Outsourcing
News.com, 4/4/03: Verizon points Wi-Fi at small businesses
By Ben Charny
Verizon Communications is thinking small when it comes to Wi-Fi.
The Baby Bell has, since November, been selling wireless networking equipment and installation know-how to Boston area businesses with under 100 employees, spokeswoman Catherine Hogan Lewis said Friday.
Satisfied with the trial results, Verizon Communications intends to target the rest of the nation's small businesses, she said, starting this week in seven Eastern seaboard states including New York and New Jersey.
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Mobile
Business Week, 4/14/03: Cell Phones: Not Just for Talking Anymore
More carriers now let you download software and information services
Stephen H. Wildstrom
Until recently, about all you could do with a wireless phone was make a call. Even as the capabilities of handsets grew, you were stuck with whatever functions your wireless carrier put into the phone. You couldn't add applications, and customization was mostly limited to a choice of ring tones.
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Computerworld, 4/4/03: Hewlett-Packard planning new iPaq handheld
By Sumner Lemon
Hewlett-Packard Co. looks like it's ready to expand its line of iPaq handhelds with the introduction of a new device, the iPaq h2200.
The h2200, which is manufactured by Taiwan-based hardware maker High Tech Computer Corp. (HTC), is based on either a 200- or 400-MHz Xscale processor from Intel Corp. and will be available with at least 64MB of synchronous dynamic RAM and 32MB of ROM, according to a draft version of a user manual filed with the Federal Communications Commission.
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Computerwold, 4/3/03: How 802.1x authentication works
By Jim Burns
Benefits of WLAN
Wireless LANs offer two things central to the adoption of communications technologies: reach and economy. Scalable end-user reach is gained without stringing wires, and the users themselves often feel empowered by their unfettered Internet access. In addition, IT managers find the technology a means to possibly stretch scarce budgets.
However, without stringent security to protect network assets, a WLAN implementation could offer a false economy. With Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), the old 802.1x WLAN security feature, networks could be easily compromised. This lack of security caused many to realize that WLANs could cause more problems than they were worth.
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Microsoft
IDG, 4/4/03: Microsoft Changes Windows Start Menu
DOJ asks change for simpler defaults to rival programs.
Grant Gross
Microsoft has agreed to reposition a program in the Windows XP Start menu so users can more easily set non-Microsoft programs as their default choices, as part of the company's antitrust settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice.
Microsoft has agreed to make the Set Program Access and Defaults icon more prominent in the Windows XP Start menu, said Jim Desler, a Microsoft spokesperson. The program allows users to change their default software, including switches to browsers and media players not made by Microsoft.
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Big Picture
The New York Times, 4/7/03: Silicon Valley Hikes Wireless Frontier
By STEVE LOHR
Eric Engstrom spent seven lucrative and exhilarating years at Microsoft — working on big projects, making a name for himself, even testifying on the company's behalf in its federal antitrust trial. But in 2000, Mr. Engstrom walked away from Microsoft and the personal computer industry, which seemed to have settled into maturity. He founded his own company and set off to pursue innovation and riches elsewhere.
"The opportunities are out on the edge, and the edge of software development has got to be the phone," said Mr. Engstrom, 38, the chief executive of Wildseed, a start-up in Kirkland, Wash.
Mr. Engstrom personifies the migration of talent, excitement and investment in computing toward the wireless business as cellphones become more like computers and hand-held computers morph into phones. To veterans of past cycles in technology, the wireless world today has the look of the personal computer business in the late 1970's or the Internet in the early 1990's.
"It's starting to happen, it's getting exciting again," observed Esther Dyson, who plays host to PC Forum, an annual gathering of technology executives, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists that was held late last month in Scottsdale, Ariz. PC Forum began in 1977. But now the PC stands not for "personal computer" but "Platforms for Communication."
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The New York Times, 4/7/03: Businesses Plan for the Unexpected
By STEVE LOHR
STEP back from the war in Iraq for a few moments, if possible. The larger picture — a struggling global economy and no shortage of geopolitical tensions — looks pretty dicey. Now, imagine that events veer toward something close to a worst case. What are the implications, and how could companies cope in such an environment?
That was the drill when a couple dozen business executives, academics and futurists gathered in New York for a two-day workshop conducted by the Global Business Network, a firm that specializes in so-called scenario planning. The resulting 36-page report, "The New World (Dis)- Order: Managing Risk in Tumultuous Times," has been sent to the firm's clients, including I.B.M., Ford, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, UPS, Morgan Stanley and the government of Singapore.
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