TechnoDomains.net

About two weeks ago, CNN reported that Apple, the trailblazing company that has previously showered us with inventions like the iPod, iPhone, and most recently the iPad, has disclosed its plans to get involved with the electronic textbook industry. And it’s doing its fair share to accommodate for this endeavor. Aside from having created colorful, interactive versions of the textbooks we’re used to, they have also released apps such as iBooks 2 and iBook Author which are said to facilitate a more fun, interesting, and overall improved learning experience for students from all walks of life.

Apple’s announcement may come at a time of infancy for the eTextbook market, but it should be noted that massive growth for the next few years has been expected since as early as 2010. A study conducted by Rob Reynolds and Yevgeny Ioffe of Xplana, an educational software and consulting firm, predicted the onset of the eTextbook market long before Apple had begun their plans to overhaul the industry. I’m not gonna rant about the details about the study, but I strongly recommend the curious, inquisitive learner to check it out. It will give you a taste of a not-so-distant future.

India’s transition into an IT society has been in the making for quite some time. But it is only in the last year or two that Internet penetration has taken off with sizable, exponential growth–and it’s only getting better.

A couple of quick Google searches will reveal numbers that are downright mind-boggling. The Wall Street Journal reports that Google’s country head in India has stated that national Internet usage will reach 300 million by 2014, a dramatic climb from its present 100 million. As if this isn’t staggering enough, that number is estimated to reach 600 million by the year 2017 according to Subho Ray, the president of the Internet and Mobile Association of India. “The 600 million target is realistic if the government follows through with its ambitious plans to put in place the infrastructure for Internet usage”, he states in an interview with Dawn.com. It’s good to know these words seem to have weight coming from credible sources and are not, as we have somewhat grown accustomed to from some gossip-hungry online media outlets, unfounded babble.

Domain name investment opportunities in India are many, and they are promising. In terms of registration numbers, I’ve had a hard time finding credible numbers on just many .in domain names have been registered. Not even HosterStats.com have begun publishing these figures. Based on this, I would say we can rest assure that the numbers do not amount to more than a couple of million or so–not a lot considering a population constituted by 1,2 billion people. What this means is for the shrewd investor is that some premium, or as-good-as premium domains under the .in extension are still available–domains that most probably will sell for 4-5 digits in just a few years if domain registration begins correlating to the amount of people acquiring Internet connections. And why would it not? It has in virtually every other country.

Looking to the drawbacks .in investments, there is of course the fact that English is just one among a multitude of languages spoken in India. This being the case, one can expect non-English keyword domains to decrease the market value of what would otherwise have been an even more profitable venture. Furthermore, .in domains are still somewhat expensive at most registrars (I’m paying about $17/year each at NameCheap.com.) This necessitates great carefulness and prudence in selecting only what will be the biggest future golden nuggets and not frivolously investing in names lacking even the least in potential.

Personally I will try to snag as many valuable .in’s as possible before the serious land rush gets under way, and make no mistake about it–it is coming. I advise you, my fellow readers, to get in on the action as well. At least now you have good list of pros and cons to factor in before deciding.

USAToday, in alluding to a Forrester Research study, has publicized figured that electronic book sales in the United States accounted for 20% of the total book market in 2011. This is great headway for the new publishing format which, despite having scores of critics voicing their skepticism surrounding it, has proven that it is here to stay. So should we simply rely on time to convert those still not swayed by electronic books, or could it be that there are fully reasonable, unmet demands with regards to functionality which must first be met? Let’s take a closer look.

Ebooks have certainly become easier to read over the last few years. Originally, they had to be read on stationary computers. From the 90′s onward, laptops made their readability a tad better. But obviously, this still didn’t make as much as a dent in ebook sales. It was simply too cumbersome to read a book, and definitely no competition against the traditional print format. Market share remained in the one-digit percent.

When the e-reader (an electronic reading device) such as the Amazon Kindle hit the markets in the late 00′s, it became possible to carry around thousands of books digitally and read them where one saw please. However, the devices had some serious flaws, such as a screen of questionable quality to rest one’s eyes on for intensive reading. It was also big, clumsy, and far too heavy for consumers to adopt digital reading at large. But the biggest reason for why it didn’t obtain a great following was perhaps product pricing–only the most avid of readers considered paying $200-$300 for an e-reader worth what they were getting.

Only in the last year or two have we been able to see digital publishing explode, and it has been the result of e-readers getting better and cheaper, as well as the decision from the major publishing companies to finally release their books in the electronic format. Still, some readers assert that they “enjoy the smell” of a newly purchased paper book or that they “like the way it feels” to flip through the pages as opposed to swiping between them on a digital screen. These concerns as justified; people prefer to do things they’ve always done it–it’s human nature. However, people who make these claims, my intuition and some first-hand experience tells me, tend to be people who have never taken the time to get properly acquainted with the e-reader and ebooks.

Would they realize the ease with which one can switch between books on an e-reader, the ability to download books on-the go, and last but not least the amount of trees they would be saving from the gruesome fate of deforesting by opting for the digital book format, something tells me they would not be so negatively inclined towards ebooks. But I don’t think we e-publishing proponents have to worry about that; like the greatest opponents of telephones, TV’s and computers eventually took a shine to the technologies that they once resented, so will the most staunch, traditional book readers change their minds with time. Just like few want to be the first to try out new technologies, no one wants to be the extinct dinosaur reading print books when nobody else is–that too is human nature.