Technology – Page 104 – MeisterPlanet

MP3 Players to Reach Critical Mass in 2005

InformationWeek has an article up on a recent report stating that shipments of MP3 players tripled in 2004. The article also estimates that shipments in 2005 should increase by at least 35%, with a minimum 10% annual increase every year until at least 2010.

According to JupiterResearch analyst David Card the important number to reach for any new technology is somewhere around 15 to 20% of US households, at which point the critical mass will be enough to fully support growth in supplemental products and services based around that technology. According to Card, “MP3 players will hit that mark this year.”

Already we can see evidence of this phenomenon. Apple’s iPod has become an icon in the public’s eye and hundreds of companies are now producing accessories for the devices. Although Apple currently dominates the MP3 player field, the growth of the MP3 hardware industry over the last year has made it possible for a number of competitors, such as iriver and Creative to have their own levels of success as well.

The increase in MP3 hardware penetration in the average US household has also lead to the online music sales success of Apple’s iTunes. Again, while Apple dominates, the market is reaching the critical mass necessary to support a number of competitors, such as Yahoo’s Musicmatch, RealNetwork’s Rhapsody and the reinvention of Napster as a legal online music source.

Ubuntu Breezy Badger Development Starts

Now that version 5.04 of Ubuntu Linux has been released, it’s time for me to once again throw caution to the wind and move on to the next development version, codenamed “Breezy Badger”.

Doing so is as easy as a simpled find-and-replace search on your sources.list file, replacing “hoary” with “breezy” and issuing a simple apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade command. The whole ease of the apt-get upgrade experience is one of the very reasons I love Ubuntu.

Right now there’s little changes between the new stable branch and that of testing, so only a few packages have been downloaded and updated, but I’m sure I’ll get some show-stopper breakages coming soon as the bleeding edge moves forward.

Are TurboTax and TaxCut Watching You?

The San Francisco Chronicle has an article written by David Lazarus in which the author claims that users of the online versions of Intuit’s TurboTax or H&R Block’s TaxCut software are tracked during their filing process through the use of web bugs.

Both Intuit and H&R Block claim any data collected is used only in quality assurance purposes, but some privacy advocates are unconvinced that either company will not be tempted to sell such data to a third-party marketing firm in the future, particularly when both use the services of DoubleClick, a company that has sparked previous privacy concerns to process the data coming from the hidden trackers.

Retro Future Cell Phones

Pokia.com has a series of wonderfully dorky retro future handsets designed for use with some models of cell phones.

The fully working handsets are sold by the site owner on ebay, for those looking to gain as much geek cred as they’ll lose for walking around with the devices.

Let’s Get Perpendicular!

Many computer hardware sites have posted the recent announcement from Hitachi about their perpendicular recording technology. The company claims that this new hard drive technique will allow the introduction of a one-terabyte drive within a year.

However, the best part of their announcement comes in the form of the Let’s Get Perpendicular! Macromedia Flash presentation they made available to explain the technology that should look very familiar to those of us who grew up with “I’m Just a Bill” from saturday-morning episodes of School House Rock.

Kick it!