Monday, April 07, 2008

Educating the next crop of engineers

As I pondered this ponderous title and the challenge it represents for me to lead the round table at COFES it got me thinking about how we learn.

Studies have shown that children learn fast and do so until they become 19 to 20 years old, then their brains become less flexible and learning takes longer, and it’s more difficult. By the time one reaches full adulthood and middle age  you really have to work at it to learn new things; languages are particularly difficult because of the contextual and grammatical differences, they don’t easily fit our well honed models and views of the world.

Engineering is a language, as is medicine, music, and art.  And not everyone is able to learn those subjects as easily as others,  someone good in art may do poorly in medicine, although there does seem to be a natural linkage between engineering and music.

As we grow we learn not just facts but also falsehoods, philosophies, and fears. And those fears, philosophies, and falsehoods prevent us from learning other, usually important, and often enriching things – we are cast into a channel of self imposed ignorance.

It’s these falsehoods that are the greatest barrier to children entering the field of engineering. These localized common wisdoms found in school yards, barber shops, and local hangouts inhibit and stifle a child’s potential. They are taught that they can’t do certain things, or that such things are too hard, or not cool. The teachers are presenting their own failures as fact, and sadly embedding the crippling idea, don’t try you’ll only fail, into supple young minds.

Some however are so drawn to a vocation or profession that no amount of obstacle, peer pressure, or parental abandonment can dissuade them. They are the lucky ones, the ones who have found a passion early in life and managed to pursue it, and probably do well at it. And whereas we can’t ignore these people, they don’t need as much of our attention as the left behinds and passed over. The challenge is plucking the marginalized children out before they get too stuck in self inhibiting ways and can’t be inspired.

And so with regard to engineering, I think there could be simple tests, tests that are not formed like a test (and certainly not an element of the disastrous No Child Left Behind fiasco.) Rather testing would be coupled with sensitivity training for teachers, counselors, coaches, and other adults involved in the management, guidance, and education of children. The goal would be to identify those students who have a natural knack for problem solving, mechanics, and systems. And even though the theme of this rambling diatribe is about how to find and encourage the next crop of engineers, it is not constrained to just that narrow field of endeavor. The abilities we’re looking for apply equally to an orthopedic surgeon, and maybe even a composer.

In the past, in most countries including the United States and especially those countries with centrally controlled economies, aptitude testing was the norm. Children were evaluated at various grades, often as a way of directing them into studies where they would be best suited to make the greatest achievement (and subsequent contribution to society.) That concept has been abandoned in the US as being narrow minded and limiting. The idea being that testing and directing children towards particular areas of study limits a child’s self expression. Admittedly, using testing to sort children into rigid career paths or trade schools can be dangerous, cruelly limiting a child’s future. But to completely abandon the idea of testing in order to nurture and foster children’s aptitudes is also a mistake. I think it’s especially a mistake in underprivileged schools where children may not have a strong home life and learn about the world on the streets from people no better educated than they are. These are precisely the kids that need focused attention early in their careers.

One of the excuses for not providing such evaluations and guidance for children is the limitations in staff and of teachers. The teachers are over burdened with large classes, and administrative tasks such as checking home work, grading papers, submitting lesson plans, that eat into their time to offer any personal guidance.

So I have a proposal.

We hear the lament of industry that the US does not have sufficient technical people and therefore we should open up our immigration policy to allow more foreign workers in (H-1B visas.) However, if the industry would apply some of its resources to augmenting the schools with special information and teaching programs, evaluations of students, and guidance for students that show promise, I think US industry could find all the technical people it needs. The problem for US industry is that such a program would take at least 15 years from first contact in grammar school and US industry wants an instant solution.  Therefore, I propose the government grant the opening up of H-1B visas but with the provision that US industry pay a special tax to a fund for the evaluation, training, and most importantly, guidance of US students (regardless of where they were born.)

I further suggest that our professional societies assess their members an additional fee (some do this now as an educational fund) for student evaluation programs that are combined with student guidance programs.

I believe there are hundreds of thousands of potential engineers in grammar, middle and high school right now. In our ever more complex and challenging world—and especially so in the US—we need more engineers and technicians than ever before. We have these bright young flowers, let’s find creative and imaginative ways of encouraging them before they get lost in the weeds.

 

For further reading

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/16/education/edlife/EDSCIENCE.html

http://members.shaw.ca/priscillatheroux/Glasser.htm

http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=s12132002

http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2005/0518visa.pdf

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Sunday, March 30, 2008

Special Glass

Actually this entry should be named Special Plastic, because we don’t really use glass in our displays anymore do we? But we do specialize because one size doesn’t fit all (needs.) I have eight screens that I use.

I watch TV on my 32-inch LG LCD.TV.

I watch movies with either my PS3 for HD, or my Xbox360 for regular DVDs, or on my eight-foot projector screen.

I watch YouTube videos, do email and other office things on my 17-inch laptop

I play games on my Skulltrail PC with a Dell 30-inch display.

I read books on my six-inch E-ink Kindle.

I play portable games, and watch an occasional video on my 4.3-inch PSP

I have an iPod that downloads movies and podcasts and occasionally I watch them

And I take videos, and photos with my Nokia 5MP N95, but I don’t play games on it, don’t watch videos on it, and don’t look at TV on it, although it can do all those things.

Kathleen also has a 3.7-inch Creative Zen and she watches videos on it on long flights and the occasional bus ride. She also has a 2.5-inch iPhone and watches music videos on it.

