img alt="EGM - Image 1" title="EGM - Image 1" src="http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126536/egm-streetfighter4_qjgenth.jpg?104649" style="cursor: pointer;" align="right"Is the magazine industry already bust? You've probably heard a lot of print media transferring to the e-format due to various reasons (mostly because of the lack of demand and rising printing costs), and it looks like a href="http://pspupdates.qj.net/tags/ziff-davis/8900" id="tag" title=""Ziff Davis/a Media's very own flagship publication, PC Magazine, is wrought by the same problems.brbrEarlier this week, the publication firm has revealed their plans to cease print circulation of PC Magazine, and opt for the e-publication approach. "The viability for us to continue to publish in print just isn t there anymore," said Ziff Davis chief executive Jason Young.brbrThe move to digital content won't be all that rough on the publication since they already have an online counterpart of the magazine in the form of PCMag.com. With this foundation already existing, it's now all a matter of getting more content online.brbrFurthermore, Young also noted that they're currently considering a href="http://pspupdates.qj.net/tags/electronic-gaming-monthly/3710" id="tag" title=""Electronic Gaming Monthly/a to follow suit. The decision to halt printing for a href="http://pspupdates.qj.net/tags/egm/452" id="tag" title="Electronic Gaming Monthly"EGM/a and publish it online instead isn't finalized yet - the matter will have to be settled by next year.brbrFor the record, EGM is the last remaining video game magazine being circulated in print by Ziff Davis.brbrhr style="width: 100 ; height: 2px;"brspan style="font-weight: bold;"Related articles:/spanbrulli style="font-style: italic;"a title="Dan Hsu officially announces resignation from Ziff Davis and 1UP" href="http://www.qj.net/Dan-Hsu-officially-announces-resignation-from-Ziff-Davis-and-1UP/pg/49/aid/117991"Dan Hsu officially announces resignation from Ziff Davis and 1UP/a/lilia style="font-style: italic;" title="Ziff Davis Media files for bankcruptcy due to overwhelming debt" href="http://www.qj.net/Ziff-Davis-Media-files-for-bankcruptcy-due-to-overwhelming-debt/pg/49/aid/115284"Ziff Davis Media files for bankcruptcy protection due to overwhelming debt/abr/li/ulbrbrdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?a=VWNBvHgJ"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?a=LoD7ae54"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?d=50" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?a=bCWPFpRe"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?d=43" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/QJ/PSP/~4/6_p7JlWptwI" height="1" width="1"/

img alt="EGM - Image 1" title="EGM - Image 1" src="http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126536/egm-streetfighter4_qjgenth.jpg?104649" style="cursor: pointer;" align="right"Is the magazine industry already bust? You've probably heard a lot of print media transferring to the e-format due to various reasons (mostly because of the lack of demand and rising printing costs), and it looks like a href="http://wii.qj.net/tags/ziff-davis/8900" id="tag" title=""Ziff Davis/a Media's very own flagship publication, PC Magazine, is wrought by the same problems.brbrEarlier this week, the publication firm has revealed their plans to cease print circulation of PC Magazine, and opt for the e-publication approach. "The viability for us to continue to publish in print just isn t there anymore," said Ziff Davis chief executive Jason Young.brbrThe move to digital content won't be all that rough on the publication since they already have an online counterpart of the magazine in the form of PCMag.com. With this foundation already existing, it's now all a matter of getting more content online.brbrFurthermore, Young also noted that they're currently considering a href="http://wii.qj.net/tags/electronic-gaming-monthly/3710" id="tag" title=""Electronic Gaming Monthly/a to follow suit. The decision to halt printing for a href="http://wii.qj.net/tags/egm/452" id="tag" title="Electronic Gaming Monthly"EGM/a and publish it online instead isn't finalized yet - the matter will have to be settled by next year.brbrFor the record, EGM is the last remaining video game magazine being circulated in print by Ziff Davis.brbrhr style="width: 100 ; height: 2px;"brspan style="font-weight: bold;"Related articles:/spanbrulli style="font-style: italic;"a title="Dan Hsu officially announces resignation from Ziff Davis and 1UP" href="http://www.qj.net/Dan-Hsu-officially-announces-resignation-from-Ziff-Davis-and-1UP/pg/49/aid/117991"Dan Hsu officially announces resignation from Ziff Davis and 1UP/a/lilia style="font-style: italic;" title="Ziff Davis Media files for bankcruptcy due to overwhelming debt" href="http://www.qj.net/Ziff-Davis-Media-files-for-bankcruptcy-due-to-overwhelming-debt/pg/49/aid/115284"Ziff Davis Media files for bankcruptcy protection due to overwhelming debt/abr/li/ulbrbrdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/qj/wii?a=t3HmoxRl"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/qj/wii?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/qj/wii?a=V5le7Vdm"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/qj/wii?d=43" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/qj/wii?a=Ozxc9RV4"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/qj/wii?d=50" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/qj/wii/~4/17q9DJMfHfo" height="1" width="1"/

