Archive for February, 2005

No cord, no difficulties

Monday, February 28th, 2005

For a long time a headset for different mobile devices was “attached” to the phone by means of a “cord”. Thus it caused some difficulties when talking over the phone while going in for sport, working or driving… At the very beginning of the XXI century there appeared an opportunity to get rid of these ever meddling cords – the new wireless technology Bluetooth was created. For mobile communication this was marked by the fact that it was no more necessary to hold a handset, instead handy headsets made it possible to walk off a signal source up to 10 meters and more. Bluetooth was the first universal wireless technology for telecommunication that used radiowaves of a short range and that replaced a wire for connection between mobile devices. The pluses and minuses of Bluetooth headsets are described at cell phone news site.

Honest movie reviews

Friday, February 25th, 2005

Honest movie reviews help the average movie-goers make good decisions and spend their time and money wisely on movies that they will thoroughly enjoy. Today there are an abundance of movie reviews appearing in regular magazines, newspaper supplements, specialty magazines, and websites. There are hundreds of movie reviews sites that offer movie reviews on films of all genres.

Movie reviews will be based on the opinionated and personal preferences of the reviewer. There are also passionate movie-goers who review movies. Reviews by these people detail the emotion that they experience while they were watching the movie. Readers of movie reviews, who share the passion of the reviewers, get a clear idea of what they can expect from the movie. Such reviews will not narrate the story line, but tell the readers what they want to hear about the movie. These passionate reviews are often the best movie reviews. (more…)

Convergence: the Next Big Thing

Tuesday, February 15th, 2005

Who owns the consumer entertainment and information budget? Content, software and services or platforms, peripherals, and networks? Proprietary systems, copyrighted IP and patented devices or standard hardware, open source software and public domain programming? Conglomerates or start-ups? Convergence or specialization?

A panel of industry players fielded by Harvard Business School took on the question of future “form factors” last month. The conclusion: “It’s more important for users to be able to easily move digital information from one device to another than to have a single gizmo that is both a car wax and dessert topping.”

Socioforum.ru.

Although the discussion was abbreviated in the article, the concepts are critical to the business of content and technology in the next decade. It seemed to us that the discussion stopped way short of the ultimate questions of convergence: one, is there a common basis for information and entertainment content that leads to a rational convergence of their respective technologies, and two, it’s corollary, is there a technological and/or economic imperative to combine information and entertainment content delivery and processing components that is so compelling as the render the first question moot? (more…)

Construction Business Directory

Sunday, February 13th, 2005

Our site of  Construction Business Directory has many offers from the companies worldwide, located in following categories: Bath and Toilet Appliances, Bricks and Pavers, Building Facilities, Building Ceramic, Building Glass, Building Metallic Materials, Building Plastic, Construction Hardware, Construction Machinery, Decorative Materials, Doors and Windows, Fiberglass, Flooring and Tiles, Insulation Materials and Elements, Pipe and Fittings, Pipe Fittings, Apartment, Villas, Stone and Marble, Slate, Sandstone and Limestone, Timber and Plank.

Moving tips and suggestion

Saturday, February 12th, 2005

If you are looking for packing supplies or moving boxes I have a great solution for you. The website offers great prices and fast (in most cases next day) free shipping. If you are not sure what supplies you need or in what quantities, there are numerous moving kits available that have been specially designed to suit every size move.

Moving boxes
All of the boxes sold on the website are professional grade, high strength, brand new moving boxes. The boxes and supplies are shipped from an extensive network of warehouses were they are being stored in large quantities, and are ready to ship upon request. AllMovingQuotes.com offers great prices because the supplies are purchased in large quantities and the discount is passed on to you.
When selecting your boxes make sure to get the size you need. It’s recommended to pack heavy stuff in smaller boxes it would make them easier to move. Always mark the heavy boxes, just like you would fragile ones, to avoid any surprises and to put the heavier boxes on the bottom.

You can also find many useful moving tips and suggestion on the same webpage. These tips contain a lot of information on how to save on your move and make it less stressful, and more efficient. You can even find a moving company or a car shipping company there as well. So feel free to browse the website that has been designed around moving industry and packing supplies. (more…)

Feel The Burn

Thursday, February 10th, 2005

A discussion group member made this post recently which says a lot about the state of distributing and manufacturing consumer electronics and the bundling of software content with devices.

Sams Club in Flint, MI has LG internal DVD burners that will do 16X DVD+/-R’s, RW’s, DVD-RAM, CD/RW’s and double layer DVD’s for $79… The unit comes with Nero Express, Nero BackItUp, InCD, PowerDVD, & Power Producer Gold

What it says to me is not comforting. Who got to keep what part of $79 when a consumer purchased this product? Whose content will be recorded onto these discs?

In the first postwar decade in major economies, consumer electronics items were major purchases after a home, a car, and appliances. There were maintenance and repair shops, there was a secondary resale market for trade-ins, and the content was advertiser supported broadcast radio and television. People structured their lives around broadcasting schedules for information and entertainment. Global reporting of news transformed our perceptions of world events and cultures, and the concept of censorship and propaganda took on new meaning proportionate to the magnitude of the new media. Music, motion pictures, theatre and games of chance were consumed in public places. (more…)

Disruptive Effects of Holographic Technology

Thursday, February 10th, 2005

What could make the two-way competition for the next generation of optical discs a three-way race? We have HD-DVD and BD-DVD. Is it EDVD? Is it FDVD? Try HVD.

