How quickly some things change! The idea of a Walkman sounds positively archaic in today's iPod world. Your kids (or interns) probably have no idea what an LP is, but say "MP3" and the know immediately what you're talking about.
So perhaps we can all take some comfort in that fact that, even in our ever-changing world, there are still some terms that have tremendous staying power. In golf, a driver is still called a wood, even though these days it's often 100% titanium. Coke is still Coke a century later, even if it's now available in more varieties than its inventor, John Pemberton, ever dreamed of.
And the system you use at work to manage your hiring process — it's still an applicant tracking system. Or is it?
It's interesting to see that the term applicant tracking system has enjoyed tremendous staying power since the 1980s, even while customer requirements and system capabilities have continuously evolved. It's not that the term isn't an accurate description of the raw purpose of the tool. On the contrary, Applicant Tracking System gets right to the primary purpose of these tools: tracking applicants from the point of application to the point of hire. The problem is that as tools and processes have evolved, it has become a limiting term that no longer accurately portrays the value of the tool's potential — or our needs as recruiters in 2004.
Technology has ushered in new ways of thinking about and executing on talent attraction, selection, and acquisition. Applicants can be processed more efficiently and with greater care. Candidate relationship management, once reserved for top-tier professional applicants, can be realized across every level of job seeker. Proprietary talent communities provide companies with opportunities for targeted marketing and can ultimately reduce time to fill and cost per hire while increasing the value of the employment brand. These benefits provide a foundation for talent management to be in play at a broad and individual level.
Don't be mistaken. If the biggest pain point in your recruiting process today is that you have no way to track applicants electronically, an applicant tracking system may be exactly the relief you're looking for. If, however, your recruiting challenges are even just a little more complex, applicant tracking almost certainly understates your needs.
For example, applicant tracking isn't about helping to brand your company as an employer of choice. It does not focus on providing a great experience to candidates on your corporate website when they apply for your jobs. It emphasizes administrative processes (e.g., tracking applicants) over process improvement (e.g., automatically screening candidates for their fit with a specific job). It doesn't speak to providing integrated tools to enhance the efficiency of your recruiters, such as job libraries, correspondence templates, recruiter-to-recruiter communication tools, and reporting modules.
In short, a decent applicant tracking system will certainly help you track applicants; it's just not likely to help you win the best ones, collect the most useful data, or deliver the level of efficiency to your recruiting process that most of us need. And with smaller teams and more limited resources, we need these things now more than ever before.
So, what's better? Well, it may be no match for the cool factor of iPod, but hiring management system isn't bad. It's certainly much more descriptive of the requirements many corporate recruiters share today, in a world that's a little more complex than the days when tracking applicants electronically was truly a differentiator.
If applicant tracking has evolved to become something of a commodity, hiring management is still very much a differentiator in corporate America. Hiring management systems facilitate a more complete story of the power and flexibility offered by technology as a differentiator to leverage expectations, performance, and process.
Let's explore a few of the differences between hiring management and applicant tracking, with a goal of helping you to decide where your organization is heading and which approach is the best fit for you.
For most recruiters, a basic applicant tracking system, even if it starts as an Excel spreadsheet or Access database, is a key to survival and certainly to efficiency. If anything, the urgency to implement even a basic system has only increased in the past few years, as the Internet has made it so easy for candidates to apply for jobs. If you don't have an automated way to capture and search for candidate information, your job is going to be defined by performing administrative tasks that consume a significant portion of your available time — time that could almost certainly be better spent on higher-level activities. The good news is that if you're just getting started with applicant tracking, there are many good systems available today to fit almost any budget.
Hiring management picks up where applicant tracking left off. Tracking your applicants efficiently is no longer a self-sustaining hiring process, and you will inevitably start focusing on the following areas to raise your recruiting process to the next level:
* Tight integration between the hiring management system and corporate recruitment site. This is key, because it is the basis for ensuring a consistent and positive job seeker experience. It's also the most visible aspect of the online employment brand interface. The hiring management system needs to support the integrity of the company's brand first and foremost, which, depending on the company, plays out at varying levels of complexity. An intuitive, flexible interface, supported by data capture, provides insight into the job seeker and drives the overall effectiveness of the system.
* Engaging above-average talent by providing a streamlined and user-friendly online application process — one that candidates tell you is better than your competitors'.
* The ability to seamlessly pre-screen candidates by asking job-specific questions in addition to collecting their resumes. This component should also add value to the applicant's experience while supporting recruiter productivity. If done well, a thoughtful approach integrated into your hiring management system can serve as a self-screen or job preview.
* The ability at a glance, to see how a candidate fits with the job he or she has applied for. You should be able to accomplish this individually and in comparison with all other applicants.
* Making it easy for your recruiters to communicate and build relationships with candidates throughout the recruiting process.
* Additional recruiter productivity enhancement tools.
* The ability to extract data from your system to make decisions that support continuously improving your recruiting and talent attraction process.
So where are you heading? If any of the above areas are priorities for your organization, then you're already focusing on hiring management, the next stop in the evolution of the applicant tracking paradigm.
Changing the perspective to hiring management also supports moving the technology from a commodity to a competitive advantage. Functionality that once was only accessible to a few at the high end is now within reach to any company with a desire to leverage the technology. Now's a great time to define your needs through the hiring management lens and explore the alternatives.
Note: Gary Alpert contributed to this article. Gary is the CEO of WetFeet Inc., a recruitment services firm that conducts ongoing research on trends and best practices in recruitment and works with companies nationally on a variety of recruitment issues, from technology to college recruiting and employer branding.
http://www.ere.net/articles/db/832A28A13B6B47E0AF4E2D03E4B5838D.asp
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Monday, May 28, 2007
Recruiting Lessons from the iPod
Why is the iPod such a phenomenon?
It's not because it looks neat or works well. Those things are just a small part of it. The real reason it's such a phenomenon is that it's more than a music player, it's a music system. In fact, it's a music business system far larger than itself. Get this: 4.8 million iPods were sold in the fourth quarter of 2004 alone. At this rate, soon everyone in the world will soon have one.
There are business, management, and especially recruiting lessons to be learned from the success of the iPod.
By being more than a music player, iPod has single-handedly changed the competitive landscape for both the music and the consumer electronics industries. Right now you can plug your iPod into your car, laptop, or your home theater system and find and play any music you want anytime, anywhere. As a result of the iPod, in a few years CDs and CD players will cease to exist.
Being more than a music player is the lesson to be learned here. Being a music system is why the iPod has been so wildly successful. Recruiters and recruiting tools need to be more than recruiters and recruiting tools, too. They have to be iPod-like.
Here's the definition of a business system from Word.net: "A group of independent but interrelated elements comprising a unified whole; example — 'a vast system of production and distribution and consumption keep the country going.'"
In the world of recruiters and recruiting, there is little interdependence similar to the iPod. There is no business system for recruiting. This is actually pretty shocking. Recruiters are all different, and they all use different sourcing, selection, and recruiting techniques. Managers are all different, and they all use different techniques for writing job descriptions, and interviewing and selecting candidates. Recruiting IT systems are different, and they're not too well integrated with the hiring process they're supposed to manage.
This lack of an interrelated whole is why just about every single hiring and recruiting initiative fails to meet expectations. It's why behavioral interviewing training programs don't work too well. It's why applicant tracking systems fall short. It's why the war for talent is still being fought.
Here are two examples of how recruiting managers and recruiters can use the iPod as a metaphor to become better managers and recruiters. The first one has to do with how to buy (or sell) recruiting software; the other with how to use the interview as part of a recruiting system and not just as an assessment tool.
Buying Recruiting Software
Buying or selling specialized recruiting software is narrow thinking. Selling a system-level solution is the key to making software work. This is the lesson of the iPod.
For example, as most of you know, name-generating software to find passive candidates is the new buzz. This could be using products that auto-scour the Internet to find passive candidates or using some type of social networking tool to get names from names.