img alt="EGM - Image 1" title="EGM - Image 1" src="http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126536/egm-streetfighter4_qjgenth.jpg?104649" style="cursor: pointer;" align="right"Is the magazine industry already bust? You've probably heard a lot of print media transferring to the e-format due to various reasons (mostly because of the lack of demand and rising printing costs), and it looks like a href="http://ps3.qj.net/tags/ziff-davis/8900" id="tag" title=""Ziff Davis/a Media's very own flagship publication, PC Magazine, is wrought by the same problems.brbrEarlier this week, the publication firm has revealed their plans to cease print circulation of PC Magazine, and opt for the e-publication approach. "The viability for us to continue to publish in print just isn t there anymore," said Ziff Davis chief executive Jason Young.brbrThe move to digital content won't be all that rough on the publication since they already have an online counterpart of the magazine in the form of PCMag.com. With this foundation already existing, it's now all a matter of getting more content online.brbrFurthermore, Young also noted that they're currently considering a href="http://ps3.qj.net/tags/electronic-gaming-monthly/3710" id="tag" title=""Electronic Gaming Monthly/a to follow suit. The decision to halt printing for a href="http://ps3.qj.net/tags/egm/452" id="tag" title="Electronic Gaming Monthly"EGM/a and publish it online instead isn't finalized yet - the matter will have to be settled by next year.brbrFor the record, EGM is the last remaining video game magazine being circulated in print by Ziff Davis.brbrhr style="width: 100 ; height: 2px;"brspan style="font-weight: bold;"Related articles:/spanbrulli style="font-style: italic;"a title="Dan Hsu officially announces resignation from Ziff Davis and 1UP" href="http://www.qj.net/Dan-Hsu-officially-announces-resignation-from-Ziff-Davis-and-1UP/pg/49/aid/117991"Dan Hsu officially announces resignation from Ziff Davis and 1UP/a/lilia style="font-style: italic;" title="Ziff Davis Media files for bankcruptcy due to overwhelming debt" href="http://www.qj.net/Ziff-Davis-Media-files-for-bankcruptcy-due-to-overwhelming-debt/pg/49/aid/115284"Ziff Davis Media files for bankcruptcy protection due to overwhelming debt/abr/li/ulbrbrimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/qj/ps3/~4/7DAqinnWYVY" height="1" width="1"/

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/84645?ns=guardianpageName=Business%3A+Brutal+share+sell-off+in+US+as+oil+falls+below+%2450+for+first+time+in+3%26frac12%3B+yearsch=Businessc3=The+Guardianc4=US+economy+%28Business%29%2CBusiness%2CMarket+turmoil%2CUS+news%2CWorld+news%2CSharesc5=Investments%2CCredit+Crunch%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Markets%2CUS+Economyc6=James+Doran%2CLarry+Elliottc7=2008_11_21c8=1121682c9=articlec10=GUc11=Businessc12=US+economyc13=c14=h2=GU%2FBusiness%2FUS+economy" width="1" height="1" //divpWall Street suffered its biggest battering in more than 10 years last night, while fears of a long and painful economic slump continued to stalk the markets./ppBoth stockmarket indices in the US - the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and Standard Poor's 500 index - closed the day at levels not seen since before the burst of the dotcom bubble in 2000. And the price of oil dropped below $50 a barrel for the first time in 3frac12; years./ppYesterday afternoon, what little confidence remained in the market was sapped by a record rise in US unemployment, and Washington's refusal to offer a financial bail-out to the country's so-called Big Three carmakers./ppIn the final two hours of trading, the sell-off was brutal: the Dow plunged 444.99 points - or 5.6%- to 7552.29. The SP 500 slid 6.7% to 752.44, its lowest close since 1997. Banking shares were perhaps the hardest hit, with Citigroup closing the day down 26%. This latest share collapse left Citigroup - once the biggest bank in the world - with a market value of $25bn. Less than two years ago, the group was worth more than $250bn./ppGM And Ford both closed up but lost massive gains made earlier in the day when the prospect of a bail-out was still on the cards. Their share prices plunged as Paulson revealed his distaste for government intervention in the car market ./pp"No one thinks a failure of any company in [the auto] industry would be a good thing. It's something to be avoided," Paulson said. But: "It doesn't make any sense to put any money in, if there isn't a clear path to viability."