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The iPad Killers Are Coming

[ 5 Comments ]Posted on March 23, 2010 by admin in Technology

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

Longing for a lightweight tablet PC but not too thrilled with the iPad? Don’t worry, there’s an avalanche of contenders.

The tech industry is a brutal world. Every time a product or service establishes some kind of dominance, every few months you’ll hear about its impending murder. Google Killers, Facebook Killers, Twitter Killers …well, now it’s the iPad’s turn. I already explained why I probably won’t be buying one even though I drooled for months awaiting its release. If you feel the same way I do, but long for a tablet PC to replace your laptop, we may be in luck. With the iPad hitting the market soon, the existing tablet industry is tooling up to cash in on its notoriety. We’ve rounded up most of the major players below. Read the rest of this entry »

You Won’t Find The G-Spot With Your iPad

[ Comments Off ]Posted on February 4, 2010 by admin in Technology

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

If you’re an Apple or Google lover who thinks Microsoft is The Evil One, you really need to get up to speed. No, One Bing Shall Not Rule Them all.

If you’re the sort of person who thinks of Microsoft as The Evil One, you haven’t really followed what Google and Apple have been up to lately. And if you think that tablet devices don’t have a big future you’re probably also fortunate that you don’t have investment dollars either, because you’d be kicking yourself down the road for the opportunities you missed. Yes, the tablet wars are on. Steve Ballmer rushed the announcement of the HP/Windows Slate to beat Steve Jobs recent unveiling of the iPad. And hot on the tails of Jobs’ announcement, Google released a rather feeble concept video of their Chrome Operating System in use on an imaginary tablet device (images here). And then of course there’s the lawsuit against the Indian company that allegedly stole the CrunchPad and renamed it the JooJoo. But what’s really going to be interesting about how this all plays out is that it’s not about the devices per se, it’s about who controls how you do what you do, and all the big players know this. Yes, Apple kicked Adobe in the face over flash, but in a way, who cares? Flash has been a crashmonster since its inception. What’s really at stake here is how you get on the web, where you buy things, and how you do your business. And Apple’s closed system on the iPad is geared toward this end. Google already has search pretty well locked down, and they additionally want you phoning and creating all your office documents through tools like the Google Phone, Google Voice, Google Docs, and G-Mail. Imagine a future in which the coolest new device doesn’t play nice with the coolest new tools you want to use on it. And if you can’t even install your own software, because it’s all located on a remote server that you have no contorl over. And to take “Evil” to a new level in this realm, now that Apple makes their own chips for their exclusionary device, they’re essentially like Intel and Microsoft rolled into one. Adding a little irony to all of this is the fact that Apple is talking to Microsoft about replacing Google on the iPhone with Bing. Who is your evil nemesis now? Read the rest of this entry »

ADD & Digital Indignation – Frontline’s Digital Nation & Web Video

[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 31, 2010 by admin in Popular Media

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

I don’t know why I wrote this piece, you’ll only read 28% of it. And Frontline’s cool new show “Digital Nation” debuts against “Lost” on Tuesday, so you probably won’t watch it.


Digital Nation Debuts Tuesday On PBS

Given the fact that according to this article you’re only going to read at most 28% of this page, I wonder if I should write less so you’ll read the whole thing? That sounds like an attempt at a humorous paradox, but it’s actually not; the fact is that according to this chart from the same article, users spend only 4.4 seconds more on a web page for each additional 100 words. So I better get to the point. This week PBS is airing a special edition of Frontline called Digital Nation, which explores how the Internet, texting, blogging, social networking, and other aspects of the “digital lifestyle” are impacting our lives. This is a topic that’s been very much on my attention-deficient mind for a few years. Although there are few solid scientific studies on the topic, I believe that as well as whatever benefits we derive from the technologies in which we’ve immersed our lives, these same tools have also caused perceptible changes in attention span, basic courtesy, and memory for many people. You almost certainly have noticed that more and more often, you and your friends can recall a film or book, but can’t recall the director, actor, author, or a major character. And who hasn’t found themselves sitting in a group of people that seem more intent on proving they have to “be somewhere else” digitally by texting, phoning, or checking a web account of some kind. Given the word count of what I’m writing, I lost you 140 words ago, but if you find this topic of interest, you might also find this TechCrunch article about what we watch and how we watch it interesting. It highlights things like how in the early 50′s, 30% of American households watched NBC during prime time, and how today that number has dropped to 5%, with other networks fairing about the same. Most of the remaining video content consumed is watched on the web, and in ways that may surprise you. This fact will almost certainly be relevant to the long-term viewership of Digital Nation; it debuts Tuesday directly opposite the season premiere of “Lost”. Read the rest of this entry »

What Do Kate Moss And An iPad Have In Common?

