Rest In Peace, T-Mobile Sidekick

It wasn't my first Smartphone - the Kyocera 6035 running PalmOS was that - but the Sidekick may have been the best pre-iPhone smartphone. It provided the killer e-mail experience of a Blackberry at about 1/10th the cost, and also offered excellent texting, good-enough web surfing, and a real App Store years before Apple. It was the T-Mobile Sidekick. And it's best feature was full cloud integration - years before anyone else got it right - your contacts, e-mails, photos, everything was always available online from any computer. But that cloud service goes away starting today, relegating a titan of smartphone usability to being just another Android phone.

Rest in Peace, Sidekick. You will be missed.

R.I.P. Arthur C. Clarke

If you have enjoyed virtually any science fiction, you owe a huge debt to Arthur C. Clarke, one of the pioneers of the genre. The author of 2001, 2010, Childhood's End, and many many more novels and short stories has died at age 90. He was also one of the few science fiction authors to have done some real science.

In 1945, a UK periodical magazine “Wireless World” published his landmark technical paper "Extra-terrestrial Relays" in which he first set out the principles of satellite communication with satellites in geostationary orbits - a speculation realised 25 years later. During the evolution of his discovery, he worked with scientists and engineers in the USA in the development of spacecraft and launch systems, and addressed the United Nations during their deliberations on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.

Today, the geostationary orbit at 36,000 kilometres above the Equator is named The Clarke Orbit by the International Astronomical Union.

The world will miss this visionary.

RIP Larry Norman

Most of the writers on this blog grew up around the glow of the Christian music industry. Whether it was Petra, Steve Taylor or Geoff Moore and the Distance we were all fans of some Christian singer or group. On Sunday Larry Norman, the man most responsible for the development of what we now know of as the Christian music industry, died. While I never listened to a Larry Norman album and only heard him sing on a couple of occasions, I know of his impact because of the way those who grew up in his era remember him. Larry was a culturally relevant singer that had no qualms in singing or talking about Jesus to anyone or singing about the torture of seduction and yet his music was as good or even better than a lot of what was coming out in the 1970s. It's too bad his legacy, the Christian music industry, has become so culturally irrelevant and generally not as good as their mainstream counterparts.

Polaroid: R.I.P. Instant Camera

Long before the first digital camera had an integrated LCD, Polaroid pioneered taking instant pictures at parties and family events. Their invention was so game-changing that it took the world by storm, and it is likely not many of us born before 1980 did NOT own a Polaroid at some point. But now, facing the Perfect Storm of the digital revolution Polaroid has announced the end of the instant camera along with over 450 jobs.

Global sales of traditional camera film have been dropping about 25 percent to 30 percent per year, "and I've got to believe instant film has been falling as fast if not faster," said Ed Lee, a digital photography analyst at the research firm InfoTrends Inc.

"At some point in time, it had to reach the point where it was going to be uneconomical to keep producing instant film," Lee said.

Privately held Polaroid doesn't disclose financial details about its instant film business.

Polaroid instant film will be available in stores through next year, the company said - after which, Lee said, Japan's Fujifilm will be the only major maker of instant film.

I will miss the simplicity and utility of the Polaroid cameras, but with LCD previews and portable printers, it definitely is time to say goodbye.

R.I.P. PalmOS

Palm was once the juggernaut of the handheld world. It held nearly the entire PDA space in its iron grip, and only a few surviving Apple Newtons and Windows CE devices were out there to challenge it. Now, however, it is a much different world. Windows Mobile owns much of the American market, Blackberry owns most of the rest, and the PalmOS is being quietly retired in favor of some kind of Linux which Palm will use on future handhelds.

The beginning of the end for PalmOS was when Palm split into two companies - one to handle Palm-branded hardware and another to handle Palm-branded operating systems and software. Ostensibly, this was to foster innovation on both sides. Instead, it institutionalized the tendency toward tunnel vision. Here is hoping devices like the iPhone can return competition to the space, and foster true innovation.