No More Polaroid Film

Fans bid farewell to Polaroid film by Jacque Wilson

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/12/08/polaroid.farewell/index.html

Polaroid Corp has announced that this will be the last month that they will produce Polaroid film. Polaroid film was first made available sixty years ago and now Polaroid Corp cannot generate a profit from the film. Consumers are frantically trying to buy as much of this film as possible and as a result the price has sky rocketed, on Amazon.com a four-pack of 10 exposures is selling for $64. Groups have be created in order to save Polaroid film from extinction, many groups are on Facebook, and now there is a web site, Savepolaroid.com, where people can exchange stories about why they think Polaroid film should be kept.
It was only a matter of time until this happened, everything is going digital, from cameras to books. Actually Polaroid lasted much longer than I expected. I thought as soon as the digital camera got really big that the Polaroid Corp would pull the plug on making instant film. I think that this will be a wake up call for people; they see Polaroid instating film, something that was so popular and so ingrained in our culture, not making a profit anymore. I feel that some people will now shy away from digital. The next thing to go would be printable books, e-books are on the rise and if they get extremely popular, the printed book may go the way of Polaroid instant film.

Google Apps could be more trouble than they are worth

The hidden cost of Google Apps By Jonathan Blum
http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/13/smallbusiness/google_apps.smb/index.htm

More business are moving away from Microsoft office and heading towards Google apps for all of their office needs. There are benefits are easy to see if you use the basic Google apps they are free, but if you want more you will have to pay $50 per subscription per year. This is still dramatically less than the cost of Microsoft office. Major problem for business when transitioning to Google apps is that it web based. The business will have to have an account and so will all the employees, so if they already have an account problems could arise.

I agree with this article that Google apps are really helpful, but to implement it in an office could be trouble. I wouldn’t be against using both; there are applications that Google has, that could help business and their employees. The problems that I can see from completely using Google apps is that it can be a little confusing with all the apps and your g-mail account. The bottom line is that it really doesn’t matter if a business uses Microsoft office or Google apps it all satisfies the same function.

Amazon's Kindle takes a year to take off

A year later, Amazon's Kindle finds a niche : by Zach Pontz

This article can be found at http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/12/03/kindle.electronic.reader/index.html

Amazon.com's electronic Kindle reader is in short an electronic book. It is small, lightweight and it has 200,000 titles that can be downloaded to it. Electronic books have been around for 10 years and there are a few reasons that the Kindle is doing so well now. First is the marketing of it, they have connected to consumers in a way that no other electronic book has been able to. The second reason that the Kindle is selling is because Oprah Winfrey has supported it, and we all know that whatever she talks about turns to gold. The last reason that the Kindle is doing well is because consumers and now getting use to reading text on their phones and computers.

What i found most interesting about this article is that Amazon was able to thrive where other companies have failed. Even with major authors such as J.K Rowling saying that they will never allow their books to be sold on an electronic book, it makes no difference in the success of the Kindle. The only problem that I can see is that the Kindle's success will most likely be short lived. It costs $360 and I don't think that people will be willing to pay that much money when they can go to a library and get a book for free.