Apple announced new tools to create and view iBooks on the iPad, and a new distribution channel for digital textbooks. In doing so Apple ignited a firestorm of debate on the subject of digital books, and the future of the publishing industry, book distribution, and likely consumer consumption patterns. More importantly, they set the stage for what we will someday recognize as a new medium, a new form of content in its own right.

And meanwhile Apple is doing so at a time when the publishing industry is at risk, with outmoded business models, under attack on multiple fronts.

More Than Just Textbooks

Apple positioned their January 19 announcement as an education event, with the aim of revolutionizing the textbook publishing industry. According to the Wall Street Journal, only 6% of textbooks are delivered today in digital form, forecasted to reach 50% by 2020. That’s a big target in its own right, but I’d guess Apple’s unspoken aspirations are even broader…

Well beyond what we think of as “books”

Years from now, we’ll look back at this moment and realize that Apple lit a fire, fueling a new medium, one still to be named.

What Apple has in mind is not just a book or a textbook rendered digitally on an iPad. Their vision for this new type of content goes well beyond digital books, enhanced ebooks, or whatever labels we use today.

Their vision mashes up elements of movies, games, animations and dynamic models, interactivity,  hyperlinking and nonlinear navigation — key enhancements to the core elements of storytelling, narrative flow, design, layout, etc. Here are some of the core elements that will drive our understanding of this new medium, as I see it.

— Source, Christine Thompson, Informing Arts ©2012

Textbooks First, But Not Last

I suspect Apple chose the textbook as the initial target for reinvention because the limitations of a print-based medium for multi-dimensional, complex or time-sensitive subjects are so well understood. Apple’s long experience at selling to and supporting educational institutions affords the company unique insights into what works, and what’s broken, when it comes to 21st century education.

The textbook publishing industry is huge, and can help finance the trials that will eventually shape the winning characteristics of this new emerging medium. In North America alone the traditional textbook publishing industry generates $12–14 billion annually, according to one expert (for a more conservative assumption: > $4 billion in 2011 textbook sales, according to the WSJ today; $8 billion in 2010 according to Forrester. Clearly no one agrees on the definition of the industry, but it’s huge.)

From Apple’s perspective (as a master of disruptive innovations), the educational publishing industry must be a sitting duck, ripe for transformation.

““We are educating people today in the same way as we did when there was 1% as much knowledge.”

– Danny Hillis, The Economist, March 22, 2001

That said Apple is willing to be a partner, not just a disrupter. Apple announced that it plans to partner with educators and publishers (reported by the Wall Street Journal today). When this partnership is productive, those who embrace change and can envision a new medium should profit enormously.

This New Medium Requires New Talents & Specialties

What will emerge is a new form of multi-faceted content. This new medium will require contributions from many specialties, such as:

• Photographers, videographers, musicians, producers
• Designers, illustrators, animators
• Art/creative directors for the ensemble as a whole
• Game developers — people who know how to incorporate game mechanics (“gamification”) within designed experiences
• User experience and interaction designers
• Usability testers
• Web developers and producers (HTML5 and CSS3 experts), scripters and coders
• Information architects, taxonomy and tagging specialists

And of course, the usual:

• Writers and copywriters (as well as translators for books with global appeal)
• Editors
• Fact checkers
• Talent spotters (acquisition experts)

On the strategic level this new medium will require visionaries, risk taking pioneers, game changers and others whose personalities are probably abhorrent to the traditional publishing world.

Not to mention new models for brand building, social media interactions with consumers, and new forms of marketing. But that’s a whole different subject in its own right.

[Disclosure: I played a key role in Apple’s early days of digital publishing, but have had no involvement in their current activities. The opinions described here are my own, based on interpretations of what I’ve read and heard over the Web.]

With more people accessing blogs and websites from smartphones, content owners need to check out their existing page designs to ensure they are “smartphone friendly” — optimized for mobile usage. By that I mean: usable on a smartphone without requiring a magnifying glass to read or navigate them. Blogs and websites that aren’t just a “minimized version” of the original content.

Yes, people can use pinching or other fingertip gestures to control scrolling or magnification on their phones, but this is less than ideal. Problems abound.

Some navigation schemes work poorly or not at all for people with fat fingers. People with bifocals or those over 40 may have trouble reading tiny type…

Photos or videos intended for viewing on a laptop or desktop PC may download slowly, or be difficult to see if not optimized for mobile viewing.

How Best to Optimize Mobile Content?

If you’re a business or content owner like me, you will need a way to adapt to a growing array of devices with divergent requirements — without increasing the time you must devote to your blog or website. This may not be a pressing problem today, but when mobile access starts to exceed 50% of your audience, the problem will become urgent.

(If you earn your living designing and developing blogs or websites for others, Halleluja! You’ve just stumbled on a new revenue stream.)

