Too Few Friends? A Web Site Lets You Buy Some (and They’re Hot)

Too Few Friends? A Web Site Lets You Buy Some (and They’re Hot)

By DANIEL E. SLOTNIK

Published: February 26, 2007

Popularity was never easily measured, until the advent of social-networking sites. Now, prospective employers and others can gain some insights into an applicant’s lifestyle and character by looking at a person’s social-networking page, including the roster of friends.

So what if a job applicant’s networking page lacks friends?

Enter FakeYourSpace.com, a business founded by Brant Walker, which offered users of MySpace.com and similar sites a way to enhance their page with photographs and comments from hired “friends” — mainly attractive models — for 99 cents a month each.

FakeYourSpace was doing very well, attracting 50,000 hits a day, until a service that provided the photographs of the models, iStockPhoto.com, noticed that use and objected to it.

Kelly Thompson, iStockPhoto’s vice president for marketing, said its licensing agreement did not allow Web sites to post photos that might lead the average person to “think that the model endorses” the product, Web site or person in question.

IStockPhoto’s network of 30,000 photographers police the Internet for such contractual infractions. When they noticed how FakeYourSpace was using the photos, they reported it to iStockPhoto, which asked Mr. Walker to stop using the photographs.

He complied, and FakeYourSpace, while still viewable online, will not be fully operational again until Thursday. Mr. Walker is searching for models through agency and online auditions to replace those that had been provided by iStockPhoto, which was recently purchased by Getty Images.

But is FakeYourSpace’s business legal? The site certainly misrepresents people, but Mr. Walker, 26, said he thought that its intent was more altruistic than fraudulent.

A graduate of Platt College, a graphics and multimedia specialty school in San Diego, Mr. Walker runs the site from his San Diego home with two employees. He said the idea came to him when he noticed, while browsing MySpace pages, that “some people would have a lot of good-looking friends, and others didn’t.”

His idea, he said, was “to turn cyberlosers into social-networking magnets” by providing fictitious postings from attractive people. The postings are written by the client or by Mr. Walker and his employees, who base the messages on the client’s requests. FakeYourSpace says it does not post any messages that are threatening, pornographic or illegal.

MySpace and other social-networking sites appear to have no rules prohibiting Mr. Walker’s idea. The leading sites, MySpace, Friendster and facebook, did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Walker’s business is a variation on a growing phenomenon that Bruce Schneier, a blogger at InfoWorld.com, a Web site for the business technology magazine InfoWorld, refers to as “the social network reputation hack.”

MobileAlibi.com and PopularityDialer.com offer similar services, using fake cellphone calls scheduled in advance to provide an excuse to escape a tedious situation, like a bad date, or to make the subscriber appear in demand.

While they may be less than honest, FakeYourSpace and similar sites are currently legal, as long as the content they post is legitimately licensed. Mr. Walker said his second business, a Web site called BreakYourSpace.com that removes unwanted friends from a user’s profile by third-party messenger, had yet to have any legal trouble.

Microsoft to Buy Health Information Search Engine

Microsoft to Buy Health Information Search Engine

By STEVE LOHR

Published: February 27, 2007

Microsoft’s drive into the health care market is just getting under way, but the company signaled yesterday that one important ingredient in its plan will be a specialized search engine tailored to deliver useful medical information to consumers.

Microsoft is buying Medstory Inc., a small start-up in Foster City, Calif. Its search software applies artificial intelligence techniques to medical and health information in medical journals, government documents and on the Internet.

The terms of the Medstory acquisition were not disclosed.

The Medstory purchase, said Peter Neupert, vice president for health strategy at Microsoft, was a first step in a broader company strategy to assemble technologies that would “improve the consumer experience in health care.”

“Clearly,” Mr. Neupert said, “search is a critical part of that better end-to-end experience for consumers.”

The acquisition follows Microsoft’s purchase last year of Azyxxi, a clinical health care software system that retrieves and quickly displays patient information from many sources, including scanned documents, X-rays, M.R.I. scans and ultrasound images.

The Microsoft move comes at a time of increased investment in online health ventures, rising traffic at consumer health sites on the Web and profits at the most popular sites. Last month, a venture firm headed by Stephen M. Case, the former chief executive of America Online, introduced an ambitious new consumer health site, RevolutionHealth.com.

WebMD, the leading health-related site, last week reported strong quarterly profit of $8.9 million on revenue of $80.6 million, surpassing Wall Street’s expectations. The stock price of WebMD — an Internet pioneer in health information that struggled for years — has surged in the last year.

In health-related search, Healthline Networks, a start-up in San Francisco, reports rising traffic on its Web site and a growing string of deals to provide the search engine for sites of other companies, including Merck and PacifiCare. At Google, Adam Bosworth, a vice president for engineering, is leading the effort to develop a health-information offering.

These companies and others are seeking ways to build businesses on the Internet that profit from what is called consumer-driven health care. The notion is that shifts in demographics, economics, technology and policy will inevitably mean that individuals will want to, and be forced to, make more health care decisions themselves.

Aging baby boomers, accustomed to personal choice and to technology, tend to want a say in their treatment decisions. And the Internet is already an important source of health information. Eight million people in the United States go online for health information every day, according to a study last year by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a nonprofit group.

Financially, the pressure by Medicare and private health insurers to hold down costs and shift more of the burden to individuals, analysts say, will force people to make more health care spending choices.

In Medstory, Microsoft is acquiring “some of the best deep technology” in the emerging field of medical search, said Esther Dyson, an industry analyst who is also an investor in Medstory. That technology, Ms. Dyson said, is “not so much a search engine, but an ontology engine,” with a capability to find and identify concepts in health and not just sort through words and Web links.

The longer-range goal, Mr. Neupert said, is to link personal information like age, sex, drug regimens, family history and even genetic markers to search. The ideal is that search results are tailored individually, identifying treatments, drug interactions and medical journal articles of interest.

“Health search could be way more relevant,” he said. “You don’t need to see thousands of results. What you want to know is, what does this mean to me personally?”

Dr. Alain T. Rappaport, the founder and chief executive of Medstory, said he was impressed by the importance Microsoft placed on “intelligent search” in health care and by the promise that Microsoft’s global reach and resources could accelerate the spread of the technology his team developed.

Microsoft had talked to Healthline recently about using its health search service, said West Shell III, the chief executive of Healthline. “This means Microsoft has decided to go it alone,” Mr. Shell said.

Mozilla fixes Firefox bugs

Mozilla fixes Firefox bugs

Among the browser updates is a patch for a security vulnerability that could allow an attacker to manipulate cookie information

By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service
February 23, 2007

The Firefox 2.0.0.2 release includes a fix for a bug disclosed by security researcher Michal Zalewsky last week. That flaw can be exploited by attackers to manipulate cookie information in the Firefox browser, making it probably the most important fix in the update, according to Window Snyder, Mozilla's head of security strategy.

"The potential to compromise a user's account is almost as serious as compromising their machine," she said Friday via instant message. "Since the details of how to exploit the vulnerability are publicly available, the risk to users is increased."

The updates also include a fix for a previously undisclosed memory corruption flaw in the browser that could be exploited to run unauthorized software on a Firefox user's computer.

This flaw could also affect Thunderbird users who have configured their mail client to run JavaScript automatically, something that Mozilla does not recommend. Thunderbird is Mozilla's free e-mail client.

The patches were released on Friday afternoon and should soon be delivered via Firefox's automatic software update mechanism, Snyder said.

Mozilla has patched a total of seven Firefox bugs and is also addressing two bugs in Thunderbird.

The latest browser release also includes enhancements to make it run better with Windows Vista as well as support for the Afrikaans, Belarusian, Georgian, and Kurdish languages.

