Southwest Virginia Blogs

Amazon is offering an eBook. Dozens of companies lost their shirts with ebooks in the late nineties. Back then, laptops were expensive and PDAs had tiny screens and were hard to read (Apple's Newton was the exception). So many thought that ebooks--light, portable readers--would catch on. But the number of titles available for any given platform were limited, and too many manufacturers opted for proprietary book formats that made publishing a nightmare. A successful book might have to be made available in several different formats. At least one company (I can't remember the name) had the good sense to adopt PDF as the file format, but nonetheless, ebooks never really caught on.

File formats were just part of the problem. There was also digital rights management, the mechanics of buying, downloading, and installling the files was another, battery life was yet another issue, finally, some were awkward to use. It's hard to beat books, which have had hundreds of years of design packed into the format.

Amazon's design has a keyboard (for taking notes, which was usually impossible with earlier ebook systems), probably uses e-ink, which extends battery life, and comes with EVDO wireless, meaning you can download books easily and probably also does email and other common chores.

It will be interesting to see how this does. If Amazon can afford to play the "give away the razor, make money on the blades" game and sell it cheap with the hope of making it up on book sales, it could catch on--if the books are cheap enough.

Despite the popularity of online music sites like iTunes, music prices did not come down any because music publishing houses were and still are greedy--they want all the money they used to make on CD sales, but they no longer have any distribution costs. If book publishers take the same route, Amazon may have tough sledding. And if it is hard for authors and publishers to prepare a manuscript for the ebook, it may be even worse.

Having said all that, I think ebooks are inevitable. A lot of books are read once and discarded, and many technical books have time sensitive material that becomes less useful in just a year or two. And the high cost of college textbooks could be brought down with cheap ebooks. So we will have ebooks; what is uncertain is what platform we will read them on. Most of us don't want both a laptop and a second ebook "thing." We'd rather have a single device that serves as both, and a tablet computer would do nicely.

This article argues that the age of the iPod may be over. For the last two quarters, iPod sales have fallen slightly, if you can call selling more than 8 million of the devices in each quarter "slow sales." The theory is that because so many people have iPods that youth no longer see them as cool. I guess it is pretty horrifying to discover that your grandfather has the same music player that you do.

Another theory, and a more likely one, I think, is that phones with music players are beginning to eat into iPod sales. It's what I call the "one too many gadgets" problem. If you can buy something that eliminates a gadget and charger, you may be motivated to get it and drop the other gadget. But there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth a couple of years ago when most cellphones began adding camera features. After a while, most people figured out that the cellphone cameras took really crummy pictures and kept buying digital cameras.

The most likely explanation is that nearly everyone who wants an iPod has one. There is no market that can continually sustain double digit growth. Eventually you have sold your widget to everyone. At that point, the market matures and sales are primarily replacement units. Tomorrow, Apple is supposed to announce movies for sale on the iTunes store. Recall that when the iTunes store opened, few thought it would amount to anything. Since then, nearly every record company has had to begrudgingly admit the world has changed. There are dozens of competitors to Apple selling online music, and the there are already several other online movie stores in the wings.

Downloadable movies may spur sales of the bigger iPods with hard drives, because they have the storage space for movies. Apple may have the last laugh yet.

This article argues that the age of the iPod may be over. For the last two quarters, iPod sales have fallen slightly, if you can call selling more than 8 million of the devices in each quarter "slow sales." The theory is that because so many people have iPods that youth no longer see them as cool. I guess it is pretty horrifying to discover that your grandfather has the same music player that you do.

Another theory, and a more likely one, I think, is that phones with music players are beginning to eat into iPod sales. It's what I call the "one too many gadgets" problem. If you can buy something that eliminates a gadget and charger, you may be motivated to get it and drop the other gadget. But there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth a couple of years ago when most cellphones began adding camera features. After a while, most people figured out that the cellphone cameras took really crummy pictures and kept buying digital cameras.

