September 2006 Archive
The recent news from Intel about its laser chips represents a significant milestone in semiconductor technology. When will these new chips turn up in a computer that you can buy? Not any time soon, but they will, they will.
The world’s largest chip maker developed the breakthrough technology (that’s a phrase which gets used way too much in the high-tech industry, but it’s highly appropriate in this instance) in association with researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Intel is calling this part a hybrid silicon laser, because the device is fabricated partly with silicon and partly with indium phosphide, a compound semiconductor used to make high-speed communications and networking chips. What’s important about this chip is that it will speed up data flow from chip to chip by an order of magnitude. Your high-end PC now may have a microprocessor doing its work at 3 gigahertz or a higher speed, but its connections to other chips on the PC motherboard and elsewhere in the PC box are running much, much slower. This Intel-UCSB collaboration isn’t the only development in this area; Japanese researchers are working on the problem employing erbium-based devices, according to The New York Times, and small suppliers of optical components have been tackling the issue for years.
On another chip frontier, Samsung Electronics has produced a working prototype of a phase-change memory. This next-generation device may succeed the flash memory chips now going into cell phones, digital cameras, MP3 music players, and other consumer electronics. The world’s largest producer of memory semiconductors developed the chip with technology licensed from a small American firm, Ovonyx. Phase-change memories will work faster and last longer than flash memories.
When will these advanced chips turn up in products on the shelves of Best Buy or Circuit City? Maybe in five to 10 years. So, don’t get too excited, for now.
The recent outbreak of E. coli caused by eating fresh spinach packaged by Natural Selection Foods goes to show that the FDA and USDA still have work to do to prevent the bacteria from infecting US foods. The outbreak, which has sickened more than 170 people, is also a reminder that food manufacturers face devastating financial losses when they fail to deliver safe edibles.
This outbreak, the latest of nearly 20 related to leafy vegetables over the last 10 years, was apparently caused by contamination in Natural Selection’s Southern California fields - not in its processing plants. The bacteria is typically spread through animal (mostly cow) droppings, polluted irrigation water, or unsanitary work conditions. The current situation has sparked agricultural organizations such as Western Growers to initiate measures to improve safety standards against the bacteria. California regulators are also carefully examining the situation; the state produces about 70% of all spinach consumed in the US.
Natural Selection is not the only company suffering from tainted greens: Fresh spinach producers in other regions of California and in other states (including #2 and #3 producers Arizona and Texas) are feeling the effects as the product has been removed from stores. Spinach from these areas has been OK’d by the FDA but won’t hit the shelves until consumer trust is regained. Several companies using Natural Selection’s spinach in their products have also had to issue recalls. Natural Selection is seeing big losses - together the Salinas Valley growers are losing about $1 million per day in sales. The company is also facing lawsuits from sick consumers.
Field workers, truckers, restaurants, and stores are feeling the financial impact, as well. And spinach lovers (including me) are being forced to make do with frozen or canned, both of which are processed with high-heat that destroys E. coli. The only good news from this outbreak is for processed food giants like Del Monte and Seneca Foods.
First there was Extreme Makeover and The Swan. But those “reality” television shows were missing one key element that makes pilot-season contender The Hottest Mom in America such a sticky prospect. The show’s main sponsor is a pharmaceutical company — Medicis Pharaceuticals, maker of cosmetic pharmaceutical treatment and “wrinkle filler” Restylane.
The production is the wacky scheme of “Felicity Huffman’s former manager” (I wasn’t kidding with that Desperate Housewives reference!) and champion poker player Jamie Gold. Gold’s viral marketing firm BuzzNation, is also in on the action — it’s spamming every message board imaginable with information about the show’s auditions in Dallas, Miami, Chicago, Atlanta, New York City, and Los Angeles — as well as canvassing salons in the upscale neighborhoods of those communities. The production is off to a rocky start: The first audition, in Dallas, hardly drummed up the thousands of hopefuls that vie for berths on American Idol — a pool of 300 applicants seems a bit thin. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Gold is tied up in a Nevada court, sorting out his World Series of Poker winnings in a lawsuit brought by a business partner.
This certainly is a novel way to market a drug — Restylane is a prescription-only topical cream that hasn’t even made a dent in cosmeceutical market dominated by Allergan’s Botox. Medicis is hoping that this viral marketing campaign will get your average housewife hooked on the Restlyane treatment (and its $2,000 per year price tag) before Allergan’s next potential blockbuster, topical wrinkle cream Juvederm, hits the market in January 2007. If the reality show scheme works, it could open the door for more elaborate viral marketing campaigns in the pharmaceutical space in the future. What’s unclear, though, is exactly how these campaigns will shore up with regulations that police the marketing of pharmaceuticals directly to consumers.
