A new study by Robert Half Management Resources finds that your CFO likely cannot live without his cellphone.

The study surveyed 1,400 CFO’s from a cross section of U.S. companies and asked them “Which of the following portable technology devices do you consider most indispensable in your life? Their responses showed the cellphone to be their highest priority, with their laptops being a close second.

Scandinavian massively multiplayer game specialist FunCom has received 5 million Euro of new funding from Nordic Venture Partners.

Funcom current operations the science fiction themed MMORPG Anarchy Online, which was launched in 2001. This new funding will be used for the company’s launch of the upcoming PC-based massively multiplayer title, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures.

While the mobile game industry has seen an inflow of funding from the financial markets over the past several years, the fixed gaming industry is still largely dominated by funding from the top tier publishers. FunCom’s continued success and ability to raise capital demonstrates that the same is possible for fixed developers.

The technology of Shazam Entertainment has been bought out by BMI for an undisclosed sum. Shazam’s recognition technology, called BlueArrows, uses pattern recognition to identify music titles from any source containing audio.

Shazam had implemented the technology into a service that allows cellphone users to call a number when listening to a song to identify the title, track and album, in as little as 2 seconds.

BMI also announced the formation of a wholly owned subsidiary, Landmark Digital Service, which will own, deploy and exploit this new technology. Landmark will integrate the pattern recognition technology into BMI’s royalty distribution systems. BMI/Landmark’s immediate usage will be to improve BMI’s radio airplay measurement system that monitors what music is played on stations.

From the press release, “As part of the agreement, Shazam will continue to pursue business activities aimed at the mobile consumer use of the BlueArrow technology under a worldwide exclusive license to be provided by Landmark..”

For the past several years, municipalities across the country have talked about and even begun implementing free WiFi offering. Many critics of these plans have claimed that cities have no business offering free high-speed wireless access as it competes with local telephone companies, cable providers of broadband, cellular companies and even local small business owners that use free wireless access to attract customers.

Proponents of free municipal provided WiFi say that it will bring internet access to lower-income households, improve tourism and benefit businesses. There are benefits, but many of these do not pass even the most basic cost-benefit analysis.

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Enter a simple but novel approach from Huntsville, Alabama. Many do not think of Alabama as a technology front mover, but Huntsville is home to 1) one of the country’s two U.S. Space Camps 2) Intergraph Corporation, 3) sizeable offices for Boeing, Northrop Grumman, LG Electronics and Lockheed Martin 4) Redstone Arsenal which houses several military and NASA installations, plus external associate firms 5) many other large technical installations and smaller R&D houses.

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Other municipalities would do well to copy this arrangement from Huntsville. It provides wireless data access to visitors and residents for basic needs at little cost to tax payers, may even become a revenue stream from commissions on extended plans sold by the service provider and leaves open the possibility of helping low-income households access the internet.

China and Japan signed an agreement on August 26th to jointly develop research for a new worldwide standard to cover 4G. A spokesperson for Samsung, one of the key members of the 4G Forum, said that the technical specifics need to be “firmed up”, but significant research has already been performed in the area.

NTT and others have been researching 4G for some time, well before WiMax development began, but standards have not been formed as there is still debate on the uses of 4G. The original plans for 4G were to offer 100 Mbps wireless transmission. NTT has successfully blown through this barrier with a successful test of 1Gbps using their 4G technology, a Variable Spreading Factor-Spread Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (VSF-Spread OFDM) and a 4-by-4 Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) antenna.

D&M, who also owns the Denon, Marantz and McIntosh brands, announced that it will no longer make Rio products after September 30th, 2005. The company cited increased competition in the mass-market portable digital audio player market.

The closing of the Rio lines, purchased from SonicBlue in early 2003, will allow D&M to focus on the more profitable premium consumer electronics brands.

Analysts are viewing this decision as a blow to companies like Microsoft, RealNetworks, Napster and other Apple rivals that operate online music services based on Microsoft and/or open standards. The exit of Rio leaves Creative Technology (maker of the Nomad and Zen music players), Samsung and a handful of other music players that operate on these other standards.

It is Monday morning and the markets are live with rumors from the weekend. The one that has jumped out first is a rumor that Palm may be buying back PalmSource.

Palm spun off PalmSource in 2003 to allow the companies to separate sales requirements, product marketing and strategy for the Palm OS and device hardware. Since then, Microsoft and Symbian have largely taken over the mobile device market. The Palm Trio has been Palm’s saving grace, but even recent comments by Palm’s CEO about being open to a non-Palm OS on a new version of the Trio raised more than a few eyes.

One could make a case either for or against a recombination of the two Palm companies, but this will be an interesting story to follow.

A new study from Parks Associates suggests that online music subscriptions will need to drop below $10 per month in order to attract a significant number of consumers worldwide. Although, the results for the study are questionable when looked at from a more complete business perspective

The study finds that 41% of people with digital music players in the U.S. are not willing to pay more than $10 per month for listening to their favorite music. For comparable prices, 62% of people in the U.K. with digital music players, 49% in France, 52 % in Germany and 56% in China are also unwilling to pay more than the $10 level.