Buying (or selling) something like this is a no-brainer for third-party retained recruiters, but a non-starter for their corporate counterparts. Names of passive candidates are the raw material of third-party recruiters, but useless for corporate recruiters unless an iPod-like business system solution is provided.
For name-generating software to work in the corporate market, the recruiting team must be reorganized; the product itself must be combined with automated techniques to contact the person; it must be integrated with the applicant tracking system; and specialized recruiter training should be provided. On a larger scale, every aspect of the corporate hiring process must be redesigned to handle passive candidates.
This is why a software-only, non-system solution won't work. Instead, software like this must be part of a interrelated business system consisting of the right people, the right processes, the right technology, and the right organizational structure. Evaluate your company's hiring system from this perspective. Does it resemble an iPod, or is it just a disconnected collection of CDs and MP3 players?
Interview as Part of a Recruiting System
Now let's consider the interview as part of a recruiting system rather than just a means to assess candidate competency. An interview must accomplish a number of objectives. In order of importance, here's my list of the real purpose of the interview:
1. Recruit top passive candidates.
2. Reduce interviewer bias and emotions.
3. Clearly explain jobs to create an "opportunity gap."
4. Assess candidate competency and motivation for the real job.
5. Reduce candidate nervousness.
6. Train candidates to give real information, not pre-scripted babble.
7. Negotiate a potential offer.
8. Demonstrate the professionalism and high standards of the company to every candidate.
When you consider the interview as part of a complete, iPod-like recruiting system rather than just a tool to assess competency, everything about how you conduct it changes. For one thing, you wouldn't ask a bunch of boring behavioral questions. For another you wouldn't be unprepared when you conduct it. You also wouldn't permit a person who hasn't been trained to interview a person and make some type of superficial judgment.
As you know, I like to ask candidates to describe their most significant accomplishments in great detail. This allows me to understand the type of work they've done and where they've excelled. By looking at the trend line of these accomplishments over time, you can observe consistency and growth. By comparing this information to the actual needs of the job, you can accurately assess job fit.
Here are two articles you can read to get you up to speed on this performance-based interviewing approach:
* The Best Interview Question of All Time
* Using the Two-Question Interview to Assess Executive Potential
Converting this type of performance-based interview into a recruiting system is the real key to its effectiveness. Here are some simple things you can do on your next interview to see the impact for yourself.
Rather than just ask the candidate to describe his or her most significant accomplishment, add this type of introduction:
One of our most important company initiatives is the launch of our new music system controller. As the lead software developer, you'd be involved in insuring the hardware and software integration of the main module. Can you please tell me about a major project you've handled where you had this type of lead responsibility?
This type of lead-in ties the importance of the job to a major company project. It makes the job more than just a software developer: it makes it strategic. Relating the job this way to a bigger project is referred to as job branding.
This recruiting introduction also includes a pull-towards question. It establishes a target that the candidate needs to reach in order for the person to be considered qualified. As a result, candidates tend to talk more in an attempt to sell the interviewer, rather than the interviewer having to sell the candidate.
The question itself creates an "opportunity gap." This is the difference between the candidate's current job and the opportunity represented by the new job. The bigger the opportunity gap, the less the candidate will need in terms of compensation. Creating an opportunity gap this way is far better than telling the candidate how great the job is. A pull-towards question like this is a simple way to modify the interview to make it accomplish multiple objectives.
The push-away is an even more effective approach. Try this after you learn a little about the candidate:
The person in this lead software development role will be interfacing with our top product marketing people and a few of our key customers. I'm a little concerned about your background in this regard. It seems that most of the people you've worked with in the past have been other developers or those in quality and operations. This job would really expose you to the new product phase of our business. Why don't you tell me about something you've accomplished where you've had to deal with these types of people?
Be careful when using this recruiting technique, and don't overdo it. However, by challenging the candidate this way you can create an even bigger opportunity gap. Candidates then have to defend their past experience and sell you even more. Of course, preparation is the key here. You must know the job and how to ask performance-based questions.
One cardinal rule of recruiting is to make the candidate earn the job. Never give it away. Using this type of pull-and-push questioning technique is how you convert a simple interviewing question into an iPod-like recruiting system.
The lesson to be learned from the iPod is to look at everything you do from a system level perspective. Interdependence is the key to success. Technology, process, people and organization must come together in order to make hiring top talent a systematic business process. Don't look at independent solutions. They have never worked, and never will. That's why we're still fighting the war for talent.
Now, if you want a glimpse at the future of creating a system for networking, go to the iMix section of iTunes. I just downloaded The Door's "Break on Through" on a Rock Classic iMix. You might want to listen to this one for some inspiration and other ideas on how to become a better recruiter.
[Note: If you want to learn more about recruiting systems, you might want to take our Recruiter 10-Factor Evaluation. This quick online self-evaluation will allow you to rank yourself on the ten most important recruiter competencies. Collectively they convert individual recruiting skills into a recruiting system. If you want to become a better recruiter, check out our new online Recruiter Boot Camp. This is where you'll get a chance to really learn how to put these ten core skills into practice.]
http://www.ere.net/articles/db/93BB4CA202BA418AAF0787DBAB56DE94.asp
It's not because it looks neat or works well. Those things are just a small part of it. The real reason it's such a phenomenon is that it's more than a music player, it's a music system. In fact, it's a music business system far larger than itself. Get this: 4.8 million iPods were sold in the fourth quarter of 2004 alone. At this rate, soon everyone in the world will soon have one.
There are business, management, and especially recruiting lessons to be learned from the success of the iPod.
By being more than a music player, iPod has single-handedly changed the competitive landscape for both the music and the consumer electronics industries. Right now you can plug your iPod into your car, laptop, or your home theater system and find and play any music you want anytime, anywhere. As a result of the iPod, in a few years CDs and CD players will cease to exist.
Being more than a music player is the lesson to be learned here. Being a music system is why the iPod has been so wildly successful. Recruiters and recruiting tools need to be more than recruiters and recruiting tools, too. They have to be iPod-like.
Here's the definition of a business system from Word.net: "A group of independent but interrelated elements comprising a unified whole; example — 'a vast system of production and distribution and consumption keep the country going.'"
In the world of recruiters and recruiting, there is little interdependence similar to the iPod. There is no business system for recruiting. This is actually pretty shocking. Recruiters are all different, and they all use different sourcing, selection, and recruiting techniques. Managers are all different, and they all use different techniques for writing job descriptions, and interviewing and selecting candidates. Recruiting IT systems are different, and they're not too well integrated with the hiring process they're supposed to manage.
This lack of an interrelated whole is why just about every single hiring and recruiting initiative fails to meet expectations. It's why behavioral interviewing training programs don't work too well. It's why applicant tracking systems fall short. It's why the war for talent is still being fought.
Here are two examples of how recruiting managers and recruiters can use the iPod as a metaphor to become better managers and recruiters. The first one has to do with how to buy (or sell) recruiting software; the other with how to use the interview as part of a recruiting system and not just as an assessment tool.
Buying Recruiting Software
Buying or selling specialized recruiting software is narrow thinking. Selling a system-level solution is the key to making software work. This is the lesson of the iPod.
For example, as most of you know, name-generating software to find passive candidates is the new buzz. This could be using products that auto-scour the Internet to find passive candidates or using some type of social networking tool to get names from names.
Buying (or selling) something like this is a no-brainer for third-party retained recruiters, but a non-starter for their corporate counterparts. Names of passive candidates are the raw material of third-party recruiters, but useless for corporate recruiters unless an iPod-like business system solution is provided.
For name-generating software to work in the corporate market, the recruiting team must be reorganized; the product itself must be combined with automated techniques to contact the person; it must be integrated with the applicant tracking system; and specialized recruiter training should be provided. On a larger scale, every aspect of the corporate hiring process must be redesigned to handle passive candidates.
This is why a software-only, non-system solution won't work. Instead, software like this must be part of a interrelated business system consisting of the right people, the right processes, the right technology, and the right organizational structure. Evaluate your company's hiring system from this perspective. Does it resemble an iPod, or is it just a disconnected collection of CDs and MP3 players?
