A new report issued this week by Future Image predicts that “by mid-2004, sales of photo phones in the U.S. could exceed the combined total sales of digital and film cameras.” [Via Poynter Onlilne]
“Photo Phones”
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Category Archives: Gadgets & Apps
Jakob Nielsen on PDF
Usability expert Jakob Nielsen on PDF: “PDF is great for one thing and one thing only: printing documents. Paper is superior to computer screens in many ways, and users often prefer to print documents that are too long to easily read online. For online reading, however, PDF is the monster from the Black Lagoon. It puts its clammy hands all over people with a cruel grip that doesn’t let go.”
WordPress adds audio playlists
MSN Direct on your watch
Beginning this fall, Microsoft plans to offer a new wireless information and messaging service that will run on evolving smart watch devices. The software company’s MSN Direct division says the service, which costs $9.95 a month, is geared to deliver customized information to a new category of watches. MSN Direct said the service would provide consumers with information including news, weather, sports scores, stock quotes, movies, dining, and games. Microsoft is expected to leverage some of its original content and existing media licensing arrangements in order to provide the data for the wireless watch information service. [InternetNews.com]
All the news, all the time.
According to CyberJournalist, Google News beat out BBC News Online, MSNBC.com, Poynter’s Romenesko and allAfrica.com to win 2003 Webby Award for best news site. I’d sure like to be a fly on the wall at AP headquarters. I spent a few (pre-Web) years trying to develop and market an “alternative (to AP) wire service.” All of the news and information was “out there.” And there was no shortage of radio stations (our target market) hungry for the information. The challenge was connecting all the dots. We had a big old expensive satellite channel to move the information one way and we busted our hump to “aggragate” (I always liked that word) the information. But people just didn’t want to pay for information. At least, not very much. Fast forward a few years and damned near every newspaper in the world is putting some or all of their stuff online.
The big record labels tell me that although I paid for my copy of the Metallica CD, I can’t rip the songs to a CD and give it to a friend. While they might win this one, keeping me from sending a copy of today’s big news story to five friends (who each send it to five friends).
I always thought the most important part of the Associated Press wasn’t it’s reporters and editors but the “connectedness” of all those newspapers. A way for them to share the news they gathered. Can we agree that has changed forever?
Fast Forward.
TiVo president Martin Yudkovitz, speaking at the Interactive Media conference in San Diego says TiVo engineers are exploring the possibility of having an actual message appear as TiVo users fast-forward past commercials. The idea is that instead of them watching a video blur, users might see a still advertising message as the unit advances the video. [Steve Outing on E-Media Tidbits]
USATomorrow.
A major step toward the creation of portable electronic newspapers. Imagine a future where everyone carries around single-sheet electronic newspapers that automatically update wirelessly as news breaks.
Radio TiVo
“…the Radio YourWay might be the first one that actually functions like a TiVo. It’s an MP3 player with a built-in AM/FM radio recorder that can be set to record at specific times, and can save up to four hours of programming as MP3 files which can then be transferred to a PC when you run out of space.” I don’t listen to all that much (non-XM) radio these days but this is pretty damned cool. By way of evhead.
XMPCR.
Satellite Radio for your computer. Attaches to your computer via the USB. Access to all 100 channels. You can save song titles and artist names to an “alert” list and get a pop-up message when a favorite song or artist is playing on a different channel. Click and you’re there. XM says “it’s not Internet radio (since the signals are still delivered via satellite), so users will experience no buffering or stalls, no slow channel changes, and the program won’t affect the PC’s performance.” The product is scheduled to begin shipping May 2nd for $69.95. I’ve never been one to listen to the radio at work but this could change that. Tell me again why this will have no impact on “traditional” radio.
Windows Media Encoder Series 9
Discovering the power of Windows Media Encoder Series 9. I’m really poor with math and have to believe I’ve made some kind of error but it appears that Media Encoder crunched a 780 meg avi file down to a 9 meg wmv file. And it still looks pretty good. I don’t see how that can be. Feeling my way along with new tools and you can check out a couple of early projects. The first is a 5 minute montage of pix from many moons ago. The second is a sixty second trailer for an 18 minute piece I did on The Derry Brownfield Show (did I post this already?).
Till now, I’ve really tried to make everything work for folks still on dial-ups but I think I gotta let that go. Life is just shitty at anything less than broadband. I know, I was there for many years. It just sucks and I’m sorry about it. So get cable if you can or DSL. If not, just check your email and forget the web. It really isn’t there for a dial-up.