Hardware and gadgets

Geeks playing with a prerelease version of OS X for Intel report that they have been able to easily install an open source Windows emulation library that then allows them to run common Windows applications--without having Windows installed.

Could this have been Apple's game plan from the beginning?

Imagine you could buy a Mac Mini for $499 that not only runs a virtually virus-proof, easy to use operating system (OS X) but also runs all your favorite Windows applications that are not available for the Mac.

I don't really have a category for this, but thought it was funny. If you haven't noticed, I usually look for gagdet-oriented or more lighthearted stuff on Fridays.

This news is hardly shocking--IT folks are NOT the best dressed people in the office!

But I'm not sure which is worse--sloppily dressed nerds or the solutions recommended in the article. One bit of advice cited is, "...no yellow toenails." Okay.....noted. Memo to self--keep socks and shoes on at all meetings.

Scientists have discovered that a butterfly in Africa with electroluminescent wings uses a microstructure to enhance the light emitting properties of the wings that is virtually identical to a design developed in 2001 to improve the efficiency of LEDs.

Nature is pretty amazing.

Nokia has announced an "Internet tablet" computer. Just three inches by five and a half inches, the device is powered by a variant of Linux and comes with all the software you would expect on a PDA, including a calendar, Web browser, email, chat, news readers, and much more. It also comes with WiFI, and has a battery life of three hours of active use, and up to seven days of standby time.

Red light cameras, which are used at busy intersections to catch people running red lights, are being turned off. Aside from some very serious privacy issues, the cameras cause accidents. Intersections with red light cameras are getting 10% to 20% more accidents than before the cameras were installed.

Palm has announced the new Palm TX, yet another version of its venerable PDA. Over the years, Palm has struggled as the company failed to update its software, released too many overlapping models with a confusing mix of features, split the company into two different hardware and software firms, and then pulled them back together.

MIT's $100 dollar computer is beginning to take shape. The idea is to create a computer that is affordable for virtually everyone in the world, and does not have the power-hogging and environmental requirements that work fine in air conditioned homes and businesses but that are entirely unsuitable for use in rural villages without reliable electric power.

Wired follows up on an AP report that more and more young people (an estimated 25%) have already sustained hearing loss that is not normally seen until decades later in life.

According to the article, too many people are listening to portable music players at ear-damaging volume levels. Particularly bad are the "ear buds" that are inserted directly into the ear canal, rather than external headphones that cover some or all of the outer ear.

Fujitsu has demonstrated its new electronic paper. It's a thin, bendable "sheet" that can display color images, and the current image is displayed even when the power is turned off.

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 one of the better uses I've seen for RFIDs (Radio Frequency ID), the power tool maker Bosch is going to put them in its line of portable power tools. Power tools are stolen frequently from construction sites, and with the purchase of a portable monitoring device, contractors would be able to keep better track of their tools. This is a sensible use of RFIDs that is much better than the creepy plans of some retailers who want to embed them in clothing so they can track us wherever we go (e.g.

Some things don't change at all. When I was a kid, people had home movie cameras that were used to make movies that no one watched. In the seventies, when I studied filmmaking, we used the latest technology--Super 8 cameras, which had the 8 mm film in an easy to load cartridge. These cameras were quite popular because of the relative simplicity, and many people used them to make movies that no one watched.

Then we got camcorders, which were at first quite big and heavy, and we made home videos on full size video cartrdridges--movies that no one watched. Then in the nineties, we got digital video cameras, which are now very affordable; the tiny digital tape cartridges won't even play on anyone's VCR, so we've actually gone backwards. For a while, you could tape a home movie and pop it right into the VCR and watch it. It beat setting up the 8 mm film projector by a mile.

But the new, tiny digital video cameras took us right back to the dark ages. Speaking from firsthand experience, it's a lengthy and tedious process to digitally edit raw video footage, even using great software like iMovie. So I've got a big stack of digital video cartridges. Every once in a great while, when the family is really bored, we do fire up the video camera, plug it into the TV, and watch a bit. But like every previous incarnation of the home movie, you quickly get tired of watching from beginning to end and/or constantly fast forwarding.

Now, we have a company called Pure Digital Technologies that is selling disposable video cameras through the CVS drug store chain. There are several things that are remarkable about this.

