Further Proof for Our Point About the Camera Market

Camera manufacturers seem to be eager to confirm our point about the explosive innovation in the camera market (this being the eve of the grand-daddy of the photo branch tradeshows, Photokina, does help, of course).

Just today, two announcements were made, in the opposite ends of the complexity spectrum (actually, there were more, but these are the significant ones):

• Leica announced a 37 megapixel camera with a medium format size sensor (30 x 45 mm) and DSLR-like form factor
  
• Olympys announced a Micro Four Thirds camera with compact camera form factor but interchangeable lenses

Again, two products that produce compatible end results but have completely different feature sets, target audiences, and price points -- further proof that not being tied to unncessary standards lets innovation reign supreme.

Lessons from the Camera Market

Unlike the PC (or even mobile phone) hardware market, the digital camera market is a hotbed of innovation and new ideas. New features, new formfactors, and new price/performance breakthroughs are being introduced at an accelerating pace, making the camera market currently the most vibrant technology market.

Just in the last two months, three new full-frame DSLRs have been introduced. Nikon, Sony, and Canon have brought professional features and performance that cost over $5000 a year ago into the sub-3000 dollar area, besting each other with the successive launches. What looked like a very compelling offering from Nikon just two months (the D700) ago is almost blown away by the latest Canon offering (5D Mark II).

Why then does the PC or phone market look so ho-hum in comparison?

One key factor is misguided standardization. Intel and Microsoft have gained near monopoly positions because the x86 hardware architecture and Windows have become de facto standards, especially in corporate desktops. While standardization can a good thing, these standards have been more driven by the needs of the industry than the needs of the users -- and copycat products have been produced by the thousands.

Users (well, most users) don't care for microprocessors. Users don't really even care for operating systems. They care for what can be done with the computers -- for most users the only really relevant area of standardization is document formats. We create documents with our computers and it is important that as many other users as possible can view and modify the documents we have created.

Camera's don't have standard sensors, standard processors, standard operating systems -- just about the only standard they share is the document format: jpeg. Because the camera industry has decided only on the relevant standard, the ultimate document format, it has allowed freer, more open, and more vibrant innovation.

The good news for PC users is that the PC industry is heading into the same direction. As computing migrates towards the cloud, document formats become the only really relevant standards and innovation in other areas becomes less restrained. Processors, operating systems, and even actual applications become less constrained and it becomes easier to start building special purpose systems that cater to niche needs -- at a reasonable cost. My system does not have to be the same as your system, as long as it can produce compatible documents.

This is something big companies do not necessarily want -- inertia has worked in their advantage in keeping the markets relatively stagnant and easy to control. When innovation becomes freer, smaller companies gain an advantage and become more competitive.

Now this is all fine and dandy, but someone please answer me a simple question. Should I stick to Nikon and protect my existing lens investments or jump to Sony or Canon for a clearly superior body for the same money? Choices, choices...

Why we need Gears on iPhone (and other phones)

The iPhone provides a nice browsing experience from the UI perspective. However, normal browser architecture is very badly suited for use with a device with relatively slow connection speeds -- reloading every page every time is slow and aggravating.

While the nominal connection speed (on the 3G model, anyway) is sufficient, the actual throughput is often much lower, especially in areas where 3G is not available.

Google Gears provides local storage (among other nifty things) for the browser, allowing effective caching and offline access to content. This feature is crucial for functional web apps, but can also greatly enhance the web browsing experience.

Currently, Safari is the only browser option available on the iPhone and it does not provide offline browsing. Hopefully Apple will allow other browsers with this feature AND also add it to Safari.

A sensible way to do this would be to work with Google and bring Google Gears to the iPhone -- Gears would be a great addition to iPhone and make it a better web application platform.

Unfortunately, it seems Apple and Google will be at loggerheads because of Android and the two companies working closely together might be a pipe dream.

The New iPods

iPod aficionados have been frothing in the mouth over Apple's new iPod/iTunes product launch.

