Grok Headline matches for SAP aims to encourage smarter IT investment
Microsoft Aims to Transform Lodging, Dining Experiences with Smarter Hospitality
Microsoft Aims to Transform Lodging, Dining Experiences with Smarter Hospitality12/22/2004 01:48 AM Picture this: After a long, stressful journey, a tired traveler checks
into his hotel from the back seat of a taxi via telephone, picks up
his key from the concierge and checks into his room - all without
stopping at the registration desk. When he enters his room, the
temperature is set right where he likes it, the drapes are open as he
prefers and his favorite hometown radio station is playing softly on
the in-room entertainment system. On the table is information about a
spa package that includes a hot soak and a massage - two of his
favorite indulgences.
Investment Newsflashes: Causeway Goes Live on Eagle's Investment Management Solutions via Eagle ACCESS, and mo
Vodafone Figures Out They Need To Encourage 3G Use
Vodafone Figures Out They Need To Encourage 3G Use07/16/2004 01:59 PM The various wireless carriers out there have a history of not having
the slightest clue when it came to pricing new services. They always
hope they can charge a premium for some brand new service. What
happens, of course, is very few people buy into it. You get the early
adopters, and no one else sees why they should bother. Instead, they
need to start realizing that there's a balance. You need to encourage
people to actually try the new service. Putting a huge upfront hurdle
doesn't help matters. So, it's a bit surprising that Vodafone appears
to (maybe? possibly?) have figured this out with their 3G datacard.
Instead of putting up a 300 Euro purchase price for the laptop card,
they're now selling the card for a single
Euro (that's right, one Euro is all it takes). In other words,
someone explained to them the concept of a loss leader. Sure, they're
losing money on each card sale, but the whole point of having a 3G
offering is not for the carrier to make money on selling phones and
cards, but off of the service. How else do you encourage people to
use the service than to make the upfront hurdle as cheap as possible?
It's similar to what they do with subsidized phones, of course, but so
far most carriers seemed so focused on how they could charge extra for
every bit of the 3G experience that it's still surprising to see this
happen. It's a smart move, even if the article goes on and on about
how it must mean they're having trouble getting people to adopt the
service. New services need promotions and low customer hurdles. That
seems to be exactly what Vodafone is going for.
Sony to accidentally encourage P2P, iTMS use
Sony to accidentally encourage P2P, iTMS use06/17/2005 07:12 PM You'd think that after the fiascos with ATRAC, that Sony would've
learned about DRM that just annoys users and ultimately doesn't work.
Apparently not.
Dell to pay $10,000 to encourage computer recycling
Analysts Encourage Businesses to Look Again at Software Assurance
Analysts Encourage Businesses to Look Again at Software Assurance12/10/2003 07:50 PM Top IT analysts discuss feedback they’ve received on Microsoft
Volume Licensing and Software Assurance. The Microsoft forum, held in
November, helped businesses explore how to maximize their technology
investments.
Government to encourage open source development
Government to encourage open source development12/30/2003 11:12 PM The Israeli government also will encourage the development of
lower-priced alternatives to Microsoft software in an effort to help
expand computer use by the public.
To that end, the Finance Ministry has cooperated with Sun Microsystems
and IBM in designing the Hebrew language version of OpenOffice
software, a freely distributed open-source alternative to Microsoft
Office.
Shark Tank: How to encourage a professional attitude
Shark Tank: How to encourage a professional attitude02/13/2004 12:47 AM It's the late 1990s, and this small group of mainframe programmers
working under a government contract is beginning to encounter PCs, the
Web, sound files -- and
Apple Stores, iPods Encourage Mac Attacks
Apple Stores, iPods Encourage Mac Attacks09/10/2004 11:58 PM "We believe the Street is underestimating the power of Apple's retail
strategy." By Forbes (via MyAppleMenu)
In a move sure to
encourage youth everywhere to keep their amps cranked up... to
eleven, scientists working on a cochlear implant have developed a
device that can actually help "reverse the death and degeneration of
hearing cells that occurs after prolonged deafness." A small electric
current releases specialized molecules that stimulate the nerve
regrowth. Professor Gordon Wallace tells Australian ABC:
We inject small amounts of electricity into the structure
and that causes the release of the molecules and makes them available
to the nerve cells.
