Cisco Systems Inc. made a big splash with the introduction of its CRS-3 router, which is capable of handing 322 terabits per second, way beyond anything an ordinary person, company or even network would use. The splash came from the way Cisco put the speed into perspective—making the comparisons individual and personal. For example, the company said you could download all the movies ever made in four seconds through their router. Or everyone in China could hold a video chat at the same time. Well, nice try. This device really has nothing to do with personal, or even corporate, use of the Internet. For one thing, why would you even consider downloading every movie ever made, or hold a country-wide video chat? But more significant, what content provider is sending data out to browsers at this speed, and how many users have anything close to this speed from their Internet provider? Very few. Web servers are rarely set up to deliver HTML pages very fast, or even video. So even if you were to increase your ISP speed upward from 4 Mbps, say, you’d find little real improvement in how fast your pages or video are displayed. So, while I appreciate Cisco’s newest product, it’s really a upper-level network intro, not a device that’s relevant to individuals.

After my discovery of the company that designed and is now marketing the point-of-sale (POS) device used in Apple stores, Infinite Peripherals’ Linēa-pro, I figured it would be a trivial step for the device to become available in the stores themselves. Well—not so fast! Now comes word that the look-alike PAYware Mobile device by VeriFone will be sold in Apple stores later this month. Ouch! The device is a sleeve that slides on to an iPhone, links to a free VeriFone app, and includes a magstripe reader so you can begin taking credit cards for purchases. The process includes on-screen signature signing with a stylus and e-mail receipts—ouch again! Naturally, it can use cellular to transmit-receive transaction data, unlike the Linēa-pro, which uses Wi-Fi only on an iPod touch. And the PAYware doesn’t have a barcode scanner, as the Linēa-pro does. Like Infinite Peripherals, VeriFone only sells the device, not the payment processing service. You must already have a merchant account from a recognized provider. Interestingly, you might receive a call during a payment transaction—the software will ask, “Accept or decline?” and act accordingly. You can then go right back to your transaction. More interestingly, the device is free if you sign up for two years of VeriFone’s PAYware Connect gateway service, which is required for the device to connect to your merchant account. Apparently the monthly fee business model is alive and well. Apparently those fees are based on your transaction amounts, and can be “as low as 2%,” the company Web site says. That’s on top of your merchant account fees, which could be in the 3%–5% range. The bottom line for the Apple stores—you could be buying a VeriFone device off the shelf, and pay Apple using a Linēa-pro. Now that’s odd.

Tivo has announced their newest devices, somehow managing to miss lots of essentials but still managing to keep their business model just above the limit of irrelevancy. The screen menus have gone HD, which they should have been a long time ago. They’ve included a disk space meter, another no-brainer. The menus themselves are organized much better to allow users to speed right to what they need. The Tivo accepts a CableCard, allowing menus to include a picture-in-picture of the current channel while you’re looking at a menu. They’ve retained the fee-based structure, come up with an optional Bluetooth remote with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, left off built-in WiFi and they’re charging lots for the difference between the two models, one with a 320 Gb drive and the other a 1 Tb—why in the world don’t they just make 1 Tb models to start with? Overall, this latest update simply takes Tivo to where it should be, not beyond. And if you’re pushing technology these days, what you introduce today better be what people want tomorrow, not what they should have had last year. Now, are they going to let me transfer my lifetime membership from a Series 3?

Now Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein has sent employees a note explaining the financial announcement he made earlier, and letting them know his plans—it’s a very strange message. Talk about a company in the dark. Shouldn’t the company’s employees already know they’re doing poorly? And then he tells them that for the past three weeks the executive team has been “working extremely hard to improve product performance.” And what has the rest of the company been doing for those three weeks? “In the next few weeks, your management will work with your to make sure your priorities are laser-focused,” Rubinstein says. Well, no sense starting right away. Read the entire message to see if this is the type of message that you’d like to receive as an employee.

It’s pretty sad to read about Palm, a company that was so early in the PDA marketplace that…well, did they actually invent PDAs in 1996? Now Palm is struggling—really struggling—to come up with a product whose features attract buyers. Heaven knows they’ve tried very hard. You’ll recall the Pilot and all of its progeny. At the time they were the electronic device to have. But tech moves pretty fast, and the rise of cellular phones pretty much ended the interest in the Pilot. And as we all now, the iPhone pretty much ended interest in bad cell phones. Most recently Palm came up with the Pre, which in ordinary times would be a very nice smartphone. It’s design and marketing was aided by Jon Rubenstein, who jumped to CEO at Palm from being iPod Sr. V-P at Apple. But since the Pre’s debut at CES in Jan. 2009, it hasn’t caught on. This week Palm announced its financial results will be down for the latest quarter because of “slower than expected consumer adoption of the company’s products.” The stock has plummeted as future confidence has evaporated. And even more sad, the price of the Pre and Pixi have dropped dramatically since the financial announcement—you can get a Pixi for free at Best Buy and the Pre for just $69.99. For a company who was so far ahead in the late 90’s, it’s sad to see it so far behind just 14 years later.

