iPad vs. Kindle? This may not be the most burning question of our age, but it’s a pretty popular one. The answer is not as simple as the question, but here’s what you need to consider.

Amazon’s Kindle 2, the small one with the six inch screen, is now $189. You need to buy a cover for it. I suggest the official leather one from Amazon for $34.95. Add sales tax and shipping and the whole package is sitting in your mailbox for just under $250.00. The Kindle comes with automatic, free, network connectivity, so you can access the Amazon bookstore wirelessly at no additional cost. And, your periodicals such as The New York Times, arrive each morning as long as you are in an area with cell phone connectivity.

The least expensive Apple iPad WiFi + 3G costs $629, the official case is $39 and you will need a $15/month data plan from AT&T. (The iPad WiFi only model costs $499, and does not need a data plan. But, as the name suggests, it can only access the Internet through a WiFi connection.) An Apple iPad WiFi +3G with case, sales tax and shipping will arrive at your house for approximately $725.00 and you will spend $15/month ($180/year) for 3G connectivity.

To try to level the playing field, I’m going to compare the Kindle 2 to the iPad WiFi + 3G. These two devices are just different enough to warrant a thoughtful decision. If you are thinking about purchasing the new $379 Kindle DX. Buy an iPad instead. The Kindle DX is about the size of an iPad and, if you are willing to carry a tablet that has a 9.7″ screen the iPad wins hands down.

The most important difference between an iPad and a Kindle 2 is the size. A Kindle 2 weighs 10.2 ounces. Add a few ounces for the cover and it’s still very easy to hold in one hand. If you take it out of the case, you almost don’t know you’re holding it. The Kindle 2 has a workable keyboard with keys that are easy to one-hand and super-easy to two-hand. You can type as quickly on a Kindle 2 as you can on a BlackBerry. This is great for searching and annotating.

The second important difference between the two units is the display. The Kindle 2 uses e-ink, a special black and white display that requires an external light source (just like a book). This is perfect on a beach, great in a plane, train, taxi, etc. It’s excellent at your desk or anywhere you have a good light source. You can clip a light to the Kindle 2. I do it often. However, the best Kindle reading experience requires exactly the same lighting conditions you would need for a paper book.

Some say that reading e-ink is easier on your eyes than reading a computer display (like the iPad). I find that I can read my Kindle 2 for hours on end with no more eye fatigue than I would get from reading a paper book. However, the iPad’s display is perfect at night when I’m in bed. I don’t need to turn on a lamp and if I fall asleep while I’m reading, the iPad just turns off (I have the auto-lock timer set for 2 min).

If you are looking for a dedicated e-reader, the Kindle 2 is so comparatively inexpensive, it’s hard to justify not buying it.

However, the iPad is much, much more than an e-reader. It is heavy (by comparison) 1.6 lbs. The official case adds no more than a few ounces. To be honest, the Kindle app for the iPad is a better experience than the Kindle software running on a Kindle. It’s in color, it’s fast and it is a joy to use.

iPads do a pretty good job with email, word processing, web browsing and about 100,000 other things thanks to the Apple App store. So it’s hard to say “just” what the iPad can do. Some people say that the iPad is “not better at anything” than a laptop computer. I agree. If you compare the raw features of an iPad to the raw features of a laptop, most laptops will win. However, that’s not the decision we are contemplating here.

So, which to buy? If you have a good laptop and you are looking for a dedicated e-reader that will give you thousands of hours of reading pleasure, spend the $250 and throw a Kindle 2 in your briefcase or purse. It’s awesome, light and relatively inexpensive.

If you are not a power computer user or road warrior and you are thinking about e-reading as only one of a 100,000 apps you might have a use for, the iPad is for you.

Is there a reason to have both? I have both, here’s why. I spend a fair amount of time reading outdoors. The Kindle is light, rugged and cheap. It is perfectly suited for reading is extremely bright sunlight. If it gets a little sand or dirt on it, it’s no big deal. This is one tough little device. My iPad is way too expensive to abuse this way. I don’t want its screen scratched. I don’t want it caked with mud and I can promise you iPads hate to get wet.

One last thing: I don’t have the iPad WiFi + 3G, I have the original iPad WiFi ($499 + the $39 case). I use a Verizon MiFi 2200 3G/WiFi hotspot to connect my iPad to the Internet. The MiFi 2200 costs only $59/month and it gives me Verizon 3G network connectivity for up to five devices at a time. In my case that’s enough for my Laptop, my iPad and extra capacity for friends and family to connect.

