[nfais-l] NFAIS Enotes, Nov 2012

[jilloneill at nfais.org]

NFAIS Enotes, November 2011
Written and compiled by Jill O’Neill, NFAIS
 
The Tablet as Driver
 
ReadWriteWeb named Amazon's Kindle Fire as one of the top 5 Internet devices of 2011, based upon its implementation of Android for a tablet device and its price point that allowed the tablet market to reach a broader demographic (see[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_5_internet-connected_devices_of_2011p2.php] http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_5_internet-connected_devices_of_2011p2.php).  The Fire was put in the company of the iPad 2, the iPhone 4s, the Xbox 360 and consumers' televisions, based on the editors' parameters for naming “devices that would have the greatest impact on the way people use and interact with the Internet.” ReadWriteWeb had already named 2011 as the year of Mobile, based on their observation “that it was the year that the way an entire populace interacts with information fundamentally changed.”  
 
The analysts were all very busy documenting this change. Gartner, Inc. had a press release in November indicating that the sales of mobile devices grew 5.6% in the third quarter of 2011 and smart phone sales increased a significant 42% (see [http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1848514] http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1848514).
 
Meanwhile, the 2011 IBM Tech Trends Report noted that developers were primarily going to be building for the Android platform in the marketplace (70% had development plans in place going forward in the next two years) while only half of that group  planned on developing for iOS (iPhone/iPad) in that same time frame (see [https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/techtrends/entry/home?lang=en] https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/techtrends/entry/home?lang=en).
 
As you are already likely aware, mobile encompasses more than cell phones. Jupiter Research released research in November that indicated that they believed sales of dedicated e-readers (25 million units shipped in 2011) would nearly triple over the course of the next five years, reaching up to 67 million units by 2016 (see [http://juniperresearch.com/viewpressrelease.php?pr=272] http://juniperresearch.com/viewpressrelease.php?pr=272 ).  In reporting on that research, GigaOm attributed the likelihood of that estimated increase to improved legibility, the (coming) color of e-Ink screens, affordability of the devices, the dedicated nature of those devices to a primary activity, screen size, and battery life (see [http://gigaom.com/mobile/5-reasons-e-reader-sales-will-nearly-triple-by-2016/] http://gigaom.com/mobile/5-reasons-e-reader-sales-will-nearly-triple-by-2016/). 
 
In one online posting between friends discussing holiday purchasing, an acquaintance casually threw out her view that the Kindle Fire was a souped-up e-reader rather than a tablet. Certainly, many reviewers of the device couldn't decide whether the Kindle Fire belonged in the cell phone category or the tablet category of mobile.  In my mind, the Kindle Fire is not a revolutionary device, but a transitional one that recognizes the on-going unsettled nature of human interaction with content.  While much research has been done on the use of tablets to read news and e-books, I found only one research study that discussed the use of tablets for viewing video. Ooyala released its first quarterly review of online technology and services in November and they noted that tablets have a higher rate of engagement with video (in the sense of watching video content through to completion). Individuals will watch nearly 30% longer on tablets than on desktops. Desktops and laptops are more likely to be used for short video clips while videos longer in length than ten minutes are most likely to be viewed in full on a tablet (see: [http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/12/people-now-watch-videos-nearly-30-percent-longer-on-tablets-than-desktops/] http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/12/people-now-watch-videos-nearly-30-percent-longer-on-tablets-than-desktops/).  And it is in the arena of video that the Kindle Fire excels. More on this in a bit!
 
Tablets (as a particular form of mobile device) are still something of a novelty for many. The $199 price point assigned to the Kindle Fire in fact allows a larger population to experiment with the form even as early iPad adopters begin to see their own usage of that device diminish. (I found this article to be particularly interesting: “500 days with the iPad – SplatF” - see [http://www.splatf.com/2011/09/ipad-fivehundred/] http://www.splatf.com/2011/09/ipad-fivehundred/ ). Novelty does not ensure long-term attachment. 
 
Two days before the formal launch of the Fire, Wired magazine ran a major article about Jeff Bezos' management of Amazon, headlined as “Jeff Bezos Owns the Web in More Ways than You Think.” Not surprisingly, Wired places Bezos in the same company as technology giants, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.  In the interview, Bezos is quoted as saying that the Fire is not a product, but a “media service.” (see [http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/ff_bezos/all/1] http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/ff_bezos/all/1).  He also comments on Amazon's emerging incursions into providing content of its own, both in terms of text and video formats.  Wired magazine’s readers are referred to the examples of studios.amazon.com as well as to the Kindle Digital Publishing platform. If you are unfamiliar with studios.amazon.com, a quick look at the site suggests that it is currently aimed at attracting writing talent and introducing that talent into the Hollywood movie-making ecosystem. The site also displays close similarities in concept and design to the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) property owned by Amazon, and it is worth noting that the Kindle Fire comes to the user with the IMDB app already loaded and ready for activity. 
 
Speaking personally, I admit that my watching of video on any kind of mobile device has gone from zero to watching at least once a week since I acquired a Kindle Fire. The experience of viewing a 90-minute episode of Masterpiece Mystery is absolutely equal to my experience in viewing the same content on cable television in my living room. No stuttering, no breakup into pixel blocks, just smooth delivery from Amazon's cloud to my particular mobile device. The quantity of free content to me as a Prime subscriber is fairly extensive and I don't mind paying 2 or 3 dollars to “rent” a movie if I'm stuck for an evening's entertainment.  (It is worth noting that my attitude would change dramatically were I living in more reduced circumstances. We still need some version of television's free broadcast in the mobile environment if we are to diminish the digital divide.)
 
