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By: heybrad
06 Apr 2003, 11:06 PM EDT Msg. 1120091 of 1120107
(This msg. is a reply to 1120070 by murrayhill.)
Mr. Putnam response to murrayhill posts
I sent Mr. Putnam a few posts by murrayhill concerning the allegations of a 'rift" between Hango, R/S and e.Digital. Below please find Mr. Putnams response.
Thank you for your e-mail, Ken. Per the Letter from the President dated February 14th, both EASTECH and Remote Solution/HanGo are well under way in taking versions of our HDD-based digital jukebox platform into production.
I doubt either would be doing so if there was a "rift" in our business relationship.
Best regards,
Robert Putnam
Senior Vice President
e.Digital Corporation
13114 Evening Creek Dr. S.
San Diego, CA 92128
http://www.edig.com
Phone: (858) 679-3168
Fax: (858) 486-3922
robert@edig.com
By Mike Musgrove
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 30, 2003; Page H07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45149-2003Mar28.html
Flash memory is cheaper than it has ever been, which has to please owners of digital cameras, MP3 players, handheld organizers and universal-serial-bus key-chain drives, all of which rely on flash memory to store data. But here's the bad news: As with everything else in the technology industry, that also means flash memory is now as expensive as it's going to get.
Consider the going rate for memory storage cards, the removable modules used in digicams and many other portable electronic devices. In 2000, these cards cost an average of $1.10 per megabyte, according to the Gartner research firm. In 2001 the average price dropped to 50 cents. Last year that price dropped to 30 cents, and Gartner expects the price to go down to 20 cents this year.
On average, the Stamford, Conn., firm says that flash memory prices drop about 30 percent every year -- and that it sees no reason to expect that trend to level out. Flash memory is now a $2 billion-a-year market -- 6,500 terabytes, at the current exchange rate.
"Flash" refers to the way this kind of memory stores data even when the power is off, unlike the cheaper "volatile" memory used in desktop or laptop computers.
"It's good old semiconductor economics, that's all it is," said Richard Gordon, a Gartner analyst. "It's all Moore's Law-driven," he said, referring to the computer-industry maxim that costs will continue to decrease even as microchip density increases exponentially.
In the case of removable flash memory, this price plunge has continued even as the memory-card market has remained splintered into four major, incompatible categories: CompactFlash cards, SmartMedia, SD Cards (and their closely related predecessor, MultiMedia Cards) and Memory Sticks.
There's no major technological difference between one and the next, although their sizes and shapes vary. Prices are dropping for each kind at similar rates. Why so many formats? It's partly a matter of engineering, partly a matter of industry politics and partly a matter of cost. Big, high-end digital cameras, for example, tend to use CompactFlash because it offers higher capacity than other formats, though it is also slightly bulkier.
No such market fragmentation prevails in the market for USB key-chain drives. The lower cost of flash memory has many in the business seeing these devices -- which plug into the USB ports standard on all new computers and are small enough to fit on a key-chain -- as the logical successor to the floppy disk. They only make up 5 percent of the removable solid-state memory market now, but the memory industry anticipates increased demand for these tiny gadgets.
"About 150 million PCs will be sold in 2003 and every one has a USB port on it, so we think this is going to grow like crazy," said David Klenske, director of product marketing at Lexar Media. "This product was initially only sold in geeky computer stores; now we're seeing it in mass retail by summer."
But even as prices drop, users may not wind up spending less. Klenske said that as memory gets cheaper, people tend to buy more instead of spending less. Lexar's most popular memory-card size tends to be whatever is in the neighborhood of $50 that year. In 2001, 32-megabyte cards were its biggest sellers, but 128MB cards top the charts now.
To some extent, consumers need that extra space. Increasingly sophisticated gadgets need more storage; digital cameras, the biggest drivers of flash-memory sales, now take pictures with higher resolutions and use correspondingly larger file sizes.
For now, though, ever-cheaper memory seems to be maintaining a lead over memory-hungry hardware. A couple of years ago, according to Eastman Kodak, a typical digital-camera user would tote a camera with a resolution of 2 million pixels and a 32MB card, good for 53 shots. Today the average camera's resolution is up by 50 percent, to 3 million pixels, but the average storage card has doubled to 64MB -- enough for 80 pictures.
03/29/2003
Widest range of PDA phones available for free with the Globe Platinum Plan
Connectivity now has a new meaning as Globe Telecom unveils the widest range of PDA phones that hooks you up to the World Wide Web, giving you access to information and communication integrated in portable support tool. Even without your PC or Laptop, you gain access to the Web with new PDA phones that come free with a Globe Platinum Plan subscription or at great discounts with other G Plans.
MORE choices of PDA phones (from left) Handspring Treo 180, Handspring Treo 270, Qtek 1010, Palm Tungsten W and the Sony Ericsson P800.
With these PDA phones, Globe offers Internet browsing through GPRS protocol. This lets stay connected to the Internet with just your PDA, allowing you to get the information vital to your business or even for recreation. And to make it more affordable, Globe introduces the GSurf-Globe’s newest Data Plan that offers Internet browsing for as low as only 25 centavoes per kilobyte at a fixed monthly rate.
“With the Globe Platinum Plan gives subscribers the most number of free voice call minutes and text messages, we also recognize the need for cost efficient Internet browsing. Globe G-Surf plan is the first of its kind in the country, offered to Globe subscribers who want to maximize Internet surfing on their PDA phones,” says Nikko Acosta, Head of Globe Handyphone’s Consumer Postpaid Business.
Personal Data Assistant (PDA) phones are sleek, handheld computers that possess the latest and most accessible interfaces catering to the multi-tasking needs of its users. It serves as an organizer, note taker and cellular phone. The latest upgrades on various units come with a camera, MP3 player, MMS capability, speakerphone, 3D screen and operation dual or tri-band mode.
Globe introduces a divers selection of the latest PDA handset models from the leading brands in PDA and mobile technology in th market today. Current offerings include the Sony Ericsson P800, a tri-band PDA phone using Symbian operating systems (OS) has a built-in camera, and MP3 player for music playback, a memory stick for larger picture and music storage, MMS capability, and 3D side screen game.
For those who are more accustomed with the Pocket PC operating system, the QTEK 1010 is capable of opening Word and Excel files, has 64 RAM, 150 PDA hours and an MP3 player.
Palm aficonados may choose from the TREO or Tungsten W models available only from Globe. The TREO 180 is superb monochrome dual band PDA phone running on Palm operating system and comes with a speakerphone and MMS capability while the TREO 270 has colored screen with over 4,000 colors, is MMS capable and has a personal speakerphone. Completing the list of cool gadgets is the Tungsten W, a tri-band PDA phone (available very soon at the Hub) that’s MMS capable, comes with a built-in-keyboard and has high resolution with over 65,000 color display.
