Insightful stuff from Alan Patrick:
So in conclusion, although we think of ourselves as the most innovative generation, Evah!, the truth is that we are not as far ahead as we would like to think, and in fact, given the comms advances we have today, it is arguable we should be a lot better at it - in fact, one could argue that some things are going backwards, and to an extent we are actually resting on the laurels of work done in the last 100 years....Being a bit more sanguine, we see a number of social trends kicking off now, driven by the IT/Net and other drivers (the crunch, shifts in global power, economics of energy. various philosophical/religious fundamentalisms) promise to be significant in the future, so we suspect that the 2009 - 2029 period will - as the Depression did - drive major innovation.
To my international readers: If you didn't see Gavin O'Reilly on
Primetime on Tuesday, the RTÉ player has it:
http://www.rte.ie/player/#v=1055986
Dunno where it came from, but it's true.
Richard Egan, the colourful and vigorous co-founder of EMC, went into a linen cupboard of his home at the Four Seasons condominiums on Boylston Street, Boston, and shot himself in the head with a shotgun on Friday, ending his fight against terminal lung cancer.
As well as bringing EMC to Cork - I've heard some of the colourful stories about him - he was once US Ambassador to Ireland. Rest in peace.
Micropayments and the power of free
WriteRoom used to cost $4.99. And last Thursday, at that price, it sold nine copies.
Then Jesse decided to make WriteRoom free for three days. In that long weekend, his application was downloaded a whopping 16,347 times.
Then, starting Monday, he brought back a price — this time, only 99 cents. In the first two days at that price, he averaged 72 sales a day.
Now, selling iPhone apps isn’t precisely analogous to selling individual news stories, for a variety of reasons. And any number of external factors could have influenced Jesse’s numbers. But it’s also another bit of evidence of how enormously price-sensitive people are in a digital environment. As Chris Anderson will tell you, free is an entirely different animal from any price — even one as insignificant as 99 cents. If you can afford an iPhone, you can afford 99 cents for an app. But even for this relatively upmarket crowd, that tiny sum was a huge barrier. Journalists who think their audiences will happily start paying a nickel/quarter/dollar for every story they click on should take note.
Joshua Benton | Aug. 27 | 12:06 p.m.
