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Re: donbalon
Make sure next time to put the date up top. I tripped for a bit (didn't seem right) then realised the news it was old news.
11 August 2003
Exclusive to Vodafone: Tickets via text message to your mobile
http://www.vodafone.com/article_with_thumbnail/0,3038,OPCO%253D40005%2526CATEGORY_ID%253D201%2526MON...
~smartbiz
Internet-Intranet Same Difference!!
The source data is encoded and printed, and then distributed by the vendor by any logical means to the end user. The end user then scans the code via appropriate code scanning (e.g. bar code scanning) equipment, decodes the raw decoded data, and the file location information is then used to access the appropriate file. In a preferred embodiment, a Web browser program is launched, and the URL of the vendor's Web site is accessed through the Internet. Local file retrieval may also be implemented on the client computer itself, as well as over an intranet or LAN environment.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/neta....
Intranet (Definition): A privately maintained computer network that can be accessed only by authorized persons, especially members or employees of the organization that owns it.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=intranet
LAN (Definition): A system that links together electronic office equipment, such as computers and word processors, and forms a network within an office or building.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=Lan
P.S. "NeoMedia Technologies has a suite of six issued patents covering core concepts behind our techniques for linking the physical world to the electronic world...." Foriegn patents are pending (Including UK patents).
Vodafone, Microsoft, Nokia Link on Mobile Web Names
4 minutes ago Add Technology - Internet Report to My Yahoo!
LONDON (Reuters) - Nine top computer, telecoms and handset companies said on Wednesday they would jointly set up a new Internet names registry company to issue domain names for wireless devices, in an attempt to boost mobile services.
The new firm has to yet be approved by ICANN (news - web sites), which registers domain names for the Internet. The new firm will establish a new as-yet-unnamed domain to simplify mobile access to the Internet, replacing the myriad of addresses with the mobile equivalent of the .com domain.
The initiative brings together two unlikely bedfellows, top software company Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) and leading handset maker Nokia (news - web sites) (NOK1V.HE), rivals in the battle to make the software that runs mobile handsets.
It also involves the world's biggest mobile telecoms operator Vodafone (VOD.L) and its competitors Orange, owned by France Telecom (FTE.PA), and Hutchison Whampoa's (0013.HK) operator 3.
U.S. computer makers Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq:SUNW - news) and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ - news) are also participating, as is South Korea (news - web sites)'s Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) and the GSM Association.
Officials told a conference call that an application would be placed with ICANN before a March 15 deadline, with a decision expected three to six months after that, allowing the new services to be up and running early next year.
"(We want to) provide an opportunity for people to innovate and deliver new services to mobile customers that will be delivered in an understandable, dependable and reliable way," Microsoft official Brian Arbogast told the call.
Other companies are also invited to take part in the Ireland-based joint venture, officials said.
Companies that want to offer Web pages and other Internet services by using the new domain name would be asked to specifically design their services for usage on mobile devices. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=575&ncid=738&e=6&u=/nm/20040310/wr_n....
Nice catch on patent 6,434,561. Didn't catch it when I copied+pasted. (Can't find where I copied it from.)
If new investors are interested in Neo and their patents they will click on the link and see SST's patents. Everyone else should know.
~smartbiz
RE: Google's Continued Dominance No Slam Dunk
Watch Google shatter. Who will catch the peaces?
I got my bag open!!
Google's attempt:
http://www.google.com/help/features.html#wp
Who's going to be left without a bag lol.
~smartbiz
Google's Continued Dominance No Slam Dunk
1 hour, 1 minute ago Add Technology - NewsFactor to My Yahoo!
Jason Lopez , www.newsfactor.com
Could Google's much-anticipated IPO result in a second Internet bubble? Forrester's Charlene Li believes the search company could fall behind in the quest for a next-generation search engine to sustain its growth.
Free PC Phone Calls
Ditch Ma Bell and save big--make calls over the Internet. Get the PC gear, or do it without a computer.
Google certainly has staked a claim as the centerpiece of the Internet. Though its site is not the most visited on the Web, visits alone do not translate into revenue. Searching does -- in the form of paid inclusions -- and more users go to Google to search than to any other site. As of December 2003, 46.1 million people flocked to Google specifically to search, compared to 42.3 million for MSN and 41.3 million for Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO - news).
Invisible Web
Google's technology has revolutionized the search business, and its approach of simplicity and directness has set it on a juggernaut course. But the company may hit the same obstacle that every other Internet company has faced during the brief history of the Web: changing technology.
"What they do very well is search pages that have links," said Forrester's Charlene Li, author of the firm's latest report, "Where is Google Headed?" But there is a lot of information that cannot easily be seen on the Web. It either has no associated links or it is buried in a database. The next search technology will mine for this kind of data.
"With that kind of information -- sometimes called 'the invisible Web,' though I call it 'unstructured data' -- Google does not have that much of an advantage," Li told NewsFactor.
Google is up against two formidable competitors in Yahoo, which has been at it longer, and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT - news), which has more money. Google's relatively stealthy head start helped it climb quickly to the top of the search industry.
But the firm's current technology will not ensure dominance for very long. "They have a strong stable of technologies," noted Li, "but other companies have strong stables of technologies, too."
Deja Vu One More Time
She foresees Yahoo, Microsoft and Google developing new search technologies that work equally well. But without a promise of continuing dominance in search technologies, could that be a fly in Google's IPO ointment? Perhaps not initially, but if the company shows itself to be merely mortal in the race for the next great search engine, it may very well look like the bubble all over again.
"Google's a great company -- I don't want to knock them -- but a company like Microsoft has other tools, like its Windows operating system, which could make it an instant player in the search business," Li said.
Microsoft is expected to weave its upcoming search technology seamlessly into its Windows OS. As long as users are connected to the Web, they will not have to open a browser to search.
To many, that has an antitrust aroma to it.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=75&ncid=738&e=6&u=/nf/20040309/tc_nf...
"Fritz predicts American consumers will use their cameraphones to point, shoot and shop by the end of the year."
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=2559715
Thats why it can be found under "Important Links" on the info board :)
Message In Reply To:
You need to read this to understand the Paperclick/UVerify connection:
http://www.neom.com/products/ip/UVerifyPresentation.pdf
Complete Data Memo: Nearly a quarter of online Americans use the Internet at places besides home or work
As use of the Internet becomes more appealing and more essential to Americans, a growing number are using multiple locations to go online. And significant numbers are moving beyond the tradition places of access – home and work. The Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that 23% of adult U.S. Internet users have gone online from a place other than home or work. That is close to 30 million people.
In that group of online Americans, 27% have used the Internet at school, 26% have used it at friends’ or neighbors’ homes, and 26% have used it at libraries.
On any given day more than 4 million Americans are accessing the Internet from some place other than home or work.
Those who use the Internet in some place other than home or work fall into two main camps. The first camp consists of the online Americans who seem to go online wherever they are. These users often have access at home and at work and they are anxious to have access from other places as well. Many of them are young – under the age of 30 – and avid Internet users. On a typical day, more than half the people accessing the Internet from a “third place” are between ages 18-24. Nearly half of students (48%) have accessed the Internet from a “third place.” They are the anywhere, anytime users of the Internet.
In the second camp are Internet users who are relatively poor and do not have high levels of education. Many have access at work, some have access at home, and a portion of them depend on a place other than home or work for their Internet access. Those who depend on “third places” make up only 3% of the entire U.S. Internet population, but they are disproportionately likely to live in households earning less than $30,000, to live in rural areas, and to be newcomers to the online world. They are fairly infrequent users of the Internet who often use libraries and friends’ homes as their access points.
Some 54% of Internet users say they go online from more than one place.
These findings suggest that use of the Internet has spread well beyond home and work. The importance of the Internet in the lives of professionals who travel often, students, young adults, and people with a lot of online experience has grown to the point that for many it is a technology that moves with them wherever they go and which they access whenever they feel the need. On any given day, 27% of those who use the Internet go online in at least two places.
