Nintendo's Low-Tech TV Is Long On Charm
You almost have to feel sorry for Microsoft and Sony. After pouring powerful technology and all sorts of extra features into their video-game consoles, the comparatively simple Nintendo Wii and its cutesy family-oriented games proved the bigger hit with consumers. Now Nintendo wants to put pressure on its rivals with a dedicated video service, one that seems riddled with technological and content-related weaknesses but which might still win over consumers with its low-tech charm and demographic reach.

Nintendo's planned video-on-demand service--reportedly called "Wiinoma"--has some obvious disappointments. It is so far only slated for launch in Japan, potentially excluding a large chunk of Wii owners. Even if the service spreads to Europe and the United States later in 2009, don't expect to be watching favorites like Lost or The Wire straight away. Only videos exclusively made for the Wii will be available, with media firms like Fuji Television (other-otc: FJTNF - news - people ) and Nippon Television (other-otc: NPTVF - news - people ) reportedly planning cartoons, entertainment shows and other original programming for the launch.

The Wii console itself has its limitations when it comes to video playback, a sign that Nintendo (nasdaq: NTDOY - news - people ) never really intended to sell it as a mixed-media box. You can't play DVDs on the Wii, and its puny 512-megabyte storage memory is barely enough to store game downloads and save positions--let alone video footage. Trying to sell the Wii as a video-focused console will therefore be tough, no matter how many Japanese cartoons or cookery shows are available for streaming.

Compare this with the Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people ) Playstation 3 and Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people )'s Xbox 360, which have trailed the Wii in worldwide sales since 2007. Both consoles can play DVDs, both offer movie downloads and both have online video stores selling television shows from the likes of Fox and TimeWarner. Hard-drive space varies, but customers can upgrade at their leisure or fork out for a big-memory bundle: the Xbox 360 offers a 120-gigabyte model, while the Playstation 3 can be bought with 160 gigabytes of storage space. Wii users are stuck with their 512 megabytes.

But Nintendo is no fool, and the company might find a different kind of advantage in a stripped-down, exclusive-for-Wii video service. Advertisers are already interested by the Wii's success, given that advertising agency Dentsu is launching the channel with Nintendo, and free-to-watch videos may end up doing more for the Nintendo brand and its products than pay-per-view movies and television shows would.

"Nintendo could have an advertising advantage," said Michael McGuire, an analyst with Gartner Research. "With the interactive nature of the games, you've got Wiis that are in homes and exercise classes, and that's a pretty interesting demographic."

Why Tech Can't Cure Medical Inflation

Lee Gomes, 12.18.08, 06:00 PM EST
Forbes Magazine dated January 12, 2009

Computers in medicine aren't a cure. They might even make the system sicker.

the private equity giant leads funding round in biofuel startup Coskata.

Traveling for business is supposed to be practical, but pack a few high-tech toys as travel companions and it might actually turn out to be fun, too.

Mark Ashley, who writes the business travel blog Travel Better and reports clocking more than 70,000 miles each year in the air, says gadgets help business travelers feel at home by making their time on the road not only efficient but also enjoyable. "If you're away from friends and family, you want to make sure you're comfortable, even pampered," Ashley says.

Travel technology has to do more than keep customers comfy, though. Ashley knows that these toys need to be efficient and reliable--even when airports and hotels aren't. That's why he breaks them down into clear, useful categories: stuff to help you find your way (like portable GPS systems), stuff to help you communicate (like electronic translators), stuff to make air travel tolerable (like noise-canceling headphones), and stuff to keep your other stuff working (like universal chargers). Put them altogether, Ashley says, and it should be smooth flying.

In Pictures: 10 Gadgets Business Travelers Need

Joining in the appreciation of travel gadgets is Mika Lepisto, head of Travel Gear Blog (travelgearblog.com) and director of Portland, Ore.-based BootsnAll, a network of 60-plus travel blogs. Like Ashley, Lepisto says he doesn't just write about flying off to far-away places, he also does it, taking up to eight domestic business trips a year. Speaking from experience, Lepisto reminds travelers to take only the gadgets that they really need. "When you travel on a business trip, you have a purpose," he says, and so should the things you bring.

What pragmatic gadgets would he recommend? At the moment, he's loving his T-Mobile G1, which he says makes a great business tool. "If you use Google apps, it'll sync from Google to the phone," Lepisto says. "It's not going to be useful for Fortune 500 companies, but small businesses, a lot of them use the Google products. I also like the full keyboard." When it comes to typing e-mails, he points out, a full keyboard means fewer keystrokes and less stress on the road.

