WTO slaps $4Bn tariffs on the US

From CNN-Money: WTO defines Tariffs in EU-US trade dispute. Expect another round of "outrage" in the US at the role of international organizations, simply because this time it's going against the US...

groove usage analysis

Ray Ozzie has posted a short comment regarding an analysis of Groove usage they made. Excerpt:

"The analysis does indeed validate that the 2-25 design center of the product is precisely the sweet spot of where it's being used in practice: approximately 35% of shared spaces are between a single pair of individuals, 60% of shared spaces are between 3 and 25 individuals, and 5% of shared spaces have more than 25 individuals. Amazingly to me - given the design center of the UI - I found that within this 5% there are actually hundreds of spaces with 100-250 members each; I'd surely never have expected this.

One other incredibly fascinating tidbit: 25% apparently use shared spaces with only themselves as a member, using Groove as a "briefcase" to transparently and securely synchronize files across multiple computers that they own - e.g. Office documents being synchronized between home and office PCs."

Now, I have a question: do people use it in the sweet spot (2-25) because that's the "natural" use of groups, as Ozzie suggests, or do they a) use it like that because the interface is optimized for it and hence pushes the users there or b) simply because huge groups of collaboration are almost nonexistent in the business world, where Groove is selling? Which is cause, and which is consequence?

Interesting ideas anyway :-)

more on spam

More on spam (a topic I was thinking about yesterday), Bryce has an entry with a ton of interesting links related to spam and spam-killing projects.

alternative displays

Polymer organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays are of the best of the new types of displays being developed to replaced LCDs in the medium term. News.com interviews the CEO of CDT, one of the major patent holders in this area, that's working in a venture with Seiko-Epson.

Another alternative is e-Ink, which was quite hyped in the bubble days.

Displays have to improve, use less power and go down in price. Hopefully one of these technologies will make it.