E-Books to Finally Take Off?

Much as I would love to get the Sony Reader (I can't, I don't have enough spare cash lying around) because I think it would be incredibly useful to me, it hasn't done all that well in the market. In fact, the whole e-book concept hasn't gone down well with consumers. At least not as well as, say, Sony would have hoped. (Or as I would have hoped, because that might have considerably reduced the retail price of the Reader, thereby making it affordable to me!)

All that might change, though, with the introduction of Amazon's long-awaited, much rumoured-about, Kindle e-book reader. At least I hope things change. Kindle hasn't yet been launched by the way -- it's supposed to be launched later today in the US -- but it's already being talked about. Notably, in Newsweek's interview with Amazon's CEO, Jeff Bezos, though both CNET and Engadget have talked about it as well.

We learn in strategy that, in many ways, the holy grail of strategic competition is to change the industry (presumably in your favour!). Amazon's already done that a number of times and, through to the Kindle, they're hoping to do that yet again. Being a fan of both e-books and tablet PCs, I hope they succeed.

Expect more coverage (on this blog) of this device and of this strategic move as more details emerge.

Lenovo to Drop IBM Brand Earlier Than Planned

"I love it when a plan comes together" was an oft-repeated line by the A-Team's John Smith. I'm guessing that's what Lenovo's Chief Executive Bill Amelio must have been thinking when they decided to drop the IBM brand name from their product line two years earlier than planned. As explained by Erica Ogg's over at CNET:

Turns out, Lenovo doesn't need the reputable computer brand to sell its notebooks and desktops anymore.

Re-branding is always a pain, especially when your company buys one the oldest, arguably most respected, and indeed most recognized brands in the business. (In case you don't know, Lenovo bought IBM's PC and laptop manufacturing division for $1.75bn in 2005).

Lenovo started dropping the IBM logo from its ThinkPad line of laptops earlier this year (it still has rights to that product brand name). I'm guessing that went well. And I guess they're confident enough to finally, firmly break from their past (i.e. their acquisition) and stand on their own with their own brand. Good for them.

It is good when a plan comes together.

Online Geospatial Technologies and Photo Editing

Let's start with the first of my tech industry-related postings. This one's about the latest, most innovative applications available on the Internet: geospatial technologies and the newest photo editing tools. Both are based on articles from MIT's Technology Review (TR) magazine.

Computer mapping tools have been around for quite a while (even online ones) but it was Google that really revolutionized the way they were used, presented, and accessed on the Internet (through Google Earth) and on the web (through Google Maps). The TR article, Google Earth: How Google Maps the World, talks about how this system works on Google's side:

Technology Review interviewed engineers at Google and at ­DigitalGlobe, the company that supplies Google's satellite photos, and did a little bit of reverse-engineering to figure out how it works.

The other how-it-works type article from TR is called New Tricks for Online Photo Editing. This one is about a really cool photo editing trick, known as seam carving, that went from being an algorithm created by a couple of researchers (from Adobe and Mistubishi) to a Flash-based implmentation of it on sites such as Rsizr and FotoFlexer as well a Photoshop plugin.

Both are interesting reads that tell you a bit about what goes on behind the new, funky stuff that you use on the Internet.