/ppThe slumping markets were further buffeted by the worst unemployment data in the US for 16 years. /ppInitial claims for state unemployment benefits were a seasonally adjusted 542,000 in the week to November 15, compared with 515,000 a week before, the biggest weekly increase since 1992. /ppCalifornia had the worst increase, with 15,000 more out of work over the week. New York also posted record gains, with 3,700 newly unemployed people as a large number of layoffs from Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs and Citigroup begin./pp"These numbers are rotten," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard Poor's in New York. He said California's losses were so high because many businesses had been affected by the recent wildfires. America's national unemployment rate is running at 6.5%, while total claims lasting more than one week broke through the 4m mark, to hit a 25-year high./ppTo compound it all, the dollar weakened further still against major currencies. A euro cost $1.2534, up from $1.2526 on Wednesday. /ppIn the oil market, the cost of a barrel of benchmark Brent crude fell by almost $3 to $49.83 on commodity markets. US light crude, which tends to be slightly dearer than Brent, briefly dipped below the $50 level in New York trading./ppThe slump means British motorists are likely to see petrol prices come down by a further 7p a litre before Christmas./ppThe Opec oil cartel is contemplating supply curbs when it meets in Cairo next week, but oil analysts said the prospect of tumbling demand for oil outweighed any possible cut in production. /ppThe RAC said the tumbling cost of crude - dropping almost $100 a barrel since its July peak of more than $147 - would mean that it would be pound;17 cheaper to fill up the average car. But AA spokesman Luke Bodset warned that, while wholesale prices were being pushed down, "they are not necessarily being passed on to the consumer, because the pound has lost a quarter of its value over the last year"./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/useconomy"US economy/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/marketturmoil"Market turmoil/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa"United States/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/shares"Shares/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Businesscountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227235575618112102461559266"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Businesscountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227235575618112102461559266" border="0" //a/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a

pFiled under: a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/culture/" rel="tag"Culture/a/pdiv align="center"a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/business/media/20mag.html?_r=3"img vspace="4" hspace="0" border="0" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2008/11/egm.logo.490.2.jpg" //abr / div align="left"As we near the end of a year that saw outspoken ema href="http://www.joystiq.com/tag/egm"EGM/a /emeditor-in-chief Dan "Shoe" Hsu a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/04/11/dan-shoe-hsu-ends-long-career-at-ziff-davis/"resign his post/a, a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/business/media/20mag.html?_r=3"emThe New York Times/em/aem /emquotes publisher Ziff-Davis as "considering" a course of action that would take the prominent print mag online only. The news comes in an article about ZD's decision to make a similar move with 27-year-old flagship publication, emPC Magazine.br /br //emZiff-Davis chief executive, James Young, revealed to the paper that an online-only future for emEGM /emis a possibility, but that the publisher "would not make a decision before the end of the year." Recent months have seen the a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/09/05/gfws-jeff-green-leaves-1up-for-sims-team/"departure/a of a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/09/18/shawn-elliot-leaves-1up-gfw-radio/"staffers/a from 1UP, emEGM's /emonline sister publication, and a a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/04/13/print-gaming-journalism-on-its-way-out-says-1ups-cox/"frank admission/a of the decreasing viability of games-related print media by 1UP editorial director, Simon Cox.br //div /divp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/11/20/new-york-times-ziff-davis-considering-online-only-future-for-eg/"NYT: Ziff-Davis considering online-only future for EGM/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.joystiq.com"Joystiq/a on Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:00:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./pp style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"nbsp;/ppa href=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/business/media/20mag.html?_r=3Read/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/11/20/new-york-times-ziff-davis-considering-online-only-future-for-eg/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/forward/1378746/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/11/20/new-york-times-ziff-davis-considering-online-only-future-for-eg/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/Jtfbip5qxHxH_jBweJyZZFZsvck/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/Jtfbip5qxHxH_jBweJyZZFZsvck/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=meVlHk3d"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=meVlHk3d" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=SuNWDJJL"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=SuNWDJJL" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/joystiq/~4/BpFT7YTqsdU" height="1" width="1"/

Controversial BBC plans to develop local news websites are expected to suffer a setback today, with ministers voicing concerns over the impact that the scheme will have on the viability of local newspapers.

