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Giga What, Giga Who?
Okay, so this blog is really just a menagerie of thoughts and topics ... that's right, I used the word "menagerie" and yes I know what it means. If you asked me if I used a thesaurus, I would tell you, "let's not bring dinosaurs into this discussion". And if you didn't get that joke, then stop reading this blog, now. There's no real method to the madness here ... just madness.So let me start off by talking a bit about Geekmas aka Macworld. I have to say that while I'm extremely impressed in the MacBook Air, I can't figure out for the life of me what market this fits in. Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love it, and the impractical side of me wants one, but the practical side of me says that I can get a MacBook cheaper with much more internally. Apple is really going to have to work to make this product stick with consumers.
While I'm talking about Apple, it seems as if the iPhone has really been accepted pretty well, while it has been documented that Apple is not necessarily hitting it's sales goal, you can't deny that Apple capturing 28% of the U.S. Smartphone market, only second to the juggernaut known as RIM (aka Blackberry) which has a sizable lead at 41%, is impressive for a first year product. It seems that Apple has really stepped to the plate and hit a homerun with the wildly popular iPhone and not one to stay complacent, Apple today has announced a new 16GB version of the iPhone. Did your Spidey-senses start tingling? Mine did ... or maybe that was something else (what?). Apple still has some work to do on the iPhone, especially if they'd like to compete with RIM. A few things that immediately come to mind are MMS messaging and more business apps. Hopefully we start to see some business apps make their way to the iPhone with the new iPhone SDK that will open the platform to developers for custom Apps (available sometime this month).
So while Apple is feverishly gaining marketshare in the smartphone arena, it seems as if another smartphone/SmartOS maker is, slowly but surely, getting pushed out of the market. Palm, which owns only 9% of the U.S. market, has started to close all of it's retail store and is paying out Treo owners. Sucks for all of you Treo owners who use the Palm OS. You might have to go to Windows Ce. I guess that's what happens when you're in a market already dominated by the Blackberry, and not only that Apple, the new kid on the block, steps in and makes you look like Bimbo Coles trying to man-up Michael Jordan (i.e. foolish).
Microsoft has recently attempted to acquire Yahoo!, for a reported 42 billion dollars. You'd think that they'd try to get their operating system fixed before they start trying new things, but I guess the fact that Vista is floundering doesn't really matter too much. It would seem that MS would like to try to challenge Google's dominance in the search/advertising market. But it's still befuddling to me how MS and Yahoo! are going to make this work. Who's going to take over the email system, what about the IM? There seems to be a good number of questions that need to be answered and for right now, if the acquisition goes through, we'll be forced to wait and see. Then on top of all of those questions, the biggest question still remains ... can they compete with Google? I mean seriously, the term "web search" has been replaced with "google", it used to be, "I'll do a web search to see if I can find a used pair of ice tongs." and now it's, "Yeah, I'll just Google 'used ice tongs' and see what I get.". That's pretty tough to compete with.
More acquisitions of note, Sun Microsystems is making an attempt to acquire, the world's most popular open-source database, MySQL ... actually, do any of you really care about that, or am I just too much of a dork? Don't answer that ... moving on!
It seems as if Time Warner can't get enough of limiting it's customer-base when it comes to internet usage. Time Warner has been considering a "charge per-gigabyte" fee for internet service. A leaked memo revealed that TW is currently monitoring how many gigabytes their customers use in a "consumption-based" pricing experiment in Texas. Apparently Comcast is also evaluating a similar pricing model. Um, giga-wtf? There's no way this is even a good idea. Not for consumers anyway. Having to pay for your internet in the form of tier-based pricing, means that not only are you constantly under the watchful eye of your ISP, what happens when you don't know that you went over your gigabyte limit? Does it work like when you go over your minutes on your cell-phone? Will you have to pay a certain amount per-gig? This just doesn't make much sense.
I'm going to end this now, but before I go, does anyone have a copy of Madden '08 for XBOX 360 that they want to get rid of? Mine got all scratched up from me playing it way too much, now it wont play and apparently tears don't fix a scratched disc. Speaking of video games Call Of Duty 4 makes me happy, it's possibly the best first person shooter I have ever played ... ever! And if you don't agree, I'll fight you.
Other things that make me happy you ask? The Mars Volta's new album The Bedlam In Goliath does. I can't help but listen to it all the way through whenever I try to listen to any of the songs. If you're a fan of Progressive Metal, you'll love this album. It's got so many time changes you feel like you have jetlag.
Also, the Superbowl made me happy. Possibly one of the best Superbowls I've seen in a very long time. Congrats to any Giants fans out there, hell of a game you guys played. The best thing about the Superbowl being over, at least now I know who the Redskins will have as head coach ... hopefully soon.
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