A decade ago, it was 200 acres of pine trees near Saratoga Lake. A decade from now, it could be the booming heart of a new high-tech corridor, filled with some of the most sophisticated labs and plants in the country.
After years of haggling and setbacks, officials finally broke ground Friday on a $4.2 billion plant that will manufacture advanced microprocessors and would be the most advanced facility of its kind in the world. The plant, to be built on a 222-acre site, will be bigger than the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan.
Elected officials are counting on the expected completion of the factory in 2011 to provide a major boost to the ailing upstate region, where for years they have promised, and mostly failed, to deliver an economic resurgence.
The plant, which will manufacture chips for California-based Advanced Micro Devices and other chip design firms, will generate 1,400 new manufacturing jobs, officials say.
With the new factory as an anchor, they say, they can attract more investment to the area, building a cluster of businesses and academic centers that could ultimately rival Route 128 outside of Boston or North Carolina’s Research Triangle.
“You’ve got everything in place here to make the whole upstate region a leader in chip fab manufacture and high technology generally,” said Charles V. Wait, president of Adirondack Trust Corporation, a bank that helped finance early efforts to bring tech companies to the area. “When I grew up, you couldn’t find a job here in Saratoga, and everyone left after college.”
read the rest > http://bit.ly/2K8oEv
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
The Security Swamp - Will a new TSA passenger-screening program end up being a nightmare for travelers?
The name on my passport, my preferred form of travel identification, is Joseph Angelo Brancatelli. I was born on May 22, 1953. And I am a male.
I tell you these admittedly prosaic bits of personal trivia because I want you to know that I am not against giving this information to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). And if you want to fly, you, too, will soon be required to disclose this data to the TSA, the lumbering, leaderless, secretive bureaucracy that has spent the years since 9/11 alternately keeping us safe and infuriating us.
Secure Flight, the official name of this latest bit of data mining by the federal bureaucracy with the power over your freedom of movement, kicked in last week in typical TSA style: suddenly, with virtually no public discussion and even fewer details about its implementation. According to the agency's press release, which is buried half-a-dozen clicks deep on the TSA website, Secure Flight is now operative on four airlines. Which airlines? The TSA won't say. When will Secure Flight be extended to other carriers? Sometime in the next year, but the agency won't publicly disclose a timeline or discuss the whys, wherefores, and practical details.
read the rest > http://www.portfolio.com/business-travel/seat-2B/2009/04/07/TSA-Launches-Secure-Flight?PMID=alsoin/The-Security-Swamp
I tell you these admittedly prosaic bits of personal trivia because I want you to know that I am not against giving this information to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). And if you want to fly, you, too, will soon be required to disclose this data to the TSA, the lumbering, leaderless, secretive bureaucracy that has spent the years since 9/11 alternately keeping us safe and infuriating us.
Secure Flight, the official name of this latest bit of data mining by the federal bureaucracy with the power over your freedom of movement, kicked in last week in typical TSA style: suddenly, with virtually no public discussion and even fewer details about its implementation. According to the agency's press release, which is buried half-a-dozen clicks deep on the TSA website, Secure Flight is now operative on four airlines. Which airlines? The TSA won't say. When will Secure Flight be extended to other carriers? Sometime in the next year, but the agency won't publicly disclose a timeline or discuss the whys, wherefores, and practical details.
read the rest > http://www.portfolio.com/business-travel/seat-2B/2009/04/07/TSA-Launches-Secure-Flight?PMID=alsoin/The-Security-Swamp
Foie Gras Palates, Hot Dog Pocketbooks
“The donut wars,” several blogs and news organizations called them, as if a platoon of cinnamon crullers were advancing on a phalanx of glazed. The dispatches from the front were numerous — and impassioned. This was clearly a contest of the utmost consequence.
It pitted Tim Hortons, a Canadian doughnut leader, against Dunkin’ Donuts, an American one. Last weekend, Hortons invaded Manhattan, displacing a dozen Dunkin’ stores and girding for battle with the rest.
But while this development could have been covered and discussed merely as a business story or even a parable of international comeuppance, it was almost instantly analyzed in epicurean terms. Which of the two fast-food chains fried a finer circle of dough? And how did the Hortons nuggetlike Timbit stack up against the shrunken Dunkin’ Munchkin?