At the same time, a portion of Internet users depend completely on these other places because these locales are the exclusive providers of their online connection. They are not avid users of the Net, but they have entered the online world at the level that is available to them.
Further details: Where and who
The study of “place” and the Internet is nothing new. There are bookshelves, virtual and physical, stacked high with research that examines whether online environments are worthy of being termed a “place.” In this report, the Pew Internet & American Life Project examines a less researched, but equally important issue regarding the concept of “place” and the Internet. Utilizing phone surveys conducted between May 2002 and December 2003, the Project investigated the “other places” beyond home and work where Americans log on. The principal analysis is built around results from the surveys fielded between May and October 2002.
The places people log on
Today, 64% of American adults (those 18 and older) use the Internet. That amounts to 128 million people. Some 88% of them have a home connection to the Internet. On any given day, 79% of the 69 million American adults who are online are using a home-based connection to the Net.
In comparison, our surveys show that 51% of all online users access the Net while at work. Some 40% of those connecting to the Internet on a typical day log on from work.
Furthermore, 23% of Internet users have accessed the Net from a location other than their home or place of work. Among these away-from-home, away-from-work users, the top “other” locations for Internet access are school (27%), friend/neighbor’s house (26%), at a library (26%), and a relative’s house (9%). In addition, 4% have logged on from some place while traveling, 3% have logged on at hotels, 2% have logged on at cyber cafés, and small fractions have logged on at community centers and houses of worship.
On a typical day on the Net, more than four million Americans are using connections that are neither home-based nor work-based. On that average day, more than half those who are using another access point besides home or work are going online at school; about a fifth (19%) are using friends’ homes, and 10% are using libraries.
Who uses “other places”: Young adults
Age is a primary demographic factor associated with whether an individual goes online from a location other than home or work. Nearly half those between 18-24 years old (48%) report they have accessed the Internet from another place. Some 21% of America’s youngest online adults log on from a “third place” during a typical day. By comparison, just 16% of those age 35-44 have ever used another place to access the Internet and a modest fraction go online from a “third place” during a typical day.
In short, young adult Americans are heavy “other-location” users, accounting for 32% of all other location use, and more than half (54%) of those who log on from a “third place” during a typical day. Their number one “other place” is, not surprisingly, school. Some 53% of those “other place” users between the ages of 18-24 report having gone online from school.
If use at school is removed from the analysis, then the largest cohort of Internet users who go online in “other places” becomes the 25-34 age group. They make up 26% of the users who go online in places like libraries, friend’s and neighbor’s homes, relative’s homes and cyber cafes.
Older Americans are the least likely to go online from other places. Only 10% of Internet users age 65 years and older have ever gone online from place other than their home.
Students
Being in school, especially full-time, is strongly associated with the likelihood that an individual has used some place other than home or work to go online. Some 58% of Internet users who are full-time students have gone online from a place other than their home or place of work and 30% of part-time students have done so. Not surprisingly, 73% of these full-time students who use “other places” report that the “other place” they have logged on is school. About 45% of full-time students have been online at a library; 41% have been online at a friend’s/neighbor’s house; and 6% have used Internet cafés.
Some 30% of part-time students who use the Internet have gone online from a place other than their home or place of work, compared to 58% for full-time students. For part-time students who use “other places,” school is number one locale (42%), followed by a library (27%), and a friend’s/neighbor’s house (20%).
Low and high income
The Pew Internet & American Life Project finds of Internet users with annual household incomes of less than $30,000, 28% have logged on from a location other than their home or place or work. School (31%), libraries (30%), and friends’/neighbors’ houses (26%) are the top “other” locations identified by this group. On a typical day, 71% of those from low-income homes accessing the Internet from a “third place” do so at a school, with a library and a friend’s/neighbor’s house each accounting for 12% of other location usage.
Those who live in high-income households (those with $75,000 and above) account for 33% of “other-location” users. Many have gone online at school. Yet, some are probably road warriors, or professionals who travel a lot: 14% report they have logged on at a hotel.
A small gender gap
Some 54% of Internet users who have logged on from a place other than their home or place of work are male. A friend’s/neighbor’s house (28%) ranks as the number one other place for men, compared with a library (30%) for women. School is the second-most reported access point for the men who go online from “third places” (27%) and a library comes in third at 23%. For the women who use “third places,” connecting to the Net from a library is followed by a school (27%) and a friend’s/neighbor’s house (25%).
http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/reports.asp?Report=115&Section=ReportLevel1&Field=Level1I...
Will you "Recognize the Future When It Lands on You"?
"....Within a decade, the major population centers of the planet will be saturated with trillions of microchips, some of them tiny computers, many of them capable of communicating with each other......... Some devices will read barcodes andsend and recieve messages to radio-frequency identity tags.....As a result, large number of people in the industrial nations will have a device with them most of the time that will enable them to link objects, places, and people to online content and processes. Point your device at a street sign, announce where you want to go, and follow the animated map beamed to the box in your palm, or point at a book in a store and see what the Times and your neighborhood reading group have to say about it. Click on a resuarant and warn your friends that the service has deteriorated......."
~Howard Rheingold (SmartMobs ISBN 0-7382-0608-3)
"This is everything. At the end of the day this is the remote control to the physical world....... and we put the whole thing on ice..... put it on ice until the device came out. We said ahhh picture phones..... the lightbulb turned on"
~Chas Fritz (NeoMedia Technologies http://www.abc-7.com/BuildASX.asx?videofilename=040225_abc-paperclick.wmv )
Virgin Launching Music Jukebox, Online Music Store
1 hour, 53 minutes ago Add Entertainment - Reuters to My Yahoo!
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - British billionaire Richard Branson's latest company, Virgin Digital, is developing its own digital jukebox and online music store with music delivery company MusicNet that will be available by the end of August, the companies said on Sunday.
Newly launched Virgin Digital, with offices in Los Angeles and London, is part of Virgin Group Ltd., which includes an airline, a record label, mobile phone service, Virgin Megastores and other assets.
Ultimately, Virgin Digital will work on mobile phones, handheld devices and other consumer electronics gear, said Zack Zalon, president of Virgin Digital. The product will include a jukebox, the ability to burn, rip and encode songs onto CDs, access to Virgin's digital music club and its Radio Free Virgin Internet radio stations,
Zalon declined to comment on pricing for the online store, which will let consumers buy songs individually or subscribe to the service.
"We're not releasing the (pricing) information but it'll be hyper competitive," Zalon said. The prevailing per-song price for legal, purchased music downloads is 99 cents.
Virgin Digital will be moving into an already crowded field, populated by Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes software and online music store, and myriad others -- from Roxio Inc.'s revived Napster (news - web sites) service to MusicMatch.
"We're not afraid not to be first movers in this space," Zalon said. "We think that if we time it right, it will be the second movers who win.
Virgin Digital already has a leg up with the more than 100 million people who come through its Virgin Megastores annually, giving Virgin valuable market and customer preference information, Zalon said.
The Virgin Digital software product, which will be available for download through the Internet and on CD that Virgin will make available in its record stores and other avenues, will support Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Media Audio, or WMA, format, Zalon said.
WMA files work on a host of digital music players, except Apple's, which does not support WMA.
Closely held MusicNet's shareholders include Bertelsmann AG (news - web sites), EMI Recorded Music, a unit of EMI Group Plc (news - web sites), RealNetworks Inc., Sony Music Entertainment, a part of Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE - news) (news - web sites). , and Warner Music Group, owned by investors Thomas H. Lee Partners, Edgar Bronfman Jr., Bain Capital and Providence Equity Partners.