First and foremost in the briefcase of a businessperson on the go is a laptop, preferably one that is ultra portable for traveling ease, says Lepisto, who recommends aiming for something light and small like the Eee PC. "It's easier to get it in and out of your bag at the airport, if you need to check your e-mail really quickly, or for the security inspections," he says. Though these mini laptops may only be good for browsing the Internet, writing e-mails and running a presentation or two, what travelers lose in technical prowess they gain in the ability to fit their computers on airplane tray tables.

Sure, a small laptop makes sense, but only the seasoned business travelers know the little things, like which mouse to buy. The answer: laser mice, since they're more responsive on desks without mouse pads, like those in hotel rooms.

President-elect's emphasis on the environment means more work for CIOs.

ITHACA, New York (AP) -- The thought of a driverless, computer-guided car transporting people where they want to go on demand is a futuristic notion to some.

To Jacob Roberts, podcars -- or PRTs, for personal rapid transit -- represent an important component in the here-and-now of transportation.

"It's time we design cities for the human, not for the automobile," said Roberts, president of Connect Ithaca, a group of planning and building professionals, activists and students committed to making this upstate New York college town the first podcar community in the United States.

"In the podcar ... it creates the perfect blend between the privacy and autonomy of the automobile with the public transportation aspect and, of course, it uses clean energy," Roberts said.

With the oil crisis reaching a zenith and federal lawmakers ready to begin fashioning a new national transportation bill for 2010, Roberts and his colleagues think the future is now for podcars -- electric, automated, lightweight vehicles that ride on their own network separate from other traffic.

Unlike mass transit, podcars carry two to 10 passengers, giving travelers the freedom and privacy of their own car while reducing the use of fossil fuels, reducing traffic congestion and freeing up space now monopolized by parking.

At stations located every block or every half-mile, depending on the need, a rider enters a destination on a computerized pad, and a car would take the person nonstop to the location. Stations would have slanted pull-in bays so that some cars could stop for passengers, while others could continue unimpeded on the main course.

"It works almost like an elevator, but horizontally," said Roberts, adding podcar travel would be safer than automobile travel.

The podcar is not entirely new. A limited version with larger cars carrying up to 15 passengers was built in 1975 in Morgantown, West Virginia, and still transports West Virginia University students.

Next year, Heathrow Airport outside London will unveil a pilot podcar system to ferry air travelers on the ground. Companies in Sweden, Poland and Korea are already operating full-scale test tracks to demonstrate the feasibility. Designers are planning a podcar network for Masdar City, outside Abu Dhabi, which is being built as the world's first zero-carbon, zero-waste city.

Meanwhile, more than a dozen cities in Sweden are planning podcar systems as part of the country's commitment to be fossil-fuel-free by 2020, said Hans Lindqvist, a councilman from Varmdo, Sweden, and chairman of Kompass, an association of groups and municipalities behind the Swedish initiative.

"Today's transportation system is reaching a dead end," said Lindqvist, a former member of the European parliament.

Cars have dominated the cityscape for nearly a century, taking up valuable space while polluting the air, said Magnus Hunhammar, chief executive officer of the Stockholm-based Institute for Sustainable Transportation, the world's leading center on podcar technology.

"Something has to change," he said. "We aren't talking about replacing the automobile entirely. We are adding something else into the transportation strategy."

Skeptics, however, question whether podcars can ever be more than a novelty mode of transportation, suitable only for limited-area operations, such as airports, colleges and corporate campuses. Detractors, mainly light-rail advocates, say a podcar system would be too complex and expensive.

"It is operationally and economically unfeasible," said Vukan Vuchic, a professor of transportation and engineering at the University of Pennsylvania who has written several books on urban transportation.

"In the city, if you have that much demand, you could build these guideways and afford the millions it would take, but you wouldn't have capacity. In the suburbs, you would have capacity, but the demand would be so thin you couldn't possibly pay for those guideways, elevated stations, control systems and everything else," Vuchic said.

Podcars typically run on an elevated guideway or rails, but they also can run at street level. As a starting point, pilot podcar networks can be built along existing infrastructure, supporters say.

Ithaca Mayor Carol Peterson said a podcar network could be part of her upstate city's long-range transportation plans and its mission of developing urban neighborhoods that are environmentally sustainable and pedestrian-friendly. Ithaca has a long history of progressive achievements -- this summer, it began the first community-wide car sharing program in upstate New York.

In Ithaca, a network could connect the downtown business district and main business boulevard with the campuses of Cornell University and Ithaca College, which sit on hillsides flanking the city. When the two colleges are in session, Ithaca's population balloons from about 30,000 to about 80,000, causing big-city congestion on the city's roads.

