We are excited to host this Sold-Out Event!  The Evening will have Special Guests- Eliot Pierce ( NYTimes) and Scott Meyer ( EVIDON).

Here are some of the participants attending..

Now that we have Digital Notebooks, there is the increasing discussion and debate over how to combine this or integrate this with paper. What are the different needs and when will this convergence really occur.  This is an active discussion over in Japan as technologies collide with the latest cool tablets in the market.  We have seen a bit of convergence with books, but when will writing on paper become part of that digital experience.

There are many devices that have surfaced over the years that can take in writing and convert it to a digital image on a screen. In places like Asia with handwriting so important, it is going to be exciting to see the types of devices to come to market.  We at ADO had a unique concept that was in the works for a patent several years ago.  This in fact was one of the concepts that led to the naming of the company- Analog.Digital.Objects.   It is exciting to see this debate coming back into the main stream.

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「デジタル手帳とアナログ手帳は両方使う」人が多い？――300万人編集会議の議論より

2011年1月21日
日経トレンディネットでは、「300万人編集会議」というコミュニティサイトをオープンした。これはその時々の旬なテーマについて話し合うネット上の「編集会議」。オープンと同時に開設した特集班のテーマが「手帳術」だ。ここでは、今まさにその会議室で行われている議論の様子を紹介する。
日経トレンディネットの「300万人編集会議」では現在、「アナログvsデジタル 最強の手帳術」と題し、手帳や手帳アプリの使い方について議論する会議を開催中です。そんななか、活発な意見が交わされているのが「アナログとデジタル、どう使い分ける？」というテーマのトピックです。
（注）この記事は、300万人編集会議に参加者が登録した発言の一部を抜粋したものです。ページの都合上、発言の一部だけを抜粋したり、意味を変えない範囲で若干の編集を行った部分があります。納富廉邦氏によるこの呼びかけから議論が始まりました。

納富廉邦さん

紙の「アナログ手帳」も、スマートフォンのスケジュールアプリを中心にした「デジタル手帳」も、最近はどちらの市場も盛り上がっています。では、皆さんはどちらを使っていますか？それとも、併用していますか？

あなたがデジタルorアナログを選ぶ理由や、両者の使い分け方について意見を聞かせてください。私は2011年に入ってからは、何故かデジタル一辺倒ですが、バックアップとしての紙の重要性も感じています。皆様はいかがでしょう。

We have entered 2011 and I have to say the first decade did fly by rather quickly for us in the mobile industry.   I am a big fan of JWT and their things to watch deck.  I thought I would share it and highlight the top 10 in my mind for those realigning and creating a  mobile strategy this year.

I was touched by the crisp and thoughtful strategy presented by Jeff Bezos recently on Charlie Rose ( also covered by Techcrunch) .

Why?…… well the questions that Charlie Rose asked recently on this interview, have been no different from what any New York Times, Techcrunch or other Media have asked recently;  ” How are they going to compete against the tablet hype of the today, i.e. iPad”.  I felt that that really missed the point entirely.  Jeff Bezos did explain this quite well on what is needed for optimized book reading and a device that is focused clearly on that experience.  What he missed in my mind is drilling down into the real genius behind what Amazon has been doing with access, conversion and fufilling a business model for the old media world in a new media era .   Many ask and  compare the product and the category to the iPad, when it is categorically totally different.   It is like comparing a bicycle to a bullet train as if they were competing products?  Well you can bring your bicycle onto a bullet train, like you can get book titles onto an iPad or iPhone, I guess, but the key is in the usage and the experiences are totally different. eBooks are carving a way to bring centuries of literature into readable 21st century form.  Reading hours on end is clearly an area in user experience that must be optimized.   There are those that gravitate to something new ( such as in new media), and those that cherish and gravitate toward something in the past ( centuries of long-form media for reading).   As Jeff Bezos put it,  - You want the hardware to disappear and for the user to experience the book.

Collecting and consuming media on devices is like an antique collector vs. a Ferrari collector, I guess.   In this case, the News Media has been digging at the core of what is special about the creation of  ”New Media” and business models, when we have something incredible powerful going on here.   The eBook trend is now at the tips of our  fingertips to give us  the ability to get  access to all of the past readable media more readily…. like having those wonderful antiques to experience  right by your side.  As Amazon is now 600K titles strong, how long will it take to get to the 10′s of millions.

According to Wikianswers “How many books exist in the World”,  the answer  comes out to be 3.5Billion.  Most of these books are part of the “old media” and they are not “new media”.  Bringing them to live on an electronic device suited for reading can be a very powerful thing. When we think of “New Media” we might compare that to 700Million Websites ( A statistic I recently learned from a colleague at Google). The books of yesterday may have charts, pictures and have color, but fundamentally they are content in long-form  for researching and for sizable reading periods.  During the 1900′s with the growth of other media such as Radio and Television, the old media of books was paralleled by 20th century new media, but the amount of recorded songs or TV programs does not even come close to the number of 3.5Billion books.   For instance, the library of congress has over 18M books, alone.  So bringing this legacy of information, knowledge is like bringing the worlds libraries to not only access immediately, but to consume in the way we have done for centuries….simple book reading.

So the Kindle as the showcase product of the category “eBooks”  is bringing that “old media” into a more efficient way to consume and access.  This was very close to the original vision of Google ( Access to the worlds information)  that has seemed to morph quite significantly with their obsession for “new media and advertising as well”.   As we now see Google chasing the iPhone and iPad with their Android strategy in many ways they have become ” me too” in their strategy of new products evolution in a category that has been called the  ”Multimedia Computer”.  Maybe we will see simplified Google Android devices that will go head-to-head with the Kindle for purposes of reading as the main design priority.  This will be a very interesting addition to Google Books and Google Print, but it has not yet happened.

As Amazon grows with the Kindle, so will the tendency to migrate the mass numbers of literary form into simple eBooks.  It is clearly a unique additional convergence device worth having to take reading to the next level.

( See Next post on the categories of Personal Screen Media)