The New York times ran an insightful piece this weekend on the decline of Sony, which is valued at just a quarter of where it was a decade ago, and just one thirtieth the size of Apple:

“Sony makes too many models, and for none of them can they say, ‘This contains our best, most cutting-edge technology,’ ” Mr. Sakito said. “Apple, on the other hand, makes one amazing phone in just two colors and says, ‘This is the best.’ ”

In addition to department infighting, that really sums up Sony’s troubles: too much product, none of them hits. (more…)

In The Know: Should The Nation’s Unemployed Be Buying New Apple Computers?

Convincing reasons here.

Speaking personally, I’ve owned a Blu-ray player (PS3) since 2007, yet I only own maybe five Blu-ray discs. Yes the picture quality is nicer, but upscaled DVDs and streaming movies look nearly as good, and up until this year, they were a whole lot cheaper.

2 Muslims travel 13,000 miles across America, find an embracing nation

An excerpt: “After 13,000 miles, I think that America still exists, and I’m happy to know that it does,” said Tariq, a 23-year-old American of Pakistani descent. “It’s really made America feel like home to me in a way that I’ve never felt before. The America that we think about [as immigrants] is still actually there. I’ve seen it! And I’m seeing it still.”

As this report so eloquently states, media is still best consumed with a mouse and keyboard, passive video, or with opposing hands leafing through pages of information. “Interactive media” as seen on the iPad is as useful as “multimedia CD-ROM dictionaries” from the 1990s, m’kay?

Now if you’re talking about entertainment, I’m all for gesture based interaction. But for straight consumption of information, give me visual ads, easy flowing editorial, and search.

Sadie woke up early today. After getting up with her and dozing off on the couch, she unfortunately decided to turn on the Today Show on NBC. I don’t watch morning shows, and now I know why. The programming is pathetic — it’s like a prolonged advertisement filled with periodic non-news and weather updates every 10 minutes. Just horrible…

Which made me wonder: Will morning shows continue to air once the baby-boomer generation passes on? Who else is watching this dross?

… like this one.

In an article entitled “Do Newspapers Have a Future,” author Michael Kinsley at TIME magazine had this to say: “Meanwhile, there is the blog terror: people are getting their understanding of the world from random lunatics riffing in their underwear, rather than professional journalists with standards and passports.”

He’s got a point. However, he also exposes the overall threatened view of traditional media towards bloggers, and rightfully so. (more…)