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Today’s Wall Street Journal reports on the convergence between cell phones and digital music players and the expected impact (not good) on the Apple iPod.

By way of example they note that Nokia expects to sell 80 million music phones in 2006 alone and pointedly remark that Apple has only sold a grand total of 60 million iPods since inception. Nokia can with some justification therefore claim to be the world’s biggest maker of music players. The article does hold out a ray of hope for the iPod by noting that only about one half of music capable phones are actually used to play music. Apple is of course fighting back mostly by means of the as-yet unannounced iPhone.

The question is, one supposes, does convenience trump cool? …the tone of the article suggests yes.

Wake-up Call for the iPod – Wall Street Journal, Nov 30, 2006

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Sony Ericsson has a new TV phone, model W44S, with a nice 3-inch 240×432 16:9 LCD screen, which is one of the largest on the market. The device uses Sony’s RealityMax image processing enhancement to improve edge definition and image contrast…hence all the sharp edges in the promotional image.

Not bad, but it would have been nicer if SE had also deigned to toss the Bravia wide color gamut WCG-CCFL lamp into the fray … its supposed to deliver more and better greens and reds…oh well.

The thing also has dual speakers, 115MB of memory and can record just over 1/2 hour of TV. Uses Japan’s one-Seg audio/video/data broadcasting service.

Only in Japan for now – no announced price.

Sony Ericsson W44S – SE Press Release, 2006/11/16

Posted in Phones ~ 5 Comments

A while back, Microsoft made an announcement about their new ‘LIVE’ initiative. It wasn’t clear then exactly what this meant and I’m not entirely sure now. The basic message was they were going to provide free web-based services to small businesses and consumers. Read the rest of this entry »

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Device convergence might be finished. From a manufacturer’s viewpoint, adding more and more features to a given platform makes economic sense – hence we see things like hyper-converged cell phones that have a built-in camera, GPS, TV, a music player, a glucometer, a toaster, can play games, and can manage your office documents. Apple seems to have resisted the trend, but yielded a while back by adding video capability to the iPod.

There are indications, however, that end users of such all-in-one, kitchen-sink devices are mostly indifferent to these fancy features and prefer simpler devices instead. Hollywood Reporter is reporting that a mere 2.2% of owners of video-capable iPods have actually played videos on their devices and spend most of their time just listening to music. And an earlier similar study in Information Week, entitled Users Don’t Really Want Device Convergence, says the same thing about the assimilation of the PDA into the cell phone…only about 10% of users use the PDA functions built into their phones.

What does this all mean? …in general, we lean towards the Jack of all Trades explanation. In the case of the video iPod, we like what Michael Bull had to say in The Meaning of iPod, which posits that users just want a respite from the intrusiveness of the external world. And finally, who really wants to watch video on such a small screen (see pic attached) ?

Study: iPod video yet to play big – Hollywood Reporter, Nov 20, 2006

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In a surprisingly positive review, ExtremeTech had a look at the new Zune MP3 player and seemed to like almost all of the core features of the product. They complimented the look and feel of the Zune’s soft finish, the large(r) screen, better sound quality (as compared to the iPod), the layout and navigation of the controls, the FM radio and the picture viewer. Some negatives include lack of support for podcasts, no TV or movies and doesn’t work on Vista. They call it an “almost great product”

The review was so flattering to the Zune in fact, that it was surprising to see ExtremeTech give it a lowish rating of 7/10.

A marginally more negative take on the Zune can be found in Ars Technica at Welcome to the social. While Ars Technica did have some trouble with the Zune’s software (it crashed), they liked many of the same things that ExtremeTech did, including the appearance, the screen, user interface and the sound quality.

And continuing on to the other end of the spectrum, we find the sharply-worded “Avoid the loony Zune ” in the Chicago Sun-Times…it’s quite negative as the title suggests.

Suffice it to say that reviews are decidedly mixed. Hmm..it’s either time to short AAPL on strength, or buy on weakness.

