Is MBTA guilty of a misstep in hacker lawsuit?

Faster than a speeding Orange Line. The MBTA sued this month to try to stop three MIT students from talking at a hackers' convention about security flaws they'd uncovered in the T's CharlieCard system. Kristen Amico, a blogger at Schwartz Communications in Waltham, called the move "a giant misstep given [that] this is the Internet age and not the Middle Ages."

For the MBTA, this was a case of winning the battle but losing the war. Within hours of the restraining order being filed, tech journalists and bloggers alike hit their keyboards. The result: the [students'] presentation, which had been distributed to attendees days before the restraining order was issued, was all over the Web. A quick Google search today found more than 300 news articles and nearly 400 blog posts on the subject, many of which contained links to the presentation.
www.schwartz-pr.com/crossroads

Battery tester. In what could be a milestone for the clean-tech sector, Watertown battery maker A123 Systems Inc. filed paperwork this month to raise $175 million in a public offering. The MIT spinout makes batteries for power tools and the much anticipated Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid car. Michael Feinstein, a Waltham investor, scrutinized the company's S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission - noting that he serves on the board of a similar (but not directly competitive) battery company, Boston-Power Inc., of Westborough.

Although A123 looks exciting for the long term, I have my doubts about their ability to either go public or, in the near term, be a successful public company.

. . .If you study their financials, you'll see that they have approximately zero gross margins. That means that their selling costs don't quite cover their material costs and manufacturing overhead. Low gross margins are not surprising for early-stage manufacturing companies. They are not yet selling at high volume and are in vesting in manufacturing capacity for the future. But it's disconcerting to me that even at $10 million in revenue per quarter, they have slightly negative gross margins. On top of that, the company has a significant rate of spending for engineering, sales, marketing, etc. at $13 million in the March 2008 quarter.

Clearly, A123 is trying to go public based on their future potential. That potential could be very high. But, I find the public markets to not be very forgiving of these types of firms. In fact, it could be tough to go public at all right now. Now, perhaps the company has some additional deals and information up their sleeve that they would only release when they update their S-1. Perhaps they are the rare company that can pull off a high-promise IPO in this environment.
thefeinline.com

The SMS VP. Boston public relations maven Lois Paul analyzed Barack Obama's decision to announce his selection of a running mate via e-mail and text message.

Barack Obama and his campaign people have been sending me e-mails daily for a while now, keeping me informed of his movements and positions and asking me to donate. Now, I learned through the blogosphere that I can be informed of his vice presidential running mate decision over e-mail - yet another indication of the enormous difference between the two presidential candidates, as well as the growth and importance of social media today. And if you're not an e-mail person, you can sign up to have the announcement texted to your cell phone the second it is made. Marshall Kirkpatrick on his ReadWriteWebblog commented on what a momentous shift this represents in political communications.

"We expect that if many people do learn about the selection by SMS first, it will likely be an emotional moment that helps advance Obama's mindshare at the very least. Nothing is as immediate as SMS and we think it's a wise move politically to spend political capital like this, in a nod to the new generation of communicators."

He contrasts it with John McCain, whom he says doesn't even know how to use a computer. Who knows? Maybe McCain will revel in his "old school" back-to-basics style and announce his choice via smoke signals.
loispaul.typepad.com

Got an interesting Boston business blog item? Send it to kirsner@pobox.com.