Competitiveness

This morning, after President-Elect Obama laid out the key parts of his economic recovery plan during his weekly address, he turned to the Internet and told the country that he intends to "renew our information superhighway." "It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption. Here, in the country that invented the Internet, every child should have the chance to get online, and they'll get that chance when I'm President - because that's how we'll strengthen America's competitiveness in the world," he said. Sponsor Last month, we highlighted Obama's use of the Web; his... [Tags: 21st century, adoption, american libraries, audience, century schools]

Obama: 'We'll Renew Our Information Superhighway' — A day after the dismal news that the United States lost 553,000 jobs in November, President-elect Barack Obama outlined some of his job creation and economic recovery plans—including a strong emphasis on improving broadband access. In his regular Saturday morning message, Obama promised "the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s" and "the most sweeping effort to modernize and upgrade school buildings that this country has ever seen." Then the president-elect—who made a point from the beginning of distributing his message online through YouTube as well as traditional... [Tags: 1950s, adoption, barack obama, competitiveness, economic recovery]

Farewell Ted — You may have seen the news today. Say what you want about the competitiveness of wireless and connectivity in Canada. It may often be the case that we lag what’s possible elsewhere in the world, or the high rents extracted by Big Telco in Canada. But our situation is, if anything, the result of too few business or government leaders with the future vision, appetite for risk and tenacity of Ted Rogers, than too many. In just the wireless industry in Canada, I shudder to think where we’d be today had not Ted made a grand bet on converting GSM... [Tags: appetite, bet, canada, competitiveness, connectivity]

45nm Opteron Performance, Power Efficiency Tested — An anonymous reader writes "Now that Intel has unleashed its next-generation Core i7 processors, all eyes are turned to AMD and its incoming wave of 45nm CPUs. To get a feel for AMD's future competitiveness, The Tech Report has taken a pair of 2.7GHz 45nm Opterons (with 75W power envelopes) and put them through the paces against Intel Xeons and older, 65nm Opterons in an extensive suite of performance and power efficiency tests — from Cinema 4D and SPECjbb to computational fluid dynamics and a custom XML handling benchmark. The verdict: AMD's new 45nm quad-core design is a notable improvement... [Tags: amd, amd chips, anonymous reader, benchmark, cinema 4d]

Innovation in America... A gathering storm? @ The Economist — Innovation in America... A gathering storm? @ The Economist- LISTEN to the growing cries of despair coming from some leading business people, and you might imagine that corporate America’s competitiveness could be the next victim of the global financial crisis. But Jeffrey Immelt, the boss of GE, the world’s largest industrial firm, sees opportunity amid the woe. “Companies and countries that really play offence vis-à-vis technology and innovation are going to come out ahead,” he said this week at an event in New York to present GE’s coming innovations in health-care technology.With those words, he touched on a debate that... [Tags: asian rivals, boss, businessmen, competitiveness, corporate america]

Blog Envy — Do you look at other blogs and enjoy the content, or do you envy their comments, traffic or subscriber numbers? I was reading Michael Martine’s blog when I came across this great guest post by Alex Fayle of Someday Syndrome In many situations comparisons are good (like a runner dropping in her minutes/per mile ratio – you want to compare such things to know that you’re making progress). Problems arise when we start comparing ourselves to others because we stop comparing apples to apples (our past selves with our present or future selves) and start comparing apples to oranges (ourselves... [Tags: alex, apples to apples, audience, bad feelings, blogger]

Nortel Hopes IP “Trunking” Will Reduce SMB Costs — Nortel's IP trunking technology is a way for SMBs to combine voice and data connections through PBX exchanges, which the company says will improve efficiency, cut costs and provide a professional polish to midmarket companies. - Nortels senior marketing manager for Carrier VoIP and Applications Marketing, Rob Scheible, says he gets one constant appeal from midmarket companies looking to increase their competitiveness, and it isnt about saving money. “When we talk to SMBs, they all say, ‘We may be a small business, but we do...... [Tags: competitiveness, data connections, efficiency, ip trunking, marketing manager]

Dell: FY Q3 Revs Miss By $1B; But EPS Beats By 6 Cents — For Dell (DELL), once a growth story, the focus is now on cost controls. For the fiscal third quarter ended October 31, the company posted revenue of $15.162 billion, more than $1 billion less than the Street consensus of $16.22 billion, and down 3% from the year-earlier quarter.Unit shipments were up just 3% from a year earlier. But profits of 37 cents a share, while down from 44 cents a year earlier, were nicely ahead of the Street at 31 cents. The company noted that operating expenses were 12.1% of revenue, down 11% on a dollar basis from a year... [Tags: 1 billion, acquisitions, beats, competitiveness, consensus]

Microsoft dropping Zune prices to edge iPod — Just two months after introducing its third-generation Zune platform, Microsoft is already dropping prices on its flash-based models to improve their competitiveness, the company's Zune marketing director Adam Sohn has confirmed in an interview on Tuesday. The company's largest cut will apply to the outgoing 4GB Zune, which drops $30 to reach $99. Zune 8GB players will drop $10 to $139, while th...... [Tags: competitiveness, marketing, microsoft, models, sohn]

