Dirty little secret
April 17, 2008 By Ian Harvey
Categories: Green Tech ICT Hardware and Infrastructure
Psst…want to know the dirt on ink jet printers?
Click here…
I thought it was pretty amazing. Who knew?
Ian Harvey
pitbullmedia.ca
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Acer buys Gateway: Goodbye cow boxes
August 31, 2007 By Peter Wolchak
Categories: General ICT Hardware and Infrastructure
One of the precepts that govern my life is that if someone ever offers me $7 billion for any business I own, I will take the money.
It’s a rule that would have benefited the execs at Gateway. Acer recently bought the PC maker for US$710 million, but back in 1997 Compaq was ready to pay US$7 billion. The decision not to sell then was obviously a bad one.
Gateway, once a real force in the PC industry, was hit hard by the 2000 tech slide and then struggled with both frequent changes in its executive suite and disappointing sales when it diversified into consumer electronics, such as TVs, DVD players and home theatre rigs.
The purchase by Acer is a sad outcome for two reasons. First, Gateway was a fun company, and that is relatively rare. It’s computers arrived in cow-patterned boxes and it promised cheerful and friendly customer support. It’s not certain that the cow boxes will disappear but the sense of whimsy that created them is probably gone now.
The second reason is entirely personal. My first PC was a Gateway. I completely bought into the bovine packaging and the spirit of the company.
That sense of corporate fun got me to buy Gateway then and it gets me to fly WestJet now. And we need more companies that don’t take themselves too seriously.
Peter Wolchak
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Intel joins $100 Laptop initiative – finally
August 29, 2007 By Peter Wolchak
Categories: General Green Tech ICT Hardware and Infrastructure
Intel is one of the most powerful and significant players in the PC industry. Its products drive much of modern computing and this gives it a huge voice when standards, prices and future directions are determined.
So it was galling that the tech giant was not contributing to the $100 Laptop initiative of the One Laptop Per Child group (www.laptop.org).
The non-profit organization is run by a consortium of vendors and researchers who want to make an inexpensive and rugged laptop available in developing counties. The laptop, called the XO, has built-in mesh networking and its battery can be recharged using human muscle power.
Companies behind XO include AMD, Google, News Corp. and Red Hat. They believe that once three million orders come in, the per-unit cost will drop from the current US$175 to about US$100.
So it was disappointing that Intel chose not to participate in the initiative and instead offered a competitive product, the US$225 Classmate PC (www.intel.com/intel/worldahead/classmatepc). Intel has signed deals in countries including Pakistan, Nigeria and Brazil.
While the Classmate is fine in and of itself, the price tag is too high and, by splitting the market, Intel was delaying the cost reductions that would follow mass-market sales.
So it is good news that Intel has decided to jump on the XO bandwagon. It looks like the Classmate product line will continue but the needier countries of the world may certainly benefit from Intel’s brainpower.
Peter Wolchak
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One cellphone. Two numbers. Brilliant
August 24, 2007 By Peter Wolchak
Categories: ICT Hardware and Infrastructure
The best product innovations are usually simple and immediately understandable, the kind of ideas that trigger a “Why didn’t I think of that?” A good tech example of this is Webkinz (www.webkinz.com). If you have kids teenaged or younger, you probably just smiled or grimaced in recognition. For you others: Webkinz are soft attractive stuffed animals made by Ganz. They sell for about $15, and that’s a decent price for a regular stuffed animal. But Ganz Webified the concept: for the purchase price kids also get to play with their toy in an exclusive online world. So if you buy a pink poodle toy, online you get a pink poodle. It can move around the online world, play games and interact with other Webkinz.
And kids love the idea. The Webkinz Web site reportedly received 3.7 million unique visitors in May of this year, and few kids own only one Webkinz. It is a collectible craze on the Beanie Babies level.
Why didn’t I think of that?
