Showing 21 - 26 of 26
Get intellectual about your property rights
Life, James Hein, Published on 23/01/2013
» Some businesses still think they can dominate their customers. A good case in point is the recent Instagram initiative to change the terms of use on the Facebook-owned social network so it could use member's photos and sell them for profit, without any compensation. The response from members was instant, and not a very nice one. Facebook made a fairly quick about face on the issue but they never should have tried it in the first place.
Fiddling with photos is now a lot more fun
Life, James Hein, Published on 16/01/2013
» This is definitely the age of the digital camera. What many people don't understand when they take digital snaps, however, is that the results can be a lot better with a bit of processing. In the old days the best way to do that was with Apple software and there are those who will maintain this view until they die. The PC started to come into its own about 20 years ago when Adobe released its first Windows version of Photoshop and about 10 years ago support started for RAW camera images. Then, in 2007, out came Lightroom, a product designed exclusively for the digital camera user.
Apple's dominance pegged by Samsung
Life, James Hein, Published on 02/01/2013
» For those that remember I like to use this issue to summarise what happened in 2012. Last year was finally the year of the tablet PC, and at the same time the smartphone wars. Coming into the year Apple was the dominant player in both the smartphone and the tablet arena with the iPad and the iPhone. It looked like Apple was unstoppable and at the end of the year they were still the biggest computer company beating out Microsoft in total sales. Apple also took a bit of a hit with the loss of Steve Jobs, the main driving force and the individual responsible for putting the company in the strong position it was.
Ink and incremental change as Apple continues to fall
Life, James Hein, Published on 26/12/2012
» This year will be an interesting one and a little like 1998 because the world marketplace will be struggling, there will be little disposable income to go around, sales figures will be down and as a consequence there will not be a strong push to move computer technology very far. In the smartphone arena I predict that the Samsung Galaxy S4 will eclipse the iPhone 5S for two reasons. The 5S will be a catch-up model to the S3 with nothing special about it and at the same time the S4 will be well ahead of the 5S in functionality. Up until the iPhone 4, Apple dominated the market. With the release of the 4S and the passing of Steve Jobs things started to go downhill as Apple started to become reactive to the marketplace instead of a market driver. It moved to litigation and protectionism over inventiveness and innovation. So the downward slide of Apple will continue through 2013.
Paid applications market growing at healthy rate
Life, James Hein, Published on 12/12/2012
» Your app store needs more developers. According to the analysis firm Canalys about half of the money paid out is to about 25 developers both in the Apple and Google worlds. Given that there are over 700,000 apps to choose from this means that most people miss out. Most of the top earners are game developers like Rovio, Electronic Arts and the like. The stand out non-game developer was Pandora selling the obviously popular Pandora radio app that supports the personalised music experience. So as usual it is the developers with the brand name behind them that get the money and it is difficult for a new player to break into the market. Not unexpected from the survey is that the demand and associated market for paid apps is growing at a very healthy rate so give it a go, you have a chance of making something for yourself in the future.
Barcoding gets better
Life, James Hein, Published on 10/10/2012
» Everyone has seen a barcode, a little strip of lines that represents a simple alphanumeric code, typically used for keeping track of stock items. There had been no need to improve on this for a long time.