Source: Technology Review

Earth-style broadband requires too much power for space vehicles, so it takes hours to download images from the Cassini-Huygens Saturn probe. Enter the single-photon detector - the ultimate low-light sensor. This nanotech-based device combines efficiency and speed, and may make interplanetary communication more practical. It could also allow for long-distance, secure communications here on earth – giving us even more spy technology.

Source: World Economic Forum website via Online Media Daily

The New York Times Company Chairman and Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said The New York Times Digital, has moved from ancillary to being core to the company's future, even though the print version still generates far greater revenue than its online counterpart. That said, the Times online already has more readers than its print product, which means the Times Company and other newspaper publishers are still figuring out how to monetize its audience.

Source: Smart Mobs blog

High school students waiting to hear if they've been accepted at Creighton University in Nebraska now check their cell phone instead of their mailbox. Apparently since November, 700 students - or 44 percent - of those admitted to Creighton University have been notified through a text message. Text messages go out within 24 hours of the admission committee's decisions, whereas letters can take several days to draft and then arrive in the mail.

Source: Cabel Sasser's blog

The #1 video game in Japan isn't a game. It's a Nintendo DS application that trains your brain to be smarter. Using the DS touch screens you do simple, interesting exercises and then it calculates your "mental age" and tracks your progress. In the first week it sold 414,556 copies and it continues to be the #1 video game. In the same period 390,181 Nintendo DS units were sold - that's more than every other hardware system that week, combined. There are a lot of people who could play video games but don't, because the right software isn't there. Wake up and read the writing on the wall, game companies.

Source: Seeing Both Sides blog

In a rebuttal to a Howard Anderson article, Jeff Bussgang blogs that in every market, there are two types of animals: wolves and sheep. The wolves are faster, smarter and can take advantage of the sheep. The trick for VCs just starting out is to recognize that although they are initially sheep, if they hang out with a few wolves, learn from them over a number of years, they can become wolves themselves. If they don’t, then they will leave the business frustrated and disgruntled rather reaping the spoils. The best VCs are wolves alright, so MUSH! Go out there and fund the company that'll cure cancer.

Source: O'Reilly Developer Weblogs

What is the videoblogging business model? Build an audience of over 100,000 viewers then sell one million ad impressions... on eBay. Go Rocketboom, go!

Source: Geoffrey Moore's blog

At the World Economic Forum last week, Bill Gates, John Chambers, Eric Schmidt, Niklas Zennstrom and Geoffrey Moore met to develop a new framework for thinking about the future of technology to take the place of Moore's Law. They came up with this:

• Computing, memory, bandwidth costs are approaching zero.
  
• Expect the digitization of everything – from natural resources, to transactions to physical meetings.
  
• Expect the value proposition of IT to migrate from enabling transactions to enabling interactions, allowing for faster time to market and more reliable operations.

Source: Boston Globe

I was inspired to write this article for today's Globe because Isis Maternity has an innovative business concept that's helping new parents and making it easier for hospitals to deliver high-quality services. At Isis Maternity's Brookline and Needham centers, moms and families meet and learn, babies roam safely, child development questions are answered by knowledgeable staff, and there's top-quality baby gear for sale. Think of it as REI for the baby set. Named 2005 Rookie of the Year by the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, look for one nearby soon.

Source: USA Today

Many Super Bowl advertisers, looking to get more bang for their bucks, will take their ads from the Big Game to a lot of small screens. There are 70,000 people in the stadium for the game and many of them are top-level people who can't see the commercials. And advertisers are betting that those who do see the commercials on TV will want to replay them on other screens. Look for ads on TV during the game, on the Web, on your iPod, even on your wireless phone.

Source: Marketwatch

Exxon Mobil Corp. made more money last year than the entire gross domestic product of New Zealand. In the fourth quarter Exxon Mobil cashed in on high oil prices with $10 billion in earnings on $100 billion in revenue – add that to the rest of the year and it's a record-breaking $36 billion profit for the year. The profits come at a time when U.S. consumers have seen what many call price-gouging and little is being done to develop new sources of fuel.

Source: Fresh Inc.