Which brings us to Rogers. The company just launched a service that is simple, clever and very useful. Its new Second Voice Line Service lets you access two phone numbers with one cellphone.
How many times have you seen someone walking around with two cellphones clipped on? Often it’s a BlackBerry and a smaller, simpler phone. Why two? One is for business, the other is personal.
The new Rogers service will remove that second phone. It can also be used to give one person numbers in two different area codes.
Rogers is not charging an additional fee, beyond the existing cost of the two numbers, and in fact is offering discounts on shared services, such as voice mail boxes. Pay for voice mail on one line, get it free on the other.
If it sounds like I am praising this idea, I am. This is just so smart that I can’t believe no one has offered it until now.
Peter Wolchak
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Still confused after all these years
June 25, 2007 By Peter Wolchak
Categories: Canadian Technology Associations ICT Hardware and Infrastructure IT Staffing Solutions Professional Services
So it turns out that the business folks still go cross-eyed every time the techies try to explain a new corporate technology. Office technology has been around for years, people fall over themselves to buy new iPods and – according to the ads we see – we're carrying notebooks to summer beaches and docks.
But despite the fact we use gadgets and gizmos every day, the two solitudes of business and tech still can't just get along in the office.
“Business and information technology managers around the world share a common challenge: IT managers' tech talk baffles business managers and fails to communicate IT imperatives,” ran a release on the Global Solution study by Info-Tech Research Group and KnowledgeStorm.
Michael O'Neil, research fellow at Info-Tech Research Group, is quoted in the release.
“Lack of alignment between the IT and business management sides of the enterprise means there's a Tower of Babel scenario happening in most businesses when IT program requirements are discussed.”
His advice? “Either the IT managers need to develop strong communications skills to
put forward the needs and benefits of IT investment, or they need to find suppliers who excel at articulating value to executives. Businesses that don't recognize this disconnect – and take steps to address it – risk falling behind their competitors.”
Well sure, but it's been decades since computers first entered the workplace and a decade since they became part of the daily experience of most business people. So if the two sides of the corporate fence still can't pull together on business initiatives, why think they ever will?
Personally, I think these two solitudes will remain just that, at least to a large extent. Technology is only going to get more complex – and so harder to explain – and the pace of business change and growth is only getting faster, so business people have less time to spend learning about tech.
But – and here's the fun point – as all of that happens, it is also becoming even more critical that businesses deploy and exploit technology effectively, because that drives differentiation and efficiency.
So where does all that leave us? Well, despite the challenges, business people need to understand technology as well as they can. Read Backbone, because as self serving as that comment is our entire raison d'être is to explain tech to business folks. Second, IT people need to walk a mile in those shiny shoes the business folks wear. Maybe that means all new IT hires should spend two weeks job shadowing a few of the suits, maybe that means sending them to a business course. But smart companies will be proactive about getting the two camps to play nicely with each other, at the same time acknowledging that tech people are tech people because they don't want to wear ties and stare at Excel, and vice versa for the suits.
And yes, that's easier said than done. If all this was easy, it would have been done already.
The full report is available at www.infotech.com or www.knowledgestorm.ca
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A conversation with LG's Frank Lee
April 14, 2007 By Andrew Rideout
Categories: ICT Hardware and Infrastructure
At the LG-sponsored Chocolate Fashion show at the Telus World Ski & Snowboard Festival, I found myself in a fascinating conversation with Frank Lee, a manager with LG Electronics Canada. We chatted about everything from HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray, to LG's internet appliance line, and I even got the inside scoop on some unbelievably cool products that LG is currently working on.
LG's presence at the TWSSF is extremely logical. Telus is the platinum sponsor for the event, and conviniently Telus happens to be the first Canadian cell provider to carry LG's popular chocolate cell phone - the Chocolate Flip 8600.
