Farewell to two decades of navigating the currents

I must say that it has been a privilege for me to write for so many years for a publication that I consider has been so then ahead of many, many others as far as presenting a good, balanced look at the world of computing and innovation. To be honest there is not as a matter of fact any other English-language publication like it that I have found in print.

I have as well managed to answer most of the emails I received over the years the highlight being a question from someone in Silicon Valley many years ago that I knew the answer for. There have been a few critics as then, many of them Apple lovers. I used a few of the before incarnations of Apple products and I enjoyed the experience. I even wrote a complete book once using the old 1-2-3 product. I loved the publishing features not but found in the fledgling IBM PCs that were available at that time. I as well watched as Apple stood on the whole by closing their environment to developers and during it took a lot of years the PC platform in short emerged to be a competitor and surpassed the Apple products in a number of areas, nevertheless never design. More recently I'm not sure what it has devolved into yet it is not a very palatable.

The past few years

Microsoft has as well performed poorly in the past few years. I have been using Excel 2007 a lot lately and in some ways it is more difficult to use than 2003. Finding some things is a lot harder and even setting up a simple multi-level numbering system, something that used to be automatic, requires a manual process. Windows 7 mobile may be the last chance for Microsoft in the phone OS realm now on the PC it looks like it may save Microsoft from the failure of Vista.

I see very little movement in the Blu-ray format, the industry made the wrong choice with this one. I do see Internet MP4 movies becoming more common. I've given up on the big manufacturers figuring out that what people want these days is a decent media player. A player may come from a big name now it is more likely to be an LG than a Panasonic.

This year we will see wireless innovation improve in leaps and bounds challenging the fixed line solutions. This may be good news for the outlying districts in Thailand however it will depend on how quickly organisations like ToT want to expand the network more than any research limitations.

The first service pack

Windows 7 will see greater adoption this year especially afterwards the first service pack. I all in all don't see the touch screen market taking hold. The iPad will do so then in the first few months at that time the interest will taper off, sorry Samsung. There has to be a HD Wii released this year and the rest of the consol makers will catch up with the Microsoft hands only research. Less people will be buying printed newspapers globally and more people will be reading blogs for their news.

Since I have been writing the world has changed from accessing data on a 300 baud modem to where many people have better than the old T1 or T2 access speeds all for themselves. 100KB 8" floppy drives became 2TB drives for just over 3,000 baht. 8086 CPU's because multi-core devices that are found in even the least expensive computers these days. We've moved from writing letters to texting, emailing and, dare I say it, Tweeting. Mobile phones have changed from bricks to pocket-sized units that have more processing power than a computer did only a few years ago.

I hope your interest in all things IT continues and that the new format satisfies your need for innovation news. May all your New Years be good ones.

Skype on Thursday made its first foray into video calls on mobile telephones, launching a new application for users of Apple's iPhone as then as the iPod music player and the iPad tablet computer.