Interview as Part of a Recruiting System
Now let's consider the interview as part of a recruiting system rather than just a means to assess candidate competency. An interview must accomplish a number of objectives. In order of importance, here's my list of the real purpose of the interview:
1. Recruit top passive candidates.
2. Reduce interviewer bias and emotions.
3. Clearly explain jobs to create an "opportunity gap."
4. Assess candidate competency and motivation for the real job.
5. Reduce candidate nervousness.
6. Train candidates to give real information, not pre-scripted babble.
7. Negotiate a potential offer.
8. Demonstrate the professionalism and high standards of the company to every candidate.
When you consider the interview as part of a complete, iPod-like recruiting system rather than just a tool to assess competency, everything about how you conduct it changes. For one thing, you wouldn't ask a bunch of boring behavioral questions. For another you wouldn't be unprepared when you conduct it. You also wouldn't permit a person who hasn't been trained to interview a person and make some type of superficial judgment.
As you know, I like to ask candidates to describe their most significant accomplishments in great detail. This allows me to understand the type of work they've done and where they've excelled. By looking at the trend line of these accomplishments over time, you can observe consistency and growth. By comparing this information to the actual needs of the job, you can accurately assess job fit.
Here are two articles you can read to get you up to speed on this performance-based interviewing approach:
* The Best Interview Question of All Time
* Using the Two-Question Interview to Assess Executive Potential
Converting this type of performance-based interview into a recruiting system is the real key to its effectiveness. Here are some simple things you can do on your next interview to see the impact for yourself.
Rather than just ask the candidate to describe his or her most significant accomplishment, add this type of introduction:
One of our most important company initiatives is the launch of our new music system controller. As the lead software developer, you'd be involved in insuring the hardware and software integration of the main module. Can you please tell me about a major project you've handled where you had this type of lead responsibility?
This type of lead-in ties the importance of the job to a major company project. It makes the job more than just a software developer: it makes it strategic. Relating the job this way to a bigger project is referred to as job branding.
This recruiting introduction also includes a pull-towards question. It establishes a target that the candidate needs to reach in order for the person to be considered qualified. As a result, candidates tend to talk more in an attempt to sell the interviewer, rather than the interviewer having to sell the candidate.
The question itself creates an "opportunity gap." This is the difference between the candidate's current job and the opportunity represented by the new job. The bigger the opportunity gap, the less the candidate will need in terms of compensation. Creating an opportunity gap this way is far better than telling the candidate how great the job is. A pull-towards question like this is a simple way to modify the interview to make it accomplish multiple objectives.
The push-away is an even more effective approach. Try this after you learn a little about the candidate:
The person in this lead software development role will be interfacing with our top product marketing people and a few of our key customers. I'm a little concerned about your background in this regard. It seems that most of the people you've worked with in the past have been other developers or those in quality and operations. This job would really expose you to the new product phase of our business. Why don't you tell me about something you've accomplished where you've had to deal with these types of people?
Be careful when using this recruiting technique, and don't overdo it. However, by challenging the candidate this way you can create an even bigger opportunity gap. Candidates then have to defend their past experience and sell you even more. Of course, preparation is the key here. You must know the job and how to ask performance-based questions.
One cardinal rule of recruiting is to make the candidate earn the job. Never give it away. Using this type of pull-and-push questioning technique is how you convert a simple interviewing question into an iPod-like recruiting system.
The lesson to be learned from the iPod is to look at everything you do from a system level perspective. Interdependence is the key to success. Technology, process, people and organization must come together in order to make hiring top talent a systematic business process. Don't look at independent solutions. They have never worked, and never will. That's why we're still fighting the war for talent.
Now, if you want a glimpse at the future of creating a system for networking, go to the iMix section of iTunes. I just downloaded The Door's "Break on Through" on a Rock Classic iMix. You might want to listen to this one for some inspiration and other ideas on how to become a better recruiter.
[Note: If you want to learn more about recruiting systems, you might want to take our Recruiter 10-Factor Evaluation. This quick online self-evaluation will allow you to rank yourself on the ten most important recruiter competencies. Collectively they convert individual recruiting skills into a recruiting system. If you want to become a better recruiter, check out our new online Recruiter Boot Camp. This is where you'll get a chance to really learn how to put these ten core skills into practice.]
http://www.ere.net/articles/db/93BB4CA202BA418AAF0787DBAB56DE94.asp
Sunday, May 27, 2007
The future of food fabrication, intellectual property and seeds
Sometime in the future, science is going to deliver to us desktop food fabrication equipment. These machines, which I'll call "FoodFabs," will be able to manufacture food items at the touch of a button on your desktop or countertop. It might have the size and shape of a microwave, but instead of punching in the time that you want, you punch in the food item you want. There was a glimpse of this technology in the movie The Fifth Element, in which leading lady Milla Jovovich approaches a machine, yells, "Chicken," and gets an instant roasted chicken.
FoodFabs sound handy, but given what we know today about corporations, intellectual property and the desire of such companies to control and profit from the behavior of consumers, let's take a realistic look at what these FoodFabs would really mean for consumers.
Let's start with the most obvious point of all, which is that no FoodFab will be able to operate independently. In order to protect the public, FoodFabs will need to be prevented from spontaneously manufacturing dangerous substances such as poisons or explosives. FoodFabs will have to be networked into a central database or clearinghouse, which will keep track of what FoodFabs are manufacturing, and either approve or deny each food fabrication request. For example, if some guy sitting in his kitchen selects a recipe for C-4 explosives, the FoodFab would say, "No! I can't manufacture that."
Controlling the intellectual property
There's actually an even more fundamental reason for these devices to be networked to a central clearinghouse database: Digital Rights Management (DRM). Of course, that's a phrase borrowed from today's music industry, but here's how it applies to desktop food fabricators: Every food item you select in the Food Fabricator will be based on a molecular recipe assembled by some corporation (Monsanto, probably, if it still exists in the future). Of course, that company will own the rights to that food item. When you want to create a batch of apples, vegetables or chicken, you're going to have to pay a fee to the company that owns the rights to that food.
"Now wait a minute," you might say. "How can a company own the rights to foods that occur in nature? How can they make me pay for that food when I can go out and get it for free?"
This is where the future gets rather messy, because we're now talking about intellectual property. Rewind to the present day, and take a look at the actions of our favorite corporate company, Monsanto. Monsanto is suing farmers for saving seeds and planting crops from those seeds. Why is Monsanto doing this? Because these are genetically modified crops that were created by Monsanto. When these farmers save seeds from one generation to the next, which of course is a practice that has taken place throughout the history of civilization, Monsanto sues these farmers and prevents them from saving those seeds.
The idea, from Monsanto's point of view, is that it wants to force farmers to buy these genetically modified seeds with each successive generation. So, now it is indeed illegal to save these seeds, and if you don't play ball with the company that claims to own them, you're going to find yourself in court, or even in jail. Tennessee farmer Ken Ralph was sued by Monsanto and was ultimately sentenced to eight months in prison for lying about a truckload of cottonseed.
Think about that. Here was a farmer who was just trying to save seeds from one crop generation to the next. This is a practice that has been carried out by generations of farmers for as long as we can remember, going back to the roots of modern civilization in the Middle East. And this farmer has been imprisoned for practicing this age-old custom. The only reason for this is because the corporation needs to protect its profits.
Can corporations really own nature?
You might say, "This is unnatural. This is exploitation of nature for corporate profits." I would respond that you are absolutely correct. That is exactly what it is. When you start assigning intellectual property ownership to things that exist in nature, you get into some rather complex ethical quagmires from which our society may never emerge unscathed.
Now fast forward back to the future, where we have desktop food fabricators. You can see that it will be companies like Monsanto who will own the molecular recipes for all the food items you want to eat. This means that if you, as a human being, want to feed your family, you're going to have to pay Monsanto or some other company that owns the rights to these items.
