A host of Apple patent filings have led to frenzied speculation — e.g. here — that Steve Jobs’s next bombshell will be a tablet computer that really works. I’ll believe it when I see it — not the tablet, but software that makes it do useful work. The computing tablet that’s more helpful than a Moleskine notebook has yet to be invented. But I’d buy one tomorrow if it existed.
Daily Archives: February 3, 2006
Some grown-up questions for Google
Terrific piece by Becky Hogge on openDemocracy.net
Since going public in August 2004, [Google] has released over a dozen products, including Google Maps, Google Web Accelerator, Google Homepage, Google Sitemaps, Google Earth, Google Talk, Google Desktop, Google Base, Google Book Search, Google Video and Google Pack. So what has Google been up to in China during those eighteen months?
One clue might lie in the feature of google.cn that sets it apart from the other global search providers, like MSN and Yahoo!, operating inside China. This feature – much lauded in the official statements given by Google on the day of the launch – is that google.cn tells its customers when their search results have been “filtered”. How Google got that concession from the Chinese authorities might go some way to explaining why it took so long to release google.cn. But the question then has to be, what did Google offer in return?
The digital camera market
From David Pogue, writing in the New York Times…
Big changes are in the photographic air. First, there’s the astonishing collapse of the film camera market. By some tallies, 92 percent of all cameras sold are now digital. Big-name camera companies are either exiting the film camera business ( Kodak, Nikon) or exiting the camera business altogether (Konica Minolta). Film photography is rapidly becoming a special-interest niche.
Next, there’s the end of the megapixel race. “In compact cameras, I think that the megapixel race is pretty much over,” says Chuck Westfall, director of media for Canon’s camera marketing group. “Seven- and eight-megapixel cameras seem to be more than adequate. We can easily go up to a 13-by-19 print and see very, very clear detail.”
That’s a shocker. After 10 years of hearing how they need more, more, more megapixels, are consumers really expected to believe that eight megapixels will be the end of the line?
So, what’s next?
In no particular order, Pogue predicts: