Tech Blog

[#1]

With just a few seconds of his keynote address this week, Steve Jobs threw the first shovel of dirt on a device that was already dead.  With a new logo for iTunes 10 , sans CD, the company that took digital retailing of music mainstream completely buried the old way of doing things.

When was the last time you actually bought a compact disc for music?  Last month, album sales dropped to an all time low since tracking started in 1991.

Future Shop recognized the trend years ago, drastically shrinking the cd department in favour of expanded gaming sections.  THAT'S what we use the cd for now - console gaming (and maybe storage).

With the compact disc (for music) now dead, I took a dig through the archives to see what other technologies have expired in the past year:

The Lexus SC430 convertible was the last car to offer a cassette deck as an in-dash option.  Surprising this took so long to expire with the growth of sattelite radio and in dash cd players.  Now cars, like the Kia Soul and the Ford line with Microsoft Sync , are moving more towards a bluetooth and USB experience where your music is all digital.

When it comes to media storage for your computer, we've gone through many iterations over the past decade.  Remember Zip disks and Jaz drives? How proud I was to have 100MB on one little device. Now USB keys are stacked up to 128 GB .

It's no wonder Sony stopped production of floppy disks this year .

Paul Simon 's music may be classic, but his lyrics will be more difficult for future generations to understand with the death of Kodak's Kodachrome film this year .  Simon may have begged "mama don't take my Kodachrome away," but the company did just that.

Polaroid 's instant film production ended two years ago but the look hasn't expired, Poladroid is a great app that will give you the slowly exposing look of a Polaroid photo to any of your iPhoto images.  Similarly, Kodachrome styled images can be reproduced with some apps and plugins .

Still, film photography exists and if you dig through a junk drawer in your garage or attic, you just might find a spare roll lying around like I did.  I dusted it off, handed the old camera to my 3 year old son and sent him off for the day.

The advancing technology has turned us into such an instant gratification world that it was wonderful to remember what it was like to wait for pictures to be developed.  When we got them back they were overexposed, covered with thumbs and dozens of pictures of nothing but carpet.  None of them deleted, each one of them printed and paid for.

Ahhh, the good ole' days.

What expiring technology will you fondly remember?

catch the buzz ... pass it on.

[#2]

Noooooo!  What will I do with the 300 odd CDs I just packed up to move???  I still want my CDs though... Nothing like listening to the entire Filter: Title of Record album on my stereo system to bring back memories of Lord of the Rings.  I read that book multiple times to that CD.

I like digital music as it fits with the 20GB hard drive in my car, but to be honest, with the exception of that, CDs still rule the roost at my home (that and the Rock Alternative channel on Galaxy radio).  But I do have to admit, I'll miss some of this old technology.  And in the meantime, I need to figure out what the heck to do with all my older stuff (and there is so much that has just been piling up).

[#3]

We at Kodak think about this kind of thing more than most as we contemplate how to help people preserve the moments of their lives forever.  It might not be enough to save your digital images onto CD..or DVD...if those formats don't live for the next 100 years.  (In fact, you know that they won't).  Even if the media survives, you'll need some sort of museum hardware to read it!

You can say what you will about making prints....but I guarantee that we'll have the hardware necessary to view them 100 years from now! (your eyes!)  I sometimes call prints "human readable images"...just to make this point.

[#4]

Agreed Kodak1 - making photobooks from images is one of my backup steps (and a great treat to flip through on a rainy afternoon).  There are many sites offering great bookmaking options - I choose iPhoto as it's built in to my Mac.

For my first wedding anniversary I made my wife a photobook of pics from our wedding.  Year 1 is paper, afterall.