Monday, February 25, 2008
My Thesis Statement
Internet use promotes increased positive social affects in individuals through interpersonal communication, open sources of information, and commercialization of cyberspace.
Theme for Digital Convergence Paper
Discuss the idea of digital convergence in regards to media ownership/content, open sources of information, commercialization of cyberspace, the entertainment industry, and the impact of digital convergence on society.
Digital Convergence...
is the latest step in the evolution of communication. This communication process is motivated by the communication of technology, social change, culture and media ownership. People - both as consumers and producers - drive convergence to meet their social and cultural needs.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Toshiba quits HD DVD business
Toshiba quits HD DVD business By YURI KAGEYAMA, AP Business Writer
2 hours, 32 minutes ago (retrieved from Yahoo News)
Toshiba said Tuesday it will no longer develop, make or market HD DVD players and recorders, handing a victory to rival Blu-ray disc technology in the format battle for next-generation video.
"We concluded that a swift decision would be best," Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida told reporters at his company's Tokyo offices.
The move would make Blu-ray — backed by Sony Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., which makes Panasonic brand products, and five major Hollywood movie studios — the winner in the battle over high-definition DVD formatting that began several years ago.
Nishida said last month's decision by Warner Bros. Entertainment to release movie discs only in the Blu-ray format made the move inevitable.
"That had tremendous impact," he said. "If we had continued, that would have created problems for consumers, and we simply had no chance to win."
Warner joined Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Co. and News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox in that move.
Nishida said his company had confidence in HD DVD as a technology and tried to assure the estimated 1 million people, including some 600,000 people in North America, who already bought HD DVD machines by promising that Toshiba will continue to provide product support for the technology.
Both HD DVD and Blu-ray deliver crisp, clear high-definition pictures and sound, which are more detailed and vivid than existing video technology. They are incompatible with each other, and neither plays on older DVD players. But both formats play on high-definition TVs.
HD DVD was touted as being cheaper because it was more similar to previous video technology, while Blu-ray boasted bigger recording capacity.
Only one video format has been expected to emerge as the victor, much like VHS trumped Sony's Betamax in the video format battle of the 1980s.
Nishida said it was still uncertain what will happen with the Hollywood studios that signed to produce HD DVD movies, including Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation.
Toshiba's pulling the plug on the technology is expected to reduce the number of new high-definition movies that people will be able to watch on HD DVD machines. Toshiba Corp. said shipments of HD DVD machines to retailers will be reduced and will stop by end of March.
Sales in Blu-ray gadgets are now likely to pick up as consumers had held off in investing in the latest recorders and players because they didn't know which format would emerge dominant.
Despite being a possible blow to Toshiba's pride, the exit will probably lessen the potential damage in losses in HD DVD operations. Goldman Sachs has said pulling out would improve Toshiba's profitability between 40 billion yen and 50 billion yen ($370 million-$460 million) a year.
The reasons behind Blu-ray's triumph over HD DVD are complex, as marketing, management maneuvers and other factors are believed to have played into the shift to Blu-ray's favor that became more decisive during the critical holiday shopping season.
Once the balance starts tilting in favor of one in a format battle, then the domination tends to grow and become final, said Kazuharu Miura, an analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research in Tokyo.
"The trend became decisive I think this year," he said. "When Warner made its decision, it was basically over."
With movie studios increasingly lining up behind Blu-ray, retailers also began to stock more Blu-ray products.
Friday's decision by Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the largest U.S. retailer, to sell only Blu-ray DVDs and hardware appeared to deal a final blow to the Toshiba format. Just five days earlier, Netflix Inc. said it will cease carrying rentals in HD DVD.
Several major American retailers had already made similar decisions, including Target Corp. and Blockbuster Inc.
Also adding to Blu-ray's momentum was the gradual increase in sales of Sony's PlayStation 3 home video-game console, which also works as a Blu-ray player. Sony has sold 10.5 million PS3 machines worldwide since the machine went on sale late 2006.
HD DVD supporters included Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp. and Japanese electronics maker NEC Corp.
Microsoft's Xbox 360 game machine can play HD DVD movies, but the drive had to be bought separately, and Nishida said about 300,000 people have those.
Worldwide sales of personal computers with HD DVD drives total about 300,000 worldwide, including 140,000 in North America and 130,000 in Europe, he said.
Recently, the Blu-ray disc format has been gaining market share, especially in Japan. A study on fourth quarter sales last year by market researcher BCN Inc. found that by unit volume, Blu-ray made up 96 percent of Japanese sales.
Sony said it did not have numbers on how many Blu-ray players had been sold globally.
Toshiba's stock slipped 0.6 percent Tuesday to 824 yen after jumping 5.7 percent Monday amid reports that a decision was imminent. Sony shares climbed 2.2 percent to 5,010 yen after rising 1 percent Monday.
Also Tuesday, Toshiba said it plans to spend more than 1.7 trillion yen ($15.7 billion) for two plants in Japan to produce sophisticated chips called NAND flash memory, which are used in portable music players and cell phones. Production there will start in 2010.
