Links for Tuesday April 12th, 2011
LAB RAT: Pretty cool web comic, delving into some of the backstory in Portal.
"I Was Itching Like a Crackhead": Study Finds College Students Addicted to Media: This story has been making the roudns, and upon reflection, I think I'd have a hard time going "cold turkey" on all media consumption as well.
Hulu, profit: Hulu's popularity poses a problem: The big TV studios are considering handicapping Hulu:
"The crux of the problem is that Hulu's ad sales are still dwarfed by some $30 billion annually in programming fees that pours into the media giants from cable, satellite and telecom providers. Those fees support the cost of producing content, and undercutting them by steering viewers away from TV and to the Internet would jeopardize the sturdiest financial leg of the TV industry."
Of course, the real problem is not the Internet, but that TV has to compete in order to get my attention. There are so many other things that I can do with my time, that if it's inconvient to watch some particular show, I just won't watch it. I'm not sure how the Robert Iger's of the world plan to counteract that.
The Long Nose of Innovation: Bill Buxton makes an interesting, albeit somehwat counter-intutive, point about innovation:
The report analyzed each technology (time-sharing, client/server computing, LANs, relational databases, VLSI design, etc.) from first inception to the point where it turned into a billion dollar industry. What was consistent among virtually all the results was how long each took to move from inception to ubiquity. Twenty years of jumping around from university labs to corporate labs to products was typical. And 30 years, as with the mouse and RISC processors, was not at all unusual (and remember, this is the "fast-paced world of computers," where it is "almost impossible" to keep up).
The Android multitouch story gets even murkier: Some interesting speculation from Nilay Patel. I think I'm really going to have to read this new book about Google.
The Real Lesson of Cisco's Billion-Dollar Flip Debacle: Astute analysis of Cisco's announcement that it is shuttering their Flip line of products. (via Nilay Patel)
Why "post PC" doesn't mean "sans PC": I'm still trying to figure out this iPad thing, but in the meantime, Michael Gartenberg has an interesting take:
"So, why so much hype about the post-PC world? Because historically, as PCs have become increasingly sophisticated, they’ve also become increasingly complex. Users become empowered by new features while simultaneously being forced to contend with complex systems that can obscure the task currently at hand.
This is one reason why devices like the iPad have become popular. No, they can’t do everything a PC can do today—but that’s not a bad thing. The iPad performs some tasks quite well, all while keeping those tasks simple—and that means an iPad can replace that second or third PC someone was thinking of buying."
(via Daring Fireball)
iPad 3 Unlikely to Come This Year?: I think that Apple making one iPad a year is a pretty safe bet.