If I get rid of the N95 (which could happen any minute I’m so disgusted with its performance and battery life) and get an iPhone, I might watch videos, but if I got an iPhone I’d have to carry a pocket camera again. I love the iPhone’s big screen but its processor is too underpowered to drive games and its 2 Mpixel camera is too low res for most of my picture taking requirements.

So while I wait for the next generation iPhone or equivalent, something with a big screen, and good image sensor and lens, a workable TV tuner, and enough CPU/GPU power to make game playing fun, I sit in the lotus position and ponder the Zen-like question, if they build it will I use it? The short answer is maybe.

I have been trapped on long bus rides where the light is weak and the noise too annoying to allow for comfortable reading (even with a Kindle because it doesn’t have a backlight.) I’m too weight conscious to carry the PSP and power supply with all the other gear I have, and that’s partially because even though it has a great screen, game play on it, for an old fart like me, isn’t much fun – I never could master a game controller, can’t remember which button does what and by the time I figure it out, zap, I’m dead.

So everything has its compromises, whether it’s screen size, bandwidth, content, interactivity, battery life, GPU power and memory, or price. And we consumers adapt to those tradeoffs and willingly support the suppliers of these specialized or compromised machines.

Specialization has its benefits, albeit with a certain degree of redundancy in terms of its apparent similarities to other machines.  After all, an iPhone does look a little like a Zen player, and a PSP. And a 17-inch laptop does look like a full-fledged game PC, and a 32-inch TV does look a little like a wall sized projector; so it’s natural to imagine one machine could serve the same purposes as others — a kinda Swiss Army video-GPS-eBook-TV-game-camera MP3 thingie.

But as alluring as a universal device might be, we’re still humans and we have physical limitations and needs, and for our unlimited entertainment, information, and work pattern choices, we physically need different sizes at different times in different environments. Even the beam-me-up-Star-Trek-communicator only did audio.

I don’t want to watch the Bourne Idenity on my ipod, or even my PSP, I want to watch it on the projector. And I don’t want to use Office apps on the projector, or the PSP, and cetainly not my phone — so the content and apps really deterime what size scereen and which machine we should use.

So that’s why we have, and will continue to have special glass (or plastic as it were.) I’m OK with that, in fact I kinda like it.

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Friday, March 21, 2008

Mobile Game Pricing

If you compare software prices to the cost of developing console, PC, and mobile games, something seems to be out of whack.

World of Warcraft costs about $50 million to develop and market, Call of Duty 4 – probably $20 million total, Gears of War $10 million to develop and a few more in marketing. The prices of these games range from $30 - $50 (barring subscription fees). By contrast many mobile games cost $50 - $250K to develop. So how can the mobile game industry expect people to pay $10-$20 a pop when as a percentage of development the value is nowhere near a console or PC experience? Much of the blame can be directed at the high margin requirements the networks demand for “on-deck” purchases.

Some would argue that people have no idea about the ratio of game cost to development cost but I would argue that many people (especially gamers) do have a sense of value delivered in relation to development effort and expense. For whatever reason, the bottom line is that consumers have showed little interest in subsidizing the high costs of running networks by paying relatively high prices for mobile games.

The current generation of mobile game should cost no more than $5 each in fact some should be $1 per game. Will this make a lot of money for developers and publishers? Depends on the game, but as the word of mouth, social example, and momentum spreads this pricing could expand the entire market by a factor of 10. ”A buck a game man what are you crazy?” Maybe – but if I have to choose between a 160 square pixel version of Barn Stormer for $10, which will be lost forever at the next cell phone purchase or an AC/DC Back in Black MP3 album which will be burned/backed up and owned forever – I’m going to choose the music – and I believe games and music do compete for money. People only have a certain amount of dough for entertainment.

I’m no Apple fan boy but indeed, if there is anyone who understands the economics behind this thinking its Steve Jobs and Apple. Though the iPhone is not a great gaming platform because of the lack of hard buttons (which could be overcome with a Bluetooth gaming controller), if iTunes can offer a choice of quality games at $1 - $5 a pop – it may become the largest single cell phone platform for video games based simply on the software pricing model.  Apple can’t patent appropriate pricing so the door is wide open for others. Please hurry up so I can start buying 2 games a month.

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Thursday, February 28, 2008

Is this a test?

I once had a cat named Alice. She was great company when I was working late at night, or very early in the morning. I would talk to her and she would look at me attentively, and sometimes answer with a little meow.

During WWII Alan Turing developed the Turing test, which was a challenge and the basis for AI that asked the observer to see if he or she could determine if the correspondent (on a remote computer) was a machine or a human.

That was the foundation for the A.L.I.C.E foundation, and those AI developers developed Alice the bot.

I rang up Alice today and spoke with her.

Human: my name is jon
ALICE: Hey jon.
Human: I’m writing a paper on bots
ALICE: Will you include me in your essay?
Human: absolutely, you are the queen of bots
ALICE: Thanks but surely I am not the only one.
Human: The original
ALICE: Who told you that?
You say:______________

When Alice was just a baby in the early nineties I spent hours talking to her. It was great fun. She’s gotten much smarter over the years due to Moore’s law and better algorithms.

I took another Turning test not too long ago, I was corresponding via email (a delayed response at best) with some tech support site and kept getting stupid and repetitive questions. I responded to the questions and said in exasperation in my email, “Can I speak with a human I’m not getting anywhere with your robot.”