Reuters/VNU
The show in CeBIT IMO will attract "Big Brands":
"For now, Neomedia is counting on netting the big brands to give consumers more than just a comparative shopping guide:
1. A bar code on your french fries would give you the carb count
2. A bar code on your car would show you how to change a tire
3. A bar code on a real estate sign would let you see inside the home while you shop curbside"
http://www.abc-7.com/BuildASX.asx?videofilename=040225_abc-paperclick.wmv
1. Being able to get a carb. count would rocket PaperClick here in the US by itself IMO. All they would have to do is jump in bed with Atkins. Atkins is one of the most popular diet programs and is based on carbs. a few company's are jumping in bed w/Atkins. GNC+Subway just to name a few. I see a PaperClick+Atkin partnership being a win-win situation.
http://atkins.com/
2. I bet Ford will be the first to get one of their cars PaperClick activated.
3. A real estate app. would also take off. I've already seen one promoted on TV.
"Additional Applications Sold Separately:
Agent Care™
Get directly connected to Nokia's agent care representatives who are trained to help you use your Real Estate Applications. This service is available as a yearly subscription ($79.99 per year) or on a per-incident basis ($19.99 per incident). Call toll free 1-866-NokiaRE (1-866-665-4273) for more information.
"
http://www.nokiausa.com/realestate/solution_ops/3650
~smartbiz
RE: I'll test that on my water-bottle...
PaperClick Product Database
http://www.paperclick.com/upc/product.cfm?f_upca=049000009774&btype=
Sorry I thought you were refering to the "FastCash DataBase" that would cost 600$Million. Next time email me :)
"We keep this board clean. Spam+False Info is not tolerated. That does not mean that we are perfect. If you feel like your post being deleted was a mistake please email me @ smartbiz85@yahoo.com and I'll get it handled ASAP. Any complaints posted on the board will be deleted. Thanks"
By: stushy000
08 Mar 2004, 06:53 AM EST
Msg. 45579 of 45579
(This msg. is a reply to 45574 by fastcash101.)
Jump to msg. #
fastcash- Retail stores already have a data base that link a bar code to a price in the store when you go to the check out counter. If walmart or retail stores feel that it is to their advantage for retailers to be able to compare shop then that dynamic data base will be accessible to the consumer quickly through NEOMEDIA. Amazon felt it was to their advantage to have that data base available for books, why not other stores. I don't think you need the data base available for every UPC in the world, just stores that will want their prices available for comparison. That way if I go into Sears and scan a Barcode then Walmart prices will be available immediately for that product if walmart participates. It's obvious the lower priced high volume stores will want to utilize this because it will draw tons of customers to their stores.
The application is real the camera phones are everywhere its just a matter of time.
GO NEOM!
(Voluntary Disclosure: Position- Long; ST Rating- Strong Buy; LT Rating- Strong Buy)
Latest on Cool Town:
Old link 4 the Video's is dead... I can't view the new video's maybe some of you will have better luck...
(downloading latest Windows Media Player)
http://www.cooltown.hp.com/
~smartbiz
S.F. library officials grilled on plan to put trackers in books
RON HARRIS, Associated Press Writer
Friday, March 5, 2004
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(03-05) 13:04 PST SAN FRANCISCO (AP) --
San Francisco library officials hosted a public forum Thursday to hash out the thorny issue of radio frequency identification tags -- small, paper-thin devices known as RFIDs that the city librarian wants to put in books to improve inventory control.
Critics of the idea say there are serious privacy concerns about exactly what information would be contained on the tags and how secure the devices would be. They fear third parties, bored hackers or the federal government might find a way to surreptitiously find out who's reading what.
"Privacy is really the handmaiden of the First Amendment," said Ann Brick, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. Brick stressed that while libraries are historically trustworthy about protecting with patron information, the prying technology of others may not be so kind.
"It's the rest of the world that we're really worried about," Brick said.
Several large city libraries throughout the United States use RFIDs for inventory control. And retailers are increasingly adopting the technology to streamline their operations and cut down on theft.
The system that the San Francisco library envisions would identify which items were checked out to whom, and then special gates installed at the exit doors would detect whether the book had physically left the premises.
Kathy Lawhun, chief of the city's main library and a proponent of the RFID proposal, described the technology as benign by design.
"RFID is simply a chip with an antenna," Lawhun said. "You can have as little or as much as you want on that chip."
San Francisco library administrators insist the information that would be contained on the RFID chip would be the same that currently exists on the barcode system.
Others at the forum raised concerns about whether adding RFIDs to the many radio-powered devices that have proliferated throughout the city, such as cell phones, could cause health problems for their users. At that point city librarian Susan Hildreth held up her main library access card dangling around her neck, containing similar technology.
"We have it by our chest everyday. We're not dead yet," Hildreth said to chuckles from the panel.
Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said it's not the power of the chip, but those who would choose to exploit such devices in the future, that should be of concern.
"Now is the time to seriously worry about the government using RFIDs to track people," Tien told those in attendance.
Insecure RFIDs, which retain data that can be linked to personal information, are a danger, Tien argued.
"Insecure RFIDs ... make secret things possible," he added.
San Francisco's RFID plan still must pass muster with the mayor's office, the board of supervisors and the city's seven-member library commission.
RFID-enabled devices are expected to abound as the cost of RFID readers go down. Stockholm-based Cypak, AB Tuesday that it has developed a disposable computer made of a small RFID tag and printable sensors on paperboard.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On the Net:
sfpl.lib.ca.us/
www.eff.net
www.cypak.se
RE: Origami helps cell phone cameras to focus
09:30 01 September 03
"Our big push now is to get this technology into cellphone cameras to give them a zoom and focus mechanism," says Tony Hooley, president and chief scientist at 1 Limited.
My friend just bought a new cell phone. Although the mobile had zoom/focus features barcodes showed up a bit blurry. I'm not sure if it was good enough or not for PaperClick. I hope so...either way Philips "Human Eye" should do the trick.
Philips' New Camera Lens Works Like Human Eye
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040304/tc_nm/tech_philips_lens_dc_1
~smartbiz
@Hagi: "A bullish situation looks different..."
Right you are. The bulls haven't begun to show their faces.
"If everyone is so sure about the success..."
Go ahead and buy when everyone else is sure. That is when I'll be taking profits.
~smartbiz
"Our big push now is to get this technology into cellphone cameras to give them a zoom and focus mechanism," says Tony Hooley, president and chief scientist at 1 Limited.
Miniature Autofocus Camera (1 Limited)
http://www.1limited.com/tech/mac/index.html
(Sent to Neo)
~smartbiz
Philips' New Camera Lens Works Like Human Eye
Thu Mar 4,12:40 PM ET Add Technology - Reuters to My Yahoo!
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Philips Electronics said on Thursday it had invented a tiny digital camera lens to fit inside a mobile phone that could focus on objects and create sharp pictures in ways that are similar to the human eye.
Related Links
• Fluid Lenses Bring Things into Focus (Philips)
Unlike high-end digital cameras, the new lens does not require mechanical moving parts because it works by manipulating two fluids in a tiny transparent tube.
Philips said it will build a production line for the three millimeter lenses that are aimed at low-cost imaging products, such as digital cameras that fit inside a mobile phone or a home security system.
By charging the sides of the tube with an small electric current, one of the two fluids is drawn to the edges while the other fluid fills up the remaining space in the tube. The place where the two fluids meet, functions like a lens.
By changing the current, this lens can be shaped hollow, curvex or anything in between, so that it can focus on objects far away or as close as five centimeters.
The lens, on show at the CeBIT electronic trade fair in Hanover, Germany in two weeks time, is the first of its kind and the technology has been patented, Philips said.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=569&e=1&u=/nm/tech_philips_lens_dc
=================================================================================
Emailed this one to Fritz.
~smartbiz
donbalon: Forget to mention in my last post that I send Chas your post eom
I want to congratulate you for winning the "award of excellence". My response wasn't as hot:
From: VLim@wfla.com Add to Address Book
To: smartbiz85@yahoo.com
Subject: RE: Regarding NeoMedia Technologies:
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 16:29:53 -0500
Thank you for writing!
I appreciate this information and am forwarding it to my editor promptly. As for the information about Nokia - it'd be best for you to ask Nokia and Neomedia about that.
Thanks for writing... and for reading!
Victoria Lim, Sr. Consumer Reporter
WFLA-TV/Tampa Tribune/tbo.com
Victoria Lim is not available via phone. I will call later and am sending an email through now.
~Chris
donbalon: Just wokeup. I'm going to make the call eom
"While the cards have been popular in Europe, they have been slow to catch on in the United States."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?