Frankly, big business couldn't dream up a better situation, because what it really wants to do is extract a certain percentage of productivity, or economic output, from each and every individual on the planet in one way or another. Today, the oil industry has done that quite effectively, and you can bet that even with the advent of hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles, it's going to find a way to keep people tied into the power grid.
Speaking of the power grid in a different context, power companies generally don't like people to go off the grid. There's not much incentive for power companies to encourage people to set up their own solar systems, or have residential fuel cell systems, because power companies then cannot extract monthly fees from those individuals or businesses.
You see, big business is all about extracting recurring fees from the working people. That's how we keep big business rich and working people poor. It is being done quite effectively right now, here in the United States and around the world.
One thing they know for sure is that people need food, and they need it every single day. One way to extract even more revenues from people is to control the intellectual property of the food they are consuming.
Personally, I think allowing corporations to own the rights to food creation would be a gross violation of nature and basic human rights. But then again, we live in a free enterprise society, and you can very easily argue that if there is no economic incentive for a company to create these food fabrication formulas, then who would bother doing so?
I would say that there are plenty of universities and open source communities passionate about food and nutrition who would be more than willing to create these recipes and just give them away to people. This is what I call the open source food fabrication movement, which will undoubtedly unfold someday and attempt to challenge the centralized, controlled food fabrication giants. You can bet this court battle will happen someday, because the food fabrication corporations will not want this open source system to exist. It will be similar to the battle today between Microsoft and Linux, in which the open source community has created a fantastic operating system without the promise of financial compensation. They've done it because they're a group of smart people who want to do something productive and interesting under a freely shared goodwill system.
Our broken patent laws
However, the biggest issue that I have is with the idea that our current patent system assigns intellectual ownership over things that were technically invented by nature, not man. For example, companies are granted patents on seeds created by nature. Basmati rice was briefly owned by a company in the United States, which then went out of its way to sue farmers in Southeast Asia for growing this rice, but thankfully the Indian government was successful in challenging the company's ownership over this seed.
Similarly, companies have been given patent ownership over sequences of the human genome. Imagine that! You're walking around with a genetic sequence in every cell in your body, thinking, "Hey, I own my own body." But, no! The U.S. patent office says you don't own your own genetic code; rather, all these various companies own it.
Technically speaking, if you choose to have children, you are in violation of international patent laws, because now you have replicated these gene sequences without paying royalties to the "owners" of these gene sequences. All of this may sound a bit outlandish to you, but this, in fact, is the law as it stands today. This is not conjecture. This is scientific fact. There are companies probing the human genome, finding interesting sequences, and then applying for, and being awarded, patents on them.
In fact, merely scratching your skin results in multiple patent violations because your body duplicates patented DNA sequences to repair the damage to your skin. Every one of us it a walking intellectual property pirate, guilty of crimes against U.S. corporations by merely living.
If food and the human genome can be patented, what else is up for grabs?
Returning to the food fabrication equipment, let's assume that some company patents not just the chicken recipe, but also the molecular configuration of vitamin D, for example. They say that anyone who uses the machine to create a food item containing vitamin D must pay a royalty to them.
Given the way that patent laws are written today, it probably wouldn't be very difficult for them to claim a patent on vitamin D if it were used in the food fabrication device, because they could claim a patent on not just the molecule itself, but also the process of assembling the molecule at the nano scale. All of a sudden, you've got a situation where people who can afford to be healthy, and who can afford to pay for nutrition through these various royalties, are going to get that nutrition and be healthy. But then you have economically challenged families that are not going to be able to afford the vitamin D, or vitamin B, or minerals and so on. They’re going to be eating food that's made without these vitamins because it's cheaper.
At such a point, you'll have a big company, the futuristic Monsanto if you will, saying, "If you want to be healthy, you've got to pay up." The upshot of all this is that big business is going to be telling humanity that it doesn't have the right to be healthy unless it pays for it.
This situation will stand as a heinous violation of human rights and nature. Human beings evolved in a natural environment in which they had access to fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, grasses and animals. These were all available free of charge as long as a person was willing to expend the effort and time necessary to gather such items. Nature offered them freely. Nature didn't charge you for creating vitamins and minerals. The plants and soils provided these on their own, naturally.
Plants create seeds naturally, and these seeds are freely available to humans, birds, insects and any other creature that wants to use those seeds. This is the natural order of things. Through technology combined with corporate greed, we're going to see a global effort to separate human beings from nature. Humans will then be effectively charged for gaining access to these natural benefits. It's the commercialization of nature.
Corporate-controlled consumers
As I have said before in other essays, if pharmaceutical companies could figure out a way to block sunlight from reaching the planet, then bottle up some sunlight and sell it as a healing drug, I have no doubt that they would do so. It would be the most potent and profitable healing substance you could prescribe to a human being. The only reason sunlight isn't promoted today is because it is freely available and no one has figured out a way to prevent everyone from getting their own natural sunlight.
With the food fabrication scenario, however, it would be very easy to prevent people from growing their own food. In fact, it may eventually turn out that food fabricators are the only way people can get food due to destruction of the environment through radiation, depletion of soils, global dimming, the overuse of pesticides, lack of water and so on. Farming may actually become such a high-cost endeavor that it becomes cheaper to build these foods on a nanotechnology scale. At that point, the companies that own the technology and the intellectual property will control the masses. Rent the old movie, "Soylent Green" to get an interesting look at the potential social dynamics.
Intellectual property failures are here right now
In practical terms, this is nothing to be overly concerned with today. Food fabricators are in the far future. It may be a hundred years or more before such items actually exist. But what is a concern is the way our intellectual property laws are written today, and what we're already seeing in terms of patenting the human genome and genetically modified seeds by companies like Monsanto. We're seeing farmers being fined millions of dollars, or even thrown in jail, for saving seeds, which is a practice as natural as peeing in the woods.
Of course, today the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry are diligently campaigning to limit access to nutritional supplements, herbs and functional foods. This is very much an attempt to separate people from nature, so that they are forced to operate under the system of controlled and "standardized" prescription drugs and medications that generate profits for pharmaceutical companies.
The future may not be so bright after all
It's a common oversight, I think, to talk about the future in rosy terms, and talk about how all of this great, new technology is going to appear. I myself may be guilty of doing that from time to time. I am fascinated by robotics, clean energy, molecular technologies and gene therapy. But I am also a realist, which means I understand that every technology is going to have a price tag attached to it. If the company inventing and marketing that technology can find a way to make sure that you have to keep paying for it over and over again, you can bet they're going to do that, because that's how business works. That's what creates profits for corporations.
The oil companies know that, and the soft drink companies know that. Beverage manufacturers know that caffeine makes their products sell on a repeated basis to the same consumers because of its addictive qualities. In the future, food fabrication manufacturers are certainly going to try to leverage the same principles to generate recurring revenue from their technology. It may end up much like the way inkjet printers are sold today, where the food fabrication machine itself is very cheap, but it's the recipes that you pay for over and over again, just like buying overpriced inkjet cartridges for your printer.
Hopefully, we would have a situation in which two or three recipe-producing companies would compete for your business so there would be some healthy competition. One company offers you a chicken casserole recipe for $2, another company offers you chicken casserole with superfood elements and extra vitamin and mineral content, including phytonutrients and perhaps some anticancer compounds, for only $2.05. Which one would you go with? Well, I'd pay the extra nickel and get the health benefits. If we can create an environment in which we have that kind of competition, then perhaps this won't be such a long-term concern, because chances are that creating food in the FoodFab is going to be much cheaper than going out and buying it or growing it yourself.
Even if the chemical composition of foods can be fabricated, their energy cannot
One final thought on all of this, though, is that even if these food fabricators duplicate the molecular structure of natural foods with 100 percent accuracy, they will still lack a certain quality. Can you guess what that is? It's the living energy of foods.
When you consume a carrot that has been pulled out of the ground, that carrot was once a living, breathing being. Every plant is alive. Every seed is imbued with qualities of life, and when you eat raw fruits, vegetables or nuts, you ingest more than just their chemical constituents. You also ingest the homeopathy of plants, or what I also call vibrational nutrition.