The number of women-owned businesses grew by 20% between 1997 and 2002 according to the Census Bureau. The states that recorded the biggest increase in women entrepreneurship were Nevada, Georgia, Florida and New York; Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami led the way among cities. The report found that there were 117,069 women-owned companies that exceeded $1 million in revenue. And there were one million women-owned businesses in health and social services, the single biggest industry category.

Source: Stanford Business Magazine

Not long ago it took up to 2 years and millions of dollars to start a tech company. Today entrepreneurs can describe the functionality they want, post it to Rent A Coder, and in a few weeks have a working prototype for under $1,000 and get to revenue around $100,000. Forget hiring a sales team. Buy some keywords and the customers find you. And unlike the bubble years, it's actually possible to find good executives. There's just one catch. You still need to have the talent and expertise to turn great ideas into billion-dollar companies.

Source: BusinessWeek

Dell plans to add 5,000 jobs in India over the next two years, bringing its work force in the country to 15,000. Dell is considering opening a manufacturing center there as well, which could help boost the sale of Dell computers in India. Dell accounts for less than 4 percent of the 4 million computers sold in India, whereas the company's share in the global market is about 18 percent, he said.Dell currently operates nine plants, six of them outside the United States.

Source: CNET

This year, if you bring a booth babe to E3 – the video game industry's rocking trade show in Los Angeles this May – you get fined $5,000. The game industry is under fire from federal and local politicians who want to limit sales of violent and sexually explicit games to minors. So they lumped those booth babes in with the problem. Personally I don't see the connection, since E3 isn't open to the public. But the practice is decidedly low-brow. I guess the booth babes will be relegated to private parties so only the politicians can see them.

Brewing a new image
Illustration: James F. Kraus

Upscale cigarettes
Grow your own
Start the countdown
Healthy returns
Pay-by-finger
Get what you pay for

Source: MIT Adverlab blog

And now it's the top 10 ways to reach the most captive audience. You know...the old ads in the public whiz routine. Forget putting posters on stall walls (*yawn*). Instead, install Wizmark, the interactive urinal communicator. "As a one-of-a-kind, fully functional interactive device, Wizmark can talk, sing, or flash a string of lights around a promotional message when greeting a "visitor". Or...guys...forget about writing your name in the snow, wouldn't it be better to try the interactive gaming system for urinals? It's proudly developed right here at MIT. As for me, I want to play the new version..."You're a Nation" (read that out loud), so I can drown the political opposition as they campaign in key swing states.

Source: Ray Ozzie's blog

Just weeks after announcing the formation of the Microsoft adLab, Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie blogs of two other new research labs, Microsoft Live Labs (MLL) and Search Labs. Ozzie says that MLL, led by Gary Flake (who came to MSFT a year ago from Yahoo Research) is structured for agility, and for turning ideas quickly into reality. "It’s a rapid experimentation, incubation and advanced development group with a very direct connection into the product organizations." Search Labs is headed by Ashok Chandra, a former VP at Verity. Its aim is to take search to the next level. Looks like Ozzie is getting Microsoft's groove on.

Source: Online Media Daily

Gobs of shows from Viacom's cable networks - including MTV, Comedy Central, and Nickelodeon - were added to Apple's iTunes music store yesterday. The pay-to-play model on iTunes is fast becoming a mandatory outlet for all content owners and is meant to complement other distribution channels giving consumers additional options. "TV is not the only driver anymore," says Michele Ganeless of Comedy Central. South Park for you. Dora the Explorer for your kids. SpongeBob for everyone.

Keep it coming, SNL.

Source: Mass High Tech

The good news? A new survey says Massachusetts technology companies are optimistic about job creation during the year ahead. The bad news? They're not thrilled with the direction of the state’s business climate. While 55 percent of tech execs are going to grow their work force this year, only 70 percent consider Massachusetts a good place to operate...that's down from 84 percent two years ago. And only 20 percent say the business climate is improving. Brain. Drain.

