My predictions for the Apple Tablet

It’s only hours away, and thou­sands of peo­ple have talked and pub­lished about it already, but here’s my take on today’s event.

Apple has a nice track record for shak­ing up entire indus­tries by intro­duc­ing new devices. It changed the way we buy and con­sume music with the iPod (arguably not the best music player in the field, and not the first either), it changed the mobile phone indus­try with the intro­duc­tion of the iPhone (same here, prob­a­bly not the best smart­phone out there, nor the first). The core of the suc­cess of these devices wasn’t the device itself, but the way it made access­ing and using con­tent eas­ier and more enjoy­able. I think we will see a rep­e­ti­tion of this strat­egy later today.

My pre­dic­tion: the Apple Tablet will shake the media pub­lish­ing indus­try to its roots. And that is what the device will be aimed at: con­sum­ing rich con­tent.

Just look at this con­cept movie Time Inc. made last year, and see how this affects the way you con­sume your favorite mag­a­zines and news­pa­pers. Heck, just based on that con­cept movie alone I’d be will­ing to pay for sub­scrip­tions for rich media content.

Now, if Time Inc. makes the con­tent of it’s flag­ship pub­li­ca­tions avail­able to be con­sumed as shown on a device like that, and oth­ers (like McGraw Hill, The NYT, Wash­ing­ton Post) fol­low it’s exam­ple, now that would make a device inter­est­ing to use.

Sure, I have a Mac­Book and an Iphone, so why should I want such a device? The answer is in it’s main strength: access­ing rich con­tent. And why would pub­lish­ers enrich their con­tent, basi­cally can­ni­bal­iz­ing on their paper pub­li­ca­tions? Because in-app pur­chases and con­tent sub­scrip­tions for this kind of rich media is the future. You need a Mac­Book to effec­tively edit and cre­ate con­tent, and an iPhone to access it from your pocket. But to get the max­i­mum (and opti­mized) rich expe­ri­ence, you’ll need the Mac Tablet.

Now on the iPhone you can get apps for watch­ing missed episodes of TV shows, news chan­nels, news­pa­per arti­cles, etc. This device will be the plat­form to access the con­tent I want, when I want, how I want. It’ll be a new rev­o­lu­tion, as Time Inc. and McGraw-Hill and the NYT are just the beginning.

What if Amazon.com comes with an app for the Mac Tablet that does exactly what the Kin­dle does, and more? If this opens up the Ama­zon Store to a larger audi­ence, with the ease of use we’ve come to expect from Apple’s user inter­face (as opposed to the Kindle’s UI), this will drive sales for Ama­zon, mak­ing the Kin­dle less impor­tant for them. But that’s what this rev­o­lu­tion is all about: con­tent con­tent content.

And because this is an Apple device, it’ll look great, and it’ll be ultra-usable. But it’s not about the device itself, but about the plat­form it will rep­re­sent: a new era for media publishing.

So what is this pre­dic­tion worth? Absolutely noth­ing. I have no inside infor­ma­tion, don’t read all the blogs all the time or just came back from the future. But to me, it makes sense. It fits Apple’s pre­vi­ous strate­gies to intro­duce a device with the great ways to use it for some­thing spe­cial, not about the specs of the device itself. But this’ll stand or fall with the con­tent pub­lish­ers. But as you can see from mr. McGraw, they’re as excited as I am.

Tags: Apple, iTablet, p52

My wishlist for 2010

I’m not really one for New Year’s res­o­lu­tions. I don’t smoke or drink cof­fee or alco­hol, so those vices I don’t need to cut down on or quit alto­gether. I play ten­nis at least once a week, and have a Kung Fu/Tai Chi/Qigong class every week. I take the stairs when­ever I can. And I also enjoy good food, which includes fresh veg­gies and lots of fresh fruit. Sure, there’s always room for improve­ment. I’m far from liv­ing the per­fect life. But I love singer/producer/DJ Ben West­beech’s motto “Wel­come to the best years of your life”. Live life to make the best of it. But this year, I’m mak­ing an excep­tion. Read more…

Tags: p52, webstandards

Listmania: the music of 2009, Herko edition!

It’s that time of year again, where you look back and –well basi­cally, make lists. So, in keep­ing with this won­der­ful tra­di­tion on the inter­webz here’s my list of music related good­ness of 2009.

Award shows on TV keep the best for last in order to keep their audi­ence hostage and their adver­tis­ers happy, but the web appar­ently doesn’t work like that. So,lets get this show on the road! Read more…

Tags: music

New site for Child Support Ghana goes live!

Finally, after many hours of work, the new web­site for the Child Sup­port Ghana NGO and Dutch Foun­da­tions is live. Child Sup­port Ghana is a non-profit orga­ni­za­tion based in the Upper West Region (UWR) cap­i­tal Wa, Ghana, West Africa, who sup­port needy chil­dren by pro­vid­ing them with a roof over their head, lov­ing care, edu­ca­tion and health­care. This orga­ni­za­tion is the vehi­cle for the awe­some work my dad is doing in Ghana. His work is sup­ported by a Dutch Foun­da­tion who raise funds and vol­un­teers for the projects. Doing their web­site, has been a long stand­ing side project of mine.

Screen­shot of the Child Sup­port Ghana homepage

Read more…

Tags: Child Support Ghana, sideproject, webdesign, webstandards

Ben Westbeech lights up RAW Rhythm Festival 2009

The 2009 edi­tion of the RAW Rhythm fes­ti­val, hop­ing to fill the shoes left vacant by its pre­de­ces­sor DRUM Rhythm, is fin­ished. Two great days filled with good food, good friends and great music and per­for­mances. Here is my review.