The New York Daily News staged a taste test. So did the blogs Urbanite (affiliated with amNY), the Feed (affiliated with TimeOut New York) and Diner’s Journal (affiliated with The New York Times).
In so doing, they showed how the humblest of foodstuffs have come to be treated in the most exalted and rapt of fashions — worthy of probing, pondering and ranking.
This elevation of what was once considered junk food to the subject of vigorous aesthetic analysis represents the convergence of two trend lines. The first is many Americans’ growing sophistication about, and fascination with, what’s for dinner (or breakfast or lunch): the variety of it; the vocabulary for it; where to buy the best this; how to cook the best that. More and more people seem to insist on deliciousness, and more and more seem to have readily articulated opinions to go along with that demand.
read the rest >
It pitted Tim Hortons, a Canadian doughnut leader, against Dunkin’ Donuts, an American one. Last weekend, Hortons invaded Manhattan, displacing a dozen Dunkin’ stores and girding for battle with the rest.
But while this development could have been covered and discussed merely as a business story or even a parable of international comeuppance, it was almost instantly analyzed in epicurean terms. Which of the two fast-food chains fried a finer circle of dough? And how did the Hortons nuggetlike Timbit stack up against the shrunken Dunkin’ Munchkin?
The New York Daily News staged a taste test. So did the blogs Urbanite (affiliated with amNY), the Feed (affiliated with TimeOut New York) and Diner’s Journal (affiliated with The New York Times).
In so doing, they showed how the humblest of foodstuffs have come to be treated in the most exalted and rapt of fashions — worthy of probing, pondering and ranking.
This elevation of what was once considered junk food to the subject of vigorous aesthetic analysis represents the convergence of two trend lines. The first is many Americans’ growing sophistication about, and fascination with, what’s for dinner (or breakfast or lunch): the variety of it; the vocabulary for it; where to buy the best this; how to cook the best that. More and more people seem to insist on deliciousness, and more and more seem to have readily articulated opinions to go along with that demand.
read the rest >
Monday, July 20, 2009
The Gift Economist - The marketplace has spoken. The marketplace wants free - Questions for Chris Anderson
As the editor of Wired magazine and a champion of the online life, you have just written a controversial book, “Free: The Future of a Radical Price,” that suggests that companies can profit by giving away digital services and products. It’s paradoxical. By giving away products to lots of people, you can make money. Free is the greatest marketing tool there is. It allows you to expose the biggest audience to what you do, and then the question is: Who’s going to pay? Google is the poster child of free. It’s one of the most profitable companies in America, but it doesn’t show up on your credit-card statement.
Several critics have already pointed out flaws in your argument, citing YouTube as an example of a mass sensation that is losing enormous sums of money. YouTube is owned by Google and today loses money. But Google has achieved something extraordinary, which is a network-television-size audience. The problem with YouTube is not that it costs too much to deliver that video but that we have not found a way to migrate television advertising as quickly as the television audience has migrated.
Why not just sell subscriptions, as in the HBO model, which proves that people are willing to pay for quality?
The original concept of the information superhighway from the early ’90s was going to be exactly that. We’re now 15 years past that, and the marketplace has spoken. The marketplace wants free. Consumers want free, and if you decide to set up a subscription service, then your competitor will make a free one.
read the rest > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19fob-q4-t.html?ref=technology
Several critics have already pointed out flaws in your argument, citing YouTube as an example of a mass sensation that is losing enormous sums of money. YouTube is owned by Google and today loses money. But Google has achieved something extraordinary, which is a network-television-size audience. The problem with YouTube is not that it costs too much to deliver that video but that we have not found a way to migrate television advertising as quickly as the television audience has migrated.
Why not just sell subscriptions, as in the HBO model, which proves that people are willing to pay for quality?
The original concept of the information superhighway from the early ’90s was going to be exactly that. We’re now 15 years past that, and the marketplace has spoken. The marketplace wants free. Consumers want free, and if you decide to set up a subscription service, then your competitor will make a free one.
read the rest > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19fob-q4-t.html?ref=technology
Monday, July 13, 2009
Exxon to Invest Millions to Make Fuel From Algae
The oil giant Exxon Mobil, whose chief executive once mocked alternative energy by referring to ethanol as “moonshine,” is about to venture into biofuels.