I’m not giving up any secrets by saying I’m planning grand opening trips for 2010. Right off the bat, I’d say that Chicago, DC, Paris and London are on my itinerary, which would total over 30,000 miles. All these are mid-year openings, so I’m really looking forward to sunny, warm weather (compared to the Louvre and UWS openings!). I’d love to get back to China for the openings in Beijing or Shanghai, but logistically that’s always more difficult. Of course, any openings in Spain would be a great trip, too. I’ve pretty much honed my packing, helped because I’ve narrowed down my choice of clothing, especially outerwear, and A-V gear. Even so, I end up taking at least three still cameras (all can also take video), a camcorder, and lots of accessories. It’s that last category that’s tough—I need tons of chargers, tripods and other stuff just to support the cameras and my laptop. I just noticed on Martha Stewart’s show a great idea for organizing: the GRID-IT system. Essentially, is a cross-weave of elastic bands attached to a stiff backing. It allows you infinite possibilities to slip the elastic bands over different sized gear so it’s all in one place and visible. They offer models that are larger and meant for packing in luggage, and others about 8″x8″ that come enclosed in a hard shell. Check their Web site for details. Seems like just what I need for the upcoming grand opening season.

If you’re creating any type of video for the Web, you can wrestle against it, or with with it. Obviously, you’ll want to do the latter. And to work with it, you’ll need to make the flow as easy as possible. First, buy yourself a camcorder that records onto SD cards. It can be standard or high-definition—these days even standard definition looks darned good for the size you’d post on a Web page. The advantage of SD cards is that you can then use iMovie or Final Cut (Express) to import the video directly from the card. More importantly, you can review all the clips from the editor and decide which ones to import. This will save you an enormous amount of time: the clips move quickly just like any file transfer, and you can leave out bad takes, goofs and glitches that would never make the final video. Now, after editing, you have to put the video into a compressed format for the Web, and here are two more tips: buy yourself an Elgato turbo.264HD encoder, and sign up for a really high-speed ISP, who provides ~10 Mbps service. The Elgato encoder looks like a thumbdrive, plugs into a USB 2.0 port, and will cut your encoding time by hours. I’ve encoded some 8-minute videos in 90 minutes using FC-Express, but with the Elgato encoder, it takes only 15 minutes. Nice! It works through a stand-alone application to encode video to H.264, but also slips right into the iMovie/Final Cut option menus to let you encode directly from the editor, too. I can’t wait to see how it works on my MacBook Pro laptop. And then lastly, who wants to wait while a 200 Mb video taken a hour to upload. With a 10 Mbps upload speed from your cable provider, it takes only minutes. Now you have spare time to go back and make another video.

Apparently the future will be a lot like today, at least in the world of high-tech hardware fixtures. The movie “Avatar” is set in 2054 as earthlings on another planet are mining a rare and valuable element (have we seen that before?). To coordinate the mining operation, and the requisite military operation demanded by the plot, there is a very large control room with circular consoles. On the outside of those consoles is a handrail with curved glass decorative panels. If you look closely, you can see that the circular attachment hardware for the glass panels is identical to that used on Apple’s glass staircases, bridges and upper-level railings. The Apple hardware is custom-made by TriPyramid Structures Inc. based in Massachusetts, which no doubt provided the fixtures for the movie set.

The trend in digital single-lens reflex (D-SLR) cameras is to include video capabilities—very sophisticated video capabilities. Even the newest Canon consumer model (T1i, T2i) have 1080p features that rival any camcorder, and the high-end Canon and Nikon models have video quality that rivals some $20,000 dedicated video camcorders. But obviously, the form-factor is all different. D-SLRs have retained their eye-to-the-camera design, with a LCD screen on the back, dials on the top, etc. Camcorders have retained their Kleenex box proportions (although they’re a lot smaller!). D-SLRs also don’t have the audio, matte box, auxiliary lighting and other features of camcorders. As a result, those using D-SLRs for serious video work have had to plaster all sorts of accessories onto their still camera, beefing it up to camcorder standards. I just spotted this photo, taken at the 2010 Macworld of a Canon on a $2,000 trip, outfitted with an external, battery-run monitor, dual handles, wireless mic, follow-focus knob and yards of cables—yikes! Am I missing something here? Wouldn’t a decent prosumer camcorder nearly handle the same assignment? Okay, maybe the external monitor would be needed. But the quality of the video from this camera couldn’t be that much better than a camcorder, especially when you consider they’re doing stand-up interviews and not Rocky Mountain scenics.