If the show is picked up by networks — there’s no word yet if it has been — the winner of the title of America’s Hottest Mom will become Restlyane’s spokeswoman and she’ll be awarded a college scholarship for her child. No word yet, though, if BuzzNation’s next reality show pitch will feature said Hot Mom’s brood in a televised battle for the college-funding booty.
Publisher Random House recently announced it would refund buyers of James Frey’s bestselling memoir, A Million Little Pieces – you know, the book lauded by Oprah before Frey admitted to altering the facts. Those of you wanting your money back need only to send proof of purchase to the publisher: page 163 for hardcover refunds, the front cover for paperback refunds, or a piece of packaging for audio book refunds.
To the legions of readers who embraced this book with all the zeal of a preschooler and his Elmo doll, Random House’s refund deal is perhaps of little consolation over being duped. Had I bought the book, I wouldn’t mind tearing out page 163 and a few hundred other pages as well. But the deal begs a bigger question: To what lengths will major publishing houses go in defending their star sellers?
Needless to say, the court-ordered Random House settlement of $2.35 million – the first of its kind – is a mere pittance compared to the millions of little dollars it and Frey earned prior to the controversy (neither Frey nor the publisher has admitted any wrongdoing). Are these guys bulletproof? Just look at this year’s laundry list of publishing skirmishes and you can see that a little bad press isn’t exactly closing down business:
- Little, Brown pulled Kaavya Viswanathan’s popular debut novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, after the Harvard sophomore was accused of plagiarizing whole sections of the book (the publisher pulled it from shelves);
- Random House defended a separate lawsuit claiming Dan Brown had plagiarized the work of two historians in his bestselling behemoth The Da Vinci Code (the publisher won the case in April, though an appeal is pending);
- Publisher Crown fended off allegations that Ann Coulter plagiarized passages in her latest book, Godless (the publisher deemed the allegations “trivial and meritless as they are irresponsible”); and my favorite out-of-left-field submission,
- In The Expected One (published by Touchstone Fireside), author Kathleen McGowan claims to actually be a descendant of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Holy editorializing, Batman!
It just goes to show that in this day and age you can never be wholly sure what you’re getting into when you walk out of a bookstore or seal a purchase on Amazon. Book sales seem to have trumped the almighty truth, often in the name of “creative nonfiction,” and publishers are more willing than ever to go to court (and the court of opinion) over it.
If they were held to a higher standard, as newspapers are, then maybe we’d be getting somewhere.
Most in the US are well aware of the woes that plague General Motors and Ford Motor Company. They have too many plants, too many workers making too much money, and too few products that can compete with their Asian rivals.
However, some might be a bit surprised to learn that Germany’s Volkswagen seems poised to repeat the mistakes that have driven America’s once proud auto industry nearly to its knees. Volkswagen? I thought Volkswagen epitomized excellence in automotive engineering and Teutonic efficiency. Evidently I was wrong on that.
Volkswagen is an auto worker’s dream. The company offers the best wages and benefits of any car company in the world. In addition to wages that would make any manufacturing worker salivate with envy, VW workers only work 28.8 hours per week. No wonder they have time for things like Bavarian finger wrestling.
Volkswagen is hoping to gain concessions from its IG Metall union-represented workers, specifically the reinstatement of the old 35-hour work week – and this is the really cruel part – without added pay. Naturally, VW workers don’t like that plan, and their jobs are guaranteed until 2011. Despite an apparent impasse, something has got to give. VW’s Wolfsburg plant runs at about 70% capacity and it loses money on every vehicle it builds. This business model is not sustainable – just ask Bill Ford or Richard Wagoner.
To meet its financial targets VW says it needs to trim its labor expenses by $1.27 billion. Union leaders for IG Metall have said they are willing to negotiate on hours if other demands are met – including a new product for the über-inefficient Wolfsburg plant and long-term job guarantees.
Here in the US VW faces some disturbing facts. Because most of the Vee-Dubs sold in the US are made in Germany where manufacturing costs are the highest on earth, VW’s US operations lost over $1 billion last year. In fact, in 2005 VW lost more per car in the US than GM did. Unlike its Asian rivals VW doesn’t have relatively cheap US plants. Why not? Because keeping those jobs in Germany is a hot-button political issue in places like Lower Saxony, the government of which happens to control a 14% stake in VW.
So what’s a German auto worker to do? I’d suggest biting the bullet and putting in a grueling 35-hour week. Either that or wind up like the former Ford and GM workers hitchhiking down to the Nissan factory outside Nashville, Tennessee.