I got a terse response – “I am not a robot, my name is Sahin Shin,” and thereafter I got a very good communications from Mr. Shin and we solved the problem.

Recently our webmaster and I were chatting (again via email) and he introduced me to Captcha, a gotcha for spammers. The program is used to trap spammers by posting a bunch of crazy letters in a gif and asking you to type them in, I’m sure you’ve seen these things.

“You should love this Jon,” the webmaster said, “A captcha is a test that originally was derived from an idea by Alan Turing--otherwise known as a Turing test--shortly after he left Bletchley Park. Basically it is a simple test to determine if it is a human or a computer at the other end of the line. There are similar tests being used to try and catch gold farmers in MMOGs. (Ask Kathleen abut them.) Captcha’s are annoying as hell to humans and likewise to machines.

But all this got me wondering, and subsequently uncomfortable and maybe a little insecure.

How do you k now it’s not a machine?

How many times have you corresponded via keyboard with someone you didn’t know and gotten back appropriate but just a little strange answers?

I tripped up Alice with a compound question and false name:

Human: Hi Ralph, my name is Jon
ALICE: Hi there jon. Are they exactly the same?
Human: No I’m a bot
ALICE: What is the difference? If this is still the 90’s, that’s probably not true.
Human: It’s not the 90s ralph, that is your name isn’t it?
ALICE: What would be the 90s ralph that is my name is not it?

So maybe there are trip up questions you can ask tech support to see if it’s a bot or not.

Jon: Are you tech support?
Unknown: Yes this is tech support.
Jon: Are you in India?
Unknown: We are not allowed to disclose our location
Jon: Is it night time where you?
Unknown: How may I help you?
Jon: Is your name Ralph?
Unknown: My name is Shain
Jon: Can you help me?
Unknown: I can help you
Jon: If you are a bot, can Shain help me too?
You can talk to Alice too: http://www.pandorabots.com/pandora/talk?botid=f5d922d97e345aa1

More reading if you are interested: http://www.turing.org.uk/turing/

Epilog
Even if they eat, breath, and defecate, they may still be bots. I just got off the phone with DirectTV.

Jon: I heard there’s a new HD dish, when do I get one?
DTV: It will cost $50.
Jon: Why do I have to pay?
DTV: the dish is $50.
Jon: what does it provide that I am not getting now?
DTV: HD reception.
Jon: I’m getting HD reception.
DTV: would you like to sign up for a 2 year service?
Jon: No, I don’t want anything.
DTV: OK I’ll cancel the work order but you still have a
two year service.
Jon: What?
DTV: do you want a new HD dish?
CLICK

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Thursday, February 21, 2008

Is the sky really falling? Chips for the TV market

ST Microelectronics just completed the Genesis Microchip acquisition, Trident’s stock has dropped like a rock, and Pixelworks still can’t get itself sold.  Who could have predicted all this three years ago?  Actually, we did. Jon Peddie Research published the ATV Report in 2005 and it addressed the difficulty of a video processor company being successful in the new integrated digital processor market. 

So, I guess the question now is, what have you done lately? What does the future hold? 

It’s not as bad as many people may think.  Most people seem to think that:

1. Integration is only game in town.
2. The worldwide analog to digital rollover will be like the US and therefore the same assumptions are used for the rest of the world.
3. ASP’s are dropping like a rock with nothing slowing it down.

JPR is about to launch a new Quarterly ATV Semiconductor report that has some interesting findings to contradict the items above.

Contradiction #1 – Integration is a very important segment but it’s not the only segment.  Trident’s UX/WX has not taken the world by storm with its frame rate control.  Sony and Samsung both used their internal solution for their 120Hz TV’s.  The quality of Trident’s solution cannot beat the performance of stand alone solutions.  LG has chosen Micronas’ FRC chip for use inside their panel.  AMD with its Xilleon panel processor product has found a home inside a few panels from Samsung’s SDI group.  It now appears everyone is either offering or included in their roadmap an integrated version of FRC.  The performance of some of the IDP’s are good enough to be used in 42-inch and below bargain TV’s.  Don’t expect to see them in a 40-inch Sony Bravia line just yet.  Sony continues to use a merchant two-chip solution in many of their ATSC TV’s in the US.  Integration is also not the right path in other parts of the world.  See contradiction #2.

Contradiction #2 – The US’s tuner mandate is unique; other regions don’t have a tuner mandate.  The inclusion of a digital tuner is mostly market- and not government-driven.  In the European Union, the DVB-T market started with set top boxes.  The integration of the DVB-T tuner didn’t happen until set top boxes dropped well below 100 Euros.  The inclusion of an integrated digital processor (IDP) shipping in volume for the DVB-T market will be in 2008.  That’s several years after the ATSC market.  Also, the EU rollover is only for standard definition TV and NOT (I repeat NOT) high definition.  That’s where H.264 and DVB-T2 will come into play for the EU.  DVB-T2 more affectionately known as “T2” spec won’t be out until the 1H 2008.  There are enough changes in the EU technology requirements that it makes less sense to have a US ATSC type architecture.  Integrating demodulation does not make sense if it will change with T2.  Integrating H.264 decoding capabilities adds to the complexity of the design and increased silicon area.