Based on the live feeds from the event, it was rather ho-hum:

• A gaunt Steve Jobs joking that the rumors about his death are exaggerated
  
• New iTunes 8 with improved playlist creation and HD
• A larger capacity (120 GB) iPod Classic -- most likely the last of its kind
• A redesigned iPod Nano with curvier lines
• A beefed-up iPod Touch with software version 2.1 (which will be available for the iPhone, too) 
• Some accessories

Basically, incremental improvements and evolutionary stuff, preparing for the holiday season sales.

Not bad, but hardly anything to get very excited about.

Nokia Don't Know Services

Nokia is the indisputed leader in mobile phones.

However, their track record in the services business (that Nokia stresses as a major growth avenue) is rather sad.

Case in point: the much hyped Ovi portal. 

Latest Alexa rankings place Ovi as the 17.840th most popular web site globally. Such Finnish language giants as www.kuvaton.com, www.nettimoto.fi, www.aapeli.com and www.riemurasia.net handily rank higher than Ovi.

Surely, given the amount Nokia has invested in Ovi, this has to be one of the worst bang-for-the-buck cases in the history of the Internet.

It's Demo Time

The Fall 08 edition of the Demo Conference is commencing in San Diego as we write this blog. While Demo may have lost some of its cachet, its track record is mind-boggling: Java 1.0, Palm Pilot, TiVo, and SalesForce.com (among other products) were first introduced at Demo.

Not all products featured at Demo become hits, but being accepted to Demo certainly does not hurt. Demo-worthiness is often considered either a sign of a great product or a great PR machine -- ideally both. For tech watchers, Demo is a great showcase of what is hot; while an individual company may not make it, the Demo'd companies are a good indicator of what the zeitgeist is about.

This fall's interesting Demo debuts include:

MixMatchMusic -- a component trading place for musicians
Infovell -- a "deep web" search tool that goes where Google has not gone before
Giftag -- a social shopping tool
Accordia -- a CRM tool that visualizes client relationships
Plastic Logic -- flexible, plastic-based thin displays

You can find the rest of this fall's demo crop at www.demo.com.

Business Mashups Nearing the Mainstream

Mashups (web apps combining data from several sources into a single context) have long been one of the catch phrases of the Web 2.0 phenomenon. Now they may be coming into a desktop near you, courtesy of Adobe -- and, no doubt, other companies soon thereafter.

Enterprise mashup companies have been heavily  funded and hyped, but the key players have mainly been new, small companies such as Serena Software, JackBe or Denodo -- not exactly household names.

However, the upcoming beta release of Adobe Genesis is about to change this. Not only is a big, established player entering the fray, but Adobe is changing the mashup game by moving it from the web to the desktop. Genesis centers around the concept of a client-based workspace that unifies several data sources and/or applications into a single environment. To get an idea of what Genesis can do, think of a portal that you put together on your desktop using web data, web apps, desktop data, and desktop apps.

The skeptic can say that Genesis is simply the old idea of containers (anyone remember Apple's ill-fated OpenDoc?) repackaged and reheated. That statement may not be altogether incorrect -- but technology has developed far enough to make the idea feasible.

It is still too early to say whether Genesis will be a success or yet another unsuccessful technology demonstrator, but it is certainly intriguing and certainly gives a glimpse of the future of client-side computing..

From Chrome to Google Cloud

While Chrome is pretty exciting in itself, it is only the tip of the iceberg of things to come.

Chrome is a key piece in the puzzle behind the Google Cloud -- a pervasive distributed computing infrastructure that will render the present day PC and OS architecture obsolete. Everything (well, almost everything) will be somewhere in the Internet cloud, with just the browser, some pretty limited CPU capacity, and a broadband connection required in the client end.

With the emergence of the Cloud, Internet is finally coalescing into the dominant design of computing -- or, perhaps it is the Cloud that is truly going to be the dominant design with the Internet being a component (albeit a crucial one).

