Tips For Picking Your Senior Yearbook Quote

http://www.theyearbookladies.com/theyearbookblog/2009/05/07/how-to-pick-your-senior-quote/


http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/021011


The following tips are from Bill Simmons, sports columnist, who posted them on ESPN.com. (Why is ESPN giving yearbook tips? Not sure, but I guess that just goes to show how important yearbooks are in our culture!)

“Some tips about your yearbook choices:

1. If you can help it, avoid picking any quote from a band that might not be around in 10 years. If you want to cast your lot with Kid Rock, the White Stripes, Alicia Keys, India Arie, The Vines, The Hives or any of these other musical acts that people enjoy right now … you’re basically rolling the dice. Look at poor Adam. Bananarama. This actually happened. If it’s a bubblegum act of the day, stay away. Stick with Bruce, the Stones, Pearl Jam, Nirvana and everyone else who will remain respectable 20 years from now.
2. If you feel like doing something wacky with your picture — a nose piercing, a visible tattoo, a freaky hairdo — don’t do it. You will regret it. Remember, you’ll be showing your kids this thing some day.
3. If they allow a section where you can write little comments, tributes and dedications, then …

1. Never say anything maudlin or sentimental about the person you’re dating — you will be linked to them forever and ever. Just remember, when you get to college, you will break up with them by Columbus Day Weekend, probably get back together during Thanksgiving Break, then break up for good during Christmas vacation. Everyone thinks, “Oh, it won’t happen to us.” Believe me, it’s going to happen — 99 out of 100 people eventually break up with their high school flames. So keep the gooey stuff to minimum. If you’re devoting a quote to your significant other, choose this one: “Dead man walking!”
2. Never gratuitously thank your parents, friends, family … that’s just lame. Nobody wants to read that stuff. If you want to thank someone, thank a teacher. They devoted their lives to helping kids like you, you ungrateful slob.
3. Make a conscious effort to include obscure references and inside jokes that will confuse everybody and please your friends, especially if they’re dirty and/or secretly defamatory to someone else in your class. One catch: Don’t make them so obscure that you won’t have any idea what they mean 15 years later. That’s no fun.
4. Don’t identify your friends by their initials. Just write their names. Years later, you won’t even remember what half the initials stood for.
5. If you have a close friend of the opposite sex, don’t spend too much time on them … odds are, one of you will end up making a move on the other one down the road, it will play out badly, and you will never speak again. And even if you make it through college, once you get married, your spouse won’t let you be friends with them anymore. So start cutting ties now. Again, just trust me.
6. Most importantly, have fun with your quote. Nobody wants to read how miserable you are, or how confused you are, or how much you hate everyone, or how everyone underestimated you, or how parents and teachers are purely and simply evil, or the world’s keeping you down, or how nobody loves you … come on! It’s high school! Everyone’s miserable in high school! That’s why they created high school! So have some fun. I’ve always been jealous of my buddy Geoff for picking this yearbook quote:

“            .” – Mark Bavaro

Absolutely brilliant. Everyone else was killing themselves coming up with these tortured quotes, and Geoff mocked the entire thing. Why didn’t I think of that? Damn him…”

Simmons then lists several quotes he wishes he would have used back in high school. Here are just a few…

“Some mistakes you never stop paying for.”
– Roy Hobbs

“Don’t have anything in your life that you can’t walk away from in 30 seconds.”
– De Niro in “Heat”

“Cheer up, Brando! How ’bout a mega-burger?”
– Nat Busichio

“I have three rules which I live by: Never get less than 12 hours sleep, never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city, and never go near a lady with a tattoo of a dagger on her hand. Now you stick with that, and everything else is cream cheese.”
– The basketball coach in “Teen Wolf”

“Those fans who are booing me now will be cheering for me when I record the final out in the World Series”
– Bob Stanley, April 1986

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/021011

Q: I am a senior in high school, and it is about time to write our Senior Quotes. I really want mine to be funny. Any suggestions? -- Christopher Burk, Bellport, N.Y.