It’s impractical tackle these mobile optimization requirements on a post-by-post or page-by-page basis. Instead content owners need a smarter, more modern technical platform to handle this for the blog or website as a whole. The smart way to tackle web + mobile optimization is by using a design strategy called “responsive web designs.”

Assuming you’re not a web developer by trade, you also want a platform that handles the heavy-lifting for you, without requiring you to make extensive use of hand-coded scripts…

WordPress Users, Rejoice

If you use WordPress to manage your blog or website, there’s a new tool in the offing that can simplify your adoption of a responsive web design strategy. Check out Headway Themes. (Pricing ranges from $68 to $378, depending on the options.)

Their upcoming release, Headway 3.0.5, aims to tackle some of the core layout challenges: enabling the designer or technically savvy blogger to turn fixed-layout designs into flexible or “responsive web layouts.” (Read the book Responsive Web Design if you want a deeper understanding of this topic as a whole.)

Headway experts discuss the new functions in a screencast here; note that the responsive web demo takes place at about the 8-minute mark… (Caution: this video and discussion are intended for people already familiar with Headway.)

How Headway (or WordPress, for that matter) will simplify the task of serving up the optimal media for each device is still unclear to me at this point, beyond the fact that it will involve the use of “media queries.”

A Good First Step

Whether or not Headway has the perfect solution in Q1 2012, I’m relieved that the WordPress developer community has begun to tackle some of the challenges presented by rapid adoption of mobile web access. Their efforts should eventually make it easier for content owners to adapt content for optimal viewing across a broad gamut of devices.

At present <5% of my blog visitors arrive here via a smartphone. This gives me time to experiment with WordPress and Headway (or others), try different approaches using an experimental site, and be ready with a solid solution once mobile traffic becomes significant.

In the meantime I look forward to some hands-on testing to see what’s involved in optimizing for mobile web visitors.

An Android smartphone entered my life this holiday season, to solve network access issues in places where my beloved iPhone can’t connect via the AT&T network. Like San Francisco and the Silicon Valley…

While the current generation of Android smartphones has improved dramatically, the overall user experience is surprisingly uneven — better suited for consumer use cases than the needs of a small business owner. Here’s my take so far.

I narrowed my shopping focus to smartphones that work on Verizon’s 4G LTE network. I wanted Verizon for its superior voice call quality, but also because it’s the only real choice for business people who need nationwide 4G access.

I chose a Motorola Droid Razr. There’s a lot to like about the Droid Razr, which you’ll discover via the consumer reviews. The display is gorgeous, the processor speedy, yet the device feels light and well balanced in the hand.

I really like the “Smart Actions” feature to set up recurring activities, like sleep mode settings for nighttime use — or quiet mode, linked to places or locations where the ringer volume should be turned down or off (such as offices or yoga classes). The Droid offers several building blocks for Smart Actions that you can adapt as needed; they also serve as training wheels to help you learn how to create your own.

As with most 4G devices, you’ll need to recharge the Droid’s battery at least once a day. I’ve learned to activate battery-saving Smart Actions, to increase the duration between battery charges.

Personalization

Unlike Android fans, I dislike the sci-fi “personality” that Verizon and Motorola layer onto the Droid. In week 2 I replaced the sci-fi imagery and robotic ringtones with content I found less droid-like. Personalizing the device took a few days, due to learning curve and usability issues.

Transferring content from a Mac to the Android is not as easy as it should have been over a USB connection (iPhones are better at this).

Thankfully, the Razr includes a utility called MotoCast that enables Mac users to synchronize music, photos, videos and podcasts between iTunes, iPhoto (or other Mac folders) and the Razr. Once you get this set up, it works quite well. (I’d imagine it works well on Windows too, but have not tried it.)

MotoCast also supports wireless streaming of digital media from your PC or Mac, which I’ve not tried. Streaming takes place over your WiFi or 3G/4G connection.

Verizon’s 4G Network: Mixed First Impressions

Sadly it took more than 24 hours to activate the phone, despite customer support calls to Amazon and Verizon. Not surprisingly, Amazon’s support was quite good.

Verizon’s 4G network was down during much of that period, which stalled the activation process. Millions of new device activations over the holidays must have strained Verizon’s network infrastructure; even so, the slow activation process was not confidence inspiring.

By way of contrast all 3 iPhones that I’ve owned were activated within moments of arriving in my hands… Apple and AT&T have clearly worked hard to streamline this process for the consumer.

Verizon’s 4G service has been up and down several times in the 2+ weeks I’ve owned the Droid Razr, so it’s obvious that Verizon is still struggling to master their LTE network operations. For data-based services (such as mobile web surfing) having to fall back to 3G on Verizon is not a pretty picture. It’s an unhappy reminder of dial-up network speeds…

When the signal is good, the Verizon 4G service is fast — for a cellular network. I ran Speedtest moments ago on the Droid Razr, measuring 14031 Kbps down and 6589 Kbps up (with a latency of 60ms). To put this in context my Comcast Speedtest registered 67.7 Mbps down and 33.8 Mbps up (with a latency of 9ms). Note the difference in units: from kilobytes (Verizon LTE) to megabytes (Comcast).

