Lenovo recalls Sony Batteries

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Lenovo and IBM Corporation, in cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and other regulatory agencies, have announced the voluntary recall of certain lithium-ion batteries manufactured by Sony Corporation.

Lenovo has joined Dell etc in recalling Sony batteries now too. [via]

IBM and Lenovo sold these Sony batteries in systems listed below between February 2005 and September 2006. Customers who bought one of the following systems may have a battery subject to this recall:

  • ThinkPad R Series (R51e, R52, R60, R60e)
  • ThinkPad T Series (T43, T43p, T60)
  • ThinkPad X Series (X60, X60s)

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IBM is out to destroy patent rights

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..frankly, that’s total rubbish.

Jim Moore suggests IBM pirates and infringes of patents at will.

Not sure if my argument will be a lucid as Dr Moore’s being an IBM serf, (or should I be a Dr IBM Serf), but holding a patent within IBM is celebrated. There’s not a culture of stealing or pirating patents within IBM. Everyone I know is ever so carefully on all licensing and patent issues to my knowledge.

IBM may not be at the forefront of Web2.0, but neither is Sun, EDS or HP (too busy firing people for spying) but IBM has always been a huge innovator and still is.

My view on Web2.0 is that it’s a bit like Opensource (linux excluded), fine for small business and consumers but it’s unlikely to be used on billion dollar contracts. IBM plays in the billion dollar contracts space, not the consumer space. So I don’t think the little guy has anything to fear in the web2.0 world from IBM.

Jim needs to check out Google’s recent history e.g bringing out a Calendar and squashing (not killing) all the calendar apps or Microsoft with Vista’s security programs and the impacts on Symantec et al.

I don’t think Jim can take IBM at face value, so I’m not sure if Jim just headed off on his own big business conspiracy theory monologue.

UPDATE: Charles agrees “First, Jim never clearly articulates what this supposed conspiracy is”

and

Feld Thoughts takes a slightly more cautious view point but doesn’t totaly agree with Jim. “However, I also don’t agree with Jim’s viewpoint that the patent system protects “the little guy” against “the big guy” and the reason folks like IBM want change is to gain an advantage over the little guy. ”

Grand Central is US only

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Grand Central is getting lot’s of attention, TechCrunch yesterday, Lifehacker today, but it’s a US centric business at this point in time.

There appears to be lot’s of business jumping into small parts of the telco space right now, Jajah, Truephone and now Grand Central to name just a few. They are obviously taking advantage of the fact the fact that you can negotiate in country call rates for almost zero and or use VoIP technology to traverse the network and pop out closer to the end point.

But this is great service, it get’s inbetween me and my phone providers and stops them leveraging both my attachment to my number (printing new business cards etc) and my resistance to change due to the hassle it causes. So good on Grand Central..but come on roll it out worldwide!

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The End of Telecom; The Emergence of Utilicom

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…a mobile company just gave away the income stream of every fixed-line incumbent Telco on the planet earth for $9 and simultaneously created new mindshare in the market that the essence of value has shifted from one domain to another. This “Value apocalypse” will be the primary premise by which your Utility company will utilize to establish itself as your primary energy and communications company.

Telecom’s Tsunami has a huge post on the rise of Utilicom [via].

A mobile operator doing this to a fixed-line operator is a beta test, when your local utility company does this to every Telco in your district, this is just another line on your utility bill!

My personal view is that is a huge leap. The utility companies may own a local infrastructure but it doesn’t own the international piece. Also Orange the Mobile operator bought Wannado and has re-branded it. So Orange isn’t strictly a mobile operator. In fact Orange Business Services now covers, Orange Mobile, Wannado and also Equant. So that’s a fair spread of services being offered under the Orange brand.

But Orange has given something away for free, but there’s a catch you’ve got to up your Orange mobile spend. So they are not giving it away for free, they have just moved the charge from your ADSL invoice to your mobile invoice So subtle invoice trickery and it appears you’ve giving away somebody else’s business for free.

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A new kind of advertising

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Gabe Rivera has created a new kind of advertising for TechMeme, which he explains here and here.

Gabe has worked absolute magic here. This is such a brilliant idea, all due respect to Gabe but I’m surprised one of the big players didn’t come up with this idea first. So hat’s off to Gabe..nice work. [via]
I emailed Techmeme a few days back and surprised to get an email from Gabe himself..nice guy.

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