May 212008
 

Excellent MediaPost article today by Steve Smith, longtime reporter for Media Industry Newsletter, an Access Intelligence property. Steve writes about a new way NearbyNow, the company that adds new media channels to mall shopping, is using mobile to spur retail sales. The company offered SMS sale information for some time. (Unfortunately at no malls near […]

May 152008
 

Lots of good reporting lately on the $13.9B purchase of EDS by HP. Many are saying its the clearest sign yet that cloud computing has fully arrived. Others say the purchase is more about buying market share and becoming the world’s #2 IT outsourcing company, behind IBM. Rob Hof of BusinessWeek has a really good […]

May 102008
 

Gabriele and I are just back from a visit to San Francisco. Of course we did a Napa Valley day, and that will soon provide content for a nice long post. We finished a fun day of vineyard visits and tastings with dinner at Greystone restaurant, a fantastic place operated by the Wine Spectator and […]

May 072008
 

Saw an interesting news item that broke Monday courtesy of DomainNameNews and SlashDot that hasn’t been broadly covered yet. Apparently VeriSign has been awarded a patent for the resolution of mis-typed domain names. This was at the heart of the controversy back in 2003 around their SiteFinder Service. Amidst a storm of criticism ICANN insisted […]

May 012008
 

RCR Wireless broke a story last week about AT&T buying millions of femtocells from British company ip.access LTD. According to research and banking firm ThinkPanmure, AT&T plans to offer the devices for as little as $100. http://www.rcrnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080424/FREE/895619934/1014/rss01 Why is this important? Because femtocells can solve two critical wireless problems — poor indoor cell coverage for […]

Apr 272008
 
RIM Battles Apple for the $79 PC Market

(graphic credit New York Times) Interesting article in the Times today about the battle between Research In Motion (RIM) and Apple for dominance of the smartphone market. Smartphones are becoming so capable these days I call them $79 personal computers. As the article notes, until the introduction of the iPhone the market was focused on […]

Apr 222008
 
New Shoes for the 530

I bought a 2001 530 back in September. BMW made the E39 5 Series from 1997 through 2003. It is a fantastic mix of comfort and performance, and in the opinion of many the last “classic” body style before the 5 Series design went in a very different, modernistic direction. Here’s how Edmunds described the […]

Apr 202008
 
Trends in Government Contracting -- Some Turbulence Ahead

Friday morning I attended an interesting event put on by the Association for Corporate Growth, National Chapter. ACG National is a who’s who of the DC business community and puts on quality events. I’ve been a member for two years and volunteer on their marketing committee: http://www.acgcapital.org/ On Friday Stan Soloway was addressing trends in […]

Apr 162008
 
Excellent Evening at Evo Bistro

Saturday night Gabriele and I had a very enjoyable experience at Evo Bistro in Mclean. It describes itself as a “tapas and wine tasting bar” and was recommended by a friend. Here’s the Post’s take from last November: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/21/AR2007112100830.html It was clear something was up as soon as we arrived. There was an air of conviviality about […]

Apr 112008
 
U.S. Now Ranked Head of the Class for Internet?

European researchers this week issued a report that portrayed the U.S. Internet infrastructure in a positive light. The study was commissioned by the World Economic Forum, and conducted by Insead, a business school near Paris. It ranked the United States fourth, behind just Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland. This struck me as strange. Turns out the […]

Apr 072008
 

How consumers are tracked online has been an issue for years. Until recently the main vehicle for this tracking has been the cookie, a small file placed on a visitor’s browser that identifies repeat visits and online activity. The latest chapter of this debate to reach critical media mass concerns Internet Service Providers (ISPs) contracting […]

Apr 022008
 
Happy Birthday M3

This month my M3 turns nine. It was built in April 1999, one of the last E36 M3s (BMW speak for the 3 series body style from 1992-1999) ever built. The design of the M3 version goes back to 1994, yet it’s still more fun to drive than 99% of the cars out there today. […]