Retail: Opinions

At what temperature do electronic books catch fire? We're going to find out sometime this year. E-book sales are about to ignite.

"One man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages," wrote Shakespeare in As You Like It .

Sony's PlayStation Portable 3000 launched Tuesday, October 14 and it's already delivering hugely impressive numbers overseas. Japanese market tracker Media Create released its hardware sales figures for the week ending October 19, highlighting a nearly 90 percent win for the PSP over the DS.

More bad news for fans of the "I bought it, I own it, I can do what I want with it" approach to living.

Gordon Ramsay is the @#$%^ hottest thing on television right now. Apart from the ubiquitous swearing, part of his appeal is his ability to tell the truth about the situation his restaurateurs are facing and then how, if they listen, they can build a fabulous business.

Creating brand loyalty means telling your story again, and again...

And then there was one: Blu-ray.

Well, that was quick. Last week, consumer electronics giant Toshiba announced it was pulling the plug on its high-definition video disc format, HD DVD. Within days, Toshiba's partners announced that they were now Blu-ray shops, and HD DVD players and movies were reduced to fire-sale prices.

Toshiba conceded the HD video disc battle this week and announced its HD-DVD formatted products were no longer going to be manufactured. It had little choice after a string of defeats, started by Warner choosing to go with Blu-Ray exclusively and concluding when the US's biggest retailer, Wal Mart, backed out of the HD DVD format.

Courtesy of Mac Rumours comes this memo from Steve Jobs on FairPlay, the Digital Rights Management (DRM) anti-piracy technology with which Apple encodes downloaded music. DRM limits where and how digital music can be played.

While the digital camera explosion has sparked rapid development and growth in other areas, such as storage and photo sharing sites, the photo editing tool space has lagged somewhat behind. There's the pricey Adobe Photoshop at the high end of the market, and each of the camera manufacturers bundles their cameras with basic editing suites, but there hasn't been much in the middle.

Just when you've figured out the settings on your latest smart phone, digital camera or GPS device from last holiday, along comes this week's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas with a whole new batch of electronic goodies to get you ready for 2008. Here's a bunch of new items I can't wait to see at the show:

So, just to be clear. We're all thieves here, right?

In a world in which gadgets are getting ever-smaller, SanDisk's new Sansa View is, strangely, significantly larger than both its competitors and its own predecessor, the company's Sansa e200 line of media players.

The scoop: Pleo, by Ugobe, about US$350

There is nothing we industry pundits love more than a good food fight. Cisco vs. Lucent. Google vs. Microsoft! Intel vs. AMD! Cable vs. Satellite! SAP vs. Oracle! But the Fight of The Future is what is going to happen on your mobile phone and in your home.

Video games have occasionally served as a convenient scapegoat for whatever ails youth. But just this week, the normal trickle of blame has become a torrent, with loud proclamations from many quarters that computer games are making kids violent, stupid and sick.

Sony Electronics' Vaio TZ191N notebook proves that good things do come in small packages. Inside the black carbon-fiber case is an Intel Centrino Duo processor (a 945GMS chip running at 1.2 GHz) with a bus speed of 533 MHz, 2GB DDR2 SDRAM and a double-layer DVD writer. The 11.1-in. WXGA active-matrix TFT color LCD screen (1,366 by 768 resolution) is amazingly sharp and drew oohs and ahhs from colleagues. In terms of size and weight, it's a road warrior's dream: It measures 10.9 in. wide by 7.8 in. deep by 1 in. high and weighs in at a mere 2 lb. 10 oz. (with battery) or 3 lb. 6 oz. (if you throw the power cord into your travel bag).

Maybe for the first time ever, somebody in the recording industry has admitted in public what a colossal screw-up the labels' approach to the Internet and digital media has been.

E-books have emerged from the shadows with Amazon's launch this week of its US$399 Kindle e-book reader and service.