On Tuesday, Exxon plans to announce an investment of $600 million in producing liquid transportation fuels from algae — organisms in water that range from pond scum to seaweed. The biofuel effort involves a partnership with Synthetic Genomics, a biotechnology company founded by the genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter.
The agreement could plug a major gap in the strategy of Exxon, the world’s largest and richest publicly traded oil company, which has been criticized by environmental groups for dismissing concerns about global warming in the past and its reluctance to develop renewable fuels.
Despite the widely publicized “moonshine” remark a few years ago by Exxon’s chairman and chief executive, Rex W. Tillerson, the company has spent several years exploring various fuel alternatives, according to one of its top research officials.
“We literally looked at every option we could think of, with several key parameters in mind,” said Emil Jacobs, vice president for research and development at Exxon’s research and engineering unit. “Scale was the first. For transportation fuels, if you can’t see whether you can scale a technology up, then you have to question whether you need to be involved at all.”
He added, “I am not going to sugarcoat this — this is not going to be easy.” Any large-scale commercial plants to produce algae-based fuels are at least 5 to 10 years away, Dr. Jacobs said.
Exxon’s sincerity and commitment will almost certainly be questioned by its most galvanized environmentalist critics, especially when compared with the company’s extraordinary profits from petroleum in recent years.
read the rest> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/business/energy-environment/14fuel.html?_r=1&hp
On Tuesday, Exxon plans to announce an investment of $600 million in producing liquid transportation fuels from algae — organisms in water that range from pond scum to seaweed. The biofuel effort involves a partnership with Synthetic Genomics, a biotechnology company founded by the genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter.
The agreement could plug a major gap in the strategy of Exxon, the world’s largest and richest publicly traded oil company, which has been criticized by environmental groups for dismissing concerns about global warming in the past and its reluctance to develop renewable fuels.
Despite the widely publicized “moonshine” remark a few years ago by Exxon’s chairman and chief executive, Rex W. Tillerson, the company has spent several years exploring various fuel alternatives, according to one of its top research officials.
“We literally looked at every option we could think of, with several key parameters in mind,” said Emil Jacobs, vice president for research and development at Exxon’s research and engineering unit. “Scale was the first. For transportation fuels, if you can’t see whether you can scale a technology up, then you have to question whether you need to be involved at all.”
He added, “I am not going to sugarcoat this — this is not going to be easy.” Any large-scale commercial plants to produce algae-based fuels are at least 5 to 10 years away, Dr. Jacobs said.
Exxon’s sincerity and commitment will almost certainly be questioned by its most galvanized environmentalist critics, especially when compared with the company’s extraordinary profits from petroleum in recent years.
read the rest> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/business/energy-environment/14fuel.html?_r=1&hp
Golfers Have Clothes Laid Out for Them
As Tiger Woods prepares to putt on the 18th green this weekend at the British Open, he will assess many variables: the speed of the green, the grain in the grass, the wind, the slope, even the moisture underfoot.
But there is one thing about Woods at the 138th British Open that has been set in stone for more than a year: the color and design of his shirt, pants and hat.
For Thursday’s first round, his shirt will be navy and striped. It will be a bright coral color Friday and white with a stripe Saturday. And Sunday, Woods will wear a new, textured red argyle shirt with black pants.
Golf is notoriously fickle, yet golf apparel manufacturers leave no marketing opportunity to chance. What Woods wears each day at every major championship this year has been scripted for him by his sponsor Nike since last summer. To ensure that retailers have a new design or color modeled by Woods on their shelves this weekend, Nike had its first meetings about Woods’s 2009 British Open wardrobe 17 months ago.
read the rest > http://bit.ly/zOMOh
But there is one thing about Woods at the 138th British Open that has been set in stone for more than a year: the color and design of his shirt, pants and hat.
For Thursday’s first round, his shirt will be navy and striped. It will be a bright coral color Friday and white with a stripe Saturday. And Sunday, Woods will wear a new, textured red argyle shirt with black pants.
