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The iPhone: Apple’s best defence

June 22, 2007 · Leave a Comment

A friend of mine works as a news journalist for PA out in New York, and as Apple’s iPhone is due for launch very soon, he’s writing a story and asked me for some thoughts on it.

It’s always interesting to help out with someone’s research, as it gives you an opportunity to give some order to your own thoughts.

I think that Apple seems to be in a very strong position at the moment – but the interesting thing is that it’s not necessarily a secure one, and this is where the iPhone comes in. More and more people are listening to digital music on their mobile phones, and as the phones get better in terms of functions and storage, this will happen in greater numbers, and it will erode the market for an iPod. Sony Ericsson has been very aggressive with this, using the Sony Walkman brand for its phones. The mobile phone networks also now offer music downloads straight to the phone, which the iPod, forever tethered to a PC or Mac’s iTunes, doesn’t currently offer. The simplicity of just having one device to carry, rather than both a phone and an iPod also appeals to people. The iPhone has full iPod features, so it’s a good way to counter this trend.

Secondly, it’s now a lot easier to do a lot more online, and the web doesn’t care what computer – PC or Mac – that it’s running on, which threaten Apple’s computer business, as does the fact that more and more people are using their phones to access the web. So, naturally, the iPhone is being pushed as being great for mobile internet, and again, it’s making sure that Apple is keeping abreast of changes in the way people use technology, the way it fits into their lives, and also, has a product to offer them.

While Apple is pushing the iPhone as a revolutionary device, it’s actually a typical Apple product in that it’s being launched into an existing, but fairly obscure/geeky market, and it will try and make it more popular. Microsoft, after all, has been releasing versions of its Windows Mobile software since the year 2000.

In order for the iPhone to be a good iPod, and a good mobile web device, Apple will have made trade offs, just as they did with the iPod, and the screen is the biggest area where you can see this. The iPhone’s touchscreen is going to be great for scrolling through songs, images and web pages, and of course it frees up space to have a massive display. It’s probably not going to be so good for entering text or numbers though, but I think Apple has decided these aren’t of primary importance – after all, most people store all their numbers in the address book, and with the iPod and internet functions being so important, the control system has to be perfect for them.

The question of whether the iPhone is a success for the Apple as a company isn’t going to be answered for a while – but regardless of how well it actually does, I think the iPhone will end up being a transitional product: if it flops, Apple will stick to computers and iPods and home media stuff. If it succeeds then you can bet there will be a lot more ultra mini computers on the way. The iPhone is just a test.

(more…)

Categories: Tech · iPhone

An old school journalist does new media

June 21, 2007 · 1 Comment

As I mentioned in my previous post about heading off to Computex with a bag weighed down with AV kit, at work, we’re really pushing on with expanding what we, technically a bunch of magazine journalists, do. When I joined, close to four years ago, I wrote articles for a magazine. In the past year, this has been expanded to include podcasting, shooting photos for web and magazine stories, and now, shooting video! Footage from the Computex trade show of some overclocking with liquid nitrogen is very neatly embedded in this news story here.

There are many decent blogs on the web that deal with the way journalism is changing: I’ve got RSS subscriptions to the fabulous Journerdism, Invisible Inkling, Publishing 2.0 and Wordblog to name just a few. It helps me keep up with what’s going on, and gives me a lot of valuable stuff to think about in terms of how my career field is changing. These sites are great and tend to avoid the position about journalism that is extremely common around the web: the assumption that pretty much anyone who writes for a print product doesn’t get the web, and doesn’t want to.

Now, this is probably true for some journalists, but most of the journalists I know can’t wait to get their hands on video recorders, cameras and decent CMS systems. I think the reason the opinion that journos hate the web is so widely held is that it appears to be true on a much wider scale, because so few major print brands have good websites. It’s a quick judgement, but an easy one to simply say – bad website = people who don’t care about the web.

However, it’s usually not the journalists – the writers – who make these websites. And being a blogger, when you want to change something, you just log in, and apply a different theme, or add a widget, or write a post. It’s great. I know, I love TypePad for that.

