and realize that tablet PCs are aren’t really that much more expensive after all. One of the biggest barriers to the adoption of tablet PCs was the fact that they cost a lot, were underpowered, and had a crappy battery life. All three of those have improved over 2007. Cost is still the biggest issue for consumers but, considering the excellent mobility that tablet PCs provide, people seem to be willing to overlook that or pay additional for it. These days in particular, mobility is quickly becoming a key selling point.

Second, two consumer products that were released with much fanfare this year should get consumers interested in tablet PCs. The first is the Apple iPhone with its awesome graphics and fancy touch screen. The second is the Amazon Kindle with its slate form factor and excellent mobility. What do you get when you put those two together? Why a tablet PC, of course. See what I mean? Once consumers put two and two together, the tablet PC should look increasingly interesting. Of course, that’s all just theory so far. Let’s see how things actually play out. Still, I’m very optimistic. Especially now that Dell has come out with its tablet PC since, in many ways, its market entry that has really validated the form factor.

As for the corporate segment. Well, tablet PCs are still just 3% of the laptop market. But, with offerings from Dell, HP, and Lenovo — which probably have the three largest corporate hardware install bases — things should be looking up. Mobility and flexibility are both key here. The more businesses want those in their laptops, the more attractive tablet PCs should look.

Meanwhile, both the professional (especially medical) and educational segments continue to increase their adoption of this form factor, with some universities even requiring their engineering students to use tablet PCs. And though widespread student usage will be the hardest nut to crack — price is too much of an issue here and, for those who don’t have that issue, performance will be one — you never know what’ll happen next year. Who knows, maybe Dell will slash its prices and will start marketing its Latitude XT to students. That would be fun now, wouldn’t it?

Here’s hoping…

[1] IDC research via BusinessWeek.

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Internet TV in 2007

Filed Under media, social media

Last100’s Steve O’Hear wrote a good roundup of Internet TV in 2007 and what we should expect of it in 2008. He covers YouTube’s continued dominance of the online video market, what television networks and film studios are up to, how Internet TV is being watch on both desktop and televisions, and how the DivX standard is being increasingly adopted by vendors.

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Leo Laporte on Social Media

Filed Under media, social media, technology

Leo Laporte, of TechTV and TWiT fame (the latter being home to two of my favourite audio netcasts), was one of the keynote speakers at the Blogworld Expo held in Las Vegas in November this year. You can find a video of his excellent keynote speech, with a rather inspirational introduction by Six Apart’s Anil Dash, here on In Business TV’s Brightcove channel.

Leo talks about the new face of media, where he sees new media going, and what it’ll take to get it there. If you have the time, make sure you take a listen. It’s a large file and takes a while to download, but it’s worth it.

P.S. Apologies for the long hiatus from blogging. The last three weeks of term (including exam week) were really busy and since end of term I’ve been on vacation. I’m back now and should get back to posting regularly very soon.

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