The MyGlobe website, now perfectly viewed with a PDA phone, keeps you up-dated on essential information. It gives you easier access to the latest news and headlines from ABS-CBN news, stock market info and business news, movie schedules, music and games from Click the City. MyGlobe also connects you to a powerful search of the web via instant access to Google. The site also features links to tips in keeping your PDA customized to your needs with latest downloadable applications. Have access to an infinite amount of information from the Net with just the click of a button on your Globe Handyphone.
The Globe Platinum Plan offers these hi-tech PDA phones for free along with 1,100 voice minutes, 650 text messages and executive discounts to prime establishments. While the Ericsson P800 is available nationwide, visit the HUB to try out the QTEK 1010, TREO 180 or 270 and the Tungsten W. Promo is ongoing until April 13, 2003.
Millions log on to work wide web
GAVIN STAMP
http://www.scotlandonsunday.com/uk.cfm?id=376332003
YOU check out the latest news on the BBC, do a bit of shopping, check your bank account and then download a couple of MP3s for the drive home.
Is this scenario made possible by the latest internet phone technology, or is it the result of a couple of hours spent in an internet cafe?
In fact, this is what millions of office workers are up to behind their computer monitors when they should be making money for their bosses.
New research on workers’ surfing habits has revealed that the most popular website is www.bbc.co.uk, which was visited last month by over 2.3 million people using work computers. Office-bound browsers account for more than a third of its total number of ‘hits’.
The dotcom book and music retailer Amazon was in second place, with 1.6 million office workers visiting it at least once last month, closely followed by the internet auction site EBay, which had 1.4 million users.
Meanwhile, the study also reveals that many office workers are putting their jobs on the line, and their bosses at risk of prosecution, by illegally downloading pirated music from the internet.
The figures, from Nielsen Net Ratings, which monitors internet usage, show that the website with the largest proportion of office-based surfers is streetmap.co.uk. Nearly 60% of people using the internet map service do so from work.
Friends Reunited, which counts first minister Jack McConnell among its users, also features in the 10 most popular sites among office workers, with one million users.
And nearly half of the sites listed in Nielsen’s top 10 are retailers. These range from high street names such as Tesco and Argos to the internet travel agent Lastminute.com. Although the workplace has traditionally been where people earn their wage, increasingly it is also where they spend it.
Free and fast internet connections are fuelling rising internet use among employees, many of whom rely on slower modems to hook up to the internet from home. According to a recent survey, 87% of office workers admitted to using the internet for personal use.
Tom Ewing, internet analyst with Nielsen, whose figures are based on a survey of the surfing habits of 7,000 workers, said people tend to visit the same sites at work as they do at home with a few notable exceptions.
He explained: "Obvious entertainment and adult sites tend not be used by people at work in the numbers that they do at home.
"Most people go to the BBC for the news but it wouldn’t surprise me if there was a large sports element."
Ewing added: "At the moment for a lot of people, work is the only time that they get to go on the internet. If companies attempt to clamp down on employees internet usage and become more security conscious, that may tip the balance in favour of usage at home."
Although many companies have a relatively relaxed attitude to their employees using the internet occasionally during work hours, few have formal rules setting out how much time, if any, their workers can spend surfing the web.
Aaron Ross, chairman of the Work Life Balance Trust, is in favour of employees being given some leeway as far as work surfing is concerned. He argues that it can take the strain off other areas of their lives and help improve their productivity.
Ross said: "If people get their shopping online, it means they can focus on their home life better and come to work afresh. People are bringing their home life into the office. If you can contain that in an environment agreed by both employer and employee, the time that they are not focusing on that will be focused on work and more productive in most cases."
He added that companies should tell workers what constitutes an acceptable level of internet usage. Some popular sites can pose serious problems for employers.
One of these is Kazaa, an online music service whose users can download, copy and share recorded music for free.
The MP3 site’s software has been downloaded to 200 million computers worldwide. One in five of its British users, around 250,000, log on at work. However, as with its famous predecessor Napster, downloading music from the site is illegal.
Companies have been warned that they could be liable to prosecution if employees use their property to pirate music.
Last night Adrian Strain, communications director of the International Federation of Phonographic Industries, which represents record labels, said: "Companies should be worried about this not only because of the legal issues but because of these services clog up bandwidth and affect the efficiency of their services.
"If the law is clear that making music available on the internet without the permission of the rights holder is illegal, it follows that there is a legal risk in allowing it to go on.
"Companies could be exposed to legal action."
Some firms have taken a hard line.
The Royal Bank of Scotland, Scotland’s largest company, has a zero tolerance approach to personal use of the internet at work. The company has a surveillance unit which monitors the surfing behaviour of its 70,000 staff in the UK.
Spokeswoman Linda Harper said: "The company policy is that the internet is for business use only and staff are discouraged from any personal use."
very good thing you can only guess at butanything.
From: "lawyerlong" <lawyerlong@y...>
Date: Mon Mar 24, 2003 10:24 pm
Subject: Re: Auditor situation...
Faux
been reading with amusement the messages on IHub where cassie has
them once again dancing on the end of her string. In 2003, given
what has happened to Arthur Andersen and the gigantic payouts E&Y
themselves had to make in the Keating scandal, if there were even a
whiff of a hint of impropriety, E&Y would be falling all over
themselves to make a public promouncement about it, sever themselves
from any liability, and point fingers immediately at EDIG. The fact
that no such announcement of any kind, nor any hint of same, is in
evidence tells the end of that story.
I find it fascinating how cassie can take an innocuous situation ,
begin parsing and spinning it, and, trading on the fears of the
board members, engage them in a ceaseless debate with no merits
whatsoever on her side. If it were a court of law even the bench
would be laughing.
LL
--- In EDIGConversation@yahoogroups.com, "fauxmorals" <pagel@r...>
wrote:
> As per RP (via voicemail) tonight, Once the E&Y auditors who were
> doing EDIG's audits were moved from the Vancouver office to the San
> Diego office, EDIG knew the price of their auditing would go up
> dramatically, and began the search for a new auditing firm. When
E&Y
> wanted to charge more money, EDIG decided it could not afford the
> price. E&Y then resigned, and the new firm was brought on. Yes,
E&Y
> technically "resigned", but Robert said it was basically "a mutual
> decision between the companies more than anything else". No biggie
> as far as I'm concerned.
so sassy - why the rise in pps -
wasn't it you and your gang that were
raging how EDIG pps was declining while
the overall stock market was a bull the
past several days -
what happened today EDIG pps rising while
the overall market took a beating.
in your infinite wisdom please explain how
the market makers were sucked in by this
scam. Is it because they didn't consult with
you. or Buttanyhow or Z. Miller the other guru ...
so sassy - why the rise in pps -
wasn't it you and your gang that were
raging how EDIG pps was declining while
the overall stock market was a bull the
past several days -
what happened today EDIG pps rising while
the overall market took a beating.
in your infinite wisdom please explain how
the market makers were sucked in by this
scam. Is it because they didn't consult with
you. or Buttanyhow or Z. Miller the other guru ...
