Another 40th anniversary… the Internet!

October 30th, 2009

On the 29th of October 1969, the first two servers were interconnected between UCLA’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and Stanford Research Institute. They eventually became ARPANET, the predecessor of today’s Internet.

40 years ago in the Universe…

October 12th, 2009

40 years ago, in 1969, a man made his first step on the Moon.

apollo11boot

At the same time a boy made his first sight of the Earth. What have these two man have in common?
Omega Speedmaster watch!

apollo11speedmaster

Apollo 11 images courtesy of NASA

30 Years of Sony TPS-L2

July 3rd, 2009

Obviously the model number above does not tell you much. If I tell you, 30 years from the launch of the first Walkman? Yes, in 1979, Sony launched its first personal mobile stereo system. Better known as Walkman, that small device marked decades to come and generations with “music everywhere”. These days, no more tapes, but we can’t live without the music around us, in our pockets within iPods, in our mobile phones…

Unlike Newton’s apple falling from a tree on his head, Apple computers are on the rise

July 2nd, 2009

Even during the current economic slowdown when all computer distributors and manufacturers report drop in sales, I suggest that Apple is on the rise. Report sales of Apple Macs in quarter 2 of the fiscal year ending in March 2009 was 3% lower than the Q2 2008, totaling 2.22 million Macs sold. In Q3 of the last year Apple sold total of 2.496 million Macs. This year third quarter was marked with new Mac releases, characterized with lower prices and increased performance. In addition, traditional iPod offering for students who purchase a new Mac is already available at the beginning of summer instead of waiting for early September. I’ve already witnessed new Macs among friends and colleagues, although at this time people usually save money for vacations.
Whatever results in Mac sales Apple announces for Q3 2009 at the end of July, the trend in Mac popularity over Windows based PCs is much higher. Add to that the announced upgrade of the Operating System announced for September and you’ll get the bunch of happy new Mac users…
If Apple would consider selling Mac OS independently from Mac computers, I am sure it would generate an army of fresh Apple users just like new flocks of iPhone users migrate from other mobile phone vendors daily…

Unhappy users of Nokia OVI store

June 29th, 2009

My last post on Nokia Ovi application store seems to proove the points. One month after its launch the online store provokes negative impressions and comments on the Internet. I’ll cite one of them related to poor customer support posted by Matthew Miller on Nokia Experts blog.  I totally agree with arguments in that article and comments from Nokia users. In this time of economic slow down when users are desperately trying to get more for less, Nokia allows such an arogance to strip down the customer support to lower levels yet rise high revenue margins for their application distribution services. That obviously does not make them competitive to other mobile phone and application developpers and they continue to loose the market.

Last weekend I’ve met friends, a small mobile application development team, and discussed their view on the future of Nokia. They’ve totally agree that Nokia’s attitude does not favour small developers with restricted budget and they are turning to Apple. I bet there are many others in the mobile development industry that will follow the same trend with catastrophic results of Nokia Ovi store. That explains why there is such a poor offer of new contents for Nokia phones. Nokia continues its old strategy to release plenty of new phone models but they don’t realize that it is not what customers want.

Now I’ve regret even less that I’ve switched from N95 to iPhone…