Santa Cruz, California, recently hired a contractor to design a small solar-powered podcar system that would loop through the city's downtown and along its beach front.

The Institute for Sustainable Transportation predicts a podcar system will be installed in an American city within the next five years, although it is likely to cost tens of millions of dollars. Because of the huge initial investment, funding would have to come from both public and private sectors, IST officials said.

The capital cost is about $25 million to $40 million per mile, which includes guideways, vehicles and stations, compared with $100 million to $300 million a mile for light-rail or subway systems, according to the IST.

Although the plan for Ithaca is only in the conceptual stages, Roberts sees the city as a logical place for the country's first community-wide podcar network, noting that construction of the Erie Canal across upstate New York in the early 1800s revolutionized commercial transportation in a young America.

"Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany are connected along a single line, the Erie Canal. Now, they are connected by the (New York State) Thruway. It would be easy to adapt. You could have a high-speed rail line, or even buses, deliver travelers to the podcar stations, and the podcars take them wherever they want to go in the city," he said.

But podcar developers say they have overcome most technological obstacles and now must overcome the political and cultural barriers that lie ahead, equating it to the mind-set revolution that occurred when Americans hitched up their horses for good to become a nation of motorists.

"We are introducing an alternative to the automobile for the first time in 100 years," said Christopher Perkins, chief executive officer of Unimodal Transport Solutions, a California company that builds podcars that operate on magnetic levitation instead of wheels.

"But if you look back 100 years, you saw that we made the transition from the horse to the car. I think we are ready to make another transition," he said.

Analysts say third-quarter results are likely to be dragged down by the global economic crisis

High tech, an industry that once seemed shielded from the U.S. financial crisis, has grown increasingly vulnerable. Evidence will begin arriving of just how much impact the meltdown has had on some of the nation's biggest tech companies when they release results for the third quarter and issue outlooks for the make-or-break yearend period.

The Nasdaq stock market has tumbled, and analysts have slashed growth and share-price forecasts for a range of tech bellwethers, from chipmakers to consumer electronics giants to vendors of telecommunications gear, as customers tighten their belts and slash spending plans. Companies reporting in the coming days and weeks include Intel (INTC), eBay (EBAY), Apple (AAPL), and Google (GOOG).

Falling demand for computers and the chips needed to run them is likely to show up in results released by Intel, the world's largest semiconductor maker, which reports on Oct. 14. Analysts expect Intel to report a 34¢ per-share profit on sales of $10.27 billion, but they'll be on the lookout for any signal that they should reduce fourth-quarter projections for profit of 40¢ per share on sales of $10.87 billion. Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) reports on Oct. 16; analysts see it posting third-quarter sales of $1.4 billion and a loss of 40¢ a share. They expect a 25¢-per-share loss on sales of $1.6 billion for the fourth quarter.

A Lower-Cost Apple Laptop?

On Oct. 9 market researcher iSuppli trimmed its forecast for 2008 worldwide semiconductor revenue growth by a half-percentage point, to $280 billion. "We had already begun to see signs of problems among chip companies before the credit crisis hit," says iSuppli analyst Dale Ford. Gartner (IT) said sales of semiconductor capital equipment, the gear chipmakers use in their factories, will decline more than 25% this year and continue to slide in 2009.

The first big computer maker to release figures for the September quarter is Apple (AAPL), which reports on Oct. 21. There's growing concern that Apple may be experiencing a slowdown (BusinessWeek.com, 09/24/08) in Mac sales. "Cracks may be starting to form in its PC business, where the firm has enjoyed growth driven by the iPod and iPhone halo effect, and by broad-based share gains," wrote FBR Research analyst Craig Berger in a research note issued on Oct. 8. Berger estimates that Apple has cut its orders by 17%. The company is expected to report sales of $8.07 billion and per-share profit of $1.11. For the December period, Apple is expected to record $10.83 billion in sales and a $1.70 per-share profit.

Apple is also set to take the wraps off a new line of notebooks on Oct. 14. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster says he expects Apple to reveal, among other things, a notebook that sells for $899 to $999, less than the company's other computers. A lower-priced notebook would help explain a drop in gross margins that the company warned about (BusinessWeek.com 07/22/08) when it last reported earnings in July.

In Pictures: Ten Technology Cravings

 

In February, John Blanchard took to his blog and declared, "My name is John and I am a technology addict."

The 27-year-old California musician was logging so many hours on Google Reader, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and video-sharing site Vimeo that he was neglecting family and friends.

