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TECHNOLOGY TOOLS of theTRADE

videos and can be camera.” The body of the cam- Detection, Movie (FHD Movie, streamed via and Hulu era tilts out from the frame to HD Movie), High Speed Movie Plus on the seven-inch Vivid- create a self-standing tripod, (HS240) HDR, HDR-art, Motion View , which dis- and the three-inch touch-screen Shutter, Slide Panorama, and plays 16 million colors in LCD is swivel-mounted to tilt Best Selection. The self-timed high-res 1,024 ✕ 600. There and rotate. The frame allows the shots are controlled by a slide are thousands of apps specif- camera to be hung from a hook, timer or a motion-detection ically designed for the Nook doorknob, or other , and auto-timer. com- Color and Tablet, including the viewing screen rotates up to patibility includes SD, SDHC, and games, productivity, 270 degrees for viewing self- SDXC. The lens is an ultra-wide- lifestyle, and education portraits—the frame rotates angle 12.1 megapixel. offerings. Preloaded are 360 degrees. These adjustments www.casio.com Sudoku, Crosswords, also enable a left- or right- Chess, and Pandora. As handed grip. The overall size is Apple an eReader, the Tablet 4.834" ✕ 2.322" ✕ 0.586", MacBook Pro will sync the last page with your and it weighs 5.5 oz. Still (JPEG) Apple’s MacBook Pro can be and so and motion formats (MOV) offer found at the top of a number of you don’t lose your place, you a variety of modes: Snapshot “the best of 2011” lists. The updated version of the get expert recommendations (Auto/Premium Auto), Snapshot Powered by a quad-core Nook Tablet moves the Barnes & from 40,000 booksellers, the by Super resolution technology, core i7 processor, the 15" and Noble device further from a tablet offers direct connections Self-timer, BEST SHOT, Face 17" run applications dedicated eReader and closer to to friends with and at up to twice the speed of their a basic . With Twitter to discuss your reading predecessors. The processor, several memory devices on and ratings, and you can swap cache, memory controller, and board, you can carry a virtual with LendMe®. The Nook graphics engine are all on a sin- library of books, magazines, Tablet is 8.1" ✕ 5" ✕ .48" and gle chip, and the architecture newspapers, and comics. There’s weighs 14.1 ounces. combines with TurboBoost 2.0 16GB storage, an SD card slot, www.bn.com and Hyper-Threading to increase and free Nook . the speed of the active cores up And you can read for 11.5 Casio TRYX to 3.6GHz. For graphics-intensive hours on a single charge.For Casio America, Inc.’s TRYX digi- applications, MacBook Pro music, there’s a built-in player, tal camera is actually list- models feature high-performance and Rhapsody, MOG, Groove- ed in the 2012 edition of AMD Radeon graphics proces- shark, and Pandora come pre- the Guinness World sors that provide up to two loaded. E-mail and the Web are Records as the world’s times the performance of the delivered over built-in Wi-Fi. HD “most adjustable digital previous generation. Beneath

58 STRATEGIC FINANCE I December 2011

TECH FORUM

One Day in August By Michael Castelluccio, Editor

A glance back on 2011 certainly recalls a noisy panorama in the world of technology. There was quite an expansion of the digital universe. The skies are now crowded with cloudscapes from early leaders like down to Apple’s recent iCloud, set aloft late in the year. They all continue to liberate computing and digital storage previ- ously anchored to earthbound facilities. the beautifully designed simplic- connect via USB inputs. Along Hacking provided the stuff of space operas in 2011, like ity of the exteriors, these new with providing surge protection the continuing saga of WikiLeaks vs. the world. During a models are thoroughbred work- for your , phone, MP3 particularly egregious State Department data dump, the horses. Also new is the Thunder- players, or tablet, the strip fea- combined financial forces of PayPal and several large bolt I/O connection that’s up to tures three AC outlets and two banks threatened to choke off all supply lines for those 12 times faster than FireWire powered USB outlets. The 360- funding WikiLeaks. Cue the mercenaries with the grinning 800 and up to 20 times faster degree rotating plug has four plastic masks announcing, “We are Anonymous. We are than USB 2.0. As more devices locking positions and provides Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.” are designed for these connec- complete surge protection And as Anonymous slammed and shut down servers tions, the port will through all the outlets. Note: belonging to the credit-card and payment forces, the world become even more valuable. The The USB outlets can’t be used began to wonder about the might of this loosely organized new FaceTime HD camera has as a USB hub and don’t trans- band of hackers. What were they really capable of? three times the resolution of the mit data; they’re intended only And, sadly, there was the passing of several pioneers previous camera, with improved for charging devices that can be during the course of this year. Dennis Ritchie, co-creator low-light performance for video charged via a USB interface. The of the OS and the C programming language; John calls. The battery lasts up to sev- strip features a mini-USB cable McCarthy, a pioneer in artificial intelligence; and, of en hours, there’s 802.11n wire- to charge virtually any USB course, . less connectivity, 2.1, device, including BlackBerry and Then there was one day in August, an anniversary, that solid aluminum unibody design, RAZR phones. The was particularly interesting. If you enter “August 12, large multi-touch track pad, six charger is lightweight and com- 1981” into a search engine, one of the results will be a ports, and an SDXC card slot. pact enough for your laptop headline: IBM Unveils 5150 PC. It was one of those beige, www.apple.com bag, and the surge protector boxy with a 5.25" floppy drive and a green- comes with lifetime product and screen, command monitor. But it was more than Belkin Mini $75,000 connected equipment that, as many recalled the 30th anniversary of that piece Surge Protector warranties. www.belkin.com of hardware. The date of its debut is considered by many One of the most convenient to be the beginning of the PC era. devices to take on the road is On the day back in 1981 that the IBM 5150 was the Belkin Mini Surge announced, on the other side of the country, two other Protector with USB entrepreneurs were meeting at Apple headquarters—Steve Charger to charge Jobs and Bill Gates. Jobs wasn’t overwhelmed by the IBM multiple devices from announcement. His company had the very successful the same location, continued on next page including those that

