| A Laptop Innovation We All Need |
 Intel and AMD are making processors faster, ATI and nVidia continue to accelerate graphics and video, while faster memory and buses underpin both. Meanwhile, hard disks are spinning a bit faster, but getting bigger at the same time. Maybe I am wrong, but it seems like hard disk access speed continues to be the bottleneck. So can our laptops really get much faster?
The answer is hopefully yes, and here is an idea that hopefully will make them faster and more reliable at the same time. Some of you may have heard of SSD (Solid State Disk), but probably only a handful of you have ever had your hands on a machine with one built-in. For those who don't know what an SSD is, it is a small capacity "disk" made of flash memory chips that retain information without power. ..............................................................Read more |
| Followup - The Future of Broadcast Television |
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I finally got my password to the beta program for hulu.com and I must say it is what I thought it would be, a site where you can watch advertising-supported Fox and NBC programming for free. This article is a followup on innovation article #75 of November 11, 2007. ABC.com has been doing this for some time, but this marks the first time that two competing networks have gotten together to share development costs on such a venture. The real question is not whether it will be successful or not, but how successful it might be.
The site sounds a near-certain death knell on iTunes future capacity to offer television content profitably. ABC already has their content for free online, and now NBC and Fox do as well. While some people may want to be able to watch content without commercials, I surely doubt that the size of that market segment are going to be large enough to make it worth the investment in servers and development cost, not to mention marketing and other costs. People that are that adamant about not having commercials, and are willing to pay for that privilege, will surely spring for the DVD instead. ................................................................................Read more |
