It’s sunrise for Music Clouds, high noon for iPods, and sunset for CDs.

Just as Amazon’s Cloud Player, Apple’s ITunes Match, and Google Music launch online music services, iPods are fading, and CDs are nearing the end.  While iOS device sales continue to sore, Apple sold 27% fewer iPods in the 4th quarter of 2011 when compared year-on-quarter. That’s the lowest iPod sales since the 3rd quarter of 2005.  Meanwhile it appears the music industry is preparing to abandon nearly all CD formats before 2013 and will distribute music to customers via downloads and streaming services. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 

Flash flames out, Amazon is Yap-ing, and Scrolling merrily along.

This week Adobe announced the beginning of the end for Flash on mobile devices. Acknowledging growing support for HTML5, Adobe will focus on Adobe Air for mobile App Stores and cease development of Flash for mobile browsers.

Apple’s Siri voice technology has shifted our attention from touching screens to voice commands. This week we learned Amazon quietly moved into voice technology by acquiring Yap in September. Yap’s technology transcribes voice commands and voices messages into text. Yap shut down services on October 20.

Are we losing the scrollbar? According to Slate, scrollbars may disappearing. It seems Apple, Goggle, Facebook, and Microsoft are either removing, fading, or altering the scrollbar. It begs the question, if the scrollbar goes away what’s next, the cursor?

The business user strikes back and IT is transforming.

Business users are using the force to turn the tables on the IT Crowd after years of having technology choices made for them. Business users everywhere are demanding smartphones, tablets, Web 2.0 services, and apps in the workplace. IT organizations are transforming by enabling bring-your-own-device policies and embracing Cloud services. The emerging “bizumer” is blurring the distinction between personal and professional.

The big story behind Big Data.

As data continues to emerge from various sources (corporations, social networks, browsed sites, etc.) we need new ways to sort, sift, and surface relevant information, quickly. The evolving big-data industry is tacking this challenge with new hardware and software approaches to help us make smarter decisions even faster. IBM, Oracle, EMC, Teradata, and others are bringing forward new capabilities, technologies, and products to address Big Data.

Fast Forward! Cloud Computing Predictions for 2012.

The Cloud Computing Journal has assembled 2012 cloud computing predictions from a variety of industry leaders. Undoubtedly, public and private clouds will continue to expand along with the cloud ecosystem.

Sprint to end unlimited data plans.

Just as Sprint begins selling the iPhone 4S, they are also changing 3G/4G data plans beginning November 2011. What matters here? Well, they are eliminating unlimited data on the 4G network. Read all about the plan changes here.

Let the storage Cloud wars begin!

Yesterday Apple launched iCloud. In response DropBox and Box.net enhanced their offerings. This means more storage for everyone. The bottom line, 50GB of cloud storage will cost zero or one hundred dollars a year. Let the battle for the bits begin!

You’ve got fail! BlackBerry outage goes global.

Research In Motion (RIM) is telling customers in the Americas that it is working to restore services as customers in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India enter into a third day with intermittent email and no access to browsing and messaging.

The surf’s up for mobile devices.

Over 116 Million U.S. consumers are using mobile devices to access the Web. Those “non-computer” devices are driving nearly 7 percent of Internet traffic according to ComScore. Mobile phones accounted for 4.4 percent of that traffic, while tablets made up 1.9 percent. iPads dominate Web traffic for tablets and lead among all iOS devices.

iMessage. Deliver Differently.

This week the iPhone 4S arrives with iOS 5 and the iMessage Service. iMessage lets iPhone, iPad and iPod owners send text, photos, and video to other iOS 5 enabled device owners over a Wi-Fi or cellular data connection. iMessage bypasses the traditional text messaging path (the voice side of the network) and transmits over the data side (3G/4G). What does it all mean? The iMessage service could reduce the costs of texting plans for consumers and texting revenue to carriers.

iMessage