• First, it's amazing that the technology has become so inexpensive that you can manufacture and distribute a throw away camera for $29.95, although it is designed for several uses. You shoot your video footage, drop the camera off at CVS, and come back in a couple of hours and get a DVD, ready to play. CVS returns the used camera to Pure Digital, which repackages it for another sale. The company expects to be able to recycle them several times.

Microsoft has announced its new, 2nd generation XBox. It's a lot more than a game console, and can do many things that a home PC can do--play movies and CDs, surf the Web, and display photos on your television. Although Microsoft is being fairly quiet about these features, the new XBox has more capable hardware than most Wintel personal computers. And it's quite capable of doing anything a Dell or HP computer running Windows can do.

So Microsoft is now in direct competition with its two biggest customers, who buy millions of copies of Windows and Office per year. Why is Microsoft doing this? Because they are losing the battle, and they have to capture customers somehow. Apple totally dominates the music business, and Yahoo's new subscription service is likely to gather up what crumbs are left in that market. Industry pundits are pretty confident that Apple's next foray will be to do for movies what they have done for music (and I agree). Microsoft has no answer to that, either. Home entertainment is driving the computer business, and the market for spreadsheets and PowerPoint has been flat for years. Microsoft has very little to offer in the new and booming music/video/entertainment markets, where all the money will be for the next several years.

So the only way that Microsoft can see to get back and retain control of customers is to get into the hardware business. Even at the risk of alienating their biggest customers. But if Microsoft is in trouble, Dell and HP are in worse shape. They really have no alternative to selling Windows computers. Both sell a few computers with Linux, but it amounts to pocket change for the companies.

IBM saw this coming years ago, and made the switch to Linux as the core of its business. But HP and Dell don't have an exit strategy, so they will have to continue to buy from Microsoft even as the company tries to take customers away from them.

One last loser in this is Intel. IBM makes the PowerPC chips that power its own computers and servers, and is the primary supplier to Apple. Guess what chip is used in the XBox? That's right, it's a PowerPC chip. Microsoft has been at the mercy of Intel for the past twenty years, and has had to continually adapt Windows to run on Intel hardware. But Microsoft has freed itself of that problem (the PowerPC is available from several suppliers). So Apple's computers and servers run on the PowerPC, IBM computers use the PowerPC, and now the XBox runs on the PowerPC. Intel is in trouble with its highly profitable processor line.

I love a good gadget as much as the next, um, geek, but the current techie obsession with PVPs (Personal Video Players) baffles me. Engadget has a review of a new one from Mustek, which is kind of an iPod on steroids (it has a 40 gig hard drive, which will store several movies).

Xerox wins some kind of special prize for the worst telephone support I've ever encountered. How bad is it?

It's worse than Verizon! (Note--not any more--see my updated note at the end of this article. Verizon, on the other hand, still has terrible customer service)

I have a Xerox printer/copier, and the hinge on the cover broke a few days ago. I bought a Xerox in part because I was assured that I could get service for it. I was tired of having to discard cheap printers because you could not get minor repairs.

Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs announced today that the company has purchased CBS Television, using Apple's enormous hoard of cash. The company has been debt-free for many years, and analysts have engaged in endless speculation about what the company might do with its billions of dollars. In the press conference, Jobs indicated that because of CBS' recent problems with Dan Rather and "fake but accurate" news, Apple was able to pick up the company "for a song," which was apparently a pun on Apple's hugely popular iTunes venture.

Jobs announced sweeping changes for the venerable broadcasting firm. The biggest change is that he will have CBS abandon traditional television. Jobs said, "The old television model is dead. CBS will be the first all-Internet broadcasting company, and beginning April 1st, 2006, the company will end it's current 50 year old broadcast method and begin offering all its content via the Internet."

Analysts were skeptical that even Apple could pull off such a big change, but Jobs indicated the huge success of the tiny new Apple computer, the Mac mini, has already begun to pave the way. The Mac mini, which debuted in the fall of 2005, comes standard with an S-video out port, meaning that the tiny computer can output high quality video directly to a television set. Said Jobs, "With all the broadband users in the U.S., we've got a ready market for video via the Internet, and we'll be providing a Tivo-like piece of software called iVideo later this summer. iVideo will revolutionize the way people watch TV, just the way iTunes and the iPod has changed music."