MM's screwed up. Bad news today and they
set the pps higher today. these guys
just don't know how to play the game.
all the losses they will incur because
they didn't take the time to listen to the
webcast or at least consulted with you or
butanyhow.
Main Entry: re·sign
Pronunciation: ri-'zIn
Function: verb
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French resigner, from Latin resignare, literally, to unseal, cancel, from re- + signare to sign, seal -- more at SIGN
Date: 14th century
transitive senses
1 : RELEGATE, CONSIGN; especially : to give (oneself) over without resistance <resigned herself to her fate>
2 : to give up deliberately; especially : to renounce (as a right or position) by a formal act
intransitive senses
1 : to give up one's office or position : QUIT
2 : to accept something as inevitable : SUBMIT
synonym see RELINQUISH, ABDICATE
- re·sign·ed·ly /-'zI-n&d-lE/ adverb
- re·sign·ed·ness /-'zI-n&d-n&s/ noun
- re·sign·er /-'zI-n&r/ noun
Main Entry: sub·mit
Pronunciation: s&b-'mit
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): sub·mit·ted; sub·mit·ting
Etymology: Middle English submitten, from Latin submittere to lower, submit, from sub- + mittere to send
Date: 14th century
transitive senses
1 a : to yield to governance or authority b : to subject to a condition, treatment, or operation <the metal was submitted to analysis>
2 : to present or propose to another for review, consideration, or decision <submit a question to the court> <submit a bid on a contract> <submit a report>; also : to deliver formally <submitted my resignation>
3 : to put forward as an opinion or contention <we submit that the charge is not proved>
intransitive senses
1 a : to yield oneself to the authority or will of another : SURRENDER b : to permit oneself to be subjected to something <had to submit to surgery>
2 : to defer to or consent to abide by the opinion or authority of another
synonym see YIELD
- sub·mit·tal /-'mi-t&l/ noun
Main Entry: 1sur·ren·der
Pronunciation: s&-'ren-d&r
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): -dered; sur·ren·der·ing /-d(&ri[ng]/
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French surrendre, from sur- + rendre to give back, yield -- more at RENDER
Date: 15th century
transitive senses
1 a : to yield to the power, control, or possession of another upon compulsion or demand <surrendered the fort> b : to give up completely or agree to forgo especially in favor of another
2 a : to give (oneself) up into the power of another especially as a prisoner b : to give (oneself) over to something (as an influence)
intransitive senses : to give oneself up into the power of another : YIELD
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By: WhatDoesItSay
24 Mar 2003, 01:51 PM EST Msg. 1117372 of 1117376
More problems for the iPod...
iPod problems send PC users in search of Zen solution
By Charles Wright
March 25 2003
theage.comau
When things first started going wrong with our friend Tim's iPod, he took it back to the dealer. It's a Windows version, which uses MusicMatch Jukebox Plus rather than the Mac's beautifully integrated iMusic software. Windows, it turned out, was part of the problem.
The dealer would have liked to help our friend, he explained, 'but we don't have anyone here who knows anything about Windows'.
Tim went to Apple tech support. They told him roughly the same thing.
As you might imagine, this was a discouraging response for someone who'd just spent $590 (a student discount on the reduced $650 sale price) on the 5GB iPod, and another $140 on a FireWire card for his laptop.
The problems had begun almost immediately. When he plugged the iPod into the FireWire card, Jukebox Plus started getting haughty. Sometimes it recognised the iPod was there, sometimes it didn't. When it did, it would agree to download about 3 per cent of the music, then suddenly freeze.
Our friend isn't easily discouraged. He mucked around and finally persuaded the iPod to download one track, selected randomly from the albums being transferred. He spent an hour one night going through that process and ended up with about 100 songs on the iPod.
His hopes were rudely dashed, however, when he discovered that many of the tracks skipped. That's when he went to the dealer, and Apple, and discovered that Apple apparently had no means to support a product it was selling.
So he brought the iPod to us. As the song goes, that's what friends are for.
When we examined his expensive new toy, it looked like it had no tracks on it. It refused to sync with any of our computers. It seemed that the internal database had become confused, perhaps because the batteries had gone flat while syncing. In any case, the iPod was essentially useless.
We used the update tool that ships with the iPod to reset the factory defaults. That made things worse. Now we'd lost the iPod menu. All we could see was a folder. We had to run the update program several times, and then reformat the hard disk.
We transferred a good deal of Tim's music, most of it without skips. Unfortunately, it wasn't the end of Tim's problems. Within days, he was having the same problems.
We think we've tracked down the likely cause - almost certainly the combination of Tim's laptop and either his FireWire card or cable.
We're about to make another attempt to resolve the issues, using the tips we discovered at www.ephpod.com/troubleshoot.html.
EphPod is an interesting product. It speeds up PC-iPod transfers, and interfaces with Outlook contacts and WinAmp playlists. It requires a copy of MacOpener, which allows Windows to read Mac files.
Another useful resource in our hunt for a solution is the information at garote.bdmonkeys.net/ipod-experience/
As that site points out, it appears that the FireWire port built into Creative Labs' Audigy soundcards works very well with the iPod. Although that's not going to work with a laptop, it may be that Tim needs to use his desktop for his iPod syncing.
The irony is that Creative Labs' Zen MP3 player is a strong competitor to the iPod on the PC. We reviewed it a few months ago and, although we were tempted by it, we ran into a few irritations. A couple of weeks ago, we looked at the new 20GB version. Initially Creative decided against including a USB 2 interface with this unit, but they've changed their mind. That means you can have high-speed transfers without buying a FireWire card - provided your motherboard or an external card supports USB 2.
The iPod has fewer buttons than the Zen - this makes accessing some functions take that little bit longer. Also we found we could do more with the Zen without looking than we could on the iPod.
When we last looked at it, we found ourselves accidentally pressing the Zen's controls, because of the layout of the buttons. The 20GB model comes with a pouch/belt clip that solves all those problems. Simply being able to grip the pouch and not the Zen puts those buttons out of reach.
The Zen has a separate power input, while the iPod uses the FireWire connection. If you are syncing your iPod with a notebook, you have to make sure it's fully charged because it will not run off the notebook's power supply.
The Zen also has a great feature called EAX. In addition to some great reverb and echo effects, it allows you to control the speed of your music. You can slow it down to 50 per cent or speed it up to 150 per cent.
When it comes to software, both leave something to be desired.
Even with all its bugs worked out - and we're sure they can be - the iPod is much better with a Mac than a PC. And because Apple and its dealers don't seem to be enough aware of the problems to warn customers of possible difficulties with hardware, let alone point them to reliable FireWire solutions, we can't recommend the iPod for Windows users, although the Mac version, particularly with its links to iCal and iSync, remains peerless as an MP3 player. If you have a PC, the new 20GB Creative Zen with USB 2 is our choice.
sassy - if EDIG could drum up demand
at will, why havn't they done it
whenever they please - why ever let
the PPS drop at all. Of course this
is one of your many pre-fabs.
