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In an interview with PC Pro, the deputy president of Sony's VAIO Business Group, Ryosuke Akahane, has revealed that the company will soon be effectively splitting its laptop business into two distinct groups. The first, called "division one," will continue with laptops designed and built by Sony as before, but the second, or "division two," will rely on laptops built by other manufacturers. Those behind-the-scenes changes may not be readily apparent to consumers, however, as the so-called division two laptops will still carry the VAIO name, and will apparently have the same "taste of VAIO" and "style of VAIO," with Sony naturally first approving all third-party designs. "We need a certain market share. And if we don't have a certain market share, it's tough to survive"

Sony, once the clear market leader in consumer electronics and entertainment, has strongly suffered because of paradigm shifts in the industries it is active in. Now it is making yet another attempt to re-establish its leadership, using online services and its coverage of a broad range of potentially interoperable devices. Will this be a sound value proposition for consumers?

We can't say if there's an actual rule or not, but we're pretty sure that anyone in the e-reader business has to, at one point, make a prediction about when e-books will overtake actual books, and it looks like Sony has now come through with a big one of its own. That comes courtesy of Sony's Steve Haber, the man responsible for the company's digital reading business division, who says that: "within five years there will be more digital content sold than physical content." Note that he says "digital content," not books, so we can presume that also includes magazines and newspapers, but it's still a fairly ambitious statement nonetheless. What's more, Habar also insists that there is a place for standalone e-readers alongside multi-function devices like the iPad, saying that, "it's just like digital imaging, where you can take pictures with a cellphone - and many people take pictures with cellphones - but if they want the best possible picture they'll use a point-and-shoot camera or a digital SLR."

Backing away from a previous position, are we Nintendo? Just a month after Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime claimed that the iPhone OS (you know, that operating system used on the iPod touch, iPhone family and the iPad) wasn't a "viable profit platform for game development," along comes the company's president to say that, in fact, Apple is the primary "enemy of the future." That's according to Times Online, who says that the Big N's CEO (Satoru Iwata) feels that the battle with Sony is a "victory already won," and who clearly believes that the next wave of gaming won't be of the traditional sit-on-your-coach-and-slam-buttons variety. 'Course, the PSP never has been able to hang with the DS family, but even the Wii has a ways to go before it catches the mighty PlayStation 2 in terms of global sales. Going forward, the company is purportedly looking to revive the element of "surprise" in Nintendo products, but it might be best served by simply catching up to the competition and supporting this wild concept known as "HD gaming" over "HDMI."

The last pasenger has abandoned ship. Sony Ericsson has now moved to Android, officially making Symbian a Nokia-only thing, though still the one with the largest market share. It is understandable that phone makers didn't want to hand themselves to Microsoft, but is it a wise bet to do the same with Google?

Cloud computing is quickly becoming the dominant design for IT systems and could do the same to games consoles. This is quite striking, given that the trajectory followed by Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft has up to now been the opposite, with huge computing power distributed in users' living rooms, instead of concentrating it in providers' data centers

Short article on the up-and-coming technology of 3D televisions, with some comments on the problem of standardization

2010 will probably be the year in which 3D television sets enter the market. Interesting that this up-and-coming technology will probably emerge before its predecessor (HDTV) becomes dominant, especially because the useful life of a TV set is longer than the lifeitme of its technology. Another interesting point is the standard that will emerge as a foundation for 3D TVs, whether it will be based on traditional colored eyeglasses, or (more costly) glass-less technology.

TV sets are exhibiting a technological revolution after another. Flat screens (LCD and plasma) have overcome CRTs, and now 3D TVs seem likely to define a new paradigm over the next few years. Of course, this heavily depends on the availability of 3D content and on consumers' desire to experience it beyond movie theaters. 

Household, Misc. Gadgets Northeastern University students build web-syncing, home-automating DPAC alarm clock By Donald Melanson posted May 6th 2010 4:51PM It may not actually be available for sale, but it looks like some students from Northeastern University are giving devices like the Chumby and Sony Dash a run for their money. They've built this so-called Dynamically Programmable Alarm Clock, or DPAC, which can sync up with your Google Calendar to automatically set alarms, get traffic, weather and other information, and even integrate with a home automation system to turn on the lights, open the blinds, and start your coffee maker as part of a wake-up cycle. What's more, the whole thing can also be configured using a web interface, and it of course packs a built-in FM radio and an iPod dock for good measure. Hit up the source link below for a look at the months-long build process, and head on past the break to check it out in action. See: http://egaertner.com/dpac/

Google and Intel are expected to announce a significant breakthrough into consumer electronics and the broadcast industry this week with the launch of a "Smart TV" platform. Top executives from the Silicon Valley companies are reported to be ready to reveal a deal with Sony, bringing web services to its televisions, during Google's annual developer conference in San Francisco. Intel's Atom microprocessor and Google's Android operating system are spearheading their assault on set-top boxes and TVs featuring integrated internet services. Intel pioneered internet "widgets" on TV screens with Yahoo in 2008 but while many other players have entered the market since, it remains fragmented and has been slow to take off.

Google made some waves yesterday when it announced the new Google TV platform, backed by major players like Sony, Logitech, Intel, Dish Network, and Best Buy. Built on Android and featuring the Chrome browser with a full version of Flash Player 10.1, Google TV is supposed to bring "the web to your TV and your TV to the web," in Google's words. It's a lofty goal that many have failed to accomplish, but Google certainly has the money and muscle to pull it off. But hold up: what is Google TV, exactly, and why do all these companies think it's going to revolutionize the way we watch TV? Let's take a quick walk through the platform and see what's what.