It turns out that Apple introduced the iPad 2-3 months ahead of its availability to keep it secret. The device needed FCC certification, and that semi-public process would have broken the cone of silence that Apple creates around its products. But, it also turns out that putting availability 60 to 90 days into the future has created a period of anxiety for Amazon, Sony and any other company that has products or plans for something tablet-sized. Simply put, the game is changing already. Amazon had a run-in with publishers over book prices, and it’s still not settled. Gates-Ballmer have commented on the iPad, noting that it’s really not that big of a deal—or at least, not something Microsoft would create. The number of software developers in the App Store has skyrocketed. Now there are rumors that Amazon will give away Kindle’s to its Prime, upper-level loyalty customers. The company may also be exploring future Kindle designs that incorporate a color screen. I say, let the industry simmer and stew. There is nothing that kick-starts innovation and change more than having a competitor. In fact, just saying you’re a competitor seems to get things moving in the technology world. It all makes for an interesting read. But you must ask yourself the ultimate question: are we all better off because of all the changes that have already occurred because of the iPad introduction? Well, we don’t even know how the iPad might affect the world of music, browsing, writing, presentations, and photography (all iPad capabilities) until the device reaches consumers. But in the important world of publishing, the changes look positive: book prices will go up, reflecting a fairer price point for writers and buyers. Other publishing segments are jumping in, including comic books, magazines and newspaper, giving them increased exposure and potential revenue. And in general, the “printed” word is getting more attention and respect, which is always a positive thing. If I were Steve, I’d be on the telephone all day talking deals with content providers—come on board! But I’d also be resting quietly at home after work, knowing that the industry is slowly changing, even before the iPad hits the market.

First it was Google Wave, now Buzz, and who knows what name is next for the social interaction software the company is devising. I’m a pretty smart guy, but really have to push myself to understand the concepts of contact and communications that are in play with Wave-Buzz. First, I’m at a distinct disadvantage by being over 40, so my methods of communicating with friends, family and business people is vastly different than those in the 14-40 age range. But I also get lost in the ways that Google is combining, consolidating and integrating new and existing social technologies to create something improved, more efficient and having new features. This all leaves me excited by the prospects of what the future is bringing, but wondering—how the heck do I participate? It’s difficult to move my social life over to the new paradigm. I’d have to convince myself that it’s an improvement, and then convince my friends they should make the move, too. So far, I’m lucky if I can convince them to make the Mac conversion. Taking up Wave-Buzz, Twitter or Facebook would be a leap for everyone I know. Even so, I’m plugging away to keep up with Google, hoping I won’t be left behind in the New Age.

After an enormous amount of speculation and hype, the iPad finally landed today. Of course, it didn’t measure up to the expectations because, frankly, our expectations were way off the charts. And of course, most of the surprise was gone because of all the leaks. Here are the main take-away points: it’s great-looking, nice-handling, and it extends the current iPhone/touch object handling and interface methods. The inclusion of iWork for the iPad was a big plus. Pricing for the 3G service was definitely amazing, especially the no-contract deal. That means you could activate the AT&T service for a month when you’re on vacation or out of town for business. The connection to the existing App and iTunes Store is great, including apps, music, movies and TV shows. iBooks—nice! The page-turning interface is amazing! The on-screen keyboard is interesting—gotta try it out to see if it’s really workable. Battery life was way more than what everyone expected. The dock and dock/keyboard were really nice, as was the binder/display. Perhaps the most underrated feature will turn out to be the A4 chip that powers the iPad—an Apple designed chip. First time. Ever. What was left out? Well, no optical gear for either photos or video, face recognition (okay, that was a wild speculation), video-conferencing or taking photos. No TV hardware or software, so there’s no live TV. No Verizon wireless service. No multi-tasking apps. No on-screen Post-It notes. But all that is probably responsible for the biggest news—pricing. Apple split up the into three memory configurations and Wi-Fi/3G to offer various prices that start at $499. That’s way below the highest speculative price of $1,000. For many, that would be a sufficient device—no 3G and basic memory. Add 3G service for $130 and you’ve got a $629 tablet that can do lots of things on the road. Questions? Plenty. Why did Steve announce it now, instead of closer to the release date? Why did he not mention a specific release date, but only 90 days (FCC approval period?)? Did AT&T retain exclusivity in exchange for the improved wireless pricing and contract? No SD slot, but an external adapter (and USB adapter, too)? What apps come standard: stocks, weather, etc.? Now, it’s up to us—everybody—to decide if the iPad fits a particular need in our tech lives. I’ll bet it will, especially if the iBook store gets rolling.