Yesterday, Apple unveiled their last product, the iPad. It’s a tablet-style device where users can do everything from reading books, browsing the web, playing music and video and playing games. Sounds great, doesn’t it. I’m not so sure.

In the past, Apple has done a great job of playing off of existing markets. The desktop computer market, the laptop marketing, the portable music device market, and the smartphone market. This time, it’s entering a marketing in its very infancy. If the market already existed and was in expansion mode, Apple could have jumped in as the cool device and dominated, as it has in the past. Only Microsoft has a tablet-style device that hasn’t been released yet. Apple, in two months, will be the first company to release a major product in the tablet market. So the question is, will people jump on this product or will it be a flop. I think it’s all dependent on how well Apple pushes it and leads the market. If tablet devices fail, it will be Apple’s fault, if they succeed, it will be their triumph.

As well, I think this device will not have an impact on other existing markets it overlaps because I feel it does not, infact, overlap them. The three existing markets I’m referring to are the netbook, smartphone and eBook markets.

Compared to netbooks, they both can play music and videos, browse the web and display books. But the Netbook was created for people who need the full functionality of laptop in a smaller form factor. They need it to display Word, Excel and PDF’s, and to multitask. All of which the iPad cannot do.

Compared to smartphones, they both can do much of the same things with the iPad having a bigger screen. The smartphone was created for people who wanted the function of a phone first and the capability to check email, browse the web, play music and video and open documents, second. All while on the go. But its not for full time use, the user would use a computer later. The iPad is for people who want to do all that on the go and not necessarily go to a computer any time soon.

Compared to eBooks, they both display books. Both (the more expesive iPad) can download new books wirelessly. For this one, I must say, the eBook’s have an advantage where they encorporate eInk technology that displays text in a manner that doesn’t strain the eye. For this reason, I feel people should go with an eBook if they will mainly use the device for reading books.

Succeed or fail, Apple has a great looking product and we can only hope its a push in the right direction.

A QR (Quick Response) Code is a two-dimensional bar code created by a Japanese corporation in 1994 to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed. Although initially used for tracking parts in vehicle manufacturing, QR Codes are now used in a much broader context, including both commercial tracking applications and convenience-oriented applications aimed at mobile phone users (known as mobile tagging).

QR Codes storing addresses and URLs may appear in magazines, on signs, buses, business cards or just about any object that users might need information about. Users with a camera phone equipped with the correct reader software can scan the image of the QR Code causing the phone’s browser to launch and redirect to the programmed URL.

Wikipedia link

Above is the QR Code you can scan and add me to BlackBerry Messenger.

My last post touched upon how some accounts are cheating at Twitter popularity. Follower numbers were an indicator of a Twitter account’s popularity but they are relatively easily manipulated. This post goes a step further into another way to rank popularity.
In October, Twitter launched Lists, “A great way to organize the people you follow and discover new and interesting accounts.” In short, twitter users can make alist and identify accounts they find interesting under each.

This can be another indicator of popularity, the more lists you are on, the more popular you probably are. In turn, one could traject there is a correlation between how many followers an account has and how many lists they are on.

There are many examples that can be given. For example, @account1 could have 35,000 followers and be on 200 lists whole @account2 has 5000 followers and 500 lists. That alone, @account1 seems more popular with 7 times more followers. But @account2 is on 2.5 times more lists. So who is more popular? My bet is on @account2 because those 500 people took the time to add @account2 to a list since they thought their tweets were interesting.

What do you think? Comment below.