(WinDVD) to target the OEM market
Divx Networks is pushing their codec to the general consumer market, in order to make it an accepted standard. Divx alredy is a very popular video compression format, but hasn't received much recognition from the major players of the PC-industry.
InterVideo and DivXNetworks Expand Comprehensive Licensing Agreement to Target Global PC OEM Market
Partnership Will Enable Large OEMs to Bundle InterVideo Software Tools Powered by DivX Technology
FREMONT, Calif.--March 19, 2003--DivXNetworks, Inc., the company that created the revolutionary patent-pending DivX® video compression technology, and InterVideo, a leading provider of DVD software, today announced an expansion of their existing licensing agreement to distribute DivX-powered InterVideo software products directly to hardware OEMs, including manufacturers of PCs, video cards, camcorders, disk drives and consumer electronics products.
Last year, InterVideo licensed the leading DivX video technology for use in its award-winning suite of retail video software products, including WinDVD, WinDVR, and WinProducer. The new agreement will enable major OEMs to bundle DivX-enabled InterVideo software directly with their hardware products. DivX video compression technology is a hugely popular video encoder / decoder that offers DVD-quality video at sizes 7-10 times smaller than MPEG-2 and ranks among the world's most popular video technologies, with over 75 million downloads and an average of over 2 million downloads per month.
InterVideo software is bundled by eight of the top ten PC makers in the world and over 150 other companies including Acer, Dell, Intel, Gateway, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, NEC, Toshiba and others. DivXNetworks and InterVideo will work together to market DivX-licensed software products to InterVideo's influential OEM customer base.
the accusation is not childish - that is your interpretation.
You are a self appointed critic of MP3 players and believe
others should follow your lead.
Do you go view a movie becuase a critic tells you should
see it?
Do you not go see a movie if a critic tells you wouldn't
enjoy the movie?
I'm not saying don't voice your opinion - but - you
keep repeating and repeating and ...
it's obvious you have a mission to discredit
E.digital - I don't have any thing to let
go - you're posts are meaningless to me.
just a shame you are given the opportunity
to beat up on whom ever you please.
we'll see how the "emergency" webcast goes
monday.
"emergency" ???
you know what you're lying about mr. "i'm innocent"
I wouldn't want to know what that moron
looks like.
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can't wait to hear your reviews on the new players.
(and pullleeeeese don't take me seriously)
"It seems that the majority of posts on this board are now off-topic or generic posts about the music industry, other digital music players, telematics, generic IFE or other off topic hopeful dot-connecting information. "
EDIG happens to be in the industries you described therefore
it is my opinion that whether these news items refer to EDIG
directly or indirectly should not determine it they are on
topic or off topic.
I have not heard you comment about how the increasing blabber on another board relates to E.Digital - where personal attacks
are becoming the normal topic.
No, you're well aware of what I was saying.
You believe it's not the best but you're
saying it's the best therefore you are
the one that is decieving the buyer.
You keep justifying your FOC belief system.
so what you're saying is it ok
for you to deceive the buyer.
and now I should believe everything
you say - what a dork.
austonia do you happen to know what Ipod return
policy is. TIA
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an expert would be professional therefore
being objective in his or her analysis and
professionally avoid slanting what they
present to please themselves.
in other words you should clean up your act.
jtdiii, and what is your selection? LOL
CeBIT offerings emphasize ease of use, better design
http://digitalmass.boston.com/news/2003/03/14/cebit.html
By David McHugh, Associated Press, 03/14/03
HANOVER, Germany -- The combined printer-scanner-copier makes no great technological leap, but it's sleek and small enough to cut the clutter and wires in your computer nook.
The Hewlett-Packard PSC1210 thus fits right in at this year's CeBIT technology fair, where the latest products reflect a more sober, post-boom tech world -- not necessarily cutting-edge, but better designed and, in theory anyway, less of a challenge.
With a footprint just a little longer than a sheet of letter paper, the $186 HP all-in-one device is the smallest of its kind in the world, the company claims.
The buzzword this year is "ease of use" saving people time, hassle and money, said Bernard Meric, HP senior vice president.
With consumer and business spending sluggish and the threat of war casting a pall, this year's CeBIT saw the number of exhibitors drop by about 20 percent to around 6,500, and there were noticeably fewer new devices on show.
Much of the buzz was about wireless local area networks -- just as it was in 2002. Much of the new hardware to accompany the trend may show up next year, analysts say, though Intel did unveil its wireless-ready Centrino chip assembly for portable computers.
Things like cell phones with a built-in digital camera, and laptops with detachable keyboards were new and cool last year; this year they're everywhere and companies have made them less confusing.
Sony Ericsson last year touted its P800 camera-equipped cell phone. This year, it's the T610, which simplifies the taking and sending of pictures down to five button pushes. "It's fine to offer imaging and gaming capability, but you have to make it easy to use," said company spokeswoman Kerry Matheson.
Likewise at Nokia, the world's largest phone seller. Its 3300 model, available in the second quarter in Europe for about $320 depending the country, includes an MP3 player and an FM radio.
It's the successor to the previous 5510 music phone that was larger and had a typewriter-format QWERTY keyboard for people who send a lot of SMS text messaging. Consumers balked. "We learned that people didn't want to make a size compromise," said spokesman Damian Stathonikos.
So the phone shrank, and got a game machine-like oblong shape -- though it can still be held up to the ear for phone conversations without looking odd.
Sony's new equipment such as its Z1 Vaio notebook emphasizes design over specification, encased in a very light, gracefully curved magnesium-aluminum case that the company -- which frankly admits it's responding to the success of Apple's metallic notebook design -- says resists scratches.
Another old-is-new design is Parrot's DriveBlue $187 handsfree cell phone adapter for autos. It uses voice recognition software and the Bluetooth wireless standard -- about 7 percent of the phones in Europe but only a few in the United States have Bluetooth-capable phones, said Paris-based Parrot's president Henri Seydoux.
Complicated installation was a deterrent to earlier devices, so with this one the only setup is sticking it in the cigarette lighter, and briefly training it to the sound of the user's voice. Hit the call button and say the person's name, and the device dials it.
There was also the usual rash of eye-catching gimmicks, including the $187 transparent, lighted computer housing by German company Pearl, which caters to a fad among European gamers who like to show off their computers' innards.
Siemens and the Dutch company Alva BV offered usability of a more serious sort -- what they say is the first cell phone for the blind. It uses a strip of moving dots that form Braille letters so people can read the phone display with their fingers.
The device, the size of a small book, combines technology already used by the blind for note-taking with a tri-band cell phone, a PDA function and SMS messaging capability.