[ 2 Comments ]Posted on January 29, 2010 by admin in Technology

Friday, January 29th, 2010

My obligatory “Why I’m Not Buying An iPad” monologue.


Help Us Name This Product

Here we go again. I get to admire an Apple product from a far. It’s sort of like admiring your friend’s gorgeous model girlfriend who has a drug problem, while being absolutely confident that you’d have no interest whatsoever in dating her. Why do you tease me, Apple? It happened with the Cube, the iPod, the iPhone…in fact, it even happened with the Newton in the 90′s when you ditched the product. In each case, an amazingly conceived and engineered product just barely didn’t suit my needs, and in your brilliant obstinance, you offered no options. So what is it, that after months of drooling over its arrival, will stop me from buying an iPad? Well, this time it’s a few things; some of them simple. Like the lack of USB, and the lack of Flash. And the proprietary Safari Mobile browser. Who do you think you are? Microsoft? It’s also the lack of multi-tasking. That’s just absurd. But what it really is about for me is that I don’t want to pay someone 500 bucks to buy an advertisement and a retail store, which – aside from its amazing interface and innovative hardware – is what the iPad represents. It’s like Apple is saying “We will develop amazing technologies for you, but only if you buy lots of stuff through it“. Which is brilliant on their part; I really admire the genius. The closed loops of iPod/iTunes and iPhone/Apps have made billions for Apple, and I’m sure the closed system that is the iPad will do the same. Unfortunately, I’m from the No Logo subset of the Free generation. I don’t wear advertisements, beyond things like the tags on Levis. Actually, I’ve been known to remove those too. And I don’t like being told where and how to buy things. No, if you want me to walk into your store, Apple, make it free or affordable. Why would I pay you money for the ability to buy things from your closed markets? You should pay ME. You’ve proven that you could afford to do so by developing a product that typically could and should cost a thousand dollars (remember, the iPhone was 600 bucks on release), and then choosing to price it just low enough to kill the Kindle. No Apple, I’m onto you, and I won’t play. But I do have to thank you once again for pushing the envelope and raising the bar. Other vendors will certainly enhance their products because of you, and maybe even create one that I’ll buy in the near future. I’m sad I won’t be able to multi-touch your gorgeous glassiness for now. Maybe I’ll see you at the price drop.

Social Media Is Like Sex – Everyone Thinks They’re Good At It

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on January 25, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Does the ability for virtually anyone to create a book or a movie diminish the overall quality of media in general? Clay Shirky wrote “Here Comes Everyone”, and now he seems to be saying “And There They Go”.


Yes, getting published
these days is child’s play.

I joked back in the 90′s that the proliferation of literacy and availability of desktop publishing tools would decimate the general quality of available reading material across the board within a few years. My implication being that if EVERYONE has the ability to write and print a book, they WILL. It seems everyone’s an expert on something, and everyone has an opinion, and frankly, I’m inclined to agree with what Dirty Harry said about opinions. In any case, when I originally said this, the web was in its infancy. Little did I know that not many years later, this same principle would apply to virtually any topic or any aspect of life, and with a multitude of new channels (YouTube, Social Networks, Blogs, Podcasts) for delivering content. This obviously has its upside, in the form of things like crowdsourcing, but it clearly has its downside as well. One of the obvious examples of this would be splogging by multi-level marketers or search-rank-obsessed bloggers; organic search results lately are cluttered with blogs, and as this article points out, the quality and credibility of the information provided by these sources is often questionable (and yes, I’m aware of the irony of making that remark on a WordPress-powered web site). The same sort of access that makes this user-generated content possible also exists in the fields of design, manufacturing, and communications technology, so we end up with a mind-boggling array of ways to do things we didn’t know we needed to do, using nicely-designed devices. I’ve had several experiences in just the past few months with failing to connect with someone in my social network, precisely because of the multiple channels available, i.e.: Facebook, e-mail, texting, and mobile phone. Because of all of this, I sometimes feel like the dystopian future suggested in the movie Brazil is happening around us, right now. And sometimes I feel like I’m the only one pondering these ideas regularly. Which is why I was glad to run across The Shock Of Inclusion, an insightful piece that Clay Shirky wrote for Edge.org. I still haven’t read his book Here Comes Everybody, but I certainly will after reading this article; he broadly touches on these topics in a much more articulate fashion than I have here, pointing out, for example, that “It is our misfortune to live through the largest increase in expressive capability in the history of the human race, a misfortune because surplus always breaks more things than scarcity. Scarcity means valuable things become more valuable, a conceptually easy change to integrate. Surplus, on the other hand, means previously valuable things stop being valuable, which freaks people out.” Well said, Mr. Shirky. I’ll just be getting back to creating some surplus now.

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