News for the technical elite....

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Apple Breaking News (again...)

Posted by dmoynihan Wednesday, October 19, 2005 0 comments

Promowebcast20051013aToday, Apple announced a slew of new and upgraded products:




New/Uprgaded PowerBooks



15" & 17" - Bumped up screen resolutions 1440x960 / 1660 x 1050

22% greater battery life



SuperDrives for everyone





New PowerMacs



Dual-core PowerPC processors in addition to a new system architecture that supports 16GB of 533MHz DDR2 RAM

1 terabyte (TB) of internal Serial ATA (SATA) storage



PCI Express (PCIe) expansion slots



Four new graphics options for the refreshed Power Mac G5 line



PowerMac G5 Quad, essentially four G5's stuffed in a box



Eight floating point units

Four velocity engines



Four 1MB Level 2 caches and is capable of processing 76.6 gigaflops



Power Mac G5 Pricing:

Single-processor, dual-core configuration clocked at 2.0GHz for $1,999.00

2.3GHz dual-core system costs $2,499.00

“Quad” dual-processor, dual-core system starts at $3,299.00



Cinema HD Displays

Apple reduced the pricing on its 23-inch ($1499.00) and 30-inch ($2999.00) CInema HD Displays by $200.00 and $400.00 respectivley.



More info at Apple.



Print is dead.

Posted by dmoynihan 0 comments

1253716504860248The statement "Print is Dead" sounds as if I am trying to be sensational, but let me clarify, print as we know it today, is changing, the traditional media we hold between our hands and sullies our fingers will disappear. 




Developments in e-ink or digital paper from the likes of Sony, Plastic Logic, E Ink Corp, and Phillips, are changing the way we read and ultimately interact with traditional print media.  Soon, you will be able to pull out your purchased e-reader, unscroll the page, and read this morning news paper, this weeks local, or this months national magazine, then roll the display back up and throw it into your brief case.  How soon you may ask?  That is for the technological soothsayers, engineers and marketers to determine, and it’s likely you may see the devices this year.   All the companies I mentioned above have working mockups; the current goals are A5 paper dimensions (5.8x8.3 inches) at 100 dpi resolutions, with larger sizes and higher resolutions to follow quickly in 2006, and mass adoption once fine tuning is complete in late 2008.  And as for the delivery method, it is already in place; it's called the Internet. 



Today I can already get content from a number of vendors; most newspapers already have an online edition, I can get a daily reproduction from newsstand.com or read the Wall Street Journal digital edition.  I can scan a slew of magazines from zinio.com, books from iTunes.com, eReader.com, amazon.com, or public domain works from GutenbergProject.org.  I can visit one of the many ebook sellers online at Abobe Online’s eMall, or even download self published works from lulu.com.



The cost of this shift to the consumer will be negligible.  At the outset you will buy a black and white eReader with four scales of grey from your favorite consumer brand name, and use it until it either breaks, malfunction or is upgraded to a newer model, much like the Walkmans of yesteryear, or the iPod of today.  The per unit price of the actual publication will drop to reflect cost saving obtained vs. traditional production methods and distribution cost, but this savings is nullified when added to the initial investment of the actual eReader across its lifetime.



With the advent of any new technology, the way media is created will change as well.    In the case of newspapers, both morning and evening editions, and magazines, both weekly and monthly editions will slowly disappear, and instead, updated stories will be reflected every time you sync your newspaper or magazine with your publication provider.  Bloggers will become main sources of niche news, and breaking stories, until mainstream media picks up the feed.  Television news will be viewed at anytime (time shifting), and will appear more and more like today’s video blog casts.  We are already seeing the blurring of this line within television with the appearance of the iTunes video store, where you can buy last nights “Desperate Housewives” or whatever television show is your personal poison. 


I would expect the Internet media to become the first adopters; since the technology already relates to the way they operate today, with television and radio to follow respectively (we are already seeing television dip its little toes in the waters with first run programming on the iTunes video store) since these media operations are similar to the Internet model.  Newspaper will be the last to change... as they have an institutional mentality that will be difficult to shift, the hesitation to view blogging as a journalistic medium, and a unwillingness for open commentary on those newspaper sites that do operate blogs, are two actions that support this reasoning... until the only choice is change or fail.



