This has been a good week for London, Ontario. In a survey titled North American Cities of the Future – Foreign Direct Investment, the business magazine for the Financial Times of London (the other London) – ranked London in the top 5 on three lists.
Top-10 small cities of the future. Best economic potential for a small city. Most cost-effective.
London is the only city to appear in the top 5 of those 3 lists. The survey covered all cites in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico.
That comes on the heels of a very successful âIT LIVES in Londonâ IT Week, sponsored by TechAlliance. All the events this week were well attended, some of them sold out due to venue capacity restraints. Many people attending were surprised at the number and diversity of IT busiesses in London, many of which have significant global reach. (Transparency disclosure: I am on the IT advisory counsel to TechAlliance.)
So for any IT business looking for a place to locate – consider London.
Read a London Free Press article on the survey
Look at the TechAlliance web site
Learn more about London from the London Economic Development Corporation (LEDC)
Wired News reports that Western Union has ended its telegram service. Itâs no surprise that email has resulted in plummeting demand for telegrams.
According to the Wikipedia entry for telegraphy, other telegram services are still available though.
So how many years will it be until we see an article that says that email over PC’s is no longer available because it has been replaced by the t-mail (thought mail) chips that are implanted in our heads?
Read the Wired report
Read the Wikipedia entry
The Consumer Electronic Show is now on in Las Vegas, and MacWorld starts today.
The CES has its usual array of new and improved electronics, and Apple is expected to announce new products today as only Apple can.
One common theme is getting digital content from our PC’s to our living room. Whether one is a fan of Apple or Microsoft, or thinks that those from the PC world should just stay out of the living room, the competition is good for consumers.
One thing Apple does best is to get product on the shelves immediately after its announcement. Most manufacturers announce products that are not available for months.
Both CES and Macworld are getting lots of press.
For details take a look at sites like Gizmodo and Engadget
BusinessWeek has an article saying that Texas Instruments is worth watching because its chips are fast becoming the workhorse for key industries in the Digital Age.
The premise is that the future of computing is not in PC’s, but in portable devices and consumer electronics. The article quotes the TI CEO as saying “We’ve moved out of this PC era and into an area where communications and entertainment are driving technology“.
Its an interesting read on several fronts – the growth of Texas Instruments, the types of devices their chips are in, and an indication of the future of computing at the device level.
Read the BusinessWeek article
The big news in the privacy front this week is the Ontario Privacy Commissioner’s release of guidelines for secure proof of identity over the Internet – in a whitepaper called 7 Laws of Identity: The Case for Privacy-Embedded Laws of Identity in the Digital Age.
The good news is that it was developed with, and is being supported by Microsoft. The bad news is that it was developed with, and is being supported by Microsoft.
Secure, private proof of identity over the Internet is much needed.
So will this approach work? Only time will tell.
The 7 laws framework is compelling. Let me offer though 7 tests it has to pass to be successful:
1. it must not be easily hackable
2. it must work easy and seamless
3. it must foster trust
4. the solutions must not cause collateral damage
5. no single entity can have excessive control over it
6. it must get past cynicism about Microsoft
7. it must be widely adopted
For more details and some interesting commentary, take a look at the comments by David Fraser and Michael Geist.
Read David’s post
Read Michael’s post
The Stiller Centre, “Ontarioâs largest life sciences commercialization facility” has just announced the Stiller Centre Prize. It is a “unique annual award offering the best and brightest young science graduates from around the world with the opportunity to develop their ideas towards viable businesses“.
The winner of the prize will be given facilities and resources at the Stiller Centre to enable the winner to turn the idea into a commercial product.
Take a look at the Big Bang Idea web site for details, the rules, and the sponsors (Harrison Pensa LLP is one of them) – or just to take a look at their explosive advertising images and YouTube video.
Go to the Big Bang Idea web site
Look at the YouTube video
BusinessWeek has an article entitled Dark Days at Dell that takes an interesting look at Dell and its current problems. Its worth a read to understand the Dell issues, and for its insight into the need to continue to innovate.
In essence, the article says that Dell’s revolutionary business model has lost its edge, and Dell has failed to adapt or innovate.
From the article:
Dell remained slavishly loyal to its core idea of ultra-efficient supply-chain management and direct sales to consumers, even as rivals have stepped up their game and markets have shifted to take away some of Dell’s key advantages. Instead of adapting, critics say, Dell cut costs in ways that compromised customer service and, possibly, product quality.
They’re a one-trick pony. It was a great trick for over 10 years, but the rest of us have figured it out and Dell hasn’t plowed any of its profits into creating a new trick
Read the BusinessWeek article
Speculation is that we will see a terabyte PC hard drive by the end of the year. That will be a noteworthy milestone. It wasn’t that long ago that a terabyte of storage was supercomputer or data centre territory.
Another noteworthy technology milestone is the sell-out of the initial 100 orders for the Tesla Roadster electric sportscar. It took less than a month for 100 people to put down $100,000.00 deposits for cars that will be available in 2007.
Read a Gizmodo post on the terabyte drive
Read an engadget post on the Tesla car
Thanks to Howard Knopf for pointing out in his Excess Copyright blog that Sony applied a while ago for the trade-mark “Like no other”. I note they have applied for it in at least the US and Canada.
Rather amusing in light of the batteries they produced for Dell that burst into flame, and their rootkit CD fiasco.
Read Howard’s post
Techdirt comments that One of the more interesting stories to look for in the tech world is the unintended consequences of new technology that can often change the way you view something else.
They cite as an example how YouTube has gone beyond the VCR and DVR (and TV shows on DVD for that matter) to obliterate the fleeting nature of TV. In other words, if one ‘misses” something on TV, its often now easy to find later.
Couple that with the burgeoning place-shifting phenomenon from devices like Slingbox, which allow one to watch TV sourced from your home tuner or DVR from any device with an Internet connection. That could be anywhere from a laptop on your patio (one has to question how often one needs to watch TV on your patio – but that’s another issue), to on a smartphone during your commute or while waiting for a meeting.
That leads to new ways to consume content, and new challenges for the broadcast and advertising industries.
Read the Techdirt post on YouTube
Read an arstechnica article about placeshifting challenges and concerns of the media