Source: Motley Fool

It didn't take long. Just days after Howard Stern began at Sirius Satellite Radio, pirate radio stations and renegade websites with names like hearhoward.org and hearhoward100.com (both now shuttered) began streaming taped broadcasts of Stern's live show. Sirius and Stern's production company have wasted no time in sending out cease-and-desist letters to shut down the rebellious transmissions. Pirating Stern isn't anything new, but the stakes are much, much higher now that Stern costs cash on Sirius.

Source: CNET

CNET says Google's new China search engine not only censors many web sites that question the Chinese government, but it goes further than similar services from Microsoft and Yahoo by targeting teen pregnancy, homosexuality, dating, beer and jokes. And CNET also found that contrary to Google co-founder Sergey Brin's promise to inform users when their search results are censored, the company filters out sites without revealing it. Though when I went on this morning I could search Budweiser...

Source: BBC News

Remember the ballyhoo about how email and the Internet would diminish our real relationships? A new report confirms that e-mail strengthens social ties. Its called networked individualism - where users of technology are less tied to local groups and increasingly part of more geographically scattered networks. Rather than relying on a single community for social support, we actively seek out a variety of people and resources for different situations. And they thought we were outrageously individualistic before the Internet...

Source: CNET

Is Yahoo going to buy Digg?

Source: IT Garage

Doc Searls observes that many businesses are not about inventing and controlling technologies and standards, but about taking advantage of the new opportunities opened up by fresh new technologies and standards. He calls this the Because Effect – meaning you are making money because of blogging, or RSS, or desktop Linux rather than just with those things. Examples? Google and Yahoo make money on ads because of search. Because of Rivendell, Salem Communications saves money in its core business, which is broadcasting.

Source: BusinessWeek

BusinessWeek now has a dozen blogs. Adding to its blogs on the auto industry, real estate, blogspotting, technology, media, design, economics, investing and more...they just launched a Working Parents blog authored by BusinessWeek writers that juggle parenthood and media. If you juggle client calls and school calls, you're not alone.

Source: ClickZ

When an airline charges you $100 to change a ticket, they drive short term revenue but ultimately it drives negative buzz. In his new book, "The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits for True Growth," Bain consultant Fred Reichheld calls these "bad profits." Reichheld says companies must learn the difference between good and bad profits and then capitalize on the goodwill of good profits, driving positive word-of-mouth. The ultimate question is: Would you recommend your company/service to a friend?

Source: Slate

By acquiring a company with a charismatic, legendary, youngish CEO, Steve Jobs, Disney CEO Robert Iger may soon be out of a job. It's happened before. When Westinghouse acquired CBS-Infinity it only took a few years for Mel Karmazin to depose Westinghouse CEO Michael Jordan. And don't forget when CEO Gilbert Amelio, eager to restart Apple's growth, acquired Steve Jobs' NeXt. In less than six months, Amelio was gone and Jobs was CEO.

Source: BusinessWeek

In addition to having a kidney transplant, Ann Livermore has revived Hewlett-Packard's Technology Solutions Group, which sells servers, storage, and consulting services to corporations, helping to fuel a 50% increase in HP's operating earnings. Now that costs are under control (helped by HP laying off 10 percent of its workforce) Livermore is competing hard against IBM and Dell by targeting CIOs and offering solutions that help get soaring costs under control. Livermore's ideal? A lights-out data center, with almost no human involvement. Layoffs to come.

Source: Forbes

From giving input on product design to influencing a company's yea or nay on a $50 million capital expenditure, companies like Gartner, IDC, and Forrester wield a lot of power. They're selling what you hope is expert objectivity, with top firms being the most painfully objective as they have more revenue coming from end users than from vendors. In tech you spend a ton of time courting those analysts and paying them to the tune of $80,000 annually.

Source: Dilbert.blog

Scott Adams blogs that he loves that China sets high goals, as in "Let’s build a wall around the entire country" and more recently "Let’s have Internet access but without the part where people can access the Internet." But if you know the history of the Great Wall, it was highly successful in keeping out animals. But invading armies just bribed the guards and walked through the gate. Adams says blocking all the unacceptable content on the Internet will probably be about as effective as the Great Wall.