Zune: iPod Killer or Half-Baked Flop? – ExtremeTech, November 20, 2006 

Posted in Music Players ~ 1 Comment

Well, the Swiss and the French seem to be pulling it off…construction of the Large Hadron Collider which is located on the border of Switzerland and France near Geneva, is proceeding apace. The 26.659 Km or 16.565 mile circumference tunnel is complete, the supporting equipment is being installed now, and trials are scheduled to begin in 2Q07, with the giant gadget to be fully operational by 2008.

The LHC is designed to take large hadrons (such as protons and neutrons), accelerate them to 99.999999% of the speed of light in the collider, smash them together to allow CERNoids to study the detritus. … uh, wait just a minute…perhaps they meant that they plan to take regular hadrons and smash them together in a large collider … it’s so confusing.

In any event, the work they’re doing at CERN may result in some good news and some bad news for you personally.

The good news is that their work may well result in discovery of the elusive Higgs boson and so help explain why matter has mass.

And the (potentially) bad news is that there is a vanishingly small, aka teentsy weentsy in technical terms, chance that Large Hadron Collider could destroy Earth. How so? The physics of TeV colliders like LHC predicts that they should produce about 1 mini black hole per second even after allowing for the effects of Voloshin Suppression. The good part of the bad news is that these BHs will have a very short life span, on the order of 10^-26 seconds and so will evaporate almost instantaneously. Some have estimated the chances of planetary destruction at about 10^-40 … which is reassuringly low.

But, in case their math is a bit off, we attach this gratuitous image of Switzerland being pulled into the black hole just created by the Large Hadron Collider.

Giant device is closing in on Universe’s tiniest secret – London Times, November 20, 2006

Posted in General ~ 17 Comments

There seems to be a trend towards over-the-top gifts this year… Neiman Marcus has on offer a $7000 dog house uh, pet home, Victoria’s Secret lists the $6.5M Hearts on Fire diamond-studded piece of underwear, and Virgin Galactic is holding a seat for you on their inaugural flight to the edge of space that’s going for a mere $1.764M.

But all may not be what it seems. According to the Wall Street Journal, many of these expensive items not only do not sell well, but are in fact marketing tactics designed to get you to view the associated company in a favorable light, and then to buy their cheaper stuff, and all the while getting some vicarious satisfaction.

And of course we here at GadgetManiac are in on the plot, by virtue of merely mentioning this scam, er, scheme … uh … we mean 4Q06 Marketing Plans.

It’s the Publicity That Counts – Wall Street Journal, November 17, 2006

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The Xinhua News Agency is reporting that The Innovative Design Contest for China Undergarments Elements was held in Beijing Thursday last. The exposition presented a number of updated interpretations of the Cheongsam, the traditional Chinese female dress.

Innovative Design Contest for China Undergarments Elements – Xinhua News Agency, Thursday Nov. 16, 2006

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Here’s a spot of bad news for hit-and-run drivers…

The 2007 Lexus LS 460 self-parking wonder car has a unique added pre-crash safety feature – namely pedestrian avoidance. Pedestrians are detected by means of 2 video cameras and a millimeter-wave radar, which work together to sound an alarm if there is a danger of collision. If the driver does nothing, the system applies the brakes automatically. If the driver then does press the brakes, the braking force is doubled. Most of the processing requirements for pre-crash detection in the LS460 are handled by NEC’s IMAPCAR image recognition chip.

The attached graphic shows two pedestrians expressing their gratitude for this innovation.

New Toyota Lexus Detects Pedestrians, Applies Brakes – NE Asia, November Issue

Posted in Automotive ~ No Comments

The brand name of the just-launched Microsoft Zune MP3 player apparently derives from a 3 month exercise earlier this year by sound symbolism specialist Lexicon Branding. Lexicon and their team of sixty PhD linguists pondered many thousands of potential candidates, rejecting names like “Tunz” and “Noiz”, before settling on the eventual winner of “Zune”.

Lexicon seems to like the fricative consonant “z”, calling it lively, daring & fast. And when followed by the letters “u” and “n”, the effect is a natural whistling/musical sound, at least according to LB.

Lexicon’s reasoning sounds solid…one hates to think that their neologism is merely a riff on the word “tune”.

What Hidden Messages Does a Brand Name Send? – Lexicon Branding

Posted in Music Players ~ 1 Comment