Well, Christopher... you came to the right place. I have been kicking myself about my high school yearbook quote for years. Here's what I actually chose:

And these children that you spit on As they try to change their worlds Are immune to your consultations They're quite aware of what they're going through -- David Bowie

David Bowie is still going strong, but The Sports Guy would like to make some "Changes" to his yearbook quote.

Translation: I'm an enormous dork.
And it wasn't just me; almost everyone screws up their high school yearbook quote. It's like a rite of passage. My buddy Jim and I were on the phone this week sifting through our yearbook ... it was like a 100-page car crash. Why in God's name did everyone take it so seriously? Quote after agonized quote from The Police, Rush, Styx, Led Zep, Pink Floyd, Boston, Journey ... you would have thought we were these anguished, miserable, disaffected kids. Please. We were going to prep school! Maybe the only positive? Looking back, yearbooks are loaded with about as much unintentional comedy as you can pack in a hardcover book. The haircuts. The fashion styles. The quote choices. The dedications. You can't even believe what's happening as you're reading along. For instance, my old friend Adam used a Bananarama quote in our yearbook. Bananarama! You think that doesn't haunt him every day? Some tips about your yearbook choices: 1. If you can help it, avoid picking any quote from a band that might not be around in 10 years. If you want to cast your lot with Kid Rock, the White Stripes, Alicia Keys, India Arie, The Vines, The Hives or any of these other musical acts that people enjoy right now ... you're basically rolling the dice. Look at poor Adam. Bananarama. This actually happened. If it's a bubblegum act of the day, stay away. Stick with Bruce, the Stones, Pearl Jam, Nirvana and everyone else who will remain respectable 20 years from now. 2. If you feel like doing something wacky with your picture -- a nose piercing, a visible tattoo, a freaky hairdo -- don't do it. You will regret it. Remember, you'll be showing your kids this thing some day. 3. If they allow a section where you can write little comments, tributes and dedications, then ...

Quoting a group like Bananarama can haunt a kid into adulthood.

A. Never say anything maudlin or sentimental about the person you're dating -- you will be linked to them forever and ever. Just remember, when you get to college, you will break up with them by Columbus Day Weekend, probably get back together during Thanksgiving Break, then break up for good during Christmas vacation. Everyone thinks, "Oh, it won't happen to us." Believe me, it's going to happen -- 99 out of 100 people eventually break up with their high school flames. So keep the gooey stuff to minimum. If you're devoting a quote to your significant other, choose this one: "Dead man walking!"
B. Never gratuitously thank your parents, friends, family ... that's just lame. Nobody wants to read that stuff. If you want to thank someone, thank a teacher. They devoted their lives to helping kids like you, you ungrateful slob. C. Make a conscious effort to include obscure references and inside jokes that will confuse everybody and please your friends, especially if they're dirty and/or secretly defamatory to someone else in your class. One catch: Don't make them so obscure that you won't have any idea what they mean 15 years later. That's no fun. D. Don't identify your friends by their initials. Just write their names. Years later, you won't even remember what half the initials stood for. E. If you have a close friend of the opposite sex, don't spend too much time on them ... odds are, one of you will end up making a move on the other one down the road, it will play out badly, and you will never speak again. And even if you make it through college, once you get married, your spouse won't let you be friends with them anymore. So start cutting ties now. Again, just trust me. 4. Most importantly, have fun with your quote. Nobody wants to read how miserable you are, or how confused you are, or how much you hate everyone, or how everyone underestimated you, or how parents and teachers are purely and simply evil, or the world's keeping you down, or how nobody loves you ... come on! It's high school! Everyone's miserable in high school! That's why they created high school! So have some fun. I've always been jealous of my buddy Geoff for picking this yearbook quote:

"            ." -- Mark Bavaro

Absolutely brilliant. Everyone else was killing themselves coming up with these tortured quotes, and Geoff mocked the entire thing. Why didn't I think of that? Damn him. Anyway, here's a list of my favorite quotes. Some of them probably won't work for a high school yearbook, but I'm trotting them out just because. Maybe somewhere in this mess lies a quote for our young friend Christopher Burk. On to the quotes ...