News @ Cisco: Cisco and Apple Reach Agreement on iPhone Trademark

News @ Cisco: Cisco and Apple Reach Agreement on iPhone Trademark

SAN JOSE & CUPERTINO, Calif. – Cisco® and Apple today announced that they have resolved their dispute involving the "iPhone" trademark. Under the agreement, both companies are free to use the "iPhone" trademark on their products throughout the world. Both companies acknowledge the trademark ownership rights that have been granted, and each side will dismiss any pending actions regarding the trademark. In addition, Cisco and Apple will explore opportunities for interoperability in the areas of security, and consumer and enterprise communications. Other terms of the agreement are confidential.

MP3 Patents in Upheaval After Verdict - New York Times

MP3 Patents in Upheaval After Verdict - New York Times

By SAUL HANSELL

Published: February 23, 2007

Microsoft was ordered by a federal jury yesterday to pay $1.52 billion in a patent dispute over the MP3 format, the technology at the heart of the digital music boom. If upheld on appeal, it would be the largest patent judgment on record.

The ruling, in Federal District Court in San Diego, was a victory for Alcatel-Lucent, the big networking equipment company. Its forebears include Bell Laboratories, which was involved in the development of MP3 almost two decades ago.

At issue is the way the Windows Media Player software from Microsoft plays audio files using MP3, the most common method of distributing music on the Internet. If the ruling stands, Apple and hundreds of other companies that make products that play MP3 files, including portable players, computers and software, could also face demands to pay royalties to Alcatel.

Microsoft and others have licensed MP3 — not from Alcatel-Lucent, but from a consortium led by the Fraunhofer Institute, a large German research organization that was involved, along with the French electronics company Thomson and Bell Labs, in the format’s development.

The current case turns on two patents that Alcatel claims were developed by Bell Labs before it joined with Fraunhofer to develop MP3.

“Intellectual property is a core asset of the company,” said Joan Campion, a spokeswoman for Alcatel-Lucent. “We will continue to protect and defend that asset.”

Thomas W. Burt, the deputy general counsel of Microsoft, said the company would most likely petition the judge in the San Diego case, Rudi M. Brewster, to set aside or reduce the judgment. If she does not, Microsoft will probably take the case to the federal appeals court in Washington, which hears patent cases.

Microsoft argued that one patent in question did not apply to its MP3 software and that the other was included in the Fraunhofer software that it paid to license.

Moreover, it argued that the damages sought by Alcatel were unreasonably high, pointing out that it paid Thomson, which represented the consortium in its dealings over the patent, a flat $16 million fee for the rights to the MP3 software.

“We think this is just plain wrong,” Mr. Burt said. “They told the jury to measure damages, not on the value to Microsoft of one of the 10,000 features in Windows, but on the value of the entire computer.”

Alcatel argued that the damages should be based on a royalty of 0.5 percent of the total value of Windows computers sold.

John M. Desmarais, a partner with Kirkland & Ellis who represented Alcatel, said the proposed damages were consistent with patent law. He said it was not appropriate to compare them with the $16 million Microsoft paid Thomson because the rights to the Bell Labs patents were far more valuable.

“It’s like going to the supermarket and paying $1 for a bar of soap,” he said. “That lets you use the soap. We were offering the equivalent of the right to make soap any way they wanted.”

The jury supported Alcatel’s arguments on every count except one. It deadlocked on the question of whether Microsoft willfully infringed on the Bell Labs patents. If the jury had found that it did, Microsoft would have had to pay triple damages.

“Microsoft has been and to some degree continues to be at a competitive disadvantage, as it did not file for patents for many, many, many years,” said Jack Russo, a patent lawyer with Russo & Hale in Palo Alto, Calif.

That makes it harder, he said, to work out deals with other large companies in which they exchange the rights to each other’s patents.

Large companies like AT&T and I.B.M. “have huge patent portfolios and that represents large and unpredictable risks for companies like Microsoft,” he said.

The judgment is part of litigation by Alcatel to enforce claims related to Bell Labs patents. The case was initially brought against Dell and Gateway, which make computers using Microsoft software. Other trials are pending for technology related to speech recognition, user interfaces and video processing.

Microsoft has countered with a claim, filed with the International Trade Commission, that Alcatel is violating its patents related to messaging technology.

The largest award for a patent infringement case to date was the $909 million that Kodak was ordered to pay in 1990 to Polaroid for violating patents related to instant cameras. That case also forced Kodak to exit the instant photography market and recall its cameras.

Mr. Burt said the appeals process might take another year or two. He said he did not expect that the courts would force Microsoft to remove the MP3 functions from Windows.

Ms. Campion of Alcatel declined to comment on whether that company would pursue similar claims against makers of MP3 players, like Apple.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment. A Thomson spokesman did not return calls or e-mail messages requesting comment.

If the judgment is affirmed, the damages payment would make only a modest dent in Microsoft’s cash hoard, which totaled almost $29 billion at the end of last year.

News of the ruling surfaced just before the regular close. Microsoft’s shares closed at $29.39, up 4 cents, and fell 11 cents after hours.

Alcatel-Lucent American depository receipts, each representing one ordinary share, rose 7 cents, to $13.14, in regular trading, and 34 cents after hours.

Money for nothing

Money for nothing

Leader
Friday February 16, 2007
The Guardian

The internet is supposed to be entering a golden age of creativity, with unprecedented opportunities for users to generate their own content. So far, however, they are getting little reward for their efforts. Now some of the bigger ones are getting restless. This week Google lost the latest round of its dispute with Belgian newspapers over the right to link to news stories without paying, but the much wider argument about who should pay for content generated by users on the web is only just starting.

The main focus at the moment is on YouTube, a site that claims well over 100m downloads a day, ranging from home-made movies to clips from films or TV shows that are covered by copyright. No one worried when it was a loss-making site run by a couple of backroom entrepreneurs but now that it has been bought by Google as a vehicle for advertisements, all hell has been breaking loose, with media companies from Disney to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation claiming compensation because Google has been selling ads next to pirated movie clips (unless they are ones for an upcoming film or TV show, when they are rather glad of the pre-publicity).

But wait. Isn't this the same News Corporation that owns MySpace, which is making a mint by attracting ads to go alongside content uploaded by tens of millions of users for which it doesn't pay a cent? The main difference is that MySpace's users are difficult to organise. They are not corporations that can reach for a lawyer. Sooner or later, though, consumers will wake up to the new network monopolies springing up on the web which are making zillions on the back of other people's hard work. They include the likes of MySpace, Cyworld and Bebo, where users have invested so much work (such as videos, music collections, contact lists) that they are loth to move elsewhere. Google is different, despite its near-monopoly status, because if someone else produced a better search engine it could lose its users overnight.

Should companies which make money distributing other people's work pay for the right to do it? Not many do so at the moment. Even where there are revenue-sharing schemes, such as the mobile-phone network 3's pioneering SeeMeTV (where people upload their own video clips which others pay to view), the actual share is small. Other mobile operators charge users heavily for downloading from their mobile, but resist demands from content providers for decent payments.

Doing something for nothing is part of the founding spirit of the internet. But if intermediaries cream off the profits without rewarding the creators, the whole creative revolution could be stopped in its tracks.

Yahoo goes live with mobile display ads - www.mobile-ent.biz

Yahoo goes live with mobile display ads
Feb 16th by Tim Green

Yahoo! has launched a display advertising platform from its mobile home page in 19 countries across Europe, Asia and the Americas.

Advertisers including Hilton's Embassy Suites, Infiniti, Intel, Nissan, Pepsi, Procter & Gamble Asia Pacific and Singapore Airlines will launch the first campaigns. The ads run near the top of the deck and let consumers click through to either call the advertiser or get more info.

