One Engineer's view on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness–and of course politics!
Not a long post from me today, but just a link to an article in the Globe and Mail that explains what RIM’s misfortunes could mean for the city of Kitchener-Waterloo. I doubt that they will become the next Nortel, but hopefully they won’t.
A while ago I was going to post a quick something that I saw about the Ottawa Tech Sector from the Ottawa Citizen, but didn’t post it. Unfortunately things didn’t seem to be going well in Ottawa high-tech despite some encouraging signs from some companies. Article below:
But now it seems we could have some more bad news for Ottawa (really Canada) tech with RIM’s recent announcements. This will affect the growing tech economy of Waterloo much more than Ottawa’s but there will be an effect. RIM is one of the local bright spots.
Who is going to be Canada’s tech anchor? It looks like RIM is still a major force and will remain the number one tech company in Canada for awhile. But who will be Ottawa’s anchor? Since the demise of Nortel we don’t seem to have a large, world-class, exporter of technology (apologies to all the smaller Ottawa companies out there). Maybe an anchor is not required beyond the government and it’s tech contracts, but I think a big world-beater would be good to have in town.
Just reading the EE Times article talking about Motorola’s resurgence. It’s good to see the inventor of the cell phone to be back in the business.
The Android operating system really is helping Motorola come back. Will this be Apple’s undoing? Doubtful–but gives the competition some breathing room.
Just a few observations from my trip to China. Seeing the growth of Shenzhen and the skyscrapers of Pudong in Shanghai, one cannot help but be impressed by the progress made in the last 30 years. I even got to ride on the Pudong Mag-Lev train to the airport. Very impressive.
I was instantly reminded of the constant debate, start, cancel, debate, start, cancel cycle that we seem to be involved in for Ottawa’s transit system. Will it ever got off the ground?
I’m not promoting China’s political system, but they can get things when they need to. (But may not care about all the consequences).
Perhaps there is some middle ground that would allow functional democracies to accomplish things a bit faster. The US was able to put a man on the moon in a limited amount of time–is there a lesson to be learned there?
Been some busy months in my life that have kept me from posting. My brother was in a life-threatening cycling injury in the US, I’ve had a two week work trip to China, all the while trying to keep the family happy…but enough of all that…experiences that could fill a blog on them alone. But from now on I’ll try to keep going with some regular commentary on the world of engineering.
As I end this post–one comment, Apple did mess up with their antenna design. Oh well, we all make mistakes every now and then.
Just a quick post on this one. Read the story on EE Times, and looked a little further into it. This can’t be coincidence with the upcoming delivery of the iPad. Should Apple (and others) reconsider using Foxconn?
Coming soon to stores on April 3rd, the iPad is causing quite a stir. Will it be “all that”?
The most interesting part about the iPad, the Kindle, and other tablet PCs and e-readers (and yes I know e-readers and tablet computers are really different things!) is what it might actually do to the print (newspapers and books) industry. It seems logical to me (someone who reads quite a bit online, but not much printed material) that we may finally see less trees being converted to paper. I bold the “may” because people have predicted the paperless office in the past.
It will be hard to fully get rid of paper, but the e-reader/tablet idea might reduce some paper usage. We shall see how this all progresses in the next few years.
I look through some of my posts and realize that I have a slightly negative tone to the blog. Well, today I will pass on some positive news–at least it’s positive for the industry I work in. The good ‘ole supply and demand economics is working, with semiconductor companies not going overboard building fabs so that the supply side of the equation will not get out of whack. Here is the story from Mark LaPedus of EE Times.
Was just reading an article on The Next Silicon Valley website that details some of the talks that Craig Barrett (formerly of Intel) was giving in Ireland. He has some strong opinions on how a real technology sector can grow. I think he has a lot of good things to say, with the biggest being that Foreign Direct Investment is probably not the best way to grow a regional technology hub. Growing from within is longer, but really the only way for a sustainable technology park. Worth a read.
Wow, this is actually a big deal. There are many aspects to this story which make it so compelling: one of the largest technology companies in the world versus one of the largest governments of the world.
There is a lot of hope in China, especially as the domestic market grows. Many American businesses have a lot to gain in this market, but what price has to be paid. The censorship issue was a tough one to swallow for Google, but they did do it. Are they being completely clear on their reasons for uncensoring now? There are also conflicting reports on Google’s market share. Are they losing or gaining ground?
Many interesting commentary articles here (NPR), here (Business Insider), and here (New York Times).
Many questions, but I will say if Google completely leaves China for good-natured reasons, I will have to applaud them. They will be leaving money on the table, without a significant replacement market. Maybe a company of this magnitude standing up to the Chinese Communist Party will open some eyes.
As an aside, in my work life I have been looking at the new Google Android mobile phone operating system. One of the markets that has really embraced the Android phones is China. One of (not all) the benefits of the Android OS is compatability with all that is Google. This move may hurt Android adoption in China.
June 20, 2011
TigercatTomorrow
Engineering Politics 