Source: Wired

When a worm is chopped in two, the missing part often re-grows. Biotech researchers are developing drugs that enhance our body's ability for self-regeneration. Cambridge-based Hydra Biosciences is working a drug that stimulates heart muscle-cell re-growth, that could lead to better recoveries for heart attack sufferers. If we can re-grow our own cells that's even better than stem cell-based procedures because it eliminates many potential medical problems, like immune rejection.

Source: Wired Beyond the Beyond blog

Source: AdAgeChina

China’s ad spending in TV and print grew 21% to $37 billion in 2005, making it the third-largest ad market in the world after the U.S. and Japan (based on published rate cards). China accounted for 56% of total spending across Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) and is now the second-largest television advertising market globally. Google, and everyone else, is following the money.

Source: AdAge.com

R.J. Reynolds is introducing a new premium-priced line of smokes called Marshall McGearty, complete with an upscale smoking lounge in a trendy Chicago neighborhood. The lounge has fresh tobacco leaves and a tobacconist who will hand-roll cigarettes in any of nine flavors for $8-a-pack. These upscale smokes can only be purchased at the lounge. Now that smokers are relegated to streetcorners, the $87 billion industry is thinking outside the pack to make smoking seem romantic again. Just forget it's the #1 threat to health and light up.

Source: Knowledge@Wharton

The beer industry is developing a marketing campaign aimed at overhauling the image of beer and staunching its declining share of the alcoholic beverage market. They will emphasize romance in the art of brewing, its social value or how beer is shared the world over (I'd like to teach the world to sing...), how it can be paired with food like wine is, and finally how it can be good for your health. Um...it's not called a beer belly for nothing. Wharton School faculty met for beers and concluded this project won't be easy.

Source: Bayosphere

A year ago Dan Gillmor left the San Jose Mercury News to pursue "citizen media" the idea that anyone with something to say could use increasingly powerful and decreasingly expensive tools to say it, potentially for a global audience. He founded Bayosphere, a San Francisco citizen journalism site. Now he ends the experiment saying that "many fewer citizens participated, they were less interested in collaborating with one another, and the response to our initiatives was underwhelming." He's off to a non-profit citizen's media endeavor. Much to think about - off to the think tank.

Source: BoingBoing

On Good Morning Silicon Valley, John Murrell writes, "Apparently you can scratch "censorship in pursuit of profit" off your list of Things That Are Evil. Today Google will roll out google.cn, a version of its search service custom tailored to the specs of the Chinese government and designed to reach China's 100 million web surfers without returning counterrevolutionary results for searches on, say, Taiwan or Tiananmen."

Source: A VC blog

How does 740 times your money in 20 years sound? That's what Steve Jobs just did. 20 years ago, he bought Pixar for $10 million. And he just sold it to Disney for $7.4 billion. Fred Wilson says Steve Jobs is one of the great technology businessmen of our time and this deal should go down in history as one of the great venture investments. Guess who Jobs bought Pixar from in 1986? George Lucas. He sold it to pay for his divorce. Doh!

Source: Salon

Often controversial hipster retailer Abercrombie & Fitch is valued at $5 billion. Revenues approach $2 billion a year and they have 800 stores and four successful brands. A&F is the brainchild of an eccentric, brash, obsessive 61-year-old named Mike Jeffries. Salon does a weird and wonderful profile of him well worth watching the Porche ad on the site so you can read it for free. Jeffries feigns the same image he promotes in his store - the casually flawless college kid. Weird guy, but he's delivered earnings increases for 52 straight quarters. Duuuuude.

Source: The Raw Feed

Sure you can buy Levis with iPod pockets or iPod belt buckles. But what about fashion for your poor naked iPod? Yup. It's iPod underwear. Just in time for Valentine's Day.

Source: Stanford Knowledgebase

We know consumers equate cheaper products with expectations for lower quality. But a new study suggests that these expectations translate into self-fulfilling prophecies that impact our behavior. Study participants were given energy drinks that supposedly make you feel more alert and energetic. Some paid full price for the drinks; others were offered them at discounted prices. Then they were asked to solve some word puzzles. Every time people who paid discounted prices consistently solved fewer puzzles than the people who paid full price. Better buy the name-brand Advil next time.