pimg alt="dow_jones_venturewire_Nov_08.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/dow_jones_venturewire_Nov_08.jpg" width="160" height="43" /a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/05/14/070514fa_fact_auletta"Walter Mossberg/a, who has been reviewing technology since 1991 for the a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/us"Wall Street Journal/a in his weekly "a href="http://ptech.allthingsd.com/"Personal Technology/a" column, is convinced the companies that succeed in this type of a href="http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/category/econaclypse/"econaclypse/a, as a href="http://allthingsd.com/"AllThingsD/a has dubbed the economy, will be those that focus on innovation. "It has been my observation that while things do slow down in bad times, they don't stop," Mossberg said.br / br / Speaking to a packed room this week at the a href="http://showcase.dowjones.com/"Dow Jones VentureWire Technology Showcase/a in Redwood City CA, Mossberg, the "a href="http://www.time.com/time/digital/cyberelite/50.html"Most Influential Computer Journalist/a" according to Time Magazine, described the trends that excite him right now as happening both in computer hardware and computer software: strongoutside the browser Web applications, service in the cloud, and hand held computers/strong./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12665amp;cb=12665' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12665amp;n=12665' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p pMuch like during the mid to late eighties, when we saw advances in the personal computer, Mossberg explained we are once again witnessing advances in hardware innovation. This time however, we are not getting excited about the a href="http://www.pc-history.org/comm.htm"Commodore/a, a href="http://www.robert.to/reports/trs80rsc3.html"Radio Shack/a and a href="http://apple2history.org/"Apple II/a devices; instead, a new model of computer is energizing the world of consumer technology. The super smart phones or hand held computers as Mossberg prefers to call them: the a href="http://www.apple.com/iphone/"iPhone/a, the a href="http://www.t-mobileg1.com/"G1/a, and the a href="http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20081119/blackberrys-storm-presses-into-the-touch-phone-fray/"soon to be released BlackBerry Storm/a./p pIn much the same way, this time also reminds Mossberg of the mid to late nineties as we are once again observing a swell of Internet innovation; this one happening on the software front with widgets/Web apps and service in the cloud./p pWith so much information available on the Internet, and the instant gratification demanded by consumers today, the melding of these products is inevitable. Mossberg, who believes widgets will flourish on hand held computers, suggested that while the new class of mobile devices offer better browsing than their predecessors, it is in the apps that he sees competition, innovation and ideas fermenting. "We don't necessarily need to go through a browser," he said./p pThe problem of course is replicating data across devices in a smooth, cohesive manner to ensure that data available on the Internet is available on the handheld. And that's where service in the cloud comes in. While corporate America has enjoyed technologies such as a href="http://na.blackberry.com/eng/services/server/"BlackBerry Enterprise Server/a, a href="http://www.microsoft.com/EXCHANGE/default.mspx"Microsoft Exchange/a, and a href="http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/notes/"Lotus Notes/a that have enabled data to be replicated between devices [servers, desktops, laptops and handhelds], according to Mossberg, nobody has yet been "wildly successful" in bringing this technology to the wider consumer world via the cloud. /p pAnd so the race begins. While Mossberg has always claimed he is not responsible for business coverage of tech companies, the fact remains that for the past 17 years, a href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.05/mossberg.html"the star of the Wall Street Journal/a has accurately assessed innovation within the consumer tech market. Given his insights this week, the only questions that remain are: who will bring cloud services to the masses, and will it happen during the econaclypse? /p pemRead the transcript of Mossberg's keynote below./p pstrongWalter Mossberg: Dow Jones VentureWire Technology Showcase 2008/strong/p pstrongEffects of the economy/strong/p pI think it's obvious to everybody that we're in for a serious recession. The question is only how serious. Barack Obama probably had thirty seconds of feeling happy and now has a whole lot to worry about./p pAt AllthingsD.com, our website, we have coined a term for the economy; we're calling it the 'econaclypse' and I think we are in kind of an econaclypse./p pMy observation, and I have been writing about tech for 17 years, I don't fund anything, but I do get pitched like VCs do./p pI see all kinds of new companies, sometimes many months, sometimes over a year before their product ships. And it has been my observation that while things do slow down in bad times, they don't stop.br / br / There is a digital tidal wave in the world, all kinds of digital products, whether they are hardware products, software products, services, web 2.0, whatever the hypesters are going to call the next phase of the Web. That stuff doesn't stop. It slows down a little, but doesn't stop/p pAnd the companies obviously that can hold together and continue to work on their innovation, whether it's business model innovation, but especially if it's product