Yep. According to MobileMag,
Today [Thursday, November 3] Samsung Electronics unveiled the world’s first 8.0 megapixel camera phone, the WCDMA SPH-V8200. Ki-Tae Lee, President of Samsung’s Telecommunications Network was the first to demonstrate the Samsung SPH-8200 model.
According to Good Morning Silicon Valley …
The publishing industry may have finally found its iTunes. Amazon on Thursday rolled out a micropayments program for books in an attempt to do for literature what Apple has done for music. Under the company’s new Amazon Pages program, readers can purchase online access to as much or as little of a book as they’d like — a chapter or even a single page. A second program, dubbed Amazon Upgrade, allows readers to add complete, perpetual online access to the purchase of a physical copy of a book. `We see this as a win-win-win situation: good for readers, good for publishers and good for authors,” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos told the Associated Press.
Fascinating technical analysis by Mark Russinovich of what happened to his PC when he inserted a copy-protected Sony music disc into his machine. Basically, it installs a ‘rootkit’ — the kind of covert software used by malware authors (aka ‘hackers’ to the mainstream media) to compromise computers they have penetrated. Ed Felten has posted several thoughtful updates and comments on this unsavoury discovery. And Andrew Brandt of PC World is absolutely incandescent about it. Here’s what he has to say (en passant):
The bigger question people have got to ask is, does Sony not respect the integrity of the computers of its customers? This cavalier act of sneaking software onto PCs not only violates our own Prime Directive — it’s our PC, dammit — but threatens the entire music industry.
After all, if you suspect that a commercial CD will install software secretly, which you won’t be able to remove and which, itself, may increase the already-great security problems of your Windows PC, would you continue to buy CDs?
I’ll tell you right now, I won’t. I’d much rather buy an unrestricted copy of a song electronically, using iTunes, or Rhapsody, or one of the other music services that offer this feature, than take a chance that some music disc will stick some hidden files in my Windows folder, which I can’t see or remove.
Sony has dealt itself a serious blow, and the best thing it — and the rest of the music publishers — can do right now is condemn this practice, apologize to the customers that were affected, provide a method to get this junk off affected PCs, and make declarations that they will never, ever do this again.
I don’t think they will. And if they don’t, I simply won’t buy CDs anymore. Period. From any publisher. And I recommend that you don’t, either. As a fan of music who respects the need for artists to make a living, and a security-savvy PC user, I’m incensed that Sony — any company — would think it’s OK to do this. It’s not. But the only way (I can see) to send that message effectively to Sony BMG executives is to vote against CDs with my wallet.
Amazing news. Early next year Microsoft plans to launch a new Web site called “Office Live” in an attempt to create a new platform that will liberate some of its applications from user’s hard drives. (Translation: to head off Google’s plans to make the PC platform irrelevant.) Office Live, Microsoft said, will be targeted at the 28 million small businesses worldwide. It will have “elements that enhance regular Office applications” while others will work independently of the software suite.
(Reality check: where did that number of 28 million come from? There must be 28 million small businesses in the US alone.)
Some of the tools promised for the site will allegedly help small businesses build an online presence as well as offer applications to automate tasks such as project management, expense reports and billing, among others.
“With Office Live services, we make complex technology affordable and easy to use for small businesses, empowering them to reach their business goals,” said Rajesh Jha, general manager of Information Worker Services at Microsoft. (Don’t you just love that cant about “empowering”!) Meanwhile, Chairman Bill was rolled out to put the best spin he could muster on the development. “It’s a revolution in how we think about software,” he told reporters and industry analysts. “This is a big change for…every part of the ecosystem.”
You bet. Especially the Microsoft ecosystem.
Here’s Good Morning, Silicon Valley‘s take on the development…
Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie today outlined the first steps in a critical change in the company’s business — a move into providing software and services over the Net, prodded by the specter of being disintermediated on the desktop by Google and Yahoo and in the business market by companies like Salesforce.com and NetSuite. But this venture, which Ross Mayfield describes as nothing less than the “third coming of Microsoft,” comes with a whole new set of challenges for the company. For one, eventually it would put Microsoft in competition with itself as services vie with packaged software (though Steve Gillmor thinks Gates is ready to bite that bullet). The other problem is that it seems to take Microsoft about three tries to get something new close to right. In the past, that meant users were pretty much forced to suffer through a couple hinky iterations, there often being no viable alternatives. Hardly the case this time. Microsoft will be trying to move into a territory with some significant and experienced occupants — a territory in which, as Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble notes, the company is already regarded with distrust and dislike.
David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of the increasingly popular Web-application development framework Rails, sees it this way: “Microsoft is now entirely optional. No part of the stack needs Microsoft. Not on the client, not on the server. And I think that’s a pretty tough challenge for a company that used to be a necessity. … To be frank, I don’t ever see the good times coming back for them. Microsoft will have to move to higher grounds. Get out of the infrastructure race. Like Apple did. There is no dominant future for the Microsoft tool chain for Web development in sight. But I doubt the company will acknowledge that before it’s game over.”