The launch is more evidence of Yahoo!’s designs on the space. In November 2006, Vodafone named Yahoo! as its exclusive display advertising partner in the U.K. In the same month the search giant launched display ads on its US mobile site.

Steve Boom, senior VP of mobile and broadband, said: “Yahoo! can offer the world's biggest advertisers the ability to work with one trusted partner to reach a targeted audience of engaged consumers on both their PC and mobile phone."

Bill would require ISPs to track users

Bill would require ISPs to track users

Published: 2007-02-19

A Republican congressman has introduced legislation that would require Internet service providers (ISPs) to keep information about their users' identities and, possibly, their actions online.

Earlier this month, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) introduced a bill (H.R. 837) with a stated purpose of combating child pornography but the legislation also includes a measure that would force ISPs to monitor their users, an item that has long been on law enforcement's wish list. The bill mandates that the U.S. Attorney General determine the exact regulations, but the rules should "at a minimum, require retention of records, such as the name and address of the subscriber or registered user to whom an Internet Protocol address, user identification or telephone number was assigned, in order to permit compliance with court orders."

Needless to say, privacy advocates and Internet industry groups are not pleased.

"The Smith proposal would give the attorney general carte blanche to require service providers to keep all information imaginable on every one of their users," Kate Dean, executive director of the U.S. Internet Service Provider Association, told the Washington Post last week.

Other proposed legislation would require that registered sexual offenders give up their online e-mail and Web-site addresses, as they currently must do with their physical addresses. Personal privacy has taken center stage in 2007, following numerous data breaches, worries about government surveillance and the monitoring of employees by corporations.

The bill, H.R. 837, is known as the Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth (SAFETY) Act of 2007.

Posted by: Robert Lemos

Hot New Phones Coming to You Soon (We Hope) : Tom Samiljan : Yahoo! Tech

Hot New Phones Coming to You Soon (We Hope) : Tom Samiljan : Yahoo! Tech

Mon Feb 12, 2007 1:34PM EST

Probably the biggest cell phone show that isn't CES is held every year on the Mediterranean—first it was the French Riviera (Cannes) and now it's the Catalonian coast (Barcelona). That's where the annual 3GSM World Congress—a worldwide gathering for mobile phone manufacturers, carriers, content makers, and assorted technologists—takes place. Sure, it's devoted only to GSM phones (used by Cingular and T-Mobile in the U.S.), but since most of the world uses that standard....

I went last year and got a lot out of it. The show has been growing in importance and prominence, similar to the way cell phones have over the last five years become indispensable in our daily lives. At any rate, I'm here in India, which happens to be the world's largest cell phone market (and growing)—increasingly the focus of the emerging-market strategies of cell phone manufacturers and providers (because there's no room to grow in established cell phone markets like Europe and the U.S.) That's a long-winded way of saying I'm not in Barcelona at the show, alas, but that hasn't stopped me from salivating over all the news and new phones.

There's likely to be loads of news over the next couple of days, but here are some of the hotter new phones on display at the show (culled from reports, of course, since I can't be there myself, alas). Note that none of these phones were on display at CES.

Motorola RIZR Z8: Leave it to RAZR-creator Motorola to come up with a totally new phone form. The RIZR Z8 is a curvy slider that's supposed to fit your face better. It's got 3G-quality HDSPA capability, a Symbian OS, a two-megapixel camera phone, and the latest Bluetooth profiles for music.

Nokia E90: This update to Nokia's high-end keyboard phone is way updated, with Wi-Fi, GPS, HSDPA (3G), and a 3.2 megapixel camera, making it sort of like the N93 but with a serious keyboard.

Nokia E61i: If you liked Nokia's Q-killer E61, you'll love the E61i, which has a two-megapixel camera, works with pretty much all corporate email systems, and is slimmer.

iPAQ Voice Messenger: There are hotter Windows Mobile 6 phones, but most of them won't come out in the States (yet). This candy-bar shaped iPAQ will be coming out in the U.S. this Spring. It looks just like a regular phone—unusual for an iPAQ—but runs Windows Mobile 6 Standard. Unfortunately, it's EDGE, so no 3G just yet, but since it has Wi-Fi and VOIP capability, you'll be okay as long as you're in a hotspot.

Samsung SGH-F520 and Samsung F700: The F700, an iPhone-killer with a touch screen and a keyboard, was announced last week, and it's just as non-3G/EDGE-enabled as the Apple offering. The F-520, a smaller and slicker phone, also with a keyboard, was announced today and has 3G capability. No word on whether either will make it to the U.S.

More to come over the next few days, but the above phones are the ones that are whetting my appetite. How about you?

Virtual war helps US soldiers deal with trauma

Virtual war helps US soldiers deal with trauma

James Randerson, science correspondent
in San Francisco
Monday February 19, 2007
Guardian Unlimited


An image from the virtual war used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder in soldiers. Photograph: University of Southern California

A "virtual Iraq" simulation that allows soldiers to re-live and confront psychological trauma has produced promising results for the initial handful of patients treated using the system.

The trial of the software, which recreates the sights, smells, sounds and jolts of the battlefield, has now been extended to a few dozen US service personnel who have suffered post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) since returning from war in Iraq.

The treatment is a more powerful version of imagination therapy, a traditional technique in which a therapist asks a patient to imagine scenarios connected with a traumatic event. With the software technique, patients talk through their trauma with a therapist while wearing goggles that immerse them in a virtual reality battlefield. The therapist can increase the strength of the scenario by adding elements such as roadside bombs or attacks by insurgents.

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"This is not a passive therapy where they simply sit back and are exposed to war scenes," the psychologist Skip Rizzo told the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in San Francisco.

"It is a very interactive and engaging experience that the patient goes through where they tend to re-live their experience but in a safe supportive environment ... We are not in the business of retraumatising people by any means, we take it very very cautiously."

PTSD can take weeks or even years to develop after returning from battle. Sufferers can experience a range of symptoms including flashbacks, nightmares, a constant feeling of being on edge, emotional numbness and an inability to continue normal relationships with loved ones. Patients are often unable to work or leave their homes.

On one internet support site for soldiers with PTSD and their families, the girlfriend of a sufferer who calls herself Worlddream2 wrote: "I'm so desperate 'cause this situation has changed him so much and he became a complete stranger to me ...This situation is destroying me and I don't know what to do anymore."

A course of the virtual reality therapy might begin with the patient standing next to a Humvee vehicle in the virtual world - which is based on the popular computer game Full Spectrum Warrior. Once they are comfortable with that, the therapist might ask them to get into the vehicle, start the engine and pull away.

"Over the course of the sessions we gradually have them do things that are closer to their traumatic memory," said Professor Rizzo, from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. "We start adding in guns, bombs, insurgents, debris on the road, being attacked and so forth. We do this in a very measured and progressive fashion based on what the client can handle."

Sounds and smells seem to evoke the most powerful memories. "I think the visuals simply set the stage ... the sound definitely produces specific emotional reactions," he said.

Sounds such as car bombs were accompanied by vibrations from a "base shaker" - a powerful sub-woofer speaker - underneath the patient's seat.

Currently eight smells are used, including gunpowder, cordite, burning rubber, Iraqi spices, barbecued lamb and body odour.

"Don't laugh because body odour is quite relevant when you are in an environment where you have got a lot of people who can't necessarily shower every day," Prof Rizzo said.

The team was also looking into replicating the smell of blood and burned flesh. "I'm not sure we need to go to that level of intensity ... but it is something that we are considering and exploring," he said.

Even if the virtual world was not entirely accurate, patients often became so involved in re-living experiences that they subconsciously added items to the scene from their own memories, Prof Rizzo said.