innovation, those are the companies that come out of these things strongest. /p pObviously this is not a typical company and I realize the model is different when you have 25 billion dollars in cash in the bank and no debt - which is what this person has - but Steve Jobs said, it was about a month ago or three weeks ago, Steve Jobs jumped on their a href="http://theappleblog.com/2008/10/22/apples-quarterly-earnings-call-summary/"earning call/a - he rarely deigns to be on their earnings call as many of you know - and he jumped on their earning call and said: in the last recession, that's when we opened our Apple stores, that's when we did... and he mentioned a couple of different innovative and expensive projects they'd taken on during the downturn, and he says we're going to try and keep innovating our way out of it. /p pObviously on a smaller scale and without the 25 billion in cash, and maybe with a little debt that he doesn't have, still I think it's the right thing to do. And even if you don't manage to do that, somebody else will./p pJust because the market is in the eight thousands instead of the eleven thousands or unemployment - which is actually the more serious number in my opinion for gauging the length of the recession - is 8.5 percent, which it might get to rather than 4 percent, it doesn't mean people stop working on new ideas, particularly in tech and particularly in consumer tech./p pstrongMossberg's take on consumer technology today/strong/p pLet me talk about what I think is going on, kind of the big picture of where we are and then we'll do some QA if you want./p pThis period we're in right now if we put the econaclypse off to the side for a minute, this period we're in right now, to me reminds me a lot of the mid to late eighties and the mid to late nineties at the same time. And here's what I mean. It reminds me a little bit of the mid to late 90's because we have another wave of Internet innovation going on. /p pThere is obviously a million different things going on in the Internet but there are two categories I look at - and you've got to remember I don't write about, and I don't pay any attention to corporate technology, or niche technology. I also don't ever use the word enterprise, because the least enterprising and least entrepreneurial part of the entire economy are these giant bloated corporations to whom that term is often applied. I don't see anything enterprising about Ford Motor Company I just call them big corporations or big government agencies or whatever they are. Fine with me that they buy technology - it's great that they buy technology, and sure there is wonderful technology being produced for those folks, but it's not my job to write about them. So everything I say is in the context of consumer/p pSo what do I mean when I talk about things going on on the Web that are to me as exciting and there is as much fervor and ferment and intellectual energy as there was when the Web was getting going in the mid to late nineties?/p pThere are two buckets.br / br / One is outside the browser - it's these widgets, web apps, whatever you want to call them, that did start on the PC and Mac. Actually in a funny way, some of them were tried in Windows 95 with what was called a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_desktop"Active Desktop/a. Unfortunately the way that Microsoft presented it to the world was as sort of selling your personal computer desktop to Disney and Warner brothers, which allowed me to write a couple of great fulminating columns, and not just me./p pBut it was kind of this idea. And then the next instantiation of any importance, of any sort of economic clout was when Apple put this dashboard aspect into the Mac OS and then Microsoft followed with the sidebar in Vista. But really the place where I think it flourishes is on handhelds. Hand held computers, the iPhone class of computers of which there are now about to be three, and I'm going to get to that in a minute./p pSo, that's the first bucket, and I think there is colossal developer energy, intellectual energy, going into this question of "okay we have the Web out there, the Internet out there, it's just full of all kinds of information; commerce engines, and search opportunities, and entertainment opportunities, but we don't necessarily need to go through a browser - we can go through an app that takes advantage of the processing power and the graphics engine and all that on the computer that is narrowly focused on whatever it is. /p pHow many people here have an iPhone or an iPod Touch? I'm talking about everything from the simple stock widget on there, to the now over 7000 apps for that phone - for that hand held computer. That's since 11th July. Two million downloads and 7000 apps for that phone, for that hand held computer. So that's one big area of excitement.br / br / The other one, of course, is trying to take what has been true in corporate America for a long time, which is a sort of service in the cloud - whether it's the Blackberry Enterprise Server, or Microsoft Exchange or Lotus products that replicate data across devices and, push e-mail and other data out and bring that to the wider consumer world. /p pYou see Google making some effort, you see Microsoft making some effort, you see Apple with a href="http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20080723/apples-mobileme-is-far-too-flawed-to-be-reliable/"Mobile Me/a making some efforts - that so far hasn't been successful. Nobody has really been wildly successful. Even a href="http://www.rim.com/"RIM/a - much of the RIM effort has been focused - and when I talk about the consumer space most of the RIM, distributed computing through the cloud, is still out of the enterprise - although that is changing with their customer profile./p pSo those are the two big exciting areas that I see. I'm not talking about business models for those things. I understand that there has been some debate in some of the sessions about the viability of the advertising model versus other kinds of models, and I share some skepticism about relying solely on advertising. /p pBut without regard to business model for a minute, I think those are two huge pools of excitement./p pAnd then, complementing that and this is what makes me think of the mid to late eighties as opposed to mid to late nineties. What was happening in the mid to late eighties?