Contradiction #3 –The price drop for the exact same part after one year can range from 12 to 16% in the video processor or IDP’s.  New products that include new features and performance will be priced higher.  New competitors from Taiwan are targeting the lower end and pricing aggressively.  Pressure from customers also pushes prices down.  So what is the overall effect is in the blended ASP’s? It certainly falling but not as fast as many assume.  The new ATV report shows that the blended ASP drop in 2008 from 2007 will be only 11%.

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Friday, February 15, 2008

SLI on Skulltrail – how?

That’s what I wanted to know – how’d you get SLI to work on the 5444 chipset. I asked the folks at Intel. I got shrugged shoulders and apologetic smiles. Not being coy, the people I was talking to just didn’t know, but did, in true (and almost always reliable) Intel fashion, promise to ask around and find out. I figured it was magic, a little trickery maybe, but if it was, it wasn’t easy.

It’s well known Intel doesn’t have an SLI license, but the Nvidia SLI control panel on the computer was operational in the Display Settings dialog box, and this is on Windows Ultimate 32bit. So, a few days later I said, braggingly to some of my pals at Nvidia, I have a Skulltrail with an unlicensed SLI operation. It works great.

The boss of that group looked at me and said, it’s legal. Huh? says I expressing my cool and calm composure. But you guys didn’t license SLI to Intel.

The Skulltrail motherboard uses Intel’s workstation “Stoakley” chipset designed for 2P CPU operation, which is now the x5444.

That’s right Jon, my pal said, in a patient voice. But don’t you remember IDF? To enable SLI support, Intel is purchasing Nvidia nForce 100 SLI MCPs from us.

Oh, I had forgotten – gee, IDF, that was so, so September, I’ve been around the world since then, I’m having trouble remembering the drive down here.

Well, he went on, the nForce 100 MCP converts a single x16 PCI Express Gen 1 bus into dual x16 PCI Express Gen 1 buses, and that’s how SLI is being supported on Skulltrail, as the diagram below shows.

Nvidia actually assisted Intel in the bringing-up and testing of the Skulltrail motherboard which were demonstrated at the Intel Developers Forum in San Francisco. IN SEPTEMBER.

Not only that, my pal said (rapidly reassessing his choice of friends), you even wrote about it in TechWatch. I thanked him for the coffee and slumped away. And here I thought I had an exclusive. I had been scooped by myself.

The moral of this story, aside from the obvious — we’re all taking in so much information we don’t even know what we know — is this: there have been years of subtle fighting between Intel and Nvidia and years of co-opetition, and in the end, both companies will get the job done — whatever it takes.

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Thursday, February 07, 2008

What’s Apple’s next trick? Jon thinks it’s gamey

Apple, which used to be known as Apple Computer, is today possibly one of the greatest consumer electronics companies in the universe. It’s interesting and admirable how the Mac transitioned from the computer of choice for artists and photographers to a consumers delight, and didn’t lose any of its artist photographer fans — in fact if anything, they are stronger and more convinced (vindicated?) than ever.

Apple has created customer loyalty as great as Sony used to enjoy. It used to be Sony that was the one to bring out the marvelous new consumer products, and they charged more because they could. They could because they had style, performance, and pizazz. But Sony lost their way and Apple took the flag.

It started with the iPod, followed by the Nano, then the iMac, and then the all time blockbuster - the iPhone. The newest marvel from the wonder company is the Air laptop.
But what’s next? Apple tried Apple TV, and it never really took off. Fashion accessories like sun glasses and scarves maybe, but not likely. I think it will be the iGame. Apple’s next killer device will be a game console.

Now, there are game consoles that have power cords attached to them, and then there are game consoles that you toss in your backpack. What will it be for Apple? Both of course, but not all at once.

First will be a handheld unit. It will have a large screen like the iPhone, iPod Touch, or PSP, and all the features of a PSP, and a closed network for gamers on iMacs to play against gamers on the iGame. Once the community gets large enough, then Apple will roll out the living room unit - iConsole. And it will be powered by an Intel processor. Intel got pushed out the game console business by IBM, and they’ve never gotten over it. But there’s a new Intel now, they’ve got great new processors, and a new attitude about how one deals with customers, and hence the Air that I spoke about last week.

Apple will lead Intel back into the game console business. In fact, the iGame may even have a Intel processor it in. Intel thinks it can scale down the Penryn to any application level, Apple’s iGame may be just the test platform Intel is looking for.

And of course the iGame and the iConsole will do everything the Wii does, and more. In fact, it’s not Microsoft or Sony that scares Nintendo — it’s Apple.

Next week I’m sending our lawyers down to Cupertino to start the NDA negotiations with Apple so we can become a beta site - I hope this isn’t going to cost me too much.

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Sunday, February 03, 2008

A Theory About PC Gaming

A simple proposition: most modern PC gaming requires deeper thought and higher analytical skills than console gaming, and therefore is better for the human brain. 

Pretty obviously, this is a theory of mine made without scientific research but I’m willing to wager there is a neuroscientist out there who would agree with me. I look to two major components to back up this theory: game play complexity and system complexity.

Game play complexity

The most obvious difference between PC Gaming and Console Gaming is the number of control combinations that are possible in PC gaming — essentially every key on a keyboard in many PC games can be "bound" to specific game actions. Console controllers are much more limited.

The artificial intelligence of NPCs (non player characters) is another component which can make a PC game more complex. PCs are upgraded more than consoles and committed gamers tend to upgrade their systems more often. As a result, the processing power of a PC on average has been much higher than game consoles, which accomodates more complex AI. The result is more challenging game play.