Roy Hobbs offered some words to live by.

"Some mistakes you never stop paying for."
-- Roy Hobbs
"Don't have anything in your life that you can't walk away from in 30 seconds."
-- De Niro in "Heat" "Cheer up, Brando! How 'bout a mega-burger?"
-- Nat Busichio "I have three rules which I live by: Never get less than 12 hours sleep, never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city, and never go near a lady with a tattoo of a dagger on her hand. Now you stick with that, and everything else is cream cheese."
-- The basketball coach in "Teen Wolf" "Those fans who are booing me now will be cheering for me when I record the final out in the World Series"
-- Bob Stanley, April 1986

Even in Boston, Yankees legend Yogi Berra is worth quoting.

"Relax. We've been playing these guys for 80 years. They're never gonna beat us."
-- Yogi Berra to Bernie Williams during the 1999 ALCS
"Now it places the lotion in the basket ... now it places the lotion in the basket ... PUT THE (EXPLETIVE) LOTION IN THE BASKET!!!!! (Holding nipples) AHHHHH! AHHHHHHH!"
-- Buffalo Bill, a k a James Gumm "That's what they get for building a stadium on the ocean."
-- Oil Can Boyd, after a game was fogged out in Cleveland "Maybe the problems of two people don't amount to a hill of beans. But this is our hill. And these are our beans!"
-- Lt. Frank Drebin "Anything else is always something better."
-- Koglan the Bartender "Never tell tales about a woman -- she'll hear you no matter how far away she is."
-- Koglan the Bartender "Everything ends badly ... otherwise it wouldn't end."
-- Koglan the Bartender "Do you know how easy this is for me? Do you know how (expletive) easy this is? Do you have any (expletive) clue? It's a (expletive) joke. And I'm sorry you can't do this, I really am. I'm sorry I have to sit around and watch you fumble around and (expletive) it up."
-- Will Hunting "I've won at every level except high school and college."
-- Shaquille O'Neal "If she keeps putting you on hold, it's time to hang up the phone, pardner."
-- Larry King

Carl Spackler will help you turn your yearbook into a real "Cinderella Story."

"And I said, 'Hey Lama, how 'bout a little something, you know, for the effort?' And he says, 'There won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed you will receive total consciousness.' So I got that going for me ... which is nice."
-- Carl Spackler
"They forgot about one thing ... they forgot about Larry Bird."
-- Danny Ainge "This is A.C.! I got O.J. in the car! (pause) This is A.C.! You know who this is, ---dammit!"
-- Al Cowlings "Anytime someone calls you and identifies themselves with their full name, odds are it isn't someone you want to talk to under any circumstances."
-- Bill Simmons "A sportswriter looks up in the sky and then asks you, 'Is the sun shining?' "
-- Sonny Liston "Drew Bledsoe's obviously having trouble with that prosthetic device on his finger."
-- Beasley Reece "You don't own your possessions, your possessions own you."
-- Tyler Dirden

"You've gotta learn to deal with those things" or you'll end up like Steve Grogan.

"You've gotta deal with those types of things or you're not gonna be around this league too long."
-- Steve Grogan
"I want you to watch something now ... watch this!"
-- Paul Maguire "Children are like TV sets. When they start acting weird, whack them across the head with a big rubber basketball shoe."
-- Hunter S. Thompson "Being a professional means doing your job on the days you don't feel like doing it."
-- David Halberstam "I like simple pleasures, like butter in my (expletive), lollipops in my mouth. That's just me. That's just something that I enjoy."
-- Floyd Gandolli "Well, that kind of puts a damper on even a Yankees win."
-- Phil Rizzuto after hearing about Pope Paul VI's death "I can't get over the size of this Russian!"
-- Warner Wolf "I have two things in this world -- my word and my balls -- and I don't break neither one of them for nobody."
-- Tony Montana "What happened? How did everything that was so good get so bad?"
-- Rocky Balboa

AP

Let Rocky Balboa help you ease through the "change" of leaving high school.