I very much doubt that food fabrication is going to be able to duplicate this energetic component of foods. That means those individuals who are willing to buy food "the old fashioned way," by getting physical food from a farmers coop, bringing it home, cooking and eating it, are going to get much better nutrition than people who make food in their desktop FoodFabs. A plant, you see, is more than its chemical constituents.
For many years following the introduction of FoodFab technology, scientists won't know why FoodFab customers are suffering from various diseases and disorders. They'll be mystified, because they'll think that people are getting all the same nutrients. "It's exactly the same," they'll say. "On a molecular and chemical basis, these two foods are identical, yet one person is healthier than the other. Why is that?" It might then be another hundred years before they finally figure out that there's more to plants than just their chemicals -- that reductionism is a distortion of reality, that energy matters and that vibrational medicine is real.
There's no replacement for growing your own food
That's why if these food fabricators were invented next year, and everyone in the world bought one and began generating their food that way, I would still grow my own garden. I would still visit that garden every day and eat something from it in its raw, natural, living state. That's what I do today. Although there's plenty of produce available down the street at the grocery store, I still want the live food because I understand that there is a quality difference in live food versus manufactured food. That quality difference is not at all understood by modern scientists or even most nutritionists.
In terms of food, our collective future could be very interesting. That is, if we don't kill ourselves first with the destruction of our natural environment. If mankind is still around in a hundred years, I'm certain we'll have food fabrication machines. Just be prepared to pull out your wallet (or, should I say, your embedded radio frequency tag) in order to pay for what you're going to be eating at that time, because you can bet there's going to be some mega corporation behind the scenes demanding payment if you want to eat.
About author
Mike Adams is a natural health author and technology pioneer with a passion for sharing empowering information to help improve personal and planetary health He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guies, and books on topics like health and the environment, impacting the lives of millions of readers around the world who are experiencing phenomenal health benefits from reading his articles. Adams is a trusted, independent journalist who receives no money or promotional fees whatsoever to write about other companies' products. In 2007, Adams launched EcoLEDs, a maker of super bright LED light bulbs that are 1000% more energy efficient than incandescent lights. He's also the founder and CEO of a well known email mail merge software developer whose software, 'Email Marketing Director,' currently runs the NewsTarget email subscriptions. Adams also serves as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a non-profit consumer protection group, and enjoys outdoor activities, nature photography, Pilates and adult gymnastics.
FoodFabs sound handy, but given what we know today about corporations, intellectual property and the desire of such companies to control and profit from the behavior of consumers, let's take a realistic look at what these FoodFabs would really mean for consumers.
Let's start with the most obvious point of all, which is that no FoodFab will be able to operate independently. In order to protect the public, FoodFabs will need to be prevented from spontaneously manufacturing dangerous substances such as poisons or explosives. FoodFabs will have to be networked into a central database or clearinghouse, which will keep track of what FoodFabs are manufacturing, and either approve or deny each food fabrication request. For example, if some guy sitting in his kitchen selects a recipe for C-4 explosives, the FoodFab would say, "No! I can't manufacture that."
Controlling the intellectual property
There's actually an even more fundamental reason for these devices to be networked to a central clearinghouse database: Digital Rights Management (DRM). Of course, that's a phrase borrowed from today's music industry, but here's how it applies to desktop food fabricators: Every food item you select in the Food Fabricator will be based on a molecular recipe assembled by some corporation (Monsanto, probably, if it still exists in the future). Of course, that company will own the rights to that food item. When you want to create a batch of apples, vegetables or chicken, you're going to have to pay a fee to the company that owns the rights to that food.
"Now wait a minute," you might say. "How can a company own the rights to foods that occur in nature? How can they make me pay for that food when I can go out and get it for free?"
This is where the future gets rather messy, because we're now talking about intellectual property. Rewind to the present day, and take a look at the actions of our favorite corporate company, Monsanto. Monsanto is suing farmers for saving seeds and planting crops from those seeds. Why is Monsanto doing this? Because these are genetically modified crops that were created by Monsanto. When these farmers save seeds from one generation to the next, which of course is a practice that has taken place throughout the history of civilization, Monsanto sues these farmers and prevents them from saving those seeds.
The idea, from Monsanto's point of view, is that it wants to force farmers to buy these genetically modified seeds with each successive generation. So, now it is indeed illegal to save these seeds, and if you don't play ball with the company that claims to own them, you're going to find yourself in court, or even in jail. Tennessee farmer Ken Ralph was sued by Monsanto and was ultimately sentenced to eight months in prison for lying about a truckload of cottonseed.
Think about that. Here was a farmer who was just trying to save seeds from one crop generation to the next. This is a practice that has been carried out by generations of farmers for as long as we can remember, going back to the roots of modern civilization in the Middle East. And this farmer has been imprisoned for practicing this age-old custom. The only reason for this is because the corporation needs to protect its profits.
Can corporations really own nature?
You might say, "This is unnatural. This is exploitation of nature for corporate profits." I would respond that you are absolutely correct. That is exactly what it is. When you start assigning intellectual property ownership to things that exist in nature, you get into some rather complex ethical quagmires from which our society may never emerge unscathed.
Now fast forward back to the future, where we have desktop food fabricators. You can see that it will be companies like Monsanto who will own the molecular recipes for all the food items you want to eat. This means that if you, as a human being, want to feed your family, you're going to have to pay Monsanto or some other company that owns the rights to these items.
Frankly, big business couldn't dream up a better situation, because what it really wants to do is extract a certain percentage of productivity, or economic output, from each and every individual on the planet in one way or another. Today, the oil industry has done that quite effectively, and you can bet that even with the advent of hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles, it's going to find a way to keep people tied into the power grid.
Speaking of the power grid in a different context, power companies generally don't like people to go off the grid. There's not much incentive for power companies to encourage people to set up their own solar systems, or have residential fuel cell systems, because power companies then cannot extract monthly fees from those individuals or businesses.
You see, big business is all about extracting recurring fees from the working people. That's how we keep big business rich and working people poor. It is being done quite effectively right now, here in the United States and around the world.
One thing they know for sure is that people need food, and they need it every single day. One way to extract even more revenues from people is to control the intellectual property of the food they are consuming.
Personally, I think allowing corporations to own the rights to food creation would be a gross violation of nature and basic human rights. But then again, we live in a free enterprise society, and you can very easily argue that if there is no economic incentive for a company to create these food fabrication formulas, then who would bother doing so?
I would say that there are plenty of universities and open source communities passionate about food and nutrition who would be more than willing to create these recipes and just give them away to people. This is what I call the open source food fabrication movement, which will undoubtedly unfold someday and attempt to challenge the centralized, controlled food fabrication giants. You can bet this court battle will happen someday, because the food fabrication corporations will not want this open source system to exist. It will be similar to the battle today between Microsoft and Linux, in which the open source community has created a fantastic operating system without the promise of financial compensation. They've done it because they're a group of smart people who want to do something productive and interesting under a freely shared goodwill system.
Our broken patent laws
However, the biggest issue that I have is with the idea that our current patent system assigns intellectual ownership over things that were technically invented by nature, not man. For example, companies are granted patents on seeds created by nature. Basmati rice was briefly owned by a company in the United States, which then went out of its way to sue farmers in Southeast Asia for growing this rice, but thankfully the Indian government was successful in challenging the company's ownership over this seed.
Similarly, companies have been given patent ownership over sequences of the human genome. Imagine that! You're walking around with a genetic sequence in every cell in your body, thinking, "Hey, I own my own body." But, no! The U.S. patent office says you don't own your own genetic code; rather, all these various companies own it.
Technically speaking, if you choose to have children, you are in violation of international patent laws, because now you have replicated these gene sequences without paying royalties to the "owners" of these gene sequences. All of this may sound a bit outlandish to you, but this, in fact, is the law as it stands today. This is not conjecture. This is scientific fact. There are companies probing the human genome, finding interesting sequences, and then applying for, and being awarded, patents on them.
