Atlanta's horrendous traffic has inspired two companies that are looking to monitor many more roads and highways than is done today and at a much lower cost. Their approach: Track the signals of cell phones that happen to be inside cars.
Both systems rely on wireless companies allowing them to process the data from their towers that calculate the position of each phone about twice a second when it's being used and once every 30 seconds when it's not. Privacy advocates are already raising a red flag, however.
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Everyone knows about Dell's troubles of late. The hardware maker's once industry-leading "build-to-order" supply chain systems are now the norm, and it's fallen behind in design -- areas where competitors such as Apple and Sony excel. Customer service has deteriorated since it was outsourced to India so that customers can no longer rely on timely and informative service. Yet visiting with CEO redux Michael Dell, he looks like a new man and is pumped about the challenge of building what he calls "Dell 2.0."