As expected voice call quality is very good — one of my chief reasons for returning to Verizon’s service, for mobile calls that matter.

Email, Contact and Calendar Management

Setting up email accounts on the phone is quick and easy, if you know what you’re doing. Email delivery, so far, has been trouble free.

If your office relies on Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Contacts, you are unlikely to encounter the problems that I’ve experienced… Two weeks later, I still don’t have a complete set of contacts on my phone. And I haven’t even attempted to synchronize calendars.

Outlook Users, Beware!

My most serious reservation about Android is its limitations when it comes to contacts and calendar management, especially for Windows Outlook. Had I known in advance the usability issues I’d encounter, I would never have invested in an Android device.

I believe the underlying drivers of these constraints are philosophical, rather than technical — Outlook users are the most at risk. Due to religious / business model conflicts between Google and Microsoft, there is no built-in way to synch your Outlook data on Android — unless your firm’s IT department uses Exchange and supports ActiveSync.

If your business, like mine, uses Outlook without an Exchange Server to manage contacts and calendars, be careful when it comes time to synch your Outlook data with your Android device.

There are a variety of third party apps for Outlook synching, but user reviews are very mixed — and quality is inconsistent from one version of Android to the next. Just because a third party app worked with Android version 2.x doesn’t mean it will work with “Ice Cream Sandwich” (version 4.x) — which is now installed on my Droid Razr.

Pleasing But Superficial Support for Contacts

That said, initial impressions about contacts are surprisingly pleasing. If you register your Twitter and Facebook profiles on the phone, Android will add your friends’ contact data to the Contacts app on your phone. You’ll see their photo when you search for their contact info, or when they call or send you a message.

But — and this is a big “but” — you have little ability to edit the contact data on your phone. My dad, for example, includes his email contact info on Facebook, but not his phone number. Android retrieves his name, photo and email info from his Facebook page, and displays it nicely in his contact record. Android won’t let me add his phone number to the contact data on my phone, because the info came from Facebook. From a usability perspective this sucks. I don’t care where the data came from; once it’s on my phone, I should be able to add key information, such as home or mobile phone numbers.

The Google “solution” is to export your Outlook contacts to a CSV file and then import them into Google Contacts online. What are they thinking????

Kerio Connect, A Better Alternative?

For a business user the Google solution is not practical.

Because my small business does not run Exchange servers, I will have to move to a hosted Exchange-like service (such as Kerio Connect). Kerio claims to streamline the process of keeping calendars, contacts and other key business data synchronized between my Android smartphone and my office computer.

This is a $120 annual expense that I had not factored in to the purchase decision (single-user pricing). That said, Kerio promises to provide cross-platform support for my Macs, PCs, iPhone, iPad and Android devices. We’ll see how it goes; I plan to try this next week.

Android: OK, But IOS Is Better

My impressions of Android may be colored by my experience as a long-time iPhone user, but there’s a lot of room for improvement when it comes to usability. The iPhone offers significant UI and usability finesse that you just don’t get with Android — unless you go online to an Android app store and find work-arounds to fill in the gaps.

Why, for example, do I need a third party app just so I can control or rearrange how apps are displayed on the various “screens” on my phone? Why did Motorola have to build an app just so I could drag and drop photos, music, etc., from my Mac to the Android’s SD card over a USB connection?

I hate the app bloatware that comes preinstalled an Android device. The initial impression is chaotic and confusing, when you see so much stuff preinstalled on your new phone — with no info about what it does or how it works.

Verizon “Knows Best”

Worse yet, you can’t delete the crap that Verizon thinks you want. Hello? Why would I need or want ESPN or NFL football apps on a business phone?

You can’t get rid of Verizon’s crap (although you can hide it — until the next update of the OS). One of several indications that Verizon thinks they know what’s best for the customer — while limiting the customer’s options to control the experience or even the cost implications. This “walled garden” lock-in behavior is frustratingly persistent on Verizon’s part. Why haven’t they unlearned this consumer-hostile behavior by now?

Case in point: Verizon preinstalls a movie streaming app on the Droid Razr that works only over the 4G network (hint: it chews up data and may force you into overage charges if you watch a lot of movies). It will NOT work over WiFi — proof that Verizon aims to maximize ARPU at the expense of what’s good for the customer.

My issue is that I don’t have enough control over the phone or key data services. And at the high price you pay the carrier each month, even for baseline 4G service, you should have a lot more control over what you’re using, including the choice to use WiFi preferentially, when it’s available.

From a brand strategy perspective, Verizon is “training” me not to trust their choices on my behalf. It’s all about them, not my best interests… The relentless quest for ARPU maximization at the expense of customer/brand loyalty.

