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Wednesday, June 27, 2007

iPhone: still a breakthrough?



Well, let me tell you something about the iPhone. Everybody is talking about the digital divide, then who can afford the $600 to buy this phone? Premium price for what? $499 for a model with 4 gigabytes of storage and $599 for one with 8
gigabytes, hmmm and $59.99/month for 450mins and $36 activation fee.

The value of this phone in most of the cases is becoming a luxury good. Should the regulator jump in and ask them how they setup this price? It sounds way monopolistic to me.

Should I buy a Porsche or a Huyndai? I can drive them both, but the experience is different. Its a preference or an income statement question?
How about the network? AT&T’s network comes in for criticism. It’s signal strength isn’t strong in some cities and the EDGE cellular network is “excruciatingly slowly".Nice, iPhone is only for cities. Great,imagine driving a Porsche on Pennsylvania turnpike, uphill-downhill, its not fun, right?

But overall, the phone is a superbly engineered, cleverly designed and imaginatively implemented approach to a problem that no one has cracked to date: merging a phone handset, an Internet navigator and a media player in a package where every component shines, and the features are welcoming rather than foreboding. The iPhone is the rare convergence device where things actually converge.

-E

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Digging into the Almanac



I was reading an article on ERT.gr about the Greeks back in 1857, when they came to the USA. Really cool stuff, between 1857 and 1910 183,000 Greeks came to New York, always big sailors no matter the ocean distance.
In 1857 the first Greek restaurant opened in NY, called "Peloponnese" and the first Greek Newspaper called "Atlantis" started in 1894; the Greeks have some serious roots with NY. Maybe that is the reason that this summer I will stay in the Big Apple and work than lying in the beach...
It is said that today in Astoria live 75,000 Greeks. cool! The owner of the 20th Century Fox is a Greek family, named Skuras, proving that Greeks were into the Hollywood as successfully as they were with the dinners business. Perhaps its the same mentality or business model:)
-E