The companies hope to sell 4,000 over the next five years; it lists for $4,350, though many purchasers will have some sort of public subsidy available to defray the cost.
Palm OS 5 Powers Up Cell Phones
Arik Hesseldahl, 03.14.03, 10:00 AM ET
Ten O'Clock Tech
http://www.forbes.com/home_europe/2003/03/14/cx_ah_0314tentech.html
NEW YORK - If this week was all about mobile computing, the coming week will be all about mobile phone handsets.
Next week the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association kicks off its big trade show in New Orleans. It's at this show that manufacturers of mobile handsets start showing off their new phone models that will carry them through the rest of the year.
Samsung's SGH-i500 PDA phone features Palm OS 5.
As it happens, the CTIA trade show is taking place within a few days of the CeBit trade show in Germany, which started March 12, where many phones also tend to be unveiled for the first time. One that caught our eye came from South Korea's Samsung.
The SGH-i500 is the first mobile phone-PDA combination that runs on Palm OS 5. This is the newest version of the Palm operating system, which has so far debuted in handhelds from Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people ) and Palm (nasdaq: PALM - news - people ), and is coming in a handheld from Garmin (nasdaq: GRMN - news - people ). It is produced by Palm subsidiary Palmsource.
The phone has a clamshell design, which for Samsung is a departure from its previous candy bar-shaped Palm phones. It runs on global system for mobile communications/ general packet radio services networks (or GSM/GPRS networks) like those operated by Cingular Wireless, Deutsche Telekom's (nyse: DK - news - people ) T-Mobile and AT&T Wireless (nyse: AWE - news - people ). It's a tri-band phone, so it should work in the U.S., Europe and much of Asia.
It can handle features like multimedia messaging and WAP Web browsing, and it has a 330,000 pixel digital camera. Inside is an Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) Xscale chip running at 300 megahertz.
Another new feature is the new Graffiti 2 pen-input system, which replaces the original Graffiti system that was unique to the first Palm handhelds. The original Graffiti system fell victim to a legal fight between Palm and Xerox (nyse: XRX - news - people ). Xerox has argued that Graffiti too closely resembled a Xerox-made system called Unistroke. Graffiti 2 is based on software called Jot from a software firm called CIC, of Redwood Shores, Calif.
Samsung hasn't yet said much about price of its unit, but it should appear in the third quarter of this year. The company has aggressive plans for mobile phone sales for the rest of the year. San-Jin Park, head of Samsung's mobile phone division, told an audience of reporters in Hannover, Germany, that the company plans to sell 52.5 million handsets this year. That would solidify its place as the number three maker of handsets behind Finland's Nokia (nyse: NOK - news - people ) and Motorola (nyse: MOT - news - people ) in the U.S.
It might just make that goal. Samsung's unit sales grew by 50% while the rest of the industry's players saw their sales pick up by smaller margins.
SanDisk Introduces 1GB SD and Mini SD Format
http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=5118
Posted By: Ryan on Friday, March 14, 2003 9:52:28 AM
SanDisk has announced that 512MB and 1 GB SD cards will be available this year at a press conference at CeBit. SanDisk has also debuted 2 and 4 Gigabyte CompactFlash cards and a new MiniSD format. MiniSD was recently adopted by the SD card association as an ultra-small form factor SD card.
The 512MB and 1GB SanDisk SD cards use one gigabit NAND flash memory chips, based on patented multi-level cell (MLC) technology pioneered by SanDisk. MLC allows two bits of data to be stored in one memory cell, doubling memory capacity.
SanDisk is currently shipping 16, 32, 64, 128, and 256MB SD cards. The 512MB and 1GB SanDisk SD cards have suggested retail prices of $169.99 and $329.99 respectively. The 512MB SD card is expected to be available in the second quarter while the 1GB SD card is expected to be available in the third quarter.
2 and 4 GB CompactFlash
For HandEra and other CF device users, SanDisk has also announced 2 & 4 Gigabyte CompactFlash Cards. The cards work with any device with a CF Type 1 slot. The 4GB CompactFlash card has a suggested retail price of $999.99 and is expected to start shipping this summer. The 2GB CF card has a suggested retail price of $499.99 and is also expected to start shipping this summer.
MiniSD Format
In addition, SanDisk has introduced the SanDisk miniSD card, a new thumbnail-sized flash memory card that is designed to meet the needs of the mobile phone market for greater storage capacity in the smallest possible physical form factor. The miniSD card was recently adopted by the SD Association as an ultra-small form factor extension to the SD card standard. While initially targeted for mobile phone devices, the format may eventually make it's way into handhelds.
The miniSD card offers significant savings in card area and volume, two critical design parameters for the new generation of increasingly miniaturized mobile phones. Compared to standard SD cards, the miniSD card saves more than 40% of the printed circuit board area and more than 60% of the volume required to support the card in a portable device. SanDisk will offer a wide range of memory capacities in the new format, with 16, 32, 64, 128 and 256 megabytes (MB) expected to ship in March 2003.
A key benefit of the miniSD card is that it is both electrically and software compatible with the existing SD standard. It uses the same SD interface, including security features for content protection (CPRM -- Content Protection Rights Management) as the standard SD card. To allow interoperability with standard SD devices, SanDisk will also offer an adapter that converts the miniSD card into the SD card form factor. The adapter allows the miniSD card to fit into existing SD card slots, and thereby provide compatibility with the rapidly growing number of SD compatible devices in the market.
The miniSD card is 21.5 millimeters (mm) long, 20 mm wide and 1.4 mm thick, and occupies a footprint of 430 square mm and volume of 602 cubic mm. The new format was developed by the three original developers of the SD card, Toshiba, Matsushita and SanDisk, and recently adopted by the SD Association, an organization consisting of more than 500 member companies.
In order to reach the broadest set of devices for the miniSD, the SanDisk-branded miniSD cards will be packaged with a full-sized SD adapter. Suggested retail pricing for the miniSD plus SD adapter will be US $29 for the 32MB card, which is approximately the same price of an SD card of the same capacity. Prices on higher capacities have not been set.
yeah, I noticed somethings missing.
Analysis: Germany's copyright levy
By Sam Vaknin
UPI Senior Business Correspondent
From the Business & Economics Desk
Published 3/12/2003 12:30 PM
View printer-friendly version
SKOPJE, Macedonia, March 12 (UPI) -- Based on the recommendation of its patent office and following fierce lobbying by VG Wort, an association of German composers, authors and publishers, Germany is poised to enforce a 3-year-old law and impose a copyright levy of $13 plus 16 percent in value added tax per new computer sold in the country.
The money will be used to reimburse copyright holders -- artists, performers, recording companies, publishers and movie studios -- for unauthorized copying thought to weigh adversely on sales.
This is the non-binding outcome of a one-year mediation effort by the patent office between VG Wort, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Germany's largest computer manufacturer and other makers.