Gould said Target was on the right track with the program, which he estimated that Visa and the retailer spent roughly $50 million to develop and roll out.
"I don't think they gave it time to mature," he said.
Klofstad declined to comment on the cost of the program. She said Target would offer a new loyalty program, but she would not speculate on what form it would take
tmpl=story&cid=569&ncid=738&e=1&u=/nm/20040303/tc_n...
Message In Reply To:
by reading that more carefully i can see the use of neoms voice patents being used to connect to internet
their are several nokia phones that remember owner voice to make calls
why not connect to the internet
phil
Cell Phone Software Aids Bargain Hunters
By VICTORIA LIM
Published: Mar 4, 2004
TAMPA - A Florida company is hoping that camera phones and bar codes soon become shoppers' favorite new tools for bargain hunting.
NeoMedia Technology Inc. has developed a software program that allows camera- phone toting shoppers to comparison hunt while in the aisles. The privately held company plans to begin selling the software program, called Paperclick, in Europe later this month and may roll it out in the United States later this year.
The first markets the company plans to tap: Cannes, France, and Hannover Germany. The software will be sold preloaded in new Nokia 3650 and 3660 digital camera phones, the company said.
NeoMedia founder and chairman Chas Fritz said the Fort Myers company hopes to roll out the products to American consumers this year.
``This will be the device you'll take with you,'' Fritz said. ``At the end of the day, you're going to walk around with this to shop, to stay connected, to get information.''
Here's how Paperclick works: Using a camera cell phone that has the software installed, consumers can take a picture of a Universal Product Code, or bar code, on a product. That launches the software, which connects the camera phone with a wireless Web connection. NeoMedia's Web server then retrieves information tied to the bar code. Within seconds, consumers can find out whether an item can be purchased cheaper elsewhere or whether the manufacturer offers a coupon.
Variety Of Uses
The company said the software also is designed to allow consumers to:
* Photograph a bar code on a food product, which then could provide nutritional information.
* Photograph a bar code on a DVD player, which then might display directions for connecting it to a television.
* Take a picture of a music CD's UPC and a clip of the music on the CD might be played.
* Snap a shot of a bar code on a designer handbag and its authenticity might be verified.
``Everything you see in the physical world can literally be a Web page,'' Fritz explains.
The company said Paperclick will also work with radio frequency identification tags, an emerging product identification technology that manufacturers are beginning to use to track products.
NeoMedia isn't the only company that has set its sights on grabbing a share of the market for the digital shopping tool. Several companies have introduced similar technology, including Pennsylvania-based Airclic and LScan, as well as New York-based Scanbuy.
NeoMedia said it is suing the three companies for patent infringement.
Analyst Questions Feasibility
Meanwhile, the company, which has raised about $20 million in venture capital financing, expects to generate its chief sales through companies that sign on to have their product bar codes activated through the software program.
Company executives declined to be specific about fees but said they think clients will be willing to pay about $1,000 for each bar code they activate through Paperclick.
Michael King, a technology analyst with the Gartner Group, is skeptical of widespread adoption.
``Why would a business pay for it if it'll level the competitive playing field from a price perspective?'' Gartner said. ``Research on the fly may reduce the amount of impulse buys.''
NeoMedia thinks price savvy consumers, already familiar with using advertisements, fliers, coupons, the Internet and recommendations to comparison shop, will embrace the technology.
Camille Branch-Turley, spokeswoman for Tampa- based grocery chain Kash n' Karry, said it may be too early for retailers to decide whether they will embrace technology such as Paperclick.
``The consumers' desire or interest in having that information available to them while they're shopping is probably going to play a large part in driving retailers' thoughts on whether or not to utilize that technology,'' Branch-Turley said.
`` I think the folks leading busier lives will see this technology as being helpful in some respects, and in other respects, a guide, but not change shopping patterns dramatically,'' she added.
Said King, ``I just can't see consumers rushing to the till to provide support for the application.''
http://newstbo.com/news/MGA9J628ERD.html
Somebody post this board on RB for lupetto3 eom
Wireless To The Rescue
Mon Mar 1,12:01 AM ET Add Technology - TechWeb to My Yahoo!
Doctors use the devices to calculate correct medication doses for patients, check drug formularies, and illustrate to patients the progress of their health. For example, a doctor could show a diabetic patient a graph of his blood-sugar readings to help him visualize how a snack might have brought about a spike in blood sugar. "These are neat tools with a 'wow' factor that says, 'I have to have this,'" Nelson says.
Christus' wireless deployment also sets the stage for a possible rollout of bar-code scanners that will let nurses check medications with patient records before administering drugs. That rollout won't likely happen for another few years, when drugmakers begin shipping all single-dose products with bar codes, based on a rule the Food and Drug Administration (news - web sites) is expected to finalize this month. The cost of the resources Christus would need to internally repackage and bar code medicines in single doses is prohibitive, so it has decided to wait for the FDA rule to take effect, Duffy says.
Not all health-care providers are waiting for drugmakers to add bar codes before deploying wireless applications for administering medication. Partners Healthcare, a network of medical practices and hospitals in Massachusetts, has a repackaging center in its pharmacy at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Employees repackage bulk medicines into single doses and add bar codes before they're delivered to hospital floors. In January, Brigham and Women's began rolling out a PC-based wireless laptop bedside drug-administering system. Before giving a patient medicine, a nurse swipes his or her ID badge, the drug's bar code, and the patient's ID bracelet. The information is sent securely via a Bluetooth wireless network, and then checked against patient- and pharmacy-systems data.
Brigham and Women's has automated the entire drug-order process, with doctors writing prescriptions electronically and sending them to the hospital's pharmacy systems. Without a wireless network, this bar-code drug system wouldn't be as feasible, says Steve Flammini, Partners Healthcare's chief technology officer. "You can't have fixed computers in pediatric rooms; the kids would bang on them," he says. The initial bar-code pilot involves a couple of patient floors at Brigham and Women's, but it's expected to be rolled out hospitalwide in May.
Meanwhile, at San Antonio Community Hospital, an independent 330-bed hospital in Upland, Calif., a wireless LAN based on products from Trapeze Networks Inc. lets emergency-room staff get a jump on entering information about patients who come to the ER, even when no beds are available and patients must wait in the ER's overflow lobby, says Jan Snyder, the hospital's senior telecommunications consultant. A portable digital X-ray machine is also available in the overflow lobby, and doctors can view images via mobile PCs. The hospital's Trapeze wireless network, which can support 600 to 800 users, has a one-year total cost of ownership of about $212,000, Snyder says. That includes network hardware as well as cabling, design, deployment, and support.
Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, Pa., has kicked off a pilot of a wireless acute-pain-management system for anesthesiologists. The system, based on IBM's DB2 Everyplace, is accessed by Palm Pilot Tungsten C PDAs. Initially, five anesthesiologists, some hospital staff, and two researchers will use the application, developed by a Penn State University team of researchers and students led by Dr. Stan Aungst, assistant professor of information sciences and technology. The anesthesiologists will be able to take the PDAs with them into the operating room or to patients in postoperative care to check real-time information that can help the doctors make decisions about the best treatment for each patient's situation.
For a growing community of doctors in their own practices, as well as at inpatient settings like Hershey Medical Center and Brigham and Women's, wireless technologies are becoming must-have tools of the trade for improving patient care.
Return to the story: A New View Of Data
Continue to: Identity Management Takes Hold and Analytics Move To The Clinic
Doctors and nurses spend a lot of time on their feet, rarely standing still, moving from room to room, floor to floor, examining and caring for patients. While technologies such as electronic medical records and computerized physician order-entry systems are beginning to reduce much of the paperwork involved with health care and improve the accuracy of information, these advances alone don't address a caregiver's need for mobility.
In a wired environment, taking full advantage of real-time electronic information requires having a terminal available at every patient's bedside--a luxury few hospitals can afford. Instead, patient information is often collected first on paper by doctors and nurses, and then entered into a computer at a nursing station or by office staff in a doctor's practice. That re-entry of data opens the door for mistakes caused by illegible handwriting and human error. It also can delay the most current information from being available at patients' bedsides, where physicians often make life-or-death decisions in a matter of minutes.
