Professor Elam

Microsoft Still Playing Catch Up

 

Apple, notoriously secretive about upcoming products, has not commented on the matter. But given the iPhone's success, which propelled competitors to come out with copycat touch-screen phones and centralized "app" stores to sell add-on software, all eyes are on Apple to define what a slate or tablet-style computer should look like and how it will be used.

AP Jan 7 2009

Read the article here.  But the excerpt above and the picture pretty well says it all, Apple now sets the Design Standard for personal computers.   It's almost humorous to see bald, heavy Balmer trying to imitate Steve Jobs at an announcement.  Jobs, a rather slimmer figure than Balmer,  has made his jeans and black shirt ensemble the understated presentation form. Can't Balmer hire a good looking faux Steve Jobs model, male or female?   It looks like Balmer is trying some sort of Garth Brooks smoke and lights show to get folks excited about, well, a tablet that will be out sometime this year. As the article notes, there have been many windows based tablets but none of them took off. Now that Apple is not going to announce, but note the verb, define, what a tablet should be, the rest are playing catch up. 

And note that Apple does not make an appearance at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas pictured above. No, they will have their own show later this month where  only Apple is the star. 

All of this makes my case that Design should be a component of business classes. 

Apple E Book Tablet on the Way

I think the whole e book think is really going to take off with the announcement of the Apple Tablet. 

Amazon's Kindle, Sony Reader, and BN product only connect to the net to download a book. Look for the Apple product to be a big iPhone running all those apps AND connecting to the internet. 

I also firmly believe this will help video conferencing get going.  Folks like Umar and the hapless TSA are the best friends video conferencing ever had. 

Burj Tower Opens

Building skyscrapers and new football stadiums re signs of market optimism, and often market tops! The developers of the Burj Tower say it is 90% sold. But apparently that means sold to sub developers who are looking to re sell the parts of the building they bought, or lease them out. Apt prices have fallen from $1900 a sf to about half that. Hmm, really?

You will be relieved to know that there are safe floors every 25 stories or so. The structure is concrete and said to be airplane resistant unlike the steel structure of the WTC, at least that is the theory. By the way Dubai World is not the owner of this structure. 

And so we have two giant construction projects on opposite sides of the world opening in the same two months, City Center in Las Vegas and the Burj. Good luck guys. 

Avatar Top Grossing Christmas Film

James Cameron's $300 M Avatar epic is a box office smash, world wide. Interestingly the number two film, Sherlock Holmes!  No doubt this introduces a whole generation of younger folk who certainly do not read, so seeing Sherlock is the introduction. I have not seen Sherlock but find the description of martial arts stuff (obviously tailored for the younger viewer) to be a departure from the original series. And Nick Cage would be a lot closer physically to the original than shorter Robert Downey Jr. But  I still applaud the idea. 

So what is going on in a down economy? Avatar uses new 3 D technology.  Tickets to Avatar are more expensive because of the technology  and that is helping the box office gross.  IN fact the movie industry did well in the 1930s. For a few cents on could escape the doldrums of the Depression in the movie theater. Movies catered to the whims of the public with both dark side fantasies, Dracula and Frankenstein, gangster movies like Public Enemy, as well as Fred Astaire Ginger Rogers musicals. The latter provided a glittering glamour world to take the public mind off the dreary economy With digital technology to make simple films and the internet available to spread them (think pjtv.com) look for lots of alternative entertainment. This helps explain why video games are such a hit. Once again studying socionomics gives us insight as to what is going on in the popular culture.  

Words Matter

My freshman economics text listed spaghetti as an inferior good. An inferior good was defined as one that you consumed less of as your income grew. Well, clearly this got the attention of the Italian food industry. Sometime since then and now a creative Madison Avenue type came up with a new phrase, yep, pasta was born. Forget Chef Boyardee and McCormick enveloped tomato sauce, enter Mario Batelli, extra virgin olive oil and pine nuts over penne pasta!  The wine industry was not far behind as a stroll through Central Market demonstrates.

George Carlin wrote several books on the subject of words and their meaning. As George put it, I don't want to get on the plane, I want to get in the plane.

I was reminded of this Christmas day over an expensive meal. The son in law commented on the fine gravy over the roast pork. I assured him at those prices we had a sauce not a gravy...