/p pRemember the personal computer; the mass market personal computer appeared in 1977. /p pYou had three of them; one of the most important of the three was the Apple II, but you also had a Radio Shack and Commodore. And those were the first machines where somebody without an engineering degree could actually take it out of the box and do something with it. And on the Apple II in particular, that's where business began to adopt personal computers because a href="http://www.bricklin.com/default.htm"Dan Bricklin/a and a href="http://www.frankston.com/"Bob Frankston/a wrote a program called a href="http://www.bricklin.com/visicalc.htm"VisiCalc/a. It was a spreadsheet, it ran on the Apple II and you were off to the races in terms of businesses using personal computers./p pBut it was in the eighties that you began to see this tremendous competition and intellectual activity and design activity and engineering activity around "what is a personal computer?"/p pSo you had Apple doing its stuff, you had Commodore, you had Radio Shack, you had, you know, a million companies. /p pWhen I started writing my Personal Technology column in 1991, a href="http://www.pcmag.com/"PC Magazine/a, and first of all, PC Magazine was the size of Vogue, and when they did their ratings of computers, there were 75 or 80 PC makers, and they were not all making the same sort of thing./p pWell I think we're kind of back there because I think there are new form factors and models of computers. Some of them are these a href="http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20081105/netbooks-come-into-their-own/"netbooks/a, everybody's heard that term, it's actually a misnomer. The original idea was it would be a very thin client, with very little memory and processing power and would mostly be used to access things on the Net, these widgety kinds of things. And there is still some of that, but within eight months, they've all gotten hard disks, they've all gotten Windows XP so they've all kind of become very small laptops, but nevertheless, it's an interesting category./p pThe much bigger category of new kinds of computers is what I call hand held computers or another term might be super smart phones. I mean this smart phone term has been out there and has meant very little. At one point a href="http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=a6c4f799-ec5c-427c-807c-4c0f96765a81displaylang=en"Microsoft actually was using it as a brand/a for something that by today's standards would look very primitive./p pYou know, a href="http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20060105/a-new-palm-treo-doesnt-beat-the-650/"Treos/a were smart phones, Blackberry is a kind of smart phone, obviously these Windows mobile phones that have been out there but there is something new, another whole level of game changing power, and application development that was kicked off with the iPhone and there are now two devices in my opinion that are in that category; one is the iPhone, and one is the a href="http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20081015/google-answers-the-iphone/"G1, the first Android phone/a, and there will be many other Android phones. /p pAnd this week we're about to see a third, which is this, the BlackBerry Storm, which is their effort to compete with the iPhone head on. It's a touch screen phone which will have an app store, and I'm not referring to the - there have obviously been third party apps for the Blackberry, but this is going to have, it has a new SDK, and it will have a major app store like Apple has like Google has for the G1./p pThese things are computers that happen to make phone calls./p pSome of you who have tried some of these 7K apps on the iPhone know that here is pretty much a staggering variety of what you can do on there. And I at least can say in my travels and daily life, I'm as glued as the rest of you probably are to this stuff. I'm pulling out my laptop less and less often during stopovers at airports, and it's not just like when you use to have your Blackberry or Treo and you could look at your e-mail. /p pI'm doing Web surfing in the browser - which is a good browser in the iPhone - and all of these, the marks of these is they have a much more real browsers than the old phones used to have, but I'm also using a lot of these apps. These are kind of big broad areas where I think it is quite fun and exciting to see competition, ideas ferment; and innovation./p pNow are these things immune to the economy? Of course they're not - of course RIM would rather be launching and Verizon would rather be launching Blackberry Storm in last years economy than in this years economy, and it may be that what it would have done in last years economy is not going to happen in this years economy. But luckily for me, I don't have to cover the business side of RIM or Verizon, I don't have to predict sales, I just have try to review