NewsScan Daily, 8 October 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 8 October 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"  
       New Strategy at AOL
       Reuters Triples Jobs at Site in India
       OECD Says Finland, Without Nokia, Is Too Low-Tech
       Advanced Chips From China
       Terror in the Information Age

FEATURES           
       Flash Card
       Honorary Subscriber: Ulysses S. Grant
       Tapscott's New Portal: "The Age of Transparency"

NEW STRATEGY AT AOL
     America Online hopes to gain substantial advertising revenues by
attracting millions of non-members to its new Internet shopping site
(in-store.com) and to AOL.com and selling ads on the two sites. The shopping
site offers consumers a new, proprietary search service called "pinpoint"
that helps them find products online. Jupiter Research analyst David Card
says: "AOL, welcome to the world. I'm not collecting subscription fees and
creating a walled garden around you. I make money with advertising served up
by Google or Advertising.com or Bizrate. This is what MSN or Yahoo try to
do." (Washington Post 7 Oct 2004)
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16112-2004Oct7.html>

REUTERS TRIPLES JOBS AT SITE IN INDIA
     UK-based Reuters news service and data company will triple the number
of employees it has in India, with as many as 1,500 employees (mainly in
technical and data-entry jobs) in Bangalore by 2006. That figure represents
about 10% of the total Reuter's workforce. Reuter's chief executive Tom
Glocer says: "The amazing thing -- and this is the dirty little secret about
outsourcing that people need to talk about publicly a bit more -- not only
is the cost conflation amazing at four, five or even six to one, but the
quality and productivity is better too. We are flooded. We have 100
qualified applications for every data input person and these people have
qualified accounting degrees." (New York Times 8 Oct 2004)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/business/worldbusiness/08reuters.html>

OECD SAYS FINLAND, WITHOUT NOKIA, IS TOO LOW-TECH
     The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has
criticized Finland for having too much low-tech economic activity and too
many unskilled workers. Mobile phone manufacturer Nokia stands out as a
high-tech powerhouse of the Finnish economy, but the rest of the economy is
still heavily reliant on Norway's natural resource of widespread forests.
OECD says the country has too much low-tech industry and too many people
with low-level skills. (The Age 6 Oct 2004) rec'd from J. Lamp
<http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/10/06/1096949551261.html>

ADVANCED CHIPS FROM CHINA
     Chinese computer chip maker Semiconductor Manufacturing International
Corp. (SMIC) will be supplying 90-nanometer chips to Texas Instruments and
other major clients as part of Beijing's plan to reduce the country's once
total dependence on imported chips for its own electronics industry. Texas
Instruments has been using SMIC for late-stage processing of 130-nanometer
chips since 2002, and SMIC's adoption of the 90-nanometer technology will
bring it to the level of the highest industry standard. But SMIC has assured
governments in Europe, the United States and Japan that it will never use
its equipment to produce defense-related products. (AP/San Jose Mercury News
8 Oct 2004) <http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/9868936.htm>

TERROR IN THE INFORMATION AGE
     Law enforcement authorities have notified school districts in six
states that a computer disc found by the U.S. military in Iraq contained
photos, floor plans and other information about their schools. The officials
say there is no evidence of any specific plans to stage Beslan-like
terrorist attacks on the schools, which are in Georgia, Florida, Michigan,
New Jersey, Oregon and California. Schools have been urged to watch for
various activities which, though legitimate on their own, which may suggest
a threat if many of them occur together: interest in obtaining site plans
for schools, bus routes and attendance lists; prolonged "static
surveillance" by people disguised as panhandlers, shoe shiners, newspaper or
flower vendors or street sweepers not previously seen in the area;
observation of security drills; and so forth. Cleveland-based school safety
consultant Kenneth Trump says: "It's a positive sign that they're finally
discussing this after years of downplaying or denying even the possibility
of a terrorist strike on schools. Public officials are in fear of creating
fear, but we have to put the cards on the table, educate people in the
school community and make sure they are well prepared."
(AP/USA Today 7 Oct 2004)
<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-10-07-school-disk_x.htm>

*****

FLASH CARD
     "But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we
cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled
here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract."
(Abraham Lincoln)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: ULYSSES S. GRANT
     Today's Honorary Subscriber is the 18th President of the United States,
Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885), who was elected to that office in 1868
following his success as the general in command of the victorious Union
armies at the close of the Civil War.
     Grant was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio, a village southeast of
Cincinnati. His parents named him Hiram Ulysses Grant but to Grant's relief,
his name was mistakenly submitted to the Military Academy as Ulysses S.
Grant, allowing him to escape having "H.U.G." as his initials He never
corrected the mistake, and his new initials led later to the acronym
"Unconditional Surrender Grant," more in keeping with his military
reputation. 
     Except for his role in the War with Mexico, Grant's time in the army
was personally disappointing. Long periods of separation from his family (he
married Julia Dent in 1848), poor pay, and some difficulties with superior
officers led him to leave the service for civilian life. Unfortunately he
suffered several business failures and to his great distress became
financially dependent on his own father and his wife's family. When the
Civil War started, the Union's need for trained officers earned him a second
chance for success in life, which as his brilliant war record shows, he did
not neglect.
     Following his years as soldier and president, Grant went on a world
tour, and then settled in New York City. In a sad repetition of the past, he
was defrauded and left bankrupt by business associates. Suffering from
terminal throat cancer, Grant gamely undertook to get his family out of debt
by writing his memoirs. Promised payments that his friend Mark Twain
considered insultingly paltry, he gave publishing rights to Twain and
proceeded to write the two-volume memoir that became an American classic and
earned his family a handsome income of $450,000. Grant just barely finished
the job before the cancer took his life on July 23, 1885. His body rests in
an imposing tomb on Riverside Drive in New York City.
                              ***
[See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375752285/newsscancom/ref=nos
im for Grant's "Personal Memoirs" -- or use RedLightGreen.com from our
friends at RLG to explore where the book is available among your favorite
libraries. Note: We donate all revenue from our book and media
recommendations to adult literacy programs.]

TAPSCOTT'S NEW PORTAL: "THE AGE OF TRANSPARENCY"
     NewsScan friend Don Tapscott, consultant and author of numerous books
on the digital economy, has unveiled a new Web site whose mission is to be
"a comprehensive portal for information and discussion on how companies
harness the power of transparency for growth and success."  Be sure to visit
<http://www.AgeofTransparency.com/>

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