Course Manager App Does Its Job Well

There are many things the Course Manager app from iTunes U does not do. It does not integrate with learning management systems. There are no discussion boards or blogs. There are no assessments or gradebooks. Plus, it only works on Apple devices.

On the other hand, Joshua Kim reports in his Inside Higher Education blog that it looks good and runs well. He also points out that it’s a curricular content-consumption experience that should be viewed as a supplement to a learning management system.

“Mostly, the whole experience on the iTunes U app just feels smooth and polished,” Kim wrote. “Content is easy to find, everything opens up quickly, and everything is logical and seamless.”

In an earlier post, Kim suggested curriculum content consumption supports the way students learn and that because it’s so easy to use, the iTunes U app should not be ignored.

“The fact that Course Manager and iTunes U is free to use, works with all sorts of text documents, handles video beautifully, allows for easy content downloading (hence offline viewing), and works great on an iPhone should make the incumbent coursepack platform providers take notice,” he wrote. “The iTunes U app is a significant threat to their business models.”

Survey Finds Tablet Users Buy Content

In the study A Portrait of Today’s Tablet Users—Wave II, the Online Publishers Association (OPA) found that adoption of the electronic gadgets in the United States is up from 2011, and still rising, and that the vast majority of people use the devices to access content and information.

The online survey from the OPA and Frank N. Magid Associates Inc. reached 2,540 individuals between the ages of 8 and 64 from March 19-26, 2012. It found that 67% of those surveyed used tablets to surf the web and 66% checked their e-mail. Other primary activities include watching videos (54%), getting weather information (49%), reading national news (37%), and viewing entertainment content (36%).

The report found that 74% of users use their tablets daily, with 60% using it several times each day. In addition, tablet users spend 13.9 hours per week on the device, 92% of video watched on a tablet involve news and entertainment clips, 23% of all tablet applications downloaded in the past year were paid apps, and that the tablet app market doubled in size from $1.4 billion in 2011 to an estimated $2.6 billion this year.

“The growing base of tablet users is also showing a healthy appetite for paid content with 61% having purchased tablet content in the past year,” said Pam Horan, president of the OPA. “Considering tablets have only been available for a little over two years, the findings of this study truly underscore the possibilities for publishers to grow their business as consumers are willing to open their wallets in order to have original content at their fingertips.”

Another Way for Publishers to Reach Consumers

A tech management and consulting firm has launched a web service that appears to make it easier for publishers to sell e-books directly to its customers.

The service, called skBookshop.com, helps publishers tap into the 900 million users on Facebook, plus provides a low-cost way to create mobile apps for Android devices immediately, with an app for Apple iOS gadgets coming later this year.

There are fees to use, but publishers are given a password-protected login to a site that allows them to create full-color catalogs with pages for author and book information that links back to the publisher’s web site. The service also provides detailed analytics and tracking information, can collect e-mail addresses, and allows publishers to easily create e-book promotions.

Justin Loeber of CarverTech, the firm that created the service, claims publishers can’t sell directly to customers from the site because rapid development in Facebook and mobile platforms make it difficult to keep up with the coding. At least not yet, and booksellers have to be wondering about the message being sent to visitors who can click on a “buy button” that takes them back to the publisher’s web site to make the purchase.

Interactive Books for Adults

Here is a website that posted the “Best Interactive iPad Books of 2011 for Adults.”  While interactive books for younger audiences are coming out in droves, interactive books for adults are not so hard to come by.  According to the article, this sector is under-reviewed and the products can be very costly making it difficult for consumers to decide which book-app is the right choice for them.  The website lists these as the best interactive books for 2011:  Our Choice, The Last Supper, History of Jazz, The Waste Land, Man in Space, On the Way to Woodstock, and Here on Earth.

Apple Keeps Grip on App Store Purchases

The New York Times’ report that Apple declined to approve the Sony Reader e-book app because in-app sales wouldn’t go through Apple sparked much hand-wringing in tech circles. Many felt Apple’s move would encompass not only the Sony Reader app, but also Kindle and Nook apps for the iPad, iPhone, and the iPod touch.

Then, blogger John Paczkowski of the Wall Street Journal reported an official statement from Apple claiming no change has been made to its guidelines for developers, but that it will now require apps to offer customers the ability to purchase items both outside the app and within the app.

The change is already in place for customers who buy through iTunes, allowing Apple to earn a cut for facilitating the purchase without forcing all content to be bought through iTunes. This means Amazon, for instance, can still sell content through its web site or Kindle device, but iOS Kindle app users will have to sync purchases to their iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad and Apple will get a cut of the proceeds.

The question now is how will Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Sony respond? It’d be hard for a company such as Amazon to back away from the iOS platform now, particularly with its “Buy Once, Read Everywhere” promotional campaign. It would also be difficult to build a new sales site that allows customers to buy both from Apple and Amazon, or from Apple alone.

Sony posted a note on its web site saying it’s trying to find other ways to work with Apple, including avoiding the App Store commission altogether.

Kno announces pricing for tablets and begins accepting preorders

Earlier today, Kno announced the pricing for its single and dual-screen tablet devices and said that a limited number of devices will ship before the end of the year. As a reminder, the Kno Tablets were designed for higher education and include: 14-inch LCD screens to display full textbook pages; the ability to highlight and annotate; multitasking capabilities; support for stylus, touch, and keyboard input; and data backup in the cloud.

A posting on the All Things Digital website says that company will work with some college bookstores and the device will be aimed at 10 college campuses initially. This semester beta testing occurred at several campuses and Cengage Learning, McGraw Hill, Pearson, and Wiley provided select digital resources for the testing. The Kno website includes videos of a few students describing their experiences with the device and the company says that the student responses have been “overwhelmingly positive for both the single and dual screen devices.”

Students will be able to purchase textbooks through the Kno bookstore that will be accessible on the tablet. The store includes thousands of titles and the list can be viewed on Kno’s website. Currently the device has built in apps for reading, taking notes, and the web but additional apps are in development. A page on Kno’s website invites developers to help them design their development platform and build their app store. Apps for collaboration, specific subjects, educational games, and productivity tools will be available.

In addition, according to the New York Times, Kno plans to make its software available for laptops and potentially other tablets in the future.

These developments will certainly be ones to watch in the month’s ahead.