Ahh, I love my modern digital lifestyle, especially when it comes to being out, whether traveling or just moving around the city. It's great that I can walk around with a music collection that dwarfs my old college record collection, that I can have several books in my pocket ready to read whenever I want and that I can snap a picture or video of anything I see.
So what am I doing? Am I walking around with an MP3 player, an e-book reader, a digital camera and a digital camcorder?
Nope, just one device, my BlackBerry smartphone, which lets me listen to music, read books, take pictures and video, and, oh, yeah, make calls, play games, manage contacts ...
Right now many companies are looking to go green, and while some are doing it out of a feeling of environmental responsibility, there are many that are doing it mainly in the hope of saving some green.
This has led many businesses to look for more efficient server room hardware, desktops and office environmental systems. But what about your computer monitors? Like TVs, monitors can often be energy hogs.
Not surprisingly, vendors have started to introduce green computer monitors, and I recently had the chance to test out a new one from NEC.
Click here to see the slide show When I heard the recent announcement about Wi-Fi Direct, a proposed method to make it possible for Wi-Fi devices to connect to each other seamlessly without the need of access points, I had a common reaction to a new technology: excitement, tinged with fear.
The part of me that's a tech enthusiast thought, this could be really cool. Letting Wi-Fi-enabled devices easily connect to each other will ease a lot of connection hassles, and probably kill Bluetooth along the way.
Though DEMOfall just finished a few weeks ago, the push is already on to get ready for the next Demo in early 2010. And the first step took place in Boston on Oct. 22.
The Boston Demo meeting was the first of a string of Demo Meetups. These meetups, which will be held in cities across the world in coming weeks, bring together Demo alumni companies, VCs, press and new startup companies that could be showing at future Demo shows.
At the Demo Meetup in Boston, eWEEK Chief Technology Analyst Jim Rapoza spoke to Demo Executive Producer Matt Marshall about how the Demo Meetups work.
Click here to see the slideshow By introducing the concept of a low cost and easy to use digital camcorder, the Flip essentially started a revolution in video recording by anyone at anytime. But recently there's been a disconnect in the line of Flip digital camcorders.
That's because, while the Flip MinoHD is their highest priced (at $229.99) and ostensibly highest quality camcorder, in recent months it has been eclipsed by the lower priced (at $199.99) Flip UltraHD, which had higher quality HD video and two hours of recording time versus the MinoHD's one hour.
But with the recent release of the latest Flip MinoHD, all is right in the Flip universe and the MinoHD once again gains its place at the top of the Flip line. In fact, this is easily the best Flip camcorder I've ever used.
If I had to stand behind one prediction on where high-tech devices are going, I'd pick my strong belief that single-purpose devices are going the way of the dodo.
I mean, why carry a device that only does one thing when you can carry something that does lots of things? I know I'd rather have one device that does many things fairly well than a device that does one thing really well.
And you can see this playing out in the market. Single-purpose music players are on their way out (even Apple knows this), and I don't think dedicated e-book readers have much of a long-term future either (sorry Kindle).
Calling people on your cell phone can often be a hit or miss proposition. If someone isn't in your address book or contacts and you don't have their number, finding it while out on the street can be a chore.
Cortera is an online service that provides credit information on businesses large and small but then combines it with ratings from a community of small business owners, who provide feedback both good and bad on these businesses. This makes it possible for a small business to know which companies are likely to be good business partners and which ones they might want to avoid.
Turning a GPS-enabled smartphone into a navigation system isn't really that new. But turning it into a crowd-sourced system for not only getting directions but also detecting traffic problems and even mapping new roads is a pretty interesting idea.
Right now many companies are looking to go green, and while some are doing it out of a feeling of environmental responsibility, there are many that are doing it mainly in the hope of saving some green.
If I had to stand behind one prediction on where high-tech devices are going, I'd pick my strong belief that single-purpose devices are going the way of the dodo.
