I recently saw the news that Nikon is shutting down a huge production plant in China as of now. The reason was unusually clear: the market for digital cameras had shrunken too much thanks to the victory march of smartphones and the plant had gotten into a little pickle as a result. If you look at Canon, who had a truly miserable year in 2016, and then check out the cameras even highly affordable smartphones come with nowadays, you might wonder whether the end of the glorious age of digital cameras has finally come. Will specialists and enthusiasts be the only ones to still use digital single-lens reflex cameras (DSLRs) in 2018?
In the life of a tech aficionado, there are many old favorites, i.e. programs you stay faithful to even in the presence of better alternatives. For years, my favorite browser has been Firefox. Not owned by a large corporation, reasonably fast and with support for countless good extensions, Firefox was my go-to-browser until, eventually, sand got in the gears. The visuals hadn't been updated for years, display errors kept coming up and the speed was hardly on par with the available alternatives. I made the switch and, with a heavy heart, put Firefox on the scrap heap along with my old love, Netscape. Did I grieve too soon? Version 57 promises nothing less than a revolution. Is this the return to its old strength?
Last week, a piece of news shook the IT world. The US government had banned federal agencies from using security software from Russian company Kaspersky as the Department of Homeland Security was worried about potential connections between Kaspersky and the Russian secret service. In an unprecedented move, all Kaspersky software now has to be removed from all government PCs within 150 days. Looking closer, a couple a questions arise the most important of which is: is there anything left that is safe to install?
I recently came upon an offer I could hardly ignore. Amazon's Fire HD 8 was being sold in its basic version for just $50 on "Prime Day". Reason enough to give it a go - it's not like there was anything else to do during my vacation. My reasoning was that, at that price point, I wouldn't be getting a high-end device but it was likewise unlikely that Amazon would market a dud under their own name . Oh the excitement!
Recently, Microsoft's Build 2017, an annual developer conference, took place in Seattle and the company once again displayed their crown jewels along with big plans for the future (as always). With a Colgate smile, attendees were shown what smart services can do with cloud data - and data protection officials were probably reaching for their suicide pills right away. Video Indexer is a great example of how to leverage these new technologies and you can give it a try - if you dare. After all, Microsoft didn't lie when they spoke of a "democratization of surveillance tools".