The treatment consists of two sessions a week lasting up to 90 minutes. In between sessions, patients are asked to listen to a recording of their description of events during the therapy.

So far the PTSD symptoms of four patients had been reduced by the therapy. Another five patients had dropped out during treatment for various reasons.

Prof Rizzo said he was experimenting with using the virtual reality technique in other medical situations. For example, he had used virtual worlds to distract children during painful medical procedures such as chemotherapy.

He had also used it to help people recovering from a stroke to practice exercises to help regain movement. Practicing repetitive movements was boring, he said, so patients often lost interest and didn't repeat the exercises as often as they should. Using a virtual reality handball game, for example, to encourage them to reach for a ball numerous times, was more likely to keep them interested.

What is post-traumatic stress disorder?

Post-traumatic stress disorder is a psychological and physical condition caused by extremely frightening or distressing events, such as military combat, natural disasters, serious accidents, terrorist attacks and rape.

PTSD can affect people of all ages and around 5% of men and 10% of women will experience it at some time in their life. Symptoms include reliving the experience through nightmares and flashbacks, problems concentrating and sleeping, and feelings of isolation and detachment from life. These symptoms can be lasting and severe enough to significantly impair the person's daily life.

Previously called "shell shock" and "battle fatigue", PTSD was not formally recognised until after the Vietnam war.

A 12-Gigabyte Hard Drive That Slips Easily Into Your Pocket - New York Times

A 12-Gigabyte Hard Drive That Slips Easily Into Your Pocket - New York Times

By J. D. BIERSDORFER

Published: February 15, 2007

Small on the outside and big on the inside, U.S.B. pocket drives have become a common choice for toting hefty files. The latest version of Verbatim’s Store ’n’ Go U.S.B. Drive holds 12 gigabytes of file storage on a device less than 3 inches high by 1.4 inches wide.

The Store ’n’ Go keeps data on a 1-inch hard drive and connects to the computer with a flip-out U.S.B. plug. The drive is priced at $179 and is expected to arrive in stores in the next few weeks. It works with most Windows, Macintosh and Linux systems.

Windows users also get Mobile Launchpad software, which can store and run programs right from the portable drive itself without requiring them to be installed on the host computer; details are at www.verbatim.com/hddrive. Some of the programs that you can take with you include Skype, AOL Instant Messenger and the Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail program, so you can communicate from just about any place you can find a PC with an Internet connection.

J. D. BIERSDORFER

Nokia To Offer Intellisync Mobile E-Mail Server

Nokia To Offer Intellisync Mobile E-Mail Server

A year after acquiring the wireless e-mail provider, Nokia is expected to announce Monday the availability of the Intellisync Mobile Suite 8.0 for enterprise. The Intellisync platform is compatible not just with Nokia phones, but up to 120 standard handsets and full-feature smart phones based on the Java-based J2ME platform. The e-mail service is already offered on some Nokia smart phones. The Finnish handset maker purchased the San Jose, Calif.-based Intellisync in February 2006 for $430 million.

There are two levels of service available. The professional version has a one-time fee of $129 per user and includes unlimited e-mail access, as well as calendar and contact syncing. The basic model is available for an unlimited number of users and has a one-time fee of $2,999. It includes unlimited access to basic e-mail services--users can receive, write and send e-mail, but it doesn't include calendar or contact list access or handle e-mail attachments.

Nokia is taking a populist approach to wireless e-mail, pitching its mobile e-mail platform as functional enough for corporate executives, but cost-effective enough for businesses to equip lower-level employees with access to wireless e-mail. The company is hoping the strategy will spur wider adoption of mobile e-mail. "If there are 700 million corporate e-mail boxes, why is it that only 14 or 15 million are mobilized?" asked Dave Grannan, General Manager of Mobility Solutions for Nokia Enterprise Solutions.

The advantages of the device-agnostic e-mail server are that it doesn't force a company to buy all new phones, the interface will be for any phone, and it can be scaled to include applications like device management and file synchronization, Grannan said.

Nokia's announcement is timed with the opening of the 3GSM World Congress taking place this week in Barcelona.

Microsoft Reveals New Windows Mobile 6 Smartphone Software, Improves World’s Fastest-Growing Mobile Operating System: Latest software to feature new m

Microsoft Reveals New Windows Mobile 6 Smartphone Software, Improves World’s Fastest-Growing Mobile Operating System: Latest software to feature new messaging tools, tighter security and improved productivity features; devices to begin shipping worldwide by second quarter of 2007.

BARCELONA, Spain — Feb. 12, 2007 — Microsoft Corp. today unveiled Windows Mobile^® 6, the newest version of its mobile software platform. By improving usability and adding support for Microsoft^® Office features previously available only on PCs, Microsoft Windows Mobile 6 delivers to the small screen a familiar and rich experience that meets the needs of work and life while on the go, all with a single device.

Pieter Knook, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Mobile and Embedded Devices Division, demonstrating the new Microsoft Windows Mobile 6 Smartphone software at the 3GSM World Congress 2007. Barcelona, Spain, Feb. 12, 2007.

Click here for high-res version

“A work force that is both mobile and connected is becoming essential for business success,” said Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. “That’s why we’re integrating innovative mobile technologies into all our key products, with Windows Mobile as the centerpiece.”

Windows Mobile 6 delivers the ability to view e-mails in their original rich HTML format with live links to Web and SharePoint^® sites, which means text and images are displayed as they would be on a PC, and are available from a corporate e-mail server such as Exchange Server 2007, from Web-based accounts such as Windows Live™ Hotmail or from a myriad of other popular service providers. Windows Mobile 6 also includes Windows Live for Windows Mobile, which provides customers with a rich set of Windows Live services. For example, now through Windows Live Messenger, people can chat with more than one person at one time, express themselves through animated figures, quickly send a file or image, or record and send voice notes.

The newest version of the platform offers the most genuine Microsoft Office system experience in the mobile versions of Office Outlook^®, Office Word, Office Excel^® and Office PowerPoint^® by bringing capabilities once available only on the PC versions of these products to the small screen. This allows users to neatly view, navigate and edit Word documents and Excel spreadsheets in their original formatting, without affecting tables, images or text, and to view PowerPoint presentations on their device.

All Windows Mobile 6 powered devices include Direct Push Technology for up-to-date e-mail delivery and automatic synchronization of Outlook calendars, tasks and contacts through Microsoft Exchange Server. Windows Mobile 6 also offers a set of important device security and management features that include the capability to remotely wipe all data from a device should it be lost or stolen, helping ensure that confidential information remains that way.

Broad Industry Support to Result in Broader Choice of Devices

By the second quarter of this year, the world will see the first Windows Mobile 6 powered devices available on the market. In Europe, Orange plans to deliver the SPV E650 smartphone from HTC, and in Japan, SoftBank Mobile Corp. will offer new devices from Toshiba and HTC. And in the United States, the popular T-Mobile Dash will be updated with Windows Mobile 6 and be available in the coming months. Current T-Mobile Dash owners will also be able to upgrade existing devices with Windows Mobile 5.0 to Windows Mobile 6.

Scores of additional mobile operators and device makers from around the globe, including Cingular Wireless, now the new AT&T, Chunghwa Telecom, Dopod International Corp., HP, LG Electronics, Motorola Inc., Palm Inc., Samsung, SingTel, Sprint, Telefónica, Toshiba, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone and Willcom, plan to ship Windows Mobile 6-based devices this year. Many of these partners are expanding large existing portfolios of Windows Mobile powered smartphones.