Can’t do it at work so easily, though – print brands (like Custom PC) are owned by large companies, large, multi-department companies that devolve control of stuff to many different teams, and when it comes to something new like the web, the structure is not all that well defined, especially in terms of who does what.

Dennis, where I work, has spent the last year trying to improve how the existing teams on the print and web side can mesh together. We are getting there, I think. For instance, my job title has just changed, so that I now have a role description that budgets 50% of my time for print stuff, and 50% for web stuff – before, if I wanted to work on web projects (like, say, the podcast), I had to find the time while doing a job that had no time allocated for non-magazine work. I still did it though, becuase I really thought it would be fun and great for us to do a podcast. Rex Sorgatz puts it perfectly in this interview:

“Big Media Is Hard. Epitaph or bumper sticker? I’m not sure, but it’s so true. Building
small little sites is so rewarding because you can build an entire new
universe in a month. But getting a big media company to change
directions is ridiculously frustrating. Big media is hard! But big
media is also influential, interesting, powerful, gargantuan,
mysterious — in a word, exciting. So my little dream right now is to
create a “small media mentality” within “big media company.”

I’m with him on both sides; that it’s hard to change, but when it does change, the opportunities are massive. The truly new CPC site is coming and it will be great, I think. I hope.

Categories: On Journalism and Media · Tech

Joost invites all gone – I wonder why?

April 16, 2007 · Leave a Comment

The post title says it all – took a little over 24 hours, but my latest Joost invites are now all gone. The lucky recipients were:

* McGuyver
* Tony Jones of Compelling Content
* Alan Hussey
* Perry Taylor

When Joost next dole out some more invites, I’ll put a post up, same as before, so stay tuned.

I learned two things from this experiment:

1. Joost has phenomenal brand power; people are hugely interested in it, which is hardly surprising given the track record of the company’s founders. It’s interesting that it’s these previous projects and the rigmarole of the invites process which are being used to generate momentum/PR for Joost; it’s a start contrast to the way TV networks normally sell themselves, which is of course, on the basis of their content.

The main reason for this is that, as everyone who has received an invite from me finds out about 15 minutes after loading Joost up, there really isn’t a lot of content on there – certainly not that’s any good. Only the White Stripes and QOTSA interviews from Canadian TV have really held my interest.

I don’t think this is the only reason Joost is opting for a drip-drip-drip of info and invites; PR wise, the most successful company in the world right now is Apple, a company which generates huge media interest by opting for secrecy. It does make you wonder if Wired’s current cover story, ‘Get Naked And Rule the World‘ is a little off target. Given Apple and Joost’s approach, and of course the secrecy notoriously favoured by Google, do you really believe the following, from the article’s intro, is true?

“Smart companies are sharing secrets with rivals, blogging about
products in their pipeline, even admitting to their failures. The name
of this new game is RADICAL TRANSPARENCY, and it’s sweeping boardrooms
across the nation.”

2. The second fact I learned is that Google blog search is fantastic; I had comments responding to my post within 30 minutes – and I think, from the stats, that pretty much everyone found the post via Google (or via an existing bookmark) – not Technorati. Something for Technorati to be very worried about, I think.

Categories: TV and Film · Tech · Web

Joost Invites

April 13, 2007 · 13 Comments

As I ~~am a well connected mover-n-shaker in the world of technology~~ put my e-mail address into the Joost site early on, I have some Joost Beta invites going spare. E-mail me / leave a comment if you fancy one and giving the service a go.

UPDATE / 16th April. Invites all gone.

Categories: TV and Film · Tech · Web

Finally, a use for PCI-E 1x slots

April 11, 2007 · 2 Comments

If you’ve bought a new motherboard in the past year or so, as well as 16x PCI Express slots for hot new graphics cards, it’s probably also got 1x PCI-E slots. Aside from some high-end RAID cards and other assorted exotica, there’s not been anything useful for the masses to stick in these; well, no longer. I found Abit makes a WiFi card with a 1x PCI-E interface called the Airpace. I picked one up for my work PC (a Shuttle) from YoYoTech for £20; hardware wise, it’s great, absolutely tiny and a cinch to install – although it’s only 802.11g, not pre-N. The software is a little weird too; so far I’ve not actually needed to use the Abit disc, with WinXP picking the card up fine on its own… Still it’s worked well enough for me to write this post

Categories: Tech

Can the PlayStation 3 do anything right?

