Open up your mind and say, ahh...

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Photo: Damon Lavrinc/Wired

Photo: Mercedes

The Bluetooth speaker dock market is becoming increasingly crowded, but Soundfreaq has punched through the noise with its Sound Stack, catering to audiophiles at a price that’s much lower than its high-end competition. I gave it a thorough series of listening tests and comparisons, and here’s my review.

The Sound Stack is aimed at the high end of this market, and priced at $399, it’s not cheap, but it costs a lot less than its chief competitors, among those being the $600 Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Air and the Bose SoundDock 10, also $600. I set out to not only listen closely to the Sound Stack, but to compare it to these two popular competitors.

The Sound Stack is at its most feature-rich when you’re using an Apple iOS device, where you can use it as a charging dock as well as wirelessly stream music to it via Bluetooth. But it’s not only for Apple aficionados — its Bluetooth magic also works with Android and BlackBerry phones, and there is an app for both the iOS and Android platforms that lets you control everything from your smartphone. It’s the same app I’ve tried before with other Soundfreaq products, and it’s rather plain and unimpressive, but is a necessary help if you want to listen to its FM radio. Beyond that, it lets you plug in most other audio devices using its auxiliary port.

After a quick and simple setup involving plugging in the Sound Stack and pressing the Sound Stack’s “pair” button to introduce it to my iPhone 4 (and later, my iPad 2), the speaker was ready to go. As it sat there on a coffee table, I admired its simple design, put together like a horizontal row of pillowy goodness with a couple of dark metallic end caps. Its styling is not going to attract a lot of attention, but it won’t offend anyone, either. Its dark and angular design is pleasant and attractive, a worthy complement to the simple design of iPhones and iPads, and a fine addition to just about any decor. That beauty is not just skin deep, either — its construction is solid and precise, exuding high quality.

After I was done admiring its appearance, it was time to settle in for some serious listening. Playing songs from nearly every genre of music — punchy funk and soothing cello music, hot salsa compared with smoking banjo breaks, hip-hop with bass notes that rattled the rafters and classical guitar with its delicate and wide-ranging resonance, soft music by James Taylor and then thick mixes by Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen — the speaker handled it all with astonishing musicality. It was even able to perfectly reproduce the sound of a saxophone, with which I am intimately familiar after playing professionally for more than a decade. Yes, this is the real thing. It sounds like music, with little noise, no distortion — and when you need it, enough volume to hurt your ears.

But would it appeal to persnickety audiophiles? Probably not. It’s hard to please that crowd, and most of them don’t even much care for the benchmark speaker of this group, the Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Air. How would the Sound Stack measure up to that beast, as well as its lesser competitor, the Bose SoundDock 10? I was in luck, because Soundfreaq co-founder and creative director Matt Paprocki had one of each of those speakers on hand, along with a setup that would let me audition the competitors, directly comparing each with the Soundfreaq Sound Stack in an A/B smackdown listening test.

 

Google+ Hangouts were already popular with users who communicate with sign language, but thanks to improvements in video stability and a new “Take the Floor” feature, the popular group chat capability just got a lot more accessible for everyone.

Switching between speakers in Hangouts is automatic using voice activation, where whomever is talking the most (or the loudest) is shown in the main video area, and all others are seen in smaller video thumbnails. Sounds great, and that automatic switching it’s one of the coolest features of Google+ Hangouts.

But that wasn’t working as well for hearing-impaired users in chat areas where all users were signing — the main screen was usually occupied by whichever user’s microphone was picking up the most background noise. As a result, most users were often trying to read the sign language of people who were shown in tiny thumbnail screens.

Google’s fixed that with its new “Take the Floor” feature. In a Google+ post, Google engineering director Chee Chew explained how it works:

1) Have everyone mute their audio.

2) When you want to sign something, hit Shift+s.

3) When you see yourself as the main video, that’s your cue. You’ve got the floor… everyone’s main video has switched to you. Sign away.

Chew added, “We’ve noticed over the past few weeks that the stability and quality of the video in Hangouts has improved as well, which also makes it easier for the hearing impaired to see and understand sign language.”

Great idea, Google.

via WebProNews

MMMMMMMM, money. How do you make money writing a book?

So, we’re at the end of the series, kids, but lots of you have asked along the way, “but can I make any money at this book thing?” Here’s the real answer first: yes, but you’ve gotta work at it. Sorry. You don’t get all that rich writing books, unless you’re James Patterson or Stephen King or that marketing guy who made 7 figures selling ebooks through the Kindle store and will gladly sell you his secret to selling you ebooks. I didn’t buy a new car based on my book money. (I bought it based on speech money.) So, now that I’ve burst your bubble, I’m going to share some ways you can make money writing a book.

Teaching Sells

Think beyond the pages for a moment. Is the information you’re selling worth someone’s money? Then a book might not even be the best medium to make that money. If you sell a book with a mainstream press company, you’ll make somewhere between $1 and $3 a book (in most cases). That means, it takes around 15,000 sales at $2 to make $30,000. (Please applaud at my math skills- I’m a marketer). Now, sell a class on the topic of that book for $97, and you only have to find around 310 buyers to make the same amount. Yep. 310 buyers are easier to find than 15,000. Consider that most US business books sell fewer than 5,000 copies in their lifetime, and it’s a pretty dismal thing to consider making money selling a book the old fashioned way. Oh, and I know this is another stupid calculator trick, but if you sell your course for $297, you only need 102 people. What kind of course is worth that? Hmmm. A real estate license course would probably be worth that. You see where I’m going, right?

Speaking Sells

Julien Smith and I didn’t exactly buy matching ponies with the money. We could have made more in a year selling popcorn than selling books, BUT books have this incredible power to them: they act as visible social proof that you might know something. A book with a “New York Times Bestseller” across the top means that you might REALLY know something. And thus, when CEOs wander into this or that store, or their marketing nerd employee (was that you?) drops our book off on the CEO’s desk and she raises her eyebrow in curiosity, there’s a chance for Julien and I to go speak professionally at their event, to their board, to whatever/whoever. And professional speaking certainly can pay well. So that’s another way to make money off a book: get it to a spot where people want YOU because they liked the book.

Selling Bits

So why not sell something digitally? There are great ways to do that. You could write something of value, post it up on ClickBank or similar sites, and get people to buy it digitally over and over again. That’s not a bad little plan actually. And if you do use something like ClickBank, they let you have affiliate sellers, which means that you can invite other people who have built an audience into your little project and you can split some of the money with them. If you’re going to do this, consider giving 50% and you’ll get a pretty decent bunch of people willing to run with your ebook. Nothing bad about that. There’s real money to be made, especially if you get a bunch of decent products moving. Thing is, everyone else who’s selling a bland and not-especially-amazing book is also selling through those channels, and so there’s a lot of competition for attention and thus, it falls back on you to be the most amazing marketer in the world. Again.

Pushing Paper

You can make money selling actual books. People do. It just takes a lot more work moving units. If you’re going to go that route, than I strongly recommend that YOU do all the work, that you get the book bound and pressed (there are a gazillion places that do this now), and that YOU go about getting the things distributed. There are tons of books on this. If you want to publish how-to information specifically, I own, have read, and can vouch for How to Write & Sell Simple Information for Fun and Profit: Your Guide to Writing and Publishing Books, E-Books, Articles, Special Reports, Audio Programs, DVDs, and Other How-To Content (amazon affiliate link).

But in that specific case, you know that you can do the distribution and you know that YOU can put those books in people’s hands. It’s a really tough row to hoe, and I hear about so many authors who have garages full of their amazing book.

So, Where’s The Money?

To me, the money was laid out to you in pretty much the order of best-to-worst money-making. You can make much more money faster if you sell your book as a course instead. You can make money if you sell speaking. You can make money by selling digitally instead of in paper form, and you can sell paper books, if you’re not scared off yet by my putting it dead last in the options of making money. Publishing in the mainstream doesn’t make the list exactly, because it becomes the bait in the larger game. Don’t cry for publishers, however. They make their money their own ways, and I still work with the mainstream press, so that tells you what I think of them.

The money for fiction authors? Oh, I forgot that part. That doesn’t work. Fiction is about passion except for the very few percent of the herd who really can move books like no one’s business. For every James Patterson and Stephanie Meyer and JK Rowling, there are gazillions of people who have a much better secret agent, and vampire romance and bunch of punchy wizards who are just aching to be found by all the world’s already-sated crowds. You’re doomed. I mean, write fiction for love, but don’t call up Starbucks and quit just yet. It’s just not likely to happen for MOST of us.

And the Secret Is Last

Magazines pay pretty darned well. Between what I get from Entrepreneur, MPI, and a few other writing gigs, I make six figures. Yep, it’s not all that sexy. Nope, it’s not necessarily as glamorous some days as walking into Bord– um, Walden–…er, Barnes & Noble (they’re still around!) and seeing your book on the New Releases shelf, but cashing checks? Well, that’s pretty darned good. Magazines, especially ones no one has ever heard of, pay the best of them all. But the work is hard and fast-paced and not nearly as sexy.

There you have it, my friends. Money (and not money) in the publishing world.

Do it for love all you want, but if you want the money, that’s how I understand the game from my perspective. I wish you fortune.

orrrr, if you want another secret…well, never mind. Don’t go here. not worth it. just a thought.

Vineet Madan is Vice President of McGraw-Hill Higher Education eLabs, which works with colleges and universities, professors and students along with technology partners to develop innovative, cutting-edge digital educational tools to improve the way instructors teach and students learn.

Since the debut of the iPad, tablets have captured the imagination of consumers. In just one year, the iPad surpassed even the most optimistic of projections to define a brand new product category and become the best-selling gadget of all time, and Forrester analysts project that in 2011, tablet sales will more than double.

But are tablets ready for the classroom? Though tablets have caught on with consumers, the higher education market has been slower to adopt, and understandably so. From grades to degrees to job placement after graduation, the devices that are used in classrooms are tied to important outcomes.