“In a highly sophisticated mobile market such as Japan, people are turning to powerful and intuitive mobile devices to stay competitive in the business world,” said Ted Matsumoto, executive vice president of technology and chief strategy officer at SoftBank. “We continue to work with Microsoft to equip SoftBank Mobile customers with the most cutting-edge tools in mobile technology and are excited that they will be able to experience the enhanced features and functionality of Windows Mobile 6 on two new smart devices from Toshiba and HTC.”

Information Management Made Easier

Users of the Microsoft Office system on the PC — of which there are nearly 400 million worldwide — will feel right at home with the new mobile versions of Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint available for Windows Mobile 6 powered devices. Windows Mobile 6 addresses extensive user feedback and makes information management easier and more convenient through the following improvements:

•	Better-looking e-mail. Users view e-mail the way it was intended with its original pictures, tables and formatting, whether from a corporate e-mail server such as Exchange Server 2007, Web-based accounts such as Windows Live Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail, or a wide range of other service providers.
•	Ease of viewing and editing of Office system documents. The new Office Mobile suite, built for all Windows Mobile powered devices, gives users a truly familiar and powerful experience with rich viewing and editing capabilities, without having to worry about the deletion of critical formatting and images.
•	E-mail management and setup with fewer clicks. Nine new one-click options have been added, including Reply All, setting a flag, moving a message to a subfolder, and, of course, Delete. Users can set an automatic out-of-office reply while on the road when using a Windows Mobile 6 powered device and Exchange Server 2007.
•	Synchronization with Windows Vista. Windows Vista™ and the Windows Mobile Device Center take the guesswork out of managing a device and swapping music, pictures, movies and Outlook information between PC and the device.
•	Smart calendar bar. This innovative new feature gives users the ability to understand at a glance the day or week ahead and quickly determine open time on their schedules. With Exchange Server 2007, they can see who is attending a meeting and forward or reply to meeting requests.
•	Web search, e-mail, instant messaging (IM) and blogging all together. Windows Live for Windows Mobile will provide customers with a rich set of services including Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger, Live Search and Windows Live Spaces, uniquely designed to work with Windows Mobile software. Users can also find all their contacts in one unified list and see presence information on their Windows Live Messenger contacts.
•	Contacts with context. Call history is now placed where it belongs, in each individual contact card, so people spend less time searching and more time communicating.

“T-Mobile is excited to make it even easier for our customers to stay connected to the people that matter most with the increased functionality delivered by Microsoft Windows Mobile 6,” said Cole Brodman, senior vice president and chief development officer at T-Mobile USA. “The T-Mobile Dash is already one of our best-selling smartphones, so we’re thrilled to improve on an already great communications experience for our customers.”

The Best Platform for Business

Windows Mobile efficiently works with existing Microsoft business technology investments and offers users a familiar software experience, making it the smartest mobile solution for businesses to deploy:

•	Security options. The platform offers a variety of security options, giving IT departments ways to help secure a device, including new Exchange Server policies and certificate options, storage card encryption, and continued support for remote and local device wipe.
•	Protected content. Organizations using Information Rights Management (IRM) technology to help control the viewing, storing and printing of confidential information on PCs can now extend those capabilities to Windows Mobile 6 powered devices, a feature not available on any other mobile phone platform.
•	Line-of-business applications. Powerful, new mobile versions of the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework and Microsoft SQL Server™ are built into Windows Mobile 6, making it even easier to create and access sales tools, inventory tracking and many other applications from a Windows Mobile 6 powered smartphone.
•	Internet sharing. A new built-in application makes using a Windows Mobile 6 powered smartphone as a laptop’s high-speed modem “one-click easy” with either a Bluetooth wireless or cable connection.
•	Communication alternatives. Windows Mobile 6 makes it easier for operators and device-makers to integrate a voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) solution into devices they are building. British Telecom in Europe, as well as HP, will be among the first to provide smartphones with new VoIP offerings for their business customers.

“As the first operator to ever release a Windows Mobile Smartphone, Orange has always had a strong relationship with Microsoft, and the launch of Windows Mobile 6 is a natural continuation of our story together,” said Sanjiv Ahuja, CEO of Orange. “Now more than ever our customers can enjoy a straightforward mobile working experience with fast access to e-mail and business applications. The increased security removes barriers to mobile working, allowing more people to experience the benefits of having their office with them on the move.”

Windows Mobile 6 comes fresh on the heels of a successful year that saw Microsoft’s worldwide converged mobile device shipments grow 135.3 percent (year over year) in 2006, according to leading IT market research and advisory firm IDC. The industry is fast taking notice of Microsoft in the wireless arena and realizing the business benefits of Windows Mobile devices, resulting in IDC’s expectation that Windows Mobile will experience the largest growth of any mobile operating system worldwide, at 75.6 percent, through the year 2010.*

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

News @ Cisco: Cisco Announces Agreement to Acquire Five Across

News @ Cisco: Cisco Announces Agreement to Acquire Five Across

Five Across technology to help enhance Cisco customers' website experience

SAN JOSE, Calif., February 9, 2007 - Cisco Systems, Inc., (NASDAQ: CSCO) today announced a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Five Across, Inc. of San Francisco, Calif., a leading vendor in the social networking marketplace.

The Five Across platform, Connect Community Builder, empowers companies to easily augment their websites with full-featured communities and user-generated content such as audio/video/photo sharing, blogs, podcasts, and profiles. These user-interaction functions help companies improve the interaction with their customers and overall customer experience on their websites. Social networking functions are of unique interest to media companies, sports leagues, affinity groups and any organization wishing to increase its interaction with its online constituency.

"Cisco believes the network is the platform for organizations to connect with their constituents and for individuals to connect with each other," said Dan Scheinman, senior vice president and general manager of the Cisco Media Solutions Group (CMSG). "With the acquisition of Five Across, Cisco is taking an important step towards helping its customers evolve their website experience into something more relevant and valuable to the end-user."

Five Across was founded in 2003 and has 11 employees in San Francisco, Calif.. Upon close of the transaction the Five Across team and product portfolio will be integrated into CMSG led by Scheinman.

The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. The acquisition is subject to various standard closing conditions and is expected to close in the third quarter of Cisco's fiscal year 2007, ending April 28, 2007.

For more information about the Cisco Media Solutions Group, go to: http://www.cisco.com/go/media.

2.4GHz technology to take hold in wireless mice, keyboards - 1/24/2007 - Electronic News

2.4GHz technology to take hold in wireless mice, keyboards - 1/24/2007 - Electronic News

By Ann Steffora Mutschler
Electronic News, 1/24/2007

The wireless human interface device (HID) market -- which includes wireless mice, keyboards, and remote controls -- has historically been dominated by products operating in the 27MHz band but 2008 looks set to be a crossover year in which shipments of 2.4GHz-based products outstrip those running at 27MHz, thanks to wholesale product changes by major OEMs, according to market researchers at ABI Research.

The firm expects that by 2011, 2.4GHz products will account for triple the number of 27MHz products shipped.

While some wireless HID products may use other communication methods such as Bluetooth, ABI Research director Stuart Carlaw notes that Bluetooth still does not have price points low enough to allow it to penetrate much outside of its present territory: products aimed at smartphones, and mice for use with Bluetooth-enabled laptops.

“The narrowing cost differential between 2.4GHz and 27MHz ICs and the improved range of 2.4GHz mean that 2.4GHz products are well positioned to take advantage of the growing need to support media center PCs with rich navigational solutions such as Vista's Side Show,” Carlaw explained in a statement.

The firm forecasts the total market for wireless HID to grow from just more than 100 million units in 2005 to more than 168 million units in 2012, at a compound annual growth rate of 8 percent with a respectable share of that growth claimed by companies such as Nordic Semiconductor and TI, which stand to profit from the shift to 2.4GHz products.