The polymer controls the timing of release, and where the molecules
are released, to maximise interaction with nerve
cells.
The implications in assisting people with severe
hearing loss and nerve damage are obviously staggering, but even more
importantly, the technology isn't limited to hearing cells and
nerves—they mention spinal cord repair as well. Check the ABC
article for more details.
MMOs discourage heroism, FRPGs encourage it08/07/2004 05:30 AM Very good Terra Nova post analyses the ways that Massively Multiplayer
games discourage the acts of heroism that made D&D so much fun to
play.
On one level, this tale highlights the plight of low levels in the
MMORPG. They pose the litmus test: do opportunities for heroism exist
for them in and amongst the treadmills? Is it ever possible for a
low-level to make a *real difference?* Perhaps, for some, an
exceptional stand by a NOOB ("newbie") party against MOB trains (large
flocks of NPC monsters) in some NOOB dungeon somewhere, qualifies. But
is there a more fundamental difference?
Consider. Can one make the argument that MMORPGs, as an adventuring
platform, have gone astray with player = single(few)-avatar
assumption? Because of the investment of time (read treadmills),
social and emotional capital, players are practically limited by the
number of characters they can play. Consequently, they are loath to
get in "over their heads" and virtual worlds are loath to offer dire
scenarios with only heroic exits for a few. Hardly a profound point,
but the question: is such a dynamic, in some guise, necessary for the
organic emergence of heroic narratives in an MMORPG?
Kerry: Bush Policies Encourage Terrorism (AP)08/02/2004 03:51 PM AP - Democratic candidate John Kerry accused President Bush of
encouraging terrorist recruitment with policies that have made the
world angry at the United States, a criticism that Bush dismissed as a
"ridiculous notion."
Bush plan could encourage more schools to drug-test (USATODAY.com)
Bush plan could encourage more schools to drug-test (USATODAY.com)01/28/2004 08:39 AM USATODAY.com - President Bush's call for a tenfold increase in federal
spending for drug testing at schools could boost the number of schools
that conduct random tests of students, experts say.
revelations that Fox exectuives explicitly encourage a right-ward slant on its news stories
Smarter Than Me12/29/2003 11:44 PM Sometimes I'm accused of being "smart," which bothers me since I don't
know what it means. It's a comparative label: if this one is smart,
then others are equally smart, smarter, or less smart. Yet all
generalizations are false, all comparisons fail. There's no way to
measure these things, not really. It's a bogus idea.
That's not exactly right. I quickly identify folks smarter than me,
but it's not empirical, just a cocktail party chat I have with myself.
Probably...
Buy smarter05/11/2004 11:56 AM Computer Weekly May 11 2004 3:24PM GMT
Smarter Than the CEO
Smarter Than the CEO05/31/2004 05:26 AM Success, most corporations assume, depends on the efforts of a few
superlative individuals. As a result, they treat their CEOs as
superheroes. In doing so, firms are neglecting their most valuable
resource: the collective intelligence of the organization as a whole.
By James Surowiecki from Wired magazine.
Something I noticed over the last few weeks is that I've started to
receive spam that is way more targeted than before. In what sense?
Well, let's say this: I'm getting spam that not only knows my full
name, but also my address. Okay, not my current address, but
I've already gotten spam that explictly mentions both my New York
address (from 5+ years ago) and my SF Bay address (from 2+ years ago).
This is bad, not only they know my email address, but they also know
where I live(d)! Yes, we know that with time and money you can get a
lot of information on anyone, but this has to be done automatically
and massively, or otherwise it wouldn't be a practical option for
spammers.
