05:04 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

International Herald Tribune via Bloomberg News writes today how cooperate missteps cost electronics giant Sony $100 billion in market value.

The article cites Al Ries, an Atlanta-based marketing strategist, saying Sony's problem is that it is too big and too unfocused. The electronics unit makes everything from image sensors for digital cameras to CD players, personal computers and headphones. The entertainment side creates movies, music and video games. The financial arm houses two insurance companies and an Internet bank.

Related to Sony's dismal performance, PalmSource shares fell as much as 16% after Sony said it scrapped plans to introduce new models of its Clie handheld computer in the U.S. this year.

03:45 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

BBC News runs a great story how there has been a tremendous boom in the consumption of online newspapers.

According to Timothy Balding, director general of World Association of Newspapers, web audiences for newspapers have grown by 350% over the last five years.

08:51 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Facer Launcher V2.0.6 is out and available at a 15% discount ($16.10 USD) until June 20, 2004.

The best thing about Facer is the plug-in system which allows for other third party applications (beside datebook and to-do list) to be integrated to Facer's Today page.

03:54 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

BargainPDA is the first to bring the news we were all expecting to hear today: "Sony has informed us that they will not release any new Clie PDAs this year in the US. The Clie line will continue in Japan though. This move is of course devastating for a number of reasons." Some more interesting points were revealed:

- This move is a re-grouping, not an exit from the market
- Sony will continue to sell through stock of current models which could last for several months
- Sony will continue to honor all support agreements and warranties
- The Clie line will continue to grow and evolve in Japan
- They believe wireless is very important to mobile devices. To this end they will continue to work hard in the SonyEricsson partnership to bring innovative devices to market
- Beyond wireless Sony feels mobile devices need to be strong in multimedia and gaming

So would you still buy a Sony Clie today knowing that Sony lost its focus on PDAs for now?

04:31 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

It is about time to invest in a new notebook.

For the first time, I've been thinking of buying a Macintosh-based computer. Yes, a very big step, because I wasn't exactly fond of Macs in the past (I learned to hate them at college).

But things are different since Panther OS X. I like the fact that Darwin runs on top of FreeBSD and allows to run *nix based programs. In the past, I could have argued that I was missing this or that application not available for Macs. Today, I am not aware of any such restriction any more, thanks to Darwin.

The big con: price. Why is Apple so horrendously expensive? And beside the general high price, here in Europe you pay another 20% premium compared to US prices. My question to you - if you are a Mac-owner: Is Panther OS X and a nice style enough reason for a PC junkie to seriously consider buying a Powerbook? Please help me to make a decision!

02:43 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Following our discussion from last week, more other tech sites were also reporting rumors of a possible end of the Sony Clie line. Shaun of PDA247 also confirms that Sony company is going to release an official press statement tomorrow. What is new: Sony Ericsson Mobile Phones will also be discontinued! (that stinks, I own a t610 and think it is a great phone!).

Let's see what news will bring tomorrow.

11:50 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Scheduled to hit the Japanese market June 12, the SONY GU-BT1 is a Bluetooth-compatible GPS receiver/transmitter unit especially designed for Sony's Bluetooth CLIE PDAs.

The personal GPS unit measures 60x89x18mm, weighs 72g, and is capable of running continuously for up to 12 hours on a single recharge.

Price will be around 31,290 Japanese Yen (which is roughly $280 USD).

12:31 AM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Found this inconspicuous paper today by two, at that time, inconspicuous students: The Anatomy of a Search Engine

Some quotes from this paper (which btw dates around 1998 me thinks) you should think about for a minute:

The prototype with a full text and hyperlink database of at least 24 million pages is available at http://google.stanford.edu/

as of now, Google knows 4,285 million pages, an insignificant increase by 17,754 percent

With better encoding and compression of the Document Index, a high quality web search engine may fit onto a 7GB drive of a new PC.

Does that mean I can fit more than five 'Googles' on my iPod?

Simple experiments indicate PageRank can be personalized by increasing the weight of a user's home page or bookmarks.

Perhaps privacy issue made this impossible so far.

A Web search engine is a very rich environment for research ideas.

...and for earning a buck or two...

...we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.

Now, THIS is funny. Does Google Adwords ring a bell?

So we are optimistic that our centralized web search engine architecture will improve in its ability to cover the pertinent text information over time and that there is a bright future for search.

And bright it was indeed.