If you blog regularly, how prepared are you to respond to the impact of device proliferation or the increasing number of people who access your content using mobile devices? I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to worry about content complexity, and the lack of “right sized” technology solutions that are usable and affordable for small businesses.

For several years I’ve been managing 2 blogs and a website, thanks to WordPress and the Thesis framework:

I’m largely self-sufficient, but do rely on web developers occasionally, when desired changes to look-and-feel require custom coding. I don’t write scripts.

Unlike large enterprises I don’t have easy access to designers or web developers (nor the budget to hire freelancers at will).

I don’t have time to stay current with changes in HTML or CSS standards, browser functionality, etc.

This means I need a technology strategy that lets me be self-sufficient — and keeps me out of trouble when the online technologies change.

As long as all the visitors to my blogs and website arrive via a modern browser for Windows or Mac OS, all is well. My WordPress/Thesis themes respond adequately (if not perfectly) to differences in browser capabilities. The resulting presentation works OK for the most common screen resolutions — but probably not well enough for mobile device users.

But things are changing. According to Google Analytics, about 3% of my visitors are now accessing my content from iPads, iPhones or Android devices. Those using iPads or iPhones can certainly view my content, but their experience is sub-par relative to people using laptops or full-blown PCs and Macs.

And if I’m honest, I don’t even know what experience is delivered to an Android tablet or smartphone user… Thankfully, Blackberry and Windows Mobile phone users are such a small subset of my audience that they’re not worth worrying about.

So What’s the Problem?

The challenge is finding a simple yet elegant solution that allows me to manage authoring, content creation/submission, design, asset management, and presentation in a way that’s optimized to the devices and browsers my visitors are using.

Even for my simple blogs there are multiple contributors of content complexity — for which I have no adequate solution today:

• Font choices: —  inconsistent font family availability across devices, inconsistent typographic effects
• Multiple-column layouts: smartphone screens are too tiny to display more than 1 sidebar plus the main body of text/content
• Fixed-resolution graphics: such as the graphic banner at the top of the page, or images inserted within the post
• Widgets: placement, functionality
• Embedded video: beware video players that depend on Flash
• Overall legibility on small screens: lots of issues here for font selection, sizes, spacing between lines of text, etc.

Fortunately, I never fell into the trap of relying upon Flash for glitzy design effects. Had I done so, I would have been facing an even greater device adaptation challenge.

Other technical issues that are beyond my ability to solve without the help of a web developer:

• Device/browser detection when a visitor first arrives at my blog or website
• Choosing the optimal “theme” given the characteristics of the visitor’s device and browser, and ensuring device-optimal presentation of my blog or website’s content
• Previewing what a visitor will see or experience on devices I don’t own (like an Android tablet or smartphone)
• QA and testing

My small business serves English-speaking clients only, so fortunately I don’t face the added complexity of globalization and localization of content…

What’s the Solution?

I’m hopeful that the software community will soon offer a choice of tools that will meet the needs of a firm like mine, but without increasing the time required for content creation or management. As of today I’m unaware of any solution that’s affordable, comprehensive or appropriate for a small business that operates without on-going support from web developers.

My current technology strategy, WordPress + Thesis, is clearly inadequate. I suspect there’s a technology generational issue at play here…

Thesis is getting long in the tooth, and I’ve lost all confidence that its developers are investing what’s required to respond to a multi-channel / multi-device world.

WordPress has no good way to manage digital assets so the right cluster of assets (optimized for a particular device profile) can be delivered based on the device/browser each visitor is using.

And yes, I’m sure there are many WordPress-savvy web developers who would love to develop conditional logic to handle all the different use cases, but this approach is too expensive in a world that’s moving so quickly.

Most of the platforms I’ve checked out appear to have a “siloed strategy” — they work just fine for a specific class of devices (like PCs and Macs), but not well across multiple device classes, like Android and iPad tablets as well as smartphones.

Adobe offers an elegant solution, but it’s priced and sized for large-scale enterprises. (And I’d be willing to bet it requires a team of IT and web developer gurus to make it all work.) Adobe’s approach is way out of my league, both financially and practically.

I’m eagerly awaiting some innovation from the software community. Bring it on!

Preorders for Apple’s new iPhone 4S surpassed a million units in the first 24 hours, more than 40% higher than Apple’s previous single-day record. This early buying frenzy stands in stark contrast to analysts’ lukewarm response to the introduction of Apple’s latest iPhone model.

Meanwhile online Apple fan clubs and LinkedIn networks of former Apple employees exhort people to “do it for Steve” — go out and order an iPhone 4S if you’re eligible for a device upgrade. (I’ve already gotten a few of those calls to action.)

What’s driving these early sales — a tribute to Steve Jobs, or are people genuinely more interested in voice control via Siri than analysts had anticipated?