"I love being able to connect with people around the world from so many different places," he wrote. "My problem is I can go overboard with new technology I find and let it take over my life."

It's a quandary that's snaring more people as technology pervades society. In 2002, 63% of Americans said it would be "very hard" to give up their landline telephones and 47% said giving up their televisions would be tough. By 2007, they had switched their allegiance to cell phones and the Internet, according to a survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The shift to mobile and Web-based technology has increased addictive behavior, say experts.

Kimberly Young, director of the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery, has studied technology addiction for 14 years. Her early studies focused on Internet gambling, chat rooms and pornography. These days, she has plenty of clients obsessed with Facebook and immersive, multi-user Web games like "World of Warcraft."

"In the 1990s, one thing or game would be addictive," she says. "Now it's multiple things; people go from one to the next and never leave the Internet."

Want more? Check out "Ten Technology Cravings."

Technology applications can qualify as addictive if they consume users' time to the point of damaging their relationships, says Young. "The problem is when technology replaces other forms of contact," she explains. "If a young person isn't on the baseball team or in the school band because he has isolated himself in this way, that's a concern."

Most (96%) compulsive Internet users struggle with time management problems, according to Young's research. Other common problems are issues involving relationships (85%), sex (75%), work (71%), finances (42%), physical well-being (29%) and academic performance (15%). Psychologists who treat Internet addiction typically categorize it as an impulse control disorder.

The list of potential culprits is growing. "World of Warcraft" is the game that crops up most frequently in Young's sessions. ("EverQuest," a 3D fantasy-themed multiplayer game first released in 1999 was the old favorite.)

Online poker continues to lure users, something Young attributes partly to the rise of celebrity poker games. EBay (nasdaq: EBAY - news - people ), with its millions of items and anxiety-inducing timed auctions, has produced its fair share of addicts, too. Young had a client who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on a military memorabilia collection that eventually took over his apartment.

Even Solitaire and Freecell, those favorites of bored office workers worldwide, can be addictive. "It's an easy distraction," says Young. "The problem is, it's so solitary; we don't know how many people are impacted by that behavior." Casual games like Tetris and Peggle similarly lull users into "just a few more minutes" stupors.

Virtual worlds like Second Life inspire other fixations. "A lot of Second Life's appeal is to older people who are playing out fantasies," says Young. That can lead to online affairs and overspending on virtual goods--topics Young plans to tackle in an upcoming book.

Data point to similar conclusions. PokerStars, which bills itself as the world's largest online poker room, attracted longer and more frequent user visits than any other Internet application in August, according to Nielsen Online. About 1.4 million people visited the site that month. That's a fraction of the mob that dropped by Apple's (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) iTunes (36 million) or Windows Live Messenger (25 million). What makes PokerStars exceptional is its "stickiness"--users logged close to 12 hours that month on the site, compared to an hour or so at iTunes and Live Messenger.

Reinforcing the trend: The third stickiest Internet application for U.S. users is Full Tilt Poker, which has dubbed itself the "fastest-growing online poker room." The second is "Pirates of the Caribbean Online," a multiplayer Web game based on Disney's (nyse: DIS - news - people ) hit films.

Poker's allure stems, of course, from the tantalizing prospect of winning. "People think, I'm getting something out of this," even when no money actually changes hands, says Young. That's the hook for most video games, too. Microsoft's (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) launch of "achievement points" several years ago prodded Xbox users to up their time on games like "Grand Theft Auto" and "Halo." More points translate into higher "gamerscores" and bragging rights in the gaming community.

The next frontier for technology addiction is mobile, says John Horrigan, Pew's associate director of research. Mobile addicts primarily talk and text, of course, but music and news updates are increasingly compelling. Song Identity, which uses software to ID songs, and sports news app ESPN MVP are two of the most-downloaded mobile applications besides instant messaging and navigation programs, according to data from Nielsen Mobile.

While Young supports the classification of Internet addiction as a specific disorder in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (due in 2013), others prefer the terms "dependence" and "heavy reliance" upon technology. "People with addictive predilections may simply glom onto tech," says Pew's Horrigan. "The jury's still out regarding cause and effect."

Blanchard, the self-confessed technology addict, crafted his own solution. He has deleted work e-mail and Twitter alerts from his iPhone and ceased scanning blog posts on Google Reader while at home or out with friends. But he hasn't let go altogether. When Forbes.com contacted him for comment, he Twittered out a message: "Just got an e-mail from Forbes.com wanting to mention one of my blog posts. Pretty cool!"