HUA HIN, Thailand - The start of the
New Year signals the season for the big trade
fares, led off by Macworld in San Francisco and
the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The
financial doom and gloom of 2008 and the urgent
demand for budgets to be trimmed merely to survive
lowered expectations for attendance both by
companies and customers.
This year's
Macworld, according to Apple the last that it will
attend, ran from January 5 to 9 and disappointed
on a number of levels. The keynote lacked Apple
chief executive Steve Jobs and lacked luster.
Apple senior vice president of worldwide product
marketing Philip Schiller took the podium in place
of Jobs, whose
health remains a cause for
rumors and concern.
There were no major
announcements or hot new products, just a few
offerings for the diehard Apple aficionados. A
slim 17-inch MacBook Pro boasting new battery
packs that give up to eight hours runtime was
announced, along with new versions of photo
management and productivity software. A competing
Google Docs offering online at iWork.com was also
announced as Apple took a leap towards the world
of cloud computing.
The biggest change was
in the way that music can be downloaded through
iTunes, which will now sell music with no
anti-piracy restrictions at three prices: US$0.69,
$0.99 and $1.29. The previous flat rate of 99
cents per song model has been scrapped and new
releases and hits will carry the higher price tag;
good news for Apple, bad news for the consumer.
The tunes available without digital rights
management (DRM) controls will be encoded at a
higher fidelity at 256 kbps, twice that of the
previous offerings. iPhone users will also be able
to purchase music directly over 3G networks via
their handsets. Eight million out of a total of 10
million songs will be made available DRM free as
of this week with the last 2 million by the end of
March.
The software restrictions on song
files have been around since the advent of digital
music and the deal isn't so appealing for the
millions of iTunes users who have already
purchased music from Apple. They will have to
upgrade their originally purchased protected files
to DRM-free ones for 30 cents a go. This could
work out quite expensive for those with large
collections who want the freedom to play music on
any other devices that are not Apple flavor.
The musical message was the highlight of
the keynote, so the Mac faithful were left
wondering what would become of next year's
Macworld event without Apple in attendance.
The four-day Consumer Electronics Show
kicked off on January 8 in Vegas and promised the
usual array of glitzy high-tech gadgets and gizmos
from the big and small names in technology and
communications.
According to press reports
the attendance figure is predicted to drop to
130,000 from last year's 141,000, and while the
number of exhibitors remains at 2,700 there will
be fewer representatives from each company.
Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer
kicked off the show with his first CES keynote
following the departure of Bill Gates.
The
first major announcement was that of a year-long
campaign to persuade consumers and companies to
test-drive a pre-release version of Vista's
successor, Windows 7. The beta version will be
made available to the public this week and will
expire in six months, just enough time for techies
and testers to get all of those bug reports back
to Microsoft before reverting back to Vista or XP.
Although the speech addressed the fact
that global confidence has dropped and consumer
spending slowed and will continue to do so,
Ballmer pressed on with optimism about Microsoft's
future, the company's cloud-computing visions and
innovation by stating: "The economic impact will
be with us for a long time, and while it feels
like we are in a time of reduced expectations, we
have to be aggressive in innovation during this
time."
There were also a couple of
announcements for gamers with two new versions of
the Xbox shooter Halo slated for release next
month. Gone are the days of guitar-wielding Gates
with the hype and fervor; today's Microsoft seems
to be a more refined animal.
Other
features of the show are likely to be small and
wireless, including 3G watch-phones from LG,
wafer-thin (6.5 millimeter thick) TVs from
Samsung, 3D TVs from Panasonic and HDTV players
wired for broadband. USB 3 devices will be
demonstrated alongside a wide range of Blu-ray
players. There will also be no shortage of hybrid
laptops boasting the latest in solid-state
hardware and multi-displays.
New
processors from chip rivals AMD and Intel will be
showcased, as will all the latest digital imaging
gear from Canon, Nikon, Kodak and Olympus.
Internet The global downturn has
done little to curb government spending on
censorship of the Internet. Thailand has blocked
2,300 websites for insulting the company's
monarchy and China warned all Internet portals to
do more to block porn.
Thailand's
information and communications ministry plans to
spend around US$1.3 million on equipment and
manpower for its round-the-clock "war room" to
fight websites displaying messages it considers
insult the country's king. Recently appointed ICT
Minister Ranongrak Suwanchawee stated that waging
a cyber-war against anti-monarchy activists was
her top priority. In addition to the 2,300 blocked
sites, 400 more were slated for shutdown.
The blocking of websites under lese
majeste laws has been criticized recently by
rights groups and media organizations. Many claim
that the laws, which are often used as a tool by
politicians to attack their opponents, are open to
abuse as they can be filed by any person against
any other. Lese majeste is a serious offense in
Thailand and carries punishment of up to 15 years
in prison.
The Chinese authorities have
ordered all 19 major Internet portals, including
Google, to censor pornographic material. The
notice indicated the aim of the campaign which was
to "purify the Internet's cultural environment and
protect the healthy development of minors". What
the Chinese government classified as porn was not
specified.
Many critics expressed concern
that this was simply another move to limit loss of
control of the Internet by one of the globe's
largest and most proficient web-censoring
administrations. Chinese search engine Baidu
apologized to the government this week for
returning links to pornographic websites in its
search results. Other smaller web portals rapidly
followed suit in an effort to quell the wrath of
the giant red web filter.
Martin J Young is an Asia Times Online correspondent based in Thailand.
(Copyright 2009
Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact us about
sales, syndication and republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
Internet