The Cloud is not going to be Google's exclusive playground (thank goodness), but if there is one firm that is perfectly positioned to dominate the cloud, it is Google.

The G-people dominate web search, have the best knowledge of user behavior on the net, have a huge server infrastructure in place, and have invested heavily into cloud-like computing architectures and platforms.

Google is also just about the only player that can truly bring the Cloud into the mainstream -- others are still niche players or have too much to lose to make the leap themselves (Microsoft being the obvious example).

They've done changed it...

Yup, it seems the Gearshifting crew called it right -- Google has admitted that they made a mistake with the Chrome EULA and it has now been changed to what it should be. They even admitted it was pretty much a cut-and-paste job as we speculated.

We were wrong in the timing -- it took less than 24 hours from yesterdays post.

Damn, it feels good to be right once in a while...

The Chrome EULA Brouhaha

By now (all of 23 hours after the release of Chrome), everyone has probably heard of the weird/evil/stupid/nefarious/power-hungry (take your pick) end-user licence agreement (EULA) of Chrome.

There are several interesting passages, but it is section 11.1 that has garnered the most interest -- it stipulates that the user grants Google an unlimited license to use any information he or she has written using Chrome (since I am using Chrome right now, Google is free to use this blog entry any way they wish).

There are numerous theories as to what Google is trying to accomplish with this part of the agreement. However, the only reasonable explanation is that this is a blunder. A colossal blunder, perhaps, but a blunder nonetheless. This portion of the EULA has been copied and pasted from another EULA where it perhaps made some sense. As to how Google could have made a blunder of this magnitude is anybody's guess, but I would speculate Google got taken by surprise and actually did have to release Chrome in a hurry, ahead of intended release schedule.

The EULA bits in question must be a mistake. Google knows the hacker community well enough and they would have known that the EULA terms would be examined and made public very fast. They know that no-one in their right mind would seriously entertain the thought of using Chrome with a stipulation like section 11.1 -- most of us could not, as using Chrome right now violates our employment agreements.

My prediction: the EULA will be amended within a week (I was tempted to say 48 hours, but this time they are probably going to do a thorough job). 

Burning Chrome

I've now had Google Chrome on my computer for little less than 24 hours, and unlike with any other new browser in many many moons, I am impressed.

In fact, I am so impressed that I have already made Chrome my default browser (even though it is beta, it works flawlessly). The pure page load and rendering speed is fantastic and the clean, minimal interface just feels right (the "home screen" with the most visited sites miniatures is particularly great). And, obviously, the plumbing underneath it all is fascinating.

One puzzling omission was the lack of Java. However, a little searching helped me find Java Early Access downloads which included a Java Standard Edition 6 Update 10 RC that adds Java support to Chrome (in case you are looking for the same, check this site).

An interesting comparison is Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 which has been out for a few days. I downloaded it last week and tried it for a little bit. While I did not test it thoroughly, it felt downright dusty and creaky compared to Chrome -- same old, same old, same old. It was slower and the interface more cluttered. Not to mention that it was far buggier than Chrome; my favorite chess site would not work, which just won't do ;-)

Holy Flaming Chrome

Today is the day Chrome beta is coming...

But all the coolness of the Chrome browser notwithstanding (and there is a lot of it), one of the greatest things about the beta launch is the insanely great white paper slash intro slash brochure Google has published in COMIC BOOK FORMAT!!!

As Chrome is a fairly radical piece of software, you'd expect a lot of big words, small print, and technical jargon -- a lot of stuff that would only be understood by the initiated few. Instead, Google has the engineers of the Chrome team tell the story of the new browser in 38 pages of pictures and speech bubbles.

Yes, there still is a lot of technical stuff. Yes, it still is also partially marketing fluff. But, importantly, it is approachable for just about anyone and illustrates they key points behind the Chrome initiative admirably clearly. In short, it is technology marketing at its best.

Well done, Google guys!

Check it out here...