It will be interesting to see how this plays out…

Logic Not Emotion?

For people who prefer logic to emotion, here’s an interesting take on Apple’s business logic: the rationale behind their product release cycle.

There’s a compelling reason why they have deliberately planned to defer release of the iPhone 5 until next year — that’s when the current 2-year contracts will expire for tens of millions of iPhone 4 owners …

When you look at how Apple’s subscriber base is segmented across different models of iPhone, a delayed product release makes huge business sense.

Perhaps by then the industry will also have resolved the battery consumption and network flakiness issues that plague current 4G phone subscribers, leading to a better experience for future iPhone 5 owners.

Forrester has identified the key factors that are most likely to spell success or failure when it comes to implementing B2B marketing automation platforms (report published April 2011). Companies that rush to implement without the right content or agreed-upon processes are unlikely to achieve satisfactory payback from their investment in marketing automation. Forrester cautions that these success factors apply, regardless of how easy the platform is to use…

Principal analyst Jeff Ernst warns CMOs that the following success factors are critical, if they expect ROI from their investment in marketing automation:

• A defined lead management process (agreed to by sales and marketing)
• A content strategy that supports buyers’ needs (not the marketer’s convenience), throughout the buyer’s journey — for each buyer role
• Access to good contact data (up-to-date contact info for the buyer roles most likely to respond favorably)
• Access to the skills and budget needed to keep the marketing automation platform running smoothly

Implications for Content Strategy

When it comes to content, Forrester warns that it isn’t enough for B2B vendors to just recycle existing product-centric literature and sales tools. Marketers must develop a plan to ensure they can deliver the right content, to the right buyer role, at the appropriate moment in the buyer’s journey. Marketing must satisfy multiple stakeholders within their prospective customer organizations:

“More people affect the purchase decision than in the past, including line-of-business managers, IT, finance, and procurement. Marketing needs to deliver information that explains the offerings and business outcomes as they relate to the particular interests and concerns of each stakeholder…

Source: Jeff Ernst, B2B Marketers Must Better Prepare for Marketing Automation, Forrester Research, April 26, 2011.

It’s highly unlikely that today’s product-centric content will suit the buyer’s needs, until it is recast in a context that answers the buyer’s questions.

Therefore marketers must identify the key buyer personas (or roles), discover the journey buyers go through while making a purchase decision, and how information needs change as each buyer role progresses along that journey.

Develop Content for the Buyer Journey

Here’s Forrester’s simplified view of the buyer’s journey (specifics vary by role, industry, application, etc.):

Source: Jeff Ernst, B2B Marketers Must Better Prepare for Marketing Automation, Forrester Research, April 26, 2011.

Each step along the buyer’s journey reveals key activities or informational needs that must be satisfied before the buyer will progress to the next step. Those activities and questions drive the requirements for the content that must be delivered, according to lead nurturing protocols, via the marketing automation platform.

This means that marketers must revisit their content strategy, identify content gaps, and put a plan in place to fill those gaps. It also means developing role-specific content, and putting in place a whole set of practices to manage what will become an explosion in content objects…

As an aside Forrester also mentioned that even the vendors’ best-practice case studies (sources for this research) are still at early stages of maturity, according to Forrester’s marketing automation maturity model.

Meanwhile, here’s a link to the content strategy maturity model that I’ve been developing.

It’s always fun to review the themes and ideas that have emerged in this blog, as a way of marking both the passage of time, but also the interior conversation. For the author or content creator, it’s a pleasurable feedback device.

Even better, when that summary is visual:

I’m happy to see Wordle reflect some core themes for this blog:

• Marketing strategy and content, or content as strategy
• Customer
• Clarity and perspectives

If Wordle had developed this topical map using blog post popularity, my musings on Apple’s strategy would have jumped out to the forefront. Instead the word “Apple” is tucked away in the upper right-hand corner of this image.

It just goes to show: automated “meaning makers” are a good start, but incomplete without the insights of a knowledgeable person to make the best sense of things.

Content marketing offers tremendous promise, but there’s a dark side to it: looming content chaos, coupled with a serious skills shortage that could limit its potential impact.

By choosing to embrace content marketing, you will confront the challenge of managing content across an increasingly complex lifecycle.

From the frenetic scrum of content creation and revision, to the locked-down governance phase of corporate-approved assets.

Whether you wrangle content in-house with just internal resources, or juggle virtual teams of freelancers and agencies, you’ll encounter challenges with content creation and content management: people, processes, skills, and toolsets.

Content Chaos

Although we all agree that content is created, deployed and eventually reaches the end of its useful life, no one agrees on the definition of the content lifecycle, nor how many stages it involves. This is just one symptom of the chaos in this burgeoning new world of digital communications.

Once you move beyond the traditional, one-size-fits-all print or broadcast model — yesterday’s world — content chaos will complicate your work life. It’s inevitable.

