On Turning 50, and Other News of Interest

    August has been a month of many milestones. I turned 50 early in the month.
The technology world has been stood on its head. Steve Jobs resigns from Apple.
HP first pulled their tablet,from  the market, and then announced they are getting out of the PC business altogether.
The 800 Pound Giant in the room, Netflix has stood its ground with Starz and refused to bow to their demands about tired pricing and  let them take their content elsewhere. I won’t miss it.
    Apple, and Steve Jobs have been called one of the greatest inventors  in the 20th Century. If one dose research one will find all of the products that he made famous are products that have been made by someone else before he refined it and set a new standard. There had been portable computers before,  Apple made them usable.
    More important then the legacy of Steve Jobs, and it is very important, is the future of Apple and the entire tech industry as a whole.  Over the last few months I’ve noticed a change in the focus of many tech company, even companies as venerable as Kodak are changing their focus looking for ways to sagging sales and poor product lines. Right now there are only a very few product lines that are interesting, the top players among them being the tablet, and the king of the hill, is Apple’s IPad.  But there seems to have been a shift to a very large degree away from trying to make a better product to protecting intellectual property . ie, their  patents.  While  some concepts and ideas are pretty cut and dried, and obvious , and the patent for that should be obvious, and the company that first filled the patent for it owns it at least to start with,. However, thee are a great many patents are are far more questionable. To the point of  one questioning is there even a prototype  filed at the patent office, and did anyone even read it? The patent office has said that need access to experts to help them sort through all to the tech patents the receive to help them tell which are legit, and which ones should be rejected. Because they don’t the the personal or expertise to go over all the material.
  

    That's not even counting all of the patents the various companies have already, and are either trying to protect or sell.  In many cases the  intellectual property may be worth more then the products they make with the information or ideas, sometimes even the company.  What kind of messages  dose that send to consumers who see new reports about companies suing each other over  patent infringement or other subtleties that no lay person or many lawyers can understand. Instead of putting the efforts to helping build the economy by giving consumer better products at lower prices. and creating more jobs and products we want to buy.
All their doing is making lawyers rich, and generally making a mockery of the US patent system. A complete rebuild of the US patent system is in order, along with  the copyright  office and reevaluating the way the publishing industry works. However, I don’t see this thing happening in the foreseeable future.

    What dose it mean when Google buys a hardware company like Motorola,?
They didn’t buy a printer company, or a camera company. They bought a company that makes hardware to run their operating system. Android.  At this point Android is  powering  roughly about 50% of all the smart phones in use depending on what report you read, and what is being covered, US or world. Point is it it fast edging Apple, and is generally killing other smart phone devices. Thus the questions becomes is there a conflict of interest in Google owning the maker of its own software distributor , the Motorola versions of the  Android smart phones. Along with the the other companies who also make phones that run Android.  On the flip side, Apple owns both the hardware and the software for their phones, in fact for all of their products. The difference being they don’t licence their IOS out to other hardware builders to put IOS into and sell to the public. Apple maintains a very tight control of their product cycle and loop from development, to production, distribution to sales both on line and retail. Something no other company has ever had.
Netflix finds itself in a quandary, much of it its own making. Last month they announced a new pricing scheme, separating the Streaming and the Dvd content, into two separate billing options, and increasing streaming fees. and increasing to total if you want both streaming and DVDs. So essentially you have your choice of three prices. Streaming, is 7.99, Dvd only is 7.99 month  Nd more for both Streaming and DVD.
Netflix is expecting to lose around a million subscribers due to this new format.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/15/netflix-price-increase-subscriber-loss_n_964026.html
It’s  expected that after several years of a format that has essentially changed the entire video  delivery system in may ways and set new standard to make what are precised as radical changes, to a tried and true format that upsets the satus qu  will bring on a out  cry, in this case its likely to take the form of a loss of subscribers. Weather it will be as much as they predict  or not m also how long the numbers will stay low are two important questions. Balancing them out are the cost of the content . Netflix has to be in a position to pay a fair price for content, but but not let itself be bullied into doing deals like Starz wanted. I have commented several times under different  articles about the Netflix /Starz issue. One can be found here;
http://www.videonuze.com/blogs/?id=3201#comment-304411031

Here:
http://www.videonuze.com/blogs/?id=3215#comment-311925790


The whole landscape of on line video is going to reshaped yet again as the dust settles over Hulu, and who eventually buys it. The main goal of any content owner and provider should be essentially the same: To provide consumer with easy acces to any content they have the right to through either subscription, like Netflix, or Amazon VOD, or even Hulu, or Boxee, and Roku, including the IPad, and Android tablets. If the consumer knows they can get they’re content when and where they want it with minimal fuss, and low price, they will be less likely to go to  alternative places to get the content they want. Distributors, and content owners will both be paid and everyone will be happy.