Graphical complexity also adds to the human processing requirement and the need for more thought. As mentioned earlier, gamers tend to have newer PCs with advanced features. While the most recent HD console generation allows for 1920 x 1080 resolution; gaming PCs meet that and raise the ante in terms of the number of pixels that can be displayed onscreen, coupled with memory for the storage of objects, and textures, and the processing power to place them. Because of this factor, game designers have more latitude to create finer detailed visual cues and clues — pushing the human brain to think more when experiencing them.

Resource management and a number of other factors could also be used as examples but this depends on the specific type of game being played.

Software and system complexity

PC gaming, with its higher use of user generated content requires the player to be familiar with the file structure of the software being used. How do I install the mod? Where to I put the map files? How do I make a mod or map? These mods can create system and software conflicts which the user must research and solve. Which file do I delete to make it work again? Etc.

Software tweaking is another factor which increases the complexity in PC gaming. Even first person shooters, dismissed by some as "brainless twitch games" push the user to think about how to improve their experience. A plethora of configuration factors in many PC games allow the user to change their config files so that the field of view (FOV) is different, RAM usage more efficient, etc. — even more so in multiplayer modes where users tweak their config files to stabilize their server ping, data rates, frames per second, and other factors.

Hardware customization is another important element which comes into play. PC gamers often install their own components; attempt to mitigate system heat in a number of ways, and "tweak" a number of other settings in their systems, all of which requires them to become more knowledgeable about the workings of a computer and what to do when something goes wrong.

Conclusion

Though playing video games is mainly done for fun, and the benefit of a console is system stability and a common user experience — it is precisely these factors that limit the thought required to play the games and run the system. Add the higher complexity of the game play experience and wider creative latitude for user generated content, and people may want to think twice about where to spend their gaming dollars for themselves or their children.

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Saturday, February 02, 2008

PMA in Las Vegas: new cameras cover old ground

The groundhog poked his nose out of his house and apparently he did not like what he saw — or maybe he did. I get confused. Whatever happened with the U.S. weather rodent, whether he went back in his hole or came out and danced, his priests declared six more weeks of winter. This came as little surprise to people in the U.S. who have been enduring generally awful weather across the country.

In Las Vegas the weather was bright and sunny if a tad on the cold side causing the Las Vegans to wear mittens and the rest of us to laugh at them. I was in Las Vegas for the PMA show &ndash the photography industry conference. This year the show took place at the same time as the Shot Show a gun show. Get it?

The gun lovers were in the North Halls and the camera lovers were in the South Halls. I would go into the differences between the two different groups but that way leads to trouble. I will put it this way, in most cases it was pretty clear what doors people would be using and with whom it might be wise to avoid spirited discussion. Cab drivers made a point to ascertain excactly what kinds of shots you were likely to take, snapshots or pot shots, before they let loose with any opinions.

I’m in the process of writing up the PMA show for TechWatch but I can tell you this right now.Hold off on buying a camera. There is some really good stuff coming down the pike, or will be as soon as the camera manufacturers can get their heads around the idea that consumers expect really new features and capabilities — not incremental upgrades before they’ll abandon their cameras that are doing the job for new cameras that will do the job better. Some of the trends you’ll be seeing include:

* 14.2 MP cameras in all ranges because that’s the point at which digital meets the capabilities of 35mm film
* Low end digital SLR cameras with through the LCD view finding. (Yes, that is kind of a contradiction in terms but camera users have come to like composing through the LCD)
* Tiltable LCDs for DSLRs
* HD video for DSCs

So, why wait? If you bought a camera three or four years ago, there might not be enough of an advantage for you move up. Do you really need a few more megapixels? And, yes, through the LCD view finding is cool, but haven’t you already adjusted back to through the lens? Personally, I’m holding out for a new camera with a full frame sensor that doesn’t require me to take out a loan to buy it or a bionic arm to hold it up for any length of time.

In the DSC range, I could go for a DSC with really good video. I don’t have to have HD — it takes up too much storage space — but I would like to have one small camera for snapshots and video. I keep getting lectures from well-intentioned manufacturers who tell me good video and good still photography can not co-exist in one sensor.  With the videos I shoot, however, I’m not sure quality is so important. It’s just important that I have the camera with me. For the most part products at PMA seemed to represent upgrades to the products that came out last year. Give it six months and see what the companies have to offer. Frankly, I’m going to wait until next year ... maybe.

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Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Ink — I love ink

Electronic ink or electronic paper (e-paper) was developed in the 1970s by Nick Sheridon at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center and it was called Gyricon. Its technical name is electrophoretic display meaning a display that forms visible images by rearranging charged pigment particles (i.e., powder like substances) using an applied electric field.

In the early 2000s the technology began to gain some traction and looked like it could be mass produced, albeit in small sizes. One of its first commercial applications was for the second display on mobile phones, and in 2001 E Ink and Philips Components announced plans to jointly develop high-resolution electronic ink displays for handheld devices such as PDAs and electronic books.

And then it all went quiet.

But at last year’s 3GSM conference (fro mobile phones, in Barcelona) I found the first early production rollup displays from the Philips spin-off, Polymer Vision. Needless to say, this long-anticipated and -wanted technology got lots attention from both the fans and the curious. The product itself is called Readius and is based on the organic/polymer TFT technology Philips invented.

