Eating while Driving Called Bigger Distraction than Hand-Held Cell Phones

In a recent analysis of 32,303 U.S. drivers, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that eating was a bigger distraction than using a hand-held cell phone while driving. Hagerty Classic Insurance issued a list of the 10 most dangerous foods to eat while driving. From bad to worst, they are: chocolate, soft drinks, jelly and cream-filled donuts, fried chicken, any barbecued food, juicy hamburgers, chili, tacos, hot soups and coffee.

RFID - there's a piece in a recent magazine (don't ask me if it's Forbes or Newsweek or BusinessWeek or Fortune or Red Herring or NetEconomy or eWeek or WirelessNews or WirelessWeek or RCR or even the WSJ or more...I read them all) about WallMart using RFID..."...when it reaches a penny a tag". Clothing and other retail stores are adopting this, faster than you can say "bluetooth". One company, StitchNetworks (funny name!) has a business based on this. Others areas that will be technologically enabled include: supply chain management, m-commerce and general retail efficiency. It will help reduce "shrinkage" too - but not the swimming pool kind.

Some retailers (like The GAP) are piloting TI's RFID tags for supply chain management and point of sale solutions, but Prada is demonstrating a less mundane application of the technology: Prada is trying to create a next-generation, high-tech shopping experience that will encourage its customers to keep buying high-end items. In the Prada implementation, an RFID tag is attached to each clothing item. The store may have additional plans to implement the tags into store processes, but the only announced application is a trigger from the tag to start a product related, touch screen application in the dressing room. The tags can also be used to aid the floor salespeople. Theoretically, an employee on the store floor with a mobile device can associate the product ID with related product information on the handheld device.

How about that MCI/WorldCom? They launched a service in "32 states and 53 million households" called The Neighborhood built by MCI. It's a flat-rate offering for $49.99 that offers for a single price "unlimited any-distance" calling. Not bad. It is unlcear if this service is for regulators to keep upen unbundled network elements (in 1999 the FCC decided that ILECs don't have to offer UNEs for CLECs when there are three or more lines/sub and it's a top 50 market)....then...today Bernie Ebbers quits. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

Newspaper sites top choice for local news

Research released by the Newspaper Association of America says Web surfers searching for local news online are most likely to look to online newspapers. The telephone survey of 2,000 online consumers in February found 62 percent go to newspaper sites, while 55 percent go to Yahoo (YHOO), local TV station sites draw 39 percent, and America Online (AOL) is the choice of 37 percent. In addition, the longer someone has been an online user, the more likely he is to turn to online newspapers for news and information, the NAA reported during the group's annual convention now underway in New Orleans.

The combination of the internet and wireless technology have forever changed the paradigm of the telephone company. The network of copper, with all its wires in walls and trenches, and all the poles and termination equipment made "churn" an unknown quantity after the consolidation of the wireline telephone network 80 years ago. These capital intensive connectors to centralized databases were expensive, took a long time to install, and were resistant to technology upgrades. Well, wireless equipment is also still expensive (getting cheaper all the time) - but - it's not nearly as resistant to upgrades; the good stuff is made for it. The databases are not purely centralized any longer, but distributed, and a wireless network can go up in weeks. Spectrum efficiency keeps increasing, faster - believe it or not - than demand. It is entirely possible to conceive of lots of different networks all co-existing that you "surf" on and off of with your multi-modal mobile device. Because of the close ties to the topography and local structure ownership, the physical networks would still have an element of local control. Especially since businesses are private property, and the "local" unlicensed spectrum will stay under their control. Like parking and ambiance, some stores and malls will advertise that they have the best wireless coverage and data speeds. The current concept of churn will cease to exist, sometime in the next 50 years.

Everybody thought that the wireless data would tax the supply of spectrum, but that's not happened. Wireless consolidation appears to be more "elimination of competition" than lowering cost structure to decrease cost to the consumer. Want to eliminate churn? Kill competition. Let the economic forces consolidate the industry back into the cozy duopoly it was for the first 15 years instead of the last 5. The result will be: higher prices, less competition, no new features, worse customer service and an general stifling of economic growth from the sector. But....churn will be much lower....until the final step....in a startling move, the U.S. government will seize the telecom licenses of all commercial carriers and operate them on ONE SINGLE NETWORK - yea, that's the ticket - just like the old Ma Bell. Then, churn will be...ZERO.

Later this year QUALCOMM will be releasing their 6000 series ASICs. These have two great/new features. First, as the second generation 3G chips they have worked on reducing chip count through the ZIF architicture. While a blow to SAWTEK, this will eliminate the need for IF chips on the phones. Next, they have made the chip compatible with NAND flash rather than all prior chips which just work with NOR flash. Why is this important? Well, the cost of handsets is driven (like MP3 players) in no small part by memory costs. Color screens, WAP browsers and other ancillary equipment need more memory than other handset functions. NAND flash will make gobs more available cheap....now...for a primer on NAND vs. NOR flash...read on...