Hmm, white bread or French baquette? What meal image does each of those two references conjure up in your mind?  Words matter, consider the difference and use it to your advantage in your writing.

Simplest is Bestest

 A pro photographer has created an application to enhance picture taking with an iPhone. As he says, the best camera is the one that is with you. Chase Jarvis is right, capturing the moment is the thing. This may be a photo of your kid at a ball game or a shot like this one fifty years ago along the then newly constructed Berlin Wall.The photograph is a visual statement that no matter what the Eastern Block did, there was no putting a lid n a person's desire to be free. The fact that I easily found the image speaks to its timeless nature. 

 Such shots were taken on the spur of the moment without thinking about idea camera settings.  The image of one person  standing against the tank in Tieneman Square is another example. 

Where am I going with this?  When I was trading the bond market in the 1980s. computerized charts were the purvey of only the high end firms that could afford such technology. Indeed I spent a day in the Merrill Trading room in New York City and saw a computerized real time graph of the bonds as traded in Chicago. But back then such tech was only found in exotic spots like the Merrill trading room. 

Now I have have the same technology for a few bucks a month. But did I get any better at trading? Uh, no. 

Back then I subscribed to a paper chart service that was updated once a week. During the week  I would study the last week's  chart, mentally or possibly making a few pencil marks for the progress of this week. Perhaps that level of concentration made me think more about what might happen that week.  I did not have computer updates, this was 1984-87. So to stay current I bought two 19 inch tvs, and put CNN news on one and FNN (the forerunner to CNBC) on the other. FNN updated the bond market every half hour and I knew if anything really big broke, one or the other would tell me about it. That system worked. Let's remember that Newton had neither a calculator nor a computer when he essentially invented calculus. The Greeks had no cad cam computers in designing the parthenon, the Romans likewise lacked computers  in designing the coliseum, the cathedrals in midevil Europe were likewise constrained. 

 Kirk Tuck a pro photographer in Austin makes the point that a zoom lens makes us lazy as a photographer. With a zoom the photographer does not have to move A fixed perspective  or prime lens forces us to move is we want more or less in the picture frame. (35 mm cameras used to come standard in film days with a 'norman' 50 mm lens)  Kirk makes the point that forcing one to move forces one to consider different perspectives in a way that a zoom lens never will. 

Power Point has more possibilities than I can learn. But dazzling the audience with various fades and dissolves will not likely make the lasting impression that say either of these images do above. For example, a Navy Vet in my class one showed us a night satellite photo of the Far East. One could easily make the outline of Japan and the coasts of Korea, China, Russia. But when one looked at the area of North Korea, all was dark. His point was dramatic and clear, there is no light in North Korea. That was literally true, and metaphorically true for its oppressed citizens. To this day that was one of the most memorable presentations in the ten years I have taught college. 

So go for a statement, keep it simple, Hannibal used elephants to cross the Alps, Matthew Brady photographed the Civil War with a giant still camera, both made history. 

Mediaweek

Tuesday Dec 22 2009

Rush Limbaugh has been named Radio Personality of the Decade by Mediaweek, a leading industry magazine and Web site.  Mediaweek also named Apple’s Steve Jobs as Marketer of the Decade, “The Sopranos” the TV Show of the Decade, Rupert Murdoch the Media Executive of the Decade, YouTube the Web Site of the Decade, Wired the Magazine of the Decade, Apple the Brand of the Decade, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google the Media Entrepreneurs of the Decade, and Google the Media Company of the Decade.

This sort of thing is interesting in terms of emerging social trends, a popular topic for this blog. It matters not what you think of Rush Limbaugh, or Keith Oberman for that matter, what does matter is the opinion that large segments of the population have of them. 

For example, there have been numerous attempts to run someone liberal as a popular radio talk show host, Mario Cuomo, Jim Hightower, many try, most like Air America fail. Why?  The assumption is that Rush just talks conservative and that if the other side just talks liberal they will find an audience. Obviously this is not the case. Indeed there are many conservative talk show hosts but Mediaweek notes none of the others come close to Limbaugh in terms of audience. Limbaugh points out that he is a professional broadcaster, it is the content of his show that makes it different. So what is the difference, any thoughts?

At any rate, consider the others in the list. 

