There's an interesting article in the latest Time. The guts of it is that digital camera development has reached the end of the line. The human eye can't discern resolution greater than five or six megapixels - which is where mainstream models are at now - so punters have lost interest in upgrading.

The 51% digicam sales growth we saw in 2004 will flatten to 10% this year, says IDC, and go negative by 2010.

Worse (for manufacturers), margins will get leaner as 'consumer electronics powerhouses like Samsung, Panasonic and BenQ flex their distribution muscles'.

To which I say: bollocks. Granted, the go-go days of mass growth are over, as most households have now made the transition from film to digital. But there's still a lot interesting, growth-driving features to come. For example, check out the GPS add-on from Sony that Bruce Buckman reviews in our coming October issue. Look for GPS to be built-in with future models. And everybody's going to want the option to know where a photo was taken. It's guaranteed to drive a fresh round of upgrades. Then how about a built-in 3G chip for sending your pics directly to Flickr.com? That's a couple of years in the future, but it'll be another must-have. DSLR is a hot, high-end, high-growth niche that's growing fast right now (check out Bruce's review of the Lumix 1 - from Panasonic, now less - in our September issue). And better video options will be a huge driver in the near future. It aint the end of history yet.

Posted by Chris Keall at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 7 )

We still don't know when Vista will land. Some now say April or May next year. But we do have a hint that it's going to whack your wallet. According to the one blog, the list price for Windows Vista Ultimate will be a nosebleeding C$499 (NZ$689).

Vista Home Premium is quoted at C$269 (NZ$359). Upgrading to Vista Ultimate will set you back C$299 NZ$413), to Vista Home Premium C$199 or NZ$275. (The 'Ultimate' edtion of Vista will include multimedia home entertainment features that have up til now been sold under the Windows Media Centre Edition banner).

Microsoft's PR company has acknowledged that the Canadian pricing, now removed from the MS Canada site, was correct.

That means for entry-level PC buyers, it might be cheaper just to buy a whole new machine.
While the price of PC hardware has plummeted and plummeted again since the last version of Windows six years ago, Microsoft is betting it can keep the price of Windows sky-high. Start saving, Vista fans.

Posted by Chris Keall at 6:08 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )

A few months ago I noted that many US telcos had already hocked off their Yellow Pages businesses. They got in while the going was good. That is, before their directories' value withered under the search assault from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft - all of whom are now getting into the local search and directory business, coupling it with attractive features like maps.google.com (which recently added New Zealand streets), earth.google.com and even free wi-fi (both to attract traffic and to make it easy for the search engine to pin down a browser's exact location).

Now comes news that Telecom is mulling the sale of the NZ Yellow Pages, which one analyst says could raise $1.2 billion. Well maybe a couple of years ago, if they'd listened to yours truly ... and if www.yellowpages.co.nz wasn't such an awkward, user-hostile site (for a face off between Yellow Pages', Wises' and Google's new online mapping services, plus in-car GPS systems, check out our coming October issue of NZ PC World).

Speaking of frightening Telecom news, some-time NZ PC World contributor Russell Brown is currently in the US, where he's been checking out IBM's Web Fountain project that's copied the entire internet to one computer for easy study (apparently only 32% of total traffic is porn ... down from the expected 50%; the current copy of the entire net comes to half a petabyte - or more than 1 billion megabytes). Anyhow, Russell discovered that the email address that's second-most associated with Telecom CEO Theresa Gattung belongs to none other than NZ PC World columnist Juha Saarinen. Now, if only she would listen to us sooner ...

Posted by Chris Keall at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Word has just arrived from Google NZ that the company's Gmail service, which seems to have been in invite-only mode for ever (19,000 of you checked out the Official Unoffical Gmail Invite Megathread on Press F1), is now available as an open beta program for all-comers (through Gmail.com ... I note that a cheeky Auckland web designer has nabbed Gmail.co.nz to push his own product .... too slow, Googlistas).

Also just in: the company's first hardware product, Google Mini is due to be released here around September 6 or 7. A slim, server-size appliance, Google Mini sells from US$1995, and lets you search your own company's files the way Google's web search engine lets you search the net. The general verdict from overseas reviews: it's finicky to set-up, but once your network's indexed, Google Mini is fast, easy and readily customisable.

Posted by Chris Keall at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 2 )

Well, a little. News came over the weekend that Google is going to bring a little order to Google News by taking a feed from ye olde Associated Press. Google is to pay for an Associated Press license, effectively settling the argument over whether the free Google News aggregator breaches AP's copyright.

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Meanwhile, Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, has told a 'Wikimania' meeting of 300 contributors that the free online ecyclopedia needs to start putting quality over quantity. Wales said the multi-language Wikipedia has now far exceeded its goal of becoming larger than the Encylopedia Britannica. Wikipedia's army of registered users have now put more than 1.2 million entries online. The founder urged contributors to stop writing in such a 'choppy' fashion, and to start identifying sources. Expertise, however, is still not required. To write, you've just got to turn up. In many categories, articles have been edited then re-edited as people on different sides of political or other arguments square off.

Said Wales: "Although we've always had this goal of Britannica quality or better, we're not there yet," he said. "We can no longer feel satisfied and happy when we see these [article] numbers going up. We should continue to turn our attention away from growth and towards quality."

To assist, Wales unveiled a new tool called "Wikiwyg" which will allow readers to edit pages without need to understand basic HTML coding. History, hopes Wales, will no longer be written by the geeks

Posted by Chris Keall at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )