| Sun's e-auction evolution
Sun Microsystem's strategy in using reverse auctions has come a long way over the last five years. And now, it's going even further. Besides using them for everything from low-end memory circuits and low-capacity disk drives to high-end chips, power supplies and virtually every capacity disk drive the company buys, Sun is now using reverse auctions with its electronics manufacturing services (EMS) providers. It awards not just printed circuit board assemblies, but entire systems, including servers and mass storage units, to contract manufacturers through reverse auctions. "This has taken some time to figure out how to do because it is a much more complex bidding environment," says Kurt Doelling, Sun's vice president of supplier management. It's more complex because Sun, based in Santa Clara, Calif., has to have an understanding of what the development and prototype costs for the EMS providers would be in building a server or mass storage unit.
The Chronicle Local News Blog
4:23 p.m.: Prosecutor Paul Hora called his right-hand man, Alameda County DA's Inspector Bruce Brock, to the stand this afternoon. Brock worked at the Oakland Police Department for nearly 25 years. He spent seven years in the department's homicide section and investigated Hans Reiser and searched his home. Brock retired from the OPD on Dec. 3, 2006. Hora asked Brock when he joined the DA's office. "Dec. 4, 2006," Brock said, prompting laughter from the jury. "So you had dinner," joked Hora. (It is common for veteran police officers to join the Alameda County DA's office as inspectors.) Brock testified that he and Hora, in May, inspected the 1988 Honda CRX that was seized by Oakland police on Sept. 19, 2006 on Monterey Boulevard off Highway 13.
Colleges and Universities Make QAS Part of Their Data Integrity ...
BOSTON, Oct. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- QAS, a part of Experian(R) specializing in address verification and cleansing products, announced today that 90 colleges and universities across North America have purchased QuickAddress software in the first two quarters of the company's fiscal year, bringing its total higher education customer base to nearly 300 schools. This demonstrates tremendous year-over-year growth for QAS and is evidence that its address verification software is gaining rapid market adoption. Of particular note in QAS' new customer cache is the University of Maine System (UMS), which purchased QAS' flagship product, QuickAddress Pro to outfit address entry points in admissions, finance, human resource and alumni departments across its seven statewide campuses. QAS will be used initially in conjunction with UMS' PeopleSoft Campus Solutions application, which is a comprehensive suite of software specifically designed for student administration, and later with SunGard Higher Education's Advance donor management system.
Albion blog: Hail Cesar
Wow, what a performance and what a result, writes Albion blogger Jarrod Hill. Surely the highlight of the season so far, in all honesty I feared our trip to Watford, they are the typical type of team we fear the most. They are an uncompromising, strong, and well organised outfit. Mowbray highlighted in the run up to the game that we needed to match them for “battle"; before we could play our football, and lead by players like Cesar we more than matched the physicality of our opponents. In the four games Cesar has played we have kept three clean sheets, coincidence? No. Cesar has brought a real physical presence to our defence, he has a determination to defend and not concede goals, and he can also pass the ball as well, which is contributing to us retaining possession better.
WINDOW DRESSING PC Makers Take A Stylish Turn To Tackle Apple
A bigger challenge was boosting technical performance and wringing costs from suppliers of standard components like computer cases, circuit boards and chips. Technology also posed limits: Chips and other components that generate heat required cooling fans and imposed limits on miniaturization. By the 1990s PCs had become generic: a simple box -- often in beige -- paired with a matching monitor, a keyboard and mouse. Consumers have long regarded desktop PCs as such aesthetic duds that they've been known to cover them with bedsheets and saris, says Genevieve Bell, an Intel anthropologist who observes global PC usage in homes. "There is this sense of, 'Oh god, why does it have to be so ugly?'" she says. There were a few early exceptions. At Sony in the mid-1990s, a stubborn designer named Teiyu Goto forced engineers to make components fit into his strict design for a purple, magnesium-sheathed PC called the Vaio 505, which garnered industrywide attention for its sleek look.
|