Source: Brandchannel.com

Each year brandchannel voters decide which brands had the most impact on them that year. Impact can be good or bad. Over 2500 people from 99 countries voted in the 2005 poll. Here's how it shook out globally. By far, Google and then Apple lead the ranking with Google ahead. Thereafter Skype and Starbucks are neck-and-neck. They're followed by Ikea, Nokia, Yahoo!, Firefox, eBay and Sony. Take a call while Googling at your Ikea desk drinking a Starbucks and you're the living global brand example.

Source: Slate

Do you get that every single search you've ever conducted — ever — is stored on a database and that search can be linked to you? So forget about not trusting the government, by keeping every search on file, Google is creating the problem in the first place. Search engines are like an "always on" wiretap. The public should be telling Google to stop keeping information linked to IP addresses. If we don't run history's greatest "search and delete," right now...no one will ever need a judge to approve a wiretap. It'll all be there. All the time.

Source: Fortune

Soon you'll be able to buy groceries with a touch of a finger. New research on biometric payment says that it reduces the potential for fraud and identity theft, speeds up the checkout process, and lowers transaction processing fees for retailers, improving their bottom line by up to 4 percent. A pilot program at Piggly Wiggly grocery stores found that pay-by-touch users increased their store visits by 15 percent and spent 12 percent more on groceries. Um...with those numbers, this will happen.

Enter your name and blog. Get points. See how you rate.

Source: New York Times

Millennials are those born between 1980 and 2000. By 2010, they will outnumber both baby boomers and Gen-X'ers among those 18 to 49 and marketers face a huge challenge reaching them. Their social lives are amped through IM, email, text messages and blogs. Their shared opinions and group-generated instincts can shift overnight thanks to never-ending feedback loops. They select the content they want and don't get it from traditional media sources. So how do you measure groupthink?

Source: CNET

The mainstream entertainment press has discovered blogging at this year's Sundance Festival. Though Sundance has been steadily losing its rebel reputation as much of the indy film trend has been co-opted by the Hollywood establishment, Sundance blogs are hot. Non-mainstreamers like Defamer and Cinematical have loads of dirt. And Boston Globe movie critics Ty Burr and Wesley Morris are blogging live. Check it out.

Source: Fast Company Weblog

Wal-Mart isn't just the largest store in America, or the largest store in the world, or the largest employer in the world. It's the largest company in the history of the world - and one of the most powerful and secretive. Fast Company senior writer Charles Fishman's new book The Wal-Mart Effect, uses the stories of real Wal-Mart suppliers, executives, and shoppers to explain how Wal-Mart delivers "every day low prices." Fishman says that Wal-Mart changes the rules, our economy, culture and perceptions and explores how to preserve the good Wal-Mart does, while reducing the harm.

Source: Boston Business Journal

The next time you hit the office vending machine, Patrick Anzalone hopes you'll select a Power Bar instead of the M&M's. Five years ago East Boston-based Automated Food Service Inc., launched "Mission Nutrition," promoting healthier alternatives along with traditional vending machine fare. Anzalone says it's enabled him to create a profitable niche, with 23 percent of his gross revenue now derived from healthier (low or no fat) items. That's up 400 percent from two years ago. I'll take a seltzer and a bag of almonds, thanks.

Source: Time

Many young doctors have not spent enough time listening to heart sounds through good old-fashioned stethoscopes, so they're ordering up high-cost diagnostic scans instead. Dr. Michael Barrett of Temple University says he has a solution. He made digital recordings that mimicked the sounds of six abnormal heart conditions and gave it to a group of medical students, who promptly uploaded the recordings to their iPods. About two hours and 3,000 playbacks later, the students were able to correctly identify 80% of the heart sounds on a test - up from 30% before iPod practice.

Source: Google Blogoscoped

The government vs. Google case is not about child porn. If it's about porn at all, it's about children looking at pornography – i.e. websites not ensuring that they sufficiently block minors from viewing harmful content. The government is ostensibly trying to find a factual basis for justifying an online pornography law that has already been struck down by the Supreme Court on free-speech grounds. Though it may really be about taking the next step toward Big Brother. It's easy to confuse the press and all of us citizens when the words "child porn" are used, isn't it?