In fact, merely scratching your skin results in multiple patent violations because your body duplicates patented DNA sequences to repair the damage to your skin. Every one of us it a walking intellectual property pirate, guilty of crimes against U.S. corporations by merely living.
If food and the human genome can be patented, what else is up for grabs?
Returning to the food fabrication equipment, let's assume that some company patents not just the chicken recipe, but also the molecular configuration of vitamin D, for example. They say that anyone who uses the machine to create a food item containing vitamin D must pay a royalty to them.
Given the way that patent laws are written today, it probably wouldn't be very difficult for them to claim a patent on vitamin D if it were used in the food fabrication device, because they could claim a patent on not just the molecule itself, but also the process of assembling the molecule at the nano scale. All of a sudden, you've got a situation where people who can afford to be healthy, and who can afford to pay for nutrition through these various royalties, are going to get that nutrition and be healthy. But then you have economically challenged families that are not going to be able to afford the vitamin D, or vitamin B, or minerals and so on. They’re going to be eating food that's made without these vitamins because it's cheaper.
At such a point, you'll have a big company, the futuristic Monsanto if you will, saying, "If you want to be healthy, you've got to pay up." The upshot of all this is that big business is going to be telling humanity that it doesn't have the right to be healthy unless it pays for it.
This situation will stand as a heinous violation of human rights and nature. Human beings evolved in a natural environment in which they had access to fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, grasses and animals. These were all available free of charge as long as a person was willing to expend the effort and time necessary to gather such items. Nature offered them freely. Nature didn't charge you for creating vitamins and minerals. The plants and soils provided these on their own, naturally.
Plants create seeds naturally, and these seeds are freely available to humans, birds, insects and any other creature that wants to use those seeds. This is the natural order of things. Through technology combined with corporate greed, we're going to see a global effort to separate human beings from nature. Humans will then be effectively charged for gaining access to these natural benefits. It's the commercialization of nature.
Corporate-controlled consumers
As I have said before in other essays, if pharmaceutical companies could figure out a way to block sunlight from reaching the planet, then bottle up some sunlight and sell it as a healing drug, I have no doubt that they would do so. It would be the most potent and profitable healing substance you could prescribe to a human being. The only reason sunlight isn't promoted today is because it is freely available and no one has figured out a way to prevent everyone from getting their own natural sunlight.
With the food fabrication scenario, however, it would be very easy to prevent people from growing their own food. In fact, it may eventually turn out that food fabricators are the only way people can get food due to destruction of the environment through radiation, depletion of soils, global dimming, the overuse of pesticides, lack of water and so on. Farming may actually become such a high-cost endeavor that it becomes cheaper to build these foods on a nanotechnology scale. At that point, the companies that own the technology and the intellectual property will control the masses. Rent the old movie, "Soylent Green" to get an interesting look at the potential social dynamics.
Intellectual property failures are here right now
In practical terms, this is nothing to be overly concerned with today. Food fabricators are in the far future. It may be a hundred years or more before such items actually exist. But what is a concern is the way our intellectual property laws are written today, and what we're already seeing in terms of patenting the human genome and genetically modified seeds by companies like Monsanto. We're seeing farmers being fined millions of dollars, or even thrown in jail, for saving seeds, which is a practice as natural as peeing in the woods.
Of course, today the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry are diligently campaigning to limit access to nutritional supplements, herbs and functional foods. This is very much an attempt to separate people from nature, so that they are forced to operate under the system of controlled and "standardized" prescription drugs and medications that generate profits for pharmaceutical companies.
The future may not be so bright after all
It's a common oversight, I think, to talk about the future in rosy terms, and talk about how all of this great, new technology is going to appear. I myself may be guilty of doing that from time to time. I am fascinated by robotics, clean energy, molecular technologies and gene therapy. But I am also a realist, which means I understand that every technology is going to have a price tag attached to it. If the company inventing and marketing that technology can find a way to make sure that you have to keep paying for it over and over again, you can bet they're going to do that, because that's how business works. That's what creates profits for corporations.
The oil companies know that, and the soft drink companies know that. Beverage manufacturers know that caffeine makes their products sell on a repeated basis to the same consumers because of its addictive qualities. In the future, food fabrication manufacturers are certainly going to try to leverage the same principles to generate recurring revenue from their technology. It may end up much like the way inkjet printers are sold today, where the food fabrication machine itself is very cheap, but it's the recipes that you pay for over and over again, just like buying overpriced inkjet cartridges for your printer.
Hopefully, we would have a situation in which two or three recipe-producing companies would compete for your business so there would be some healthy competition. One company offers you a chicken casserole recipe for $2, another company offers you chicken casserole with superfood elements and extra vitamin and mineral content, including phytonutrients and perhaps some anticancer compounds, for only $2.05. Which one would you go with? Well, I'd pay the extra nickel and get the health benefits. If we can create an environment in which we have that kind of competition, then perhaps this won't be such a long-term concern, because chances are that creating food in the FoodFab is going to be much cheaper than going out and buying it or growing it yourself.
Even if the chemical composition of foods can be fabricated, their energy cannot
One final thought on all of this, though, is that even if these food fabricators duplicate the molecular structure of natural foods with 100 percent accuracy, they will still lack a certain quality. Can you guess what that is? It's the living energy of foods.
When you consume a carrot that has been pulled out of the ground, that carrot was once a living, breathing being. Every plant is alive. Every seed is imbued with qualities of life, and when you eat raw fruits, vegetables or nuts, you ingest more than just their chemical constituents. You also ingest the homeopathy of plants, or what I also call vibrational nutrition.
I very much doubt that food fabrication is going to be able to duplicate this energetic component of foods. That means those individuals who are willing to buy food "the old fashioned way," by getting physical food from a farmers coop, bringing it home, cooking and eating it, are going to get much better nutrition than people who make food in their desktop FoodFabs. A plant, you see, is more than its chemical constituents.
For many years following the introduction of FoodFab technology, scientists won't know why FoodFab customers are suffering from various diseases and disorders. They'll be mystified, because they'll think that people are getting all the same nutrients. "It's exactly the same," they'll say. "On a molecular and chemical basis, these two foods are identical, yet one person is healthier than the other. Why is that?" It might then be another hundred years before they finally figure out that there's more to plants than just their chemicals -- that reductionism is a distortion of reality, that energy matters and that vibrational medicine is real.
There's no replacement for growing your own food
That's why if these food fabricators were invented next year, and everyone in the world bought one and began generating their food that way, I would still grow my own garden. I would still visit that garden every day and eat something from it in its raw, natural, living state. That's what I do today. Although there's plenty of produce available down the street at the grocery store, I still want the live food because I understand that there is a quality difference in live food versus manufactured food. That quality difference is not at all understood by modern scientists or even most nutritionists.
In terms of food, our collective future could be very interesting. That is, if we don't kill ourselves first with the destruction of our natural environment. If mankind is still around in a hundred years, I'm certain we'll have food fabrication machines. Just be prepared to pull out your wallet (or, should I say, your embedded radio frequency tag) in order to pay for what you're going to be eating at that time, because you can bet there's going to be some mega corporation behind the scenes demanding payment if you want to eat.
About author
Mike Adams is a natural health author and technology pioneer with a passion for sharing empowering information to help improve personal and planetary health He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guies, and books on topics like health and the environment, impacting the lives of millions of readers around the world who are experiencing phenomenal health benefits from reading his articles. Adams is a trusted, independent journalist who receives no money or promotional fees whatsoever to write about other companies' products. In 2007, Adams launched EcoLEDs, a maker of super bright LED light bulbs that are 1000% more energy efficient than incandescent lights. He's also the founder and CEO of a well known email mail merge software developer whose software, 'Email Marketing Director,' currently runs the NewsTarget email subscriptions. Adams also serves as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a non-profit consumer protection group, and enjoys outdoor activities, nature photography, Pilates and adult gymnastics.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Apple Doing Well in U.S. Retail Channel
Apple managed to rank in the top five for U.S. retail computer and portable media player sales in March. Data from The NPD Group ranked Apple and other electronics manufacturers based on brick-and-mortar store sales only and did not include direct sales, according to Bloomberg.
