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Industrial Search Engines and Directories	25 October 2007
Promoting industrial products has never been one of the more exciting activities in the marketing or advertising world. Characterized by technical journals, trade magazines, industry trade shows, and listings in directories like the Thomas Register of American Manufacturers, industrial promotion is rarely an expertise of many advertising agencies.
Thomson agencies adopt Jungle Book theme	12 October 2007
Sales promotion links to DVD release of Disney classic
Tech group calls on Congress to act on priorities	12 April 2007
(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Congress needs to act on the IT industry's priorities instead of just talking about them, an advocacy group representing tech chief executive officers said Thursday. Most of the items on the Technology CEO Council's list of "seven for '07" legislative priorities seem to enjoy broad support from members of Congress, but that support hasn't translated into passed legislation, said Bruce Mehlman, executive director of the group. "There's been wonderful lip service. There needs to be legislation and money brought to bear," Mehlman said. The council is working to educate members of Congress and presidential candidates about the issues important to the group, Mehlman said. The council has already set up meetings between tech CEOs and 2008 presidential hopefuls, he added. Issues important to the tech industry seemed to get put in the backburner during the last two years while Congress debated more controversial issues, Mehlman said. "The high tech community is frustrated," he said. "CEOs come to town and can't figure out how they hear Republicans and Democrats all agree with them on their issues, but then nothing gets done." The tech industry will be watching lawmakers who have talked a good fight but haven't delivered, he added. "It's a significant year to either put up or shut up," he said. At least two of the council's seven priorities have faced opposition in the past. The council called on Congress to pass immigration reform, including a higher cap for H-1B skilled worker visas and a revamp of the permanent resident green card program. Earlier this month, the 65,000-visa cap on H-1Bs for 2008 was exceeded on the first day companies could apply for the visas. But U.S.-based tech worker groups such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-USA (IEEE-USA) have opposed a higher H-1B cap, saying companies use the program to hire foreign workers for less money than U.S. workers would receive. Some companies also abuse the system by giving preference to lower-wage H-1B workers, IEEE-USA has charged. Mehlman argued that abuse is "isolated," even though two U.S. senators introduced a bill earlier this month that would prohibit companies from giving preference to H-1B hires. U.S. companies need access to the top computer scientists and engineers in the world, he added. "Our companies ... succeed when we get the best and brightest to work here," he said. The council also called for patent reform that would limit "unjustified" lawsuits against alleged infringers and improve patent quality. Small inventors and pharmaceutical companies have resisted efforts to weaken patent lawsuit remedies, saying lawsuits are one of the few ways small inventors can stop infringers. The other five council priorities: -- Increase funding for programs and incentives for recruiting qualified math teachers for U.S. schools. -- Double basic research budgets at four U.S. government agencies, including the Department of Defense and National Science Foundation. -- Renew presidential trade promotion authority, giving U.S. President George Bush power to submit trade agreements to Congress on an up-or-down vote, without amendment. -- Pass legislation that would help accelerate the use of IT in the health-care industry. -- Strengthen and make permanent a research and development tax credit. The council's members include the CEOs of Intel Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp., and Dell Inc.
CWT appoints VP global sales for North America	28 November 2007
Internal promotion fills role
Stella acquires leading UK independent travel group	28 November 2007
adding 1,100 agencies to the Stella network, including 650 travel agencies in the global network.
Programming less	28 November 2007
A programming lesson I keep relearning. The design of the central data structure of an app determines the quality of the app, in every way. Any extra thought that goes into this, will pay off in: 1. Maintainability of the code. 2. Size of the code (you'll write less code with a well thought-out central data structure). 3. Simplicity of the user interface (the structure inevitably shows through in the UI). 4. Ability to respond to feature requests. 5. Adapt to new hardware, OS changes, other apps. 6. More "it just works" experiences. This is why it's sometimes the right thing to start over from scratch. Programmers often want to start over because they look at the code and it looks complicated, and they think they can make it simpler if they start over. They're right, of course, it will be simpler when they start over, because it won't do nearly as much as the mature product does. Once they finish building out the feature set, it may well be just as complicated. It's a judgement call. I remember looking at the source of Unix kernel for the first time as a grad student in Wisconsin, and being amazed at the simplicity and obviousness of the code. I couldn't believe something so simple actually worked. Your code at its kernel level must have this simplicity. But at the edges, where you're accomdating the minds of users, inevitably it gets a little messy. The key thing to look for is how hard is it to add a completely new feature. It should be easy to do that. If it's not, it's likely because of a poorly organized (and therefore not well-understood) central data structure. I've rewritten apps many times, over many years, because when I wrote the first or second versions, I didn't understand the problem well enough, and the code had turned into a morass of patches and workarounds. Right now I'm recoding the internals of a special-purpose aggregator. I've written many of these, over the years, always quickly, trying to get something running fast, and then lived with data structures that resulted. This time I'm going slowly and carefully, with an installed base of one (me) and ripping up the pavement whenever I find even a slightly better way of doing something. I have other users who are waiting, but that's life. 5/7/97: "When a programmer catches fire it's because he or she groks the system, its underlying truth has been revealed."