I’ve heard someone ask, “Do you want a carving knife or a Swiss Army Knife?” It’s an imperfect metaphor. Like I said, the Kindle App for the iPad is better than the Kindle experience on a Kindle. That being said, there’s a difference between being an e-reader and an iPad user. Which one are you?

Shelly Palmer is the host of "Digital Life with Shelly Palmer," a weekly half-hour television show about living and working in a digital world which can be seen on WNBC-TV’s NY Nonstop. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group, LLC an industry-leading advisory and business development firm and the President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy® Awards). Mr. Palmer is the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2008, York House Press) and the upcoming, Get Digital: Reinventing Yourself and Your Career for the 21st Century Economy (2010, Lake House Press). You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.net For information visit www.shellypalmer.com

Apple is having a bit of a public relations problem. As everyone on the planet now knows, if you hold your iPhone4 and cover the antenna on the lower left side of the unit, you can reduce the radio reception by up to 20 dB and that’s enough to drop calls. I’m not a fanboy, but I think Steve Jobs had it right the first time he commented on the issue, “Don’t hold the phone that way.”

Anyway, love it or hate it, I have an iPhone 4. It replaced my iPhone 3Gs, which I still own. Since my new iPhone 4 was a direct replacement, will my 3Gs devolve into a really expensive iPod Touch or mini iPad or a paperweight? No way!!!

First, a fantasy come true, let’s make my iPhone 3Gs work over the Verizon network. That’s easy. You don’t even need to run jailbreak to do it, just purchase a Verizon MiFi 2200 WiFi/3G Hotspot and you can make Skype, Truphone, iCall or Fring VoIP calls immediately. You also get WiFi wherever you have a Verizon 3G network signal (which is pretty much everywhere) and you can share the connection with up to five devices at a time. Heaven! But I’m thinking about going underground. So let’s turn to the dark side and Jailbreak my iPhone 3Gs. After all, it’s mine … all mine and AT&T has nothing to do with it now!

A quick tech note: at this writing, there is a jailbreak for iPhones running iOS 4.X, it has been tested with the beta version, however it has not been officially released. Visit blog.iphone-dev.org for more info. iPhones 3G/3Gs running the 3.1.2 and 3.1.3 versions can be successfully jailbroken using websites such as blackra1n.com. To watch step by step instructions, just Google “blackra1n” (the “i” is replaced by the number “1″) and you will find dozens of excellent tutorials from knowledgeable jailbreakers.

After you complete your jailbreak, get ready to download tons of cool apps that Apple just wouldn’t let you have!

If you didn’t upgrade to the iPhone 3Gs, one must have app for your jailbroken device is Cycorder, which allows you to record video on your iPhone or iPhone 3G. Another great app available through jailbreaking is Winterboard, which allows you to fully customize the background on your iPhone including the icons, battery images, keyboard, icons, and more! Finally there’s MxTube that allows you to save and download videos from YouTube for offline viewing! There’s also xGPS which allows you to use both the phone’s GPS along with Google GPS, and you even have a voice directing you (instead of having to follow the dot on your screen).

As you know, Apple is quite parochial about what can and cannot be downloaded from the Apple App Store. However, once you have jailbroken your iPhone, you never have to worry about that again. While it’s true that you will void your Apple warranty, all you need to do to unjailbreak your iPhone is plug it into iTunes and reset it to the default Apple software. No one will ever know that you took a walk on the wild side.

Is there a jailbroken future for the millions of recently retired iPhones? Maybe. Think about how much that would change the culture of iPhone users. There would be a serious yin and yang (choose your own metaphor) to the user base. There would be “bad apples,” those scofflaws with cool, underground, contraband apps and Little Goodie Two-shoes types. Hummm … what an interesting future.

If you are really adventurous, you can, jailbreak an iPhone that has a current AT&T contract and continue to use AT&T’s phone service. You just can’t get your phone repaired by Apple or AT&T if it is not running an official operating system from Apple. But, that aside, look for some interesting things to happen with the still-very-capable last generation iPhones. They’re not dead, but they are about to go underground!

