Deflating this month's overblown memes.
| Ranking| Tendency| Life Expectancy
| 1| 
| Cable Telephony| 6
The push to put voice service on data networks is just heating up, and a new twisted pair is getting ready to enter America's living rooms. Long distance giant AT&T merged with John Malone's TCI with an eye toward using the cable network to get into the local phone market. Good luck. Cablecos can't stand up to the rigors of telephony: While a typical voice network in the USoperates dependably 99.8 percent of the time, cable's infrastructure struggles to hit 70 percent reliability. And then there's TCI's infamous customer service. Please hang up and dial again.
<p>
<strtimgstrhips</ststrst>
P
r to announcing a 25 percent plunge in second-quarter chip orders, Motorola unveiled a partnership with Packard Instrument and Argonne National Laboratory to mass-produce diagnostic biochips, which pack micro-gel "test tubes" onto a glass slide. Rather than bit-by-bit gene-crunching, the devices can process 10,000 samples of DNA at a shot. But Moore's Law doesn't apply to biological reactions. Plus, the semiconductor company's sure to face an extended legal battle with Affymetrix, which owns a broad patent estate covering almost all aspects of biochip production.</p>
| <ong>gsrcng>y Enabled Networks</strongng>ng>
W
ost of proprietary products in tow, Cisco, Novell, and Microsoft vow that a standardized directory of routers and switches will deliver greater quality of service and security. True, the Directory Enabled Networks initiative allows for the allocation of network resources according to user needs. But experts have been touting the arrival of directories since X.500, another scheme that was deemed too unwieldy and expensive for the optimization it delivered. If there's a lesson in DEN, it's that industry groups are more effective as marketing bodies than technology implementers.</p> <p
<stro4</s "ht
nstaging</strong>
| </s/>
g
ing up, or call it karma, but the youthful promise of certain Internet products inevitably leads to the same marketing purgatory – the corporate intranet. Push, you may recall, went from a world-beating product to a nice way to update software. The same fate awaits instant messaging. Once a cool app that amused office workers, real-time chat has matured into a groupware tool in Lotus Notes and Microsoft's NetMeeting. ICQ may prove to be AOL's gateway to portalhood, but chat's future seems torn between fun time-waster and productivity aid. A moment of silence, please.</p> <p> |
rong>5trongps:um-ating</strong>
| <strtro
<
t
exes have made onscreen choice a fixture of the movie landscape, companies such as AMC and Loews are turning to offscreen attractions. The latest fad: stadium-style seating. The arrangements feature retractable LoveSeat armrests – conducive to time-honored arm-stretching come-ons – and terraced aisles, which keep hairdos out of your view. Harvard Business Review bluebloods call this the "experience economy" – commoditized services differentiated by superior surroundings. The bottom line: The picture, not the upholstery, puts warm bodies in the seats.</p> <p><em><a
="http*/a></em></p>*