VG Wort initially sought a levy of $33 per unit sold. But Fujitsu and the German Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media, known as Bitkom -- including Microsoft, IBM, Alcatel, Nokia, Siemens and 1,300 other member firms -- intend to challenge even the more modest fee in court.
They claim that it will add close to $80 million to the cost of purchasing computers without conferring real benefits on the levy's intended beneficiaries. They made similar assertions in a letter they recently dispatched to the European Commission.
The problems of peer-to-peer file sharing, file swapping, the cracking and hacking of software, music and, lately, even e-books, are serious. Bundesverband Phono, Germany's recording industry trade association, reported that music sales plunged for the fifth consecutive year -- this time, more than 11 percent.
According to figures offered by the admittedly biased group, 55 percent of the 486 million blank CDs sold in Germany last year -- about 267 million -- were used for illicit purposes. For every "legal" music CD sold, there are 1.7 "illegal" ones.
Efforts by the industries affected are under way to extend the levy to computer peripherals and, where not yet implemented, photocopying machines. Similar charges are applied already by many European countries to other types of equipment: tape recorders, photocopiers, video-cassettes and scanners, for instance.
Blank magnetic media, especially recordable CDs, are -- or have been -- taxed in more than 40 countries, including Canada and the United States.
Nor is Germany alone in this attempt to ameliorate the pernicious effects of piracy by taxing the hardware used to effect it.
The European Union's Directive on the Harmonization of Certain Aspects of Copyright and Related Rights in the Information Society, passed in 2001, is strenuous, though not prescriptive. It demands that member states ensure "fair compensation" to copyright holders for copies made by means of digital equipment -- but fails to specify or proscribe how. It has been incorporated into local law only by Greece and Denmark hitherto.
In Austria, Literar-Mechana, the copyright fees collection agency, negotiated with hardware manufacturers and importers the introduction of a levy on personal computers and printers. The Swiss are pushing through an amendment to the copyright law to collect a levy on PCs sold within their territory. The Belgian, Finnish, Spanish and French authorities are still debating the issue. So are Luxembourg and Norway.
According to Wired, the Canadian Private Copying Collective, the music industry trade group, has proposed "new levies to be applied to any device that can store music, such as removable hard drives, recordable DVDs, Compact Flash memory cards and MP3 players."
Precedent is hardly encouraging.
The aforementioned Canadian collective has yet to distribute to its members even one tax dollar of the tens of millions it inexplicably hoards. In Greece, a 2 percent levy on all manner of computer equipment provoked a hail of legal challenges, still to be sorted out in the courts. The amounts collected hardly cover the government's legal expenses hitherto.
The United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden and Denmark are against the levy, claiming, correctly, that hardware is used for purposes other than pilfering intellectual property digitally. The Italians, Portuguese and Dutch haven't even considered the option.
Hardware manufacturers are livid. In a buyers' market, their razor-thin profit margins on the commoditized goods they are peddling are bound to be erased by a copyright levy.
The European Information and Communications Trade Association implausibly threatens to pass on such extra costs to consumers and recommends to stick to technological means of prevention, collectively known as digital rights management systems, or to novel CD copy protection measures.
Moreover, the fuzzy nature of the surcharge leaves a lot to be desired. Peter Suber, a prominent advocate of free online scholarship, analyzed the various post-levy scenarios in his FOS blog: "What I can't tell is whether the copyright levy on hardware will come with universal permission to copy. If so, that's a big gain for a small cost ... If the levy does not imply permission to copy, then which copying does it cover?
"If it covers copying without prior permission, then users will simply stop asking for permission, and convert all copying to pre-paid copying. If it covers copying without pre-payment, then that begs the question: what does the levy pre-pay? (It's not clear) how the plan would continue to distinguish authorized from unauthorized copying."
Yet, at this stage, it is difficult to see how to avoid the kind of rough justice meted out by Germany. Even the most advanced digital rights management systems lack a reliable model of remunerating copyright holders. Hence the conspicuous absence of DRM in the EU's Copyright Directive.
Suber raises some practical concerns, though he broadly supports a copyright levy on hardware: "To make the system fair, we would need reasonably accurate measurements of the amount of copying. Otherwise we wouldn't know whether to bump up the price of a computer $35 or $350 or whether to give Elsevier 1 percent or 10 percent.
"Download counters wouldn't catch the peer-to-peer traffic. So would you put up with packet sniffers or other eavesdropping technologies to take random samples of the copy traffic, as long as your identity was not recorded?"
Even what constitutes copyrighted work is not entirely clear. The European Court of Justice heard arguments last week in a case pitting two American companies, IMS Health and NDCHealth, against each other. IMS Health vends aggregated German data pertaining to the sales of pharmaceuticals.
NDCHealth tried to emulate an organizational element of the IMS Health database. The court is faced with seemingly intractable questions: Can IMS Health be compelled to license its database to a potential competitor? Is the structure of the database -- the way Germany is divided to 1,860 reporting zones -- protected in any way?
In essence, copyright is a temporary monopoly on creative work granted to the authors, publishers and distributors of such products. It is intended to compensate them for their efforts and encourage them to continue to create. Yet, the disintermediation brought on by digital technologies threatens to link author and public directly, cutting out traditional content brokers such as record companies or publishers.
This is the crux of the battle royal. Middlemen are attempting -- in vain -- to sustain their dying and increasingly parasitic industries and refusing to adapt and re-invent themselves. Everyone else watches in amazement and dismay the consequences of this grand folly: innovation is thwarted, consumers penalized, access to works of art, literature and research constrained.
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Send your comments to: svaknin@upi.com
Copyright © 2001-2003 United Press International
Apple's Chance To Get Online Music Right
By Alex Salkever
March 12, 2003
A Mac-centric online-music venture would fill a hole in Apple's digital-hub strategy by giving Mac users a legal means to enjoy downloaded digital music.
It's an incredible technological irony: Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPod is the best-selling and most acclaimed digital music player on the market -- but iPod owners can't legally use big-label music sites to download tunes. That because the recording industry has basically shunned Jobs & Co., resulting in the ridiculous situation where the big labels' commercial download sites aren't compatible with the No. 1 MP3 player.
That may be about to change. If the rumors floating around the techsphere last week are to be believed, Apple users will soon have a bona fide legitimate online music service of their own, on par with PressPlay, MusicNet, Listen.com, and other PC-only sites that offer vast catalogs of legal tunes.
Naturally, Apple wouldn't comment for this story on the rumors allegedly leaked by loose-lipped record execs. Those accounts, which appeared everywhere from music and tech trade magazines to wire services and the big local dailies, claimed that Steve Jobs had talked the beleaguered music business into backing an Apple service. It would provide at least comparable terms to the PC-based sites, many of them owned directly by the labels themselves and operated by subsidiaries. That means Apple users could listen to libraries of music for a monthly fee in the $10 range. Or they could pay a buck or so to download a tune and burn it to a CD.