Source: MSNBC

Google’s decision to resist a Bush administration demand for millions of its search-engine records may not do a thing to protect the privacy, but it can certainly boost Google's reputation as a protector of its customers’ rights. Because the data requested is in aggregate, it's not a privacy issue. MSN, AOL and Yahoo! folded immediately and provided the info. But Google is taking a risky principled stand against a sweeping demand that could have lasting repercussions. They're trying to live up to their "Do no evil" motto.

Source: Online Media Daily

39 percent of all singles have tried online dating. 42 percent said the key is to keep the first date short and 32 percent said a convenient exit strategy is crucial. Meeting for coffee? Perfect. That's why Yahoo! Personals and Starbucks have teamed up to offer the Espresso Dating Guide. Through Valentines Day singles can go there to get dating advice, locate the nearest Starbucks and pick up a $10 Starbucks gift card for subscribing to Yahoo! Personals.

Wrinklometer
Illustration: James F. Kraus

Homeshoring
Boomers' kids
The IT Crowd
Personal supercomputer
First impressions count
No freeloaders

Why not get a job and negotiate your salary on eBay all at once? That's just what this guy is doing. He's pretty flexible. He either wants to design rockets or golf clubs.

Tipped off by Jeff Jarvis' Buzz Machine.

Source: New York Times

The Washington Post has shut down reader comments on one of its blogs due to a deluge of personal attacks, profanity and hate speech triggered by a Jan. 15 column written by Deborah Howell, The Post ombudsman, in which she said that arch-lobbyist Jack Abramoff had made "substantial campaign contributions to both major parties." The attacks were in such volume and were so vitriolic, that the Post took down the comments function in order to be able to clean it up. The truth is that sometimes blogs "suck up the time of two people" to keep comments from getting out of control - which is pretty tough in these times of lean old media budgets.

Source: CNET

In the next chapter our hero, Alex Tew, founder of the Million Dollar Homepage, gets sued by one of his advertisers. Eliger Kliger won an auction on eBay for the last 1,000 pixels of the site last week, right before the denial of service attack shut down the Million Dollar Homepage. So Kliger wants to sue for breach of contract and negligence. His big complaint? His ad didn't go up immediately after the auction closed. Well, Tew was a little busy battling cyber-extortionists. Dealing with the lawsuit should take away a few thousand of Tew's million bucks.

Source: Micro Persuasion blog

25-year-old Scott Ginsberg has worn a name tag everywhere he goes, no matter what he's doing, for 5 years. Last year he even had it tattooed on his chest. He now has a company called Hello, my name is Scott and speaks about the power of approachability. I found out about Scott when reading Steve Rubel's blog who saw him speak at the Word of Mouth Basic Training conference. Scott's message is really compelling. Now I want to meet Scott.

Source: AdRants

This billboard from at&t's new campaign alludes to the SBC acquisition of at&t (new and improved with lowercase!) and how that somehow delivers blogging. AdRant supposes it just means they own more of the world's bandwidth so they have the right to say they deliver whatever they want. But go to att.com and type in "blog" and you get a message that says "We're sorry, there are no pages on this site containing the word you entered." Lowercase duh.

Source: Business 2.0

Thousands of companies pay real money for your clickstream data - all the sites you visit, articles your read, things you buy. If this information is so valuable, why not collect it yourself? That's why entrepreneur Seth Goldstein is creating a financial market for consumer data. Rather than "spyware" which surreptitiously collects your clickstream, Goldstein calls his new software, Root Vaults, "myware." If myware takes off, we will be collecting the information ourselves and either selling it to the highest bidder or sharing it with those who choose to give something back. Don't get mad. Get even.

Source: Ad Forum

After millions of years of evolution, Guinness created the perfect ad.

Source: Forbes

Starting this morning you can use your cell phone without worry that it will give you brain cancer. A four-year study has found that people who regularly use cell phones do not have an increased risk of getting glioma, the most common type of brain cancer, something you know you've thought about as you held that hot little phone to your ear. So go ahead, use those free minutes.

