We often get e-mails that ask us about the criteria we use when reviewing a product. In some cases we are able to use empirical objective results. This would encompass reviews such as processors, graphics cards or hard drive performance. In performance-based testing and review, the comparison of benchmarks will often provide the majority of information for your result. In other words, if the objective is speed a simple speed test determines the winner and/or potentially best product.
The vast majority of the reviews and testing we conduct, however, are not that simple and objective. How well something works for a given task or in a given environment is often a subjective matter. Consider ergonomic mice. In testing them, we'll certainly look to see if they perform properly, accurately and have the buttons and controls the user is looking for. However when we get to that sticky "it's comfortable in your hand" section, you no longer can use empirical testing to get your answer. Simply put, it's going to boil down to someone saying "yes, this one feels best".
So in an effort to shed some light on that sticky, subjective area we have developed a set of criteria that we use to help illuminate those qualitative traits.
We recently returned from CES, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. As always, too much to see and not enough time to see it. The show was a somewhat smaller this year by a few hundred thousand square feet, but exhibitors and content still greatly outnumber the time available to take it all in. CES is always a great opportunity to preview the technologies we'll be seeing this year, and how the economy is affecting all of it.
The buzz words at CES this year were 3-D TV, e-Readers, Slates and smart books, smart phones and video conferencing. We're going to take a brief look at these different categories and give you our impressions.
Eco Friendly LED Lighting Comes of Age in the New Green Economy
LED lighting technology opens the door to the first truly "super-efficient, cost-effective" lighting solutions for commercial, institutional, and residential applications. The newest generation of LED bulbs have been designed to use the same lighting fixtures as incandescent and compact fluorescent bulbs. In the case of standard fluorescent bulbs the installer needs to cut the ballast wire as it is not utilized with the LED replacement bulbs. An added bonus to this generation of LED bulbs is that, in most cases, they are dimmable, unlike many of the bulbs they are designed to replace.
CES 2009 was a bit smaller than in previous years. The economy played a
big part in that both attendance in general plus the size and scope of
the presence of various manufacturers was diminished. With a slightly
lighter crowd of about 120,000, it was easier to get around although
still much too big to be able to see everything within the allotted
time.
That CES was an incremental show this year was not a big surprise.
Given the pervasive gloomy economic atmosphere we did not expect to see
huge new developments in technology. There were a number of incremental
improvements in the areas of large flat screens and refresh rates, as
well as other refinements in the video and audio sectors overlapping
both entertainment and computing devices.
So all the hype aside, three items caught our attention in very different categories.
Traditionally we have always done a ‘Predictions’ piece sometime just
before year’s end. In it we take our crystal balls firmly in hand, don
our silicon turban and prognosticate on the future of various aspects
of the tech industry.
This year we didn’t.
We just weren’t seeing
anything that exciting on the horizon and we made an editorial decision
to wait until after the first salvo of trade shows to see if there was
something we were missing and go from there. Well we’ve had 6 weeks or
so to settle into 2008, take a deep breath and scope out the industry.
There are some exciting things happening, such as the bid by
Microsoft to acquire Yahoo and the ever improving and proliferating
tools to put more and more and more (and more) content on the web. To
that end, we have asked two of our resident wizards, Analyst Amy Wohl and Contributing Editor Stan Coplan
to give us their take on the areas of mergers and acquisitions, SAAS
(software as a service), and all those neat development tools for the
web. All that being said, as far as hardware is concerned, I still feel
that 2008 will be….
Already, it’s gotten off to a tumultuous start in the M&A area with Microsoft’s hostile offer to purchase Yahoo for $31 per share in cash and stock, originally worth about $44.6 billion (worth somewhat less now, in a falling stock market). Yahoo has been looking (unsuccessfully, we think) for a white knight. Most knights don’t have $50 Billion plus horses. So we suspect Microsoft will slightly sweeten the deal – financial analysts suggest to $35 per share – and take the prize. The question is what they’ll do with it.
{A little over 2 years ago Adobe systems bought Macromedia and added their Flash software to an already impressive repertoire of applications. Since then, there has been much discussion regarding what direction Adobe would take with this very popular development platform. Contributing Editor Stan Coplan adds his thoughts and expands on the web development tools sector for 2008. ed}
If you were worried about what Adobe would do with Macromedia's Flash and other tools fear not. Thermo is on the way. Will Thermo replace Flash? From what I can tell the answer is no. Thermo will produce output that feeds Flex Builder. Flex Builder is an Adobe programming tool used to produce the SWF files that play in flash. Thermo will take your layered Photoshop files as input and produce MXML (XAML) output for use in Flex Builder. MXML and XAML and similar XML formats are used to describe a user interface (UI) in a human readable but very structured format.
As part of the conversion process it is easy to transform a text field from Photoshop into a text-input field for Flex Builder. In fact there are many possible transformations available. This makes it very easy to convert a graphic design directly into a mix of graphics and programming components. So the hand-off from design to programming should be very smooth, much better than what we have available today, if Thermo lives up to its promise. It’s possible that MXML and XAML will replace CSS, and the browser will become a container for Flash or Microsoft's Silverlight. Of course, that could all be changed by new products like Adobe AIR that bridge the desktop-web divide.
For those of you who might not have caught the news feed, SunRocket,
the 4th largest voice over IP (VOIP) phone service provider, ceased
operations Monday, July 16th. In itself, this is not a monumental event. Companies
close their doors all the time. Sometimes it’s the competition,
sometimes poor management and sometimes it’s just the right time to
retire from the corporate battlefield, thank your customers and say
goodbye. But sometimes, just sometimes you get to see a company miss
the mark completely. If you couple that with a complete lack of respect
for the marketplace and its customers, you’ve got SunRocket.
Perspectives 
