Rumors! Hype! Steve Jobs! Giant iPhones! The End of Newspapers! Ebooks! Pizza!

What: Watch the Apple Announcement with Cloudbrain
When: Wednesday 1/27, 1pm-2pm
Where: Cloudbrain Office (above Christian’s Pizza on the Mall)

The entire tech world is freaking out about the rumored Apple iTablet / iPad / Giant iPhone supposedly being announced this week.  It’s like nerds waiting for Christmas.  There is a lot of discussion concerning whether or not this device, if it exists, will change books, newspapers, magazines and publishing the way the iPod and iTunes changed music.  If it does, this could be a really big deal.

Cloudbrain (because we’re cool like that) will be watching the live blog this Wednesday at 1pm and we’d love for you to join us.  We’ll order some pizza and beer from Christian’s downstairs and ring in the dawn of a new era together. Also, hanging out at lunch is fun.

UPDATE: Wow! Lots of excited people out there. The more the merrier.  Twitter or email us if you are planning to come so we know how much pizza to get… (@cloudbrain)

As part of our Save The Songs campaign, we built the Challenge – a fun Twitter or Facebook-based app that will scan your iTunes music library and give you a report card.  It’s fun.  You should try it here.

We formally broke in the office this weekend with our annual Christmas party – complete with Cramer Photo party booth.  Check out all the pictures.  Merry Christmas!

After months in development, we have finally launched SaveTheSongs.org.  It is a (get ready for buzzwords…) viral social media marketing campaign for TidySongs.  We had a ton of fun putting it together and now that it is up we’re learning a lot more.  Let us know what you think.

Great short (3:53) video from Eric Ries on building a technology startup. The main point: How can you really know what you are building is something people want?

We are working on something cool.  I’ll tell you about it later.

Paul Graham wrote a great essay today that is the best summary I’ve read so far of the plight of media and publishing companies like newspapers.

His argument goes like this:  Publishers, despite what they think, are not in the business of selling content (newspaper articles, music etc.), they are in the business of selling the physical media that content exists on (paper, CDs etc.).  We know this because customers do not place a higher value on content of higher quality.  Most CDs cost about the same – regardless of the quality of the band.  Most newspapers cost the same – regardless of the quality of journalism in that particular issue.  The biggest factor influencing book price is not the quality of the literature (Pride and Prejudice and the latest Dan Brown go for about the same price) but the book medium – hard cover vs. paperback.  And as soon as the content is removed from the medium – music and news to the internet – the price consumers are willing to pay drops to near zero.

People pay for songs on iTunes, not because a song is worth $0.99 to them, but because the convenience of having Apple deliver a high quality song directly to their iPod is worth money.  Apple can charge because they own the iTunes Store / Computer / iPod ecosystem – a medium – and that’s what consumers pay for.  Case in point – almost every other online music company outside of the iTunes-iPod loop that has tried to sell music has failed.  The New Napster anyone?

So if you are in the content business, take a close look at the way your content is delivered to customers.  You would be well off to consider how to link your content to a medium or delivery method customers are willing to pay for.

You know the TextEdit application on every Mac computer?  The Apple equivalent of Notepad.  This is what the icon looks like zoomed in.   The note says:

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

That quote is from an Apple commercial. You can’t fake an obsession with design.  Apple is known for beautiful products and attention to detail.  And its not a marketing gimmick.  It’s who they are.  At his speech to graduates at Stanford, Steve Jobs told a story of “sitting in” on a typogrophy class because he thought it would be interesting.  And what he learned in that class was built in to the very first Macintosh computer years later.

Design may not be your thing.  But if you want to create something remarkable, you need to be obsessive about something.  We use unkind words to describe people that pretend to be really in to something but whom we know are just faking it for appearances.

Thanks to Cult of Mac