Last week’s news that Amazon intends to bow their own unlimited streaming video service to go head to head with Netflix and Apple TV both excites and amuses me. It excites me because streaming media is where it’s at and when it comes to consumer choice, content selection, and technological innovation, the more the merrier. […]
Joel Rollins blog posts Vanishing History parts 1 and 2 got me thinking about my own experiences with analog recording media. Recently I dug up a box of mixed tapes that I had painstakingly duped in the late 1980s. Kids today with their iPods have no grasp on how much work we had to do back then to create compilations of favourite songs. […]
It’s funny how often discussion seems to revolve around the iPad. Some days it feels like that’s all that I write about. One day last year I stopped in at the butcher store and the first thing out of the owner’s mouth wasn’t “Hello” it was “So what’s the deal with the iPad?” And just yesterday my […]
Anybody who has experience with luxury goods, whether buying, selling, or both understands the psychology of Bigger Boat Syndrome. Especially as technophiles, many of us are susceptible to the seduction of toys that are newer, shinier and cooler than what we, or more importantly our friends have now. I recall one retail client I had back […]
I never have been. “Look before you leap” is definitely one of my character traits. People are often surprised by that, given my career in CE and my visibility on social media. Yet despite the fact that it seems like I’m on Twitter 24/7 I didn’t sign up for Twitter until about two years ago, […]
CES 2011 is over but that’s just the beginning of the trade show calendar for the New Year. All the dealers I know are highly focused and selective about the shows they attend: It’s typically CES, OR CEDIA Expo, OR InfoComm OR EHX, and occasionally two, but almost never more than that. On the manufacturing side, however, it’s typical for my […]
Every industry and channel has its larger than life characters. They’re the Bill Brasky types that we all tell stories about at industry functions when they’re not there, either as an inspiration or as a warning to others. If they are there, there’s an excellent chance that they’re the ones telling the story. One of my favorite […]
The phrase “you can’t be everything to everybody” gets tossed around a lot, but people seldom stop to think it through and ponder the importance of that message. I’m not aware of any successful small or medium-sized business that has ever become successful through doing a whole bunch of things half-assed, as opposed to doing […]
I remember my first December in the custom channel very clearly: 9-5 office hours, comfy chair in an office, and meetings with clients. And with the exception of being closed on Boxing Day and only half-day hours from Christmas to New Year’s Eve, it was business as usual and no different from any other month […]
Last month I had no idea that the banter on Twitter surrounding a CE Pro story about HDMI-related issues would touch off a minor flame war, and inspire Gary to write a very good blog post about the opportunities that HDMI affords to integrators. For my part, I took advantage of the discussion to Tweet a series of haikus about HDMI. In case you […]
I’ve got a lot of aphorisms that I like to live by but the notion that “It’s Better To Be Prepared Than Postpared” is one of my favorites. Sometimes I take it too far, but when it comes to system design, I don’t think that’s possible. Related to that, I’m also inclined to believe that there’s no […]
As clichéd as it sounds, the one constant in CE is change. That’s why resistance to it always comes as a surprise. Recently a story of mine went online that dealt with sustainable architecture principles, with a special focus on Daylight Harvesting: programming a lighting control system to respond to daylight levels so as to maintain a […]
It used to be called the Information Superhighway, but really, if information and news is central to your business, it’s more like trying to drink from a firehose. Like everything else work related, it helps to have a process. Here’s how I do it. I get something on the order of twenty industry-related newsletters a day […]
Now that Sony has announced its new TVs that will incorporate Google TV, the concept is beginning to look less like vaporware and more like yet another entrant to the coming content wars. So I guess that means it’s time to start blogging about it, in anticipation for when it’s finally released and we can get our […]
I was talking the other day with an integrator on the east coast of the US. Like a lot of conversations I have with people in the industry, there’s always some small talk about business conditions in our local markets. As I told him, in the past eighteen months, in Edmonton and Calgary pretty much […]
Reflecting on discussions I had on the topic of 3DTV at CEDIA Expo last week, a clear trend emerges: beyond the official pitches the exhibitors were giving during their booth tours, no one is really that keen on 3D. One bon mot that swept across Twitter last week was: “Too bad LED and 3D came out at the same […]
Last week I submitted a story for rAVe [Publications] that detailed the trend of AV installers moving away from using Wi-Fi unless absolutely necessary. The main reason cited was that the sheer density of Wi-Fi routers in both residences and commercial operations in urban spaces has led to wireless traffic jam, seriously inhibiting the ability of any of those devices to […]
