Researchers at the University of Minnesota have found that they need
something far less mystical to predict future innovations of firms.

“The answer lies in the words of the CEO,” said Rajesh Chandy, professor of marketing at the university’s Carlson School of Management. “By simply counting the number of future oriented sentences in annual reports we can predict future innovation by the firm.”

Sometimes a company just “gets it”. Read the full exchange at: The Consumerist.com: Above And Beyond

TEEN GOES NUCLEAR: He creates fusion in his Oakland Township home

In the basement of his parents’ Oakland Township home, tucked away in an area most aren’t privy to see, Thiago is exhausting his love of physics on a project that has taken him more than two years and 1,000 hours to research and build — a large, intricate machine that , on a small scale, creates nuclear fusion.

Note that Thiago didn’t do this in just one day, but over two years of hard work, preceded by years of preparation. Like most projects, this was not just one big, hard task, but a series of smaller tasks, completed over days and weeks and months and years. One at a time.

What do you want to accomplish? What did you do today to reach that goal?

NEW DELHI — Bangalore, India’s high-tech capital, is getting a new name. The Indian state of Karnataka plans to announce Nov. 1 that its state capital will become Bengaluru, the city’s name in Kannada, the local language.

The change, which won’t be official until the state Cabinet gives its approval — possibly this week — and a few other formalities, follows several others:

• Bombay to Mumbai in 1995.

• Madras to Chennai in 1996.
• Calcutta to Kolkata in 2001.
• Dozens of smaller cities have switched names; Pondicherry, a former French colonial outpost, became Puducherry in September.

Oracle on Monday announced plans to pay $219 million for MetaSolv Software, which specializes in serving the telecommunications business.

MetaSolv develops software designed to automate the process of ordering and activating service for wireless, wired and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service providers. The company also offers software designed to help carriers manage their network operations.

The deal to rename the Arena in Oakland also includes additional exclusive team sponsorship elements with the club. Financial terms were not released by Oracle, which is headquartered across the San Francisco Bay in Redwood Shores.

The Oracle, with a capacity for 19,596 people, will play host to 43 Warriors regular-season home games each season along with a variety of events that include concerts and other entertainment.

The venue’s new name comes in the same season the club has brought in a new coach to try to reverse the fortunes of a team struggling to return to the playoffs for the first time since 1994.

By

Reuters

All hail the long tail—Universal has just announced the first results from its own experiment with making niche products available online, and it turns out that the strategy works. This is excellent news for groups like Fairport Convention and Eddie & the Hot Rods, but it’s also a win for consumer choice.

The project began back in February, when Universal uploaded 3,000 tracks from out-of-print (and mostly European) recordings to online music stores across the continent. In the eight months since, Europeans have responded by snapping up more than 250,000 downloads of the new music…

In May, 2006, Oracle opened its new services and technology centers headquarters in Bucharest. Oracle centers provide around-the-clock support and consulting services for the company’s customers and partners worldwide, with a particular emphasis on the EMEA region. There are currently 10 Oracle Centers in Romania, employing more than 350 specialists, and covering global product support for Oracle product users worldwide, support for Oracle partners in EMEA region, software development for Oracle, support renewals services, and Oracle University Sales for the EMEA region.

Oracle will launch a series of initiatives later this month designed to boost the business it transacts through partners.

The company will launch a revamped partner Web site that will include Oracle-recommended third-party applications, as well as a more complete catalog of offerings from Oracle partners.

The company currently makes about 44 percent of its revenue through partners, said Doug Kennedy, vice president of Worldwide Alliances and Channels. Oracle intends to boost the amount of business it gets by selling in tandem with partners, he said.

Oracle announced on Tuesday that it has purchased Sunopsis, an enterprise software company that manufactures software for heterogeneous data integration. The acquisition comes just days after a statement from Vishal Bhagwati, an Oracle vice president, indicated that the company would continue to aggressively pursue the purchase of smaller companies. Sunopsis, which was founded in 1998 and has offices in Boston, Paris and Singapore, is the latest in a string of Oracle buys that has included retailer-oriented software company Retek, logistics start-up G-Log and rival Siebel Systems.

According to a press release from Oracle, Sunopsis was acquired specifically as an enhancement to the Oracle Fusion Middleware line for its PeopleSoft products. Oracle bought PeopleSoft in January 2005 for $10.3 billion in a messy acquisition that was marked by layoffs and court battles. Since then, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has placed an emphasis on fusing Oracle and PeopleSoft products.