Andrew Lark

They'll Get Over It...

It's been interesting watching Kiwi's get all excited about the arrival of iTunes. Much like I was when it first arrived. Today though. it's a different story. iTunes still does the syncing and I love using it to get at all those podcasts. But that's it. Seems I'm not the only one as iTunes remain flat in the US market:

“IPods are not sitting around generating dozens and dozens of transactions every quarter,” said Josh Bernoff, a principal analyst for Forrester Research. “People buy a certain number of songs, and then they stop.”

I'm also one of the few people that watch video on their iPod - the downloading is just painful but on planes or treadmills, nothing beats watching TED speeches or Blade...

Why? Maybe they get frustrated with the DRM as I did. OK, buying songs one at a time seems cool until you realize how many you've bought and how unportable, limited in use and incompatible (e.g. with Sonos) they are.

Then you get a Sonos with Raphsody at home and it's pretty much game over inside the house as I simply pay a small monthly fee for all the music we can eat. Just love it. I use Raphsody for sampling and then buy CDs on Amazon.

iTunes has become a terrific music storage and management platform for me. But its no longer a place I shop.

Question...

If anyone can point me to great books being written as blogs or blogs as books I'd love some pointers.

New Gladwell Book On The Way...

The Tipping Point tops my "Must Read" list. Malcolm has a new book on the way (but oh so far away):-

How do we make decisions--good and bad--and why are some people so much better at it than others? Thats the question Malcolm Gladwell asks and answers in the follow-up to his huge bestseller, The Tipping Point. Utilizing case studies as diverse as speed dating, pop music, and the shooting of Amadou Diallo, Gladwell reveals that what we think of as decisions made in the blink of an eye are much more complicated than assumed. Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience and psychology, he shows how the difference between good decision-making and bad has nothing to do with how much information we can process quickly, but on the few particular details on which we focus. Leaping boldly from example to example, displaying all of the brilliance that made The Tipping Point a classic, Gladwell reveals how we can become better decision makers--in our homes, our offices, and in everyday life. The result is a book that is surprising and transforming. Never again will you think about thinking the same way - Amazon.

It also draws on an article he penned for the New Yorker in 2002...