David Pogue,New York Times Technology Writer
Featured Speaker
Illinois Technology Conference for Educators
<These are notes from the presentation and are not the reflections and ruminations. These, I will post within the week>
These are five broader technologies which will cause serious societal shifts.
Voice Over IP (VOIP)
Internet Telephone.
Phone Company not involved – $20 per month for calls anywhere
Need Broadband connection
No taxes or fees. Federal Government hasn’t found out
Carry your number. It doesn’t matter where you are. Geography does not matter. Will give you second number in area code that you want.
Every feature know to man
Dial tone is fake, for user perception.
Caller ID, call forward, etc. multiple ring, three way calling, etc.
Web statement is “live”, can connect to calls in list.
The fine print, no power, no phone
The area code issue, occasional audio glitches, and 411 and 911 calling issues, due to lack of location issues. Have installed software to deal with this.
Examples are Vonage, and computer to computer (skype).
With new phones, can connect to wifi and make free calls.
Radio Frequency ID Tag
No power to run
18 thousand trillon ID numbers
Costs 7 cents each
Detailed information.
Used in library books
EZ Pass
Pets
Cattle
talking perscriptions
building security
pallet tracking
clothing stores
tires
Ohio Prisoner Tracking
Controversy:
Future phone – free international phone calls. Loop hole in FCC guidelines. Government would subsidize calls into rural areas and a person took advantage of loop hole to allow people to call Iowa and then dial out.
Chips remain alive forever.
You may not be aware
Can be compared against credit card in garbage. Gillette and Max Factor had this blow up in your face to show user’s patterns. RFID in passports, but potential problems. Some concern about regulation, no laws currently. Self-Regulation
Untethered TV, A La Carte Television
iTunes to buy
Tivo
Shared experience of sitting down together almost a thing of the past.
Frees scheduling of time.
iTunes – $2 per show, no ads.
Akimbo story – set top box, put old TV shows on Internet, pay $2, and watch. Shows back to the 1950s. Akimbo had to settle for what people would put, because TV executives were fearful of the Internet.
Google TV – Audience supplied, you can put your stuff on and charge for it. Example, a skilled craftsman, someone who shoes horses, can post and make an income based upon a specialized skills grow.
Rever is a popular choice. Will pay $5 per 1000 views.
(I read about an interesting use of San Diego Padres using video iPod for storage of pitch by pitch retreval.)
Digital Cameras 2.0
90% of camera sales are digtial
20% annual decline in film sales
Cutbacks in R&D
Kodak, Konica, Minolta are out of business. Nikon is only making two old versons. Going up 100% per year.
Digital SLR sales up 100% per year.
The Most Emailed indicator
The most compelling race is now the MegaPixel race. You can have the same 10 million dots that take a crappy picture. Most important part, sensor and lens. Large Megapixel can decrease picture quality, so dot are closer together which increases heat, which causes noise. Only light directly on top make it through.
New designs, better pictures. No longer need to look like film cameras, they are computer devices.
Movie taking quality getting better. Higher res than TV. They are becoming wireless. Canon working on face recognition software, SD800, developing blink shot and smile shot.
Camera phone 900 million per year. Causing huge upheavals.
Challenges:
Privacy. How do we protect
Storage problem, how do we save. Each medium has a shelf life of about 8 years. Have to vigilant to update your memories. Problem with online storage.
High Definition TV
Analog TV was supposed to end in 2006, then 2007, now 2009. Can squeeze more info in a smaller swatch of the frequency. Spectrum is now crammed full, new ideas with no available spectrum. Huge opportunity to auction the spectrum, new innovative ways to communicate.
Digital does not mean High Definition TV. Wide screen, different aspect ratios. One day, turn off all analog Television (pre-1990) will not work.
HDTV Formats – multiple types
Not just TVs, but camcorders, DVD players, and tapes.10 years from now, everything will be Hi Def.
DVDs not hi def, there is a HD DVD – Blu-ray disc format war now.
New Netflix. Watch live, purchase by hours per month, now will have movie surfing.
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