E.J. Svoboda

In 2002 ebook sales were $7,337,000.00

In 2003 ebook sales were $19,772,000.00 up 169.5%

In 2004 ebook sales were $30,271,000.00 up 53.1%

In 2005 ebook sales were $43,832,000.00 up 44.8%

In 2006 ebook sales were $54,396,000.00 up 24.1%

In 2007 ebook sales were $67,233,000.00 up 23.6%

in 2008 ebook sales were $113,220,000.00 up 68.4%

With very capable readers on the market like the Sony 505 and the Kindle 2, I believe that this trend is only going to accelerate.

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I have been using google docs more often as I have found that it is a wonderful writing tool.  It also has basic collaborative tools and controls built in that make it an ideal platform to share drafts in order to get some outside editing done.  Unlike Microsoft Word, google docs is not overly laden with features that are only useful some of the time.  It’s a nice basic word processor platform that just gets the job done.  I appreciate that you can now upload files into it as well.

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I’ve spent a lot of time on the road (for me) over the last few weeks and it occured to me that someone needs to create a GPS that has an integrated radar detector and internet capabilities so that it could report to a central system potential speed traps.

No tickets were issued and I wasn’t pulled over to inspire the idea.

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I was reading Information Week today and saw an interesting article about a hospital that is using VNC to do virtual desktops that users can access inside and outside of the building.  They can use any of the thin clients that are around the hospital to access their personal system and the IT staff is easily able to comply with HIPPA regulations.  I thought it was a well thought out solution for that particular environment.

One of the other big advantages that I see to such a solution is that you can very easily increase resources for a user if they need more memory or storage space.  The backing up of their data becomes much more centralized and easier to manage as well.

Filed under: Technology by Ed Svoboda - 1 Comment →

The buzz in the tech press right now is all about how to virtualize the desktop.  It looks great on paper but I believe that it is still a good distance off in the future.  It’s just not ready for primetime.

What is ready for primetime or at least more ready is the concept of virtualized applications.  It is most effective to utilize a hybrid approach so that the local PC does have a cached version of the applications on it in case there are any issues with the connections back to the servers.  The key components of any solutions that are rolled out to users in a technology environment are usability and uptime.

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https://www.photoshop.com/express/index.html?bypass&wf=testdrive

This is a pretty cool little site they have designed.  I like the 2 GB of storage and the controls are really well thought out for manipulating photos.  Unlike photoshop, you do not need to know how to use unsharp mask instead you select “sharpen” and choose from different option presented much like a film strip (who remembers those!).

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I read an article today talking about a company in Japan who has managed to do a wireless transfer over a modified 3G network at 250 MB per second.  They’ve also managed to hack a 4G connection to 5 GB per second.  4G is suppose to hit 1 GB out of the box.  Now wrap your head around that.  Today we’re impressed with having a 8 MB cable modem.  Can you imagine having 80 MB or even 800 MB?  This type of service has major impacts on both home use and business use.  Today most businesses pay $450 to $550 per T1 (sometimes more sometimes less depending on the carrier).  A “bonded” circuit that will carry 3 MB is going to cost $800 to $900 per month.  If the carriers are able to show that a 4G technology has a greater or equal up time than high speed circuits available today then I believe you will see a number of companies adopt such technologies.  Even if the technology proves to be slightly less reliable than wired connections I still believe a number of businesses will look into the technology as an emergency fail over option.

How does any of this relate to convergence?

Well the main thing to keep in mind is that I believe we will live in a world where TV/Phone/Internet Connectivity/To Be Determined Cool Technology is delivered over the same fat pipe.  The more portable the better.  Being able to take my connection with me on vacation or when traveling would be an interesting paradaigm shift.

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For years I used to talk about how one day I would be able to drive along I-55 between Chicago and St. Louis and never lose a high speed connection.  That day is pretty close to happening.  The next step in the process of Ubiquitous Convergence will be driven by the demand of consumers to use one connection method for transferring all of their data.  With this in mind it seems obvious to me that ultimately mega band wireless connections will be the norm.  I’m not sure exactly how the technology will shake out – will we carry laptops that have undockable phones?  I’m not sure.  Who’s to say if someone doesn’t come up with a rollable laptop with a touch sensitive or even virtual keyboard.  But one thing remains clear to me – access everywhere is what consumers want and it is what they will get.  One day we’ll no longer have to deal with marginal call quality no matter where you are across the nation.  But it all comes down to massive bandwidth, technological advances and time.

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I still find the little Moleskine notebook in my pocket to be the best way to capture quick ideas or notes.  In spite of the fact that I carry a perfectly good pocketpc most of the time I still find paper to be faster.  This led me to think that the best improvement to the pocketpc would be if I could simply capture notes in my handwriting into the task application rather than having it convert my “handwriting” to text.  I can write quickly with a sylus but I can’t write like the program wants me to for it to make it into “ink”.  If I could enter my actions into the pocketpc in “raw text”, if you will, I would be more inclined to use the pocketpc as a capture device.

Filed under: pocketpc, Productivity, Technology, windows mobile by Ed Svoboda - No Comments →

One of the features that I leverage now fully with gmail is the ability to use gmail as the collection tool for multiple email accounts.  I have a few different email accounts but they all funnel into gmail and when I reply it looks like I am replying from the appropriate account.  This is great on a couple of levels.  First, gmail has pretty decent spam filtering.  If something inadvertently made it through the spam filtering on the mail server where the other account is hosted, gmail will normally tag it as spam.  Second, it’s a pain to have to check multiple places for email.  Another advantage is that gmail is portable.  I can check it on any computer (provided I take the time to remove my personal information).  It is not platform dependent and it is as powerful as a stand alone email client.

Filed under: lifehack, Productivity, Technology by Ed Svoboda - 1 Comment →