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 ...
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.
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.
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.
DEMOfall, which launched this morning in San Diego, is the final Demo for longtime Executive Producer Chris Shipley. During Shipley's opening remarks, replacement Matt Marshall jumped in to interrupt a couple of times, seemingly playing Kanye West to Shipley's Taylor Swift.
This was somewhat amusing but, as always, the most important thing about Demo is the new products that launch there.
My colleague Don Reisinger recently wrote an article where he talked about the rise of netbooks and stated how they were not yet enterprise ready, pointing out their inability to multitask, connect securely to company networks and handle business class graphics tasks.
I have to admit I was a little bit surprised by Don's article, especially since, as I was reading it, I was on my own netbook, running multiple applications, including Adobe's latest Creative Suite graphics applications and connecting to my office network over a VPN connection.
So what gives? Is Don just wrong to state that netbooks are not yet enterprise ready?
While I've had the chance to test out and try various netbooks, I haven't actually been a netbook owner, that is until just about a week ago when I plopped down my own cash and picked one up.
Scratch that. I was a netbook owner in the past, they just didn't call it that back then. Years ago I was a very happy owner of a tiny Sony Vaio that would have fit in nicely with today's netbook crowd.
I always loved the lightweight and small size of that Vaio so as netbooks grew in stature and increased in power and capabilities that approximate full size laptops, I knew that I would eventually get one.
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.