Given the fragmentation in media types and formats, the proliferation of devices and channels, content chaos is rampant. It’s getting exponentially worse due to the explosion in content volume, a consequence of tailoring messages and tweaking content elements to the needs of specific audiences and diverse viewing preferences.

There’s Hope for Larger Organizations

Content management experts like OpenText recognize the need to educate the market about the risks and challenges of “content chaos” — a real issue for organizations of all sizes, and for all types of content.

OpenText offers a broad set of solutions for mid-market and larger enterprises, including the types of content so near and dear to content marketers’ hearts: web content, brand and marketing assets, as well as social media.

Likewise Microsoft and its partners provide platforms for managing content created by sales and marketing people, based on SharePoint 2010 and its underlying infrastructure. (For example, here’s an introductory podcast to digital asset management and SharePoint).

Generally speaking, these are enterprise-class deployments, and come with mixed blessings (and high price tags): the need for information architects, taxonomy wizards, IT professionals, and other highly trained people to manage the server farms, content repositories and role-based permission sets.

Microsoft would have you believe theirs is a less complex approach. Enterprises that have deployed the server version of SharePoint 2010 have mixed viewpoints on its benefits for content management, although all agree it’s a big step forward from previous versions.

No doubt there are highly productive solutions for content marketers, if your firm can afford an investment in custom consulting and the software licenses entailed, and enjoys IT support to drive the procurement process. There are probably bazillions of Microsoft Certified partners who have attained competence in content management, if not taxonomy wrangling or digital asset management for marketers.

Complex Solutions, Complex Messaging

Given their core buyers, enterprise software suppliers tend to communicate in terms better suited to IT pros than content marketers. So even though their platforms may offer everything a content marketer needs, and more, understanding what’s possible or where to start is beyond the ken of most marketers. Here’s just one example (from Microsoft, writing about digital asset management):

“Increasing numbers of office workers create or reuse images and other rich media assets as part of their daily tasks. Often, however, no common repository exists at the departmental or enterprise level that is optimized for storing these assets. A common repository lets users easily discover and reuse rich media assets that others have already created. The asset library in SharePoint Server 2010 can save an organization time and other resources by providing a specialized repository for storing and managing digital assets. Users no longer have to look for assets in multiple locations over the network, or re-create assets from scratch. By using a centralized repository for managing digital assets, the organization also exerts tighter control over brand-sensitive content and can ensure that only approved assets for products are made available to the appropriate users.

Chaos, A Fact of Life for Small or Virtual Teams

For smaller firms like mine, the path out of chaos is less clear. We can’t afford enterprise-class solutions nor a hefty investment in custom development by highly trained IT consultants. We don’t have IT procurement resources in-house. We like web-based services because they free us from server management headaches.

It’s too early to tell whether the cloud-based versions of SharePoint and Office — called Office 365 and SharePoint Online — will satisfy the needs of content marketing teams within SMB enterprises or start-ups. (This is not the focus of Microsoft’s messaging or solutions positioning, so only time will tell if the offering fits our needs. At present these platforms are still in beta.)

Is there a cloud-based solution in store for us? We may not even have the skills to answer that question or assess our options adequately. So we default to what’s simple and well understood.

Many of us limp along with a mish-mash of Excel, Basecamp, WordPress (or other open source CMS platforms), NAS drives, Box.net, DropBox, and who knows what else. We run into trouble with SaaS offerings when the transition from one content lifecycle stage to another entails a change in content ownership — but our suppliers have no way to handle those ownership changes. (I’ve blogged on this before.)

It’s almost laughable to see the behind-the-scenes negotiations between freelancers and creative agencies over which set of tools and technologies to deploy for a new client engagement. A symptom of the chaos that’s our daily reality…

Freelancers and small firms cope daily with the chaos of project-based, content silos — the consequences of little-to-no project budgets for content management. And it’s only going to get worse until someone comes up with an easy-to-use, comprehensive solution that’s scaled (and priced for) smaller organizations and the virtual talent networks that are so prevalent across the creative community.

When you’re competing for attention, production quality matters; it can help your content stand out in an over-crowded media environment. Of course, you can’t forget the basics: your story must be interesting and well crafted; your message should have intrinsic appeal for its intended audience. Without that, why “put lipstick on a pig?”

Although the notion of “high production value” comes from the film industry, the benefits of production quality apply to all media. All else being equal, content with higher production values is more memorable and therefore more likely to garner attention. The best will get forwarded or be shared by its viewers, and may even “go viral.”

Content creators who will benefit most from a higher quality standard are:

• Those who serve unknown or lesser known brands.
• Bloggers and small businesses who want to look bigger than they are.
• People struggling to get the conversation started with prospective customers, influencers or partners.
• Businesses launching new products when the corporate brand has low awareness or visibility.