In the laptop category, Apple came in at number 4 with a 9.9 percent unit share, behind Toshiba with 26.2 percent, Hewlett Packard with 23.9 percent, and Gateway at 13 percent. Compaq took fifth place with 8.5 percent.
Apple landed in fifth place in the desktop category with a 7.7 percent unit share. Hewlett Packard was first with 35 percent, Compaq was second with 16.7 percent, Gateway was third at 16.6 percent, and Emachines came in fourth with 16.4 percent.
Dell was missing from the computer sales lists for good cause: Its computer products are available through direct sales only, not traditional retail stores. Had direct sales been included in the study, the numbers would have likely been very favorable to Dell.
In the MP3 player market, Apple took the top spot with a 68.9 percent unit share for its iPod product line. Sandisk came in a distant second with 11.2 percent, Creative Labs was third with 3.6 percent, Microsoft was fourth at 2.5 percent, and Samsung took fifth place with 2.2 percent. Even in the extremely narrow scope of the NPD study, Apple still clearly held the lead in portable media player sales.
The numbers in the NPD study represent a subsection of the overall computer and MP3 player market since the focus was only on retail stores in the United States, and also excluded Wal-Mart and warehouse clubs. It does, however, show a strong consumer interest in the Mac within the limited scope of the survey
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2007/05/11.5.shtml
In the laptop category, Apple came in at number 4 with a 9.9 percent unit share, behind Toshiba with 26.2 percent, Hewlett Packard with 23.9 percent, and Gateway at 13 percent. Compaq took fifth place with 8.5 percent.
Apple landed in fifth place in the desktop category with a 7.7 percent unit share. Hewlett Packard was first with 35 percent, Compaq was second with 16.7 percent, Gateway was third at 16.6 percent, and Emachines came in fourth with 16.4 percent.
Dell was missing from the computer sales lists for good cause: Its computer products are available through direct sales only, not traditional retail stores. Had direct sales been included in the study, the numbers would have likely been very favorable to Dell.
In the MP3 player market, Apple took the top spot with a 68.9 percent unit share for its iPod product line. Sandisk came in a distant second with 11.2 percent, Creative Labs was third with 3.6 percent, Microsoft was fourth at 2.5 percent, and Samsung took fifth place with 2.2 percent. Even in the extremely narrow scope of the NPD study, Apple still clearly held the lead in portable media player sales.
The numbers in the NPD study represent a subsection of the overall computer and MP3 player market since the focus was only on retail stores in the United States, and also excluded Wal-Mart and warehouse clubs. It does, however, show a strong consumer interest in the Mac within the limited scope of the survey
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2007/05/11.5.shtml
Apple Doing Well in U.S. Retail Channel
Apple managed to rank in the top five for U.S. retail computer and portable media player sales in March. Data from The NPD Group ranked Apple and other electronics manufacturers based on brick-and-mortar store sales only and did not include direct sales, according to Bloomberg.
In the laptop category, Apple came in at number 4 with a 9.9 percent unit share, behind Toshiba with 26.2 percent, Hewlett Packard with 23.9 percent, and Gateway at 13 percent. Compaq took fifth place with 8.5 percent.
Apple landed in fifth place in the desktop category with a 7.7 percent unit share. Hewlett Packard was first with 35 percent, Compaq was second with 16.7 percent, Gateway was third at 16.6 percent, and Emachines came in fourth with 16.4 percent.
Dell was missing from the computer sales lists for good cause: Its computer products are available through direct sales only, not traditional retail stores. Had direct sales been included in the study, the numbers would have likely been very favorable to Dell.
In the MP3 player market, Apple took the top spot with a 68.9 percent unit share for its iPod product line. Sandisk came in a distant second with 11.2 percent, Creative Labs was third with 3.6 percent, Microsoft was fourth at 2.5 percent, and Samsung took fifth place with 2.2 percent. Even in the extremely narrow scope of the NPD study, Apple still clearly held the lead in portable media player sales.
The numbers in the NPD study represent a subsection of the overall computer and MP3 player market since the focus was only on retail stores in the United States, and also excluded Wal-Mart and warehouse clubs. It does, however, show a strong consumer interest in the Mac within the limited scope of the survey.
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2007/05/11.5.shtml
In the laptop category, Apple came in at number 4 with a 9.9 percent unit share, behind Toshiba with 26.2 percent, Hewlett Packard with 23.9 percent, and Gateway at 13 percent. Compaq took fifth place with 8.5 percent.
Apple landed in fifth place in the desktop category with a 7.7 percent unit share. Hewlett Packard was first with 35 percent, Compaq was second with 16.7 percent, Gateway was third at 16.6 percent, and Emachines came in fourth with 16.4 percent.
Dell was missing from the computer sales lists for good cause: Its computer products are available through direct sales only, not traditional retail stores. Had direct sales been included in the study, the numbers would have likely been very favorable to Dell.
In the MP3 player market, Apple took the top spot with a 68.9 percent unit share for its iPod product line. Sandisk came in a distant second with 11.2 percent, Creative Labs was third with 3.6 percent, Microsoft was fourth at 2.5 percent, and Samsung took fifth place with 2.2 percent. Even in the extremely narrow scope of the NPD study, Apple still clearly held the lead in portable media player sales.
The numbers in the NPD study represent a subsection of the overall computer and MP3 player market since the focus was only on retail stores in the United States, and also excluded Wal-Mart and warehouse clubs. It does, however, show a strong consumer interest in the Mac within the limited scope of the survey.
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2007/05/11.5.shtml
Pacemaker Malfunction due to iPod?
A study carried out by a 17-year-old high school student reportedly reveals that Apple Computer's iconic iPod may after all cause cardiac implantable pacemakers to malfunction by interfering with the electromagnetic equipment used to monitor the heart.
The study, conducted at the Thoracic and Cardiovascular Institute at Michigan State University, revealed that iPods can cause electrical interference when held as far as 18-inches away from cardiac implantable pacemakers.
The study was presented by Jay Thaker, an Indian student at the Okemos High School Electrical, during the Heart Rhythm Society annual meeting attended by heart specialists from across the US.
The study was reportedly conducted on 100 patients, whose mean age was 77, and who had implanted pacemakers. In about half the study population, iPods caused electrical interference when held 2-inches away from the patient's chest for 5 to 10 seconds.
Thaker said that during the study, they found various problems with the pacemakers. One device stopped functioning briefly; others picked up iPod signals, and put them in their memories.
While co-author of the study, Dr Krit Jongnarangsin, admitted that most pacemaker patients are not iPod users, both Jongnarangsin and Thaker agreed in principle that pacemaker patients might get affected if they are in close proximity to others using iPods.
Thaker concluded the study on the note that iPod interference can lead Physicians to misdiagnosing the actual heart functioning.
http://www.techtree.com/India/News/Pacemaker_Malfunction_due_to_iPod/551-81047-615.html
The study, conducted at the Thoracic and Cardiovascular Institute at Michigan State University, revealed that iPods can cause electrical interference when held as far as 18-inches away from cardiac implantable pacemakers.
The study was presented by Jay Thaker, an Indian student at the Okemos High School Electrical, during the Heart Rhythm Society annual meeting attended by heart specialists from across the US.
The study was reportedly conducted on 100 patients, whose mean age was 77, and who had implanted pacemakers. In about half the study population, iPods caused electrical interference when held 2-inches away from the patient's chest for 5 to 10 seconds.
Thaker said that during the study, they found various problems with the pacemakers. One device stopped functioning briefly; others picked up iPod signals, and put them in their memories.
While co-author of the study, Dr Krit Jongnarangsin, admitted that most pacemaker patients are not iPod users, both Jongnarangsin and Thaker agreed in principle that pacemaker patients might get affected if they are in close proximity to others using iPods.