Shelly Palmer is the host of "Digital Life with Shelly Palmer," a weekly half-hour television show about living and working in a digital world which can be seen on WNBC-TV’s NY Nonstop. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group, LLC an industry-leading advisory and business development firm and the President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy® Awards). Mr. Palmer is the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2008, York House Press) and the upcoming, Get Digital: Reinventing Yourself and Your Career for the 21st Century Economy (2010, Lake House Press). You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.net For information visit www.shellypalmer.com

I hate being a criminal. It’s really no fun at all. I bet you hate it too. But the amount of casual piracy that is woven into the fabric of our digital lives is really starting to bother me.

One of my good friends just sent me an email. He just returned from a weeklong trip and wanted me to hear this, “new, great song” that he downloaded from a friend while he was away. I have no idea what song it is. It has a cryptic filename, no song name, no artist’s name, no metadata. It is truly a pirated work because without any identification it has no promotional value. I had no luck with the usual music identification services and the worst part … there was no way to pay for it … even if I wanted to.

This got me thinking about the plethora of new handheld devices. I have my new iPhone 4 and my slightly older, but still brand new Verizon BlackBerry Bold 9650. I’m very impressed with Sprint’s HTC EVO and its 4G WiMax capability. Next week, Verizon and Moto will release the new Droid X, which is billed as the all-singing, all-dancing Android-based handset and on and on. Then, there’s my iPad, my Kindle 2 and about fifty competitive tablets and e-Readers either here or on the way.

All of these devices have MAC addresses (Media Access Control Address), which is basically a globally unique number assigned to each device by the manufacturer. Technically, your computer does too. But, the handhelds are generally sold by networks with a contract for network access. The difference is profound. You can’t use your Verizon phone on the AT&T network unless you contact both companies and they switch the service for you. In practice any compatible device will work on any compatible network, but the network will require a billing relationship with the device before you use it. As I said, when you use your computer to access the Internet, you do not need permission from any network owner — you just need access to the Internet. (Note: While AT&T’s 3G network is GSM/EDGE and Verizon’s is CDMA/EVO, there are several dual-system devices on the market and, both companies will use LTE (Long Term Evolution) as their 4G standard.)

This should not come as news to you, but stating the obvious points out a non-trivial difference between the open Internet and the upcoming wireless broadband universe. The telephone companies (carriers) have been expert in extracting every single cent from every possible billable feature on every device. This is possible because they own your access to content from end to end. (The term of art is a “Walled Garden.” It’s beautiful on the inside, but a prison, none the less.) Is that the future? If I am a content provider, must I sell through a carrier to make a sale in the mobile broadband world?

If so, what happens when I get an email like the one I just received from my friend. It has a file attached that I have no way to purchase. How might we solve this problem? Do we need the carriers to get involved? They have a billing relationship with each user. In theory, the carriers could bill for content if they knew it was supposed to be charged for.

Of course, we might invent a tool that enabled content owners to identify their work and a small piece of computer code that would identify copyrighted material and offer the prospective user an option to purchase it. Such a button would actually allow us complete unrelated micro-transactions on any connected device. It would certainly help keep honest people honest.

Who gets paid and how is always the number one question in the meetings I attend. With the advent and explosive growth of identifiable broadband devices, it’s really time to work on some systems that will allow us seriously reduce casual piracy. No one wants to be a criminal and most people who can afford smart phones and broadband plans are willing to pay fairly for what they consume … we just need to give them a way.

Shelly Palmer is the host of "Digital Life with Shelly Palmer," a weekly half-hour television show about living and working in a digital world which can be seen on WNBC-TV’s NY Nonstop. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group, LLC an industry-leading advisory and business development firm and the President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy® Awards). Mr. Palmer is the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2008, York House Press) and the upcoming, Get Digital: Reinventing Yourself and Your Career for the 21st Century Economy (2010, Lake House Press). You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.net For information visit www.shellypalmer.com

I got a call from a prospective client today. They wanted me to assist them in building a website for their new online business. It was quite a conference call. There were all kinds of really smart people involved. The demo screen shots they created were stunning. Pretty pictures, awesome usability, excellent site architecture … I was impressed. As the presentation continued they showed me all of the features the site was going to have: social web stuff, news feeds, interfaces to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, data pulled in from all kinds of interesting places, you name it, it was on the list.

Only one problem … they didn’t need to build a website — they needed to build a database!

It is remarkable how many people still come to the online world believing that a website is the central core of their operation. Nowadays, that seems as archaic as saying that a television show is the central core of your operation. We’re in the information age, everyone is in the customer relationship management (CRM) business and that starts with a database.