The most likely explanation is that nearly everyone who wants an iPod has one. There is no market that can continually sustain double digit growth. Eventually you have sold your widget to everyone. At that point, the market matures and sales are primarily replacement units. Tomorrow, Apple is supposed to announce movies for sale on the iTunes store. Recall that when the iTunes store opened, few thought it would amount to anything. Since then, nearly every record company has had to begrudgingly admit the world has changed. There are dozens of competitors to Apple selling online music, and the there are already several other online movie stores in the wings.

Downloadable movies may spur sales of the bigger iPods with hard drives, because they have the storage space for movies. Apple may have the last laugh yet.

This new Skype-compatible VoIP phone is cordless, which fixes a limitation that has always made Skype and other Internet phone services clumsy--you had to be tethered to your computer. With this phone, a little widget plugs into a USB port and you can wander around the house or office with the cordless handset. As more phones like this become available, it will drive even higher use of VoIP.

Dell has dropped out of the MP3 music player market as another casualty of the iPod juggernaut. The iPod has, as I predicted, become a platform, because it does much more than play music.

With the very first iPod model, Apple established an external interface that allowed third party manufacturers to make add-on gadgets, like a BMW or a stereo with an iPod plug. No other manufacturer has been able to establish a similar third party add-on market, and the iPod add-on market is conservatively valued at over half a billion dollars in annual sales. It would be much more than that if you counted automobiles as an "add-on."

Apple has also consistently increased the functionality of the iPod with its ability to store notes, calendar items, play games, store and view pictures, and store and play videos. No other manufacturer has come close. With the sneaker interface that communicates wirelessly with an iPod to show exercise stats, Apple has raised the bar even higher, and the somewhat indulgent sneaker-net only hints at what will likely be a flood of new wireless devices that use the iPod as the interface. Many pundits predict that the external wireless widget that now plugs into the bottom of an iPod to add the wireless functionality will appear as an internal feature in the next revision of the iPod, and that would be my guess as well. Once that happens, it will make it much easier and less expensive to design and sell iPod wireless gadgets.

If Apple ever comes out with an iPod cellphone, expect to hear a collective shriek of despair from cellphone makers all over the world.

Dell has dropped out of the MP3 music player market as another casualty of the iPod juggernaut. The iPod has, as I predicted, become a platform, because it does much more than play music.

With the very first iPod model, Apple established an external interface that allowed third party manufacturers to make add-on gadgets, like a BMW or a stereo with an iPod plug. No other manufacturer has been able to establish a similar third party add-on market, and the iPod add-on market is conservatively valued at over half a billion dollars in annual sales. It would be much more than that if you counted automobiles as an "add-on."

Apple has also consistently increased the functionality of the iPod with its ability to store notes, calendar items, play games, store and view pictures, and store and play videos. No other manufacturer has come close. With the sneaker interface that communicates wirelessly with an iPod to show exercise stats, Apple has raised the bar even higher, and the somewhat indulgent sneaker-net only hints at what will likely be a flood of new wireless devices that use the iPod as the interface. Many pundits predict that the external wireless widget that now plugs into the bottom of an iPod to add the wireless functionality will appear as an internal feature in the next revision of the iPod, and that would be my guess as well. Once that happens, it will make it much easier and less expensive to design and sell iPod wireless gadgets.

If Apple ever comes out with an iPod cellphone, expect to hear a collective shriek of despair from cellphone makers all over the world.

Logitech has introduced an integrated desk set: it is a completely wireless keyboard with wireless mouse, wireless headset, and wireless speakerphone. It is a neat design, but I remain wary of Bluetooth accesories, especially wireless headsets. Although Bluetooth is a low power system, I have never liked the idea of gigahertz radio frequencies going directly into my brain all day long. Ditto with cellphones and cordless phones. They all use frequency ranges similar to microwave ovens, which we use to COOK things. What is interesting about this is that Logitech has tried to provide a better solution for the emerging "electronic desktop." I would like to see a corded version as well, but the concept is excellent--make all these devices work better together with less effort.

