Right On Technology

Growing up in a fairly high-tech household I have many memories of different innovations and changes in technology, from the first personal home computer to the first VCR to the first CD player, these events all stand out in my mind, if somewhat vaguely. One of the early memories that I have of the whole tech revolution happened as I watched the Superbowl in 1984. During that game, Apple Computers aired one of the most famous and effective commercials of all time. This commercial depicted a future similar to that portrayed in George Orwell’s book 1984. Hordes of drones being brainwashed by some dictator on a big screen. However, soon a beautiful woman rushes in and hurls a large hammer at the screen and introduces the Macintosh revolution.

Of course, the whole idea was that the tiny company Apple would revolutionize personal computing and the ever-present Big Brother of IBM would meet it’s match. A very effective and awe inspiring commercial, even if it didn’t ever actually come true quite like Apple thought it might.

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First the Segway (remember when that was going to revolutionize personal travel and mobility) and now we have the next step in pointless tech gadgets, the Honda U3-X (catchy name).

Looking like a stylized, ultra-modern unicycle, the U3-X zips it’s occupant around simply by balancing forward, sideways or backwards. It can keep a constant speed of around 3.7 MPH. Amazingly the device only weighs about 22 pounds and has a lithium battery that can last around an hour or so.

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Yay good news, today I was chosen to host a Windows 7 Launch Party! What exactly does that mean? You can learn more about the program here. Basically this is Microsoft’s new marketing technique, get thousands of people to have “install” or “unboxing” parties around the country and at the same time promote the new features of Windows. In exchange, the hosts get several pretty cool benefits, including a Signature copy of windows.

Once you go through the application process, and if you are chosen as a host for a party then you have to set up your own web page. I used facebook connect to put in all my info in, and I think this might help folks who are interested in getting chosen.

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Twitter just finished it a round of private venture capital raising and the new valuation for the start-up is around $1 Billion. Techcrunch reports that Twitter CEO Even Williams recently told employees that recently raised around $50 million dollars. This follows earlier rounds of capital fundraising that was valued at around $250 million, led by Benchmark Capital.

While it is clear that Twitter can raise money like no other start-up I can remember, what is not so clear is how exactly they are going to motenize their venture into something that actually makes money. Twitter has done a better job in turning something with no value into something with great potential then any company I’ve seen, but the end game is still unclear to me.

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A marriage made in heaven. Intuit, the makers of Quickbooks and TurboTax have purchase the very popular financial site Mint.com today for $170 million dollars! Not too shabby for a small start-up that is less then 2 years old. Silicon Alley Insider first reported the rumor and it has now been confirmed by CEO Aaron Patzer.

If you have not used Mint.com before, it’s actually a very slick site. Think of it as Quicken for the average dummy (like me). You can enter all your financial data (bank accounts, credit cards, mortgage, etc) and your sources of income and the site tracks everything for you. It downloads your statements, income and daily purchases directly from your bank and gives you a lot of data about your personal finances. You can then use that data to plan your household budget and make other important financial decisions. The best part about Mint is that it is free! There is other software you can buy that does essentially the same thing (Quickbooks/Quicken for one) but the value the consumer gets from Mint is really incredible.

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Uh oh, here comes the judge. It looks like the US Department of Justice has decided to take a look at the Microsoft/Yahoo deal, requesting that both companies give more information about their partnership. The worry seems to be that there might be some kind of anti-trust problems, or at least some perceived problems.

The main concern revolves around how their new partnership might impact ad pricing online. This is something of a silly question considering that Google owns about 70% of that entire market, and that combined Yahoo and Microsoft maybe owns about 20% of the market. It is somewhat bewildering to me that the Justice Department would question this deal and worry about anti-competitive pricing when essentially the entire industry of search engine driven ads is entirely uncompetitive.

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While yesterday’s Apple press event held a few surprises, the biggest consensus is that it was pretty much a flop. The biggest disappointment (outside of no Beatles!!!) was the lack of a camera for the flagship iPod device, the iPod Touch. Speculation ran wild yesterday as the tech world collectively asked, why give the Nano a camera and not give the Touch a camera?

