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To: Cooters who wrote (18274)	1/17/2001 11:48:09 AM
From: Jim Greif	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 60323

This from Forbes seems interesting. Note the preference for the SD card format. Jim Wednesday January 17, 10:15 am Eastern Time Forbes.com Ten O'Clock Tech: Panasonic's Music Boxes By Arik Hesseldahl Two years ago, owning a portable MP3 player was a pretty edgy thing, something that established one's position among the digitally hip. But now that nearly every consumer electronics manufacturer on the planet has brought one out to market, they're showing up all over. From commuters on Manhattan's subway lines to joggers in Oregon, there's almost nothing new about owning one. So it was about time that the world's biggest consumer electronics maker, Japan's Matsushita (NYSE: MC - news), got into the game. While the name may be unfamiliar, you've no doubt heard its various brand names: Quasar, Technics, JVC and Panasonic. The company has launched a pair of digital music players under the Panasonic name that are likely to catch the eyes of consumers in the coming year, and for good reason. They look cool, and they're backed by some attractive technology. The company used a runway fashion show to generate hype at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. But the product names are lousy. The first player, dubbed the SV-SD75 e-wear SD audio player (not as easy to remember as Rio, is it?) is a tiny little box about the size of a pager. It's about a half-inch thick, and about two inches square in size. In that tiny package, it packs an LCD screen that displays the name of the song and the name of the performer. The other player looks more like a somewhat bulky set of headphones, and that's the idea. The headphones are the whole player. This one is called the SV-SD05 Headphone player. It weighs about three ounces and folds into a compact little package for carrying. Both players connect to PCs using the USB connection, and both work with the Real Jukebox software created by Real Networks (Nasdaq: RNWK - news). And both will run for about six hours on a single AAA battery. But their real advantage appears to be the SD Card storage technology. While rival Sony (NYSE: SNE - news) has launched several players and other devices that use its proprietary Memory Stick storage cartridges, Matsushita has been working with several companies, including Toshiba and SanDisk (Nasdaq: SNDK - news), to make the SD Card technology and industry standard. As more manufacturers adopt the technology, it will make trading cartridges containing songs as easy as trading cassettes or CDs is today. Right now, a Sony Memory Stick can only work with Sony-made devices. Other manufacturers like Palm Computing (Nasdaq: PALM - news) have picked the technology for a forthcoming MP3 player add-on for the PalmPilot, and more are sure to follow. And whenever the recording industry gets around to implementing its Secure Digital Music Initiative, the SD card, which stands for ``secure digital,'' will support it. That should satisfy the record companies, whose lawyers have been busy beating up on companies like Napster and Scour for helping spread copyrighted MP3 files far and wide.

To: Cooters who wrote (18274)	1/17/2001 7:07:42 PM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 60323

Cooters, I listened to the Carp interview on CDBC this morning. Many thanks for the transcript, which, if anyone had any doubts about Kodak, shows that Kodak still doesn't get it. Here they make all this noise about film market share holding up, but film sales being disappointing, but then they're sure this situation won't last. I've got news. The lively sales of flash cards, mostly for digital cameras, explains why Kodak is experiencing lower film sales. People are learning quickly that digital is cheaper. It's that simple. Only Kodak thinks that as long as it can figure out some cumbersome way of doing more things with conventional film, its film still has a future. When you see increased sales revenues from the three most used flash memory units (CF, SmartMedia, and MemoryStick), it means not only growth in sales of digital cameras but DECLINES in demand for conventional film and cameras. The interview with Carp shows just how far Kodak has strayed from really committing to digital. (Yeah, digital is ok as long as there still is a place for regular film.) That attitude can only mean that when people first think about their next camera, they'll think Olympus, Canon, Nikon, etc., but not Kodak, which will become an afterthought, if it hasn't already. Art Bechhoefer