“I am president of the Electronics Club, the Math Club, and the Chess Club. Now if there’s a bigger nerd in here, please… point him out.” – Brian Parks (The Day After Tomorrow, 2004) 20th Century Fox Attend CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in January and you’;ll have lots of fun. People are excited, exhilarated even. [...]
Articles By: Andy Marken
One-Minute Internet Reputation Management
It isn’t by accident that we borrowed the headline from Spencer Johnson’s very successful book, The One-Minute Manager. When the book was first published in the early ‘90’s, it became an instant guide for managers at all levels on how they could hone and improve their management skills. Even as book sales soared the business [...]
3D TV is Coming
Listening to Lenny Lipton tiptoe through the history of 3D content production and viewing technology, he almost convinced you that 3D TV is finally just around the corner. Oh sure, the internationally renowned author and inventor acknowledged that there were still a few obstacles to overcome – like standards — but after more than 40 [...]
There’s No Good Time for Data to Disappear
Say storage and people immediately think of a hard or flash drive…tape…optical media. In other words, bit buckets to hold your digital stuff. Until that inevitable fateful day. Like ours… First, the 2TB drive on your office server won’t boot up. It’s dead. Ten skilled people sit on their hands, wondering how they’re going to [...]
The OS Wars
The grass isn’t greener on the other side of the fence. It just seems to be human nature to want your grass … and theirs! We don’t just want our share of the business that is out there, we want our unfair share. That’s certainly true of the PC/CE/communications industry. It’s even more fun when you’re [...]
Company Product Communications, Loosen Up!
In theory corporate policy is to encourage creative thinking, initiative and growth. Their communications policy is to quickly and accurately support all of the audiences. Firms constantly seek new ways to efficiently and effectively accomplish that goal…as long as it follows corporate policy and conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom says: 1. Public relations should be the sole spokesperson [...]
Can Vendors Really Get Along?
The industry struggles for sales and profits as manufacturers and the distribution channels continue to work against each other. Hardware and software producers as well as VARs and integrators are going to have to put their adversarial positions aside if the industry is to return to a healthy growth condition. The most serious problem threatening [...]
A Deep Look at the State of the Internet
The Internet wasn’t developed to be a dangerous place. It wasn’t developed for spammers/scammers which Australia-based Marshal’s Threat Research and Content Engineering Team estimates will represent up to 90% of the email by the end of the year. It wasn’t developed for you to use to buy/sell stuff on eBay, Amazon and the tens of [...]
Women Taking Over the Internet
If computer and consumer electronics technology is so entrenched in a man’s world, why do we have to get clearance before we make a PC/CE purchase for home? Yes we can buy the device without asking or discussing our decision but we do like our limbs and associated parts. Don’t jerk us around…we aren’t alone!!! According [...]
The Next Great Tech CEO
Admit it. You missed Steve opening WWDC (Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference). You missed him walking out at the end of Phil Schiller’s keynote where Steve walks from behind the curtain and says , “One more thing!” There was no colored water to dazzle folks. No one sat down on the chair, whipped off the shoes and [...]
Piracy as Free Advertising
“My whole life I felt like an animal.” – Logan/Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), X-Men Origins: Wolverine (20th Century Fox – 2009) Purloined Copy – One way or another an early copy of X-Men Origins was illegally uploaded to the web. While the copy circulated the Internet and is undoubtedly being saved/shown in various corners of the [...]
Improving Video Quality with CUDA
Technology moves so quickly that almost everyone has analog (tape) and digital video they want to save and enjoy. Even with today’s low-cost, high quality cameras and ubiquitous camphones is that the results are usually less than great viewing quality. Unless you’re carrying a bank of photo lights around the video is usually a little on [...]
iCommerce: How Apple Apps Changed the Game
Guess when you have $56 billion and change in the vault in today’s economic environment you must be doing something right. Just wish our kids would quit contributing to the stash Apple is using to buy GPU (graphics processor unit) technology and game designer talent. A few years ago Apple decided all smartphones sucked (they’re not too [...]
Twitter World
We see the value in Earth Day. We recognize the importance of World Peace Day. In deference to our wife we think even Mother’s Day is OK. But Twitter Day? Somehow Oprah coming online and saying “Hello Twitter World.” (or whatever) is not quite up there with the wizard of Menlo Park (Edison) calling one of [...]
Social Media: The Hunted Become the Hunter
“Nothing in those files makes their sacrifice worthwhile. You have to let go. We’re professionals, when an operation goes bad, we tie it off. “ – Ward Abbott (Brian Cox) – The Bourne Supremacy (2004) The world of new media – widgets and social applications – looks like a beautiful marketing hunting grounds. It’s like [...]
Hard-core Gamers Losing Their Edge
Hard core gamers have lost their “most sought after” position for video game system and software producers. Without a lot of fanfare the developers/manufacturers have found that there is a huge general and casual gamer market out there… young or old, male or female. It came as a rude shock to our son…he was no [...]
Consumers Need Voice in Driving Products
On any given day you will find a group of engineers or programmers huddling in the back room, sitting in the corner of the coffee shop, or gathering around the most recently divorced individual’s kitchen table to plan the next major new company built on breathtaking technology. The hard fact is…we really don’t need more [...]
Attack of the iPhone Clones
“Victory? Victory you say? Master Obi-Wan, not victory. The shroud of the dark side has fallen.” – Yoda, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002) You can forgive the news reporter who mistook President Obama’s Shaka wave for a sign to call him during the inauguration. The connected candidate — who took communications [...]
Data Security Related to Stupidity
“My Mama always said you’ve got to put the past behind you before you can move on.” — Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump – 1994), Paramount Pictures Instant information, instant entertainment, instant communications to and from anywhere in the world, with anyone is fantastic. It’s all been brought to us by the computer and communications industries. [...]
CES 09 Wrap-Up
Ok, CES (Consumer Electronics Show) 2009 was off a little in the number of exhibitors and attendees. So? It was a crappy second half of ’08 folks. No one has been drinking happy juice about the prospects for the next six months! Best guess there were only about 90,000 people at the Vegas show (after 5-10 shows [...]
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