Thaker concluded the study on the note that iPod interference can lead Physicians to misdiagnosing the actual heart functioning.
http://www.techtree.com/India/News/Pacemaker_Malfunction_due_to_iPod/551-81047-615.html
Friday, May 25, 2007
Selecting Speakers For Your iPod
More and more people are purchasing a set of speakers for their iPods, some to replace their current home audio set ups in order to get rid of the cd collections that take up so much room, some to have a portable audio source for when they are away on holiday, some just for having some iPod speakers because everyone else is buying them! One of the problems we come across the most is people being faced with a huge selection of choices and feeling bewildered about what to buy. What I am aim to do is make your choice that little bit easier.
We can break down the different sets of speakers into the following categories:
Portable and powered by batteries.
Portable and powered by mains adapter.
Home Set up powered by mains adapter.
For those of you looking for a portable set that is powered by batteries there are a variety of excellent options at varying prices. Personally I am of the belief that whatever amount of money you are spending it is important that sound quality is pretty good as what use is a light speaker set that has crackily sound! If you are looking to spend under £50 then we highly rate both the Logic 3 i-Station 7 and the Monster iSpeaker. Both of these are very light to carry, are of a size very conveninet for putting ina backpack or suitcase and run for a good amount of time on batteries, sound from both is exceptional for this pricepoint with great clarity.
If you are looking to spend a little more then a lot of options open up in the £50 to £150 bracket. If lightweight is your number one problem then you will not go far wrong with the JBL On Tour, this is an incredibly lightweight unit that what it lacks in bass it makes up for in the sound clarity department. If you would prefer better sound quality then a step up to an Altec Lansing IM5 or Logitech MM50, Saitek A250 and for iPod Nano Owners the XtremeMac MicroBlast. All of these provide excellent sound alongside good looks and a highly portable structure. Once your budget is going over £150 you are in to the realms of a great portable system in the Altec Lansing IM7, thumping bass, crystal clear treble and a great portable structure, definetly the daddy of portable iPod Docking Stations and Speaker units.
If you would like something that can be considered portable but don't mind having to use a mains charger then there are a couple of good options available. One of our favourites is the Macally IceTune, this is indeed one of our top 5 iPod accessories altogether, when stacked up it looks like a coke can and has two separate speakers that can be removed and pointed to send sounds in different directions, the sound quality is excelletn for only £39.99 and it is very much portable but does require mains power. The JBL On Stage is another wonderful compact and lightweight unit that can be plugged into the mains for power and will charge your iPod while you listen to it, very high quality sound, lacks bass a littel but you are compromising bass to have such a small portable unit, clarity of sound and loudness are both very impressive. Another excellent unit in this bracket is the Logic 3 iStation 8, newly released and keeping up the fabulous reputation of the iStation 7 this really is worth the money, great combinations of bass and treble and very much a portable size and weight.
For the home set up there are a variety of options and in honesty the best value speakers in our opinion come at this price point. For just £59.99 you can have a pair of JBL Creature II's, these are surely one of the greatest home electronics products to ever hit the market, the bass is phenomenal and the clarity is superb, vocals sound great for many types of music, they also look very appealing and are bound to interest visitors who glaze their eyes upon them! Also in the JBL range are the Encounters, these expand on the Creature philosophy of an alien themed set of speakers and have even stronger bass, they are quite simply phenomenal! At this price point we also have the Harmon Kardon Soundsticks, for a long time these have been my individual favourite speakers, they are see through so you can have a look at what is going on inside and provide possibly the clearest vocals you will hear from iPod focused speakers they are simply outstanding, perhaps not as strong bass as the Encounters but still more than enough for most pallettes. For anyone considering a home iPod set up I strongly suggest a very close look at the Harmon Kardon Soundsticks they are oustanding and will fit in to 99% of home settings in the living room, dining room, kitchen etc!
Hopefully this guide has been of some use to you choosing your speakers, firstly establish which of the three categories your requirements for speakers come into and then you can use the above advice to direct you to some great units, we wish you the best of luck in your choice!
About The Author
Nick Segrue is the Managing Director and Founder of http://www.mp3additions.co.uk MP3 Additions is one of the UK's fastest growing online retailers of iPod Accessories and strives to supply only the highest quality products that will always enhance your iPod experience. All products are thoroughly tested before being offered for sale and the staff at MP3 Additions are happy to advise you on any products you are interested in or catch your attention.
We can break down the different sets of speakers into the following categories:
Portable and powered by batteries.
Portable and powered by mains adapter.
Home Set up powered by mains adapter.
For those of you looking for a portable set that is powered by batteries there are a variety of excellent options at varying prices. Personally I am of the belief that whatever amount of money you are spending it is important that sound quality is pretty good as what use is a light speaker set that has crackily sound! If you are looking to spend under £50 then we highly rate both the Logic 3 i-Station 7 and the Monster iSpeaker. Both of these are very light to carry, are of a size very conveninet for putting ina backpack or suitcase and run for a good amount of time on batteries, sound from both is exceptional for this pricepoint with great clarity.
If you are looking to spend a little more then a lot of options open up in the £50 to £150 bracket. If lightweight is your number one problem then you will not go far wrong with the JBL On Tour, this is an incredibly lightweight unit that what it lacks in bass it makes up for in the sound clarity department. If you would prefer better sound quality then a step up to an Altec Lansing IM5 or Logitech MM50, Saitek A250 and for iPod Nano Owners the XtremeMac MicroBlast. All of these provide excellent sound alongside good looks and a highly portable structure. Once your budget is going over £150 you are in to the realms of a great portable system in the Altec Lansing IM7, thumping bass, crystal clear treble and a great portable structure, definetly the daddy of portable iPod Docking Stations and Speaker units.
If you would like something that can be considered portable but don't mind having to use a mains charger then there are a couple of good options available. One of our favourites is the Macally IceTune, this is indeed one of our top 5 iPod accessories altogether, when stacked up it looks like a coke can and has two separate speakers that can be removed and pointed to send sounds in different directions, the sound quality is excelletn for only £39.99 and it is very much portable but does require mains power. The JBL On Stage is another wonderful compact and lightweight unit that can be plugged into the mains for power and will charge your iPod while you listen to it, very high quality sound, lacks bass a littel but you are compromising bass to have such a small portable unit, clarity of sound and loudness are both very impressive. Another excellent unit in this bracket is the Logic 3 iStation 8, newly released and keeping up the fabulous reputation of the iStation 7 this really is worth the money, great combinations of bass and treble and very much a portable size and weight.
For the home set up there are a variety of options and in honesty the best value speakers in our opinion come at this price point. For just £59.99 you can have a pair of JBL Creature II's, these are surely one of the greatest home electronics products to ever hit the market, the bass is phenomenal and the clarity is superb, vocals sound great for many types of music, they also look very appealing and are bound to interest visitors who glaze their eyes upon them! Also in the JBL range are the Encounters, these expand on the Creature philosophy of an alien themed set of speakers and have even stronger bass, they are quite simply phenomenal! At this price point we also have the Harmon Kardon Soundsticks, for a long time these have been my individual favourite speakers, they are see through so you can have a look at what is going on inside and provide possibly the clearest vocals you will hear from iPod focused speakers they are simply outstanding, perhaps not as strong bass as the Encounters but still more than enough for most pallettes. For anyone considering a home iPod set up I strongly suggest a very close look at the Harmon Kardon Soundsticks they are oustanding and will fit in to 99% of home settings in the living room, dining room, kitchen etc!
Hopefully this guide has been of some use to you choosing your speakers, firstly establish which of the three categories your requirements for speakers come into and then you can use the above advice to direct you to some great units, we wish you the best of luck in your choice!
About The Author
Nick Segrue is the Managing Director and Founder of http://www.mp3additions.co.uk MP3 Additions is one of the UK's fastest growing online retailers of iPod Accessories and strives to supply only the highest quality products that will always enhance your iPod experience. All products are thoroughly tested before being offered for sale and the staff at MP3 Additions are happy to advise you on any products you are interested in or catch your attention.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)