Tech News and Notes: Twitter and Apple? Kindle for Textbooks and Wolfram Alpha May 5, 2009
As usual, it’s been a hectic beginning of the week in the tech world:
At the forefront is the reports that Apple is the latest suitor for Twitter, a role that Facebook failed at, and Google and Microsoft have been rumored as potentially being. Funny enough, I heard this rumor this morning from @Tweetmeme (via @gawker)…haha.
The problem here is simply that Twitter doesn’t want to sell out yet. They still haven’t had a true shot at implementing a revenue model, and it seems to be one of their goals and top priorities. Of course if Apple or someone else threw the right amount of money their way, they’d be hard pressed not to accept it. The most recent rumor set the Apple offer at $700 million. But what would Apple do with Twitter? We’ll certainly be watching what develops here.
Next up on my radar screen is a product that I have very high hopes about – the Amazon Kindle. A report in the Wall Street Journal (then by CrunchGear) today stated that Amazon is preparing to release a new Kindle for textbooks, one with a wider screen for more academic purposes. This could be the sort of product that changes a market that hasn’t changed in ages it seems, not to mention save some trees in the meantime. It will be interesting to see how they deal with note taking and highlighting on this new device…something most students rely on. Check out some pics from Engadget:
http://www.engadget.com/photos/amazon-kindle-dx-to-feature-9-7-inch-display-2/1534486/
Finally, there’s the hot new name in search (yet un-launched): Wolfram Alpha. This tool was started by the guy who did Mathematica, Stephen Wolfram. The tool promises to give us the holy grail in search: straight answers to our questions. It looks and sounds like a great idea, but time will tell if it will actually pose a threat to Google Search (it certainly will be astonishing if it can). Then there’s the question of its business model, but that’s another conversation. Wolfram Alpha is set to be released this month (per their homepage). Until then, check out some screen shots from a recent demo at Harvard:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/see_wolfram_alpha_in_action_-_video_and_screenshots.php
If you have some time, check out the video demoing Wolfram Alpha:






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