Now, you might want to build a website that allows your customers to access your data (content, video, audio, text, graphics, pictures, etc.). But you will also need an easy way to supply their needs on smart phones, app phones, cell phones, landline phones, netbooks, notebooks, slates, tablets, iPads, iPods (separate because they are not flash compatible) and a whole host of other devices that are out there and that are yet to be invented. You’re going to have an App vs. WAP debate, and sadly, you’re going to decide that you need to create both consumer experiences. You might also have to supply your video to broadcast television, cable television, satellite television, on demand systems (online and offline), IPTV and even lowly YouTube. Audio may go to traditional radio, podcasts, online distributors, iTunes, Rhapsody, Pandora and a thousand others. This list of deliverables is not endless but it is frighteningly long and it is getting longer every day. And, it won’t come out of a website, it will come out of a database that can be accessed by a plurality of devices in a plurality of ways.

People who are in the “website first” business get their knickers in a knot when I bring up this non-trivial strategy shift because they use all kinds of databases when designing a site. There’s the content management system, the image server, the video server, to name a few. All of these are databases.

But the difference here is flexibility. If you create a website first you are committing your thinking to optimizing and specializing content for one type of online delivery. It simply doesn’t make sense to do that when you know full well that you have to make your content available and optimized for whatever experience consumers popularize. I don’t want to even try to guess if the Droid X will outsell the iPhone 4 or if the Galaxy Tab will trounce the iPad. Maybe there will be 20 other devices that capture the hearts and minds and checkbooks of consumers late next year … what then?

If you’re starting a consumer-facing services business, you should seriously consider starting with a robust, content management system, good CRM, and a best practices integrated transaction engine and accounting system. Designing the digital infrastructure and database first will give you the best opportunity to maintain margin and manage your digital business as consumer consumption patterns evolve. And, it won’t compromise your website design in any way.

OK, I lied. You do need a website … but it’s really a database.

Shelly Palmer is the host of "Digital Life with Shelly Palmer," a weekly half-hour television show about living and working in a digital world which can be seen on WNBC-TV’s NY Nonstop. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group, LLC an industry-leading advisory and business development firm and the President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy® Awards). Mr. Palmer is the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2008, York House Press) and the upcoming, Get Digital: Reinventing Yourself and Your Career for the 21st Century Economy (2010, Lake House Press). You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.net For information visit www.shellypalmer.com

I had a very interesting discussion with a tech-savvy, Internet veteran the other day. He is a self-proclaimed, “serial entrepreneur” with an impressive track record of successfully exited start-ups. For reasons of decorum and political correctness, I will call him “Joe.” It’s not his real name (obviously), but this is a true story and you would recognize this person’s real name instantly.

A mutual friend introduced me to Joe at a cocktail party. His new start-up is focused on reinventing advertising and marketing using social media. We were in violent agreement about the power and potential of social media, so I thought the conversation was going to evolve into a serious business conversation. I was wrong.

To my surprise and amazement (hyperbole intended) Joe presented his theory of the future of online advertising empowered by social media. He articulated a future where traditional media and big brands were dead, and, just for good measure, he postulated a consumer-controlled, self-selected future of infinite choices of goods and services. His monologue was pervaded by phrases like, “advertising doesn’t work” and “people don’t want to be interrupted.” And, my favorite, “Social Media marketing is the only possible future … brands are completely out of control and marketers have to realize that. Consumers control everything! Besides, everyone wants targeted, measurable messaging, it’s all going to be online.”

Because of Joe’s reputation and stature, I listened attentively for a while. Then I asked a question. “What do you mean by advertising?” He answered, “You know, TV commercials and stuff like that.” So I asked, “What do you mean by marketing?” He answered, “… ideas to help sell stuff.”

I don’t think you can lump all advertising into one category, and I can assure you that marketing is more than just “ideas to help sell stuff.” Definitions matter and semantics are important. And, in this case, Joe simply didn’t know what he didn’t know. You may have a different way to describe the following (I hope you do) but here’s my take:

First of all, advertising does work. Far from being one thing, there are at least three major types of advertising: brand/lifestyle, call to action and direct response. The efficacy and ROI of direct response advertising is accurately measured because you are asking the consumer to directly respond. So Joe and I did not need to discuss this $200+ Billion use of advertising dollars. He admitted that DR is actually a pretty good business and actually works. But not until it was pointed out.