All these wireless devices may be perfectly safe, but we really don't know, and the wireless manufacturers don't really want to know. I have been following this since the early eighties, and the few researchers that study these issues have consistently been able to show, for more than thirty years, that this range of frequencies do create measurable effects at the cellular level. The problem is that we do not really know whether this is a problem or not. Until we do, I will continue to use a corded phone and mouse at my desk and a wired headset for my cellphone.

Many of us spend too much time sitting in front of a computer, often while seated in a poorly designed chair and/or a poorly designed desk space. Here are some tips for avoiding repetitive strain injury (RSI) and/or surgery.

• Put the mouse as the same level as the keyboard. I still see many many people with the mouse on the desk. This will kill your shoulder and elbow because of the repetitive strain of moving your arm up and down. Unless you like rotator cuff surgery, put the mouse next to the keyboard, even if you have to hack some sort of tray extension.
• And while it should not need to be mentioned, you need to get the keyboard off the desk and onto an adjustable keyboard trayideally with four axis adjustment: in/out, up/down, left/right, and tilt angle. Tilt angle is very important for RSI and wrist problems; you should have a small negative tilt (downward slope) on the keyboard.
• You need a palm rest, either integrated into the keyboard, or a foam extension that you place at the base of the keyboard. Your palms/wrists should not rest on any kind of edge. I see many keyboard trays with a thin metal lip placed on the edge to keep the keyboard in place, but these often stick up just enough to dig into your wrist. Over time, this continually pinching of nerves in your wrist will lead to pain and RSI.
• Get a good chair. If you are experiencing back pain, while it could be related to keyboard problems, it is more likely related to posture (which is severely aggravated if your keyboard is on the table). Any chair that costs less than $500 is usually inadequate. I have NEVER seen a properly designed chair in places like OfficeMax or Staples, at any price. Many of you will be disappointed to hear that, but it is true. Good chairs have carefully engineered support, and more levers rarely translates into a better chair. Good chairs tend to run $650-$800, and I would recommend the Freedom chair. It has very few adjustments but is extremely well designed. If you think an $800 chair is an extravagance, consider that it will last ten years or more, and if your livelihood is sitting in front of a computer or at a desk all day, it is a lot cheaper than surgery on your wrists or back.
• If you have back pain, you need a different chair. Note that the Aeron chair is highly overrated. While it broke new ground, it has two major problems: 1) the breathable fabric is like sandpaper and will ruin your clothes, especially if you keep anything in your back pockets (like a wallet), 2) the front edge of the chair, although designed with an appropriate downward slope, has a rigid edge that digs into your thighs and cuts blood flow to your legsthis is inexcusable.
• Keyboardsa split, contoured keyboard is a must. It only feels odd for 2-3 days, and then you don't notice it anymore. There are many good one, but my favorite is the Datadesk Smartboard. It is one of only a very few keyboards that actually make the keys farther from the centerline bigger, so it is easier to hit them. In other words, the "O" and "P" keys are wider than the "G" and "H" keys.
• Most mice are poorly designed. They require a fairly tight grip to be usable, and this is often where RSI sets in. Most people don't realize how muscle stress and strain, continued over days and weeks, even the small amount of force required to grip a mouse, can damage muscles. A good mouse will require NO gripping pressure to use it. This is very hard to understand until you use a mouse that does not require gripping pressure. I've used a Contour Design Perfit mouse for nearly a decade. It's big, but a pleasure to use. The Perfit mouse is one of a very few mice that can be ordered in different sizes for different size hands--important for women and for larger men.
• Finally, few doctors know a darn thing about any of this stuff, and are often too eager to recommend surgery. The stats on RSI surgery are very grim--surgery often makes the problem MUCH WORSE. There is a huge bundle of nerves passing through the muscle sheath on your wrist, and going in there and hacking away is extremely risky. Surgery should be a last resort only after spending as much as needed on better furniture and giving your body time to repair itself.

