Digicel, Samsung Galaxy Tablets and Newspapers - Tomorrow Never Dies and the Paper Man

A Man may as well expect to grow stronger by always eating as wiser by always reading.

Jeremy Collier, Of the Entertainment of Books

Now it is set to get even better. Google, after their initial debut of Google Voice integrated into Gmail as per my blog article entitled “Google and Google Voice - The World is Not Enough” has decided to extend their offering of Google Voice for the WHOLE of next year as per the article “Google makes Gmail calling free for all of 2011”, published Tuesday December 21, 2010 12:45 pm ET by Lex Friedman, Yahoo News!!

Apparently, Google may have gotten a clue from the major Skype Outage, an outage so major that even the brick-and-mortar news agencies got wind of the story as per the article “Skype CEO: 21 million Skype users back online”, published Thursday December 23, 2010 6:57 pm ET By Jessica Mintz, AP Technology Writer, Yahoo News initially reported by the Yahoo Blogger Ben Patterson in the article “Skype CEO offers apology, credit for Wednesday's outage”, published Thursday December 23,2010 1:59 pm ET By Ben Patterson, Technology Writer, Yahoo News.

This incident may have made Google’s Marketing Department (I assume Google does marketing!!) realize the grandeur and complexity of Skype’s VoIP Empire – not to mentioned users disgusted with Skype’s outage and looking for stable, cheaper, flexible and more stable and less “bloat-ware” [American Colloquial] riddled options, hence their extension to woo more of Skype’s customers across.

But as it is Google involved, VoIP also has an innocuous connection to the rise of the Tablet, spurred by the introduction of the Amazon Kindle. Especially as Google Chrome OS is now out and about prowling around, threatening Microsoft with their tightly integrated mixture of Google Docs, Google Reader, Google Bookstore and now Google Gmail and Google Voice all over the cloud on Tablets as well as on smart books as per my blog article entitled “Microsoft Windows 7 vs Google Chrome OS et al - 300 and Quo Vadis Dominae”.

Since the Amazon Kindle crash landed on the scene and recently reduced it prices to within striking distance of the Apple iPad on its Amazon Kindle 3 as per the article “Amazon Temporarily sells out Newest Kindle e-Readers”, published Tuesday August 3^rd 2010 by Mark Long, newsfactor.com, Yahoo News, reading is back in vogue.

The Apple iPad is threatening to encroach on the Amazon Kindle’s ebook and eNewspaper (is there such a thing?) market, as the idea of books on Tablets and eReaders has slowly caught on from the small smoldering fire to a now raging firestorm. The verdict is obvious folks: Now with the Tablet and smart phone form factor, the Newspaper in its current paper based format is effectively dead as per the article on Administrator Kirk’s Geezam blog entitled “Newspapers vs Online Publications”.

The Amazon Kindle, which started all this reader madness in November 19 2007 with the first Generation Amazon Kindle on Telecom Provider Verizon, as per the history buffs in the WikiPedia article entitled “Amazon Kindle”, viewed December 24 2010, Wikipedia  and then went on to produce Second Generation Amazon Kindle for an expensive US$399 as in the article by CNET Editor Molly Wood entitled “Amazon Kindle 2: It's NOT too expensive”, published February 9, 2009 4:27 PM PST by Molly Wood, CNET News - Crave went on the defensive.

Amazon attacked the Apple iPad for its flaws in a well designed ad campaign as per the article “Amazon's New Kindle Ad attacks Apple iPad”, published Tuesday September 14,2010 1:00 pm ET by Brian Heater, PC Magazine, Yahoo News. Even I, John Public, got into the action, effectively accusing the Apple iPad, originally my suggestion to a bunch of brain-dead Shurpower Engineers back in April of 2009, of fuelling eBook Piracy as per my blog article entitled “Apple iPad and Video Game Piracy - The Saint” as well as the article “Apple iPad and Amazon Kindle - Publishers, Developers and Piracy”.

Meanwhile their newest baby, the Third-Generation Amazon Kindle, with its Integrated 3G and Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11n) was selling like gangbusters [American colloquial] as per the article “Amazon temporarily sells out Newest Kindle e-readers”, published Tuesday August 3 2010 by Mark Long, newsfactor.com, Yahoo News and corroborated by the article “Amazon unveils 3rd-generation Kindle e-book reader”, published Tuesday August 3 2010 by Edward C. Baig, USA Today.

However, the Apple iPad is also credited with reviving the hopes of the once thriving Newspaper Industry, which once laughed at the Silicon Valley CEO’s with their single websites that went bust in the 90’s only to grovel at their feet as more and more Generation X [ages 14 to 28] and Generation Y [ages 29 to 45] began ditchin’ long sheets for Online spreads (sheets? Alas, no words to fill the gap…..!) as per the article “US Newspapers look to online editions as possible saviours”, published Wednesday March 28 2007 by Catherine Hours, AFP, Yahoo News.

Thus, the arrival of the Amazon Kindle held out the hope of a Star Trek-like device that would fire the imagination of a disinterested Generation X [ages 14 to 28] and Generation Y [ages 29 to 45] and thus revive the flagging hopes of once proud and mighty Empire of The Paper Man (TV Mini-series 1990) style, now gone online but with significantly reduced staff compliments and revenues.

Bloggers at CNET and ZDNet, please do not be so smug. Derided for years as being nothing more than fame seeking journalistic wannabees, the blogger is now a respectable specimen of the journalistic community.

No longer considered Neanderthals, we are on par if not equals with the homo sapiens otherwise known as Newspaper and Television Journalist, repackaging the news in a more palatable format for today’s generation: shorter stories, Video and Audio Podcasts consumable on smartphones and now the Tablet, attributable to CEO Steve Jobs.

The Apple iPad, despite its design flaws as per my blog article entitled “Apple iPad and the Future of Computing” has now set off a firestorm of creativity in the assumed dead Silicon Valley Electronics and Design Teams, with almost monthly announcements of Tablets.

Thus far, only one contender has appeared in the United States of America, namely the Samsung Galaxy Tablet, as per my description of the device and its potential on Administrator Kirk’s Geezam blog entitled “Samsung Galaxy - Apple iPad's Contender for the Christmas” and my criticism as per its pricing neatly summarized in my blog article entitled “Apple iPad and the Competition - The Rescuers” and the article entitled “Apple and the iPad 2 - Honeycomb, chrome and the DragonSlayer”.

Others are slated to make their appearance next year, such as the already seen but-as-yet-played with RIM Playbook and the much anticipated “Motorola Tablet with Google Android 2.4 codenamed Honeycomb”.

But until they arrive, the Samsung Galaxy is now prowling about here in Jamaica on Telecom Provider Digicel Network as per my blog article entitled “Digicel the ITU and Samsung Galaxy Tablet - The Sorcerer's Apprentice” and the article entitled “LIME TV vs Digicel's Samsung Galaxy Tablet - Call of Duty Black Ops”.

The possibility abounds that this may be a Platform not only for Newspapers, such as the Jamaica Observer, now with integrated Video Reporting to complement Google Voice with its Video Calling on this most capable of tablets, but also for Television as well, especially Television Jamaica and CVM TV . In essence, Telecom Provider Digicel has just saved both Newspapers and Television in Jamaica in one fell swoop, Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) style…..