Google first made many security analysts very concerned with the release of Google Desktop Search (now called Google Desktop) in October of last year. The first version allowed for access to many secure files and even provided access to password protected websites and intranet sites.

With the release of Google Desktop 2, Google has answered many of these initial questions, and ones that remained open after the release of Google Desktop Enterprise in May. However, some security analysts are still leery about the new search software.

This latest version no longer indexes password protected files and will not view files in other users’ directories, but it is one of the new feature suites that is causing some concern. This new version adds a Sidebar that searches the internet for information (email, news, weather, photos, stocks, Atom feeds) and displays them to the user based on their web browsing history.

In an in-depth article by eWeek on the subject, Nikhio Bhatla, product manager for Google Desktop is quoted as saying “we wanted to let people just sit back and let the Web come to them.” This can be quite benefical for users but does add two concerns:

Microsoft showcased the Xbox Media Center Extender (MCE) at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) this week. MCE allows the user to stream various types of content, including HDD video, from a Media Center PC to the Xbox 360.

The browser industry has been half waiting half dreading the release of the next Internet Explorer, IE7. Either way, Microsoft continues to release more information about the upcoming release which promises to add significant improvements to the web-experience but which may also put Microsoft on shaky ground.
The most recently announced feature for IE7 will […]

According to figures recently released by Strategy Analytics, WCDMA (3G) technology, accounts for 5% of the total handset sales during Q2 2005. While 3G is still in an early stage of development, Nokia has 17% of the 3G market.

This 17% may not seem that large, but it puts Nokia well ahead of other handset manufactures and may be due in part to the popularity of the 6680 line. While Motorola continues to make inroads into the GPRS / 2.5G market, it may have to step up pace for the next battle of the WCDMA phones.

Is this barrier already too high to climb for Nokia’s competitors? No, but Nokia is clearly making up some of the “high-end” ground it has lost to Motorola, Samsung, LG and others in the past few years.

The continued battle of the “games are good” “games are bad” war plays on with a recent article in Discover Magazine that examines the growing body of research suggesting that video games exercise the mind similar to the way physical activity exercises the body.

Laparoscopic surgery, also known as keyhole surgery or band-aid surgery, involves manipulating controls/joysticks to control a fiber optic camera and surgical tools to perform minimally invasive surgery with only tiny incisions in the person’s body. Laparoscopic surgery has been around for many years now, but doctors have only recently begun to notice a stirring correlation between the top surgeons and video gamers.

Surgeon Butch Rosser, directory of minimally invasive surgery at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, read a reporter’s comments about one of his procedures that referred to him as a “Nintendo surgeon”. This started his thinking that perhaps his apparent gift among many of his peers was because he was a gamer.

Chris Merris of CNN presents, in an August 24th article, a great look at a possibility that several in the game industry have proposed. Is Sony bluffing about how expensive the Playstation 3 will be?

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The Technology Suits looked into the business strategy of a move like this by Sony and think that it is quite reasonable. If Sony is playing a “bait and switch” game with the price of the PS3, will it hurt Microsoft and the Xbox 360? Not likely.

Even if the PS3 does release around the $300 price point or even less, Microsoft is still in a better position by entering the next generation race 8 to 12 months before the competitors. Console manufactures have historically sold each console at a steep loss per unit, where console licenses for each game sold on the system bring in significant revenues down the line. Many analysts have claimed that Sony in fact often sells hardware at a loss to maintain brand strength and market share, with Sony’s video game revenues and movie divisions subsidizing at least portions of the hardware businesses.

Early adopters and many hardcore gamers will no doubt buy the Xbox 360 at the proposed $300 and $400 prices, and the more expensive bundles of games and accessories will likely increase the overall stigma of a “must have” item. This higher price point will lessen the loss that Microsoft experiences form each console sale and help the bottom line.

When the final pricing for the PS3 is announced and it goes on sale, Microsoft will be in a position to decide whether or not to drop the price to be more competitive with Sony’s release. Plus, Microsoft will have many months to monitor consumer views on the high prices and new technology.

By moving first, Microsoft may be in a position to manipulate the 360’s price to track closer with consumers’ willingness to play and maximize revenues, but Sony will have the extra time to learn from Microsoft’s mistakes, as will Nintendo with the Revolution (We have not forgotten it and are excited to hear more details on the Revolution.). While the PlayStation 3’s hardware specs may be fairly locked down, Sony can continue to tweak the software offering with the console such as media center functionality, DVR capabilities and integration with other digital services.

Analysts are predicting that Google’s move into the IM and VOIP arena may shake the market. While analysts and vendors are generally upbeat about Google’s chances to win consumers and enterprise customers, the move may be a sign that the market is about to explode.
Several reviews on Google Talk have talked about […]