Clearly, one way this could happen is if someone (say, buy.com) has
been selling their customer information. Since I usually take care of
buying online only when my privacy is more or less protected, this is
unlikely, though certainly possible.
There's a more likely way in which this connection was made:
Google.
Google not only knows the web, it also knows other information...
like phone numbers (at least in the US). Jon mentioned this some time ago.
A spambot to get "connected information" would work like this. Say
you write an automated script to go through phone numbers on Google.
Then the script takes the address data and the person's name, and then
googles the person's name. It takes the first few results (or
maybe only the first one) and scans the resulting pages to match an
email's name to the person's name. Sure, this won't be 100% correct,
but spammers don't care about that. And Google's reach makes it
reasonable to think that you'd have a reasonably high hit rate. You
could even write a program that uses the GoogleAPI for it.
Sure, we could say, as Scott McNealy does, that "you're privacy is
gone, get over it". Even if you don't agree with that statement (and I
don't, at least I want to resist it!), this is nevertheless
disturbing. And the question that follows is: does Google have any
responsibility for this? They'd probably say that they're providing a
service by integrating yellow pages information, which would be true.
I'm not picking on Google, rather Google is the example here
because of its reach and pervasiveness, but I'm sure that similar
things can be done with other search engines and if not it won't be
long before you can. Can we fix this at all? If so, how?
Since this is the tip of the iceberg, my main thought at the moment
is that I'm a character from Lost in Space and all I hear is
"Danger Will Robinson! Danger!".
SAP CEO: Not more, but smarter IT investments
SAP CEO: Not more, but smarter IT investments01/28/2004 12:06 AM DÜSSELDORF, GERMANY - Accepting the idea that many businesses aren't
prepared to spend more on enterprise application software, Germany's
SAP AG aims to help them spend smarter.
The Perils Of Ego Surfing: There Might Be A Smarter You Out There
The Perils Of Ego Surfing: There Might Be A Smarter You Out There08/17/2004 05:32 AM An LA Times reporter finally did what most people discovered long ago:
the ability to search Google for your own name. However, he
came to a horrifying realization: he wasn't the only Geoff Boucher.
Even worse, in his opinion, it looked like the other Geoff Boucher
might be smarter than he was. Once again, we discover the dangers of
a combination of too much free time and Google.
Microsoft Word And "Smarter Than"08/30/2004 07:45 PM What the Word team lacks, in my view, is an awareness that, when a
user is trying to get his or her own work done, the user is always
smarter than the technology. By Marc Hedlund, O'Reilly Network
(via MyAppleMenu)
New Cell Phones Smarter, More Fun03/19/2003 10:27 PM Record-breaking sales in 2002 put the cell-phone industry on top of
the world. Manufacturers hope to stay there with a new crop of
handsets that offer gaming, picture-taking, multimedia messaging and
more. Elisa Batista reports from New Orleans.
Sleep makes you smarter!
Sleep makes you smarter!01/22/2004 02:45 AM An AP article says that the first "hard evidence supporting the common
sense notion that creativity and problem solving appear to be directly
linked to adequate sleep" will be published in tomorrow's issue of
Nature. Finally, proof that my nap habit is actually beneficial to my
productivity! Link
OkCupid! Smarter, Better Matching
OkCupid! Smarter, Better Matching03/14/2005 04:50 PM this cutesypoo little personality test .. OkCupid! Smarter, Better
Matching .. personality quiz thingamabobsky .. I'm a Peach .. Ok Cupid
.. OKCupid .. here .. quiz .. you
In a move sure to
encourage youth everywhere to keep their amps cranked up... to
eleven, scientists working on a cochlear implant have developed a
device that can actually help "reverse the death and degeneration of
hearing cells that occurs after prolonged deafness." A small electric
current releases specialized molecules that stimulate the nerve
regrowth. Professor Gordon Wallace tells Australian ABC: