Technology Futures

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Are the phone companies wrecking the U.S. economy by spending hundreds of millions of dollars to buy legislation that prevents America's businesses from competing in the global marketplace?

James Carlini, writing in ePrairie, says yes. He wonders why the phone companies are putting millions into the pockets of lobbyists while simultaneously claiming they can't afford to upgrade their networks. He also points out that is not just the phone companies. The cable companies have also been pouring millions into the pockets of politicians to try to get laws passed that force businesses and communities to use only the old, copper-based telephone and cable systems, while the rest of the world is going straight to fiber.

Carlini says there is something wrong when twice as many South Koreans have broadband than U.S. citizens. Worse yet, Americans are paying, on average, about twice as much as South Koreans, and getting inferior connections that are slower. So we pay more and get less.

I write a lot about what is happening in other countries, but some of my citations are just statistics--useful to a point, but sometimes you want more detail. Here is some great information about a single project in South Korea that probably dwarfs many other technology park efforts in the United States, and an indicator of how serious some other countries are about passing the U.S. in technology.

This Digital Media City project appears to be well-focused and well-financed, and is not just a local effort--read down the page to see the "Rental Housing for Foreigners." The project is planning from the ground up to attract overseas investment, and to make sure the right kind of housing is available. How about business parks in your area? Does your plan address the needs of international firms to this degree?

This is the competition.

Even before I had a transistor radio as a kid, I got a small reel to reel tape recorder. It had the old 4" reels, used 1/4" tape, and recorded a single channel of mono sound. It was fun to use, and was my first technology gadget. We've made huge strides in recording technology since then, and the ultimate in magnetic tape technology was the analog portable video recorder. These devices, which are really only about fifteen years old yet seem quaint, were and still are, in my opinion, some of the most sophisticated mechanical devices ever designed. The recording technology was extremely complex but actually worked very well. By comparison, the newer generation of digital video cameras are much simpler (from the perspective of what you actually record on the tape).

I wrote recently about disposable video cameras. I think they are likely to be popular, but after last night, I've decided that magnetic tape is about to go the way of dodo bird and the VCR. I finally got around to trying the video mode on my Canon A85 digital camera. It turned out to be terrific. I've been playing with digital video since the dark ages (1995), and previous generations of video produced by digital cameras was pretty bad stuff--tiny pictures, very fuzzy images, and muffled sound. But the short clips I made last night were nothing like that. The images are crisp in a medium-sized window, and can be blown up for an audience without turning them into complete fuzz. The sound is superb, and I was pleased but not really suprised when I plugged my camera into my Mac and iPhoto happily grabbed the movies, dropped them into iPhoto, and I could immediately double-click and play them.

Oh, and there is one more thing. Now I know why Apple came out with the photo edition of the iPod--it was never really about still pictures--it's about video. If you run out of memory while taking videos, it's not always convenient to lug around a laptop (like a day at DisneyWorld) and transfer the movies. But with a tiny iPod Photo in your purse or backpack, you plug the camera in, squirt the videos on to the iPod, and keep shooting. On a 60 gig iPod, you could store more than two hours of video--more than enough for most things.

In short, taking movies on my digital still camera beats the heck out of using the digital video recorder and all the hassle of digital tape.

Are there any downsides? A thirty second video clip uses about 15 meg of memory, so you need to invest in a good-sized memory card for the camera. A 512 meg memory card will record 17 minutes of video--plenty for the average family event, and since it is quick and easy to move it to your computer, capacity is not really an issue. You could always keep a spare memory card in your camera bag. You can buy a 512 meg memory card for under $50, so the price of a few tapes pays for the card, which you can re-use, unlike tape.

The other thing I realized is that with the high capacity of tape (1 hour +), you tend to turn the camera and leave it running, which usually results in the typical home movie--long stretches of pretty dull stuff punctuated with a few moments of genuine humor or a real "Kodak" moment. With the shorter capacity of solid state memory, you tend to be a little more focused on capturing the good stuff.

Next step: making good use of iMovie, the free video editing software that comes with Macs. Video editing is a real chore, but much of that was because it is extremely tedious to edit down long stretches of video tape. With a bunch of short all-digital movie clips, it's a entirely different story. It's the difference between starting with an hour of video (using tape) and five minutes of video (using a digital camera). With just five minutes of video, it's now easy to add some titles, a little narration, and some background music. And with iMovie's one click burn to DVD capability, with just a little effort you've got an archival copy and/or something to send to the grandparents.

I've been writing about personal applications for this, but the business potential is enormous. Step one: economic developers ought to be putting together some short courses for small businesses to show them how easy it is to produce short videos for their Web sites. What used to be costly and expensive is made for small business efforts.