That's where wireless technologies are beginning to make a difference. Devices such as PDAs, tablet computers, and laptops are becoming invaluable tools for doctors and nurses to access and enter patient data in real time. "Wireless products untether physicians, nurses, and other clinicians from their desks and let them move to the point of patient care," says John Distefano, VP and technology service leader for health care at IT consulting firm Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. "Wireless is a breakthrough technology in health care. Rather than caregivers being encumbered by technology, they're enabled by it."
Deployments of wireless technologies, at both inpatient and outpatient settings, are on the rise. Almost two-thirds of business-technology executives in the health-care industry say handheld computing devices are included in their planned IT projects this year, according to 50 health-care companies that participated in the InformationWeek Research Outlook 2004: Priorities 1Q study.
In one of the country's largest outpatient technology initiatives, health insurer WellPoint Health Networks Inc. said in January that it's giving as many as 19,000 of its busiest physicians a choice of either a free PDA bundled with software for doctors to send prescriptions from their offices to pharmacies electronically or a desktop PC to reduce paperwork involved with activities such as claims processing (see "Health Insurer Gives Away Hardware To Boost E-Prescriptions"). WellPoint executive VP and CIO Ron Ponder says the products, which have a total retail value of $40 million, are aimed at "jump-starting E-prescriptions" in physician offices.
Dr. Bill McClatchey, an internal-medicine specialist and chief medical information officer at Piedmont Medical Center, a 600-bed hospital in Atlanta, says the timing is good for wireless technologies at the point of care. Over the last few years, much of the clinical technology investments by health-care providers have been focused on integrating patients' clinical care information such as drug, lab, and vital-sign records. Now wireless technologies such as PDAs provide the mobility that's needed for physicians to access that integrated patient information.
Brigham and Women's Hospital, Christus Spohn Hospital, Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, and San Antonio Community Hospital are among a growing number of companies embarking on wireless initiatives. "We anticipate that PDAs, laptops, and wireless tools will be as essential as stethoscopes," says Cathy Duffy, an RN and clinical applications manager at Christus Health System, an operator of 40 Catholic hospitals in six states. Christus Spohn Hospital is deploying a wireless strategy that lets doctors access and enter information at patients' bedsides via Palm Pilot Tungsten C PDAs running PatientKeeper patient-record software.
The Christus rollout began in mid-December, and so far 55 of about 250 affiliated doctors have started using the PDAs to access patients' lab and radiology reports, drug information, "and anything that would've been contained in a paper record," says Dr. Darrick Nelson, a family-practice physician affiliated with Christus and a medical-informatics fellow. Nelson is one of the 55 doctors using a PDA for patient care at Christus. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cmp/20040302/tc_cmp/17701297
NOTE: The video showed clips of mobiles that weren't Nokia -
"PaperClick For Cell Phones for the Nokia 3650 phone is expected to be available in the fourth quarter, with versions for other popular Nokia Series 60 phones, including the Nokia 7650, and phones from other leading manufacturers to follow."
http://www.neom.com/corporate/press/2003/20030930.jsp
~smartbiz
Looks like we might have uncovered the US Service Provider:
Sorry for not digging through the video earlier. I've been busy :)
~smartbiz
Bingo! Its mlife (AT&T):
Yahoo search:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=mlife&ei=UTF-8&fr=fp-tab-web-t&cop=mss&tab=
What is mLife? Ask AT&T Wireless
› › › News
By Christopher Saunders / February 1, 2002
For the past two weeks, cryptic television spots, billboards and print ads have been touting something called mLife -- but just what mLife actually is has been a closely-kept secret. Until now.
As it turns out, the multi-million dollar campaign, which debuted in a mysterious and vaguely philosophical spot during the Golden Globe Awards, is an elaborate rebranding effort conceived by AT&T Wireless Services. (Quote, Chart)
Yet even before the link between mLife and AT&T Wireless has been unveiled in earnest, it's uncertain whether the campaign will be allowed to continue.
On Friday, insurance and financial services giant MetLife (Quote, Chart) filed a lawsuit against AT&T Wireless seeking that a federal court prohibit the company from using the term "mLife" and "mlife" in its advertising.
MetLife said in a statement that it disapproved of AT&T Wireless' use of the term, which it found "confusingly similar" and potentially "dilutive" to MetLife's own trademarks, "thereby causing irreparable harm to the company."
The New York-based insurance company also said the mLife ads were similar to MetLife's own "have you met life today?" campaign, which, it said, "also address issues such as enhancing life significance in an emotional way." MetLife also objected to AT&T Wireless' frequent use of "mLife" as spelled "mlife," which it felt is similar to "have you met life today?".
MetLife, which filed the suit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, said that in addition to preliminary and permanent prohibition of AT&T Wireless from continuing the mLife campaign, it would also seek other, unspecified "appropriate" relief.
"We are taking this action on behalf of our customers and employees because we believe strongly in protecting the value of our good name and widely recognized brand," said MetLife senior executive vice president Lisa Weber. "We have acted promptly and reasonably to resolve the critical issues raised. It is our hope this matter will be resolved swiftly and on the basis of fairness and best business practice."
For their part, spokespeople for AT&T Wireless said the suit was "without merit," and that because the two companies offer vastly different products and services, "there isn't the remotest chance that AT&T Wireless' use of 'mLife' could in any way confuse consumers or dilute MetLife's brand ... Last time we checked, everyone is still free to use the thirteenth letter of the alphabet."
Since mid-January, the campaign's TV, print and outdoor ads sought to drive visitors to www.mlife.com, which, like the offline creative, aimed to build buzz around the question of what just mLife is all about. Copy on the site reads: "Is mLife fattening? ... I'm told that mLife can predict the weather ... mLife gives me something to talk about with clients ... What's an mLife and how do I get one?"
In an effort to confound the curious, the site's domain name, and the mLife service mark, were both registered to a mock corporate entity administered by Perkins Cole, a law firm in the employ of AT&T Wireless.
The site also features a contest to submit ideas about the meaning of mLife, with a $1000 prize to be given to a random entrant.
Officially, the tie between AT&T Wireless and mLife won't be revealed until Sunday's Super Bowl. During the game's broadcast on Fox, a 60-second ad will draw a correlation between the freedom associated with wireless telephony and data services, and, procaciously, the freedom that comes via the severing of the umbilical cord.
"We are meant to lead a wireless life," the voiceover will read. "Now we truly can. Welcome to mLife."
As with the teaser ads, the Super Bowl spot was designed by AT&T Wireless' agency of record, Ogilvy & Mather, a WPP Group (Quote, Chart) company. According to spokespeople, the Super Bowl spot will -- if Met Life doesn't get its way -- kick off a major brand advertising and marketing initiative that serves to illustrate the company's new consumer vision.
Evidently, that vision entails less of a focus on the marketing mainstays of the mobile phone industry, like calling plans and special promotions. Instead, company executives said the campaign aims to describe the more human side of mobile technology.
"With this new brand campaign, we are making a bold break from our industry's obsession with plans, prices, promotions, and patter about esoteric technology issues," said AT&T Wireless chairman and chief executive John Zeglis. "Instead, we are reaffirming the real power of wireless communication ... to keep human beings connected -- to the people, information, and things that are important to them -- while letting them be free of the limitations inherent in wired communication."
Zeglis added that the early campaign's intentional vagueness about mLife aimed to inspire curiosity about the term as well as to invite consumers to create their own meanings -- a ploy that the company wagers will reinforce the idea of freedom being available via its services.
Zen-like product positioning and life-affirming creative might play well with advertising critics, but AT&T Wireless also is making certain to try to convert the campaign's touchy-feely personality into real-world sales.
Following the Super Bowl spot, the mLife-AT&T Wireless connection is to be fleshed out in a series of TV, print, radio, and outdoor ads that depict ways in which the mobile products can be used, and why AT&T Wireless is "uniquely positioned" to meet consumers' needs, Zeglis said.
