Tag archives: arthur goldstuck

Brand reinvention: Nintendo is about to lurch out of the tomb once more with Wii U GamePad

Nintendo is doing its own zombie act: coming back from the dead with the new Wii U, writes Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee)

Are you prepared for the Zombie apocalypse? It’s a concept that has long been viral on the Internet, inspiring numerous guidebooks on how to prepare for both the day and night of the living dead. You can even explore a version of Google Maps adapted to show the level of likely zombie infestation across the globe, and highlighting resources like pharmacies, hardware stores and police stations, where you would find handy resources to help survive the undead onslaught. Medicine, guns, axes and baseball bats will be high on your shopping list.

Sadly, preparing for the apocalypse only by reading a map is like learning to drive using a mapbook. You also need on-the-job training.

Enter an unlikely ally: Nintendo. It is the old-timer of the gaming console industry, and rapidly falling behind Sony and Microsoft. These global giants have brought the industry back to life, respectively, with a new version of the PlayStation Portable, called the Vita, and an add-on to the Xbox, the Kinect.

Brand reinvention: Kodak gets its next moment

Kodak may be dead as a camera and film company, but it is coming back to life in the “post-capture” world of printing, writes Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee).

The Kodak moment is back. When the company that invented popular photography filed for bankruptcy protection five months ago, it provoked a tut-tut that was heard around the world. The company had been undone by the advent of digital photography – a technology it pioneered, but never managed to turn to its own advantage.

The “portable all-electronic still camera”, invented by Steve Sasson in 1975, was awarded US patent number 4,131,919, but that wasn’t enough to convince Kodak executives. As Sasson would write many years later, they could not understand why people would ever want to view their pictures on a TV.

Brand reinvention: What Windows 8 means for Microsoft (and computing)

Debate swirling around Microsoft’s proposed Surface tablet misses the point about the significance of Windows 8, writes Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee).

It’s almost a mantra in the computer business that you write off Microsoft at your peril. The company’s Windows operating system runs most of the world’s computers, it has tens of billions of dollars in the bank, and its Office software sets the standard for productivity tools in the working world.

Yet, it remains fashionable to predict its demise or declare it is unable to innovate and is about to be supplanted by Google or Apple.

That summed up the response to Microsoft’s announcement last month that it would release its own tablet computer, to be called the Surface. (see http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en/us/about.aspx ). Its most striking feature is a thin, touch-sensitive cover that folds out into a keyboard, with a built-in trackpad. It will run the new Windows 8 operating system, in two configurations: a lower-end version called Windows RT, and the business-oriented Windows Pro.

Media Future: Battle of the mobile operating systems

by Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) The next big technology war is about to start on the mobile phone battleground. But this war is not about features and hardware, but is instead about operating systems.

The next big war in technology is about to be fought, and the battleground is the mobile phone. But it’s not the obvious war over who has the best features, size, weight, sound and screen quality. It is the next phase in the war of operating systems, and it begins this week.

Gadget War 1 ended in victory for Apple, when it’s iPhone completely transformed the phone market, and set a new benchmark for ease of use, integration of applications, and sheer aesthetic appeal.

Will HTC slay the market-share monster?

Almost every new major smartphone announcement comes with an element of groundbreaking change. Every groundbreaking change is heralded as the next big thing, until the next next-big-thing arrives the following day. Or until the next big thing turns out to the last big novelty.

Internet Access in South Africa to hit 20% penetration by 2013

The following is a tweetnote presentation – 10 tweets on the same topic – on the Internet Access in SA 2012 study for the 2012 Netprophet conference recently held in Cape Town.

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