    A side note on turning 50 this year. Its now been a about a month since my birthday.  Sometimes, 50 is a concept one has to wrap ones brain around. The idea that you’ve been alive and doing your thing, for half a century. Most days you don’t feel any different then you did at 49. Suddenly your 50 and everything is older, every tool or possessions that you bought or acquired when you where younger seems older. Events that didn’t seem that long ago suddenly seem like  ancient history when you stop and do the math as to how long ago it really was.  Getting to be 50 has been a real adventure for me. As many  of you who personally know me I’ve had heart issues since I was born, and was not expect to live,  I was sent home, they had done all they could do for me. But I survived and eventually a operation was developed in Canada, The Mustard Procedure, which essentially rebuilt the top half of my heart. I was the first one in the United States to have it and Survive.  To this day I’m setting new records. I have since gone on to do all the things everyone else dose, high school get married, and raise  4 kids, and many other things that  the little blue boy they sent home to die was never expected to. do. The Lord has seen fit to keep me around for this half century   .I’m looking forward to many more years of doing what I do best, being a tech pundit and all around geek and movie lover, Lord willing.



 

Better Late, Back to Keyboard, Then Never..

As many of you know , in spite of best intentions and plans, Real Life gets in the way. Projects such as writing and publishing their blog or other personal projects get put on hold. Essentially this is what has happened to me.
This last July, not long after I put out the last article, on the publishing industry, My family and I moved and had to essentially start over again. Needless to to say I have had a lot of other thing going on theses last few months, and not having a fast easy to access connection had made it difficult to work the way that I was used to.

So instead of trying to cover news I should have been commenting on for the last six months, Let me start fresh, so to speak.

Verizon now has the holy grail of Smart phones,,, the Apple IPhone,,,
But is it enough and soon enough? Yes it is a big deal, However, it seems to me if it had happened before Android had gotten a serious foothold in the Verizon market base it would had a much more of impact. many folks who would have loved to get a Verizon IPhone and couldn’t are now solidly in the Android camp and are not interested in jumping to the IPhone, now they have their Android.
I know if and when I get into a position that I can get a Smart Phone I’m going Android. Yes Apple will make inroads into Verizon but it will take time and not as much as they would like.


CES, this January was the grounds for the first round of the tablet wars. Apple true to form, created a monster when they created the IPad, As I’ve said before in other article, tablets have been before, by various manufactures mostly by trying to shoehorn a standard desktop operating system into a platform that was never designed for it. The most common of those being Microsoft and their various Windows versions. which never did completely work right or stable.
Along come Apple, building on the success of the small tablet form factor, and a custom os, The IPhone and the IPod Touch which they had sold millions of and had all of those millions already familiar with the platform, now its scaled up to a 9 inch screen with better functionality .. A immediate hit. Needs to say.

There was a lot of talk before it was actually released to the masses of weather it would work, It did, once consumers got their hands on it and used it they loved it.
Of course everyone started jumping on the tablet bandwagon. CES saw the announcement of no less then 18 tablets from everyone from Blackberry, to Samsung, and many others. How many will make it to consumers shelves and get a fair chance is another matter. Most of the competing tablets are running Android, which makes sense because the next biggest platform on phones next to Apple IOS is Android. Android scales up to a tablet nicely and can be offered with just wifi, or with ¾ G bundles with the major carriers. However, that this point there is abig downside to using 3 or 4G that, being bandwidth caps, not that they’ll cut you off if you use too much, they just charge you for the privilege of going over, by the megabyte. I haven’t had the chance to play with the IPad or Android tablets, So I can’t say which I like better. Both offer comparable features and both will fill a certain need for certain consumers, while others will want the specific features of one or the other, thus driving their choice. On the whole a consumer should be able to use any tablet easily and do basic web surfing and media playing without having to do a learning curve to figure out how to do essential functions, they should be self-explanatory .

