Mobilog

Monday, July 22, 2002

Of sandwiches and entropy. This BBC news article details recent efforts by scientists at the Australian National University to turn accepted scientific truth on its ear by showing that the Second Law of Thermodynamics, one of the pillars supporting mathematical models of the universe, may not hold true in all situations. [kuro5hin.org]
10:41:44 PM

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Apple introduced iSync at this week's MacWorld in New York City. iSync supports Bluetooth connectivity between Mac's and Bluetooth-equipped phones, PDA's, etc.

iSync ensures that address books and calendars flow seamlessly from a userâs Mac to all of their digital devices and back. Rather than requiring a separate synchronization application for each type of device, iSync works with the latest Bluetooth mobile phones, Palm OS devices and iPod to keep all these devices up to date. As a result, iSync users will enjoy seamless mobile access to schedules and other crucial information on all the devices they travel with.

[The Bluetooth Weblog]
10:14:27 PM

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Louis Berk has given up on Bluetooth.

Bluetooth? Why bother? I abandoned bluetooth and went back to trusty old IrDa to interface my Ericsson T39m mobile phone to my laptop. It works - it is entirely transparent (none of the Bluetooth neighbourhood distraction) and it is cheap (eg £49 for a USB IrDA dongle versus £100+ for a Bluetooth card). [The Bluetooth Weblog]

10:09:09 PM

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A 400 MHz Pocket PC 2002 Hits the Shelves. Expected to be available at European retailers this week, the Fujitsu Siemens Computers' Pocket LOOX PDA is fast, expandable, and colorful. [allNetDevices Wireless News]
10:02:33 PM

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The Economist. The telcoms bust was 10x larger than the .com bust and will be seen as the biggest bubble in history. >>> The likely winners, it is already clear, are the former [base "]Baby Bells[per thou] in America and the former monopoly incumbents in Europe. Because they own the [base "]last mile[per thou] of the network that runs into homes and offices, these operators have a firm grip on their customers and solid revenues. Compared with their upstart competitors that proliferated after the liberalisation of telecoms markets during the 1990s, these firms are relative safe havens. Customers can switch long-distance carriers at the first whiff of trouble, but often have no choice of local provider. In theory, regulators should require local monopolies to allow competitors to provide services over their lines, but most local monopolies have successfully obstructed such [base "]local-loop unbundling[per thou] using a variety of technical excuses. In a further sign that local operators are seen as a safe haven, Michael Powell, America's telecoms regulator, even signalled this week that he would consider allowing one of the Bells to buy WorldCom. <<< Unless we can break the stranglehold of the baby bells on the local loop, all bets are off for the rebirth of the Internet. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
9:57:33 PM

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Knowledge Management. An interview with Robert Buckman of Buckman Labs in Singapore's Business Times [via Mohan Narendran's comment on John Robb's blog]: We found that over 90 per cent of the knowledge in the company was in the heads of our people and it was changing every minute of every day. It [E M E R G I C . o r g] I am blogging a blog that points to a comment on my blog. Say that ten times fast. Regardless, this is a great article that says basically that KM as it is practiced now is wrong. It only deals with explicit knowledge, which represents only 5% of corporate knowledge. The value is in finding a way to share the 90% of corporate knowledge in people's heads. The answer, of course, is K-Logs. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
9:53:36 PM

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Wired. Korea's solution to high bandwidth and its obsession with gaming.

>>>And the numbers are impressive [~] South Korea has the highest per capita broadband penetration in the world. Slightly more than half of its households have high-bandwidth connections, compared to less than 10 percent in the US. The growth in broadband has surged in the last three years from a few hundred thousand subscribers to 8.5 million.

As luck would have it, urban apartment dwellers have a lot of broadband capacity right under their noses, courtesy of Kepco, the public power utility, which developed a network of fiber-optic cables for its own use years ago. In 1996, South Korea allowed Kepco to lease the unused 90 percent of its capacity, giving upstart providers a cheap, instant last-mile solution. Sharp competition with Korea Telecom, which the government forced to open its network in the early '90s, has driven broadband prices down to the world's lowest levels. All-you-can-eat service is available for as little as $25 a month.<<<

I love this. A provider of fiber-optic connectivity that isn't interested in owning the consumer account. Excellent. A similar system is being built out by RCN in major US metro markets. RCN is running a fiber network to within 900 feet of customer homes, mostly using the right of ways secured by partnering with Utility providers like Boston Edison. So far, it looks like they are doing something right. They have over 1 m customers and their bundled pricing plan looks like it would save my family around ~$25 a month in service costs from Verizon. They are also tied into L3. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
9:50:38 PM

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Samsung Sings Happy Song as Profit Sets a Record. Samsung Electronics reported the biggest quarterly profit in its history Friday and said the rest of the year looked promising, too. By Don Kirk. [New York Times: Technology]
9:26:32 PM

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Brazilians' Spin: Remix Music Biz. Fed up with the lord-and-serf model established by the record labels, a group of artists and musicians band together to create a new way. Paulo Rebêlo reports from Brazil. [Wired News]
9:24:30 PM

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Useit.Com: Becoming a Usability Professional. Usability expertise is mainly an issue of talent and experience rather than theory. Much of usability work requires pattern matching, which is why it's so dependent on brain power and past experience: Once you observe slight traces of a usability issue in users' behavior, you must deduce the underlying implications for design. [Tomalak's Realm]
9:20:24 PM

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Breastfeeding could slash breast cancer risk: "Western women could reduce their breast cancer risk by nearly 60 per cent if they returned to pre-industrial levels of fertility and breastfeeding. The new findings help explain why breast cancer, virtually unknown 200 years ago, is now a major killer." [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]
8:58:54 PM

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Investors May Have Repudiated the Internet, but Consumers Have Not. Analysts and executives caution that the Internet's capacity to change the rules should not be discounted too quickly. By Amy Harmon and Felicity Barringer. [New York Times: Business]
8:56:10 PM

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How One Telecom Thrives Amid Slowdown. While most telecommunications companies are struggling to keep their heads up, the Harris Corporation has seen its stock trading up $34.75, from a low of $26.50 a year ago. By Laurie J. Flynn. [New York Times: Business]
8:55:26 PM

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Oh boy. I am sorry. Our President doesn't know the first thing about managing an economy, let alone the largest economy in the world. It's like letting your 10 year old drive a car. Jerky, dangerous, and out of control. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

I'm certainly no fan of the current and previous administrations but why should the government "manage" the economy?
8:23:47 PM comment

Outsourcing: It's Not Just About Cost Cutting

To get the real strategic value out of your third-party relationships, the first thing to do is throw out what you thought you knew about outsourcing. Here's why.
7:45:31 PM

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Your Company Strategy -- in Pictures

Preparing a company strategy can bury you in data. Make it easier by drawing a strategy picture, advises this excerpt from Harvard Business Review. Here[not equal]s how Southwest Airlines found "The Big Picture."
7:44:47 PM

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