NAND vs NOR memory for mobile phones...

Intel's future dominance in the mobile wireless market could be threatened by its decision to focus on producing only one type of flash memory architecture, known as NOR.

"There are two dramatically different types of flash; there's the NOR technology, and there's NAND technology," said Steve Cullen, an analyst with Cahners In-Stat Group, in Phoenix. "NOR technology is traditionally used in PCs for the BIOS and most cell phones. NAND is the stuff going in flash cards that are used for data storage, like on digital cameras, and digital music players."

Morales said that while all cell phones currently use NOR-type chips that Intel manufactures, he expects NAND, which is most often used to store large amounts of data, will likely be used in future mobile phones and emerging wireless handheld devices.

"NOR has been the dominant technology in the mobile wireless space and will be for the next couple of years," Morales said. "But NAND has a cost advantage on a per-bit basis, and most flash suppliers are planning to do some sort of NAND implementation. Intel's sort of following their own route, but I definitely see the market going toward some sort of NAND implementation."

A spokesman for Intel's flash memory division rejected that assertion.

"NAND is for large, slow, bulk data storage, similar to a hard drive," said Dan Francisco, a spokesman for the flash division, in Folsom, Calif. "NOR makes perfect sense for cell phones; it has, and it will continue."

But another analyst, Alan Niebel, of Web-Feet, said NAND will likely gain a hold in future mobile wireless devices.

"There is place for it, and a variety of companies are building NAND/ SRAM [static RAM] combo solutions to address it, including Toshiba [America Inc.], Samsung [Electronics Co. Ltd.], Fujitsu and AMD," Niebel said. "Intel does have some weakness in terms of competing costwise vs. NAND for high-density, low-cost flash solutions."

From a recent analyst briefing on Q1 in wireless...family plans are growing and now accounting for 20-30% new activiations...little uplift from data (recall that during their conference call SprintPCS said that $1 out of their $61 ARPU was for data - I guess the black raincoat guy turns women on, but they STILL don't run out and use their data phone) will keep ARPU flat or even a decline in '02...more big bucket/bad subs AND more "emergency" plans are being sold...and finally...more landline replacement is going on

gave a short talk the other day in NYC. As one guy put it "telecom was the pariah for 6 months, now it seems to slowly be getting back in vogue". Sure does not feel like it. we keep working and working, paring and paring, and still complaints. One big revelation over the past 10 years has been the massive groupthink virtually each collection of people in the same time/place seems to undergo. first, every poor/single mom was a welfare queen (the 80s). If only we'd reform welfare. next, every dad is deadbeat in the '90s and today. Turns out that even "respected social scientists" like Dr. Elaine Sorenson, who was responsible for the single biggest piece of misinformation of a decade when, through a colossally lame piece of mathematical bumbling declared that there was $34B of unpaid child support, are not immune. Turns out it was more like $3B, and, most of the unpaid part of that was from dads who were IN JAIL. Well, that still seems to be the conventional wisdom, but slowly this little bit of misinformation is slipping away as DNA tests are revealing the astonishing unfaithfulness of so many. And the realization that that there are always cheats and deadbeats, but most parents are fundamentally good. looking for a single scapegoat rarely is good public policy. Now the feds are going after financial analysts, as if they are single-handedly to blame for the greed of the late '90s that most of the country participated in. give me a break. every analyst that bucked the CW was either maligned as an idiot or fired. Bubble's of economic "growth" have been occurring since the beginning of time. Isaac Newton lost tons on a similar bubble. Then there was tulipmania. It's just that now there are "analysts", and, somebody for people to blame.

well well well. You can come late to the party and still have fun. This blog is only 6 months old, and I'm looking for a new template, so contact me if you have any fun ideas. My wife, a Stanford trained graphic artist, thinks this is a silly way to spend time...what does she know! TechTV, Wired magazine...that means Newsweek is only 6 months away. But for real fun they need to be wireless - BIG WIRELESS that is - faciliated by mobile phones with cameras. And BTW, I felt like an idiot posting a couple of short articles, but it seems like the "log part of blog" concept has been extended to for-profit newsletters. hmmm...

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (CBS.MW) -- A Pennsylvania State University researcher says the popularity of sex on the Internet may be over-rated.

Dr. Amanda Spink reviewed search requests of Excite.com and found 8.5 percent of queries last May were for sex-related or pornographic Web sites, down from 16.8 percent in May 1997. By comparison, searches involving commerce, travel and jobs rose from 13.3 percent for 24.7 during the same period, she said.

"The content of the Web has shifted toward commerce sites," she explained. "Also, the nature of people who search the Web has changed. In '97, you probably had a higher proportion of university people, of young guys who knew about computers. Now you have more the average person, and the average person may not be as interested in sex and pornography." She added that almost 10 percent of Web searches were in languages other than English.