The FCC is pushing a plan to get broadband to rural areas, that is nothing new.
They have been fighting with the cable and wireless companies for years trying to get them to invest in rural technologies for years. However, the companies in question see investing in rural broadband as dumping money into a big black hole, where they will be forever getting their money back, if ever. Yes its probably true they may never get all their money back. But the bigger issue is public safety and supporting the communities they are supposed to be serving. Yes they are in business to make money, However, the bigger picture is they are granted these big essentially monopolies to serve their communities. All of their communities, not just the parts the make them money. of the are easy to support . Telecommunication companies have a obligations to provide at least reasonable access to good phone service, and should be able to provide at least DSL speeds if not faster, where they can lay fiber and increase the speeds. It goes with out say the should be no limits on use and and throttling is no acceptable.
With the increased options for streaming material form the net directly, ie You Tube and the like, and NetFlicks, and other streaming services putting caps on monthly downloads would result in a consumer revolt to rival the revolutionary war .

Well, Folks I seems to have run out of steam for now, This is the first article in at least six months, and I hope that I can continue to put more out in a more timely fashion as the summer goes on.
I hope you found my ideas interesting and worthy of reading and commenting on.
Ken Lawson

The Summer Of Apple..?

Christmas-Like excitement abounds with the the imitate release of Apples IPad. Scheduled to hit stores April 3rd.
Never has there been so much written and talked about, about a product that only announced, and not yet released.
The Apple IPad will either be a huge success and a huge flop. My feeling is that once its out and people can touch it and use it, and word get around how amazing it is to use, it will find more believers. Over the last month I have read numerous articles touting its future uses in a variety of business applications, both corporate and small business. The major ap developers are rushing to get new versions of their aps out in time for the release on April 3rd. So far, all of this is being done with the SDK that Apple put out when the announced the IPad. So they are developing for a product they haven't even touched yet.. Once its out and the aps can be tried on a real product the real fun begins.


The idea of a tablet pc has been tried before several times. Each time it died a slow painful death, and generally faded off the market into tech history. Theres has been some limited success with tablet pc, in specialized situations, it has not done well with the general public.
The recent success of the Apple Iphone, Ipod Touch, and more recently the Google Android series of Phones has shown that there is a market for tablet devices, if done well. The major lesson being you can't just stick a regular PC desktop OS into a tablet and add touch, and handwriting recognition and call it done. It won't work, its not intuitively and easily, its clunky and a pain to use in a hurry to take notes, or other uses where one would want quick access to information, or to add information quickly. This is where the Iphone and its little brother the Ipod Touch come in, They are easy to use, and get information from, and in many cases easy to get it into.

Apple has taken on a new venue with the IPad, that of the ebook reader. For many years the ebook market has been limited to Amazons Kindle product line, and more recently Barnes & Nobles offering the Noook ebook reader. Both of which use a plain text format limiting it to pretty much just text and no pictures. While it works well, its not breaking any new ground. Then Apple comes along with the IPad, and introduces the IBook store and wakes up the publishing industry and upsetting the price structure that Amazon had set up for the ebooks they sold. That's not even discussing the whole color and multimedia formats that the Ipad is able to bring into play.The idea of publishers and writers being able to produce not only a written book, but a multi media experience to complement it is huge. magazines being able to play videos of subjects of the articles, or related to the articles Nativity in the player, and adding links to supporting content and other ways to enhance the ebook experience are astounding. Again Apple has possibility changed a entire market, as it did with music, and video and Itunes. At this point its only guessing, but given Apple past track record for redefining markets, and in some cases creating markets, its a pretty safe bet.
As I asked in the last article ; "Is the Apple IPad a game changer?" Very soon we will begin to know the answer.. This will be the summer of Apple. Possibly Apple's biggest summer in recent years.

And One Phone shall Rule Them All...Not...!!!

One Phone to Rule Them All.....NOT!!!!

I remember many years ago,when My wife had a pager. That was a big deal then. If I needed her to call someone, or call home when she was out and about I could page her. and as soon as she was able she would call me back and find out what was going on. I know that there were days it payed for itself.