Source: CNET's Enterprise Software blog

Alorie Gilbert blogs that Oracle and Salesforce.com delivered messages to their customers this week that are worlds apart. Oracle urged customers to "retire" custom-built programs so they can migrate more smoothly to Oracle's next-generation releases. But Salesforce.com encouraged customers to build custom programs on top of its software and launched an online marketplace for custom apps. Time for Larry Ellison to re-read the Art of War.

Source: Mass High Tech

NASA has awarded a $34 million contract to the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory Inc. in Cambridge to provide engineering development and analysis for the space shuttle and International Space Station. The work will support the guidance, navigation, control and integrated avionics systems of the shuttle and station.

Source: Inboxer via EnronEmail.com

Inboxer is a Concord, MA company that makes software that analyzes and filters corporate email so companies can see if their employees are sending personal or inappropriate emails or disclosing corporate information. To prove how well their software works, they've downloaded all of the now public emails from Enron and made them searchable by their software for free on www.EnronEmail.com. Now anyone can search emails that are being used as evidence in the Skilling and Lay criminal trials. This reminds me of when we were all searching the text of the Clinton-Monica testimony on the web.

Source: BusinessWeek

Did you know that all of JetBlue's 1,400 reservation agents work from home? With "homeshoring" customer service jobs don't go to India, they go to the lowest-overhead place in the U.S.: workers' homes. Unlike high-overhead call centers, home workers pay for their own computers, training and healthcare (if they can afford it) and they are largely educated, stay-at-home moms with lots of work experience and loyalty.

Source: Ethan Zuckerman's blog

Ethan Zuckerman is a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society where they do a lot of thinking about the global and social implications of media and blogging. I first met Ethan back in the day when Tripod was starting up out in Williamstown MA. Tripod pioneered personal home page communities and Ethan was the heart and soul of that business, providing part of the foundation that landed us all out here in the blogosphere. But I digress... Ethan blogs about the opening of the Center for Citizen's Media, jointly sponsored by UC Berkeley's Journalism school and the Berkman Center and run by Dan Gillmor, a new initiative aimed at enabling and encouraging grassroots media. Keep this on your radar. With blogging and the Internet changing the global media landscape, it's good that all these heads are thinking together.

Source: BBC News

Remember Alex Tew? He's our British hero who made a million dollars in four months to raise money for college by selling ads on his home page 1 pixel at a time? Well, evil blackmailers have hit his site with a massive denial-of-service attack. On January 7th Tew got an email saying that his site would be bombarded with data unless he paid a ransom of $5,000. Tew did nothing and the attack began along with a call for $50,000 in ransom. With the help of a US-based firm DDoSprotection.com, Tew is back online. So far no luck getting the attackers.

Source: Mediapost Out to Launch, Boston Globe

Pepperidge Farm Goldfish just launched its latest TV ad campaign featuring the animated goldfish "Finn," and three new friends, each one with a different flavor and personality. Finn decides to "think outside the bag," and leaves home to find friends from different walks of life (the snack bowl, plastic baggie). The spots run on Nickelodeon and they're just the kind of thing that made a coalition of parents and advocates sue Nickelodeon claiming that marketing junk food on TV assaults kids' hearts and minds. Kid's view: Evil parent attackers! Parent's view: Evil, evil Nick!

Source: MarketWatch

Disney is reported to be in serious talks to buy Pixar Animation Studios for slightly more than the $6.7 billion that Pixar already is worth. This would leave Pixar CEO Steve Jobs as Disney's largest individual stockholder. Disney's new CEO, Bob Iger and Steve Jobs work well together, having sealed the iPod video deal in October, breaking new ground for the entertainment industry.

Source: Sprint

What's the number one technology you can't do without? I bet it's your cell phone. According to a new nationwide survey by Sprint of wireless phone users, 56 percent of wireless phone subscribers rely on their mobile phones for features such as cameras, clocks, calendars, messaging, music and as a substitute flashlight for seeing in dark places. Add the phone and text messaging and it's pretty much indispensable.