"If I can change ... and you can change ... Everyone can change!"
-- Rocky Balboa
"Uh-ha, it's all good baby bay-bee, uh."
-- Notorious B.I.G. "I think Corey had the talent to win an Academy Award some day."
-- Corey Haim's father "Listen, here's the thing. If you can't spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker."
-- Mike McDermott "In the poker game of life, women are the rake. They are the (expletive) rake."
-- Lester "Worm" Murphy "Talk is cheap and rumors are even cheaper."
-- Carver High coach Ken Reeves

Worm Murphy talked a better game than he played in "Rounders."

"His recollection was not in a full and adequate disclosure, and not in conformity with an objective reality."
-- Edward Bennett Williams on George Steinbrenner
"The amount of liquor I drank last night would have killed a small- to medium-sized Asian family."
-- The Dorfman, H.C. class of '92 "I don't understand the creative process. Actually, I make a concerted effort not to understand it. I don't know what it is or how it works but I am terrified that one green morning it will decide not to work anymore, so I have always given it as wide a bypass as possible."
-- William Goldman "You want a beer? Wanna quit starin' at mine then?"
-- Dylan McKay "On this Father's Day, we'd like to wish all you fathers out here a happy birthday."
-- Ralph Kiner, Father Day 1988 "Please, Hatch. You must play. If we run now, we lose much more than a game."
-- Pele "Great players make great plays."
-- Joe Theismann "Never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut."
-- Jimmy Conway "Just when they think they got all the answers, I change the questions."
-- Roddy Piper "After changes upon changes we are more or less the same ... after changes, we are more or less the same."
-- Paul Simon "It seems like I win every week ... and I do!"
-- Stu Feiner "Being a Red Sox fan is like being a 120-pound man in a maximum security prison."
-- My buddy Nez "Is this a futuristic movie?"
-- My buddy Nez 30 minutes into "Escape from New York"

Quoting Sonny Crockett, left, should go over big with the ladies.

"Well, our divorce was a bigger failure than our marriage."
-- Sonny Crockett to his estranged wife
"Yah mo be there."
-- Michael McDonald to James Ingram "They can do whatever they want. I'll still be eating steak every night."
-- Von Hayes on Philly fans booing him "Last time I checked, there weren't any W's and L's in my paycheck."
-- Former Celtic Curtis Rowe "Show me a good and gracious loser, and I'll show you a failure."
-- Knute Rockne "We weren't giving up on Chauncey! We thought he was fantastic!"
-- Rick Pitino, after trading No. 1 pick Chauncey Billups after 50 games

What Sports Guy column would be complete without a few words from Rick Pitino?

"Larry Bird is not walking through that door, fans. Kevin McHale is not walking through that door, and Robert Parish is not walking through that door. And if you expect them to walk through that door, they're going to be gray and old. ... And as soon as they realize that those three guys are not coming through the door, the better this town will be for all of us. ... All this negativity that's in this town sucks."
-- Rick Pitino
"Wish I didn't know now what I didn't now then."
-- Bob Seger "The only time I want to talk to a woman when I'm naked is if I'm on top of her or she's on top of me."
-- Former Tigers pitcher Jack Morris on female sportswriters "When I was in elementary school, we had the kid who threw chairs, the kid who stuttered, and the kid who went to the bathroom on himself ... but we never had the kid who came in one day and started shooting everyone."
-- Bill Simmons "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son."
-- Dean Wormer "You don't pick up a woman who just put staples in your side!" -- My buddy Nick while watching "Road House" "If anything in life is certain, if history has taught us anything ... it's that you can kill anyone."
-- Michael Corleone "Stop looking out, start looking in. Be your own best friend. Stand up and say, hey, this is mine!"
-- Sammy Hagar "No one has ever satisfied me like Christopher Burk."
-- (insert name of homecoming queen here) Hope that helped. And best of luck to all the high school seniors out there, including young Christopher Burk. Bill Simmons is a columnist for Page 2 and ESPN The Magazine.