A few years later we finely were able to get a cell phone it was a old Motorola flip phone that had a short little antenna, and a the Flip was a plastic panel that would flip up to cover the keypad, and protect it when not in use. Just being able to call during the day if there was a issue or to call someone back was at first a matter of convince, then it became a matter of necessity.

Fast Forward to today. We now have 5 phones on our plan. I have a basic phone as the the older kids who each have one. My wife is now completely computerized. everything is on her PDA/smartphone. It is plugged in every night to sync and charge. We have a saying;

"If its not in the computer,, It snot Happening.." Which pretty much sums up our dependence on technology. and computers, and her pda in particular.

For the last probably 10 years or so there have been what are generically referred to as Smartphones. which in a very wide sense, means any phone that can do more then just talk and other basic functions. Which could include everything from the keyboard texting phones, up to Palm Pre, My wife's Treo, to the king of the hill, Apple's IPhone.

Ah, the elusive IPhone, which has been hailed as the be all, and end all, of smart phones....

Again Apple followed its usual pattern of not being the first to a market, just doing it better then anyone Elise's once it got there. As was the case with the original ipods, and mp3 players. There were several players making mp3 players, out in the market, but none of them were doing well, their hardware, while mostly functional, was anything but ascetically pleasing and easy to use. Then along came Apple..

Suddenly was a struggling market, only geeks and techies know about bloomed into a national obsession.

Much has been written and made of the success of Apples Ipod Lines. The point is today they are the standard of which all other Mp3 and portable media players are judged against. The did the same thing with the smartphone, They didn't make the first smartphone, they just did it better then anyone else,,,

Until Now..

Now there is the Android series of smartphones, made by Motorola, HTC, and eventually several other manufactures for Verizon wireless, cell phone service. The Android is a direct competition to the Apple I Phone. While the IPhone has for the last couple of years been only on the AT&T network, The Android is only on Verizon . While the AT&T network is constantly panned for their poor service, ranging from coverage, to customer service, Very few, have paned the IPhone itself, except for a limited number of issues particular to that phone. The Verizon network is generally praised for its coverage, among many things, However, in recent years they have not been able to come up with a phone that could seriously directly compete with the I phone. Now it appears they finely have.

The Android runs on the relatively new Google operating system, and widely touted as being equal to the Apple Phone OS. In circles even better. But that's a subjective judgement call.

The pros and cons of each phone and platform, and even carrier, are being debated all over the web.

I am not even going to attempt to compare them, It wouldn't be fair, because at this point I've never used either, the closet I've come is the Apple Ipod Touch, which we got earlier this year.. Color me impressed.

However, that doesn't give me the creditability to compare something I've never seen or used.

The point of this article is there is room for two phones to rule them all ..so to say.

Android will have a tough time competing with Apple, particularly if AT& T manages to improve the coverage and service. However, this may be the ship that many of their IPhone folks were looking for to jump ship, and many may not wait until their contract is up to do it. So based on AT&T's past record,

I see a huge letting of IPhones. That will help drive Android sales, However, Android better deliver, as had better Verizon, if they want to keep all those new subscribers, I've heard talk of their Nickle and dimeing services, That's a ploy that may well cost them in the long run, given T-Mobile's new program, where you buy a phone at regular price up front, and they give you a way better rate on the service plan, Something like from AT&T, and Verizon, would go a long ways to sway customers, and bringing down the retail price on the phones to begin would also help drive that plan, and they would make more in the long run.

In the long run the two will have live together and each will have its strengths, and weakness.

Choosing which one is going to be a matter of taste, in many cases location. Depending on what features you need, and platform you work from, one may be better then the other for specific needs.

I predict that after all the release hula is over over the next few months, Things will settle down, and we find the two AA's ruling their respective carries and coexisting very nicely, While there will probably be a slant towards Apple, if Android, plays its cards rights, and Verizon, keeps it network up and reliable , and the android Apps store matures and useful aps that compare to the aps on the Apple App store come up soon, and the phone just works and doesn't send users screaming to tech support, on a regular basis, Android will do very nicely, it may take a while but Android should do very nicely.. In the long run.

And Two Phones Shall Rule Them All.....