A New (Beta) Offering from Apple

So when Apple improved its online document sharing and presentation capabilities yesterday, I took notice, always being on the look-out for things that might benefit my emerging and mid-market clients. Apple’s way of re-imagining existing applications or methods is always worth consideration.

Knowing Apple’s commitment to design, I was intrigued, so I decided to test their beta service by adapting an existing Keynote presentation for online viewing and sharing. Here’s what I’ve learned so far about Apple’s platform, called iWork.com, now in public beta.

I’ve made my test presentation public, so you can draw your own conclusions about the quality and usability of Apple’s current offering. You can see it via this link or play the embedded presentation here. It is beta, so you may experience some UI glitches. Needless to say, the full-size version of the presentation displays more detail and visual definition than the smaller embedded version that follows here.

Supported Browsers and Platforms

People can see your content from a Mac, PC, iPad or iPhone as long as they have broadband access, and you provide an easy way for them to link to the document’s URL within iWork.com.

iWork provides optimal viewing via the Apple Safari browser on Macs, iPads and iPhones, as well as the latest version of Safari on Windows. But it’s not limited to Safari.

Based on my quick-and-dirty tests, it also works fine with Firefox 3.x and Internet Explorer 8 in Windows 7. (I did not test on a PC with an older version of Windows.)

The principal trade-offs that I noticed between Safari and Firefox or IE8 are:

• Transition effects work only with Safari. In my test case, for example, all the sweet little dissolves from one screen to the next are disabled with Firefox and IE8.
• The cursor control keys, Home, End, Page Up and Page Down have more functionality in Safari, but are also supported to some extent with IE and Firefox.

Quality Impressions

I was pleasantly surprised at how well iWork.com renders presentations online — stunning in fact, if you’re viewing content from a Mac or even an iPhone. (I haven’t yet tried an iPad, but expect Apple has sweated the details to make online presentations really sing in that environment.) Compared to most online presentations, typography is gorgeous when slides are displayed via iWork.com.

My test presentation features a subtle graduated background and several nonstandard fonts, including the custom font formerly used by Apple for its corporate communications. In my tests this presentation looks really good on Windows and the iPhone, as well as on the Mac.

No surprise, it looks best of all on a Mac: the online colors are quite true to the original and the font rendering is a bit more crisp.

As you can see in this screenshot from Windows Firefox, the font rendering is very pleasing on a PC as well. To dramatize this effect, I’ve used Apple’s former corporate typeface, a customized version of Garamond, which you see here with “Apple Style.”

Graphics display beautifully on all the devices I tested, from the iPhone 4 to the Windows 7 PC.

For my Windows tests, I was surprised to see that the color fidelity was better with Firefox or IE8 than with Safari on Windows. Windows Safari introduced a sepia or taupe tint to the overall palette that wasn’t present in the original presentation.

Who Can Create Content for Sharing via iWork

So here’s the big caveat for content mavens: you must use Apple’s application suite, iWork ‘09 (or later), to create content for viewing online via iWork.com. That means you either need a Mac or an iPad as your content creation platform, plus a license to the iWork suite or iWork app. Relative to Microsoft Office, iWork is not expensive — about $10 for the iPad app version, and under $70 for the Mac OS X version.

My sample presentation was created using Keynote ‘09 (a member of the iWork suite) on a 3-year-old Mac Pro. Keynote supports some simplistic voice-over narration, which I did not test.

Note that you can create 3 kinds of visually rich content using iWork ‘09:

• presentations with embedded movies and multimedia, including transitions and other special effects (browser dependent)
• documents (brochures, proposals, marketing collateral, etc.)
• spreadsheets, charts and financial models

To host a presentation or other document in iWork.com, you need an Apple online identity and no doubt, a subscription to MobileMe. For about $99 per year, you’ll have 1 gigabyte of online storage for document hosting purposes.

Not Designed to Replace Webinar Platforms

As a point of clarification, Apple’s iWork is intended for private or public document sharing, but not as a vehicle for webinars per se.

Having said that, people on a low budget who have access to audio conferencing facilities could cobble together a visually rich webinar using iWork and meet the needs of a smallish audience or group meeting.

If you take this approach, you will miss out on the meeting management facilities of the leading webinar platforms. Even so, your presentation will look dramatically better than it does on most of today’s leading platforms. IMHO presentations via iWork.com are visually superior to what you see with Adobe Connect; Connect (and the other contenders) have the edge when it comes to managing audience interactions, Q&A, etc.

In a later post I’ll share my impressions of the user interface, both for online interaction as well as the content sharing features that iWork affords.

Like other Mac users eagerly awaiting 4G LTE service in the US, I was angry to learn that Verizon’s initial 4G modems will support Windows only. There’s no official word when the service will be extended to Mac and iPad users…

Initial Reactions from a Long-time Mac User

How could that be possible, I fumed: Mac and iPad users tend to be enthusiastic early adopters, especially for services that help us express ourselves, communicate, or help our companies stand out from the rest.