Another 60-second TV spot, slated to air Feb. 4, is to draw more attention to the products behind the message -- showing happy couples and suggesting, through a voiceover by actress Linda Hunt, that AT&T Wireless has services that help the couples both "stay connected and be free."
Upcoming ads, some of which will be targeted at Hispanic/Latino and youth demographics, are also expected to focus on SMS, downloading and playing games, checking e-mail and other Internet features that are available on AT&T-enabled mobile phones.
"The mLife campaign will also reinforce what the vast majority of people do not yet know -- that they can use wireless technologies other than voice to connect with people and information," said Andre Dahan, president of the company's mobile multimedia services unit.
In conjunction with the effort, AT&T Wireless also said it planned to redesign its consumer Web sites and retail stores.
http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/12_966711
About Digital:Convergence
Digital:Convergence Corporation is a privately held Internet technology company headquartered in Dallas with offices in New York and London. Working in conjunction with industry-leading partners such as Forbes magazine, Young & Rubicam Inc., Belo, and Radio Shack Corp., the company's proprietary technology can link almost all media or products instantly and easily with the Internet, allowing users to obtain relevant information or conduct e-commerce activities. The company's management team includes a roster of industry veterans from Time Warner, AT&T, GE, ING Barings and Disney.
http://www.neom.com/corporate/press/2000/20001019.jsp
I believe many of the old company's that jumped in w/CueCat will pick off where they left off with PaperClick... If you notice there is a screenshot of AT&T with the date 2/12/04 and the words "Welcome To XXXX" Find what theat 3-4 letter name is for some new DD. Looks like "mufe"
Gotta Run!
~smartbiz
Postal Customer Council
Here are our 2004 meeting dates:
Jan 13th (second Tuesday due to New Year's Holiday)
Mar 2nd
May 4th
Jul 13th (second Tuesday due to July 4th Holiday)
Sep 14th (second Tuesday due to Labor Day)
Nov 9th (second Tuesday due to Election Day)
http://www.pcc-ct.org/htfdpcc.html
HOT find kokonut eom
RE: Northstar Aerospace, Cirrus flying in tandem
I'm going to assume that Northstar uses more then one network to power their inventory tracking system. If they don't they should consider changing their system.
NOTE:
1. This PR was released on the Miami Herald (Florida).
2. NeoMedia was looking to hire in the Aerospace field earlier this year.
~smartbiz
Northstar Aerospace, Cirrus flying in tandem
Posted on Sun, Feb. 29, 2004
PETER PASSI
Associated Press
DULUTH, Minn. - Northstar Aerospace, a Duluth-based machine shop that got its start in the aviation industry as a supplier for Cirrus Design Corp., is gunning for contracts with additional airplane manufacturers.
Recently, Cirrus singled out Northstar as its "supplier of the year." Northstar's 50-person shop beat out massive Fortune 500 companies to earn the honor as Cirrus' most valued and consistent supplier.
Now, John Eagleton, Northstar's president and CEO, hopes Cirrus' accolades will help him land new business in the aviation industry.
Last year, Northstar delivered about 180,000 machined parts to Cirrus, and 99.5 percent of them arrived on time and defect-free.
"Of course, our target is zero defects," Eagleton said. "But we're still humans making parts here."
Among the many airplane parts Northstar manufactures and assembles are components that go into Cirrus' unique emergency parachute systems, its cockpit controls, its seating and its landing gear.
Northstar delivers parts to Cirrus on a daily basis, making it unnecessary for the manufacturer to stock a large inventory. This "just-in-time" system helped Cirrus free up more than 6,000 square feet of space in its Duluth assembly plant for production and sharply trimmed inventory costs.
Stephen Chun, Cirrus' vice president of manufacturing, said Northstar now performs several fabrication and assembly tasks that his company used to perform in-house.
As a result, he said Cirrus has been able to focus on boosting production and improving quality.
"You know the old adage about being a jack of all trades and a master of none," Chun said. "We don't want to do everything. We want strong partners."
But Northstar's evolving role has placed a lot of responsibility on its shoulders.
"We don't ever want that production line to stop because of us," Eagleton said.
Northstar uses a barcode tracking system to make sure a sufficient supply of parts and the raw materials needed to produce them are always in the pipeline.
Richard Lien, Northstar's director of operations, borrowed some of the ideas for inventory controls and ordering mechanisms the company now employs from his stint as a buyer for Target Corp. Lien joined the discount retailer when the chain comprised just five stores and left when it had 55 outlets.
Despite his foray into retailing, Lien has spent most of his career in the machining industry. He operated a shop, first with his father and then independently, producing precision components for high-tech clients, including Control Data Corp.
When Eagleton decided a few years ago to push Northstar aggressively into the aviation sector, he came knocking on Lien's door.
Precision counts in the aviation industry, where almost every component that goes into an airplane must be certified by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Every step of the way, Northstar tests and measures the components it produces to make sure they meet strict specifications. Using computerized equipment, the company can measure the dimensions of pieces it makes to within one 5-millionth of an inch.
Lien said Northstar continually works with Cirrus to look for ways to improve manufacturing processes, sometimes reducing costs at the same time. He cited a new approach to machining a landing gear component that saved Cirrus about $200 per aircraft.
"Our relationship with Cirrus is not just as a supplier but as a partner," Lien said.
Tom Bartoe, Cirrus' vice president of supply chain and logistics, said, "Northstar's role as a vendor has expanded, based on its willingness to grow and work with us, as well as its close proximity."
Staff from Cirrus and Northstar have enjoyed "a close relationship," Bartoe said, explaining that people from both companies have collaborated to improve production and quality.
As Cirrus has ramped up airplane production, Northstar has grown alongside it. Four years ago, the machine shop - then doing business as Northstar Machine & Tool - employed 12 people. Today, Northstar Aerospace has 50 workers on its payroll.
After investing more than $1 million in new equipment, Northstar has posted productivity gains that are even more impressive. Eagleton said that while the size of his company's staff has quadrupled in the past few years, its output has increased 10-fold.
About one year ago, the company moved out of a 10,000-square-foot shop on the site of Duluth's former air base and into a new 19,200-square-foot shop in Duluth's Airpark Industrial Park, near Duluth International Airport. The $1.9 million building belongs to the Duluth Seaway Port Authority, which leases it to Northstar.
Eagleton predicts his company isn't done growing yet.
"In three years, we could have 100 people," he said.
Fortunately, there's room in the Airpark to expand the footprint of Northstar's facility by another 10,000 square feet if the company outgrows its space.
Eagleton freely acknowledges his aggressive growth plans will require the company to branch out.
"Part of our growth will certainly continue to come from Cirrus," Eagleton said. "But our quest is to build additional new customer base, as well."
Toward that end, Eagleton has been calling on other airplane manufacturers, including Eclipse Aviation in Albuquerque, Diamond Aircraft of Austria, Bombardier of Canada and Piper Aircraft of Vero Beach, Fla.
Chun said Northstar's experience as a supplier to Cirrus should help open industry doors.
"Cirrus is now the No. 2 manufacturer of single-engine airplanes in the world, and we're on the way to pushing Cessna out of its top spot," he said. "Who would not look at us and conclude that our supply chain is very reputable?"
Shelly Simi, a spokeswoman for the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, said prospects for suppliers such as Northstar continue to look bright in 2004. Shipments of piston-engine airplanes continue to run strong, after rising 9.5 percent during 2003.
She also said several companies are working to launch small personal jets.
"The first of these 'microjets,' as they've been called, are anticipated to be out by 2006," Simi said. "And they should help expand and increase the whole general aviation marketplace."
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/8072474.htm
Virgin Megastore Puts HP iPaq and Music Search Program to Work Back to all headlines
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
submitted by abaxter Tuesday, December 02, 2003
If you have a Pocket PC PDA there's a good chance you've used it to listen to some of your favorite music. And why not, the quality of music when using headphones in a Pocket PC is really quite good. But have you ever thought about using a Pocket PC to find music? Probably not, but the Virgin Megastore in San Francisco has started handing its customers HP iPaq 3900 devices all dressed up as a "MusiKube" to allow customers to scan CDs and sample tracks while in the store. Wi-Fi and Handheld technology meets pop culture in this very cool application called Vista Service from MusiKube LLC.