Then, there’s call-to-action advertising. This kind of message asks you to do something at a later time such as, “Come in to our car dealership for a test drive and a free glass of soda this weekend and get zero percent financing.” You can’t directly respond and it’s not an emotional, ethereal hard-to-measure, non-temporal request — you can measure the efficacy of a call-to-action by tracking how many people came in to the car dealership before you ran your campaign, how many people came in during your campaign and what happened when the campaign was over. Call-to-action measurement is more of an art than a science, but it is measurable to a fair degree of accuracy. This really can’t be what Joe was referring to, this system is clunky and old-fashioned, but it’s not really broken.

Perhaps Joe really meant, brand/lifestyle advertising. It is hard to measure because it does not require a direct response, but there are plenty of organizations that will tell you how to measure the efficacy and ROI and you know who they are. For example: How many BMW “Ultimate Driving Machine” ads do I need to see before I start dreaming about driving one? It’s an important question, it will always be. Perhaps this is what Joe really thought he was talking about. It’s where $60+ Billion gets spent annually. And, to quote John Wanamaker … well, you know the quote.

As my conversation continued with Joe, he informed me again and again that not only was big media dead, but big brand’s days were numbered. “We are in the information age,” he said, “consumers want to completely control what they consume.”

While this is probably true for some percentage of items that we consume, let’s not get crazy. You need to wash your clothes. You need to brush your teeth. You need inexpensive, nutritious food. You need durable goods, soft goods, hard goods and you need them packaged and delivered to a venue near you … everyday. In fact, the more organic, unpreserved, special and perishable the produce and goods are, the more time and energy must be expended to get them as close to you as possible. Not just in your town, nationwide — and in some cases, worldwide.

So I asked Joe if he thought that people were giving up Cheerios or Tide or Crest or Ivory soap or cold cuts or spices or dog food or disposable diapers any time soon. And then he said it, “You’re too into real business to understand advertising and Social Media in the 21st century.” You know, I never thought about it that way. “Too into real business?” I really didn’t know what he meant by that, so I asked. He told me, in a very authoritative (and pejorative) way, that he wasn’t really talking about the benefits of the Internet or social media for big, incumbent, multi-national brands with just-in-time inventory systems and EDI-based replenishment and RFID systems on loading docks. He’d never heard of “adjusted case volume” or “velocity at retail.” ROI in his mind was about the return of investment capital from the Venture Capitalist and Private Equity firms that substantially own his start-ups. He, to use his words, was talking about “all the new businesses that were forming in the Information Age.”

I’m glad he cleared that up. As it turns out, he agreed, there is room for both of these types of businesses to coexist. What a relief! We’re not all doomed. Wow, that was close.

All kidding aside, no matter how much new communication technology evolves, some businesses will be quick to evolve and others won’t. Manufacturing, distribution, marketing, advertising and financing all respond to market pressures the best way they can. It’s the nature of business.

I think it is a huge mistake to focus or fixate on what the universe will “eventually” look like. It’s not a good strategic exercise and it’s not a good practical or tactical exercise. Most astrophysicists agree that at some point the sun will expand and consume the earth. Is it really helpful to put that in your long-range plan? So why try to guess when technological efficiency will usurp incumbent, massive, inertial systems? Why not simply profit from the delta between the two and be best practices at both?

I enjoy a Socratic debate about how technology is going to destroy everything we know as much as the next guy. And, I get hired to scare people with stories of technologically empowered consumer behavior changes on a regular basis. But it’s important to remember that the technology does not exist in a vacuum. As long as the VP of marketing at XYZ Company’s main focus is to become the SVP of anything at Any Company, we are going to live in a world that doesn’t work as designed … but works as evolved. So relax … you’re NOT too into real business to understand Social Media … most self-described Social Media-types are too into technology to understand real business.

Shelly Palmer is the host of "Digital Life with Shelly Palmer," a weekly half-hour television show about living and working in a digital world which can be seen on WNBC-TV’s NY Nonstop. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group, LLC an industry-leading advisory and business development firm and the President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy® Awards). Mr. Palmer is the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2008, York House Press) and the upcoming, Get Digital: Reinventing Yourself and Your Career for the 21st Century Economy (2010, Lake House Press). You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.net For information visit www.shellypalmer.com