By David Sims
[email protected]
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is… you know how they say there’s something good in everything? Picking through
the wreckage and detritus of mid-80s New Wave, over in the disco slag heap, one
finds ABC’s The Lexicon Of Love
album, and realizes that y’know, musically the ‘80s weren’t a total loss.
Close, but not total, and this from a guy who can’t stand disco, New Wave or
the ‘80s:
Advanced ID Corporation, an RFID vendor,
has announced that it has been collaborating with Goodyear Vehicle Systems to
develop and manufacture the RFID tags
embedded in the tires used in the 2006 NASCAR season.
Didn’t know they did that, did you? We’ve come a long way from
North Carolina moonshiners and Junior Johnson on the NASCAR circuit, folks.
This includes the Nextel Cup, Busch and Craftsman Truck
series races. The Daytona race on February 19 will feature the tires with the
embedded RFID tag on all the cars.
Goodyear worked with Advanced ID to develop a RFID tag to
meet the extremely harsh environment of NACAR racing. Advanced ID has a
production contract with Goodyear to provide the tags for all NASCAR races
throughout the 2006 season.
Advanced ID has been working with Goodyear on this program since the middle of
2005.
For about the past twelve years Advanced ID Corporation has
offered a product line of over 100 items comprised of low frequency RFID
microchips, identification scanners, and a proprietary pet recovery database to
the companion animal and biological sciences markets. The company supplies over
3,000 organizations such as animal shelters, veterinarians, breeders,
government agencies, universities, zoos, research labs and fisheries with LF
RFID devices for companion animals, equines, bovines, llamas, alpacas,
ostriches, aquatic species, reptiles, migratory and endangered species.
Advanced ID Corporation has implanted LF microchips in over
450,000 animals, currently tracks nearly one million animals in a proprietary
pet recovery database, and reunites numerous lost pets with their families each
month.
Since 2001 Advanced ID Corporation has been developing and commercializing its
UHF line of food-animal and wildlife identification products and systems. It’s
involved with government and industry livestock identification and trace-back
projects and pilots in Australia, Canada, China, Argentina, Thailand, Taiwan
and the United States.
Now if anybody has any idea why NASCAR needs RFID chips in
its tires, please let me know.
…
Vocalscape Networks, Inc. has announced
that it has executed a letter of intent to acquire
100 percent of Azatel Communications. Therefore, in
connection with the transaction contemplated by the letter of intent,
Vocalscape Networks Inc. will buy 100 percent of Azatel Communications Inc. by
either an asset purchase agreement or a stock purchase agreement.
Mr. Ryan Gibson, Vice President of Vocalscape said the company has been “actively
looking for an acquisition within the hardware business that enabled lower cost
analogue telephone adapters and IP phones for clients and the VoIP marketplace
in general.”
Having a physical product, he said, “will increase the
presence of Vocalscape globally and complement our software and services.”
Having Azatel will “enable our often one-time license fees for billing and
turn-key systems to have a fantastic residual opportunity in hardware and
support.”
Derek Herman, CEO and Founder of Azatel Communications Inc.
said “this has been a long awaited strategic move for Azatel to find the right
partner to expand globally with.”
…
BlueBean, LLC, is now offering what the
company describes as “complete RFID
development lab kits for anyone who needs a smaller-scale RFID portal product.”
The do-it-yourself RFID kits, company officials claim, “come
complete with everything you need to set up your own RFID development lab
including the portal, RFID reader, power supply, RFID antennas, cables and
tags.”
It’s a way for companies to test RFID products on-site as well as for “colleges
and universities that are setting up RFID labs for their students,” says
BlueBean President Gregg Maggioli. “It’s also a great RFID product for sales
presentations and trade shows.”
According to company claims, the RFID product kit arrives in a standard UPS
package and needs only one simple hand tool to assemble. In a short period of
time, users can have their RFID development lab kit set up and ready for use.
“The RFID portal requires no maintenance, is RFID hardware manufacturer
agnostic, and uses T-slot technology for easy assembly and modifications,” adds
Maggioli.
…
Bozeman, Montana-based RightNow Technologies has announced it has
been awarded U.S. Patent No. 6,985,893,
its fourth patent for optimization of customer self-service searches.
The patent, titled “Usage Based Strength between Related
Help Topics and Context Based Mapping Thereof in a Help Information Retrieval
System,” no doubt so named because “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” was
already taken, helps companies provide site visitors with the information item
or items they’re most likely seeking based on the web page they’re on when they
initiate their search.
So when Slim clicks on a “help” link from an ordering page,
he might first be provided with information about shipping and return policies,
while other customers clicking on that same link from a product description
page might first be provided with more detailed technical specifications or
answers to frequently asked questions about the product’s capabilities.
The award of this patent brings RightNow’s total patent
portfolio to seven issued patents and 11 patents pending.
…
Janice
Goh is reporting on a study which found that female rats that got their first shot of caffeine before mating were
quicker than “uncaffeinated” females to scurry back to a male rat after sex.
The study, rather unimaginatively titled “Coffee, Tea
and Me,” (rats, coffee, sex and that’s the best they can do? First
CoffeeSM detects a distinct lack of imagination in naming in today’s
society) was conducted by researcher Fay Guarraci, an assistant professor of
psychology at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas.
The rats had never had caffeine before, so the study’s
findings might be of particular interest to Mormons and Donald Trump.
The caffeinated females “would go and visit the males faster, and they would
stay with the males until they received sexual stimulation before they left,”
Guarraci found, adding that they specifically sought a male sex partner and
weren’t particularly interested in socializing with another female rat.
“They seemed motivated to seek sex and not to burn extra
energy from the caffeine,” the study said.
Dr. Ng Foo Cheong, a senior consultant urologist and chief of urology
department at Singapore’s Changi General Hospital, told Goh that “there is no
recommendation to use caffeine as a sexual stimulant, as far as evidence-based
medicine is concerned.”
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