Virgin has invested in the Vista Service technology from MusiKube in order to bring more interaction into the in-store environment. At the center of this Virgin Megastore experience is the opportunity to listen before you buy. Upon entering the store you simply fill out a small application to register for the service, then you can use the iPaq 3900 device to walk around and scan the bar code on CDs. Upon scanning a bar code the iPaq will download artist and album information via the Wi-Fi 802.11b net connection in the store, and then you can stream music to the device to sample tracks off of the album. No more waiting at listening stations or restrictions on which albums you can listen to, the entire store is your playground with the HP iPaq and Vista Service application.
Consumer Perspective of How it Works
In order for a consumer to gain access to a unit and interact with the application he / she must sign up for the service. This requires filling out a short form and answering some basic questions revolving around personal music buying habits. The user is then issued a membership card that has a user specific barcode printed on it. The member is then issued a device for the duration of their in-store visit. Scanning this member card logs the consumer into a unit. Functionally, the application allows a user to do a number of things, including:
1. Log in to a Vista account provided by the store (currently Carbon Music Stores in the UK or Virgin Megastore in San Francisco USA). This account contains information relevant to the customer such as favorites, listening history and personal recommendations.
2. Access a store managed album listing promoting selected artists. This may be used by the store to move inventory or simply market albums by featured artists.
3. Scan albums from a store's inventory and access the following information about that album:a. A track listing of songs on the albumb. Associated music samples for consumer listeningc. Album information like date of release, record label, reviews and eventually album art to name just a few.d. Related albums based on genre that can be selected and loaded into the application.
4. Manage scanned or selected albums in a favorites list for review at a later time, possibly leading to a purchase.
5. Access a stored scanning history sorted by time and date. A user can log in and refer to what he / she had previously scanned and retrieve information on those albums.
Geek and Technology Perspective of How it Works
iPaq 3900 all dressed up with barcode scanner and wi-fi jacket
The HP iPaq 3900 is customized so that the shortcut buttons enable you to control volume, view more information or add favorite tracks.The Vista Service application is an entirely Flash based app. C++ coding was used to divert the shortcut buttons to control specificfunctions of this application. The iPAQ units access data over a secure 802.11b network running in the retail environment. The Symbol sled/jacket attached to each iPaq acts as a barcode scanner and wireless interface. Each location is equipped with an access point that acts as a proxy for calls made out to a database housed in Marlin Technology Partners Florida data center. This mid-tier server houses a Microsoft SQL Server database with all the artist and album information necessary.
The Flash application on the iPaq processes barcode input for use by the symbol unit and initiates a call to the database. After this it parses XML data retrieved from the database for proper presentation on the iPaq screen. If a track is selected in the Flash application a url call is made to an Akamai server sitting on the edge of the Net and requests a music stream. This stream is passed to a Media Player instance running in the same browser page as the Flash application. The media is streamed through the Media Player but the play of that track is initiated by the Flash application. The communication is handled primarily with JScript.
Conclusion
Technology and pop culture are both close to my heart, so this application really excites me from both a technical and consumer perspective. I'd love to be able to go to the local Virgin Megastore and make sure the latest release from, let's say the Red Hot Chili Peppers or Jay Z, is up to snuff with what I expect by playing a few tracks off of the album. Sure it's a way for the store to market to you and get you to spend money, but hopefully you're wise with that anyway and will just be able to make a more informed purchase and have fun while doing it. Even if I'm not out to buy an album this marriage of PDA, Wi-Fi, innovative software and music is so enticing I might just go to the store to hangout for the afternoon and use this anyway!
For more information on MusiKube visit their website at http://www.musikube.com/
RE: Virgin Entertainment Group Case Study
NeoMedia has patented this technology.
~smartbiz
Virgin Entertainment Group Case Study
The Virgin Entertainment Group operates one of the largest media product retail chains in the world. Its 20 U.S. Megastores range in size from 35,000 to 70,000 square feet and carry up to 400,000 music CDs, as well as some of the most extensive inventories of VHS movies, DVDs, video games, and books. While such a massive selection sets Virgin apart from competitors, its extensive inventory can prove daunting to shoppers. Customers often lack enough knowledge to make a purchase decision about many of Virgin's products--especially less promoted or obscure CDs and videos. So Virgin turned to Microsoft and its Windows Media® Technologies to develop a state-of-the-art electronic product kiosk. The showcase components of the kiosk are Windows Media audio and video streaming files, which customers use to preview music CDs and videos.
Case Study Contents
Company Profile
The Solution
The Challenge: In-Store "Searchability"
Windows Media Audio and Video
Integrated Development Platform
Lowering Costs, Increasing Customer Satisfaction, Increasing Sales
Future
Company Profile
Virgin Entertainment Group (VEG) operates five of the six most heavily trafficked retail outlets worldwideand is the second largest merchant of entertainment media. The Virgin Megastores sell CDs, DVDs, video games, books and other entertainment products. Larger Virgin Megastores hold more than 300,000 CDs, as well as some of the largest stocks of DVDs, video games and other items. VEG is part of the London, England, based Virgin Group Ltd., headed by the high-profile entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson.
The Challenge: In-Store "Searchability"
Virgin's extensive retail inventory provides tremendous product selection but creates a complex challenge for shoppers. The enormous stores can make it difficult for customers to browse for products or quickly locate ones they want to purchase.
Virgin needed to address the problem of "searchability" customers face in the retail shops' voluminous spaces, says Peter Duke, director of retail development at Virgin. The Megastore's strength--its extensive inventory--was turning into a weakness as customers became frustrated trying to find what they wanted in the labyrinth of aisles. Also, many products were simply lost in the shuffle. Virgin, and the music and film industries in general, cannot afford sufficient marketing promotion and information for all CDs or videos, especially older or obscure ones (known in the industry as "deep catalog" items).
Solutions Overview
Customer Profile
The Virgin Entertainment Group (VEG) operates 20 Virgin Megastores in the United States and North America, as well as stores in Europe and Japan. Virgin Megastores offer some of the most extensive inventories of entertainment products in the world. Larger Megastores carry over 300,000 CDs, 10,000 DVDs, and aisles of video games, books and other products.
Business Situation
Virgin wanted to boost sales in its North American Megastores. The company determined customers were having difficulty searching through the vast amounts of products available in the giant retail spaces.
Solution
Virgin turned to Microsoft's Windows Media® Technologies to create a state-of-the-art Web-based kiosk that provides multimedia product information on over 200,000 CDs, DVDs, and other items. The cornerstone of the kiosk is Microsoft's Windows Media-based streamed audio and video files, which customers use to preview CDs and movies.
Benefits
Higher customer satisfaction from greater ease in learning about products and locating them in the stores Higher sales per customer because of lowered barriers to customers for making purchasing decisions and finding products Improved promotion and sales of older or obscure "deep catalog" items Lower cost from less use of staff to answer product questions
Software
Kiosk Client:
Windows 2000 and Windows XP operating systems
Internet Explorer 5.5
Windows Media Plugin 7.x
Visual Basic custom application
Windows 2000 Server with Internet Information Services 5
SQL Server™ 7 Database running on Windows NT 4.0
But Virgin found the answer to its dilemma on the Internet. CD and video Web sites have learned to tap Internet technologies to manage extensive "virtual" inventory similar in scope to Virgin's retail stock. These sites have developed new ways for providing detailed information on any CD or video, regardless of its popularity.
So Virgin wanted to take the same impressive product search capabilities found at leading Web retail sites and bring them into its stores.
"We needed to figure out how Virgin was going to exist in a world with competition from a host of new Web outlets such as Amazon and CDNow," Duke says.
Back to the top
The Solution: Windows Media-Based Preview System
The solution is a state of the art product information kiosk--dubbed the Virgin Preview System (VPS).
