Editorials

Everyone talks about Apple innovation and how they are great designers and creators. They have come up with some amazing ideas; marketing ideas. If you look at the history of Apple they have really not “created” much. They have taken ideas and concepts and made them work and in some cases even made them better, but for the most part they have not really created anything new.

For those that are going to nay-say this let’s look at a few items. The original Apple, was based off of concepts that were seen at Xerox and also on the IBM “PC” concept that was out. The Original iPad was taken (as proved in court) from the Creative Nomad MP3 player. The iPod was a much better product, but it was based on the Creative design. You can look back and see this trend in almost all of Apple’s devices. I am not calling apple out on anything new here as this is also the trend with most companies.

Where Apple does things different though is to file a patent on their way of doing things and make those patents so vague and broad that they can easily be extended to encompass almost anything in the event that Apple feels threatened. A case in point on this is one of the core patents in the Apple Vs the world of Android suits around the world. The Patent that was granted by to Apple actually covers “the look and feel” of the way a touch screen works. Excuse me? The look and feel? How to you patent that? Maybe I am wrong, but I thought patents were for technology. As such they should be about the actual hardware and workings involved not the concept or thought. Still Apple has managed to push these through even with prior art in evidence and on the books.

So Apple’s success (and bank roll) comes from being able to market old ideas as new and innovative, and to patent concepts and ideas that are so broad that they can sue anyone that even tries to invent a competitive product. Considering they are getting away with it on a massive scale it is really not a bad business model.

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About three or four years ago nVidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang made the bold announcement that he wanted nVidia’s ARM based SoC (System on Chip) named Tegra to become 50% of nVidia’s revenue. One of the products that has had at least good success has been Microsoft’s ZuneHD. We were given the chance to play around with one of these and found it to be a great product. Unfortunately between the launch of the Tegra and the Tegra 2 was a serious delay. This had something of a negative impact on the market acceptance for this processor. When you combined these delays with the issues (and rumors) around the Fermi GPUs things did not look good for nVidia’s dream.

However, since that time they have managed to turn much of that around and pulled off some great design wins. We have found nVidia’s dual core Tegra 2 in devices such as Asus’ Transformer and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. Both of these devices have grabbed the market’s interest and have begun to nibble away at the strangle hold that Apple has on the tablet market (and prompted a number of lawsuits from Apple).

Now with the Tegra 2 still tumbling out into the market nVidia is talking Kal-El a quad core Tegra that is reportedly faster and more power efficient than the Tegra 2. Now, having a power efficient quad core ARM based SoC is a very cool feat, but if nVidia is to be believed then the Kal-El Tegra will use less power than the current dual core Tegra 2. For those that will sat that the Android based Tablet and phone is in serious trouble due to Apple’s recent lawsuits and patent complaints do not worry. According to Huang, nVidia is still investing heavily in Android and also looking forward to Microsoft’s Windows 8. Windows 8 will be the first Windows operating system for ARM based SoCs.

We have some questions into nVidia to see just what they see as the future for Terga and the whole world of the Tegra and Smart device. We hope to hear back from them soon on this, but for now… it will be interesting to watch and see if nVidia can get Kal-El out of the gate soon and not repeat the same mistakes that plagued Tegra 2.

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It seems that some members of the AntiSec group have recently released a large amount of information about law enforcement officers to include their names addresses, social security numbers and in some cases credit card information. Now, I have no love at all for corrupt police officers or ones that abuse their position of authority, but exposing their personal information puts innocents at risk.

You see the bad guys rarely go after the officer in question directly. No, they go after the family the wife, kids etc.  So while I have never had an issue with the things that Anonymous have done in the past. For the most part they go after corporate entities that have no respect for the consumer or anyone else for that matter. However this particular portion of the group has stepped over a line that will lose them appeal from the average person. Now the media can claim they have put innocent people at risk (and they have in truth).  

Anonymous was better off when they were going after the corporations and the government instead of releasing information of this type. Of course on the other side of the coin, I also put blame on the people hosting these sites as they are responsible for protecting that information and failed in that duty not once but twice.

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If you have not heard of Harry Potter then you have been living under a rock. The Boy Wizard has become this generations Star Wars. The series of seven books has amassed a serious number of followers (I have read them) while the movies have spawned a monster of a merchandising machine.

As I live in Florida I have visited the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studio’s Islands of Adventure more than once and after being open for almost a year there is still a multi-hour wait to get into some of the stores.  However, even though the creator of this phenomenon makes a good deal of money from all of this it is not as much as she could.

The solution? Well J.K. Rowling has teamed up with Sony Entertainment to create an online virtual world called Pottermore. In this new virtual world they are extending the world created in the books to allow fans (both young and old) to take on new personalities and experience the world of Hogwarts (the best Wizarding School in Brittan and pretty much the central location in the books. Officially the new site opens up in October, but ever since it was announced they have teased about a close Beta beginning on July 31st. At first all you had to do was submit an e-mail before July 31st.

However, because of that most people submitted the e-mail and that was that. People still visited Pottermore.com but it was not as much as it could have been (at least from what we are hearing). So how do you fix that? Again a simple answer. You change your mind before the morning of the 31st.
Fans began to hear that for the Beta there was only going to be 1 million people allowed to enter. Now that is a pretty big number until you realize that more than a million people went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (the final film in the series) on opening weekend and it is still going strong many weeks later.

So, on the morning of the 31st at 8am London time fans flocked to Pottermore.com in the hopes to be one of the few to get in. However, the powers that be changed their minds once again. Instead of letting people in they were going to have a multiday (seven for the seven books to be exact) scavenger hunt (maybe they stole that idea from us…). On each day you would have to hit the site by 8am London time (3am Eastern Time in the US) and try to find something called the Magic Quill. Each day a clue (a question that could be answered if you have access to or have read the books) would be posted on Pottermore.com. This Clue would give you a site to go to at Pottermore.com. There you could click on a flash image that of the Magical Quill and you could put your name in for the Beta. Even if you had the answer you had to be quick. If you did not get your submission in before that days allotted number of positions was filled you were out of luck.
But wait! There were still four more days so everyone that did not get in check back tomorrow! As you can see what Sony has done is create a site that is going to have other companies clambering to put ads on it. Before the site is even live they have found a way to get multiple millions of hits (perhaps even tens of millions).  From what we are hearing although the early entries are done no one has actually gotten into the site. In order to do so you have to wait for an e-mail to arrive with a special link to gain access to the site. While everyone waits they are still going back multiple times every day to see if anything has changed. Can you imagine the advertising allure of a site like this, especially one that is already geared towards kids and teens? J.K. Rowling may truly want to create something for the fans of her books, but I am certain that the executives at Sony are seeing nothing but dollar signs at this point.

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*updated 08-08-2011 17:46PM EST with correction on number of days the magic quill was available