Marketplace: Dungeons & Dragons goes digital

Marketplace: Dungeons & Dragons goes digital: "The role-playing board game for self-professed geeks is getting a facelift. David Chong takes a look at how it's being reinvented and going electronic."

Marketplace: Click-and-print replacing clip-and-save

If pinching pennies is one of your New Year's resolutions, take note: Coupons are going digital. Next week Valassis Communications plans to launch a website it hopes will reinvent the lowly paper coupon for the Internet age. Marketplace's Sam Eaton reports.
Marketplace: Click-and-print replacing clip-and-save

Future of IT: Web 3 0 and Web 4 0 will make social sites look quaint

Future of IT: Web 3 0 and Web 4 0 will make social sites look quaint: "With his 27-year government career, Brand Niemann, co-chairman of the Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice, seemed a likely choice to reflect on the past and future of government computing and what’s ahead for social networking and the Web.

Semantic interoperability — the ability of information systems to exchange data using a common vocabulary to guarantee that concepts and their interrelationships are not misinterpreted — is just one example Niemann cites of how technology can support data sharing. He sees the future of government computing as a place where knowledge is shared."

Bangkok's Independent Newspaper

Bangkok's Independent Newspaper: "Institute aims to encourage local software
To strengthen the country's software industry, Sripatum University is collaborating with Software Park Thailand and a private company, initially to establish the Information Science Institute."

Personal Technology - WSJ.com

Personal Technology - WSJ.com: "As the need for global communication increases, online translation services are in greater demand. Users are attracted to the breakneck speed at which online translation is done and the price. Those that aren't free are still fairly inexpensive.
New languages have been added to the traditional lists and Arabic, in particular, has been in demand recently. I spent the past few weeks tinkering with four free online services, translating various texts from English to Arabic and vice versa to test their speed and accuracy. I tested Google's Language Tools and services from Applied Language Solutions, WorldLingo Translations and Systran.
Customers who have been waiting for such services to be perfected will find improvements are slow in coming. Overall, I found the Arabic-English translations rife with syntactic and semantic errors -- from the merely too-literal to the laughably bad."

Andrew McAfee-Making Your Company Run Like a Ducati

My previous blog post on the benefits of commercial enterprise systems, which was a response to an article by Cynthia Rettig, generated some interesting comments, both on my blog and elsewhere. The ones that caught my eye argued that companies were digging themselves into a deep, dark, hole of complexity by deploying these technologies:
Andrew McAfee

Marketplace: Fiat takes road to building in U.S.

Scott Jagow: This morning, the dollar is weaker against the euro -- $1.47 buys one euro. Not much fun for American tourists visiting Europe, but it's serious business for European companies. The strong euro is killing their export business. There are rumblings that European companies like Airbus might build a factory in the U.S. And now, the car maker Fiat is saying that.
Marketplace: Fiat takes road to building in U.S.

Report: Many U.S. Parents Outsourcing Child Care Overseas | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

Report: Many U.S. Parents Outsourcing Child Care Overseas | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

NPR : Thailand Celebrates King's 80th Birthday

[Ed note: 2007 class went to Bangkok. Long Live the King!]

NPR : Thailand Celebrates King's 80th Birthday: "Morning Edition, December 5, 2007 · Thailand celebrates the 80th birthday of its king. The birthday party comes just weeks before Thailand elects a new civilian government, a year after its last prime minister was ousted in a military coup. King Bhumibol Adulyadej gave a speech urging the country to resolve its differences. "

Soaring Above Traffic In a Flying Car Sooner Than You Think. | Autopia from Wired.com

Soaring Above Traffic In a Flying Car Sooner Than You Think. | Autopia from Wired.com: " The flying car has been a dream pursued by inventors since the dawn of aviation and a fantasy long held by commuters wishing they could soar above traffic like George Jetson."

The IT Factor: Tech Staff's Bigger Role - WSJ.com

The IT Factor: Tech Staff's Bigger Role - WSJ.com: "As Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings was finalizing a $3 billion deal to become the official clinical laboratory for a unit of UnitedHealth Group in mid-2006, it ran into an obstacle. So LabCorp turned to an unusual savior: its chief information officer.

Under the 10-year deal, LabCorp, a Burlington, N.C., operator of clinical laboratories, had to open 400 specimen-collection centers nationwide for the UnitedHealth unit within a three-month period that included Thanksgiving and Christmas. While LabCorp knew it could find and occupy the facilities in that time period, it was unsure whether it could connect them all to LabCorp's computer network. Scott Walton, LabCorp's CIO, had anticipated the problem. Mr. Walton had his information-technology, or IT, department test off-the-shelf 'air cards' that used the cellular-phone network as an Internet connection. Using those devices, LabCorp was able to open the centers in time. 'Having Scott and IT as part of the team during the United negotiations was an enormous advantage,' says LabCorp Chief Executive Officer David King.

Mr. King isn't the only business leader who is finding that he needs to tie his business deals more closely with his company's IT department. According to a study by Diamond Management & Technology Consultants Inc., of Chicago, 87% of business leaders say they believe that IT is critical to their companies' strategic success. The study finds that few businesses have yet positioned IT in a way that allows it to achieve this. Only 33% of business leaders say IT is very involved in developing their company's strategy, and 30% say the business executive in charge of strategy works closely with IT, according to the Diamond study. That has an impact on performance: 76"

Business Technology : IT Struggling? Put a Business Person in Charge

Business Technology : IT Struggling? Put a Business Person in Charge: "Here’s a suggestion for companies struggling to get value from their information-technology departments: put a business person in charge. "

Don't Fear the Wiki! Business Can Benefit -- Socialtext -- Confluence -- StructuredWikis

Fear is one of the obstacles keeping businesses from realizing productivity gains by using internal wikis. But the business gains -- collaboration, informed employees, sense of community -- may outweigh any risks.
Don't Fear the Wiki! Business Can Benefit -- Socialtext -- Confluence -- StructuredWikis

Low-Cost -- and Free -- Collaboration Tools -- Zoho -- GoToMeeting -- Yugma

Project management, shared calendars, contact lists, and other collaborative software can be pricey. Companies such as Zoho, Yugma, and Google aim to provide cost effective solutions. Are they right for your business?
Low-Cost -- and Free -- Collaboration Tools -- Zoho -- GoToMeeting -- Yugma

How to Get Ahead By Going Backward - WSJ.com

When it comes to advancing a career, sometimes the best way to take a step forward is to take a step back.

For most people, a promotion is the cure for a stagnating career. They've accomplished and learned all they can at one job, so they aim for the next one up the ladder, hoping it will bring them bigger personal and financial rewards.
How to Get Ahead By Going Backward - WSJ.com