Photographers and Their Iconic Photos

The Mahatma, 1946
By Margaret Bourke-White
"I feel that utter truth is essential," Margaret Bourke-White once said of photography, "and to get that truth may take a lot of searching and long hours." This approach to the craft is, it can be said, Gandhi-esque, so perhaps it is fitting that the Mahatma, who spent many long hours searching for answers, was one of her regular subjects in the 1940s. Here, the great man of peace is at his spinning wheel in Poona, India.

Birmingham 1963
By Charles Moore
For years, Birmingham, Ala., was considered “the South’s toughest city,” home to a large black population and a dominant class of whites that met in frequent, open hostility. Birmingham in 1963 had become the cause célèbre of the black civil rights movement as nonviolent demonstrators led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. repeatedly faced jail, dogs and high-velocity hoses in their tireless quest to topple segregation. This picture of people being pummeled by a liquid battering ram rallied support for the plight of the blacks.

Breaker Boys1910
By Lewis Hine
What Charles Dickens did with words for the underage toilers of London, Lewis Hine did with photographs for the youthful laborers in the United States. In 1908 the National Child Labor Committee was already campaigning to put the nation’s two million young workers back in school when the group hired Hine. The Wisconsin native traveled to half the states, capturing images of children working in mines, mills and on the streets. Here he has photographed “breaker boys,” whose job was to separate coal from slate, in South Pittston, Pa. Once again, pictures swayed the public in a way cold statistics had not, and the country enacted laws banning child labor.

Execution of a Viet Cong Guerrilla 1968
By Eddie Adams
With North Vietnam’s Tet Offensive beginning, Nguyen Ngoc Loan, South Vietnam’s national police chief, was doing all he could to keep Viet Cong guerrillas from Saigon. As Loan executed a prisoner who was said to be a Viet Cong captain, AP photographer Eddie Adams opened the shutter. Adams won a Pulitzer Prize for a picture that, as much as any, turned public opinion against the war. Adams felt that many misinterpreted the scene, and when told in 1998 that the immigrant Loan had died of cancer at his home in Burke, Va., he said, “The guy was a hero. America should be crying. I just hate to see him go this way, without people knowing anything about him.”

 Migrant Mother 1936
By Dorothea Lange
This California farmworker, age 32, had just sold her tent and the tires off her car to buy food for her seven kids. The family was living on scavenged vegetables and wild birds. Working for the federal government, Dorothea Lange took pictures like this one to document how the Depression colluded with the Dust Bowl to ravage lives. Along with the writing of her economist husband, Paul Taylor, Lange’s work helped convince the public and the government of the need to help field hands. Lange later said that this woman, whose name she did not ask, “seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me.”

Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima  1945
by Joe Rosenthal
is an historic photograph taken on February 23, 1945, by Joe Rosenthal. It depicts five United States Marines and a U.S. Navy corpsman raising the flag of the United States atop Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II.
The photograph was extremely popular, being reprinted in thousands of publications. Later, it became the only photograph to win the Pulitzer Prize for Photography in the same year as its publication, and came to be regarded in the United States as one of the most significant and recognizable images of the war, and possibly the most reproduced photograph of all time.

The Falling Soldier 1936
by Robert Capa
The Falling Soldier is a famous photograph taken by Robert Capa, understood to have been taken on September 5, 1936 and long thought to depict the death of a Republican, specifically an Iberian Federation of Libertarian Youth (FIJL) soldier during the Spanish Civil War, who was later identified as the anarchist Federico Borrell García. Capa is known for redefining wartime photojournalism. His work came literally from the trenches as opposed to the more arms-length perspective that was the precedent previously. He was famed for saying, "If your picture isn't good enough, you're not close enough."