Frank was extremely positive about just how significant the Canadian market is for LG. "In the past few years, we've realized just how important the Canadian market really is. In terms of feedback, you can't get much better, it's almost like one giant focus group because you get so many different opinions. There's so much diversity." I asked him about a specific instance that he could think of, "our line of Digital Internet Appliances, definitely, is one of the first that comes to mind. Ultimately, those have been a real success for us, but in other cases we've even pulled certain products because we got feedback from Candians that we thought were so incisive, it resulted in us retooling the products."
I also wanted to get Frank's opinion on the HD format wars. It turns out that LG already has a leg-up on the competition, "it's all about offering consumers a choice. We figured what better way to give them the maximum amount of choice than to allow both formats to work on the same player. That's what the Super blu HD Player is all about."
We talked a bit about some of LG's new phones and it was fairly clear that LG is really pursuing the Chocolate phone as a fashion statement (the outdoor fashion show was my first clue). I asked him about new phones we could expect from LG this year and he obviously couldn't reveal too many specifics, but he was definitely excited about it. "We have an innovative new phone coming out in Q4 that is going to be massive. We're pushing boundaries in the mobile market and we definitely think this phone is going to create a sensation."
I figured that since we were on the topic of LG's upcoming products, I asked him what product he thinks consumers will be most excited about that they may not have heard about yet. I got quite a response. "We've got 7 R&D centers worldwide, and they put together some incredible products. One that I think consumers will really be excited about is the new 3D plasma screen we're putting the finishing touches on. It's going to be a new manifestation in plasma television. I saw the prototype and I was speechless. It's that good."
A 3D plasma screen? I tried to get pricing and release details, but Frank insisted that we're going to have to stay tuned to find out.
To think that this was only the first day of the Telus World Ski & Snowboard Festival. An incredible 13 day extravaganza bringing together Skiing, snowboarding, music, art, and most importantly some of the most cutting edge tech you'll find anywhere.
Andrew Rideout
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Is next-generation DVD going to be an expensive (although very sharp-looking) flop? Part 2
January 31, 2007 By Andrew Rideout
Categories: ICT Hardware and Infrastructure
Millions has been spent on state-of-the-art DRM (digital rights management) encryption in order to keep piracy from hitting as hard as it does with regular DVDs. At least they have that, right? At least nobody can pirate this new technology and blow the whole profit margin, right? Wrong.
A few weeks ago, you may have noticed a bit of Internet uproar over a hacker named Muslix64 who managed to break the encryption technology on a Blu-Ray disc and successfully store a back-up of the disc on a computer. You can probably be sure that all elementary school tours of Sony head offices were probably cancelled due to excessive profanity. To be honest, I would probably feel the same way too. It must have come as a massive relief this past weekend when Muslix64 announced that HD-DVD encryption has also been cracked, and that an HD-DVD version of the movie Lord of War was available for download through bittorrent. The file was 19.6GB in size and it has since been taken down.
This served as proof millions of dollars of DRM won’t always work and managed to prove some people would waste a quarter of their hard drive space to watch a Nicolas Cage movie. Both instances are strange, but true.
For another piracy-is-alive angle, check out the goings on in the frigid Northern Atlantic. The Pirate Party, Sweden’s tenth largest political party and operator of Internet piracy haven thepiratebay.com, is rumored to be mulling a bid to purchase the Principality of Sealand. You probably remember Sealand from an old episode of Dateline NBC or 20/20 about a guy who took over an abandoned oil rig in England’s North Sea and used a loophole in British law to declare the oil rig its own sovereign nation. It is self-powering and has been outfitted with a massive number of Internet servers. Turns out the Sealand people consider it to be a bit of a seller’s market these days and have been inviting bids to take over this fledgling little republic that thrives on the principles of porn and internet gambling.
Needless to say, thepiratebay.com has expressed interest in purchasing the rig and its servers, with the intention of hosting the world’s software piracy out of reach from the long arm of the law. Do you think Interpol has jurisdiction out there?
Andrew Rideout
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