Mobilog

Thursday, August 15, 2002

Samsung dials up Smartphone 2002. The electronics maker receives approval from the Federal Communications Commission for a new cell phone running Microsoft's Smartphone 2002 operating system. [CNET News.com]
7:38:49 PM

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Tomorrow's cars, today's engines

The internal-combustion engine has been synonymous with the automobile throughout the 20th century. Now it faces a rival from the past, the hybrid-electric engine, and a brand-new adversary, the fuel cell. Even so, while these technologies have been getting all the hype, and not a little funding, the internal-combustion engine has been pressing ahead quietly but effectively in dimensions such as power, fuel efficiency, and emissions reductions. But regulation remains its Achilles heel as concerns over greenhouse gas emissions and national energy independence play out.
2:31:13 PM

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Making more of pharma's sales force

US pharmaceutical companies have long prospered by following a sales model in which a stream of sales representatives, confident that at least one of them will gain access, call on the very same doctors. But recently there has been an explosion in the number of reps as well as a raft of new pressures: busier physicians, the proliferation of new drugs, and greater competition among the companies that produce and market them. Physicians, reps, and pharmaceutical companies are quickly losing patience with a system that is increasingly inefficient and costly.
2:13:33 PM

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The secret life of factory service centers

In a time of disposable products and planned obsolescence, factory service centers might seem old-fashioned. About as old-fashioned as cash: customers say that they will spend up to half of the cost of a product to fix it. A network of service centers can be more profitable than the core business.
2:12:20 PM

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A hard turnaround for software

Saving any company is tough, but saving struggling software companies is especially hard: only 13 percent of them make it, for conditions in the industry reward winners with momentum and punish companies on the ropes. Here are a few lessons from software developers that have managed to draw back from the brink.
2:10:21 PM

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Cheapest or Smallest or Both?. PC Wave's new USB WLAN adapter may not be the smallest out there, but it might have cornered the market on affordability. [allNetDevices Wireless News]
2:09:07 PM

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IBM, Paybox team on wireless payments. Vendors to develop mobile payment apps for verticals, wireless operators [InfoWorld: Top News]
2:07:59 PM

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Technology Review: Push-Button Innovation. Michael Schrage. Innovation isn't what companies do; it's what customers adopt. In fact, the telecom sector remains a fabulous market for innovative uses of bandwidth. But innovation shouldn't mean getting people to use more bandwidth; it should be about getting people to change their bandwidth behaviors. [Tomalak's Realm]
2:06:49 PM

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Verizon switches programmers to Linux. The telecommunications company says it saved $6 million in equipment costs by moving its programmers to Linux computers. [CNET News.com]
2:06:10 PM

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News.Com: The myth of cybersecurity. Ray Ozzie. But "weak encryption" is no longer a reasonable excuse for insecure systems. It's clear by now that real security comes not just from strong crypto, but from recognizing and embracing human strengths, frailties and common behaviors in building, managing and using complex systems. [Tomalak's Realm]
2:05:30 PM

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Server Based Document Management App for BlackBerry. Enables RIM users to view attachments, send/receive faxes, view Web content, and print. [allNetDevices Wireless News]
1:59:20 PM

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Genome Pioneer Will Start Center of His Own. J. Craig Venter, who raced government-financed researchers to decode the human genome then was ousted from the company he made famous, plans to create a huge laboratory. By Andrew Pollack. [New York Times: Science]
1:58:06 PM

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Language Gene Is Traced to Emergence of Humans. A study of the genomes of people and chimpanzees has yielded a deep insight into the origin of language, one of the most distinctive human attributes and a critical step in human evolution. By Nicholas Wade. [New York Times: Science]
1:53:31 PM

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The Declustering of America: "With the new telecommunications technology, it is increasingly easy for a firm to operate in a dispersed manner". Although only really discussing geography, I find articles like this fascinating, of course, because today are living early forms of the "next company" described by Peter Drucker: "By now the new information technology -- Internet and e-mail -- have practically eliminated the physical costs of communications. This has meant that the most productive and most profitable way to organise is to disintegrate." [Ray Ozzie's Weblog]
12:04:34 PM

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Bettering Ourselves Through Biotech: Greater Productivity, Sharper Memories, Hair Feathers

Beefing up muscle without steroids or hormones; rejuvenating damaged skin and heart tissue; ratcheting up memory function. A decade ago, these medical treatments might have seemed like pure science fiction. But thanks to ever-faster breakthroughs in biotechnology, therapies that promise to enhance human abilities are nearing the marketplace. What are the social and ethical issues that this brave new world raises? And what is the outlook for biotech companies eager to cash in on our quest for longer, better and more productive lives? Experts at Wharton and elsewhere provide some answers.
11:20:23 AM

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Can i-mode Go Global?

Japan[base ']s mobile Internet service, i-mode, has left its European and American counterparts in the dust. Takeshi Natsuno, a Wharton graduate who manages i-mode strategy for NTTDocomo, says the mobile service now has 34 million users in Japan. Can i-mode export its success to other countries? Experts at Wharton explain why this is still an open question.
11:19:31 AM

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