Moon and Half Dome, California, 1960
by Ansel Easton Adams 
(February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American photographer and environmentalist, best known for his black-and-white photographs of the American West, especially in Yosemite National Park. One of his most famous photographs was Moon and Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, California.

Abraham Lincoln, 1860
by Mathew B. Brady 
(May 18, 1822 – January 15, 1896) was one of the most celebrated 19th century American photographers, best known for his portraits of celebrities and the documentation of the American Civil War. He is credited with being the father of photojournalism.^[1]

 Emmett Till 1955
by David Jackson
The murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year old black boy murdered in Mississippi in August 1955 sparked the Civil Rights movement, but the crime won’t caused a nation to awake if not for the above photo. The gruesome photographs of Till’s mutilated corpse however circulated around the country, notably appearing in Jet magazine, which targeted African American crowd. The photo drew intense public reaction.

100 Photos That Changed The World

Anne Frank   Photographer unknown

Examine this link of 100 Photos That Changed The World

http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0309/lm01.html

1. Which of these photos have you seen before? (Describe) What (or who) is the subject? 
2. Choose one of these photos that appeals to you most. Copy/paste this photo on your blog and answer the following questions.
3. What's the "story" here? 
4. What else is in the photograph? 
5. What do you learn from this picture? 
6. Why do you suppose this photograph has become iconic? 
7.Why does this photo appeal to you the most? 
8. How do you think the photographer got this shot? 
9. Is it possible to "see" this iconic photo with "new eyes," or is the image's impact is lessened over time with multiple viewings?
10. What differences do you notice between these photographs and those we've taken ourselves? What is the difference between personal photography and photojournalism? 
11. What do professional photographers tend to pay attention to that amateurs do not? 
12. What makes a photo good? What makes a photo great?

Elements of Good News Photographs

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/

Andrea Diefenbach was shocked by what she saw in a first-grade classroom in Cirpesti, Moldova, in 2008. When asked whose parents had emigrated to Italy, two-thirds of the students raised their hands.
Ms. Diefenbach, 36, set about to depict the daily lives of the Moldovan children who were left either to fend for themselves or live with grandparents, as well as the parents who departed. Her project, “Country Without Parents,” resonates with love and sadness — and a captivating contrast between devotion and abandonment.
Tiny Moldova is desperately poor. As many as a quarter of the 4.3 million people listed as living there actually work in Italy and other Western European countries, sending pay home to support their families. “They just have no other opportunities,” Ms. Diefenbach said. They do the jobs in agriculture, housekeeping and health care that others refuse to do.
It is not easy to emigrate. Often, Moldovans enter Italy on counterfeit visas that have cost $5,000 or more. They borrow the money from loan sharks. As the debt accumulates, the parents are forced to stay abroad to repay their high-interest loans. If they are lucky enough to get an Italian citizen to sponsor their legal residence, they must then save up enough to pay the high costs of bringing their children to live with them.
Parents continuously send money and food back home to Moldova, trying to compensate for their absence. But children are losing the notion of family, nationality and livelihood. They are, indeed, being deprived of their childhoods. Ms. Diefenbach photographed three sisters who rely on one other for survival. They wake up two hours before school every day to clean and cook. The oldest sister, who was 12 when Ms. Diefenbach began photographing them, had to take on the role of mother.
In the two years she worked on the project, Ms. Diefenbach saw no improvement in conditions. Moldova’s best educated citizens are now going abroad to perform unskilled labor. “The country is bleeding out,” Ms. Diefenbach said.
“But much worse is the disintegration of families.”


Class Discussion Questions:
1. Why do you think this image was chosen to be featured on the New York Times blog?
2. What does the image tell you about what's happening in this part of the world?
3. What did you learn while looking at this photo?
4. What do you notice about the photographer's remarks about his or her work?
5. What are some of the elements that make this a good news photograph?

