Then there is this one, again featuring a woman, who seems to be waiting for a frog to leap out of the water (it seems to be a particularly uncomfortable reading position)

Whilst in the UK we’re still having to suffer these irritating little stop-motion segments of whimsical “whatever”
(only watch if you can stand to hear the painfully twee song yet again (Original song “Fly Me Away” written and performed by Annie Little, who is also the actress in the ad, if you must know):

Perhaps they are trying to make them seem less like a gadget, and more touchy-feely. My girlfriend actually suggested that, so don’t blame me for being sexist.

Anyway, it didn’t stop me buying one, but these ads are quite patronising and annoying quite frankly. Maybe women feel differently (my mum didn’t even know what a kindle was though).

Is that an iPad in your pocket or.. well yeah it clearly is an iPad in your pocket.

Urban Dictionary definitions for Gadgey:

Non specific person in Scotland; ‘joe bloggs’. Often used to refer to workman, or random person in street/crowd.

Another word for a ned in scotland.

Derogatory Scottish term for someone who’s not so well-off.

I’m obsessed with gadgets, and never more so than now, when I’m trying to stop myself from buying any (I have a wedding to save for you know). I’ve spent most of my evenings this week compulsively ‘researching’ various expensive items that I can’t really afford. But a little voice in my head has been telling me that I ‘deserve’ to treat myself. After all when was the last time I bought a cool gadget? It was 18 months ago that I bought my iPhone 3G.

Part of me realises that all I really want is a shiny new toy to play with, so trying to justify any new purchase as being in any way necessary would be to lie to myself, and you.

Now I knew I had an addictive personality, but I didn’t realise that shopping for gadgets could also become so all-consuming a hobby. According to the 99% however, I’m not the only one, and there’s even research to say why it’s so addictive.

But most of us gadgeys just don’t have a spare five hundred quid lying around to splash out on Apple’s latest gizmo so we have to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of any new purchase in detail.

E-Readers – the new Kindle (3G & Wifi) vs iPad

I like to think of myself as a writer, and therefore I love books, and am always reading several at once. I like their physical form, but I also believe that e-readers are the future (in fact they are already outselling hardback books in the US according to Amazon).  Also I live in a small flat and there just isn’t room for all the books we already have, never mind those I will want to get in the future.

Whilst the iPad clearly does a whole lot more besides being an e-reader, I see Amazon’s Kindle as having the following benefits:

• E-ink is easier on the eyes. Everytime I go to the optician my eyes have deteriotated – this can’t be helped by the amount of time I spend staring at a computer screen at work and at home, or squinting at the lcd screen on my iPhone. Whilst iBooks on the iPad has a built-in dimmer switch, it is still a backlit lcd screen – e-ink is meant to be much easier to read with. (I haven’t actually tried a kindle so I’m just going by what I’ve heard)

• It has free 3G. The wi-fi model is only £109, but for £149 you get free 3G which means you can download books wherever you are, and also use the ‘experimental’ web browser feature, without the costly monthly subscriptions necessary for the 3G iPad. I’m not expecting this to be very good compared to the iPad but if I can at least read my google reader feeds on it then I’d be happy.

• Amazon is good value. Whilst Waterstones is peddling the Sony e-reader for the bargain price of £99, according to the Register buying 36 books from them will cost around £80 more than to buy the same books from Amazon.

• Plus despite daft UK tax laws which means e-books have inflated prices here, Amazon has discounted many of their best-sellers in the new UK Kindle store – and from a cursory glance at Apple’s iBooks store, it seems that Amazon is (unsurprisingly) better value – and provides a far wider choice.

Of course there are downsides – the Kindle is only black and white, which already makes it look somewhat dated when compared to the gorgeous iPad screen, and doesn’t do any of the multitude of things the iPad can do. But as useful as having an all-purpose item is, sometimes it’s better to go for the dedicated device that does one thing but does it very well. I reckon the lure of all the other apps on the iPad would mean I never actually got round to reading any books on it. Of course I still want one…

Related reading:

Engadget: One Device to Rule Them All?

The Next Web: Kindle Outselling iBooks 60 -1?

 WHAT IS IT?

 A huge bloody big iPhone (well actually iPod Touch as it has no phone or camera). It looks a bit daft held up, but it looks pretty cool on your lap pretending to be the New York Times.

 WHAT’S IT FOR THOUGH? I ALREADY HAVE A BLOODY IPHONE.

 Good question. Nobody really knows. Some have said it’s an upgrade of the portable TV. Some say it’s useless cos you can’t view porn.. I mean ‘flash’ on it.

I say, it’s a portable storefront, a touchable shop window, for Apple to sell you crap. If the iPod was their way to sell music on iTunes, the iPhone their way to sell you widgets and games via the app store, then the iPad has been designed to sell you both of those plus reading material via the iBooks store.

 My favourite sci-fi blog io9 called the iPad  ’Crap Futurism’ and much of what they have to say rings scarily true. They quote sci-fi author Karl Schroeder who says “what Apple has done (again) is seize the moment with a combination of a device and a business model . .” and the writer of the piece agrees that “the iPad isn’t so much new technology as it is a shiny, pretty doorway to a mall where you can buy everything from books to movies.”

 Not only that but as the article also points out, the focus is very heavily on consumption, not creativity. Lots of people are worried that if this is the future, it’s one controlled by Apple. The iPad will allow for very limited customisation and won’t run any of the programmes used by creative professionals such as adobe creative suite, or even the iLife suite which, though basic, made my MacBook such an attractive purchase. Twitter programmer Alex Payne agrees, saying that he probably wouldn’t have become a programmer if he had owned one as a kid.

