David Maybury | Blog

Tech research company Gartner reckon that by 2015 more than 50% of PCs purchased for users under 15 years of age will have touchscreens – with major implications for education use.

By 2015, we expect more than 50 percent of PCs purchased for users under the age of 15 will have touchscreens, up from fewer than 2 percent in 2009. On the other hand, we are predicting that fewer than 10 percent of PCs sold to enterprises in 2015 for mainstream knowledge workers will have touchscreens.

/via Mashable

A note from CBI ahead of the Digital Developments on Saturday.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, Vanessa Robertson of Fidra Books will not to able to attend the seminar. CBI regrets any inconvenience this may cause to attendees.

Hopefully all is well in Scotland and the birthday celebrations are on-going!

I’ve been drafted in to talk (I begged!) and now I’m pulling notes together ahead of the seminar… And there are some really interesting things happening in the last month or three.

Tech companies have pushed eReaders and Christmas this year has been swamped with new and affordable devices. It’s inevitable that publishing is going to change as consumer demand for new titles and innovation increases (like Sony’s move to integrate Google’s book platform).

A little less speculative with a quick look at web usage in the last month: iPhone has sliced through the UK – making up a whopping 74% of smartphone web traffic. (Android has picked up a huge 10% in only a few months – well ahead of Blackberry with only 4%)

At best guess those figures are going to jump exponentially – even Tesco will be offering the iPhone next month.

And one last statistic dump (I swear): Unique traffic to Twitter was down 27.8% between September and October (Nielson) – as more people move onto 3rd party applications the likelihood that dedicated eReaders will stand out over multi-tool devices (iPhone/Android/Symbian) is looking doubtful.

The rumoured iTablet has already got companies planning – part phone, laptop, browser, iPod, book and newspaper.

As mentioned at Cybercoms 10th Birthday last month – anyone turning 18 in just over two years has never lived in a world without the web. 2012, not just the apocalypse, will see a new consumer come to the fore and communication (books and publishing included) is going to have to adapt.

Right, back to note gathering…

Anyone else tired of cycling? Get your hands (wheels?) onto a jet propulsion unit and the days of tiresome peddling are over. It could be yours for a mere $920 on eBay.

Can you tell that I really really want one of these?:

via Boing Boing.

Are new book technology users just growing up?

A few weeks ago I put a computer illiterate five-year-old in front of a keyboard, mouse and monitor. She grasped how to use the operating system (Windows XP) the browser (Firefox) and the Internet (Google, Sesame Street, Nick Jr. and Dora The Explorer) in less than half an hour.

The experience got me thinking.

One of the largest reasons that e-books haven’t become a reality is due to our reluctance to let go of the book. Would gadget savvy young readers be more comfortable using an e-reader than the rest of us?

This isn’t as far fetched as it might sound. Disney, Fisher Price and Hasbro have all released mp3 players for children in the last year. The Fisher Price Kid-Tough FP3 Player is aimed at the youngest audience (3 – 6 year olds) and their online store sells audio books as well as music. While the Disney player is aimed at a 5 – 12 year olds but without the option to download music.

Is it such a leap to imagine a similar device with a large, colour screen* that reproduces picture books? [It could play the author reading the book at the same time through its mp3 player.]

If public libraries and schools supported ebooks then young readers would be encouraged to use them, and be more likely to using them as adults. Some, such as the New York Public Library has already begun to lend copies of ebooks – with certain copyright conditions.

Looking at the conclusions from the research in Bell State (dated 2004) Richard Bellaver concludes:

The children thoroughly enjoy playing and interacting with the eBooks. However, many of the children used the eBook for non-reading purposes because the content was not to their reading level. This was remedied by adding more content geared towards the younger reading level, but at the time of the interviews, that was not the case. The children did grasp the technology, and were able to learn the basic features of the eBook. Only one eBook of fifteen was damaged during the test.

Do you ever wish you see the future??

Sources:
> Richard Bellaver – Bell State University
> New York Public Library
> About.com
> e-book.com

*One of the most ideal distribution outlets for ebooks is the iPod Touch and the iPhone through Apple’s iTunes.
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