December 23, 2005
Technological Innovations Coming Rapidly...

The technological changes are coming so rapidly these days, I can't even keep up.

For instance, I was flipping through yesterday's New York Times business section, only to find the following:

-an article by David Pogue on cell phones for small children that only has limited functions;

-an article by Thomas J. Fitzgerald on the dropping price of fast and elegant laptop computers, now easy-to-find for under one grand;

-an article by Adam Baer on Verizon adopting the popular Razr phone;

-an article by John Biggs on the Audex winter jacket that comes with cellphone and iPod capabilities built into the jacket, a crosspromotion by Burton and Motorola;

-an article by Andrew Zipern on a solar-powered charger for the iPod;

-an article by Shelly Frierman on LaCie's new Brick line of computer storage drives designed to look like children's building blocks;

-an article by Ivan Berger on a new, simplified memory card reader called the MediaGear 15 in 4 Camera Reader;

-an opinion column by J.D. Biersdorfer on the benefits of bluetooth and video files for Sony PlayStation Portable;

-an article by Ian Austen on the large profit margin for the BlackBerry;

-an article by Stephen Labaton on the Senate's approval of legislation to create a federal program to help American pay for equipment to help analog televisions work with the digital television conversion, to be completed by 2009;

-an article by Steve Lohr on IBM's buying Micromuse, a compoany whose software manages Internet-based networks for video, voice, and other types of data;

All of these processes make what some people would call pie-in-the-sky dreams by us academians of what is to come in transmedia approaching very rapidly, it seems. It's just hard to even begin to keep up with all of the innovation, even when your job is to track it...