Golf is notoriously fickle, yet golf apparel manufacturers leave no marketing opportunity to chance. What Woods wears each day at every major championship this year has been scripted for him by his sponsor Nike since last summer. To ensure that retailers have a new design or color modeled by Woods on their shelves this weekend, Nike had its first meetings about Woods’s 2009 British Open wardrobe 17 months ago.
read the rest > http://bit.ly/zOMOh
Sunday, July 12, 2009
The Invisible Hand, Trumped by Darwin?
IF asked to identify the intellectual founder of their discipline, most economists today would probably cite Adam Smith. But that will change. Economists’ forecasts generally aren’t worth much, but I’ll offer one that even my youngest colleagues won’t survive to refute: If we posed the same question 100 years from now, most economists would instead cite Charles Darwin.
Darwin, renowned for the theory of evolution, was a naturalist, not an economist, and his view of the competitive struggle was different from Smith’s in subtle but profound ways. Growing evidence suggests that Darwin’s view tracks economic reality much more closely.
Smith is celebrated for his “invisible hand” theory, which holds that when greedy people trade for their own advantage in unfettered private markets, they will often be led, as if by an invisible hand, to produce the greatest good for all. The invisible hand remains a powerful narrative, but after the recent economic wreckage, skepticism about it has grown. My prediction is that it will eventually be supplanted by a version of Darwin’s more general narrative — one that grants the invisible hand its due, but also strips it of the sweeping powers that many now ascribe to it.
Smith’s basic idea was that business owners seeking to lure customers away from rivals have powerful incentives to introduce improved product designs and cost-saving innovations. These moves bolster innovators’ profits in the short term. But rivals respond by adopting the same innovations, and the resulting competition gradually drives down prices and profits. In the end, Smith argued, consumers reap all the gains.IF asked to identify the intellectual founder of their discipline, most economists today would probably cite Adam Smith. But that will change.
read the rest > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/business/economy/12view.html?em
Darwin, renowned for the theory of evolution, was a naturalist, not an economist, and his view of the competitive struggle was different from Smith’s in subtle but profound ways. Growing evidence suggests that Darwin’s view tracks economic reality much more closely.
Smith is celebrated for his “invisible hand” theory, which holds that when greedy people trade for their own advantage in unfettered private markets, they will often be led, as if by an invisible hand, to produce the greatest good for all. The invisible hand remains a powerful narrative, but after the recent economic wreckage, skepticism about it has grown. My prediction is that it will eventually be supplanted by a version of Darwin’s more general narrative — one that grants the invisible hand its due, but also strips it of the sweeping powers that many now ascribe to it.
Smith’s basic idea was that business owners seeking to lure customers away from rivals have powerful incentives to introduce improved product designs and cost-saving innovations. These moves bolster innovators’ profits in the short term. But rivals respond by adopting the same innovations, and the resulting competition gradually drives down prices and profits. In the end, Smith argued, consumers reap all the gains.IF asked to identify the intellectual founder of their discipline, most economists today would probably cite Adam Smith. But that will change.
read the rest > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/business/economy/12view.html?em
Monday, July 6, 2009
For Australian Winemakers, More Turns Out to Be Less
SYDNEY, Australia — Just a few years ago, Australia was being hailed as the great international success story of the wine business, challenging the dominance of France, Italy and Spain. From 1999 to 2007, foreign sales grew more than threefold, making Australia the world’s fourth-largest exporter.
But even as its star appeared to be rising, the Australian wine industry was sliding, selling a greater volume of wine at increasingly lower prices. Last year, the average price per liter of Australian wine sold overseas was about 25 percent lower than it was a decade ago, a level many say is unsustainable.
The industry is also facing increased competition from lower-cost rivals and changing consumer tastes. Last year, exports fell 9 percent by volume, the first such drop in a decade. Many vintners are hanging by a thread.
“The industry is in crisis — anything less than that is avoiding reality,” said Jeremy Oliver, an Australian winemaker and critic. “It is interesting that nobody really saw this coming.”
read the rest >http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/04/business/global/04wine.html?em
But even as its star appeared to be rising, the Australian wine industry was sliding, selling a greater volume of wine at increasingly lower prices. Last year, the average price per liter of Australian wine sold overseas was about 25 percent lower than it was a decade ago, a level many say is unsustainable.