At the same time, a wildcard in the development and growth of this market is Wibree, the new low-power wireless local area network technology.

“While Wibree is interesting and may have significant potential, it is still very new, and the jury remains out on the question of whether it can make significant inroads in the wireless HID market,” Carlaw concluded.

The brain scan that can read people's intentions

The brain scan that can read people's intentions

Call for ethical debate over possible use of new technology in interrogation

Ian Sample, science correspondent
Friday February 9, 2007
The Guardian

Using the technology is 'like shining a torch, looking for writing on a wall'. CT image: Charles O'Rear/Corbis

A team of world-leading neuroscientists has developed a powerful technique that allows them to look deep inside a person's brain and read their intentions before they act.

The research breaks controversial new ground in scientists' ability to probe people's minds and eavesdrop on their thoughts, and raises serious ethical issues over how brain-reading technology may be used in the future.

The team used high-resolution brain scans to identify patterns of activity before translating them into meaningful thoughts, revealing what a person planned to do in the near future. It is the first time scientists have succeeded in reading intentions in this way.

"Using the scanner, we could look around the brain for this information and read out something that from the outside there's no way you could possibly tell is in there. It's like shining a torch around, looking for writing on a wall," said John-Dylan Haynes at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany, who led the study with colleagues at University College London and Oxford University.

The research builds on a series of recent studies in which brain imaging has been used to identify tell-tale activity linked to lying, violent behaviour and racial prejudice.

The latest work reveals the dramatic pace at which neuroscience is progressing, prompting the researchers to call for an urgent debate into the ethical issues surrounding future uses for the technology. If brain-reading can be refined, it could quickly be adopted to assist interrogations of criminals and terrorists, and even usher in a "Minority Report" era (as portrayed in the Steven Spielberg science fiction film of that name), where judgments are handed down before the law is broken on the strength of an incriminating brain scan.

"These techniques are emerging and we need an ethical debate about the implications, so that one day we're not surprised and overwhelmed and caught on the wrong foot by what they can do. These things are going to come to us in the next few years and we should really be prepared," Professor Haynes told the Guardian.

The use of brain scanners to judge whether people are likely to commit crimes is a contentious issue that society should tackle now, according to Prof Haynes. "We see the danger that this might become compulsory one day, but we have to be aware that if we prohibit it, we are also denying people who aren't going to commit any crime the possibility of proving their innocence."

During the study, the researchers asked volunteers to decide whether to add or subtract two numbers they were later shown on a screen.

Before the numbers flashed up, they were given a brain scan using a technique called functional magnetic imaging resonance. The researchers then used a software that had been designed to spot subtle differences in brain activity to predict the person's intentions with 70% accuracy.

The study revealed signatures of activity in a marble-sized part of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex that changed when a person intended to add the numbers or subtract them.

Because brains differ so much, the scientists need a good idea of what a person's brain activity looks like when they are thinking something to be able to spot it in a scan, but researchers are already devising ways of deducing what patterns are associated with different thoughts.

Barbara Sahakian, a professor of neuro-psychology at Cambridge University, said the rapid advances in neuroscience had forced scientists in the field to set up their own neuroethics society late last year to consider the ramifications of their research.

"Do we want to become a 'Minority Report' society where we're preventing crimes that might not happen?," she asked. "For some of these techniques, it's just a matter of time. It is just another new technology that society has to come to terms with and use for the good, but we should discuss and debate it now because what we don't want is for it to leak into use in court willy nilly without people having thought about the consequences.

"A lot of neuroscientists in the field are very cautious and say we can't talk about reading individuals' minds, and right now that is very true, but we're moving ahead so rapidly, it's not going to be that long before we will be able to tell whether someone's making up a story, or whether someone intended to do a crime with a certain degree of certainty."

Professor Colin Blakemore, a neuroscientist and director of the Medical Research Council, said: "We shouldn't go overboard about the power of these techniques at the moment, but what you can be absolutely sure of is that these will continue to roll out and we will have more and more ability to probe people's intentions, minds, background thoughts, hopes and emotions.

"Some of that is extremely desirable, because it will help with diagnosis, education and so on, but we need to be thinking the ethical issues through. It adds a whole new gloss to personal medical data and how it might be used."

The technology could also drive advances in brain-controlled computers and machinery to boost the quality of life for disabled people. Being able to read thoughts as they arise in a person's mind could lead to computers that allow people to operate email and the internet using thought alone, and write with word processors that can predict which word or sentence you want to type . The technology is also expected to lead to improvements in thought-controlled wheelchairs and artificial limbs that respond when a person imagines moving.

"You can imagine how tedious it is if you want to write a letter by using a cursor to pick out letters on a screen," said Prof Haynes. "It would be much better if you thought, 'I want to reply to this email', or, 'I'm thinking this word', and the computer can read that and understand what you want to do."

· FAQ: Mind reading

What have the scientists developed?
They have devised a system that analyses brain activity to work out a person's intentions before they have acted on them. More advanced versions may be able to read complex thoughts and even pick them up before the person is conscious of them.

How does it work?
The computer learns unique patterns of brain activity or signatures that correspond to different thoughts. It then scans the brain to look for these signatures and predicts what the person is thinking.

How could it be used?
It is expected to drive advances in brain-controlled computers, leading to artificial limbs and machinery that respond to thoughts. More advanced versions could be used to help interrogate criminals and assess prisoners before they are released. Controversially, they may be able to spot people who plan to commit crimes before they break the law.

What is next?
The researchers are honing the technique to distinguish between passing thoughts and genuine intentions.

Hi-Tech Surveillance Firm Prospers

Hi-Tech Surveillance Firm Prospers
Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus 2003-03-13

If you're under FBI surveillance, there's a good chance your phone calls and Internet traffic are traveling over the equipment of Verint Systems -- a company that's doing very well these days.

New York-based technology firm Verint Systems recently launched a product called "IntelliFind" that claims impressive capabilities. The system is designed to be attached to the phone lines at a company's call center, where it silently monitors every telephone call, and -- using advanced voice recognition technology -- picks out conversations in which certain keywords are spoken, dumping a digital recording into a searchable database. "You can decide you want to see all the calls where product 'xyz' was mentioned, and then you can pick one and listen to that entire call," says Alan Roden, Verint's VP of corporate development.

If IntelliFind sounds like something that would normally be found on a supercomputer humming in an NSA basement, there's a reason. Behind business intelligence offerings like IntelliFind, and a line of networkable video cameras, Verint is a leading maker of electronic surveillance equipment and software for the United States and other governments. And it turns out that while other technology firms are struggling in a down economy, the business of helping governments with their spying may be a growth industry. In quarterly results announced Wednesday, Verint, a subsidiary of Comverse Technology, posted record sales of $42 million for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2002 -- the company's third straight quarter of growth since going public in May 2002.

"During the year we believe that a greater interest in gathering intelligence to prevent criminal activity by government and law enforcement agencies resulted in greater demand for our communication interception solutions," said company president Dan Bodner in a conference call for analysts. "Over the past year we enhanced our competitive position by entering new markets, expanding our customer base, and introducing new capabilities for the analysis of content and culled data collected from wireline, wireless and data networks."

Among those new markets was an unnamed country "in the Latin America region" whose government recently placed a multi-million dollar order for communications interception systems, said Bodner.

Bodner didn't say what the Latin American government bought with that money, but the mainstay of Verint's electronic surveillance business is its "STAR-GATE" and "RELIANT" products, which operate on the supply and consumption sides of domestic spying respectively. The RELIANT system acts as a government agency's big ear, collecting and managing intercepted voice, e-mail, fax, SMS, data, chat, and Web browsing -- all on a single platform. On the delivery side, STAR-GATE does the actual wiretapping, and is primarily marketed to telephone companies trying to comply with the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which requires telecommunications carriers to keep their networks wiretap friendly for the FBI. An ISP version of STAR-GATE lets Internet providers conduct lawful surveillance of their customers and send the intercepted data to law enforcement over private networks.