December 2011 I STRATEGIC FINANCE 59

TECHNOLOGY TECH FORUM

Apple II, which was introduced four years before, and incandescent light bulbs.” and his development team was in the middle of But it isn’t just a shift in hardware type creating the first —a computer with that’s at the center of the new era. Dean says icons and a mouse instead of a letter prompt. the focus of the new direction is not what’s In fact, shortly after the IBM announcement, in your hands, but the role performed by Jobs took out a full-page ad in The Wall whatever device you happen to be using. Street Journal with a taunting headline, This new age of computing is about a different “Welcome, IBM. Seriously.” Bill Gates said kind of human interface with the computer. In the of the Apple team, “They didn’t seem to care. It took them a past, what you saw on the screen (command line or year to realize what had happened.” Gates, who later found icons) and how you manipulated those elements (via key- his company firmly established in the middle of a very board, mouse, or touch screen) are the elements that durable Wintel universe, had a clearer sense of what that defined the human/computer interface. Mark Dean, in his rudimentary IBM would become. blog, seems to be talking about a larger, almost metaphysical interface between humans and their computers—the social THE ERA ENDS—TWO TESTIMONIALS space between humans and computers. He writes: “PCs are As this year’s anniversary rolled around, IBM was no longer being replaced at the center of computing not by another producing PCs. The company sold that division to type of device—though there’s plenty of excitement about back in 2005. Apple appeared on Wall Street’s distinguished smart phones and tablets—but by new ideas about the role list of the most capitalized—not only ahead of IBM and that computing can play in progress. These days, it’s becom- , but even, for a time, a notch above Exxon Mobil. ing clear that innovation flourishes best not on devices but And then there was the blog posted by Mark Dean two in the social spaces between them, where people and ideas days before the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the PC meet and interact. It is there that computing can have the era. Mark Dean, chief technology officer of IBM in the Mid- most powerful impact on the economy, society, and people’s dle East and Africa, was one of the 12-person IBM engineer- lives.” ing team that built the 5150 and launched the PC. In his Another view of the disappearance of what we usually guest blog posted on Smarter Planet on August 10, 2011, he think of as the human/computer interface is noted in Walter as much as announced the end of the PC era. Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. Michael Noer told a story “It’s amazing to me,” he reminisced, “to think that August on Forbes.com that moved the developer of the first suc- 12th marks the 30th anniversary of the IBM Personal Com- cessful tablet computer. Isaacson reports in his : “Noer puter. Little did we expect to create an industry that ulti- was reading a novel on his iPad while staying mately peaked at more than 300 million unit sales per year.” at a dairy farm in a rural area north of Bogotá, Columbia, After expressing his gratitude for having the opportunity when a poor six-year-old boy who cleaned the stables came to work on that team, he then wrote, “It may be odd for me up to him. Curious, Noer handed him the device. With no to say this, but I’m also proud IBM decided to leave the per- instructions, and never having seen a computer before, the sonal computer business in 2005. While many in the tech boy started using it intuitively. He began swiping the screen, industry questioned IBM’s decision to exit the business at launching apps, playing a game. ‘Steve Jobs has the time, it’s now clear that our company was in the van- designed a powerful computer that an illiterate six-year-old guard of the post-PC era.” can use without instruction,’ Noer wrote. ‘If that isn’t magi- At this point, Dean turns to what the post-PC era actu- cal, I don’t know what is.’” ally looks like, and the man who helped usher in three Over the last 30 years, it appears two very important decades of PC ubiquity explains that he, too, has moved changes have occurred in the world of computing. Apple has beyond the PC. “My primary computer now is a tablet,” he succeeded in making the interface disappear, and IBM has explains, adding, “When I helped design the PC, I didn’t turned its attention away from the hardware and toward the think I’d live long enough to witness its decline. But, while social dimension of human/computer activity. In the Post- PCs will continue to be much-used devices, they’re no PC era, six-year-olds have no need for manuals or training, longer at the leading edge of computing. They’re going the and Jeopardy champion Watson, the IBM computer, can way of the vacuum tube, typewriter, vinyl records, CRT, hold his own in a human conversation. SF

60 STRATEGIC FINANCE I December 2011