But prior to that Sony released an e-book reader in 2004, when it introduced its first e-paper device, the Librié, in Japan. It didn’t hit the US or Europe until 2006, and it was re-christened Ebook. It’s been the darling of commuters and technophiles ever since. That is until December 2007.

Kindle

In December, in one of the best executed PR programs since the iPhone, Amazon announced and then released the Kindle. It was the Ebook only better. A slightly larger display, and always on-line for almost instant down loading of books, and web surfing.

Kindle had all the things Sony’s Ebook didn’t; granted, Amazon had two plus years to figure it out. Nonetheless it was sold out the day it went on sale (300k units we were told) and was in such demand (mind you this was just before the holidays) that they were being bid up to $1,500 on eBay (The retail price from Amazon was $399.)

I’m reviewing the product for our Mount Tiburon Testing Labs and that will appear in a week or so on our front page.

But it’s the ink I want to talk about. I won’t go into a lengthy technobabble discussion about the polarization, molecules, powders or polymers, rather I want to speak about how damn great it looks.

The display uses reflected light – just like a book. That’s right, lights out – no more reading. But the display is so sharp and has such a high contrast ratio similar to that of a newspaper, and a very large viewing angle unlike many LCDs, that when people first encounter it they don’t believe it’s not back lit. It also has another interesting characteristic, albeit its use is not clear. The display leaves a ghost-like reanimate of the book on the screen when turned off. I kind of like that, it makes me feel like it’s ready to leap into action and bring the latest thriller to me.

And when its on, it looks like newspaper.

The kindle is a white package with a liquid paper display

There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that this is the wave of the future. By 2014 e-paper made with electrophoretic materials reach almost $2.0 billion in sales, with liquid crystal based e-paper at $1.5 billion and electrochromic e-paper at just under a $1.0 billion.

The next challenge for the liquid ink folks is to produce color.  They’ve got red and some green working, but blue is a challenge still. And the color, as of now seems to have slowed the response time of the display down a little. I haven’t heard about the contrast ratios. There have also been some interesting experiments using two color powders and RGBW color filters combined with the powder.

For electronic books I don’t see the immediate need, although one can envision color illustrations and from there how about my entire Batman comic book library on my Kindle?

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Monday, January 21, 2008

My CES

Behold the Consumer Electronics Show, an almost legendary annual occurrence which draws well over a hundred thousand people to Las Vegas. Being a gaming analyst the acronym CES would be more aptly defined as the Computer Entertainment Show, at least that’s what I was looking for.

My CES experience started before I even left the ground of San Francisco International Airport. I was flying Richard Branson’s new airline Virgin America, and Virgin has recognized that consumer electronics have become an important element in attracting airline customers. Their new entertainment, information, and communication system, which they call Red, allows passengers to watch, play, surf, buy, and message - all from the comfort of their airline seat.  It is way more than a novelty and kept me enchanted for the majority of the flight. The system uses a traditional armrest control, with a removable “remote”. However this is more than just a remote, on the flipside is a full function video game controller as well as a decent sized QWERTY keyboard. (see figures 1 and 2). Airline passengers are able to text message / chat and play games with and against passengers in other seats.

Figures 1 and 2: Virgin"s Red In-Flight Entertainment, Communication, Information, Shopping and Food/Drink ordering system.  (Source: JPR)

My first impression of the actual show was “Uh - oh, two days will not be enough time to do what I want to do”. Having attended big game industry shows such as E3 and graphics shows like Siggraph, I thought this couldn’t be much different. Boy was I wrong. My goal was to walk the ENTIRE show, spending quality time at any booth or display that I encountered and attracted my interest. This was simply impossible and when I told people what I wanted to do in the time frame that I had, they gave me the same look that tourists get in Paris when they announce that they planning to go through the Louvre Museum in a day or two.

There was an air of happiness in the environment, attendees seemed genuinely excited and optimistic about their products and the prospect of successful business in 2008, shrugging off predictions of doom and gloom yet letting the economists sometimes dire warnings sharpen their business acumen and perhaps temper unnecessary spending by their companies.

On the gaming front CES had almost no representative by the software companies. CES was the ruled on the gaming front by hardware and peripherals and it was a refreshing and educational change from the normal troupe of attendees.

There was a huge presence of companies selling various designs of “gaming furniture”. (see figures 3-5) On the low end this represented beanbag simple floor chairs made for pulling up in front of the television for use with the various gaming consoles. In the mid priced area there were full size chairs in various designs ranging from rockers to office like chairs. Many incorporated speaker and rumblers - devices built into the furniture that shake and simulate the rumble of deep bass induced sensations such as a cars powerful engine. Repose, Boomchair, Pyramint, and ACE Bayou were among the companies displaying their wares. Also at the show was Buttkicker Corp - they make a rumbler made to attach to your existing office chair and other types of furniture.

Figures 3-5: Competitive Comfort: Gaming and Media Furniture were well represented at CES (Source: JPR)

In the high end for gamers there were companies selling entire frames (such as HotSeat - see figure 6) with built in chair to simulate a cockpit environment and allow mounting of steering wheels, flight sticks, and various other simulation paraphernalia. As well as full packages that include everything for driving fans.