News: Microsoft announces lower Zune pricing — Microsoft has announced that it will be dropping the prices of its Flash-based Zune players ahead of the holiday shopping season, increasing their competitiveness with Apple’s iPod nanos. The price cuts will see the company’s 4GB Zune drop to $99, the 8GB model cut from $149 to $139, and the 16GB model drop from $199 to $179. Despite the fact that these price cuts put the 8GB and 16GB models lower than their iPod nano counterparts, Zune…... [Tags: apple, competitiveness, counterparts, holiday shopping, ipod nanos]

Strict conditions almost certain for automaker bailout — Sending Detroit's Big Three billions with no strings attached would be folly, some say. Others contend too many requirements would strangle a weak industry. With pressure rising for the government to save U.S. automakers from the financial junkyard, the question is fast becoming: Should General Motors, Ford and Chrysler simply get infusions of tax dollars? Or, in exchange for the billions, should they be forced to accept sweeping changes that critics say are necessary for their competitiveness and survival?... [Tags: automakers, bailout, billions, chrysler, competitiveness]

Microsoft waits 7 years before fixing security exploit — Featured links from the CNET Blog Network Microsoft takes 7 years before fixing security exploit -- A patch addressing an NTLM reflection vulnerability in the SMB protocol seems to have skipped Patch Tuesday for the last seven years. Report confirms AMD gains on Nvidia -- The competitiveness of AMD's new graphics chips is confirmed by a report. Sick? Google shares health searches with govt. -- Google is launching an initiative called Flu Trends to help the U.S. government "track sickness." Could such initiatives one day lead to an invasion of privacy? Best Buy gift cards with built-in speakers -- So... [Tags: amd, best buy, cnet, competitiveness, flu]

Report confirms AMD gains on Nvidia — The competitiveness of AMD's new graphics chips is confirmed by a report.... [Tags: amd, competitiveness, graphics chips, new graphics, nvidia]

The end of the Google/Yahoo ad pact dream? — You can almost hear the collective sigh of relief on both sides of the Atlantic; the proposed deal between Google and Yahoo is looking increasingly less likely to happen, reports the FT.Photograph: dannysullivan/Flickr/Some rights reservedBoth firms have endured long-running discussions with the Department of Justice in the US over what rivals have said is a potentially anti-competitive partnership, and a series of reports have said the two are struggling to resolve the details of that 'anti-competitiveness' during those negotiations. The longer it goes on, the less likely it seems that the alliance will take place.The original proposal was for Yahoo... [Tags: collective sigh, competition authorities, competitiveness, dannysullivan, department of justice]

Seed Endorses Obama — The editors of Seed Magazine have endorsed Barack Obama for President: ... It is abundantly evident that science can refuel economic growth, address the energy and climate challenge, and help restore America's soft power around the world. President Bush dismissed this potential, turned the very act of defying science into an art, and in so doing diminished US competitiveness and disenfranchised the country's source of innovation. His administration not only disregarded evidence time and time again but also rejected and debased the very enterprise that offered that evidence. Renewing the promise of science starts first and foremost with restoring scientific... [Tags: barack obama, climate challenge, competitiveness, economic growth, editors]

BlackBerry Bold dips $100 CDN to fight iPhone? — Rogers or Research in Motion could be allowing major price cuts to the BlackBerry Bold in a bid to improve the smartphone's competitiveness against the iPhone, if a new update is an indicator. Best Buy Mobile Canada's listing for the 3G BlackBerry n...... [Tags: 3g, best buy, blackberry, canada, cdn]

"The US Has No Long-Term Economic Strategy" — With the U.S. election just days away, it has never been more important to consider what the next President must do to keep America competitive. In this time of crisis, Washington has focused on the immediate and the short term. Lost are the more basic questions we really need to worry about: What is the fundamental competitive position of the U.S. in the global economy? And what must we do to remain strong when other nations are making rapid progress? The stark truth is that the U.S. has no long-term economic strategy--no coherent set of policies to ensure competitiveness over... [Tags: american economy, basic questions, competitiveness, developing a strategy, economic prosperity]

Q&A: Xen, the start-up in Citrix clothing — Ian Pratt, vice president of special products, discusses the competitiveness of Xen and about the prospects for virtualization in a recession.... [Tags: amp, citrix, competitiveness, pratt, prospects]

7 Tips On Building Relationships Through Blogging — For anyone who has blogged for three months or more should know that as time moves on and you continue to blog, natural relationships are formed. These can be formed from comments/replies, linking to others, email contacts with similar niche blog authors, etc. I was thinking the other day how many people I wouldn't know anything about and vice versa had I not started publishing content on my own blog. The past year and a half of serious blogging has giving me the opportunity to build relationships with people all across the world. In fact, one of the readers... [Tags: audience, blogger, bloggers, blogging, building relationships]