"We've taken lots of time, money, effort and square footage to offer people the largest selection of entertainment products possible," Duke says. "The kiosk lets us maximize our inventory investment by helping people find what they want as well as helping them find what they might not have known they wanted."
The VPS not only engages shoppers by providing a high-tech "wow" consistent with Virgin's cutting edge branding but more importantly boosts the shopping experience for Megastore visitors by offering them access to music and movie previews streamed to the kiosks via Windows Media audio and video files. The VPS also includes a rich assortment of multimedia product information such as album and video cover art, linear notes, and reviews from Virgin as well as movie and music magazines.
Customers can look up information in one of two ways:
"MegaScan" lets customers use a built-in UPC bar code scanner to scan individual in-store items and bring up product information.
"MegaBrowse" provides customers Virgin's top recommendations by categories, such as jazz CDs or adventure movies.
"Byte for byte we get better quality and performance with Windows Media than any other format," Duke says. " It works in a development environment that lets us get a lot more done for less money in less time." The VPS also provides a product locator feature which gives customers directions on where to find a given product in a store.
The VPS breaks new ground by dealing with more information and greater functionality than other music "listening stations," Duke says. Many music stores now use some type of device to let customers preview a CD before
buying. But most of those systems are limited in the number of CDs they can support at one time, and they usually lack any additional product information. Virgin's old listening station system, for example, could only maintain previews for 1000 titles. And no retailer offers an analogous "viewing station" for video previews. The VPS kiosk, however, will eventually contain clips and information for nearly every CD and movie in stock at the Virgin Megastores, adding up to over 2 million streamed media files.
The first VPS machines debuted June 2001 in the company's Sunset Boulevard store in Los Angeles, followed by an installation in its Dallas store in September (both stores with five kiosks). And in its biggest deployment to date, Virgin turned on a network of 20 VPS stations in its Time Square store in New York on October 25, coinciding with Microsoft's launch of its Windows XP operating system. The Times Square kiosks are the first to run on Windows XP. A new store in Boston will open in February with 15 kiosks. The company will continue deploying the VPS in other stores throughout 2002.
Most retail sites will include 10 to 20 kiosks. The VPS stations in each store are networked to a Microsoft® Windows 2000 Services with the integrated Internet Information Server 5.0. A separate database server runs Windows NT 4.0 with SQL Server™ 7.0. Kiosks are connected to the server on a LAN using 100 base-T Ethernet lines.
Hardware includes a touch screen interface and a PC running an Intel 500 MHz processor, with 64 MB of RAM and a bar code reader.
Virgin used the Visual Basic® development system to build the 27 KB thin-client kiosk application, which runs on either Windows 2000 or Windows XP operating system with Internet Explorer 5.5 and the Windows Media Player plug-in residing on the PC.
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Windows Media Audio and Video
The key component of Virgin's kiosk is Windows Media used for encoding, streaming, and playing the audio and video clips in the application.
The Virgin team that designed the VPS credits Microsoft's Windows Media for making the project possible. Duke says Windows Media provides the highest quality compressed audio and video available. "Byte for byte we get better quality and performance with Windows Media than any other format," Duke says.
Windows Media compression technology plays an especially crucial role in the kiosk. Virgin cannot store and host the media clips on its local servers in each store because of copyright licensing issues. Streamed media must travel from remote servers run by Virgin content
partners, such as Muze Inc. That means the media clips travel over the unpredictable Internet with its assortment of crowded data lines and router bottlenecks. If the streams do not reach the kiosk in good shape or force customers to wait too long, a sale is lost and possibly a customer as well.
Virgin is delivering the audio streams at 20 kilobits per second (kbps) and video streams at 100 kbps (video resolution on the VPS is at 240 x 180). Duke says these bit rates still provide sound and video quality good enough for enjoyable listening and viewing while making the files small enough to slip past Internet congestion.
"This kind of kiosk was not possible one year ago without the compression advances now available in Windows Media," Duke adds.
While all information offered by the VPS helps customers find the products they want to buy, the high quality audio and video previews are the most influential factor in the purchase decision.
"It's such a super aesthetic thought process that goes into CD choices. The cover art of an album or a paragraph of text doesn't convey the essence of a musical recording. Only sound can do that," Duke says.
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Integrated Development Platform
The Windows development environment was also a huge part of the success of the kiosk, Duke says.
Windows Media, unlike any other streaming media technologies, is seamlessly integrated with Microsoft Web software, including Internet Explorer and Windows 2000 Server.
The close integration of Windows Media with the rest of the kiosk's software is the key to enabling rapid changes or easy expansion of functions, Duke says.
Before joining Virgin, Duke worked as a producer for Sega Gameworks as well as building Internet sites for leading music labels such as Capitol Records and Blue Note Records. Many of these sites relied on Microsoft products and forced Duke to give the technology a try.
"I was a gigantic skeptic, but what I noticed was that the projects I worked on using Microsoft technology got built faster and worked better than those that used other tech options," Duke says
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Lowering Costs, Increasing Customer Satisfaction, Increasing Sales
Though Virgin is still developing measurement techniques to qualify the effectiveness of the VPS and its influence on sales, so far the retailer is impressed with early indicators.
First, customer usage of the VPS kiosks is far above industry standards and Virgin's expectations. The industry average for customer usage rates of kiosks--regardless the application--ranges from 25 to 40 percent (active use during store hours). But Virgin customers use the VPS kiosks 50 to 80 percent of the time, indicating that customers are lining up to use the machines, says Jan De Jong, vice president of information technology at Virgin Megastores. He says Virgin had hoped customers would use the kiosks 30 to 40 percent of the time. So just from this measure, De Jong says Virgin is enjoying a full return on its investment.
Virgin, however, is still developing methods for accurately assessing the VPS's impact on sales. Because the kiosks are not tied into the company's retail sales system, tracking relationships between VPS usage and purchases is challenging. Nevertheless, anecdotal information is showing the kiosk to be an effective marketing tool for deep catalog items. De Jong says over 60 percent of products inquiries at the kiosks are for older or obscure CDs and videos, indicating the machines are providing much needed information to aid customer purchasing decisions. Unlike the latest Michael Jackson CD or Hollywood blockbuster movie, these alternative titles receive little if any marketing support. By opening up a new marketing channel for its entire inventory, Virgin expects the kiosks to increase sales while lowering costs. The VPS also fields many of the questions that customers would have directed at clerks, freeing them to manage other store needs.
"We sell products in boxes that are closed (CD and video cases)," De Jong says. "This technology lets customers open the boxes and look inside to see what they are buying."
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Future
While the Virgin Preview System provides significant benefits to the Virgin Megastores, the company has only begun to tap the potential of this new marketing and customer service tool.
As resources allow, Virgin also hopes to develop another core function to the VPS, called "MegaSearch." It will be an intelligent search engine using XML to tie each store's inventory tracking system into the kiosk to help customers locate products and find out if an item is in stock. This capability will also enhance Virgin's ability to measure the relationship of kiosk usage to product sales.
When completely developed, the VPS will serve as a full-featured in-store ecommerce site where customers can not only look up product information, listen or view CD and movie clips, but also, for example, order out-of-stock items or other merchandise online.
Virgin has already tested the viability of migrating the VPS onto in-store PDAs, networked via a 10-megabit wireless Ethernet LAN. De Jong says tests were successful and the company is considering such a deployment for the future.
"The PDAs allow customers to bring up product information form , rather than the customers having to bring the products to the kiosk," he says.
Given the VPS's unique capabilities, Virgin is interested in private labeling the software to sell to other entertainment product retailers.
Much of what Virgin is learning from its kiosk could help the company with its other Internet-based Web development projects. The retailer can apply many of the kiosk's application features to its Web sites and track customer previewing and purchasing to create a selling environment that offers customers the products they're looking for both in-store and online.
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© 2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This document is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Microsoft, Visual Basic, Windows, Windows Media, and Windows NT are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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RE: Everyone's a winner with I-Tunes
Not a barcode but a manual code regardless of if it was a winner or not.
~smartbiz