2 hours, 32 minutes ago (retrieved from Yahoo News)
Toshiba said Tuesday it will no longer develop, make or market HD DVD players and recorders, handing a victory to rival Blu-ray disc technology in the format battle for next-generation video.
"We concluded that a swift decision would be best," Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida told reporters at his company's Tokyo offices.
The move would make Blu-ray — backed by Sony Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., which makes Panasonic brand products, and five major Hollywood movie studios — the winner in the battle over high-definition DVD formatting that began several years ago.
Nishida said last month's decision by Warner Bros. Entertainment to release movie discs only in the Blu-ray format made the move inevitable.
"That had tremendous impact," he said. "If we had continued, that would have created problems for consumers, and we simply had no chance to win."
Warner joined Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Co. and News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox in that move.
Nishida said his company had confidence in HD DVD as a technology and tried to assure the estimated 1 million people, including some 600,000 people in North America, who already bought HD DVD machines by promising that Toshiba will continue to provide product support for the technology.
Both HD DVD and Blu-ray deliver crisp, clear high-definition pictures and sound, which are more detailed and vivid than existing video technology. They are incompatible with each other, and neither plays on older DVD players. But both formats play on high-definition TVs.
HD DVD was touted as being cheaper because it was more similar to previous video technology, while Blu-ray boasted bigger recording capacity.
Only one video format has been expected to emerge as the victor, much like VHS trumped Sony's Betamax in the video format battle of the 1980s.
Nishida said it was still uncertain what will happen with the Hollywood studios that signed to produce HD DVD movies, including Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation.
Toshiba's pulling the plug on the technology is expected to reduce the number of new high-definition movies that people will be able to watch on HD DVD machines. Toshiba Corp. said shipments of HD DVD machines to retailers will be reduced and will stop by end of March.
Sales in Blu-ray gadgets are now likely to pick up as consumers had held off in investing in the latest recorders and players because they didn't know which format would emerge dominant.
Despite being a possible blow to Toshiba's pride, the exit will probably lessen the potential damage in losses in HD DVD operations. Goldman Sachs has said pulling out would improve Toshiba's profitability between 40 billion yen and 50 billion yen ($370 million-$460 million) a year.
The reasons behind Blu-ray's triumph over HD DVD are complex, as marketing, management maneuvers and other factors are believed to have played into the shift to Blu-ray's favor that became more decisive during the critical holiday shopping season.
Once the balance starts tilting in favor of one in a format battle, then the domination tends to grow and become final, said Kazuharu Miura, an analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research in Tokyo.
"The trend became decisive I think this year," he said. "When Warner made its decision, it was basically over."
With movie studios increasingly lining up behind Blu-ray, retailers also began to stock more Blu-ray products.
Friday's decision by Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the largest U.S. retailer, to sell only Blu-ray DVDs and hardware appeared to deal a final blow to the Toshiba format. Just five days earlier, Netflix Inc. said it will cease carrying rentals in HD DVD.
Several major American retailers had already made similar decisions, including Target Corp. and Blockbuster Inc.
Also adding to Blu-ray's momentum was the gradual increase in sales of Sony's PlayStation 3 home video-game console, which also works as a Blu-ray player. Sony has sold 10.5 million PS3 machines worldwide since the machine went on sale late 2006.
HD DVD supporters included Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp. and Japanese electronics maker NEC Corp.
Microsoft's Xbox 360 game machine can play HD DVD movies, but the drive had to be bought separately, and Nishida said about 300,000 people have those.
Worldwide sales of personal computers with HD DVD drives total about 300,000 worldwide, including 140,000 in North America and 130,000 in Europe, he said.
Recently, the Blu-ray disc format has been gaining market share, especially in Japan. A study on fourth quarter sales last year by market researcher BCN Inc. found that by unit volume, Blu-ray made up 96 percent of Japanese sales.
Sony said it did not have numbers on how many Blu-ray players had been sold globally.
Toshiba's stock slipped 0.6 percent Tuesday to 824 yen after jumping 5.7 percent Monday amid reports that a decision was imminent. Sony shares climbed 2.2 percent to 5,010 yen after rising 1 percent Monday.
Also Tuesday, Toshiba said it plans to spend more than 1.7 trillion yen ($15.7 billion) for two plants in Japan to produce sophisticated chips called NAND flash memory, which are used in portable music players and cell phones. Production there will start in 2010.
Monday, February 11, 2008
The Evolution of Technology and its Future...
I would like to suggest the topic focus on the evolution of technology and its future. In addition, how you keep up with these constant changes.
In the article “Prototypes and Ideation, Computer Networks, by B. Winston, we read how the internet was originally started by the military to work on the problem of military communications systems, it then made its way to academia and then it became the World Wide Web. Technology has continued to evolve, it would be good to research the progress it has made, and what factors played a part.
DVD technology may be going over to Blu-Ray technology, video games are moving over to new technology such as the Wii, where you use body movements to play games. The Wii has become so popular; it is used in rehab therapy for patients recovering from strokes, broken bones, and surgery, cell phones are becoming avenues to listen to music. Using blogs to discuss televisions shows, how did this come about? Today I stumbled across Twitter, this is similar to myspace or facebook, but it seems to have much more capabilities than just goofing around with your friends. It has reminder services, live updates of various events, such as Super Tuesday or the Super Bowl and mobile updates.
It is evident through digital convergence, technology is going to keep advancing, how did we get here and how do we keep up with continued advances?
In addition, it would be beneficial to create a “guidance” type piece on keeping up or learning about new technologies, which would also include our own experiences (through this class or on our own). The “guidance” would not focus on specifics but might help give a baseline of how to learn and where to go for information. It could provide links to various websites that provide comparisons and reviews of new things.
In the article “Prototypes and Ideation, Computer Networks, by B. Winston, we read how the internet was originally started by the military to work on the problem of military communications systems, it then made its way to academia and then it became the World Wide Web. Technology has continued to evolve, it would be good to research the progress it has made, and what factors played a part.
DVD technology may be going over to Blu-Ray technology, video games are moving over to new technology such as the Wii, where you use body movements to play games. The Wii has become so popular; it is used in rehab therapy for patients recovering from strokes, broken bones, and surgery, cell phones are becoming avenues to listen to music. Using blogs to discuss televisions shows, how did this come about? Today I stumbled across Twitter, this is similar to myspace or facebook, but it seems to have much more capabilities than just goofing around with your friends. It has reminder services, live updates of various events, such as Super Tuesday or the Super Bowl and mobile updates.
It is evident through digital convergence, technology is going to keep advancing, how did we get here and how do we keep up with continued advances?
In addition, it would be beneficial to create a “guidance” type piece on keeping up or learning about new technologies, which would also include our own experiences (through this class or on our own). The “guidance” would not focus on specifics but might help give a baseline of how to learn and where to go for information. It could provide links to various websites that provide comparisons and reviews of new things.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Sunday, February 3, 2008
January 29th Class Thoughts...
Hi,
Last weeks class was informative & fun! Just the way I like a class to be :0)
For years I always thought I was technology savvy, keeping current with new things, but I've noticed over the last few years that it is passing me by fast! I just got into the whole myspace thing, with some resistance, mainly because who has time to sit and put all that together & search to post witty things everyday... But it's the only way I can communicate with my older brother these days so I jumped in. It took me 3 hours to put together my lamo page, but I did it!
Anyway, during class last week I realized that the reason I'm finding technology is passing me by isn't because I am not open to it, but more so because I haven't been exposed to it enough or exposed to it at an earlier age. Now children are learning how to use computers in kindergarten, while I only just got on board about 15 years ago. Having the knowledge at a younger age gives them an advantage to understanding and keeping up with technology. I can learn how to use anything I need to, but it is just a matter of keeping up and having the time, while I believe it is second nature to the younger generation.Growing up I wasn't exposed to media convergence as it is today.
Social and face-to-face interaction was my primary source. Ok yeah we had the telephone...but today kids are connected digitally in so many other ways. The internet has opened the doors to many outlets for communication, as we have discussed, texting, instant messaging, email, blogs, chat rooms, playing games with people all over the world, etc...
I look forward to learning more about the possibilities that are out there & ways that I can bring myself up to speed, not just in my personal life, but also in my workplace. I feel that my company is very behind in technology and working in a global department there are ways we can and should improve.
Thanks!
Jen
Last weeks class was informative & fun! Just the way I like a class to be :0)
For years I always thought I was technology savvy, keeping current with new things, but I've noticed over the last few years that it is passing me by fast! I just got into the whole myspace thing, with some resistance, mainly because who has time to sit and put all that together & search to post witty things everyday... But it's the only way I can communicate with my older brother these days so I jumped in. It took me 3 hours to put together my lamo page, but I did it!
Anyway, during class last week I realized that the reason I'm finding technology is passing me by isn't because I am not open to it, but more so because I haven't been exposed to it enough or exposed to it at an earlier age. Now children are learning how to use computers in kindergarten, while I only just got on board about 15 years ago. Having the knowledge at a younger age gives them an advantage to understanding and keeping up with technology. I can learn how to use anything I need to, but it is just a matter of keeping up and having the time, while I believe it is second nature to the younger generation.Growing up I wasn't exposed to media convergence as it is today.
Social and face-to-face interaction was my primary source. Ok yeah we had the telephone...but today kids are connected digitally in so many other ways. The internet has opened the doors to many outlets for communication, as we have discussed, texting, instant messaging, email, blogs, chat rooms, playing games with people all over the world, etc...
I look forward to learning more about the possibilities that are out there & ways that I can bring myself up to speed, not just in my personal life, but also in my workplace. I feel that my company is very behind in technology and working in a global department there are ways we can and should improve.
Thanks!
Jen
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