Apple has also had a longstanding relationship with Akamai, which has banks of servers located all over the United States and already streams video for companies like Apple, usually for annual meetings and other corporate functions. Jobs indicated that Akamai would indeed play a major role as part of the all-Internet CBS. Jobs also indicated that Pixar, the movie production firm he also heads, will design the production facilities for the effort. "Nobody knows more about digital film and television production than Pixar," he said.

Certain parts of the 'net have begun talking about building your own TV. Back when I was a kid, one of my favorite pastimes on rainy days was poring over the Heathkit catalogue. Heath of Benton Harbor, Michigan had a whole catalogue full of electronic kits, ranging from simple transistor radios to things like electronic keyboards and color televisions. I eventually built a shortware receiver, among other home-designed projects.

But with the advent of the microchip, Heath went out of business. Electronic stuff got so cheap no one was interested in putting things together themselves. So why the sudden interest?

We're beginning to see "perfect storms" in several areas. The phone business is becoming a perfect storm. Skype's CEO announced the other day that the company has 29 million users and is adding 155,000 PER DAY. Skype is free for Skype to Skype calls, and they charge a small fee for completing calls to non-Skype users. Skype is using the Google model--mostly free service and offering an optional fee-based service. And we all know what happened to Google.

But Google was not disruptive in the same way that Voice over IP is destroying the phone business because there was no global search business before Google. But the steady increase in broadband users, excellent voice telephony software from companies like Skype, and monopoly pricing from the telecoms has created a perfect storm in telephony that will shortly also swallow the entire cellphone industry, since WiFi carries Skype and other VoIP calls just as easily.

Similarly, the television business is also on very rough seas that will build quickly to a perfect storm. Again, broadband winds have increased the wave height. We're very close to a time when some innovative and brash content developer says, "Heck with the TV industry. We're going to produce a "tv" show and broadcast it over the Internet." The show will be so compelling (I'm guessing a comedy will be first) that millions will download and watch it, even if the picture quality is a little fuzzy. Once we have a single breakout show, the wave height will only get higher and eventually the existing model for television will be swallowed by the monster wave of Internet TV. This storm could start anytime in the next year or so, and TV as we know it will hang for a few years, but with fewer and fewer viewers day by day.

One of the big flaws in the whole telecom debate is a chronic focus on the past. The telecom companies and the FCC both tend to rely on looking backward, and by extension, it's a problem at the state level because the incumbent providers have been much better at getting their message to state legislators than purchasers of telecom services.

Here's a concrete example of what I mean. The Times-Picayune has a story today on the fast-growing "iPod Economy," which is the exploding market for iPod accessories. According to one researcher, iPod owners spend half as much as the cost of their iPod on accessories. With most iPods selling for between $200 and $300, that's a lot of money. And iPod sales itself grew 525% last year. By some estimates, iPods account for as much as 80% of the total portable audio player market.

So what's the point? The point is that very few people could have predicted this three years ago. Technology innovation is creating incredible business opportunities. If you browse through the companies selling accessories, none of them are "big name" companies, and many of them are garage start-ups, especially those that make protective sleeves and cases for the iPod.

The telecom discussion tends to be framed by what is called the "triple play," which is voice telephony, video, and (Internet) data. I've seen a lot of business cases that "prove" that communities can't recover their costs using a triple play model. I think the reports are right, but for the wrong reason (which makes them wrong overall).

It's really a quadruple play, with voice, video, data, and what I call "advanced services." Advanced services are anything that will be delivered via the Internet that we have either not thought of yet or just are not including. My favorite example is network backups. Knowledge Economy startups like Data Ensure are growing rapidly by playing in the Advanced Services arena, and Data Ensure, in particular, is creating jobs in a remote part of southwest Virginia. They just happen to be in a vertical business incubator with fiber in the basement--part of a regional fiber project.

A lot of phones are beginning to look a lot like iPods, and I don't think that is a coincidence. By some estimates, Apple has as much as 80% of the portable music player market, and the latest entry, the iPod Shuffle, which is incredibly small, is enormously popular, despite a lot of naysaying from competitors who claim it lacks features. Apparently they don't read the reviews of their own products, in which a frequent criticism is that there are too many controls and widgets that are too hard to figure out.

EWeek reports that a cellphone virus that originated in the Phillipines has been found on cellphones in the United States.