Miscellaneous

I've taken heat in the past for writing about network "god boxes" (author's note: historic industry term, not mine) so let's just agree to refer to said systems as "super boxes." Just what is a super box? A honkin' big system that combines processing and network I/O capabilities. These systems were pure vision in the past, but a modern combination of cheap processors, global software development talent, and stable scalable operating systems makes them a reality today.

When I think of these network super boxes, I think of vendors like A10 Networks, … Read more

Guy Kawasaki recently interviewed Chunka Mui to discuss Mui and Paul Carroll's new book, Billion-Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last 25 Years. All the problems that Mui lists make lots of sense and I could offer plenty of my own examples from high tech and elsewhere.

Companies overestimate the power that comes with additional size.

Companies underestimate the complexity that comes with additional size.

Companies overestimate their hold on customers.

People routinely overpay for acquisitions. But you already knew that.

However, I think … Read more

In the 1980s, New York City undertook a huge project to begin metering residential water service and charging for individual apartment and condo water use rather than simply assessing a flat fee as had been the norm. It was as huge and contentious a project as one would imagine. Why go to all this trouble and expense?

Well, you hardly have to be a radical free market economic thinker to accept that there's generally a connection between how much something costs and how much people consume. The higher the price, the less you use. In this case, the incentives … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Nearly half of kids age 8 to 12 years old own cell phones in the U.S., in what could be the next big cell phone demographic for the mobile industry, according to a Nielsen report released here Wednesday at the CTIA Fall 2008 trade show.

Nielsen says that 46 percent of the 20 million young consumers known as "tweens" are using mobile phones. On average kids get their first cell phone between the ages of 10 and 11 years old. About 55 percent of tweens, who own cell phones, send text messages and 21 percent download … Read more

Roz Savage, the Brit who aims to become the first woman to row solo across the Pacific, is back on land for the first time in nearly 100 days and is marking a milestone.

She arrived in Hawaii on Monday morning, completing the first of three legs of her journey across the Pacific Ocean. That's after setting off from San Francisco in her 24-foot rowboat known as the "Brocade" just before midnight on May 24. In all, she rowed about 2,600 miles.

Savage was met by family, friends, other well-wishers, and the media. After she landed … Read more

The Hyundai IT booth at the IFA electronics fair in Berlin got some unwanted visitors on Saturday: German customs police.

Police seized flat-screen TVs from the South Korean company's booth as visitors watched, according to Reuters. The raid followed Thursday's German court ruling that Hyundai IT and other companies were planning to display unlicensed patented tech at the fair, Reuters said. A customs official told the wire service that 69 raids had been authorized.

The official wouldn't name the other companies but said about 170 TVs, 140 digital audio players, 21 cell phones, and 57 DVD recorders … Read more

Google on Thursday announced Android Market, an online center that will let people find, buy, download, and rate applications and other content for mobile phones equipped with the open-source operating system.

Attracting developer attention is a key part of the Google-led Android software effort, and those who produce applications will have an easy time getting them to the market, Eric Chu of Google's Android project said in a Thursday blog post.

"Similar to YouTube, content can debut in the marketplace after only three simple steps: register as a merchant, upload and describe your content and publish it," … Read more

In the wake of a computer failure that caused delays for 646 U.S. flights on Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration plans to upgrade its decades-old technology for flight-plan processing and potentially add a third backup system.

The FAA's central system in Atlanta for handling all U.S. flight plans went down Tuesday because of a corrupted file, according to a FAA representative. Then, when the administration's secondary and lone backup system in Salt Lake City got bogged down with repeated re-entries of flight plans from the airlines, the malfunction caused major delays at airports in Atlanta, Boston, … Read more

U.S. consumers are feeling more confident about the economy than they were last month and continue to plan to spend more on technology in the coming 12 months, according to two surveys conducted by the Consumer Electronics Association and CNET and released on Tuesday.

Both the CEA-CNET Index of Consumer Expectations (ICE), which measures consumer expectations about the broader economy, and the CEA-CNET Index of Consumer Technology Expectations (ICTE), which gauges consumer expectations about technology spending, showed rises for the month of August.

The ICE hit 165.5 points in August, in a range of 100 to 300 points, … Read more