Elements of great news photographs:

-Composition (background, foreground, placement and framing)
-Lighting and color
-Focus and depth of field
-Timeliness
-Point of view/objectivity/subjectivity
-Storytelling or narrative

The 10 Businesses The Smartphone Has Destroyed

24/7 Wall St. The Ten Businesses The Smartphone Has Destroyed
November 11, 2010

By: Douglas A. McIntyre and Charles Stockdale

Global smartphone sales rose by nearly 100% in the third quarter of 2010 compared with the same period last year. That allowed Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) to pick up market share while large handset companies like Nokia, Samsung and LG, which do not have strong smartphone products, lost ground. The success of the iPhone and smartphones powered by Google’s Android operating systems have allowed these 3G and WiFi powered devices to leapfrog over products like the netbook as “PC replacements.” iPhone has a huge advantage over netbooks because of the App Store, which has more than 250,000 software applications that enables users to customize their devices to their individual needs.

The first major smartphone was the BlackBerry. It was introduced in 2002, but was built for business use. The iPhone, which was first available in 2007, created a huge consumer demand for smartphones.
The smartphone has begun to replace a number of other consumer electronics devices. As AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon Wireless build their cellular business, landline customers cancel traditional phone lines. They don’t need them anymore in a world with 3G wireless devices.

The power of the smartphone as the primary device used for news, entertainment, and communication will only increase. New 4G networks will allow subscribers to connect to the internet with handsets which will download data at speeds similar to those supplied by a home cable modem. Smartphone processors become more powerful each year and the devices get more storage capacity.
This is 24/7 Wall St.’s list of the devices that the smartphone has begun to replace, and in some cases, that process is so far along that the older products have almost disappeared.
The following are the ten products which smartphones are killing.

1. PDAs Personal digital assistants, the device that transformed personal organization in the 1990’s, are almost obsolete. The product was a stepping stone towards the superior smartphone. The Palm Pilot, which was the leading PDA, was successful because it possessed a number of features that are now included in most smartphones. Creator Palm’s performance in the face of the expanding smartphone market helps further illustrate the decline of the PDA. The company lost about half of its North American market share between 2008 and 2009, while smartphone sales increased 13.9% from the year before. As a result, Palm launched its latest smartphone in June 2009, the Pre.

2. Flip Video Cameras Cisco Systems’s line of Flip video cameras has been modestly popular over the past few years, bringing in about $75 million between February and May 2010, according to Cisco. However, the multifunctional smartphone may soon push Flip out of the picture. Both the iPhone 4 and the Droid X feature 720p video capabilities, the same as Flip cameras. Flip cameras do, however, have a small advantage over smartphones because of their higher video frame capture rate. This slight edge in technological ability isolates Flip cameras as products which only appeal to a small percentage of consumers whose video recording needs cannot be met by a smartphone; a niche market that may not be able to sustain the business.

3. MP3 Players Companies that make MP3 players have sold fewer and fewer units ever since smartphones began to provide the service. This marks the first time since the inception of the Walkman that portable music players will exist with more than a singular function. According to Deloitte, 42% of smartphone users have reduced or stopped using their portable digital music players because of their phones’ music-playing capabilities. Even the iPod, the biggest selling MP3 player of all time, had its lowest since 2006 in the most recent quarter.

4. Digital Cameras As handset phone cameras improve in quality, the demand for separate, low-end digital cameras may begin to decrease. Many phones already have 5-megapixel camera capabilities. Market intelligence company iSuppli predicts that the average for phones will rise to 5.7 megapixels by 2013. Digital still cameras, however, averaged 7.6 megapixels in 2008 and may reach 13.9 in 2013. According to Pam Tufegdzic, consumer electronics analyst at iSuppli, “handsets soon may begin to cannibalize the low-end of the DSC (digital still camera) market as they incorporate higher megapixels and flash capabilities.” This scenario does not seem too far off, as the recently released Nokia N8 smartphone features a 12-megapixel camera.