As a result, colleges and universities must proceed carefully when considering whether to adopt a new technology on a large scale. However, reports from recent iPad pilot programs at schools across the country have been positive, and some colleges have even begun distributing tablets to all of their students. As we wrap up the first post-iPad school year, do we know enough to make the “fad, fail, magical” call? I think so.

By looking at all that tablets offer in the context of student behavior and some of the recent trends in education, it’s clear that tablets are ready for the classroom. Here’s a look at the top reasons why.

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1. Tablets Are the Best Way to Show Textbooks

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Tablets are cable of offering enhanced ebooks featuring images, video and audio. These elements are impossible to include in print or in a standard ebook. Read about music? No thanks, I’ll follow my auto-advancing sheet music as the audio plays. See a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. as I read his “I Have a Dream” speech? I guess that’s fine, but with one tap of my finger, I’m watching it. The result is a more integrated learning experience, which is more engaging for students. This isn’t the future — this is today.

By allowing students to highlight text, take notes in the margin and access a dictionary directly within the book itself, tablets are matching (and in some cases, surpassing) everything that a traditional book — print or digital — can offer.

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2. Classrooms Are Ready for Tablets

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Though tablets are a recent phenomenon, many students in high school and college have been using smartphones for years, and are already well-acquainted with touchscreen technology. Because they’ve become so accustomed to using these devices, students are increasingly expecting to use them in the classroom setting. When classrooms don’t implement what has now become “everyday” technology, we’re doing students a disservice.

Additionally, students — and consumers in general — are becoming more comfortable using tablets for advanced tasks. According to a new Nielsen survey, 35% of tablet owners said they used their desktop computers less often or not at all now, and 32% of laptop users said the same. Most tellingly, more than 75% of tablet owners said they used their tablet for tasks they once used their desktop or laptop for. While tablets can’t totally match laptops in terms of functionally (yet), they can get today’s students most of the way there.

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3. Tablets Fit Students’ Lifestyles

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The appeal of tablets to a college student is obvious: They’re thin, lightweight, and spring to life without delay, making them much easier to take to (and use in) class than a laptop or netbook. Longer battery life means that students don’t have to worry about carrying a charger with them. Forgot what the professor said at the end of class about the mid-term? Launch Tegrity, tap the lecture and replay it in just seconds. That’s faster than texting a half-dozen classmates and waiting for what might be an inaccurate response.

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4. Tablets Have the Software to Be Competitive

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Some of the most innovative software around is being developed specifically for tablets. In addition to the thousands of exciting educational apps available, tablets are fully compatible with online teaching and learning platforms, such as Blackboard, which are becoming the norm at colleges and universities. In fact, tablets’ current shortcoming — limited multitasking — could be their greatest asset in education, as it forces students to focus on one task at a time.

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5. Tablets Integrate With Education IT Trends

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Cloud-based solutions have become ever more popular with colleges and universities, which are looking to deliver synchronized experiences that are device agnostic. Tablets align well with this trend, given their portability and options for constant connectivity. With tablets and cloud-based systems, students can work anywhere on campus and make sure that their work is saved in a central location and accessible from all of their devices. They also don’t have to pay for computing power that they no longer need.

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6. Tablets Are Becoming More Available

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One of the primary reasons that tablets have been slow to penetrate the higher education market was their limited availability. Apple’s supply chain issues and the difficulty that some Android tablet manufacturers have faced in getting their products to market have made it difficult for schools to get serious about adopting. As these issues are resolved over the coming year, expect to see more and more tablets popping up on campuses.

Lower price points will make tablets even more appealing to colleges and universities. For close to a year, Apple went virtually unchallenged in the tablet market. Increased competition should drive down prices. The wave of tablets introduced at CES in January is just the tip of the iceberg. With dozens to hundreds of offerings, many based on Google’s open source Android OS, expect price points to fall quickly just as they have for laptops, smartphones and HDTV sets. Heck, Apple’s original iPad can be had for as little as $349 if you get the timing right and don’t mind a refurb.

How close are we today to tablets displacing computers on campuses? Closer than you might think. I wrote this article on a tablet with a touchscreen keyboard.

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The quest for better fuel economy has General Motors cribbing from headphone technology.

The boost the efficiency of the GMC Terrain crossover utility vehicle, engineers bolted a six-speed gearbox to the 2.4-liter direct-injection four-banger. It sports an “eco model” that lowers the shift points, squeezing another mile or so from a gallon of gas for an EPA-rated 32 mpg highway. Trouble is, running in eco mode created an intrusive and annoying low-frequency hum.

To counteract the boom, they installed an active noise canceling system similar to what’s found in many headphones.

When the two microphones in the headliner detect the hum, a frequency generator emits counteracting sound waves through the audio system’s speakers and subwoofer. The system also helps keep things quiet at higher RPMs when cruising at highway speeds.

Although the Terrain is the first GM vehicle to use the technology, it could appear in other models.

“It has strong potential for implementation on other four-cylinder vehicle programs,” Paul Beaker, Terrain program engineering manager, said.

Image: General Motors