PATRIOT Profits
With recent legislation and court decisions granting U.S. law enforcement agencies greater spying powers than they've had since the Nixon administration, government surveillance solutions look like a good bet, and other technology companies are getting in on the game. Last Fall, VeriSign launched its "NetDiscovery" service -- a turnkey CALEA solution for telephone companies that sends intercepted communications to law enforcement over a national IP-based network, using Verint STAR-GATEs for the taps. And last August, computer security company Network Associates got into the Carnivore business with its acquisition of Utah-based Traxess, makers of the "DragNet" Internet spy tool.

And for every company that makes the news with a surveillance system, there may be countless more that nobody's ever heard of. When the non-profit Electronic Privacy Information Center recently obtained a list of companies vying for a piece of the Defense Department's "Total Information Awareness" computerized spying project, the list of bidders included nearly as many obscure companies as it did brand name defense contractors. "It looks like there's this whole world of these little security technology companies that are probably doing well these days," says EPIC attorney David Sobel.

But Gartner analyst John Pescatore isn't convinced that there's big money in domestic surveillance. Instead, he says, the real opportunities are in helping the U.S. perform surveillance internationally. Indeed, according to its quarterly report, Verint has a subsidiary that provides communications interception solutions to what's described demurely as "various U.S. government agencies." The subsidiary's offices hold a facility security clearance from the Defense Department, and are located in Chantilly, Virginia, a stone's throw from most of America's intelligence agencies.

"Certainly with the USA-PATRIOT Act and all this homeland security stuff, there's been more effort in domestic collection," says Pescatore. "But the domestic type money has been a lot slower to start flowing than the national intelligence stuff... There's been definite growth there."

BSI Corporation: Hi-Tech Articles: Warrior Wisdom for Business and Investment

BSI Corporation: Hi-Tech Articles: Warrior Wisdom for Business and Investment

by David James

The teachings of two great warriors of ancient times, the Japanese samurai Miyamoto Musashi and the Chinese general Sun Tsu, have long provided inspiration and guidance not only in martial arts but in business and investment as well. Their classic books, Musashi’s “The Book of Five Rings,” written in 1643, and Sun Tsu’s “The Art of War,” written around 400 B.C., are insightful studies of conflict and strategy, and they are as relevant to competition and success today as they were centuries ago. Translated copies of their books are available in most public libraries and can be purchased through many booksellers.

Key principles for success in business and investment today can be extracted from the writings of each of these great warriors. For Musashi, the dueler and sensei, who writes in detail of state of mind, focus, footwork and rhythm, it is the principle of disruption of the opponent or the battlefield. For Sun Tzu, the commander of armies, it is the principle of maneuver and understanding.

Each writes with great specificity about the conflicts and weapons of their day, but the following few quotes from their writings clearly indicate the relevance these two key principles today:

From Musashi on disruption:

• “Do not forget about the possibility of disorder in times of order.”
  
• “Fluster an opponent with unexpected moves.”
  
• “Disrupt others’ defenses.”
  
• “Always contrive to put your adversary at a disadvantage. Seize the initiative.”
  
• “The science [of martial arts] is all about how to win by getting your opponent to take the initiative, using tactical ploys as your basis, launching various preliminary blows, and shifting strategically.”
  
• “In a stand against many opponents, attack the first who comes forward. Do not wait.”
  

From Sun Tzu on maneuver and understanding:

• “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”
  
• “What enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge.”
  
• “To ensure that you withstand the brunt of the enemy’s attack and remain unshaken, use maneuvers direct and indirect.”
  
• “There are armies that must not be attacked, positions that must not be contested.”
  
• “If [the enemy] is in superior strength, evade him.”
  
• “He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent, and thereby succeed in winning, may be called a heaven-born captain.”
  
• “Avail yourself of any helpful circumstances over and beyond the ordinary rules and modify your plans accordingly.”
  
• “Attack [the enemy] where he’s unprepared, appear where you are not expected.”
  
• “The skillful leader subdues the enemy’s troops without any fighting.”
  

There are many examples of successful application of these two principles. One is Skype, the provider of phone services with Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), a technology that is disrupting the long distance sector of the telecommunications industry. Another is SouthWest Airlines, which has made profits in the dismal airline industry by offering services that do not compete directly with the major airlines.

Talk is Cheap

Skype, a variant of VoIP, is a peer-to-peer software-based phone system that connects users directly via the Internet using their computers, cell phones, PDAs or other devices. The Skype software is downloaded for free, and users talk for free when connected Skype-to-Skype.

Skype commenced operations in August 2003, and one year later it had more than 9.5 million users with at least 500,000 connected at any given time. Michael Powell, a Skype user and then the Chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, said at a telecom conference in 2004, “I knew [the traditional telephone system] was over when I downloaded Skype . . . . The world will change now inevitably.” Today Skype has more than 100 million users with at least three million of them connected at any given time.

Skype utilized a Musashi stratagem – employing a disruptive technology to seize a critical advantage in a rapidly changing industry, and it is moving swiftly to provide services that will actually earn it money, such as enabling users to connect to land lines for as little as two cents per minute (“SkypeOut”). Seeing Skype’s potential, eBay acquired Skype for a breathtaking $2.6 billion in October 2005.

Friendly Skies

SouthWest Airlines launched its operations in 1971 with a strategy of avoiding direct competition with its many stronger and larger rivals. Its business model focused on short haul, high frequency, point-to-point routes, with low fares and friendly service but few luxuries (no first class or business class seats and no in-flight meals).

Herbert Kelleher, now SouthWest’s chairman, started the airline with this notion: “If you get your passengers to their destinations when they want to get there, on time, at the lowest possible fares, and make darn sure they have a good time doing it, people will fly your airline.” This folksy statement was a rather simplistic variation of a Sun Tzu stratagem: win by understanding the opposition and avoiding direct competition with stronger rivals.

SouthWest Airlines has been a profitable investment for its founders and shareholders alike. While many airlines have failed or entered bankruptcy in recent years, in 2005 SouthWest completed 33 consecutive years of profitability and was named by Fortune magazine as one of “American’s Most Admired Companies” for the ninth year in a row.

Skype and SouthWest Airlines are two prominent examples of these principles, but there are many others. Indeed, Musashi’s and Sun Tzu’s principles are applied every day as businesses are formed and managed and as investments are made.

Care Package

Consider Doctors' Choice, a homecare business serving senior citizens in the San Francisco, California, Bay Area. In 2004, Philip Lee, its founder and operations director, made the strategic decision to narrow the company’s focus to serve one of the most difficult types of patients to care for: senior citizens with Alzheimer’s or dementia. “In an industry that is all about individual care, we've found that customers won't settle for a big company trying to be all things to all people,” says Lee. “By specializing, we may never be the biggest homecare provider, but our high scores on customer satisfaction, retention, and word-of-mouth growth speak for themselves. We expect to continue to have healthy growth and satisfied customers for a long time to come.”

An additional benefit Lee found in narrowing his company's focus was an ability to better understand his customers' unique needs. This in-depth knowledge has allowed his company to develop proprietary approaches that larger companies often fail to see or have trouble justifying investment in. One such proprietary approach, using technology to collect relevant data, helps to coordinate and optimize the efforts of family members, doctors and healthcare professionals in caring for patients. “Our proprietary and patent-pending technologies are proving disruptive in what continues to be a staid, archaic and fragmented industry,” Lee says.

