Social Analytics

The past year has seen a tremendous increase interest by companies in the vast array of data made available in social media. Data about markets, customers, buyers, competitors, suppliers, almost any aspect of a business. The analysis of those data is being incorporated into the mainstream information systems and put to use for strategic and other purposes. In this series published by InformationWeek, the burgeoning field of Social Analytics is examined in some depth. Worth investigating. Check it out.

How E-Books are changing the Publishing Industry

The publication of e-books has grown to the point that it is now an established and important part of the overall industry. New publishing vehicles are emerging which enable authors to publish their books without the need to find an agent or jump the hoops with a publisher. The new vehicles, like Createspace and Lulu enable authors to offer their wares for download or in paper on a print-on-demand basis. The real winner is the consumer, who can chose how they do their reading and will have a wider choice of authors to choose from. Also, they can get their books online for a much lower price  in many cases as little as 99 cents.

As one who has published books in both ways, using traditional publishers and the new vehicles (in my case, Createspace), I can say that I much prefer the new scene. I can get my books out there in a form that I like, set the price and find ways to seek out readers for them (the hard part). With traditional publishers, you can't do that. You are at the mercy of the publishers., your book goes on the market for a short period of time on book shelves and than is taken off to make room for the new ones. The result is that most authors do not make any money on their books, even though it might be a very good one. With the new system, authors can leave their books for download on sites such as Amazon indefinitely, can have their books made available in print indefinitely and can devise their own marketing schemes, making use of the many emerging e-marketing specialists out there.

The new world of publishing gives consumers of books a better choice and gives the authors more control over their product. A win-win. For another writer's view, check out this article.

The Wireless Spectrum Shortage

The amazing growth of mobile units like smartphones and tablets is having an enormous impact on the way people communicate and on business generally. As those units become steadily more powerful, they transmit ever increasing volumes of data. Something that is often forgotten, except by people in the communications industry, is that this uses up available spectrum, and that there are limits on the spectrum available.

The ability to transmit over the air waves is a controlled function. It has been so for many years because if it were not controlled and organized, the transmissions would get mixed up, interfere with each other and become very unreliable and unsafe. So government agencies administer spectrum and data carriers buy it.

So the amount of spectrum available is limited. To complicate the situation, most of the spectrum is not owned by the mobile operators, making the availability even tighter.

All of this means that the cost of using mobile devices is bound to go up. Unlimited data plans will be a thing of the past, which they already are in some quarters now. And tiered plans that charge heavy users higher fees will continue to grow. For more on this, check this link.