A cloudy day in Washington and the kids are at a birthday party. So once I’ve cleaned up the kitchen, here’s a couple of articles that I’m re-reading:
BusinessWeek
The Apple Calendar Conundrum – OCTOBER 12, 2006 By Arik Hesseldahl – There’s no easy way to transfer addresses and other data from Mac to PC to handheld and back—but there should be. “A startup called Sharpcast is building a way to make complicated, geeky tales like mine and that the of the “Holy Grail” author a thing of the past. Sharpcast CEO Gibu Thomas demonstrated for me the company’s photo-sharing service that takes all the guesswork out of keeping your photo collection in sync between computers.”
BusinessWeek’s slides on how Technology can Make Fitness More Fun
A Red Flag In The Brain Game – BusinessWeek’s look at “how America’s dismal showing in a contest of college programmers highlights how the tech talent gap is closing in China, India, and Eastern Europe.” By Steve Hamm – May 01, 2006
The Man Who Invented Management – Why Peter Drucker’s ideas still matter. By John A. Byrne, with Lindsey Gerdes in New York – November 28, 2005. Also this podcast from BW’s John Byrne in which he tells why Peter Drucker’s ideas still matter. Download the episode directly or grab the feed for your podcast reader.
PC Magazine
Wire It Yourself – By Eric S. Fellen, 053106 – “In a world of wireless this and wireless that, sometimes we all find ourselves begging for a little bit more—a little more reliability, a little more bandwidth, a little more speed, a little more security, and heck, even a little more free time to enjoy this world that offers so much more. In order to feed this technology crave, we need to go back to the basics and connect our dots with copper.”
Will Digital Access Make the World a Better Place? “Low-cost machines are neccessary but not sufficient for getting the world online. We also need broadband Net access and education.” By Michael J. Miller, 053106.
Office Problems, Solved! “Microsoft Office doesn’t always behave the way you want it to.” It’s a helpful article with quick links, menu shortcuts and tips.
Business 2.0 has an article on Pushing Past Post-Its – “By allowing his top scientists to peek over the horizon, 3M’s Larry Wendling helped turn a century-old giant into a nanotech pioneer.” By Daniel Del Re, November 1, 2005
DVDs: They will survive – “Doomsayers say DVDs are dinosaurs, but they’re dead wrong. These discs will not only make it through the digital age – they’ll thrive in it.” By Chris Taylor, Business 2.0 Magazine
Retooling the Entrepreneur – Excite co-founder Joe Kraus says cheap technology makes this the perfect time to start a new company–which gives him an invaluable chance to prove himself again. By John Heilemann, November 1, 2005
The Master of Gadgets – Samsung Electronics CEO Jong-Yong Yun wants to dominate the digital world–inside and out. By Erick Schonfeld
Forbes articles (subscription required):
Forbes’ Offshoring The Offshorers – April 17, 2006 – “Forget India. For outsourcing, China, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Brazil and Mauritius are open for business.” Also see The Great Offshore Wimp-Out (“The offshoring story has two sides. Guess which one Lou Dobbs wants to talk about?”)
Back Door To Growth – April 24, 2006 – “China has a powerful economy, but its stocks are iffy. So Steven Champion gets a piece of the action there via shares in Taiwanese companies with big stakes on the mainland.” Also see the Forbes 40 China
NotPods – Apr 24, 2006 – “By now Apple’s sainted ipod should be seeing real competition. Some enterprising company should be developing a dandy new device that costs the same as the clickwheeled darling but performs significantly better–or a pure knockoff that looks great and works as well but costs a lot less.”
Also see Different Tunes – “By now Apple’s iTunes Music Store should be seeing some real competition, too. All some enterprising company would have to do would be to develop a site with much the same content, add the ability to use it on a host of players that don’t happen to be iPods and offer better prices.”
Tags: misc, articles.
Of interest is this article from Mark Sullivan of Light Reading, featuring a look at the Microsoft TV usability lab in Silicon Valley. It’s an interesting read (complete with photos of the facility) that goes into a customer’s digital TV experience, studying not only our own TV products but the other products in the market. David Sloo and his team “spend their time watching people watch TV. They record people’s responses — their joys and their frustrations — to the experience of watching and controlling IPTV.”