Having a BlackBerry makes one reflect on those flyblown theories that all our communications will converge on the mobile phone. I’ve just spent a few days in Donegal where I was for the most part deprived of wired connections to the Net, so the BB became my prime communications channel. And it works fine — in the sense that stuff gets through. But wading through a stack of email messages on a small screen, and replying to them using an ingenious but fiddly keyboard (which, for example, always assumes that when I type ‘see’ I really mean ‘are’), is not something I would wish on anyone. It’s fine for a few days, in extremis, but not really viable as a sole platform. And although it’s terrific to be able to access Google or BBC Online from anywhere with a GPRS signal, browsing on such a small screen is purely for masochists. The laptop has some life in it yet.
From Good Morning, Silicon Valley…
“We got off to a little bit of a rough start. People were looking for an iPod and that’s not what it is. We may have missed the marketing message there.” That’s what Motorola CEO Ed Zander had to say about the company’s ballyhooed ROKR phone, which appears to be sinking like its namesake in the market for converged devices. According to American Technology Research, an exceedingly high percentage of customers who purchased the phone are exchanging it. “As many as six times more customers are returning the ROKR phones than is normal for new handset,” ATR analyst Albert Lin told Bloomberg. “There’s an overall disappointment with the product.” I’ll say. But honestly, what did they expect? With its slow syncing, artificial 100-track limit and ungainly design, the ROKR is a poor substitute for an iPod. And as a cell phone, it’s less than astonishing. You’re better off spending your money on a NAZR.
Nice to know that one’s intuitions are occasionally correct.
This morning’s Observer column.
History repeats itself, said Marx, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
Step forward the consumer electronics industry. In the late 1970s, two incompatible video recording systems emerged: Betamax, from Sony; and VHS, from JVC. The battle between them became one of the canonical case studies in the curriculums of business schools, illustrating the victory of marketing over technology, a moral deeply comforting to sales executives and those who teach marketing.
Although the Betamax format was technically superior, VHS won the battle for the hearts and pockets of consumers. It is thus seen as a cautionary tale for smart-ass engineers who think technical sweetness is all that matters.
As ever, reality is slightly more complicated than marketing myth….
… and get one of these.
It’s a Yamaha EZ AG. Each fret has six illuminated microswitches which, when depressed, simulates the sound of a string being pressed at that location. If you want to learn, then the device will ‘play’ a desired riff, lighting up the relevant switches/frets as it goes. Quentin and I found it when buying audio kit at Digital Village. I left him in charge of it while I went to pay. As I was signing the credit card chit, what should I hear but the opening bars of Eric Clapton’s ‘Tears in Heaven’, played expertly.
Someone (Gordon Brown?) should give one of these to Tony Blair when he steps down from Number 10. After all, he used to be an air guitarist before he took up politics. A snip at £149.99!
From Good Morning Silicon Valley…
Bill Gates’ recent assertion that Sony’s Blu-ray DVD standard is “anti-consumer” and “won’t work well on PCs”… has apparently put The Fear into Hewlett Packard. At a meeting of the Blu-ray Disc Association Wednesday afternoon, HP, which has shipped a Wintel PC or two in its time, delivered a pointed ultimatum: Include two technologies supported in HD DVD or we will consider switching allegiances. The first of HP’s requested features, “mandatory managed copy,” allows users to copy high-definition movies for use on home networks. The second, iHD, supports PC-friendly interactivity and is slated to be implemented in Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system. HP was “shocked” when Microsoft and Intel announced support for HD DVD, and hopes the addition of these features will lead to a compromise between the rival groups and hopefully a unified standard. “We’re still supporting Blu-ray, but we’re very serious that we want these technologies,” said Maureen Weber, general manager of personal storage in HP’s personal-systems group. “If in the end, they’re supported in one and then not the other; we’ll have to make a choice.”
Coincidentally, HP’s appeal came on the very same day that Forrester predicted Blu-ray will win the DVD format war. “After a long and tedious run-up to the launch, it is now clear to Forrester that the Sony-led Blu-ray format will win,” Ted Schadler, a Forrester analyst, said in a report. “But unless the HD DVD group abandons the field, it will be another two years before consumers are confident enough of the winner to think about buying a new-format DVD player.”
See here for his enthusiastic review.
The biggest surprise: watching video on the tiny, 2.5-inch screen (320 by 240 pixels) is completely immersive. Three unexpected factors are at work. First, the picture itself is sharp and vivid, with crisp action that never smears; the screen is noticeably brighter than on previous iPods. Second, because the audio is piped directly into your ear sockets, it has much higher fidelity and presence than most people’s TV sets. Finally, remember that a 2.5-inch screen a foot from your face fills as much of your vision as a much larger screen that’s across the room.
Many people — including Apple’s chief, Steve Jobs — have predicted that video on the iPod would never be as popular as music. One crucial reason is that watching requires your full attention. You can’t do something else simultaneously, like driving or working.
In practice, these predictions turn out to be absolutely accurate. (I established this fact through scientific hands-on testing. Unintentionally absorbed in an episode of “Lost” while walking through Grand Central Terminal, I marched directly into a steel support girder.)
