Wak Oentoenk

A friend asked me the other day what I thought of Access/PalmSource's recent announcement of the Access Linux Platform (formerly known as Palm OS). I think it's interesting, and there are some hopeful signs. But my main takeaway is that we should probably stop thinking of this thing as the successor to Palm OS, and instead judge it as a new mobile OS based on Linux. Here's why...When you do a pre-announcement like this, you're usually looking to accomplish a couple of things. You want to make...

One of the fun things about working in high tech is that you'll occasionally get a look at something new that you know is going to have a big impact in the future. I got that feeling when I first saw a development version of HyperCard at Apple (back when they called it WildCard). Today I had that same feeling when I saw a video called Multi-Touch Interaction Research. It was produced by researchers at NYU who are exploring what you can do with a tabletop video touchscreen that can track separate...

Last week HP Personal Systems Group (PSG), the organization that makes all of its PCs and mobile devices, announced that it has split its handheld business unit out of the notebook computer team, and has recruited Dave Rothschild as VP of the new business unit. I think Dave's a good choice, and he's an example of how everything's interconnected in Silicon Valley. He was CEO of Pixo, a mobile OS company whose software was incorporated into the iPod. At Pixo, his head of engineering was Larry Slotnick,...

Microsoft has once again declared war on the RIM Blackberry. This is probably the third or fourth time they have done so, and like the other times the full solution from Microsoft isn't quite shipping yet. But it's closer than it was before, so this is a good time to check in on the situation.In the early 1990s, Microsoft went through a harrowing experience with IBM over the OS/2 operating system. First they worked together on it, then Microsoft shifted its focus to Windows. There are a lot of theories...

We're entering what I like to think of as the silly season, the time when the major tech analysis companies issue their quarterly reports on mobile device sales. IDC already released its report on Q4, while Canalys is due any day. These reports always generate press coverage; some of it insightful, most of it just repeating whatever the analysis companies said.Once all the reports are out, I'm going to look through them and try to give some comments on what I think they mean. But in the meantime,...

A couple of follow-ups to my post regarding music distribution.--"If Aerosmith sold only 100,000 copies on the Internet, we'd make more than selling a million for a big label. No matter how you slice it, everybody's making more than the band." --Aerosmith's Steven Tyler, noting that the band's recording contract is up for renewal after the next album--The LA Times runs a lot of articles giving the entertainment industry's view of technology. Some of them are a tad...skeptical. But there was a very...