Google: Jolly green giant?	28 November 2007
The search and advertising company is a force to be reckoned with across the Web. Now it's looking to do the same in alternative energy (along with many others, large and small).
Google service uses cell towers to locate users	28 November 2007
Google launched a location service for mobile users on Wednesday that doesn't rely on GPS.Google Maps with My Location, currently in beta, locates users who don't have GPS-enabled phones based on their location to nearby cell towers. The result isn't as accurate as GPS but works for people who lack the positioning technology in their phones."It helps users speed up search by showing the general neighborhood they're in," said Steve Lee, product manager at Google for the service. Without the location service, users must type in their address or neighborhood in order to find nearby businesses using Google Maps.Google Maps with My Location will use GPS data to locate the user if the phone has the capability. But even for users of GPS-enabled phones, the cell location service might be useful, Lee said. That's because the cell tower feature works better indoors than GPS, it doesn't drain the phone battery as quickly and can bring up a result quicker, he said.The service could be useful to a person who might be traveling in an unfamiliar city and looking for restaurants or other businesses. A user pulls up Google Maps and hits the zero key on the phone. A blue dot will appear on the map in the user's location. If the service used GPS in the phone, the blue dot will be solid. If the service used cell towers to determine the location, the blue dot will have a halo around it, indicating that the location isn't precise. The user can then search for nearby businesses.Google says the cell tower technique will locate the user within about 1000 meters. It doesn't use triangulation, which calculates a user location based on the user's distance to three nearby towers. Instead, it essentially shows the range of the tower that the user's phone is connecting to.But the accuracy should improve as more people use the service, Lee said. That's because Google is keeping a database of location queries, minus any personal information like individual phone numbers or names. That will allow Google to learn more precise information about the range of each tower so that it can deliver a more accurate location area to users. The coverage area of cell towers can vary from about a quarter of a mile to several miles based on whether the tower is in an urban or rural area.For now, Google Maps with My Location doesn't feature any advertising, but it could in the future. "This product makes a lot of sense for advertising," Lee said.In order to use the service, phone owners must download a free application from Google. The application will work on BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian phones as well as many phones that support Java. A few notable exceptions include the Samsung Blackjack, Moto Q, and Palm Treo 700W, which don't support the APIs Google requires to find cell towers, Lee said.
OLPC sued for patent infringement	28 November 2007
A Massachusetts company has sued the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Association for patent infringement, charging the project with stealing its designs for a multilingual keyboard.Lagos Analysis Corp., or Lancor, filed the lawsuit Thursday in the Federal High Court, Lagos Judicial Division in Nigeria, where the company owns a patent for a four shift-key keyboard, said Adé Oyegbola, Lancor's CEO.OLPC illegally reverse-engineered the company's patented keyboard, which, with its four-shift keys, allows computers to better handle multiple languages, Oyegbola said. Lancor wants the Nigerian court to award "substantial" damages and issue a permanent injunction to prevent OLPC from manufacturing and selling its XO laptop.Oyegbola said he hopes Lancor can reach a settlement with OLPC before the Nigerian court issues an injunction. OLPC could have "sought a license and gotten it for a minimal fee," he said. "We're hoping ... they can come to their senses, and we sit down and come to a reasonable settlement."Lancor, based in Natick, Massachusetts, has tried to reach a settlement with OLPC but did not get a "reasonable response" from the project, Oyegbola said.OLPC released a statement, saying it has not yet seen the legal filings in the case. "OLPC has the utmost respect for the rights of intellectual property owners," Robert Fadel, OLPC director of finance and operations, said in the statement. "To OLPC's knowledge, all of the intellectual property used in the XO Laptop is either owned by OLPC or properly licensed. Until we have a copy of the claim and have had time to review it, we will not be commenting further on the matter."The goal of the nonprofit OLPC, founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Nicholas Negroponte, is to donate laptops to children in developing nations. Through Dec. 31, residents of the U.S. and Canada can donate $400 and get one laptop for themselves, while sending a second to a child overseas.In addition to the Nigerian lawsuit, Lancor is looking at filing a patent lawsuit in U.S. court within three weeks, if the case is not settled by then, Oyegbola said.Lancor's Shift2 technology has been used to create region-specific keyboards called Konyin Multilingual Keyboards, according to the company. Lancor's lawsuit alleges that OLPC purchased two Konyin keyboards and used them to reverse-engineer the source codes for use in OLPC's XO Laptops.Asked about the goals of OLPC, Nigerian citizen Oyegbola said he didn't have a strong opinion. Laptops can be useful to children in Africa, but many of them have more basic needs, he said."Children might not need a laptop," he said. "Maybe instead they need a classroom."
'Cleantech' Investing Gets Its Day in the Sun	26 November 2007
Everybody seems to be looking for ways to make money on technologies that are said to reduce fossil-fuel emissions, wean the country from foreign oil and, generally, save the world. Venture capitalists have invested $3.64 billion nationally this year in search of promising ideas in what they call...