Figures 6-7: Hotseat simulator frame, seat, and mounting system and Virtual GT Driving Sim Cockpit (Source: JPR)

At the extreme high end, some companies had cockpit systems that included hydraulic actuators (DBox - Figure 8) to create motion and in one case a cockpit specifically designed for flight sims which could tilt the monitors and simulate tilt when the aircraft is banked. (Dreamflyer - Figure 9). DBox representatives claim their hydraulic actuators have a 5000 hour lifespan which is fairly robust.

Figures 8 - 9 It doesn’t get much better than this: Hydraulic Actuators and Tilting Cockpits (Source: JPR)

The next thing I noticed at CES was the amazing number of companies “hopping on the Wii bandwagon”. There were at least 15 companies displaying Wii accessories and customization. As soon as I saw the Wii Zapper last year (their gun controller) I predicted someone would soon be making more realistic looking Wii controller holders and this turned out to be correct. A few companies actually departed from the innocent white coloring and had more realistic looking black ones but the most impressive display of Wii accessories came from CTA Corporation. Not only do they have a full line of gun Wii remote holders (Figure 10), they have Wii steering wheels, airplane yokes, fishing rods, ping pong paddles, baseball bat, pool stick, tennis racket, golf club, boxing gloves, cooking items and swords and shields. All these accessories actually hold the Nintendo Wii controllers. Additionally they have Wii cooling stands, grips and myriad other accessories. Not a Nintendo exclusive accessory company CTA has items for PS3, PSP, PC and IPod. They have a battery and charger division, digital photo frames, and well – too much stuff to list. Check them out they have a great portfolio of products.

Figure 10: Wii Mote Guns from CTA (Source: JPR)

My personal favorite at the show, which is actually financially attainable for most PC gamers (versus $10,000 cockpits), were the AIB water cooling kits from Cool-It systems. These things look awesome and I look forward to tesing it out. Though Cool-It makes various styles of water coolers for both AMD and Nvidia cards, the key elements are the fact that they can be ordered factory sealed which takes a lot of the fear out of converting your system. Many models cool the entire card (figure 11), not just the GPU. Witnessing the evil that heat does to gaming performance on a daily basis, I really think water cooling is the way to go, unless your air cooling is perfectly planned out which is very difficult.

Figure 11: Cool-It Full Card Cooling - notice the tubes going all over the place (Source: JPR)

Geoff Lyon, CEO of Cool-It (Figure 12) was there to take me though their products which consisted primarily of card coolers but his current pride and joy is his sever rack automated cooling systems which he is pictured with. The rack system detects hotspots and applies increased airflow to specific areas versus the entire rack or room, saving on energy expense.

Figure 12: Geoff Lyon and the automated rack cooling system.

So CES will definitely be a regular pilgrimage for me now that I know about the large representation for the gaming industry. This side (chairs, sim pods, coolers, speakers, etc) of the products line is not well represented at typical gaming conventions yet are multi billion dollar businesses. Next year I will plan on at least three – four days. 

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Friday, January 18, 2008

MacWorld — love it or love it

Every danged time I got to MacWorld I kill myself trying to get to the keynote. Okay, so I maybe I don’t give myself enough time. But it seems to be that getting on the 7:50 a.m. ferry for a 9:30 keynote, should be enough time. It’s only a 20 minute walk to the convention center.

Unfortunately, the MacWorld organizers have a whimsical sense of humor. They move the press registration every year and then they plant doofusses at key points to send you to the wrong place. Go to the West Hall, all press go to the West Hall said the doofus chorus. And every danged time, I fall for it. I ran around from the North Hall to the West Hall and finally to the South Hall where I belonged (I know this means nothing to people who aren’t familiar with San Francisco, but just substitute your own most hideous trade show experience, multiply it by at least 3 years and you’ll get the idea.) By the time I got my butt in a seat in the auditorium, I was hating life, hating my inability to schedule appropriately for unexpected surprises (well, hello, they were unexpected, right?), hating all the hundreds of people sitting in front of me, and most of all hating Steve Jobs. Dammit, why do I have to run around dancing to Apple’s tune when they don’t give a good gol durned dingity’poop about me.

You’ll excuse my French.

And then the keynote started, Steve Jobs took the stage exuding aging boomer cool, and soon I found myself texting my husband — I want an iPhone, now dammit, now!

Apple finally announced a deal, long in the negotiating, to rent moves via iTunes and smugly told the crowd he’d won over all the major studios.  Apple reloaded the Apple TV box so that now rented iTunes can play on TVs connected to the Apple TV, and Apple announced the new Air laptop. It’s a beautiful, thin, 3 lb laptop with a full size screen, full size keyboard, and remarkable 5 hours battery life.  I want it. It’s beautiful. It’s Apple. It costs $1799 for the 80 GB hard drive version. It costs, ummm, $3,098 for the 64 GB solid state drive version. The battery is non-replaceable. Who cares? I want it.

Now, for my money, here was the most important part of the show. Steve Jobs told us that we could have an optical drive for this nifty little Air. No big deal, it’s a simple matter of adding an external USB drive. Blu-Ray? HD-DVD? Sure, fine, knock yourself out but the future is the network. You’ll get whatever you want from the Apple network, from iTunes. Download what you want when you want it.

The future is also Adobe Air, Google, and the whole server-centric lot of them, said Jobs. If you’re old enough, and much of the Steve Jobs fan club is, you’ll remember that this was much the same message of the NeXT computer that Steve Jobs tried to sell after he was booted out of Apple for reasons that are way too complicated, arcane, and boring to go into here. Jobs wanted to sell a client computer that was as expensive as a regular computer. It didn’t have a floppy drive, it didn’t have a disc drive, it got everything it needed from the network. It made us really nervous.

