On The Verge

I didn’t attend the CES show. This is the second straight year that start-of-the-year management tasks have kept me from the show. In this case, however, I didn’t miss much from most accounts. But as I promised in my most recent post, I have to commend Sony for their introduction of an OLED TV even if it measures only 11-in diagonally.

I’ve regularly blasted Sony for obsession over royalty streams rather than aspiring to make breakthrough products of late. The OLED TV is exactly the kind of product that I expect from Sony. Just as they did with say the Trinitron CRT, the company is stepping out with a revolutionary new way to implement a display. The OLED push may not be without risk, but this type of risk is what once made Sony a great company.

Alas I didn’t get to see the TV. I understand that it’s priced at the moment comparable t...Read More

Since the news about Warner came down last week indicating that the movie studio would only support Blu-ray high-definition technology going forward, I’ve meant to post this message. I was further prompted today when fellow EDN blogger Brain Dipert posted “CES: Blu-ray, my my, is HD DVD gonna die?” on the topic. As Brian points out, the Warner support likely means a win finally for the Blu-ray camp. But read the complete post and Brian also points out that the win came at substantial costs. Indeed I question whether there is really a prize to be had this time around and if there was a chance to capture a prize in the form of profits that chance has passed Sony by.

Every time I blast Sony I adm...Read More

I don’t know why, but I remain infuriated with analysts and members of the media that continue to point out irrelevant issues in the broadband segment. I promise to post on some of the other items stacking up on my desk soon, but here’s another analyst missing the point. I’m not sure how a report from Mercator Capital ended up in my inbox, but in their IP Communications Newsletter there is an article entitled “Cable -- Winning the VOIP battle but losing the video war.” Actually you can disregard the headline because the article is mostly about the saturation in the broadband subscriber segment. Early on the article does claim that cable companies are losing video subscribers, although it doesn’t cite the magnitude of the loss. But it primarily ...Read More

Some so called experts still don’t get the challenges of Internet technology. In the recent USA Today article “Video, interactivity could ensnare web users by 2010,” analysts and industry participants discussed the impending traffic crisis. And yes things such as video content or even Flash animation can slow the Internet experience. But the article squarely places the blame on the last mile. The only real issue in the last mile today is the number of people who still can’t get broadband in North America as I wrote in "Reach is key to broadband-based innovation.” Moreover the last mile won’t be the issue by the 2010 date projected in the article. And the...Read More

I’ve heard some technology executives make some pretty strange and entertaining statements over the years. But Alereon CEO Eric Broockman really has me wondering if he’s actually serious with a recent blog post. In “A rose by any other name… Whatever… Or my frustration with wireless product reviews,” Broockman chastises members of the press for testing Wireless USB products based on the specs that remember were defined by Alereon and the other Wireless USB players. No member of the press has had anything to do with the specmanship of the wireless industry. It’s purely the industry players like Alereon that want to boast of fast data-transfer rates and hot applications such as wir...Read More

For the second time in four years, many of us in Southern California spent last week dodging a fire storm. I know that the fires aren’t exactly news at this point. But I thought I’d share some observations and feelings from a hectic, seemingly-lost week. The fires introduced a helpless feeling to which I’m unaccustomed and my trusted technology-centric environment offered little help. But my family was fortunate as we, our pets, and our home are fine. And as bad as the week was, and it was horrendous for those that lost homes and even family members, it was no Katrina as some politicians and mainstream media were quick to claim.

A week ago Sunday my son and I finished a round of golf just after Noon and headed home crossing what would be the most devastatin...Read More

In all honesty, I still don’t have an opinion on whether we have a shortage of engineers in the US. I am constantly told that there are shortages in specific areas such as true analog experts. But overall, there are many engineers matriculating nationwide and even more on the global scale. In those US engineering programs, however, there remains a distinct imbalance between the number of males and females pursuing and engineering degree. I found a pair of dueling columns on that topic in a recent USA Today a very interesting read.

