Friday, December 29, 2006
XM-Samsung Helix: A Brilliant Idea
State of the Art
Brilliant Ideas That Found a Welcome
By DAVID POGUE, Dec 28th, The New York Times
It may take a village to raise a child, but that’s a trivial task compared with the act of bringing a new electronic gadget to market.
Marketers determine what the masses want, product managers guide the design, engineers bring the thing to life — it’s a lot of cooks. No wonder so many people across the country are, at this very moment, staring at newly unwrapped electronic holiday gifts in utter bewilderment.
Even so, brilliant ideas sometimes make it off the drawing board, past the layers of lawyers and onto store shelves. Sometimes, a delicious idea is part of a triumphant overall product. Other times, the flash of greatness is wasted on a turkey.
Here, then, is my second annual Top 10 List — not of the greatest tech products of the year, but of the greatest ideas, individual features, that surfaced. It’s a little tip o’ the egg nog to the great thinkers whose ideas made it out of committee...
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A RECORD RADIO BUTTON Samsung Helix is a regular music player, like an iPod (though smaller). But it’s also an XM satellite radio receiver.
That’s already a good idea, but here’s the clincher: When you hear a song that you like on one of XM’s 70 themed, ad-free music channels, one button-press records that song from the beginning — even if you were a little late hitting record. In all, this gadget can hold about 25 hours’ worth of recorded radio.
Long-suffering music fans could probably have predicted that XM would be sued over this glorious idea, and, well, sure enough. Maybe what’s so great about this idea isn’t so much its ingenuity as its bravery...read more:
here
12/29/2006 10:50:00 AM
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