Easy Pay

In another example of Musashi’s and Sun Tzu’s principles applied to the present day, Finpago Inc. of Conshohoken, Pennsylvania, is taking advantage of disorder in the healthcare and electronic payment industries, and using knowledge of those industries, to create a service of potentially broad application.

The focus of Finpago’s service is the process of clearing specific healthcare products and services for payment with consumers’ pre-tax funds under employers’ Flexible Spending Account plans (FSAs) and the government’s Healthcare Savings Account plans (HSAs). These plans permit consumers to buy qualifying healthcare products and services with pre-tax monies, deducted from their paychecks or contributed to an HSA, which would otherwise be taxed as income. The bottleneck is sorting out and accounting for what qualifies for credit or reimbursement under the plans.

Finpago has developed a patent-pending service – “FSAok” – that serves as a clearinghouse for the collection and application of purchase data that qualify consumers for credit or reimbursement under their FSA or HSA plans. Finpago’s technology collects from participating merchants (typically leading pharmacy, grocery and mass merchant retailers) the necessary data about product qualification and enables consumers to use their FSA or HSA accounts to make eligible healthcare purchases from merchants without later having to submit paper receipts to their FSA/HSA administrators for reimbursement. This service even obviates the chore of having to separate eligible products from non-eligible products in the cashier’s check-out line.

According to Fred Hawkins, the founder and CEO of Finpago, more than 11 million households are using FSA or HSA accounts and buy more than $30 billion eligible products annually, but currently systems that use FSA/HSA debit cards to automate those purchases are unable to automate 30 percent of qualifying purchases and typically do not even work for many eligible over-the-counter products. Moreover, consumers presently use their FSA/HSA debit cards for less than 50 percent of eligible prescription purchases and only seven percent of eligible over-the-counter products. “As consumer awareness grows, and as more merchants and FSA/HSA administrators utilize Finpago’s technology, this will be a huge market,” says Hawkins. “We expect that Finpago will have a big piece of it.”

Hawkins attributes Finpago’s promising potential to a thorough understanding the relevant industries and to application of a disrupting technology. Finpago’s technology is all the more disruptive, he says, because it cuts across many different markets and industries – consumers, merchants, providers and manufacturers.

Virgin Territory

Finally, consider an inspiring example in the manufacturing industry – MBA Polymers Inc. of Richmond, California. This company manufactures three important plastics used in the durable goods and electronics industries, and it does so using less than five percent of the oil used by companies that produce plastics from scratch, the “virgin plastics producers.” It also gets rid of discarded junk in the process. With patented processes, it extracts these plastics (polypropylene, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene – ABS, and polystyrene) from thrown-away computers, cell phones, TVs, VCRs, refrigerators, and various broken or obsolete products that are otherwise filling up dump sites these days.

Mike Biddle, the CEO of MBA Polymers, points out that most recyclers of plastics merely produce a simple product, polyethylene terephthalate (PET), from plastic bottles and the like. “The opportunities for us are immense. Less than four percent of the complex plastics found in discarded products are recycled, compared with 95 percent for steel and aluminum,” he says. “We are using disruptive technologies to take business away from the big virgin plastic producers. There’s no point in competing directly with them.”

The World Economic Forum in Davos named MBA Polymers one of its 2005 Technology Pioneers. MBA has an R&D and demonstration center and pilot line in Richmond, California, and world-scale recycling plants in Guangzhou, China, and Kematen, Austria. These plants are built for less than $23 million, which is less than half the cost of a typical virgin plastics plant, and they are twenty times as energy-efficient.

Martial Arts Rewards

These companies – Skype, SouthWest Airlines, Doctors’ Choice, Finpago and MBA Polymers – are just a few of the businesses that are benefiting from application of the principles of Miyamoto Musashi and Sun Tzu, two of the greatest martial arts teachers of all time. Founders, managers, employees and investors of all businesses, who follow these principles and who practice in their own business lives the precepts of martial arts – study, harmony, character building, discipline, self-control, respect and compassion – will become rich and successful by all measures.

Vishing, A New Kind of Threat : Gina Hughes : Yahoo! Tech

Vishing, A New Kind of Threat : Gina Hughes : Yahoo! Tech

Fri Jan 26, 2007 11:58PM EST

With the popularity of Internet telephony, comes a new scam called Vishing. The gals over at Blogher, wrote a good conversation starter about it. Vishing is a phone scam that uses Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology to trick you into divulging personal or financial information over the phone. Criminals use this new technique to randomly dial customers in hopes of obtaining their credit card number complete with security codes, expiration date and other information. It's extremely important for VoIP users to be extra vigilant when receiving mysterious calls or emails that "alert" them of fraudulent activity on their credit card.

If you receive a call prompting you to dial a toll-free number, think twice before offering sensitive information, especially over an automated system. The call may appear legitimate, but what unsuspecting card holders don't know is that this new breed of criminals have software that can recognize telephone keystrokes, and any information they enter is being recorded. Once criminals get this information from you, they will not think twice about cleaning out your account. The scary part about this type of scam is that victims are often unsuspecting because the crime is being conducted offline. Since this is still a new type of technology, there is not much you can do in terms of installing software or some sort of encryption method. The best thing you can do is use common sense. It's better to call your credit card provider or bank if you suspect any illegal activity on your account.

How Phishing Sites Work
The Attack of the Big Phish
How to Spot a Phishing Scam

Help! Too Much Technology : Dory Devlin : Yahoo! Tech

Help! Too Much Technology : Dory Devlin : Yahoo! Tech

Help! Too Much Technology

Sun Jan 28, 2007 7:10PM EST

Does this scenario sound familiar? Prices on HDTVs have fallen to a place where you think, "Let's do it. We can always save money by installing it ourselves!" Only to find several hours and many frustrating rants later that it's not as easy as you'd hoped.

If it rings a sad little bell, you're in good company. Dr. Donald Norman, an enormously competent engineer who helped set up the technical standards for high-definition TV in the United States, didn't even try to set up his HDTV by himself. He hired professional installers. Technology changes so fast and the competitive pressure is so intense, Norman says in this CBS 60 Minutes episode called Get Me the Geeks, that many electronics products are pushed quickly to market before engineers have time to simplify them.

"Someone complained to me, you need a degree, an engineering degree, from MIT to work this damn thing," Norman tells 60 Minutes. "Well, I have an engineering degree from MIT, and I couldn't work it."

Sometimes, the technology we crave (and hope will make our lives better) is, simply, too much. We often get more than we need, want, and can easily figure out on our own with each new device we bring into our lives. Even after we pour through inch-thick manuals, and give it to our kids to tinker with.

Tell the truth: Do you really know how to work all the settings on your newest digital camera? Or do you point and shoot 98 percent of the time? And do you honestly know all the things you can do with your sleek new cell phone besides make calls, send text messages, and take photos? Tech manufacturers are doing a great job of marketing all these must-have add-ons, but often fall short of making all the functions intuitively easy to find and use.

I've got a Palm Treo 700p, and I make calls, get my email, surf the web, and record calendar items on it. But I know I haven't come close to mastering its full functionality and using all that I paid dearly for.

In the 60 Minutes segment, New York Times columnist David Pogue theorizes that many tech troubles often can be traced to the fact that there are so many cooks in the tech kitchen. Different companies make the computers, software, and drivers that need to work together for your one camera, for example. So odds are, there will be trouble at some point, followed by frustration.

Where are you on the too-much-tech meter? Have you gotten caught in a vortex of complicated tech setups and troubleshooting sessions? Or is all the new technology you've added at home and the office truly making life more fun and work more efficient? Step right up and unload your tech frustrations below!