 Let’s face it though, Charlie Brooker is probably right as always. 

 ”I don’t want to hear how the iPad is going to make my life simpler. I want to hear how it’ll amuse and distract me; how it plans to anaesthetise me into a numb, trancelike state. Call it the iDawdler and aggressively market it as the world’s first utterly dedicated timewasting device: an electronic sedative to rival diazepam, alcohol or television. If Apple can convince us of that, it’s got itself a hit.”

NEVER MIND ALL THAT, HAS IT SAVED THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY OR WHATEVER IT WAS YOU WERE WITTERING ON ABOUT IN THAT REALLY LONG AND POINTLESS POST YOU PUBLISHED THE OTHER DAY?

 Not that I can tell. It doesn’t seem, at first glance to offer anything new for the publishing industry, as in fact it makes web browsing so easy that it might even do away with the need for a lot of the paid apps necessary on the iPhone due to the small screen.

 According to Simon Jenkins in the Guardian, the death of printed reading materials has been greatly exaggerated, and Peter Preston for the same paper reckons the iPad is destined to be landfill, like so many ‘revolutionary’ gadgets before it.

 A PAD IS FOR WRITING

Clearly, this video by Peter Serafinowicz is a p*ss-take. But personally, I think the iPad might be quite good if you could write on it.

A decent handwriting conversion programme does not to my knowledge exist yet, but if I could write notes using a stylus that were cleverly converted to digital text (which could be used by multiple apps like iWork, Simplenote, WordPress etc), I could really see the iPad being useful for writers & bloggers, freeing us from the tyranny of the RSI inducing keyboard and mouse (multitouchscreens are probably even worse for RSI) and thus being more than just another way of consuming the web.

However the fact that a keyboard dock has already been announced makes me think this is some way off.

FiNALLY

As for its other obvious fault, apparently the ability to use more than one app at once may be on the way in the next iPhone upgrade (and therefore the iPad as they use the same OS).

So, in conclusion, do I want one? Yes. Do I need one or can I come up with a justifiable reason to get one? Not really.

Finally, Patrick Jordan of Just Another iPhone Blog, who I’ve written for in the past, was interviewed on ABC news before and after the announcement, alongside a couple of other Mac bloggers. I think he did a cracking job. And he’s already set up a sister site called – yes you guessed it, Just Another iPad Blog – so I will be reading that with great interest in case they can come up with a decent excuse for buying one…

Michael Caine: photographer unknown

Print newspapers, it seems, will soon be no more than a minority medium, and so owners of the big news brands are wondering just how they’re going to make money once their main outlet is via the internet – whether it’s accessed via a computer, a mobile device or one of the fancy new touchscreen thingys such as the Skiff or Apple’s new tablet which is expected to be announced next Wednesday (27 January).

Skiff Reader

 Clearly most of the big name news organisations will survive in some form or other, and will either monetize their websites through advertising (which clearly is a difficult business model to sustain) or, like the New York Times have decided, and Rupert Murdoch’s News International are reportedly planning, will charge a subscription fee for their content.

In the UK Murdoch’s plans will also be difficult to sustain whilst the BBC make so much news content available for free online, but he may well persuade David Cameron to do something about that once the Tories get into power (probably).

 Take Your iTablets

 Although some sectors of the publishing industry are hoping that Apple’s new device and others like it will give them a new multimedia platform which will enable them to charge a subscription for their content, it will need to be something special and not just a bigger shinier version of the current iPhone if it is to offer something extra than the current apps such as available from the Guardian, New York Times and Time Magazine.

Apple Tablet mock up

The Guardian’s iPhone App

 The one UK newspaper I read regularly is the Guardian (despite its shameful lack of Scottish news, but then I am heavily involved with Scottish news all day at work). I mainly read the sections that interest me, such as its excellent coverage of culture, media and technology, which in my opinion is only rivalled here in the UK by the BBC.  And  I read it entirely online, either by RSS or on their impressive new iPhone app.

 The app costs a couple of quid, but then you have access to the latest and most popular content from the Guardian, and the ability to save certain sections and content as favourites which you can then access offline.

 There are some limitations – the share function is currently limited to Facebook and email as opposed to the app from the New York Times which has multiple sharing options including Twitter, and there is currently no way to access comments or make a new comment. However these could hopefully be added as time goes on.

Guardian iPhone app promo video (with annoying voice-over)

 What Was That About Print Media Being Dead?

 It is in this climate that I’ve perhaps foolishly decided to put together a pilot issue of a Products of a Gaseous Brain fanzine, something I have been meaning to do for a long time. It will be available both as a downloadable pdf and a print version – watch this space for more details!

 Related Reading:

This article by Jonathan Fields is an interesting take on the latest developments, and continues the ongoing debate around ‘Free’ which Chris Anderson’s book recently sparked off. Whether you’re talking about newspapers, music, or any kind of creative endeavour, it’s a fascinating debate because no one really knows how things will develop yet.

Former Manchester Evening Times writer Ian Wylie, who was made redundant in October last year, has written a very thorough report from a recent conference called ‘New Ways To Make Journalism Pay’. It’s lengthy, but well worth a read if you have any interest in this topic. 

 However Martin Cloake argues over at The Media Blog that what we should be concentrating on is message rather than medium. 

 For a pretty comprehensive run down of news mobile apps see the Online Journalism Blog

And finally, a good overview of what’s likely from Apple’s new tablet from the Guardian (no, I’m not an employee, unfortunately!)