Surely, I thought, we must fit Verizon’s ideal customer profile for their new 4G LTE data service. If we can afford the Apple brand premium, we must be attractive prospects for Verizon’s top-of-the-line wireless service.

And we’re increasing in number, too. Professionals who work out of the office, travel often for biz dev reasons, sell or consult — and importantly, those in roles with direct purchasing authority — are increasingly likely to use Mac laptops and/or iPads when our device choices are not dictated by IT or purchasing policies. Although fewer in number than the Windows community, we traditionally drive spikes in demand for groundbreaking services that suit our multi-faceted modes of work and play.

Surely we’d be very attractive customers for Verizon. Why would Verizon take the risk of alienating us by denying us a service that we want?

Over dinner I talked about this with my husband who, though not a Verizon employee, has a well-informed view of wireless industry behavior. His POV made sense, although it didn’t resolve my disappointment. Here’s how the thinking unfolded as we tried to imagine what drove Verizon’s decision to support PCs only, at least at first…

A Plausible Business Scenario?

Let’s start by assuming that Verizon expects Mac, next-gen iPad and future iPhone users to become significant 4G customers over time. They most likely represent Verizon’s most strategic customer acquisition opportunity over the next few years. Not to mention ARPU boosters (margin improvements). So this is a high-stakes play for Verizon and its shareholders…

Here’s why the delay probably makes sense from Verizon’s POV.

Technical/Business Factors

• Verizon’s LTE network is bleeding-edge technology, especially at the scale needed for the whole US market
• The shift to an LTE nationwide network is capital intensive and fraught with risk
• Verizon must resolve many technical and infrastructure issues before the service is reliable, their LTE footprint covers all of the major markets, and actual bandwidth delivery meets people’s inflated expectations
• Service will be rocky for early customers
• Verizon faces unknown scaling issues for network provisioning, customer on-boarding, etc.
• Unlike AT&T, Verizon lacks real-world experience scaling up to respond when actual bandwidth demands exceed forecast by orders of magnitude
• Verizon has watched AT&T scramble to add bandwidth capacity after dramatically under-estimating what iPhone users would consume — with brand tarnishing consequences for AT&T when iPhone users screamed loudly in San Francisco, New York and elsewhere, not to mention billions in unforeseen capital investments
• The USB LTE dongles are first-generation technology comprising 4 radios, each with its own chipset, so they’re large and clunky
• Qualcomm, Verizon and their technology ecosystem must move up the learning curve before they can afford to miniaturize and deliver the LTE-enabling technology in smaller and more elegant form factors, with improved reliability

Brand/Reputation Factors

• Apple has trained its customers to have little patience for unreliable services or devices
• Apple customers expect superior user experiences (that’s why they pay extra for the Apple brand)
• Apple has taught its customers to expect elegance of form and function — in Apple devices, and the peripherals and accessories that are designed to work with those devices
• Apple/iPhone customers expect the same caliber of user experience from their wireless carriers that they expect of Apple
• The Mac and extended Apple brand fan community have proven to be highly vocal when angry, frustrated or disappointed
• Macs are widely used by media businesses to produce magazines, newsletters and other mass media, online or offline, so the brand fans’ voices will be amplified by the media
• Verizon doesn’t want the brand risk of large numbers of disappointed Mac and iPad users blogging and tweeting about how awful the LTE service is
• Verizon wants to deal with a manageable set of users during what is essentially an in-market pilot phase for the early LTE service

My Conclusion

Verizon plans to extend LTE service to Mac and iOS devices once Verizon is assured that the service experience and overall quality will meet what Mac and iPad owners have come to expect of their technology providers.

So, disappointed as I am, this scenario seems plausible to me from a strategic perspective, given the stakes for Verizon.

Having said that, I won’t be surprised if there’s an announcement by Apple and/or Verizon in January (at CES?) with service availability announced for H1 2011. Perhaps in Q1 we’ll see some off-brand drivers hacked together by eager techno geeks serving bleeding-edge users who can’t wait for the Verizon-branded modems for Mac users.

Oh yes, and there may be a wee bit of revenge operating here as well, payback for the long wait before the Apple-AT&T exclusivity terms expired so Apple could bring the iPhone to Verizon customers.

So, happy holidays, Mac and iPad owners. There won’t be a Verizon LTE gift card in your Christmas stocking this year…

Update: If you’re willing to use Bootcamp and Windows on your Mac (and probably jump through some other hoops), you can use Verizon 4G LTE on Macs with Intel processors, someone has tweeted to me. At least in Houston, that is.

Update #2: Here is some discussion about the Verizon iPhone offer (3G at first, not 4G) and reasons why. Source: ZDnet. My guess? A 4G Verizon model will be announced in June, for late summer availability. Based on Apple’s past patterns…