I think collbative recording can work well. My iPhone app, Jampipe, is kind of a scratch pad for musicians. Quality isn't the top priority, the main focus is on collaboration. Not sure about drums but most instruments pick up well with the iPhone mic. I sent you an email by the way!
cxz & pud -- If either of you guys want, some friends and I developed a pretty comprehensive collaborative recording suite a while ago that I just couldn't get off the ground.
I've since taken it offline (minimal active users + a couple hundred a month for hosting != sustainable), but if either of you want to take a look at the source code, let me know.
Here's a TNW article detailing what we did, from back in 2010:
I don't think these digital textbooks will take off on a closed platform. The iBooks format is based on ePub so I think there's every chance you'll see these books reaching other devices over time.
Don't be so sure, the tablet market is still totally dominated by the iPad, and the education-angle for tablets is all but completely Apple.
Now, with all the major textbook publishers behind them, they're moving FAST into education.
How long until another platform even has a large enough install base and education push to be competitive? And that competitor will have to get the publishers behind them too, and then that system would have to get bigger than the Apple system...
I don't see it, I think Apple is already years ahead of their competition -- most notably because there is no competition for this.
Now the competitors have to -start- entering this market, ---start- making competing products, start building those relationships with authors and publishers...
It'll be an uphill battle and really only Amazon today seems to have any chance at all, and they've not really expressed too much interest in the market yet.
