Tuesday - January 6, 2009
Unless Apple is planning on unveiling an iCar, an iHome or an iBrain at Tuesday's Macworld Expo in San Francisco, the media focus will remain squarely on Steve Jobs; his absence, his health, his successors. That's as it should be, even with the "Dear Apple Community" letter from Jobs that the company released Monday, and an accompanying statement of support from Apple's board of directors. Still, I feel sorry for anyone who's wearing a press badge in the Moscone Center audience.
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Tuesday - January 6, 2009
If history were a reliable guide, a job hunter would stay as far away from the telecom field as possible. Ten years ago, telecoms could not hire enough people to keep up with the demand. The industry was investing millions, if not billions, in telephony and Internet infrastructure. Then the dot-com bubble burst, and many telecom staffers went on the dole for a year or more.
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Monday - January 5, 2009
Well, this is CES week, and I am eagerly waiting to fly to Las Vegas, participate in the Tiger Build Your Own PC race, and spend the following three weeks relearning how to walk. This year should be interesting because I'm getting weekly notices that the hotels are lowering room rates, and one of the vendors is letting me use one of its pre-paid rooms for free.
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Monday - January 5, 2009
Despite the daily onslaught of grim economic news, the need for skilled information technology staff remains stable, according to the Robert Half Technology IT Hiring Index and Skills Report, released earlier this month. Twelve percent of chief information officers polled in the survey said they planned to expand their IT departments in the first quarter of 2009.
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Sunday - January 4, 2009
Welcome to the latest BriefingsDirect Analyst Insights Edition, Vol. 35, a periodic discussion and dissection of software, services, SOA and compute cloud-related news and events with a panel of IT analysts. In this episode, our guests make their top five predictions for IT in 2009.
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Friday - January 2, 2009
Growth of the mobile broadband market happens along two major dimensions: subscribers and traffic. Specific growth drivers for both of these categories vary by geographic region, but in general, drivers can be divided into three major categories that are applicable to all the regions: evolution of useful mobile applications, carrier pricing and bundling strategies and replacement use cases for fixed-line broadband.
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Wednesday - December 31, 2008
Online retail saw a 3 percent year-over-year drop in sales between Nov. 1 and Dec. 23, according to research firm comScore, as economic hardships combined with a calendar that shortened consumers' usual buying period. The decline marked the first dip in online sales since comScore began tracking the figures in 2001.
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Tuesday - December 30, 2008
For those who like to feel like they've gotten a bargain whenever they make a purchase, 4Sale4Now.com could be a dream come true. The site lets retailers discount their products and services regularly, and it lets buyers to monitor these discounts and buy when they're deep enough to suit their fancy. It's akin to an auction model, but unlike sites like eBay, the prices on 4Sale4Now always go down.
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Monday - December 29, 2008
People don't like to change; particularly as we get older, we take comfort in the status quo and start avoiding things that are new and different. As we get older we gain more power and this generally places the most conservative people in positions of authority. Let's look at four companies this week and how they are likely to change in 2009/2010.
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Tuesday - December 23, 2008
Lorrie Thomas does not "sell, share or whore out" the personal information of any visitor who comes to her Lorrie Thomas Web Marketing site -- and she backs up this no-share promise in her privacy statement. Indeed, the entire document is a straightforward description of what the company will and will not do with personal data.
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Monday - December 22, 2008
This year was likely the last of an era where vendors could afford to shotgun out products and services and hope that buyers would take them. 2009 will be much harsher on practices like this, as funding will be very short and misses will be career limiting, severely for some. Looking back, there were a number of products we covered that stood out as being amazing, and one I can't picture living without at the moment.
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