Peter Brantley of the Open Library noted immediately how this constitutes a problem for content providers. On his blog at Publishers Weekly, Brantley wrote, “...the competition is for the customer’s attention across all media, in one device. It means that publishing has to very seriously consider what kind of experiences creative artists can design that will be appealing on highly portable mixed media platforms.” (see [http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/PWxyz/?p=7903] http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/PWxyz/?p=7903). He stresses that enhanced e-books as a medium must be designed with an eye to other forms of media that may be favored by the user because the traditional stand-alone work of text is apt to be considered within the context of something else also viewed on the device. If the user is viewing email, that may admittedly be a distraction; if the user is viewing a film adaptation, that may be focusing the user's attention on the narrative presented in both forms of the work. One of the downsides of the Fire as a tablet is that I can't multi-task in this context; I can read or I can view, but I cannot engage in more complex consultations of both forms. Actually, I can, but it would require two hands, one holding and watching the video on the Kindle Fire and the other holding and reading the text on my Kindle 3rd generation. That leaves no hand available for either annotation of a passage or freeze framing a single shot, something a student or a scholar might reasonably expect to do.  
 
There is also some issue (cause as yet undiagnosed) regarding those e-book Kindle editions that came enhanced with video. Such videos which operated well on the iOS platform of my iPod Touch, using a sanctioned Kindle app, fail to run in the Fire environment. When I contacted two separate publishers of enhanced editions to ask if they were aware of the failing, one apologized for the glitch, but couldn’t explain what might have caused it and the second publisher failed to respond at all.  Too busy adapting to the new landscape for books?
 
When I started nosing about for information about user experience design on tablets, one small but helpful publication that surfaced was Uxmag.com. In an article from this past August, the point was made that users think of tablet devices more as “extra-convenient portable laptops” than as mobile phones. This means that the device is as likely to live in a single location (the home) as to be carted back and forth constantly (see also the aforementioned “500 days with the iPad” piece where a similar point was made). The Kindle Fire is slightly bulkier than the iPad itself, so this observation will likely hold true for that device as well (see [http://uxmag.com/articles/five-lessons-from-a-year-of-tablet-ux-research] http://uxmag.com/articles/five-lessons-from-a-year-of-tablet-ux-research). 
 
Early in August, Amazon had released its browser based Cloud Reader, another avenue of approach to the content housed on their platform for users still wedded to their desktops. The Cloud Reader works solely in Chrome or Firefox browsers; it is not available for Internet Explorer, Safari or Opera. Wired magazine somewhat disdainfully wrote about Amazon's failure to provide a satisfactory user experience within that application, noting the following flaws - the user cannot: 
Highlight text or write notes (you can read older notes).
Copy-and-paste text.
Share text or notes over social media like Twitter and Facebook (you can now do this in the iOS Kindle app).
Read or buy magazines or other periodicals (you can now do this in the iOS Kindle app).
Read enhanced books with audio/video that Amazon sells for iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone.
Read EPUB3, the emerging — but still incomplete — e-book standard that is HTML5 but isn’t used by the Kindle. Or Nook. Or iBooks. Even for the enhanced books that sometimes use HTML5 audio & video (see [http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/08/amazons-cloud-reader/] http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/08/amazons-cloud-reader/ ).  
 
The Cloud Reader may have been intended primarily to hold the line against Google's E-bookstore while Amazon transitions from a legacy text-based platform to one that can handle all of the various capabilities expected in a mobile environment. Earlier in the article, the reporter noted that the social elements of posting to twitter or Facebook had been removed from the Cloud Reader and I find it fascinating that the user is also precluded from such activity within the Fire. Each of the Kindle Fire's seven content environments – magazines, books, video, music, documents, apps and the Web – are kept separate from one another. There is no mechanism for launching Twitter from within a book file in order to share with others the joy of a particular title. 
 
I have noted before in both print and presentations that Amazon appears to favor some level of functional restrictions being in place on Kindle apps operating outside of Amazon-designed hardware. It retains the value of their particular device rather than yielding any advantage to Apple or other mobile provider. 
 
What’s the take-away then from a few weeks of fiddling with the Kindle Fire? Oddly enough, I find it both reassuring and discouraging to realize that a major player like Amazon has the same issues of transitioning platforms, interfaces, and devices as the NFAIS membership has experienced. So often, the media suggests that the likes of Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook are navigating disruptive channels with greater ease and success than other entities. At the same time, it is not pleasant to recognize that the average user over the course of the next five years is going to find the same bumpiness in the road with regard to digital reading that they experienced in transitioning between video tapes, DVDs and now Blue-Ray.
 
I can tell that the new interfaces introduced by Twitter, Google, and Facebook in December are driven in part by rapid incursion of mobile and tablet-style devices. Those interface changes are certainly significant, if not (as in the instance of Facebook’s Timeline) unnerving, and the next issue of Enotes – the last of 2011 – will examine just how those changes disrupt ordinary daily use. That disruption will have some impact on NFAIS members within the next two to three years as the interfaces for library information resources will also be shifting to accommodate the new form factor. But let’s face it: Disruption is indeed the new normal.  It’s a good thing that the 2012 NFAIS Annual Conference is covering that trend (see [http://www.nfais.org/page/335-2012-nfais-annual-conference] http://www.nfais.org/page/335-2012-nfais-annual-conference and register now). 
 
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2011 SPONSORS
 
Access Innovations, Inc.
Accessible Archives, Inc.
American Psychological Association/PsycINFO
American Theological Library Association
CAS
CrossRef
Data Conversion Laboratory
Defense Technical Information Center
Elsevier
 Getty Research Institute
H. W. Wilson
Information Today, Inc.
International Food Information Services
Philosopher’s Information Center
ProQuest
Really Strategies, Inc.
TEMIS, Inc.
Thomson Reuters IP & Science
Unlimited Priorities Corporation
 
 
 
 
 
 
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