Technology news from The New York Times

Here is a roundup of the latest technology news from The New York Times:

Skype, the Web Phone Giant, Brings Cheap Calls to Cellular
"Skype, the Internet calling service that has more than 400 million users around the world, is aggressively moving onto mobile phones. The company plans to announce that it will make its free software available immediately for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch and, beginning in May, for various BlackBerry phones."

Do-It-Yourself Magazines, Cheaply Slick
"For anyone who has dreamed of creating his own glossy color magazine dedicated to a hobby, the high cost and hassle of printing has loomed as a big barrier. With a new Web service called MagCloud, Hewlett-Packard hopes to make it easier and cheaper to crank out a magazine than running photocopies at the local copy shop."

Is Facebook Growing Up Too Fast?
"Sometime this week, the five-year-old start-up, born in a dorm room at Harvard, expects to register its 200 millionth user."

Video Game Makers Challenged by the Next Wave of Media
"The video game market has expanded greatly, with more women and older gamers playing. People are playing on consoles, computers, cellphones and hand-held gadgets. But a proliferation of free or low-cost games on the Web and for phones limits how much the major game publishers can raise prices. It also diverts attention from the game consoles, like the PlayStation 3 from Sony and the Xbox 360 from Microsoft."

Marketing After the Recession

According to Professor John Quelch, the downturn in economy has likely changed people's buying habits in fundamental ways. In this article, for Harvard Business Online, reprinted on HBS Working Knowledge, he discusses why marketers must start planning today to reach consumers after the recession.

Are CMOs gaining ground in the recession?

A recent Ad Age article by John Quelch has some good news for marketing heads: Chief marketing officers are holding on to their jobs longer. According to Spencer Stuart's annual survey of CMO tenure at the 100 most advertised brands in the U.S., average time on the job has risen to 28.4 months from 26.8 months in 2007 and 23.2 months in 2006.

In this Ad Age article, Quelch lists the top four issues on which CEOs look to CMOs for guidance. Here is a summary; for details see Ad Age.
- Shifting consumer behavior: The recession has changed consumer attitudes and behaviors and the CEO needs a CMO who understands company's brands, consumers, and their comparative profitability.
- Price positioning: The economic downturn has increased customer price sensitivity. Marketers need to hit key retail price points and revamp their promotion and marketing strategies to maximize price competitiveness.
- Stretching marketing dollars: Recession demands that marketers come up with creative ways of doing more with less.
- Embracing digital: Rather than avoid online advertising, now may be the time for many companies to experiment further and allocate more of their budgets to search advertising, banner advertising or motivating user-generated content.

Wired: "Netbooks prove that we finally know what PCs are actually for: Not all that much"

This Wired article points out a fact about computers in the most basic way possible. Most people do not need heavy-duty hardware. Read the article on Wired: "The Netbook Effect"

"Netbooks have ended the performance wars. Our most common tasks—email, Web surfing, watching streamed videos—require very little processing power. Only a few people, like graphic designers and hardcore gamers, actually need heavy-duty hardware. For years now, without anyone really noticing, the PC industry has functioned like a car company selling SUVs: It pushed absurdly powerful machines because the profit margins were high, while customers lapped up the fantasy that they could go off-roading, even though they never did. So coders took advantage of that surplus power to write ever-bulkier applications and operating systems."

"Netbooks are evidence that we now know what personal computers are for. Which is to say, a pretty small list of things that are conducted almost entirely online. Netbooks prove that the "cloud" is no longer just hype. It is now reasonable to design computers that outsource the difficult work somewhere else. Netbooks are a classic Christensenian disruptive innovation for the PC industry. "