Good furniture and the right tools is usually cheaper than surgery, too.

Many of us spend too much time sitting in front of a computer, often while seated in a poorly designed chair and/or a poorly designed desk space. Here are some tips for avoiding repetitive strain injury (RSI) and/or surgery.

• Put the mouse as the same level as the keyboard. I still see many many people with the mouse on the desk. This will kill your shoulder and elbow because of the repetitive strain of moving your arm up and down. Unless you like rotator cuff surgery, put the mouse next to the keyboard, even if you have to hack some sort of tray extension.
• And while it should not need to be mentioned, you need to get the keyboard off the desk and onto an adjustable keyboard trayideally with four axis adjustment: in/out, up/down, left/right, and tilt angle. Tilt angle is very important for RSI and wrist problems; you should have a small negative tilt (downward slope) on the keyboard.
• You need a palm rest, either integrated into the keyboard, or a foam extension that you place at the base of the keyboard. Your palms/wrists should not rest on any kind of edge. I see many keyboard trays with a thin metal lip placed on the edge to keep the keyboard in place, but these often stick up just enough to dig into your wrist. Over time, this continually pinching of nerves in your wrist will lead to pain and RSI.
• Get a good chair. If you are experiencing back pain, while it could be related to keyboard problems, it is more likely related to posture (which is severely aggravated if your keyboard is on the table). Any chair that costs less than $500 is usually inadequate. I have NEVER seen a properly designed chair in places like OfficeMax or Staples, at any price. Many of you will be disappointed to hear that, but it is true. Good chairs have carefully engineered support, and more levers rarely translates into a better chair. Good chairs tend to run $650-$800, and I would recommend the Freedom chair. It has very few adjustments but is extremely well designed. If you think an $800 chair is an extravagance, consider that it will last ten years or more, and if your livelihood is sitting in front of a computer or at a desk all day, it is a lot cheaper than surgery on your wrists or back.
• If you have back pain, you need a different chair. Note that the Aeron chair is highly overrated. While it broke new ground, it has two major problems: 1) the breathable fabric is like sandpaper and will ruin your clothes, especially if you keep anything in your back pockets (like a wallet), 2) the front edge of the chair, although designed with an appropriate downward slope, has a rigid edge that digs into your thighs and cuts blood flow to your legsthis is inexcusable.
• Keyboardsa split, contoured keyboard is a must. It only feels odd for 2-3 days, and then you don't notice it anymore. There are many good one, but my favorite is the Datadesk Smartboard. It is one of only a very few keyboards that actually make the keys farther from the centerline bigger, so it is easier to hit them. In other words, the "O" and "P" keys are wider than the "G" and "H" keys.
• Most mice are poorly designed. They require a fairly tight grip to be usable, and this is often where RSI sets in. Most people don't realize how muscle stress and strain, continued over days and weeks, even the small amount of force required to grip a mouse, can damage muscles. A good mouse will require NO gripping pressure to use it. This is very hard to understand until you use a mouse that does not require gripping pressure. I've used a Contour Design Perfit mouse for nearly a decade. It's big, but a pleasure to use. The Perfit mouse is one of a very few mice that can be ordered in different sizes for different size hands--important for women and for larger men.
• Finally, few doctors know a darn thing about any of this stuff, and are often too eager to recommend surgery. The stats on RSI surgery are very grim--surgery often makes the problem MUCH WORSE. There is a huge bundle of nerves passing through the muscle sheath on your wrist, and going in there and hacking away is extremely risky. Surgery should be a last resort only after spending as much as needed on better furniture and giving your body time to repair itself.

Good furniture and the right tools is usually cheaper than surgery, too.