In two weeks, TC44, a technical standards committee of ECMA formed at the 88th General Assembly in December 2004 will meet in Tokyo to discuss four proposed new product configurations based on holographic storage on rotating discs, both read-only and recordable. The activity was initiated by Optware on behalf of the newly formed Holographic Versatile Disc Alliance.

Within 2 years there could emerge an international standard, as ECMA standards may be automatically ratified by the ISO. Before then, products based on the agreements expected to be forthcoming could enter the commercialization process in sample quantities. If things ramped up quickly, within 3 to 5 years after that, economies of scale would kick in and mass markets could begin to form. (more…)

Seriously Ineligible

Tuesday, February 8th, 2005

Dolby Laboratories is going public. Inquiring minds want to know: what are the future fortunes of Ray Dolby’s namesake enterprise after his retirement?

Dolby earned his place on the consumer electronics map taking the “ss” out of cassette. Way back when everything was still analog. The enterprise grew with unexpected agility as all components made the transition to transistors except the speaker (and Henry Kloss is another story). Audio giants like Sony, Pioneer, or Philips could have ignored him or bought him out or Microsofted him, but they didn’t. Dolby technology and professionalism has secured for the company a big fish position in the small and dwindling pool of American consumer electronics patent owners.

Digital changed everything. Noise reduction had no place in the CD era because there is no noise created by friction like tape scraping heads. No Dolby button on a CD player in my studio anyway. But Dolby, who was no one-trick Pony, reinvented the meaning of his own brand name. Dolby Digital, the 5.1 multichannel audio codec also known as AC3, carried Dolby into the digital television era piggybacked on the ample coat tails of DVD and digital pay TV as a full-fledged audio codec. (more…)

Eat or Be Eaten

Monday, February 7th, 2005

A mere 20 years ago, Stan Cornyn produced an album of the inside adult humor troupe Firesign Theatre by the name of Eat or Be Eaten. Far from the typical big shot, Cornyn has always had my admiration, just for being himself. Google him, as I just did, and what sets his career apart comes right to the top of the list. “King of Liner Notes” is his moniker.

Liner notes on LPs were huge in the record business in the 60’s and 70’s, and Cornyn wrote great ones, born of both a feel for the music and a flair for the slice of stardom that he brought to the project pie personally. The concept of a record album was more coherent then, like a concert orchestrated as an experience, thoughtful, artful, conceptual, not merely the list of a coupla hits plus filler that later led to its disintegration when making the transition to the era of distribution via online downloads.

One fan site offers this excerpt, which pretty much captures the essence of Stan’s approach to liner notes. “This is the dean martin. It is a largish bird which, like the purple martin, is given to frequent perching and swallowing. Its dark crest is going just a shade gray at the temples. The rest of its plumage it frequently sheds in favor of all new feathers from Sy Devore’s. Specifications on the dean martin rump have not been established, this bird not having yet appeared in any European art films. Its tail is believed not to be forked, except on formal dinner occasions.” (more…)

Draw Conclusions from Models, Not the Reverse

Sunday, February 6th, 2005

New Scientist this month reports on a study by the Santa Fe Institute comparing dummy and actual market and limit orders on the London Stock Exchange. I do not make this stuff up, folks. If we keep getting all this hilarious copy, we shall be forced to revive Bread & Circuses, our industry humor gazette on ice, so as to clearly differentiate it from the serious stuff. Don’t make me do it!

Entitled, ‘Zero intelligence’ trading closely mimics stock market, it shows that a lot of the volatility is irrational, e.g. not tied to information. Oh, to have the luxury of time to draw parallels, but alas, I must leave that up to you. I am far too busy modeling the highly evolved behavior of Hollywood studios, record labels, and other content developers interacting with the orderly evolution of delivery technology, and predicting the logical and reasonable reaction of consumers to those coherent business activities so as to forecast markets to illuminate the most economically efficient path. Do post at will.

This story was pointed out by Ray Kurzweil’s news feed, highly recommended reading for the eclectic technophile, along with the news from Esther’s Papa Freeman Dyson, writing in Technology Review, “Now, after some three billion years, the Darwinian era is over.” Far from the threatening specter of genetically modified food supplies that substitute Monsanto’s and Pfizer’s earnings objectives for natural life, his brief description has exotic birds singing and innocent children giggling on a soundtrack hidden in the narrative. (more…)

CDRInfo Scoops National Enquirer: RIAA Sues Dead Woman

Friday, February 4th, 2005

Not to be content with issuing lawsuits against minors, the RIAA filed suit against an 83 year old dead woman, currently residing in Greenwood Memorial Park.

In response to the claim that the woman made 700 songs available illegally on the Internet, her daughter said that, while living, her mom didn’t know how to turn on a computer.

She sent a copy of the death certificate to record company officials, in an effort to get her late Mum excused from attending the hearing, but they filed the suit anyway.

Greenwood officials did not return calls seeking to determine whether the )cemetery( was indeed war chalked. (more…)