Day one: start with a bang

The fes­ti­val started with an early per­for­mance by Lamb, one of –if not the most — my favorite bands. Lamb got back together again after they split up 5 years ago to per­sue other projects (such as Lou start­ing her own label Infi­nite Bloom, and singing on two Cin­e­matic Orches­tra albums, and Andy doing Hoof and Luna Seeds). But now pro­ducer Andy Bar­low, singer Lou Rhodes and bass­player Jon Thorne are tour­ing the fes­ti­vals again, play­ing their old songs. We saw them first at the Cac­tus Fes­ti­val in Brugges, Bel­gium a cou­ple of weeks ago, and the basi­cally played the same set.

Lamb live @ RAW Rhythm 2009

Lou Rhodes tak­ing cen­ter stage

Lamb used to be 5 peo­ple, with Ice­landic Oddur Mar Run­nar­son play­ing the gui­tar, and Dane Niko­laj Bjerre as the main per­cus­sion­ist. But now it’s just the three of them on stage.

Lamb had the dif­fi­cult task to play early in the evening, in the largest venue at the West­er­gas­fab­riek, with gor­geous weather out­side. By the time they started play­ing, there were only about a hun­dred peo­ple about. Their audi­ence grad­u­ally grew, but they had to work hard to get the pos­i­tive and ener­getic vibe they’re famous and loved for.

I espe­cially liked Lou’s singing, her voice has matured over the years and become rock solid and frag­ile at once. Her voice is a love it or hate it thing, appar­ently, as a friend who joined us for this per­for­mance told us later, her voice annoys him.

And Andy and Jon were their usual ener­getic selves, with Andy fir­ing up the fans by tak­ing the bongo’s (or what­ever these drums are called) to the front stage and solo­ing a bit.

I loved see­ing Lamb per­form live again, this must have been our 8th time. And I can’t wait for their live CD/DVD to be released (as their Wikipedia page announces). But in all hon­esty, their per­for­mance was lack­ing that bit of extra fire, the inter­ac­tion with the fans and audi­ence, and frankly, the drum­mer. It made a big dif­fer­ence, but not enough to ruin the performance.

There’s one lit­tle anec­dote I’d like to share with you all that relates to Lamb. I twit­tered about the per­for­mance, and I got a spe­cial kind of reply:

Tweet @Herko Lamb was awe­some! As usual @RAWrhythm #RR http://twitpic.com/ca9d6
Reply @Lamb_lover It’s so easy using up roast lamb left­overs, wrapped in foil and kept in the fridge they’re good for two days

Ben West­beech and Jazzanova

The rest of the evening were ded­i­cated to walk­ing from one hall to another, find­ing some good tunes to dance to. Ducth rap­pers Zwart Licht were able to get the crowds going crazy in an instant, but that was just loud noise. Ryan Leslie was a slick smooth talker with a good show on the main stage, and Dizzee Ras­cal was ok, but not my kind of music. Nneka was great, she has a voice like a real soul diva. And then we came to Ben Westbeech.

West­beech is a producer/singer/DJ from Giles Peterson’s Brownswood Record­ings label. His was a DJ set with vocals. Jaz­zanova was there to tweak some knobs as well, appar­ently they know eachother and have worked together for a bit. But West­beec clearly wanted to have a good time. He played an impres­sive set of funk, soul, house, hip-hop and sang in some of those tunes as well. There weren’t many peo­ple in the audi­ence at first (Dizzee Ras­cal was per­form­ing on the main stage), but as the set con­tin­ued, the dance­floor filled up nicely.

Ben West­beech + flutist @RAW Rhythm

Ben West­beech & Jazzanova

Ben West­beech (photo @arnecoomans)

And thus ended day one of the RAW Rhythm fes­ti­val 2009. The old Drum Rhythm vibe was there, the qual­ity of the artists was high, the food was good and the weather was too.

Day two: not so much

The sec­ond day of RAW Rhythm started with us get­ting more bracelets, as the pho­tog­ra­phers and crew bracelets we got yes­ter­day appar­ently didn’t cut it for today. So now we got a new photo bracelet, and uniquely a back­stage access bracelet. We looked kinda like a freak­show with all those tags, if you ask me.

Tagged

This sec­ond day was main spon­sor G-Star RAW Denim’s day, appar­ently. They held a ‘pri­vate’ party, invit­ing a bunch of ‘celebs and babes’ as my brother put it. This meant that there were a lot of peo­ple there who didn’t come for the music, who were more inter­ested in how they looked, and by whom they were noticed, and this didn’t have a pos­i­tive effect on the fes­ti­vals vibe. It became more tense, and more crowded out­side. The effect was that DJs were play­ing in a smaller room, near empt, while out­side were hun­dreds of peo­ple drink­ing and eating.

Any­ways, back to the music, so to speak. Sur­prise soul act of the fes­ti­val was Lee­lah James, sort of a smaller (and younger of course) ver­sion of Tina Turner. She has a great voice, and an awe­some band, but she clearly didn’t like that fact that she had to start off for a rather empty and docile main stage.

And we saw De Jeugd van Tegen­wo­ordig, which was nice (but also not my kind of music), and Chuckie and Lil John. Chuckie is ok, but Lil John is just nasty. And for some rea­son, there’s a LOT of talk and inter­rupt­ing going on, in stead of just play­ing the music and let­ting every­body dance.

We also saw Roni Size, who is clearly still king of the jun­gle. His beats got the whole room up and jump­ing from the very first start. Roni Size was awe­some. For me, it was the best of the whole day.

Any­ways, the sec­ond day just didn’t reach the same high as the first –for me. Over­all we enjoyed our­selves very much ‚and hope to see the fes­ti­val return next year!

Tags: festival, Lamb, rawrhythm