A Mac-centric online-music venture would fill a hole in Apple's digital-hub strategy by giving Mac users a legal means to enjoy downloaded digital music. This compares to the distinctly illicit pleasures of KaZaA and other pirate file-swapping systems -- until now, the only choice for Apple owners. In addition, a handful of cheap programs have allowed iPod users to override the paper-thin copyright-protection mechanisms on the portable music players that are supposed to prevent the devices from downloading songs on multiple computers.
Apple didn't help its relations with the recording industry much with its earlier digital-lifestyle marketing mantra: "Rip. Mix. Burn." The three-word slogan became a thorn in the side of the big labels, with its semi-veiled reference to ripping off copyrighted materials. Perhaps Jobs is trying to make nice with the music folks and do right by his customers at the same time.
Whatever the case, I was stoked to hear about this prospect. It gave me the chance to fantasize about what the perfect Apple music service would provide. Sure, one-click downloads and total portability are a must. Ditto for no copyright protection on downloaded songs. Also, it should have no limits to the number and type of songs a user can burn onto a CD -- among the major-label sites, only Listen.com's Rhapsody service has this necessary provision in place.
Sensible System
Apple shouldn't stop there, though. It has a long history of innovation, and I think it can turn the music business upside down with some moves that don't cost a lot of money but really shake up the model of selling music over the Net.
For starters, I would set up a demand-based pricing system. Listen.com now offers unfettered access to its tracks, but each burnable download costs 99 cents, and the service has been very slow to catch on. I think Apple should set up a system that makes more economic sense to customers.
To date, the music industry has failed to capitalize on enormous pent-up desire for back-catalog songs. At the same time, it has missed out on ridiculously strong demand for songs high up on the charts. By keeping prices constrained within tight boundaries, the industry doesn't collect a penny from the millions of people who might balk at paying a buck for an old Miles Davis recording but would take the plunge for, say, 45 cents.
A Win-Win-Win
Likewise, Listen.com's set fee prevents the service from making more money from tracks people might be willing to pay a little extra to download. Think of the millions of fans who might pay $2 to get the new Eminem track a week early.
Apple should break this mold by pushing for floating pricing that actually establishes variable market prices based on how many people are downloading a song. It would be good for Apple by improving its service's bottom line. It would be good for the back-catalog artists who rarely get downloaded at 99 cents a track but might well generate some income at lower prices. And it would be good for Eminem and the record companies by capitalizing on the biggest acts.
As a second step, I would establish a new way for audiences to relate to artists through their wallets. I'd call this program "The 20% Club." Basically, artists who received fair deals from their labels would gain membership to the club. By fair, I mean the artist receives 20% of all revenues derived from sales of music after the label has recovered its recording and promotional costs. All members of the club would get a big logo button, or something like that, on the Apple site.
Outsize Fruit
This is, of course, a bit of a pipe dream. Labels have been notorious over the years for obfuscating their books to hide royalties due to artists. But I'm personally far more inclined to buy music when I know the artist is getting a reasonable cut. And I've heard from several friends who say they would be much happier buying music if they felt the artists weren't getting short-changed. This initiative on Apple's part would help assuage our fears as well as help to create much-needed reform in the music industry's treatment of artists.
These are two modest suggestions. But I think they would bear outsize fruit. Putting variable pricing in place would free vast amounts of money that the recording industry can't touch right now. Putting a seal-of-approval on artists and record labels acting in good faith will help clean up a business that suffers acutely from its bad image.
Still, Apple will need to do a lot more than this to win with selling tunes online legitimately. To date, the top three label-approved online music services combined haven't cracked 500,000 subscribers. That compares to the 200 million downloads so far of KaZaA's peer-to-peer software.
Overturning those failures requires more than just slapping an Apple logo on a site and saying it's great. This music service really needs to be different. An Apple-branded site that's basically no different from Listen.com, PressPlay, and MusicNet would just indicate that Jobs & Co. has fallen into the same traps that snare the old-line music giants.
© 2002 Business Week Online, The McGraw-Hill Cos i/a/w ScreamingMedia, Inc. All rights reserved.
© 2002 NewsFactor Network. All rights reserved.
The Problem with Convergence
Wednesday, March 12, 2003
Quick quiz: Name a successful electronic or digital convergence device other than the clock-radio.
Did you say MP3-camera or video-telephone? Did wristwatch-PDA come to mind? No fair counting Dick Tracy's Wrist Communicator.
How about Internet refrigerator? Camcorder-browser-voice recorder? Phone-browser-camera?
Yesterday at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, representatives from Sony and Microsoft were pressed to describe their visions of convergence in the home.
Convergence has been a popular word in recent years, applied to everything from giant company mergers to the mingling and melding of consumer products. There seems to be an irresistible human urge to converge things despite ample evidence that most successful products should simply be left alone. How else to explain the "spork" or AOL Time Warner (parent of FORTUNE's publisher)?
Adam Horowitz of Business 2.0 magazine moderated a panel called "Convergence Devices of the Future." He invited Eric Gould Bear of Microsoft's Windows Hardware Innovation Group and Mark Hanson of Sony's VAIO PC division to discuss the question: "What appliance wins out as the centerpiece of the living room of tomorrow: the television, the computer, or the gaming station?"
It was a tricky question, and the panelists artfully dodged it. (I was on the panel to represent the consumer's interests.)
Sony's official answer would have to be "all of the above." Consider: The Japanese electronics giant recently launched (in Japan) a TV-based hardware platform called Cocoon, which is sort of like a Web-enabled TiVo hard disk recorder on steroids; it's easy to see Cocoon evolving to grab entertainment and information not just from the Internet and from video broadcast sources, but also from Sony's vast libraries of movies and music, and from the hard disks of VAIO PCs around the house.
Sony also sees its VAIO computers as more than just computing devices. Sony was first to add a TiVo-like hard disk video recorder feature called GigaPocket to its desktop PCs, and it claims to have been first to include a IEEE 1394 port for attaching digital video cameras. Video, audio, and info all converge in the PC.
But guess what? Despite those cool technologies, more than half of Sony Corporation's profits last year came from the PlayStation video game machine. Sony has put tens of millions of them into play, and the next logical step is to add Internet access and local storage, transforming the PS2 into the home's portal for games, music, and other forms of entertainment.
If you skip the living room part of the question, Sony is also trying to figure out how to crack the convergence conundrum through its Sony-Ericsson joint partnership, creating mobile handsets that combine voice and data communications with video, music, and games.
Microsoft is no less ambitious. The software colossus sees the PC as the brains of the converged household, acting as traffic manager and control hub for all sorts of digital media that are shuttled, either wirelessly or over wires, to various other devices in the home. Televisions, other PCs, Smart Displays, tablet PCs, automobile dashboards, handheld computers, surround-sound systems, digital picture frames - the company has lots of very smart people, including Mr. Bear, working to define the standards for the converged future.