We, Joe Q. Public often forget that newspaper and television news programming isn't a free source of information... they aren't public services... but money making ventures, that must make money to pay the salaries of those who provide the services we expect.  Though oversimplified, newspapers and magazines make the lion’s share of their incomes from advertising, and a smaller portion from subscriptions.  Television and radio rely solely on advertising to fill their coffers.  The challenge to the media from the next cycle of technological change will be how to make money from these new mediums.  An example would be in newspapers, where traditionally an ad is sold either for the entire market, or for preselected divisions of that same market.  In this future model, newspapers will still be able to sell ad space to a specific demographic, region/zone, or zip code, but also to a specific ip address, email addresses, or specific subscriber using location based technologies.  Newspapers could even sell the same ad space to different customers for different needs, just think, the ad on the inside of A7 could be different if your demographic skews a certain way than your neighbors ad on A7 if his ip address is a block owned by earthlink.  Two different ads or coupons, same space, same edition, different set of criteria to attract two different types of advertiser to sell to two different types of Joe Q. Public. 


Another challenge for the traditional media organizations is the proliferation of news aggregators or RSS readers.  RSS readers pick up only the headlines and copy of a news article, not the advertising, so how does one recoup the cost of producing that article if the newsreader is only 'grabbing' the relevant text for the story?  One solution is to start embedding advertising with the story itself.   Though this notion may be viewed as heresy to the traditionalist analogy of a separation of church and state equates to a separation of the advertising and editorial divisions, it can be done after the journalist has finished writing the piece, and advertising inserted in to the article by the advertising division, and all of this is done before it is released for publication.



Change is good, and change of this kind, when applied to traditional media, is good as well, but with change comes challenge.  Big media will need to understand that the rules have changed, that just because they were the only source of information before, doesn’t make them the heir to the vehicle of dissemination of information in the future.  Bloggers are finding out that barriers to entry have come down, and small media organizations with large audiences are starting to see their impact, these are the companies embracing changes as outlined here, and they are the companies that are going to lead us on this new journey.


With further thought one might start to see how the implications are far reaching, just think of what you will be able to carry on your person instead of what you carefully chose to carry today.


A student carrying a single eReader, loaded with their entire semesters textbooks, and notes from their teachers or professors, as well as their own notes.


The professor or teacher who carries an eReader loaded with all the texts they teach from, including their entire wealth of notes, in addition to easy access to students digital homework, and email correspondence. 


A businessman flying cross country carrying his entire volume of work from the office, including presentations to the next client, along with copies of his home town newspaper, and that of the town he is visiting, in addition to myriad of personal and trade magazine neatly stored in one compact eReader.


You and me, Joe/Jane Q. Public, sitting on a Sunday morning on our balcony, sipping coffee, with an eReader in hand scanning the weeks news, or just perusing the latest sales from the digitally reproduced inserts.


Many will read the opening lines of this article and forgo reading it based solely upon the title, they will assume that since I postulate the position that “Print is Dead”, that reading is also a dying art.  But though print as we know it is dying, the art of reading is entering a new renaissance.



Editors Note:  Today, as we went to press with this article, LG Philips and E Ink announced a working manufacturing prototype, not a mockup.  The future is here today.


-About the Author:

Drew Moynihan is an 18-year veteran of the media industry having straddled creative, technological, and advertising positions in senior management.  His latest venture is an internet publishing company, BAM 2 Media, located in Austin, Tx.


Mobile news from around the web...

Posted by dmoynihan Monday, October 17, 2005 0 comments

1417_214x325Hidden internal documents found on Cingular's web site confirms that the company plans to launch a nationwide 3G network on November 1st. The markets in the initial launch include: Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco / San Jose / Oakland, Seattle / Tacoma and Washington / Baltimore / NoVa. Some of these markets are large overlapping metro areas.



