Netizen: Sony

Showing posts with label Sony. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Virtually Speaking

Mark Zuckerberg buying Oculus has laid news emphasis on virtual reality, hardly a new thing. The scale of the discussion has changed irreversibly.

Bringing Burning Man to the masses through virtual reality, now that's a thought.

Drones for a few hundred dollars. Virtual reality headgear for a few hundred dollars. "Don't underestimate the power of the common man!"

The Quest to Put More Reality in Virtual Reality

After the initial unfamiliarity wore off, chatting with Rosedale and Karpf in virtual space was much the same as it would have been in real space. ..... The impressive 3-D headset being developed by startup Oculus VR, acquired by Facebook in March for $2 billion, has spurred new work on virtual-reality hardware by startups and established companies such as Sony ...... hanging out in virtual space will become a new form of mass-market entertainment. ..... Second Life .. “We did our best and got to a million people and made half a billion dollars [in revenue] or something” ..... Rosedale still logs into Second Life from time to time (his avatar is younger and slimmer than he is, with a muscled torso). So do about 1 million other people each month, and Linden Lab remains profitable. But hanging out in a free-form virtual world didn’t become mainstream, as its founders had hoped. ........ people donning Oculus headsets to dip into quick social interactions or strange environments. ...... virtual worlds will open up a new era of human existence ..... the freedom to explore and experiment inside a virtual world generates a “social force,” creating positive interactions between people that are impossible in everyday life–much like the Burning Man festival he attends each year ...... When I met Rosedale in that virtual club, his avatar’s eyes sometimes darted wildly to the side because of glitches with the face-tracking technology. ...... popular enthusiasm about virtual worlds is surging again thanks to Oculus ...... Rift goggles, due by 2016 .. All are expected to retail for only hundreds of dollars. .... “Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures”

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Unsung Hero Samsung

English: Samsung Logo Suomi: Samsungin logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It is almost like Samsung flew beneath the radar, and it is still not talked about as a major tech innovator by the mainstream press.

The Genius of Samsung

It is the world’s largest tech company by revenue, and in 2012 it became the world’s leading smartphone maker. .... Samsung’s smartphone market share in the third quarter last year beat that of Apple, Sony, HTC, and Research in Motion combined ..... Samsung’s smartphone proceeds have doubled in the past year ..... a brilliance exemplified by the way the company stumbled into success with the Galaxy Note: Samsung is willing to try anything. Actually, it’s willing to try everything. By building dozens of models across a range of product categories—it makes everything from phones to tablets to refrigerators to washing machines—Samsung can offer a device for every conceivable market niche. As long as its devices meet a minimum level of quality—and in general, its products are very good—and it manages to kill the failures and push the successes with great marketing, Samsung is sure to keep its place at the top of a roiling tech business. ...... The world’s tech-addled masses are switching from desktop devices to mobile ones, from bulky programs to sleek apps, from limited local storage to acres of space in the clouds. ..... By giving people what they wanted—even if it meant copying Apple—Samsung had become a global gadget powerhouse. ..... Since 2010, Samsung has deepened its technical prowess. Its design and workmanship have improved, and now its devices work just as well as Apple’s and no longer look like clones of Cupertino’s best stuff. ...... Samsung has become a master of marketing. Its commercials portraying Apple’s customers as mindless sheep were brazen—especially considering Samsung’s mimicry of Apple’s devices—but they were ubiquitous and beloved by Apple haters. They announced Samsung as a friendly, reasonable alternative to a cultish global brand. ...... there is something charmingly humble about Samsung’s see-what-sticks strategy. Other tech giants operate according to lofty philosophies. Apple prizes aesthetics and usability, Google cherishes the free flow of information, and Facebook wants to connect us all to one another. Samsung has no such philosophy. All it wants to do is make stuff that we’ll buy. ..... making phones that look exactly like your rivals’ devices, or making phones that are foolishly large, or making devices that run every conceivable operating system, or creating a fridge with a built-in baby monitor and an Evernote app ..... when one of its bets hits, Samsung knows how to push all of its resources into making it the next big thing .... The future is unknowable, so there’s no shame in guessing.

Thursday, August 02, 2012

RIM's Options

"Getting it" is not enough. It is said the top people at Sony all "get it." They all know exactly what needs to be done. But the dysfunctional corporate culture gets in the way. When a company is on a downswing much damage gets done to its corporate culture. A turnaround is not just about "getting it."

I don't have any particular insight into where RIM's corporate culture stands today. But as for vision, there seem to be a few options.