In the first column, “First, dispel all of the myths,” the author argued that despite the fact that 60% of the students earning degrees are f...Read More

I just wrote a municipal Wi-Fi column for the next print issue of EDN about issues with planned deployments. A number of experts are suddenly questioning the validity of the concept, although most question the technical difficulties and cost. I think the real issue is that there is no one to pay for the service. I went looking for some more input on the topic and here are a bunch of quick links that you might find interesting.

Here’s a breakdown of how municipal Wi-Fi works from the How Stuff Works web site.

Here’s a ...Read More

It’s Wednesday night as I write this, and my son and his gang of gamers have been beating on Halo 3 for more than 24 hours excepting school and sleep time. They are an enthusiastic bunch. And they all profess to really like Halo 3. But for the life of me I can’t detect the kind of rampant enthusiasm that might drive Xbox 360 to the top of the game console market. The game was evidently released to reviewers last week and most gave it a very positive review. I’m not so sure it’s a runaway hit. Now I wouldn’t be an appropriate judge of Halo’s prospects. But the crowd gathered in front of our big-screen TV has proven accurate in the past. And like I said, they are clearly in like but I don’t know about love.

The tidbits that I’ve ...Read More

How are Blackberry mobile devices and global warming related? Well it’s a tenuous link but regular EDN Europe contributor David Marsh recently wrote an article entitled “Blackberry sweetens SCADA solution” that did just that. David led with mention of a study that presumably proves that observed global warming can’t be tied to solar activity thereby presumably indicting “carbon-heavy human habits.” Now I’m not going to touch that argument, but David’s story actually moved on to focus on wireless schemes to implement SCADA (supervisory controls and data acquisition) activities in installations such as remote water-quality-monitoring stations. It turns out that a Blackberry and a GSM link offer one such...Read More

I’ve been conspicuously absent from the blog world for a while. I have good excuses such as working on the launch of our video platform that has been well received at edn.com and working on our fourth annual Global Report due in November. Those aren’t however good excuses for letting my blog grow stale. It took our company’s commitment to a charity fund raising day to get me back blogging. Tomorrow Thursday Sept 27, we are holding a fundraiser for the Alex’s Lemonade Stand charity. The charity is named focused on finding a cure for childhood cancer.

Tomorrow our sales organization will donate 5% of the day’s proceeds...Read More

I’ve been traveling nonstop the past few weeks and carrying a USA Today business section that’s a couple of weeks old. Sorry for the late commentary, but I have to mention the article “Verizon rejected Apple phone deal” that describes the onerous demands that Apple made of Verizon when negotiating a potential iPhone deal. According to the story, Apple wanted a percentage of the monthly cellular service fees and wanted to severely limit where the iPhone would be sold. Ironically, I had written the column “Has Jobs lost his magic?” in the days after the iPhone introduction and I questioned how Jobs would adapt to the cellular world where playing nice with partners is pretty much a necessity. I guess I should hav...Read More

I spent two days last week at the Demo 07 conference where companies get six minutes on stage to demonstrate a new technology or product. By nature, the demonstrations can be pretty far out. My friends and colleagues know I’m not the biggest movie fan. But even Kasey Clark, our Managing Editor and resident movie fanatic, might find the “social cinema” concept proposed by Jaman a tough sell. The concept is based around niche rather than mainstream films, and in either case I’m not sure how many people want to notate their likes and dislikes about specific moments of a film.

There were some more mainstream IT-centric demonstrations. I’m sure that IT managers will find the Alcatel-Lucent Mobile Endpoint Management System of intere...Read More

Today in the San Diego Union Tribune, the story “Report questions iTunes’ savior status” reported a decline in sales at the iTunes online store. The story that appears to have originated at the Chicago Tribune quotes a report from Forrester Research. Forrester claims that US sales at iTunes dropped 58% in the first half of 2006. Note that this happened at a time when iPod sales are still soaring. An Apple spokesperson denied the bad news, but as usual for Apple, wouldn’t provide substance behind the denial. Assuming the report is true, what’s the culprit? It could simply be more illegal downloads. Or perhaps the consumer base has finally started to realize that buying music from iTunes locks the purchase to Apple hardware.