Let’s be honest from scratch: I’m not a marketing expert nor a communication specialist (as recently heard somewhere in Milan) neverthless I’m so full of myself to think that my opinion in this field has something of interesting, a point of view that deserves to be shared.

Simply stated: I really dislike the last Apple Commercial that launches the new Apple app/service/biz called «iBooks Author» for three fundamental reasons:

• Dramatization: hey guys don’t you feel a bit ridicoulus to reuse the same pattern more and more? Ok, it’s a matter of «identity» but don’t take it too seriously…
  Let’s look at the characters choosed: what impression about the teacher that open the ad? He really seems domesticated, brain-drained, under psychotropic effects… Everthing but a passionate teacher… I was really scared! Do you leave your guys with him: I hope no! 
  And what about the soundtrack: I can only guess that some Hitchcook’s film was of inspiration!
• Redundancy: soooooo lengthy… atypical for Apple’s communication standards… 7minutes, even more than that’s typically devoted to the presentation of a new release of Mac OS… to talk about what? something really easy to grasp…
• Betrayal of its roots: who recalls the famous Rydley Scott’s «1984» commercial? Well, what did you feel looking at those boys and girls playing frenetically with their iPad and its green pupil? Classrooms, houses, schools invaded by a wearable BigBrother? I mean, the flow of the message is so compulsive in presenting hordes of young people interacting with an iPad that reaches an obsessive effect that’s really hard to conciliate with any educational purpose

Steve whould have approved that?…

That’s said about the commercial I’m also convinced that the iPad, and more in general the tablet era, will introduce a big advancement into the pedagogical discipline delivering new opportunities to involve the learner with a pervasive and interactive experience.

I can’t wait for my daughters when they’ll read Dante’s Inferno on a multimedia edition or they’ll study the electromagnetical fields with an interactive simulator. I’m so lucky to have two daughters separated by 8 years: enough to assist at another unthinkable (r)evolution.

Posted via email from Giovanni Costagliola | Comment »

Posted via email from Giovanni Costagliola | Comment »

For better or for worse, people like me, are having the sad privilege of witnessing the death of their idols and their consecration as the myths of the computer science, our beloved discipline. Dijkstra’s disappearance in 2002 was my first felt loss.

People like me, people like you, will experience an event even more sad: the mourning of a friend never met physically represented as an indefinitely offline status.

Have you ever thought about you at 80yo online? How like will be your contact list? A sort of little cemetery just a few clicks away from you. The deluded hope that sooner or later some bulb will switch on and start greening back again.

Can be an «inactive account» of a disappeared beloved discontinued by his/her provider? Would it sound like a desecration of a grave? 

Did facebook faced this event? and Google+?

And you?

Paraphrasing Freddy: «Who wants lo be online for ever?»

Posted via email from Giovanni Costagliola | Comment »

For better or for worse, people like me, are having the sad privilege of witnessing the death of their idols and their consecration as the myths of the computer science, our beloved discipline. Dijkstra’s disappearance in 2002 was my first felt loss.

People like me, people like you, will experience an event even more sad: the mourning of a friend never met physically represented as an indefinitely offline status.

Have you ever thought about you at 80yo online? How like will be your contact list? A sort of little cemetery just a few clicks away from you. The deluded hope that sooner or later some bulb will switch on and start greening back again.

Can be an «inactive account» of a disappeared beloved discontinued by his/her provider? Would it sound like a desecration of a grave? 

Did facebook faced this event? and Google+?

And you?

Paraphrasing Freddy: «Who wants lo be online for ever?»

Posted via email from Giovanni Costagliola | Comment »