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  • The Paradox of Consumer Choice
    A few years ago I read a book called The Paradox of Choice: Why Less is More by Barry Schwartz. His anecdotes were insightful and pointed to truths about the amount of choice the free market has laid on us as consumers. Of course free markets and consumer choice should be good things, but there are certainly experiences I have had where the overwhelming sense of having too many options made it difficult to actually make a decision. I related to much of what the book was saying, particularly with the experience of picking out a DVD to watch from my massive collection. I recall staring at a wall of DVDs and having the most difficult time deciding what to watch. The decision-making process when faced with so many good choices was simply immobilizing.  
  • The Future of PC and Mobile Processors

    I've spent a lot of time with a number of hardware manufacturers recently, trying to get a glimpse into the next generation of processors and the ways in which they'll impact future gadgets and PCs. In all my meetings, one term has arisen time and again: SOC, or system-on-a-chip.

    Traditionally, chips have been created independently and then coupled together to provide multiple computing features. For example, a manufacturer would create a core processor like an Intel Centrino with a built-in Wi-Fi radio, and then attach that to a systems board, perhaps linking it together with a separate graphics co-processor, in order to deliver enhanced PC graphics. Another might take an ARM core processor and then add on additional features like extended graphics to enhance device functionality.

  • Apple's iPad: Live up the Hype? It Will....
    It was interesting to hear all the chatter after last week's iPad launch. Most reactions I heard from other analysts and media were lukewarm at best...which was what I expected. If you think about it, how can anything live up to the kind of hype leading up to this launch? But there was a lot missed in the media about the event and the product that I hope to share in order to maintain our perspective on not only the iPad but on Apple and their products.  
  • Innovation Abounds - CES 2010 Post Show Analysis

    This year's CES was very interesting. I had felt for the past few years that CES was sorely lacking in the innovation department. But this year it looks like things have changed in the technology industry. Technology companies have realized that to reach the consumer the pace of innovation needs to accelerate, and this year's CES was a start in that direction.  Several things stuck out that I'd like to highlight:  

Adobe's Publishing Revolution

Written by Tim Bajarin Monday, 14 December 2009 16:12

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Adobe is one of the most important companies in this industry. The nearly ubiquitous Flash player has put it on most users' radar, but the Adobe's real mark is the role it has played pushing forward desktop and Web-based publishing.

Adobe was founded by John Warnock and Chuck Geshke, two former Xerox PARC employees who developed Postscript, a printer language that helped launch the publishing revolution in 1985. It was Warnock who convinced Steve Jobs to back the language in the first Apple laser printer. This, coupled with Aldus's Pagemaker software helped Apple establish the de facto Mac desktop publishing standard, which vaunted the company to national attention in the business world.

Today, Adobe continues to innovate in the publishing space. The company has introduced products like Acrobat, Flash, and AIR and continues to create great tools for anyone publishing documents and media in one form or another. But it's Adobe's recent announcement of its InDesign CS4 tool that could perhaps be its most important product when it comes to the future of publishing.

Over the last few weeks, I have written a couple of columns predicting that a new generation of smartphones and mini-tablets will eventually become mobile platforms for multimedia e-books. I also suggested that the days of the standalone e-book reader may be numbered, due to the potential role these emerging devices might play as vehicles for delivering next generation multimedia content and e-books.

But if these devices are going to emerge and become successful, we will need new publishing tools and standards. These will help publishers create rich content combining text, images, voice, and video, which can be delivered to a wide variety of devices, rather than being limited to a proprietary system like the Amazon Kindle or Apple iPhone. In the past 90 days, two proprietary formats have died (BBeB, .PDB) and two controlled DRM systems bit the dust (MarlinDRM and eReader DRM). More importantly, two closed systems have opened based on ePub and Adobe's eBook platform (Sony and Barnes and Noble).

Using ePub as the base standard and working with its own e-book platform, Adobe has given content publishers a very rich development toolkit with InDesign CS4, letting the industry create multimedia content for inclusion in all types of e-content and e-books. This is an extremely important development for the publishing industry, giving publishers a way to create rich content that could be used on various OS-based PCs, smartphones, and eventually mini-tablets.—Next: Smartphones and Mini-Tablet Platforms >

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