March 10, 2007 · 2 Comments

Like many tech journalists, I’ve certainly done my fair share of Sony hating. What makes Sony such an exasperating company for me is its past: Sony used to make technology that was genuinely interesting, inspired even, and it was worth buying. Its stuff used to be so good. I wrote a review of an all-in-one Sony PC a couple of years ago that touched on Sony’s background:

"Not all PC manufacturers aspire to £499-plus-free-printer-scanner-kitchen-sink ignominy… It should not come as any surprise that Sony also considers itself above the vast swathe of beige PC builders. In John Nathan’s biography of the company, former CEO Norio Ohga talks about its approach. ‘Sony must always be extraordinary,’ Ohga says. ‘I always asked myself what was essential to the company. I find myself thinking about the Chinese character san, which means to shine dazzlingly like the sun. It’s not simply a matter of brightness. San means an extraordinary radiance.’"

These days of course, Sony usually comes across as bitter (why else would it stick Rootkits on customers’ PCs?) and out of touch (claiming people should work extra hours for a PS3!). Nothing embodies the fall of Sony like the PlayStation 3 – it comes across as overpriced and not very innovative, but having seen Sony’s presentations at GDC, I’m feeling perhaps all is not lost for the Japanese giant. In fact, I’m really surprised PlayStation 3 Home, LittleBigPlanet and the SingStar stuff haven’t garnered more praise.

Matthew Ingram, whose blog I really, really like (and respect – he’s a tech journalist *AND* he keeps his blog updated with smart posts daily, which is more than I can do) rounds up and summarises much of the criticism in a a post entitled ‘Can Sony Get Anything Right?‘ He focusses on the fact that PS3 Home is a bit of a Second Life rip-off, but lacks the open and flexible nature of the original:

"It sort of looks like a really nicely designed shopping mall where you can only buy things from one company… As for the likelihood of success, Tony Hung has a great phrase in his post at Deep Jive Interests, calling it “charming, desperate and futile.” I couldn’t have said it better myself."

Now, I do agree with the first bit, and on its own, i think Home would be an underwhelming riposte to Microsoft’s decent Xbox Live, but with SingStar and LittleBigPlanet, Sony is showing that it really *gets* online, and perhaps in a more radical way than Microsoft and Nintendo do.

Let’s compare SingStar with the upcoming Xbox360 version of Guitar Hero 2. I’m a huge GH fan, and the biggest, biggest problem with the PlayStation 2 version is the songs. There’s some good ones, some bad ones… but what you get on the disc is all you get. Clearly, when we have Emusic and the iTunes store, that’s hopelessly old fashioned. Yes, you can mod new songs into the game, but not easily or officially: what most Guitar Hero players want is a huge and deep catalogue of songs to explore, whose wares are cheaply priced and delivered instantly over the net. The Xbox 360 has the technical infrastructure, but it’s not there. From Koatku’s preview, the 360 version sounds
identical to the PlayStation 2 version, but shinier. Now SingStar for the PS3 (a roughly comparable music performance game) sounds like it delivers online functions like Mariah Carey delivers diva behaviour and high notes: in spades.

Secondly, check out the video below for the PS3’s LittleBigPlanet: awesome physiscs, totally customistable levels, including the abilities to import your own stuff, and a way to share them: it’s basically Flickr for games. And that is awesome: fun, collaborative, competitive, inspiring: a complete other world.

I’ve posted before about how awesome GamesIndustry’s editorials are, but this week’s hit the nail on the head when it comes to Microsoft’s online approach:

"For all that Microsoft talked the talk about customisation and user participation when the Xbox 360 was rolling out, the company hasn’t really walked the walk. Xbox Live is beyond a doubt the most robust, consistent, fully-featured, user-friendly and generally brilliant online service we’ve ever seen… but Allard’s proud boasts that the HD Era would be all about user customisation seem to have been reduced to snap-on covers for the console, downloadable skins for the interface and the ability to play your own music in games."

