Blog

  • Let’s Make a Tech Deal

    After a five-year hiatus, tech’s biggest players are snapping up startups. Broadband and solid business models have everything to do with it Mergers are popping up across the vast landscape of the tech market. On Sept. 12, online-auction giant eBay (EBAY ) announced that it would pay $2.6 billion in cash and stock for Internet-phone upstart Skype Technologies (see BW Online, 9/12/05, “eBay Opens a Whole New Channel “). The same day, software powerhouse Oracle (ORCL ) said it would add to its heft by acquiring business-software maker Siebel (SEBL ) for $5.85 billion. Those wer...

    Continue →
  • TOP

  • Typography

    This is a lot one can do with typography… express emotion… make a statement… with only a word or even a letter… one can say anything. Typography is visual imagery. Having never taken a typography class this is fun for me!

    Continue →
  • TOP

  • QOTD: Words to live by…

    If ever in doubt, go underground.

    Continue →
  • TOP

  • “The Door Is Unlocked” for CIOs

    Gartner’s Mark McDonald says its 2005 survey shows corporate tech chiefs are gaining influence and their departments can play bigger roles [LINK] There’s an old joke that CIO (chief information officer) really stands for Career Is Over. Well, that can’t be the case if you accept the Watergate-era advice from Deep Throat and follow the money. According to consultancy Gartner’s 2005 survey of 1,400 CIOs, two-thirds of their companies are actually raising their information technology budgets faster than their operating budgets for the first time in years. “It’...

    Continue →
  • TOP

  • Tech’s “Dearth of Innovation”

    Business Week (special report – July ’05) [LINK] That’s due to “near-monopolists” in many areas, says futurist Mark Anderson, whose newsletter is read by the likes of Gates and Dell Mark Anderson just might be one of the most influential technology futurists around. His weekly newsletter, Strategic News Service (SNS), is widely read by a who’s who of investors and tech visionaries. “Overall, your newsletter is good, which is why I ordered it,” reads one reader comment on Anderson’s Web site. Scant praise? Not when it’s coming from Mi...

    Continue →
  • TOP

  • Strategy by Design

    In order to do a better job of developing, communicating, and pursuing a strategy, the head of Ideo says, you need to learn to think like a designer. Here’s his five-point plan for how to make the leap. [LINK] It’s remarkable how often business strategy, the purpose of which is to direct action toward a desired outcome, leads to just the opposite: stasis and confusion. Strategy should bring clarity to an organization; it should be a signpost for showing people where you, as their leader, are taking them — and what they need to do to get there. But the tools executives tradi...

    Continue →
  • TOP

  • Power of Design

    [LINK] In October 2003, several hundred graphic designers gathered in Vancouver for the American Institute of Graphic Arts’ biennial conference. For three days, they argued, debated, and fulminated over what seemed a daunting question: How could they make the world — especially the business world — understand the power of design? Today, that challenge seems quaint, even antiquated. If anything, companies now face the question’s inverse: How can you not see the power of design? Look around you: The evidence of design’s power is everywhere. It’s apparent in th...

    Continue →
  • TOP

  • QOTD: Quotes & Definitions

    Golden Section: Ratio between two sections of a line or the two dimentions of a plane figure, in which the lesser of the 2 is greater as greater is the sum of both. Expressed as such: a/b = b/a+b “A regulating line is an assurance against capriciousness. It’s a means of verification, which can ratify all work created in fervor. It confers on the work the quality of rhythm. The regulating line brings in this tangible form of mathematics which gives the reassuring perception of order. The choice of a regulating line fixes the fundamental geometry of more...

    Continue →