and try to understand these products and where they are heading./p pJust as a lot of the design and engineering energy left things like CD-ROMs and rushed into the Web when it was clear that it was a big deal, I observed, and I don't know about all of you, but I'm observing a tremendous migration of design and engineering activity into these super smart phones or hand held computers, iPhone class devices. And into these both cloud services and these kind of widgety outside the browser Web apps./p pSo that's what I think are the big kind of trends that going on right now, at least in consumer technology - of course mixed with other things. People are still making laptops, we have a new version of Windows coming, which I actually think has a chance of being quite good, and quite good is not a phrase you would have seen in any of my columns next to the word Vista, but I think the track they're on with Windows 7 is quite promising. So I'd like to open up to QA and we can talk about these topics or any other topic you might think I might be quite competent./p pThank you./em/p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mossberg_says_innovation_is_th.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/yKAU4li3HOmlSNW9kY5ObU9oNrs/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/yKAU4li3HOmlSNW9kY5ObU9oNrs/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=sWEQLTgS"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=1035" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=WSLESLVU"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=XVYQ3cRY"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=XVYQ3cRY" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=Oanbv2y8"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=Oanbv2y8" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=ykTMUKOo"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=ykTMUKOo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=3UiX34D1"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=cv11MywQ"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=1034" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/e8wy9EmrvNI" height="1" width="1"/

pFiled under: a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/government-legal/" rel="tag"Government/Legal/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/earnings-financials/" rel="tag"Earnings/Financials/a/pimg vspace="4" hspace="4" border="0" align="right" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/11/billhopeless_opt.jpg" alt="" /Wow, what an amazing piece of political theater that just went down. As we reported, four senators from auto producing state (two Democrats and two Republicans) led by Michigan Senator Carl Levin have a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/11/20/breaking-automaker-bailout-agreement-reached-in-senate-still-n/"reached an agreement on a compromise bailout bill/a for automakers. They were set to announce details of the compromise bill at 2:30PM, but before they could, a team of Congressional Democrats led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid walked into the room in which the press conference was to be held and announced that they didn't support the compromise bill and that CEOs of the Big 3 would have to come back after the Thanksgiving holiday and present a plan on how any loans that might be given would be used.br /br /Back to that compromise bill. The big stalemate, other than whether U.S. automakers should get a bailout at all, is where the money would come from. Democrats want to take $25 billion from the $700 billion bailout fund for financial institutions while Republicans and the White House want to re-appropriate $25 billion in loans that have already been approved for investments in green technology. Levin revealed the compromise to be a version of the Republican's plan, with concessions made to Democrats in that certain environmental restrictions would remain in tact and that loan repayments would go directly back to replenish the $25 billion fund for green investments. br /br /What do we take away from all this? The Big 3 will get no assurance of federal aid before Thanksgiving, and there's still no guarantee they'll get help after the break. The ball is again back in the court of the Big 3 CEOs, who need to show up in December with detailed plans of how each would use any federal aid. The Democrats are calling for "accountability" and "viability" in their proposals, which are due to Congress by December 2.p style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/11/20/aw-snap-congressional-democrats-undercut-compromise-bailout-bil/"Aw Snap! Congressional Democrats undercut compromise bailout bill/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.autoblog.com"Autoblog/a on Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:16:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/11/20/aw-snap-congressional-democrats-undercut-compromise-bailout-bil/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/forward/1378516/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/11/20/aw-snap-congressional-democrats-undercut-compromise-bailout-bil/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/kWU6k5KxXcEkiBYnGLONBospjKI/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/kWU6k5KxXcEkiBYnGLONBospjKI/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=9Tmn94mW"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=9Tmn94mW" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=X6CVGRPk"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=X6CVGRPk" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/autoblog/~4/34LD9eJyyeE" height="1" width="1"/