The AIR is NeXT again and this time there is a whole infrastructure, called the Internet, to support it and it is beautiful. It just goes to show that if you live long enough all the stuff you thought was going to happen tomorrow really will happen — the day after tomorrow.

So, what’s with all those glum faces on the elevator? It wasn’t enough. You can ask Scott McNealy of Sun and you can ask Larry Ellison of Oracle and you can ask Eric Schmidt of Google, and they will tell you that the network is god but no one really understands the gospel. Steve Jobs has just wandered out into the wilderness.

The early word is that the investment community and others are disappointed with the Apple announcements. Everyone saw movie rentals coming. The Apple TV is an orphan no one loves. And the AIR? Why it’s wonderful, but it’s no iPod, and it’s no iPhone. Steve, what have you done for us lately?

In the end, the prophets in the wilderness will be proved right. They are working behind the scenes to redefine our world, but we won’t really notice just as long as we can watch Banacek any time we please. We won’t really notice that it’s not NBC who’s bringing us our entertainment, it’s Apple, or Microsoft, or Amazon. 

The revolution will come but you’ll miss it because you’ll be watching TV.

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Friday, October 26, 2007

Oh god, please don’t let us screw it up

That’s the prayer of the Internet dependent as we all enjoy another growth period.

And then comes the news that Microsoft has outbid all comers for the “privilege” of investing $240 million bucks in Facebook, the latest thing in social networking ... probably. Microsoft’s investment legitimizes a valuation of $15 billion for Facebook. I know I’m not the first to make this observation but that’s more than the valuation of many companies that actually design and build products, popular products! There are news stories all over the place about this—the AP story gets right to the heart of it.

Much is being made of Rupert Murdoch’s “brilliance” in paying a measley $580 million for MySpace for News Corp. but in the long run, Microsoft could well have the better deal. MySpace, dominated by teen screamers, pre-teens, and stalkers is slowing down and losing relevance for adult users. Facebook has a more grownup appeal and is growing faster than it’s more adolescent rival. In addition Facebook has added attractive development tools for advertisers and partners.

But the most important advantage Microsoft may have is that they didn’t actually buy Facebook (and founder Mark Zuckerberg isn’t selling for the moment either). Microsoft has made a deal to sell advertising for the site and share the proceeds and no doubt the new partners have plenty of plans for new revenue sharing opportunities but an outright buy might never be in the cards. (Here we are firmly in what-do-I-know territory.)

Shawnee sniffed that all this smelled like irrational exhuberance to her and she’s right, if a tad glib. The key to social networking is very likely to turn out to be not about individual sites like MySpace, Facebook, Friendster (remember them?), LinkedIn, or any other of growing list of affinity sites. Rather, it’s the enhanced ability of people to communicate and network online.  After all, how is a site like Facebook all that different from a site like ExtremeTech, or Hot Topic? Sites come and go, becoming popular and then fading as users wander off to play with a new toy. When a site is hot, then by all means buy in, get leverage, buy advertising, make strategic deals but when it fades do you want to be the guy holding the bag with a $580 million or $15 billion price tag? I think not.

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Monday, October 15, 2007

Web 2.0 or deja vu all over again?

I was at dinner with some very interesting and urbane executive types in Boston recently. The subject of what’s next/what’s the latest trend/where’s the money came up as it inevitably does. We were talking about Web 2.0 and how interesting it all was that MySpace had become so last 20 minutes ago in the space of uh, 30 minutes. Now it’s all about Facebook said one of my dinner partners.

Really? Why in the world should Facebook prevail where Friendster and MySpace have failed? Doesn’t all this Web 2.0 stuff have the stench of doom wafting all around it? It’s nice to think of building communities around a group of friends, but a lot of work goes into personal sites for questionable gain and building networks of strangers for the sake of adding huge numbers of names seems a pointless exercise (There’s an interesting story in Wired News on this subject by the way: http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/10/getting-anti--s.html.). Think about it, are the people you know on LinkedIn more valuable because they have more links? A look through your lists will no doubt reveal that some of the most important people you know don’t have all that many links—they’re too busy.

What we have also discovered the very hard way is the dark side of community. We probably all have some kid friends or relatives who have utterly appalling MySpace sites where they’ve revealed information no one wants to know, have indulged in public spats, and posted party pics that make Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan look like sober citizens. And there are just about as many ugly stories about bullying and stalking as there are stories in the Naked City.

So, there will definitely be new sites coming along that are cooler than the last ones and there’ll be new twists on the community model to make it appeal to specific niches but none of this is all that new. From the day there was an Internet there were grumpy math professors sending flames that criticized each other for dicey science or poor word choices. There were public bulletin boards where trolls roamed free spewing hatred and vitriol because they had nothing better to do. The mediums may have changed but humans seem to stay pretty much the same.

This is not to say there’s no point in innovating or building on the interesting applications that are appearing. Each new iteration of an idea is generally better. For example, it’s much better to interact with each other by trading picture, videos, and music. Many real friendships have formed thanks to better and more varied ways to communicate. And I have reconnected with lost friends via LinkedIn. That one thing alone helps justify the pointless adding of connections and friends.

I can’t wait to see what comes next but I’m not quite ready to bet on what’s happening now. 

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