Some crooks in England figured out how to steal credit card numbers from credit cards that have embedded RFID (Radio Frequency ID) tags in them. The RFID tags can be read at a distance. The enterprising crooks stole the numbers, made up a batch of fake credit cards encoded with the legitimate credit card numbers (easily done), and then flew to India to withdraw cash from ATM machines that don't bother to read the RFID tag (ATMs in England won't give you cash unless the machine can get both the credit card number off the magnetic stripe AND can read the RFID tag). Apparently British police did not even know some credit cards now have the RFID tags.

Welcome to the global economy.

Some crooks in England figured out how to steal credit card numbers from credit cards that have embedded RFID (Radio Frequency ID) tags in them. The RFID tags can be read at a distance. The enterprising crooks stole the numbers, made up a batch of fake credit cards encoded with the legitimate credit card numbers (easily done), and then flew to India to withdraw cash from ATM machines that don't bother to read the RFID tag (ATMs in England won't give you cash unless the machine can get both the credit card number off the magnetic stripe AND can read the RFID tag). Apparently British police did not even know some credit cards now have the RFID tags.

Welcome to the global economy.

This little device uses the videoconferencing facility of Skype (the VoIP software) to send a television stream to anyone with Skype. It's one of those odd little devices that often end up in ads on late night TV, and will probably amount to nothing, but it could become the monster that ate the Internet. It sounds like you could plug this into your cable or satellite TV jack, then have your computer call you at work to stream your favorite soap opera to your work computer, among other devilish uses.

It is just the kind of thing that frightens the pants off the cable and telephone companies that are selling broadband connections for fixed prices that have zero relationship to the things that people actually want to do. Their response is to stop people from doing anything they don't approve of, rather than redesigning their networks to support what people actually want to do (and will pay for happily in most cases).

This little device uses the videoconferencing facility of Skype (the VoIP software) to send a television stream to anyone with Skype. It's one of those odd little devices that often end up in ads on late night TV, and will probably amount to nothing, but it could become the monster that ate the Internet. It sounds like you could plug this into your cable or satellite TV jack, then have your computer call you at work to stream your favorite soap opera to your work computer, among other devilish uses.

It is just the kind of thing that frightens the pants off the cable and telephone companies that are selling broadband connections for fixed prices that have zero relationship to the things that people actually want to do. Their response is to stop people from doing anything they don't approve of, rather than redesigning their networks to support what people actually want to do (and will pay for happily in most cases).

This fuel cell powered portable power source is pretty neat, and suggests the future of portable and emergency power. The device runs on hydrogen stored in a removable tank, and provides a trifecta of power: 120 volt AC, 12 volt DC (cigarette lighter plug), and a 5 volt USB port. That just about covers every kind of device you would ever need to recharge or power. The USB port is a nice touch, since lots of devices can now be charged via a USB port, including many cellphones. The one issue I have with it is that Voller, the manufacturer, is a bit vague about the fuel source. The data sheet says it uses "standard" hydrogen cylinders, but it is not clear about where you buy them. The company Web site says it is working on fuel cells that work with more common hydrogen-based fuels like propane and butane. If they get devices like this one working with propane and butane, these will be wildly popular.

Someone asked me this morning why Apple had not come out with a cellphone (we'll ignore the awful Motorola phone that had some iTunes support). The cellphone marketplace is extremely crowded and highly competitive; Apple would not have any real advantage in marketing an Apple-branded cellphone, and phones need more than the gorgeously simple iPod interface.

But my other guess is that Apple has plans to skip over the phone completely. Take a look at this mysterious patent over at Engadget. The patent is listed by Apple, but it refers to the iPod constantly and seems to be some kind of videoconferencing add-on to an iPod. The illustration shows an external camera, but that's not likely. Here's my guess (and this is just speculation).

Apple already has miniaturized its iSight camera; they are built into the lids of all Apple laptops now. The same camera could easily be added to an iPod with any difficulty at all. Apple has been a pioneer in WiFi, and could easily add wireless Internet connectivity to an iPod. Finally, Apple has superb videoconference software with iChat, a mature product that comes with every Mac.