Source: Reveries

Cadbury is paying a "sensory panel" of gum-chewing taste-testers $15 per hour because gum is pivotal to its future growth. Chocolate still leads in total sales versus gum but its market is growing slower than gum, which is on the rise. So they used the panel plus technology acquired from Pfizer to get the "mouth experience one gets from other snacks," creating a gum that's "crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside and with a liquid center." It's sugarless too. Enter the well-engineered Trident Splash.

Source: BusinessWeek

How bad is it? All Internet traffic entering or leaving China must pass through government-controlled gateways where e-mail and Web-site requests are monitored. 30,000 paid government workers prowl Web sites, blogs, and chat rooms on the lookout for banned content. (The CIA employs an estimated 16,000 people.) To do business in China you have to prohibit banned terms, so foreign and domestic companies abet these efforts.

Source: Salon

In a globally unprecedented move, Venezuela enacts a law this month mandating that all government agencies switch to open source IT software. Is President Hugo Chavez an open source activist? Is he wrestling control of the country's vast oil business to help his country out of poverty? Is he a dictator? In 2002 Chavez took control of the Venezuelan state oil company. In so doing he battled politically-opposed IT consultants (from the US) who sought to "sabotage" his efforts. Apparently Chavez' open source mandate is a move to head that kind of thing off at the pass. Regardless of your politics, Salon writes, "it's hard not to be fascinated by the emergence of open-source software, itself a technological artifact, as a political response to globalization, a force that is also in large part driven by technological change."

Source: Fast Company

Sure there are horror stories. Like the success-bred 22-year-old who was passed up for a promotion so his parents came to the office to "fix" it. The 76 million children of baby boomers now entering the workforce are used to being heard regardless of hierarchy. But what's wrong with that? General Mills adapted to provide college grads with senior mentors to provide feedback. It resulted in an innovative sales approach for Totino's Pizza Rolls. If you're 22 you've probably eaten 100,000 of those.

Source: CNET

New bioscience software Clarity Pro rates your skin's health. Input a white-light digital image of your face and it calculates wrinkles, sun damage and pore inflammation so doctors and aestheticians can recommend creams, salves or surgeries, backed up by before and after images. With over $10 billion spent on antiaging products in the US every year, this could hold the cosmetics industry up to a new level of scrutiny. Though it will probably just make us spend a few billion more on diagnostics.

Source: Googlesightseeing.com via MIT Advertising Lab blog

Advertisers should discover the potential of Google Maps. Googlesightseeing.com shows three Target stores (the one above is in Everett, MA) that are enjoying some unexpected windfall. These Target locations are near airports where fliers can see the logos. But now anyone can reap the Google Map advantage.

Source: Googlesightseeing.com

What's that picture? It's people rowing on the Charles River, as seen from Google Maps. Why bother seeing the world for real when there's Googlesightseeing.com? They collect Google Maps images from around the world of tourist destinations, bridges, you name it. Bet you can't just view one...you'll be clicking for more.

Source: BusinessWeek

News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch rang the warning bell this month for Google, Yahoo! and MSN by saying that his newly acquired social networking site, MySpace.com, will add search, e-mail, and even telephone service. Fast-growing MySpace now has 47 million unique users a month, compared with Yahoo's 127 million. But never underestimate the media baron, who has a history of thrashing bigger rivals like CNN and the Big Three TV networks.

Source: CNET

iPod is to iTunes what AppExchange is to Salesforce.com. Salesforce.com today launched AppExchange, an online marketplace for hosted business software applications. Adobe, Skype and Factiva are among those offering software through this new software "ecosystem." Applications include finance, electronic signatures, document management, data cleansing and human resources. Think of this as Web 3.0.

Source: Slate

A clinic says it has trained dogs to smell lung cancer on your breath and get it right 99 percent of the time - and to smell breast cancer and get it right 88 percent of the time. That's more accurate than high-tech tests. It appears that tumors release tiny amounts of telltale chemicals that dogs can smell. Scientists say the results are too good to be true, so they're waiting for an independent study. How about doing an independent study instead of just waiting?

Photo from BehindTheLenz on Flickr