Jobs has made Mike Dell eat his words about liquidating Apple as Dell stock cannot rise above $20 and is in Wal Mart selling computers . The i Empire will no doubt spur lots of sales of the upcoming iTablet or whatever Apple will call its reader. The Sopranos tv show foretold the turn to the dark side and the popularity of gangster shows ala our previous template, 1966-82 for the period we are in now. Notably it was followed by True Blood, one show about contemporary gangsters, another about contemporary vampires. Conventional media still does not want to take Murdoch seriously but he did buy the Wall Street Journal, and his Fox News continues to attract and star ex CNN talent. O Reiley is up again this year. You Tube has made every video cam a potential tv studio, can Jay Leno rescue NBC?  I think I will subscribe to Wired, we did post a story about quants from Wired. Apple has created Apple devotees, something that escapes their commodity based competitors that are essentially selling television sets. I view today's personal computer as the new television set of another generation. Interestingly Apple has shown no interest in going down market to compete on price. Wall Street dismissed the Dutch Auction of Google shares, and then it went to $400 a share. Google continues to set the pace.  

A key component of success here is Design. We previously mentioned this with Apple, its elegant designs cascade right down to the packaging. Limbaugh has designed his program his way, it is right there for everyone to hear, why can't they duplicate it?  Note to younger readers, others tried to do the same when Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon were on the Tonite Show, they tried all sorts of guy combinations, none were successful. Letterman, O Brien, and Leno are shadows of that team. Google also has a clean uncluttered design interface. Conclusion, Good Design Works. 

Meanwhile Time Warner threatens to drop Fox, gee does that mean 24?  Time Warner proved its incompetence over paying for AOL resulting in the biggest impairment write off in history, perhaps they can do it again!

Avatar Opens this Weekend

Outer space has been good to me 

Sigourney Weaver

You can see the blue creatures elsewhere, Sig photos gets my vote on this blog. Whoever did her eye job certainly earned his fee!

Avatar with a budget of over $300 M and 3 D effects debuts this weekend. Projections are $80-$200 M for the first weekend, it is a world wide debut. James Cameron has not done a film since Titanic and with its success, got free reign to do what he wanted. 

Read about it and Sig W's comments here. 

Thirty years later, Alien and Aliens are perhaps the best sci fi movies ever made. The gritty realism (?) if in fact we ever end up on distant planets seems just right and it established one of the first female action stars. Avoid the last two which are in no way equal to the first two franchises. 

Sean Connery only did one space film Outland. while the the Review at Amazon is nothing special, I thought like Aliens it captured the loneliness of a far off world. Connery said he had been offered many scie fi scripts before finally picking this one. 

The Stigma of Low Price

This reviewer raves about the 27" MAC desktop computer, the most gorgeous desktop computer he has ever touched. Even the Apple packing  boxes have great design he says. this underscores the importance of Design in marketing a successful product. 

I have advocated building an MBA program around he concept of Design. Good designs not only improve function but make us want to use the product. Read Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things to get some ideas. 

The reviewer goes on to make the point that Apple is not interested in the low end of the market. This is where Acer, Dell, HP all slug it out for thin margins, the latest model soon to appear at Sams and WMT. 

There are no Dell or Accer computer people, but there are Apple devotees. And they are willing to pay a premium price for the product, check Apple stock versus the others. Business Week has an issue on Design every quarter. Designers are the new rock stars. 

The Electric Car Arrives

 My friend Terry Box at Dallas News tests the Mitsubishi i-MiEV, which I am sure stands for something. Lithium ion batteries are the wave of the future, at least the only wave we can spot from the beach at this point. As Terry points out the charge cycle is still too short at 80-100 miles and too lengthy, it takes all night on 110 Volts. Still, there are lots of golf carts in daily use that cannot go that far. It is safe to assume batteries will improve. I would argue that this is not an improvement over a similar car with a one liter engine but that is no doubt the same horse versus horse less carriage argument from 110 years ago. Gasoline equates range and convenience, I do not see that changing any time soon. 

Prof Elam Comment

The design at left has its roots in the original Mini, introduced in England in the late 1950s. The idea was to maximize interior space in a small car. So the wheel, back then, were tiny and pushed to the four corners of the car. In this way the wheel wells did not intrude on the space. All the mechanicals were located up front, eliminating space for a driveline and differential in back. One can see the influence of wind tunnel design as in all the current high mileage efforts, cheat the wind. George Jetson I am sure would love it.