So the next generation iPod comes with a built in camera, WiFi connectivity, and iChat software. Walk into any WiFi hotspot, pick someone off your buddy list, and call them via iChat. When they answer, you have a full duplex, two way videoconference with a high quality Internet protocol. In fact, you can talk to anyone with a similarly equipped iPod, but also anyone connected to the Internet who uses the same platform independent chat protocols that iChat uses.

With the iPod more popular than beer with college students, an iPod with video chat capabilities would fly off the shelves and deepen the iPod's lock on the youth market for portable gadgets.

With an iPod, why bother with a phone?

Someone asked me this morning why Apple had not come out with a cellphone (we'll ignore the awful Motorola phone that had some iTunes support). The cellphone marketplace is extremely crowded and highly competitive; Apple would not have any real advantage in marketing an Apple-branded cellphone, and phones need more than the gorgeously simple iPod interface.

But my other guess is that Apple has plans to skip over the phone completely. Take a look at this mysterious patent over at Engadget. The patent is listed by Apple, but it refers to the iPod constantly and seems to be some kind of videoconferencing add-on to an iPod. The illustration shows an external camera, but that's not likely. Here's my guess (and this is just speculation).

Apple already has miniaturized its iSight camera; they are built into the lids of all Apple laptops now. The same camera could easily be added to an iPod with any difficulty at all. Apple has been a pioneer in WiFi, and could easily add wireless Internet connectivity to an iPod. Finally, Apple has superb videoconference software with iChat, a mature product that comes with every Mac.

So the next generation iPod comes with a built in camera, WiFi connectivity, and iChat software. Walk into any WiFi hotspot, pick someone off your buddy list, and call them via iChat. When they answer, you have a full duplex, two way videoconference with a high quality Internet protocol. In fact, you can talk to anyone with a similarly equipped iPod, but also anyone connected to the Internet who uses the same platform independent chat protocols that iChat uses.

With the iPod more popular than beer with college students, an iPod with video chat capabilities would fly off the shelves and deepen the iPod's lock on the youth market for portable gadgets.

With an iPod, why bother with a phone?

A new study of college students suggests that iPods are more popular with that age group than beer, which normally occupies the top slot among the things that college students prefer most. In recent years, more and more technology-related items and activities have been the top ten list, including instant messaging and Facebook. Facebook, the popular Web site for young adults, actually tied with beer for second place. So perhaps these gadgets do have some redeeming social value--they appear to be cutting down on drinking.

There is something strangely pleasureable about reading this article. PCWorld has compiled its list of what its editors think are the 25 worst tech products of all time. It's a bit like watching cable TV shows like "World's Worst Drivers." You know you should not take pleasure in other people's misfortune, but somehow, you just can't change the channel.

The other thing about this is list you kind of want to scan it to see if you ended buying or using any of these boat anchor products. My guess is that most people can find at least one item on the list that they purchased, thinking it would make life better and instead made it much worse.

There is something strangely pleasureable about reading this article. PCWorld has compiled its list of what its editors think are the 25 worst tech products of all time. It's a bit like watching cable TV shows like "World's Worst Drivers." You know you should not take pleasure in other people's misfortune, but somehow, you just can't change the channel.

The other thing about this is list you kind of want to scan it to see if you ended buying or using any of these boat anchor products. My guess is that most people can find at least one item on the list that they purchased, thinking it would make life better and instead made it much worse.

In what has to be one of the strangest, but potentially quite practical, iPod accessories, you can buy a tie designed to hold an iPod nano on the backside. If you have never seen a nano close up, they are extremely small and very light, so this would actually work pretty well. And it looks like the tie would match your Nike/iPod sneakers. To trick out an entire ensemble, you might want to finish up with one of the jackets with a solar panel on the back so you can charge your iPod from the sun while you are walking in your Nikes.