Xbox Live is good, but it’s basically a store for buying games, a shared leaderboard and a way to hook up with friends for a game. it’s basically Steam + XFire + TeamSpeak/MSN/Skype wrapped up in one slick package. Which is good, but it’s not the be all and end all of online. Sony has got some neat new ideas, bright shiny ones. Watch the last 5 minutes of the LittleBigPlanet presentation and then see if you can honestly say Sony can’t get anything right.

Categories: Games · Tech

It’s never a good time to buy anything (aka, damn you the Nikon D40x)

March 7, 2007 · 2 Comments

I’ve just finished writing my column for the latest issue of Custom PC, and was focussing on how many e-mails we get from readers who want to know when the best time to buy a graphics card is. It depends on how you look at it, I wrote: if you want the most speed for your money, then frankly, tomorrow will always bring a faster, cheaper card.

Having seen a lot of technology come and go, I think the best way to know when to buy tech is to consider what you want it do: or at least, to balance this consideration with objective benchmarks and tech-specs. After all, if you buy a graphics card to play Oblivion or Command & Conquer 3 on your 20in widescreen TFT, and you do research and it can do this, does it really matter if a slightly faster one appears next month? If you’re buying something just because it’s the latest-n-greatest, then of course you’ll be disappointed when it becomes obsolete.

Turns out I get to eat a nice dose of my own medicine, because today Nikon’s announced a new dSLR, the D40x, boosting it from 6 to 10 megapixels. Does it, as Engadget snidely says, make the D40 seem totally out of date? Not for me: I only got my D40 a month or so ago, but it’s a great camera, and it’s been great for what I wanted it for: a light, small budget beginner’s dSLR with a great kit lens. It was that yesterday, and it’ll be that tomorrow.

Buy tech to do something, not be something.

Categories: Tech

If you still think Apple are cool…

March 1, 2007 · Leave a Comment

….then I suggest you give their tech support line a call, and ask to be put on hold. It’s where I am right now, and here’s the music they’ve played at me so far:

1st – Horrible live version of "Every Breath You Take", featuring an extended bit where Sting does ’shout outs’ to his band.
2nd – Sub Green Day American "punk" music. In fact, scrub that, it’s sub Good Charlotte.
3rd – Naff Euro disco music. Sounds a bit like "I Miss You" by Everything But The Girl, but twenty times worse. The mixing was probably done on an old Nokia.

Categories: Tech · Thought For The Day

Wallpaper images: a quest

February 22, 2007 · Leave a Comment

Speaking of what makes a good wallpaper image, Vanity Fair has an article up about one writer’s crazed quest to track down the location of Windows XP’s “Autumn” background. [via Engadget]

Categories: Photography · Tech

Wallpaper Images

February 22, 2007 · 1 Comment

I first learned that Microsoft had approached a Flickr user to supply some of the standard wallpaper images included with Vista a while ago, but that little nugget of info has re-appeared today on Ars.Technica. I think it’s worth linking to the Flickr photoset from which MS bought two of the images that you can find in every copy of Vista. There’s also a good interview with the lucky (and talented) photographer who’s work will end up of bazillions of PCs world wide, here, which tells the full story.

Coincidentally, backgrounds was something I was wrestling with last night. I’ve just put together a PC for a computer-less friend, and once I’d finished downloading the basics (FireFox, Avast, Picasa etc) I started wondering what image to use as the wallpaper. Not wanting to hide my light under a bushel, I had a look through the mathematically generated set of my 100 most “interesting” pics on Flickr and I couldn’t actually find anything I was happy to use there: they all seemed a bit too…. aggressive. Going back to the Flickr pics MS used, I can see they do all have a very particular “wallpapery” quality to them: calm, despite the
fact there’s lots of highly-saturated colour, and subject matter that
is definitely natural but that still has very other-worldly feel to it. A dreaminess, I think. Anyone else got any other suggestions about what makes a good wallpaper? (No prizes for the first person to say scantily dressed babes…;)

(In the end, for my friend’s PC, I opted for the nice sunny shot above.)