The industry is also facing increased competition from lower-cost rivals and changing consumer tastes. Last year, exports fell 9 percent by volume, the first such drop in a decade. Many vintners are hanging by a thread.
“The industry is in crisis — anything less than that is avoiding reality,” said Jeremy Oliver, an Australian winemaker and critic. “It is interesting that nobody really saw this coming.”
read the rest >http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/04/business/global/04wine.html?em
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Europe's free health care has a hefty price tag
LONDON — As President Obama pushes to overhaul the American health care system, the role of government is at the heart of the debate. In Europe, it's a given.
The concept of free, state-run health care has been enshrined in Europe for generations. Europeans have built health systems so inclusive that even illegal immigrants are entitled to free treatment beyond just emergency care. Europeans have some of the world's best hospitals, and have made great strides in fighting problems like obesity and heart disease.
But the system is far from perfect.
In Britain, France, Switzerland and elsewhere, public health systems have become political punching bags for opposition parties, costs have skyrocketed and in some cases, patients have needlessly suffered and died.
Obama has pointedly said that he does not want to bring European-style health care to the U.S. and that he intends to introduce a government-run plan to compete with private insurance, not replace it.
read the rest > http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-07-05-europe-health_N.htm?csp=usat.me
The concept of free, state-run health care has been enshrined in Europe for generations. Europeans have built health systems so inclusive that even illegal immigrants are entitled to free treatment beyond just emergency care. Europeans have some of the world's best hospitals, and have made great strides in fighting problems like obesity and heart disease.
But the system is far from perfect.
In Britain, France, Switzerland and elsewhere, public health systems have become political punching bags for opposition parties, costs have skyrocketed and in some cases, patients have needlessly suffered and died.
Obama has pointedly said that he does not want to bring European-style health care to the U.S. and that he intends to introduce a government-run plan to compete with private insurance, not replace it.
read the rest > http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-07-05-europe-health_N.htm?csp=usat.me
Friday, July 3, 2009
The IT Companies Shouldn't Buy
For the better part of two decades, the mantra of giant server and storage makers was the coming of the paperless office.
Well, scratch that idea. The stacks of paper that have been digitized leaving a vast digital trail sends chilling--and sometimes thrilling--shivers down the backs of corporate lawyers. The volume of paper is still growing. It's time to face reality: The paperless office is never going to happen.
Neither will the completely virtual corporation. There needs to be a core to companies or they just don't work right. You can't run them without employees. What else that core includes varies from one company to the next, depending largely on the corporate culture. But so far, no one has succeeded in making money with no employees. And those employees need some technology.
What seems to be more in question these days is just how much technology. In the case of a trading house or a distributor, technology is the heart of the business. But in other cases, the subject is wide open for debate.
Interestingly, the companies that are fostering that debate are IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft, each of which have made billions of dollars by convincing corporations that they need an endless infusion of new technology. Now the big vendors have done an about-face, declaring that companies can offload many of their non-critical, non-defining applications and servers. In some cases, they can even offload their critical applications. The big technology vendors will even set up internal clouds and run them more efficiently than an IT department can--or at least that's the pitch.
read the rest > http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/28/paperless-office-virtualization-technology-cio-network-sperling.html
Well, scratch that idea. The stacks of paper that have been digitized leaving a vast digital trail sends chilling--and sometimes thrilling--shivers down the backs of corporate lawyers. The volume of paper is still growing. It's time to face reality: The paperless office is never going to happen.
Neither will the completely virtual corporation. There needs to be a core to companies or they just don't work right. You can't run them without employees. What else that core includes varies from one company to the next, depending largely on the corporate culture. But so far, no one has succeeded in making money with no employees. And those employees need some technology.
What seems to be more in question these days is just how much technology. In the case of a trading house or a distributor, technology is the heart of the business. But in other cases, the subject is wide open for debate.
Interestingly, the companies that are fostering that debate are IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft, each of which have made billions of dollars by convincing corporations that they need an endless infusion of new technology. Now the big vendors have done an about-face, declaring that companies can offload many of their non-critical, non-defining applications and servers. In some cases, they can even offload their critical applications. The big technology vendors will even set up internal clouds and run them more efficiently than an IT department can--or at least that's the pitch.
read the rest > http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/28/paperless-office-virtualization-technology-cio-network-sperling.html
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