5. Handheld Video Games For 2010, factory unit shipments of game-capable mobile phones are expected to reach 1.27 billion, according to iSuppli. This will be an increase of 11.4% from the year before. Handheld video game devices, however, are expected to decline 2.5% over the same period, shipping just 38.9 million factory units. The reason is more consumers are using their phones for portable gaming. In 2009, the percentage of portable gaming revenue generated by the iPhone grew from 5% to 19%, according to Flurry Analytics. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has said the company has sold more than 1.5 billion iPhone/iPod Touch OS games. Currently, six of the top ten highest-grossing apps are games, such as “Angry Birds” and “Tap Zoo.” There are now reports that a Sony PlayStation smartphone is in the works.

6. GPS The increase in smartphones with GPS capabilities poses a huge threat to standalone GPS devices. According to iSuppli, by the end of 2011 about 80% of phones will include GPS technology. According to the company, the number of navigation-capable smartphones being used by 2014 will be greater than the number of standalone devices. As a result, very few people will seek out GPS-specific devices such as those made by TomTom and Garmin.

7. PCs There are plenty of studies which insist that smartphones will begin to replace the PC as the common vehicle for accessing the Internet. Analyst firm Informa Telecoms & Media projects that smartphone traffic will increase 700% over the next five years. IT research firm Gartner predicts that smartphone sales will outpace PC sales by 2012, if not earlier. Google CEO Eric Schmidt, whose company’s mobile business has doubled over the last year, has expressed this sentiment as well. As smartphones continue to feature more memory, storage capability, and stronger processing power, consumers will increasingly rely on them for Internet use instead of their clunky PCs.

8. Regular Cell Phones Just as smartphones are making other single-function devices more and more obsolete, they are pushing regular, “featureless” cell phones out of the competitive marketplace. According to iSuppli, smartphone manufacturers Research in Motion and Apple claimed the fifth and sixth spots for top phone brands in the first quarter of 2010. Both companies exclusively produce smartphones. Nokia, however, saw its cell phone market share drop to 28.2% from 36.7%, underscoring its focus on non-smart phones. According to Gartner, third quarter sales of smartphones nearly doubled.

9. Watches As more people have become equipped with mobile phones, fewer people have found a need to wear wrist watches. From 2001 to 2006, the amount that Americans spent on watches dropped 17%, according to Experian Simmons Research. This trend will most likely increase, as Tamara Sender of research group Mintel notes, “Many consumers have grown up with technology and are just as likely to associate the notion of checking the time with a mobile handset as with a watch and as they grow older this mindset will accompany them.” It should be noted that many luxury watch brands, such Rolex, have remained popular. This, however, is due to the fact that these watches are worn for fashion, not function.

10. Remote Controls Although it is hard to imagine there being a successful replacement for the television remote, smartphones are beginning to do just that. Smartphones now offer apps that act as remote controls for television models made by Mitsubishi, Samsung, and Sonos. Additionally, as Internet and television content become more and more intertwined, smartphone remotes seem an increasingly appropriate instrument of control. The iPhone can currently be used for Apple TV boxes, and Google offers its own controls for its television services. According to technology research firm Forrester Research, the number of homes with televisions that are connected to the Internet is expected to reach 43 million by 2015.

Questions:
1. Are you or people you know less likely to buy any of the products listed as a result of the development of smart phones?

2. In general, do you think it is an advantage or a disadvantage to have so many of your technological functions in a single device?

3. How have smart phones improved our lives?

4. What do you think has been the most important invention of your lifetime? How do your answers compare with the most important inventions of your parents’, grandparents or great-grandparents’ lifetimes?

5. “There are plenty of studies which insist that smart phones will begin to replace the PC as the common vehicle for accessing the Internet.” Do you agree? If so, does this mean PCs are on their way out? Would you ever stop using them?

6. Do you have any need for TVs, radios, and other devices, rather than just using your computer for everything? Would you ever want to use your phone as a TV or radio? What are the barriers to either of these things happening?