According to Phone Scoop, "Cingular expects throughput speeds of 220-320 Kbps on the network, which is slower than what HSDPA is capable of, however the Sierra Aircard 860 is an HSDPA specific device, lending credibility to Cingular's statements that the network would be HSDPA on launch."



Coincidentally, the FCC web site let slip that a second new Motorola RAZR 3G phone has been approved for the U.S. Market, the Motorola RAZR V3x, as detailed on techarati.com two weeks ago, and on phonescoop.com today.



phonescoop.com

cingular.com>/a>

3G Phones



The Cingular Siemens SX66

Posted by dmoynihan Friday, October 7, 2005 1 comments

Pda2kclosedThis week I purchased the Siemens SX66 Pocket PC to be used on Cingulars network. Many of you outside the United States know this device as the as the HTC PDA2K or iMate PDA 2K. The basic feature set is rich, and includes the standard organization fair: calendaring, address book, tasks, email, SMS, and MMS. The specs themselves are also impressive, a high performance 32-bit, 400 MHZ, XScale processor is shoehorned into a rather small slider package. After playing with it for the last two days here are my thoughts.



Screen:

The screen is beautiful, being a 3.5 inch transflective TFT LCD (backlit, of course). The colors are good and the screen resolution at 240 x 320 pixels is crisp, though only 64k.



Touch Screen:

One of the better touch screen implementation I have used, dialing is easy with big fingers, and I can easily close windows and open applications without using the wand.



Slide out Keyboard:

They should make keyboards like this for every device of this size, rather large backlit keys that are well spaced apart, and it is perfect for typing out long emails, word documents, or even this blog entry (I am entering this from the SX66).



Communications:

The SX66 supports nearly every protocol available today: GPRS, WiFi, Bluetooth, Infrared, USB, in addition to a quad-band GSM/GPRS Phone (850/900/1800/1900).



Memory:

The SX 66 has 64MB of flash ROM, 128 MB of RAM, and is SD IO capable using the traditional SD/MMC slot. This last feature I like allot, it keeps me from having to buy new SD/MMC memory cards that I already have lying around for my digital cameras.



OS:

Unfortunately it is Windows, specifically, Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition. Though there is a great selection of applications, menus and settings are buried deeply within the OS, accessing simple feature that should be easy to get to are more difficult than it should be, especially Bluetooth. The WiFi settings are confusing, even for an industry veteran like myself. It needs a simple and intuitive application to be included in the package to streamline finding and connecting to WiFi hot spots. Another aspect that was more dificult than it should was the screen modes, it allows you to switch the screen orientation between portrait mode and landscape, a nice feature, yet the setting itself to accomplish this is buried in the settings dialoged window - this should really be moved to the task bar.



Overall impression:

Surprisingly, I am impressed! The phone volume could be a little louder, the settings and menus could be easier to use, but it works well, seems rugged, and allows me to work via the internet and email effectively, without having to pull out my trusty PowerBook. Using software from Mark Space, Missing Sync for Windows, it communicates seamlessly with both of my Mac's (iCal, iTunes, iPhoto, Address Book, and Mail.App using Apple's iSync).



Will a device like this influence me to consider Windows on the desktop, no, the user interface is just to difficult, but for my daily uses, it is just fine (it does make me wish that Apple would get off it’s collective rear end, and build a PDA phone and decent UI)



Pda2kopen



Quick Tip: Email to SMS

Posted by dmoynihan Thursday, October 6, 2005 0 comments

You can email to any cell phone using the following addresses as a template (as long as the cell recipient has SMS/text messaging).



T-Mobile: phonenumber@tmomail.net

Virgin Mobile: phonenumber@vmobl.com

Cingular: phonenumber@cingularme.com

Sprint: phonenumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com

Verizon: phonenumber@vtext.com

Nextel: phonenumber@messaging.nextel.com



I use this feature to email reminders, as well as using email 'rules' to email specifically addressed users email to my cell phone automatically (no more deer in the headlight look for you!).