But Microsoft is also spending billions of dollars to develop and promote its Xbox, a game console that, not coincidentally, connects to the Internet and turns the TV set into more than just a video monitor. It's not a new idea for Microsoft, which has bankrolled and mothballed projects including WebTV and UltimateTV. Microsoft may not make television sets, but it brings convergence to other people's TVs.
With its PocketPC Edition handhelds, Microsoft has converged wireless data, communications, games, video, music, digital photos - well, you get the picture.
What becomes obvious is that we're not really talking about convergence into one universal device, but rather an evolving array of digital devices that overlap in function and - in theory, at least - communicate with one another.
Mr. Hanson gives this example: He takes his camcorder into the backyard to take video of his children at play. When he walks back into the house, he wants the camcorder to automatically communicate with other devices in the home. The TV might offer to display the video. The computer might offer to store the video, or to e-mail it to grandma. The game console might offer to incorporate images of the kids into a game. He wants to download music from Sony's online music service and transfer it to the music player in his car. He wants to order a Sony movie through his VAIO and have it streamed to the Sony Wega TV in the bedroom.
This isn't convergence; it's divergence.
And here's what's wrong with the picture:
It's far too complicated for a consumer audience, unless the consumers have a technical degree from the University of Pluto. Most Americans still connect to the Internet over dial-up modems. The VCR clock is still blinking 12:00. When consumers go to the electronics store to buy home networking gear, more often than not they return it because it's just too hard to figure out. That's not an exaggeration: The return rate for home networking products is well over 50 percent, according to retailers.
And that's just for connecting computers, not to mention a United Nations of devices that use different communications protocols, different operating systems, and different media formats.
Sony and Microsoft don't even know how to explain to Ma and Pa and the kids why they should want their PC to communicate with the TV. Stop someone on the street and ask, "Are you frustrated because you want to stream video from your PC to the video monitor in your bedroom?" Chances are you'll get slapped.
Electronics stores aren't going to help. Camcorders, aisle 1. PCs, aisle 6. Televisions, aisle 13. Computers, aisle 25. With the possible exception of the dedicated retail stores operated by Apple and Gateway, there's no easy way for people to see how all these "convergence" devices are supposed to work together.
Apple has done a masterful job of showing consumers how easy it is to get connected to the Internet, rip and burn music to CDs, edit home movies onto DVDs, synchronize calendars and contacts between a computer and a portable device, set up wireless networks at home, and so on. Nobody does it better than Apple.
And yet, Apple still struggles to get even 5% of the market.
I'm glad Microsoft, Sony, IBM, and other companies are planning for the coming era when all devices are smart and all of them communicate with one another. But for now, it all seems like a solution in search of a demand. Here's an idea: Start by making the devices in my home less confounding, and then we can talk about convergence.
CeBit shifts from an IT show to an integration exhibit
By Christoph Hammerschmidt
EE Times
March 12, 2003 (12:55 p.m. EST)
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HANNOVER, Germany — When CeBit opens its gates today (March 12), organizers won't be reporting record attendance as they have in the past. Economic doldrums have hit the world's biggest IT exhibit hard. Perhaps because of the ongoing downturn, hardware and software manufacturers, developers, dealers and service providers are pinning their hopes on an economic upswing — and soon.
The number of exhibitors has dropped for the second year in a row. Only 6,526 exhibitors will show up here this year, 738 less than 2002. According to industry insiders, however, the show remains the most important platform for exchanging ideas and products. With nearly 3.9 million square feet of exhibit area divided into 27 exhibit buildings and with about 600,000 visitors expected, the event is gigantic and serves as an economic barometer.
"CeBit is unique in setting the pace for the information and telecommunications (ITC) industry in terms of innovation and investment,” said Bernhard Rohleder, president of the ITC industry association Bitkom.
The range of exhibits, traditionally oriented more towards the IT needs of corporate customers, is increasingly expanding in the direction of multimedia and consumer electronics. Key themes are mobility and mobile communication in the broadest sense, the convergence of IT and electronics as well as network security.
Focus on trend-setting
Topics considered especially trendy by the organizers are showcased in “Exchange Booths." Choices for that distinction this year were wireless Personal Area Networks (PANs) based on technologies such as Bluetooth, 802.11, GSM, the infrared standard IrDA and 3G mobile communications. The Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA) also set up its Wi-Fi pavilion by the Wireless PAN/LAN booth.
Another Exchange Booth is devoted to open source. The product categories range from embedded systems through handheld solutions and office applications to open source for standard platforms. One point that emerges here is that the triumphal march of Linux continues. With the exception of PDAs, Linux is now available for practically all computer platforms, even on the Sparc platform.
An original theme for CeBit is computing. Interest this year is concentrated on anything mobile. Thus Intel will be introducing its new Centrino platform today. Intel is seeking to build the foundation for a new generation of energy-saving, low-power mobile computers.
A trend towards server consolidation has been evident over the last few years for larger machines. This has influenced the design of computing center machines: blade servers and devices for installation on racks are being more widely used. For example, Fujitsu Siemens' "Flexframe" server is based on blade technology that makes it possible to concentrate up to 300 servers within one case.
Voice and data convergence is the dominant theme in network technology at CeBit, but there will be little here in the way of innovation. "The topic of VoIP is not in the foreground this time around," said Carsten Queisser, marketing manager for Cisco Germany. "The market is moving along. We're very happy about the development of VoIP," said Queisser.
In the mobile communication market, UMTS networks are expected to open up before the end of the year. Terminal equipment should therefore be on the way. Among others, Nokia is showing its Model 6650, Sony Ericsson is introducing the Z1010 and Motorola has two UMTS cell phones, the A820 and the A835. The common denominator for all these devices is outfitting them with a camera and relatively high-resolution color display. Data transmission is reaching 384 KBit/s.
While UMTS has yet to be tested in day-to-day use, wireless LANs (WLANs) are hot, and not just in offices. They are springing up in hotels, train stations and airports. CeBit itself is a good example: All buildings are equipped with access points based on the 802.11b standard, and, for a fee, attendees can plug in to the service.
Consumer electronics emerges
Intelligence is increasingly being built into consumer electronics devices in the form of processors, memory and software. Cell phones with built-in cameras or MP3-capable PDAs illustrate just how fuzzy the boundaries are between entertainment electronics, messaging technology and IT.
A Korean exhibitor, Imri, for example, is showing a "Smart PDA phone" called Lenio that combines the functions of a Windows PDA with a CDMA portable telephone. It is also equipped with a camera. It can also be used as a voice recorder. The device communicates not only via digital cellular network, but also with Bluetooth, infrared and serial connections. Computing power is provided by an Intel XScale processor running at 400 MHz.
Christoph Hammerschmidt is editor-in-chief of EETimes.de.
my bad bad
You forgot to include your previous post on that list.