[rim competes with apple's app store]

Copied from Larry Dignan's article on zdnet:

"Research in Motion launched its BlackBerry application store—dubbed App World—and the pricing model will immediately draw comparison’s to Apple’s App Store set-up. That comparison, however, only goes so far.

For starters, RIM’s App World pricing model has raised a bit of a ruckus since it veers a bit from Apple’s scheme (Techmeme). But a business audience isn’t going to sweat a $2.99 application compared to a 99 cent minimum priced app. And RIM’s audience is likely to even pay higher prices if the App World can actually deliver software with a real business use. And there are so many tiers to the App World model that RIM could have said “charge what you want.”

But the biggest takeaway from the App World pricing model is that higher prices mean more for developers (see FAQ). RIM needs more developers on its bandwagon since the iPhone is the shiny object in the mobile world. Simply put, money talks and RIM plans to use it. Matthew Miller notes that RIM’s pricing model shouldn’t be that big of a deal.

Sure RIM does offer free apps, but developers aren’t likely to offer them. Given developers pay an upfront fee why would you pay RIM to distribute a free app? RIM’s message with App World appears to be: Frivolous and fun apps need not apply.

Will RIM’s App World work?

My hunch is that RIM’s App World will do well, but isn’t going to a success as measured by Apple’s store. RIM’s store is likely to be more BlackBerry-ish—the applications will be more business focused, tool oriented and won’t feature hot games.

RIM also has an app management issue on its hands. Apple’s App Store has to support just the iPhone and iPod touch. RIM’s applications will work on these models:

• BlackBerry Bold 9000 smartphone
• BlackBerry Storm smartphone
• BlackBerry Pearl Flip Series
• BlackBerry Curve 8300 Series
• Black Berry Curve 8900 smartphone
• BlackBerry 8800 Series
• BlackBerry Pearl Series

The experience on all of those models will vary. For instance, a game on the Storm will be different than the Bold and Curve. How will RIM navigate that conundrum? As a developer those models mean more complications.

Other takeaways from the RIM App World effort:

• A PayPal account is required with App World for customers and developers;
• Developers from around the world can contribute except for those from Belarus, Myanmar/Burma, China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.
• To submit an application there’s a $200 fee, which will be refunded if the software is rejected."

[transdisciplinarity and academia]

With my new job starting on the 1st of August I'm getting ready by reading (and reading and reading!) about transdisciplinarity. Although my post is going to be more focused on a kind of academic transdisciplinarity and creating a context/facilitiating conversations between various disciplines, I'm interested to read/learn/hear/see how other knowledge institutes are grappling with the demand to share information while having to cross (sometimes) radically different research cultures (enter: knowledge translation theory "exchange, synthesis and ethically sound application of knowledge—within a complex system of interactions among researchers and users"). I've just come across a set of interview questions that were posed to Mark Linder (Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at Syracuse University) in January this year. On the blog: Critical Practice for the Next Generation, most of the questions seem to broach issues of transdisciplinarity...how is architecture transdisciplinary, should it be *more* academic or more *businessey.*

In his book, Nothing Less than Literal, Linder has this definition of transdisciplinarity:

"the exchange of concepts and techniques between established disciplines through translation and transference" and one of the interview questions asks: "What would this 'exchange of techniques between the established disciplines' look like, in a practical sense? Are you proposing that the architect take on the roles of the painter, builder, or other professional in order to widen the scope of what is currently considered the 'architects job?'"

I think it is precisely this anxiety that to be transdisciplinary one must be able to wear many hats and wear them well. I suppose this is what the students on the Creative Writing and New Media Master's course at DMU must grapple with. As authors of new media works, must they also be well versed in Flash, html, java, image design etc...? I think this mirrors the development in science from Mode 1 knowledge production and the move to Mode 2:

Mode 1 refers to the more traditional practice of science,

created within a disciplinary, primarily cognitive context” (p. 1), situated within universities, and characterized by a polarization of discovery and application. In contrast, Mode 2, also referred to as “postacademic” and “steady state” (Ziman 1994, 1996) “is created in broader transdisciplinary social and economic contexts” (p. 1), and is based on the principles of convergence and synthesis.

Of course raising the idea of Mode 1 and Mode 2 is not value-free nor does it lack an "imperializing" stance as Mode 2 seems to be the preferred system in the hierarchy (at least according to Gibbons et al. and not that I disagree either...but how to avoid hierarchies in transdisciplinary practises and is it even necessary?)

I wonder how disciplines other than architecture and science are managing issues of transdisciplinarity...