Well, it turns out that the camera may still be on the way, but there were some quality issues that prevented Apple from unveiling the long awaited Touch camera yesterday. Apple Insider reports that Apple originally planned on releasing the Touch with a camera yesterday, but made a last minute decision to delay the release of the camera touch. Reportedly the camera did not live up to Apple’s quality assurance expectations. Other sources stated that this decision was actually made about a month ago while they continued to work on the device.

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Today was the day that Apple fans have been waiting for, the new Apple event where they were going to make announcements regarding their new iPod line and who knows what else. Rumors abounded from the return of Steve Jobs, to the Beatles finally available for digital download (9.9.9 being the hint that this was some tie-in to the Beatles Revolution Number 9).

Well, if you were waiting for anything really cool or huge announcements from Apple today, it was certainly a mixed bag. Given the amount of hype, it was probably a let down for most of us. The good news first: Steve Jobs is back baby! I must say it was pretty cool to see Jobs appear on the stage and give his presentation. He looked pretty healthy considering all that he had been through. So, that was rockin’ and the reception he received was certainly well-received. After that, things pretty much go down hill.

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It looks like ASUS is getting ready to jump into the e-reader game, competing with Amazon’s Kindle and the Sony e-reader. ASUS, who essentially invented the netbook, stands on good ground to introduce a capable product that would compete well with other e-readers that exist.

ASUS is claiming that this will become the world’s cheapest e-book reader and it will sport some pretty impressive features. Some of the features included will be built in 3G, a web browser and more impressive, a dual screen form factor touch screen (picture at the link). The dual screen is intended to mimic the style in which we usually read books, however it also offers some interesting possibilities. You could read your book on one panel and surf the web or type on a virtual keyboard on the other, pretty neat concept.

Most impressively, the price point for this new reader is reportedly around $150! This has got to be a scary concept for the Kindle and Sony as both of their premium readers are nearly double that price. The question that remains for both Asus, Sony and any other competitor (and there are a few) that decides to enter this market is, can anyone compete with Amazon for content? Amazon has such a huge advantage when it comes to providing content that this will continue to be a very difficult market to penetrate. No one touches the number of books that Amazon provides at the touch of a button, and as of now the Kindle remains proprietary and DRM protected. Ultimately, my hope remains that Amazon will decide to un-DRM their content so that any device, whether it is Sony, ASUS or whatever, can just access and download books to their reader. I think this actually makes a lot of business sense for Amazon as well. Imagine, instead of being able to sell 1 million books to Kindle only users, you can sell 30 million books to the combined e-book world, it seems like there is more money in doing just that then selling pretty expensive hardware.

The e-book reader is getting ready to explode and finally claim it’s own time, of course, the big 800 lbs gorilla is Apple, should they announce their “i-pad” or whatever they’ll call it, the game changes again. We shall see.

Amazon Kindle

In July, you may remember, Amazon took much flak for “recalling” the George Orwell book “1984″ from hundreds of Kindle e-readers. Eventually, after they were caught, Amazon and Jeff Bezos apologized calling the act “stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles.” While Amazon also issued a credit back to their customers, this didn’t satisfy many users who thought this was a tremendous invasion of their privacy.

The good news is that Amazon has decided to return the deleted books to anyone who was affected by the intrusion, alternatively customers may choose a $30 gift certificate if they so choose.

One student was so annoyed by this by what Amazon did that he has actually filed a class action lawsuit against the company, claiming that “Amazon ate my homework”. In this case not only did Amazon take his book, but also all the notes that he had included as he read it. Seems like a bit of a stretch to me, but I guess you can sue anyone these days. Reportedly the offer of the refund of the book has nothing to do with the lawsuit. Uh huh, sure.

The e-mail from Amazon to their customers who were affected read thusly:

“This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our ’solution’ to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission,”

I will say this, Amazon and Bezos are not perfect, but they usually respond well to situations like this. I’m sure this was the fault of some middle-manager somewhere who just didn’t think about the repercussions of snatching a book back from their users’ Kindles, and I do believe Amazon will not allow stunts like this to happen again. However, it does open a whole discussion about who owns digital materials like this. It is a very unsettled area of the law and society is still adjusting to copyrights and licensing agreements in this brave new world.

Photo Source: Shakataganai