NewsScan Daily, 14 October 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 14 October 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Google Tackles Desktop Search…
        … And Plans Big Expansion in India
        Dell Takes a Bite Out of Apple
        What Women Want (In Game Design)
        Vatican Taps RFID Technology to Track Books

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Worth Thinking About: Baseball's Lonely Class Act

GOOGLE TACKLES DESKTOP SEARCH…
      Google has released free Desktop Search software that addresses an 
ongoing headache for users -- finding e-mails and files on their own 
computers. The move pits Google directly against Microsoft, which includes 
a file-search feature in its operating systems and is planning a more 
comprehensive tool in the future. Google's Desktop Search 
(http://desktop.google.com/) sifts through Microsoft Office and text files, 
e-mails, AOL instant messenger exchanges, and Web sites that users have 
visited in the past. Once installed, the software creates an index of the 
PC owner's files to speed up the search process, and when the owner then 
uses Google to search for something, a small box showing related files will 
appear above the Web results. "Our goal for the application is to have it 
act like a photographic memory for your computer," says Google consumer Web 
products director Marissa Mayer. (Wall Street Journal 14 Oct 2004)
<http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109776260102945353,00.html> (sub req'd)

.. AND PLANS BIG EXPANSION IN INDIA
      Google is planning a major expansion of its operations in India which 
are run from the two southern cities of Hyderabad and Bangalore. "We are 
committed to substantial growth in terms of both manpower and 
infrastructure at both these offices," says Sergey Brin, co-founder of the 
search engine, adding that the expansions are scheduled to take place by 
the end of the year but refusing to give details on numbers or figures. 
Google's Bangalore office will focus on research and development while the 
Hyderabad center would look after online sales and operations and human 
resource functions. (The Age 13 Oct 2004) rec'd from John Lamp
<http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/10/13/1097607263930.html>

DELL TAKES A BITE OUT OF APPLE
      Dell launched its diminutive Dell Digital Jukebox music player, 
dubbed the DJ 5, which features 5GB of storage for $199. The move signals a 
direct challenge to Apple, whose 4GB iPod Mini sells for $249. In addition, 
Dell lowered the price on its existing 20GB Dell DJ from $279 to $249 and 
introduced a new line of plasma TVs, which start at $2,299. The PC maker's 
aggressive move into consumer electronics reflects its determination to 
stake out a strong position in the so-called digital home market. (CNet 
News.com 14 Oct 2004)
<http://news.com.com/iPod+Mini+gets+new+challenge+from+Dell/2009-1041_3-5409195.html>

WHAT WOMEN WANT (IN GAME DESIGN)
      Videogaming has long been a bastion of young male techies, but a 
handful of women game designers is hoping that will soon change. The 
problem, they say, is that interest in game design as a career path usually 
starts with a keen interest in playing games -- and girls just don't play 
videogames as much as boys do. "It's not so much that women look at the 
industry and discard the idea," says Sheri Graner Ray, a senior game 
designer at Sony. "It's that the game industry just never even comes up on 
their radar." According to NPD Group, only about 19% of videogame players 
are female. The key to boosting that number, says Nicky Robinson, director 
of technology at LimeLife, is to make the games more appealing by making 
the user interfaces more intuitive. "I personally loathe interfaces that 
are cluttered. I've heard this as a common complaint from women: " In 
addition, some women say they'd like to see less graphic violence and more 
characters they can relate to, as well as "instant immersion" in a game's 
story line. "I know I'm opening a can of worms, but I'd like to see more 
romance," says an attendee at last month's Women's Game Conference. (New 
York Times 14 Oct 2004)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/14/technology/circuits/14wome.html>

VATICAN TAPS RFID TECHNOLOGY TO TRACK BOOKS
      The Vatican Library has tagged about 30,000 of its books with RFID 
(radio frequency identification) tags since last year, and says plans call 
for tagging 2 million of the 40-million piece collection in the near 
future. That would enable the staff to complete the library's annual 
inventory in less than a day -- a task that previously forced it to close 
for a whole month. Emilia Di Bernardo, VP of Seret, the company that 
installed the RFID system, says initially the Vatican staff were interested 
only in an efficient inventory process. "But we came up with something that 
is not only an inventory but a way to manage the books. This way staff 
always know where all the books are." Di Bernardo says it is relatively 
inexpensive to maintain the system and the technology does not harm the 
books in any way. "The most expensive part is the tags and the hardware." 
The RFID tags cost between five and 10 cents each, but Texas Instruments, 
which manufactures the tags, anticipates the costs coming down. "It's 
robust and as the price comes down, you will see it being used more and 
more, including in bus ticketing and concert ticketing," says a TI 
spokesman. (CNN.com 14 Oct 2004)
<http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/10/14/spark.rfid.vatican/index.html>

*****

FLASH CARD
      "Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with 
ourselves." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: BASEBALL'S LONELY CLASS ACT
      Buster Olney's book about the New York Yankees praises closer Mariano 
Rivera's lonely struggle to bring class back to the ballpark:
      "Mariano Rivera sometimes paused to stand behind the crowd of 
teammates watching The Jerry Springer Show in the Yankees' clubhouse. As 
they laughed loudly and exhorted the on-screen combatants, Rivera remained 
silent, shaking his head. To him, the remedy for the many misbehaving 
teenagers on the program was clear: rigid discipline. Establish rules, and 
if the children don't adhere, then physical punishment -- a paddling that 
would hurt and be remembered - must always follow. Growing up in Panama, he 
had been weaned on discipline. His father worked as a fisherman, collecting 
sardines to be processed for animal feed, a job that took him away from 
home a week at a time, and if little Mariano fell into trouble he would 
dwell in dread until his father returned, knowing that his mother would 
report his worst offenses. If he broke a window with a ball, he knew he 
would be spanked. There was no getting around this: mistakes are made, and 
consequences follow. His father insisted that Mariano be accountable for 
his behavior and show respect for others, and years later Mariano expected 
the same from his own children.
      "Rivera, the Yankees' closer, thought players should act properly, as 
well; he despised pitchers who were disrespectful to opponents -- glaring 
insolently at hitters and stomping and swaggering around the mound like 
angry Neanderthals, pumping a fist to celebrate the smallest successes. You 
should act as though you've won before, Rivera believed; you should act as 
though you expect to win again. Some pitchers grew mustaches and beards and 
groomed them in arcane ways to make themselves look threatening, but this 
made Rivera more certain they were actually very much afraid. During a 
Yankees game in Toronto in 1999, Blue Jays closer Billy Koch stalked in 
from the bullpen, a spaghetti strand of beard descending from his lower lip 
to his chin, and after throwing his first fastball for a strike, he 
lingered at the apron of the mound to stare at the batter. Rivera watched 
from his own bullpen and seethed. What a tough guy, he smirked to himself. 
What a joke. Show some respect for the game. Show some respect for 
yourself."  Excerpted from Buster Olney's "The Last Night Of The Yankee 
Dynasty: The Game, the Team, and the Cost of Greatness."
                      ***
[For further enjoyment: go to RLG's RedLightGreen to find a library copy of 
the Richard Adler and Jerry Ross's musical "Damn Yankees" 
<http://www.redlightgreen.com/ucwprod/servlet/ucw.servlets.UCWController?ACT 
ION=EDITION&WORKID=22504682> -- or buy the Olney book at 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060515066/newsscancom/ref=nosim>.
Note: We donate all revenue from our recommendations to adult literacy 
programs.]

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