GE’s random re-entry into various small appliance markets continue. Last year it was digital cameras and a printer, and in 2009, it’s HDTV’s. I remember GE making TV’s when I was little and then TV’s left the US for good in the late 80’s. Anyhow, GE claims these TVs will be high-end and it looks like they are planning to use them as vehicles to pump their programming from NBC-Universal — content provider and content displayer — hahaha!
“Executives at the venture say they are working on ways for the new sets to highlight Internet content from GE’s NBC Universal unit. They haven’t explained exactly how those technologies and relationships will work.”
I guess they are making a small bet (only $15-million) on a solution play. They better hope Americans have a nostalgic feeling towards GE TVs, because all that comes to mind to me are the cheap looking TVs from my early adolescense. Here’s a link to the article for more information.
Here’s some info about it from CNET-UK. It’s too pricey from my blood, but when it comes down, this is one I will definitely check out. I like being able to pull pictures from Flickr 🙂 so I don’t have to worry about what 2GB of stuff I want to put on the frame. Here’s a link to the Kodak site for the frame. It’s a super annoying noisy and CHEESE-MO Flashsite that takes a little over a minute to load over a high-speed connection each time you choose a new link to explore. Thank goodness there’s a button in the lower right corner to shut the darned music off. Yeeks!!! Work on your image compression guys (or perhaps ditch the tunes)! Long load time is not cool once you are supposedly already in the site. A little bit of Flash can be a dangerous thing …
I am determined to make a sheep because they are so cute. Here’s my start:
I spent a lot of time on his body this afternoon. I will work on his face tomorrow and then the legs, and then I will see what magic I can work to give his fur depth. Then I will animate him. Sheep!!! So cute!!!
Uh, goody … I wonder whether others feel the same unexcitement I do. I’m not so sure going with T-Mobile upon entry was very wise. T-Mobile is the smallest of the major wireless carriers and doesn’t have as much coverage as the other carriers. Well, it’ll be nice to have competition to drive touch-phone innovation, but I wonder will this be enough to really challenge Apple. The iPhone is slick looking. The HTC phone shown in this article looks kinda homely.
Here’s an interesting article from CNN on the end of the “Kodakchrome” era. I was under the impression that Kodak had stopped making film some years ago, so it makes me wonder, since they are being secretive about when they run the film, whether Kodak has stopped production and the film that photographers are still buying is the last of a big stock pile from the final run. This article says nothing about people who develop film in their own labs. Anyhow, time passes and technology changes. It’s interesting to hear people talk romantically about film photography. The thing that piqued my interest, though, was the color stability aspect of the film for archiving and for documenting disease and research. Recreating that ability sounds like an opportunity for high-end digital imaging — both image capture and image processing. I imagine things get goofy recreating color and displaying the proper contrast from output device to output device — this includes both electronic displays and printing. And then there’s recreating the lighting … sigh …
More Rambling 