xlii

Walkman – Pilot

As new technology is developed we say often say goodbye to the old, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes with fond memoires. Most recently but not surprisingly, the original Sony Walkman hit the dust. I was more surprised to find out it was still being manufactured up until now! I’ve still got one sitting somewhere of course, along side an original Sony Minidisc player. The 1/4″ floppy stopped being manufactured this year (a fantastic ice scraper for your car btw). Being a hoarder I’ve got quite a few things sitting around, including one of the the first real touch screen devices, the Pilot 5000 (and a few of its descendants), the device that went on to become Palm and inspired a revolution, but faded itself – or is still fading.

Bigtrak is back!

My favourite old bit of technology in the house is my still working 1980′s Bigtrak (white, UK model). My kids now love this if I let them have a go. But wait, 30 years on say hello! Bigtrack is Back! Some things to return – if they were good enough and loved enough…

Apple is the donkey’s carrot on the string

Steve Jobs is often quoted as wanting to “Change the World”. And he has. And no doubt will continue to. Whether you like Apple or not everyone gets excited about the “Just one more thing…” But in developing the next thing and leading the way they are often strongly attributed killing off technologies they see as obsolete. The obvious one that everyone is writing (too much) about is Flash – Adobe Flash that is, not Flash Memory (Steve Jobs: “Flash? We love Flash memory!”). Now we see Microsoft is giving up on Silverlight in favour of HTML5. Apple lead, everyone follows (eventually). Consider instead of a carrot on a string leading the donkey, it’s a tastier apple leading the tech world – they all want a bite, never quite reach, but it keeps them going. There are other leaders of course, but Jobs and Apple get the media attention – aren’t they good at that? Though, they aren’t perfect of course – I don’t like iTunes’ interface for browsing content – too slow, and what’s the point in Ping?

There are many others, in decline. MySpace keeps trying to revamp itself, but will it go anywhere? I doubt it. I just deleted my account. Yahoo – the next big thing, the internet phenomenon of the 90′s – well, they also keep trying to revamp too, but will they keep it up?

Say Goodbye to…

What will we say goodbye to next, what will stay?

Flash will fade away
Silverlight will go the same way
Google Earth is here to stay
As is Wikipedia
though I must say
I prefer h2g2
Yahoo take two steps forward, three back
MySpace, sorry, but following you lack
America On Line – gone off-line
the phoenix has phizzled
Ping just pongs
Syonara Symbian
Beebo’s a dodo
IE, who uses that?
Linux for servers and die-hards
Less about the OS, more about the Apps
iPhone will just get better
iPad and iPod will follow suit
What happened to the old fashioned letter?
now that point is mute
Moores law will carry on, or double
Palm – who? They’re in trouble
CDs – a year or two
DVDs – maybe five
Digg dug its grave
Twitter will grow a bit more, flatten out and dive
(unless they add something new)
Facebook will get bigger but not forever
It is to the naughties what Yahoo was to the nineties
Riding the peak of the wave
Something else will come and it will fade away
A Modern Messaging System?
Not impressed, not excited, 5/10, could do better
Everything comes and goes in waves, except Google Wave – that just went
Waved goodbye before saying hello
Social networks become anti-social networks – why not just talk to people?
Get outside and go
Camping, get back to nature, move to the country (the next big thing?)
Skype n Facetime – Video and VoIP good for us
Google talk – only in the US
Say hello to Graphene – that’s one to watch
Blogging is old hat (so why am I doing that?)
Perhaps I should stop.