The obvious one is to claw back into the smartphone space. How do you do that? Do you get rid of the physical keyboard? What do you do? How do you compete with the iPhone? Do you ditch the keyboard a-n-d jump onto the Android bandwagon? And become a hardware company? I don't think that is in the cards. RIM wants to continue doing both hardware and software. Well, first, it wants to survive.

Is there room? Is there room in the smartphone space for a Nokia? A Microsoft? A RIM? How do you differentiate? Those are hard questions I don't have answers for.

Another option would be to take RIM's resources and go into something else. Do a fundamental rethink and become a company that produces something else. Or break the company into a hundred different startups.

When Steve Jobs went back to Apple he did not try to win the PC war. He instead created the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. There is always that next big thing.

Monday, July 30, 2012

Apple Samsung Trial: Big Implications

Common sense has to prevail. Common sense is that Apple needs to go back to the lab if it wishes to win the innovation war.

Apple v. Samsung: The patent trial of the century starts today

The highly-technical confrontation pits the world's most valuable company, whose iPhone once dominated the touchscreen smartphone market and whose iPad still has the largest share of tablet computers, against South Korea's largest manufacturer, which makes tablets and phones that run Google's Android operating system and whose smartphones are now outselling Apple's. ..... Samsung's brief: "In this lawsuit, Apple seeks to stifle legitimate competition and limit consumer choice to maintain its historically exorbitant profits." ...... Dozens more pretrial motions were unsealed last Thursday in a legal data dump almost too large to digest. ..... For its part, Samsung is reportedly demanding 2.4% of Apple's sales for use of its mobile communications technology. ...... Samsung's version of the chart will show at least 10 iPhone-like designs created in Samsung's labs before the iPhone was unveiled ..... Samsung will claim the iPhone's design changed after Apple hired a designer from Sony and got wind of their plans. Apple fought hard to keep the jury from seeing that evidence. ..... Samsung tried to prevent Apple from showing the jury five slides in its opening presentation because the images of Steve Jobs they contained might prejudice the jury. ..... Apple, on the other hand, has so far been able to keep Jobs' remarks about "thermonuclear war" out of the record, despite Samsung's objections.

The Smartphone Is A Frying Pan

You should not be able to patent a frying pan. Like farms are a category. Hand looms are a category. The PC is a category.

The PC Was A Category And Could Not Have Been Patented

There were music players before the iPod. How come Apple did not get sued?

And if it is about "look and feel" like Apple claims, rumor has it the next iPhone is going to have a larger screen and it is going to look like the large Samsung phones. Talk about look and feel.

Key Witness No Longer Works at Apple, Doesn’t Want to Testify at Samsung Trial

Shin Nishibori, the Apple designer whose Sony-infused iPhone designs have become a central issue in the Samsung patent case, apparently has no plans to testify in the upcoming trial. ..... The lawyer said Nishibori no longer works at Apple, and is in Hawaii, “trying to recover from several health issues.” ..... It was Nishibori who created a series of designs in 2006 that show what a Sony-like iPhone might look like, allegedly at the direction of Apple design chief Jony Ive. ..... Nishibori’s designs show that Sony influenced the iPhone design that Samsung is accused of copying. ...... Apple would not make Nishibori available for months, noting that he was on a leave of absence. ..... Samsung submitted Twitter postings from Nishibori, in which he talked of world travel and running 10K races. Samsung eventually took his deposition in May 2012

Samsung Makes Another Case to Have Apple’s “Sony Style” Put Before Jury

Apple’s iPhone was heavily influenced by Sony. ..... the iPhone project changed direction based on things that Apple learned from news articles about where Sony was headed ..... Samsung claims Apple tried to delay Samsung learning about the extent of the Sony influence on the iPhone, and says the California company shouldn’t be rewarded for its tactics. ..... “Apple’s ‘iconic’ iPhone was conceived as part of a study of Sony designs that was ordered by Apple executives,” Samsung said in the filing. “It took Samsung four separate court orders — three from this Court and one from the International Trade Commission — compelling Apple to produce the testimony and documents that are the subject of Apple’s motion before Apple finally disclosed it. ...... Samsung argues that it tried for months to take the deposition of Apple designer Shin Nishibori, but Apple said he was on a leave of absence and unavailable. ..... Prior to the work by the Apple designer, the company was pursuing a separate design approach, known as “extrudo,” while its later work (and the eventual iPhone) more closely resembles the “Sony style” design. ..... Apple hopes to avoid public disclosure of the full, detailed story of how the iPhone in its present form came to be.”