Coleman Research Group’s Technology, Media & Telecom Group facilitates consultations between our clients (institutional investors) and leading technology professionals on a wide variety of topics including semiconductors, data storage and security, computer hardware and software, satellite system operators, telecom equipment, cable and wireless providers, and advertising spending.

Our TMT network spans technology industries across the globe and includes CTOs, CIOs, marketing and business development executives, engineers, buyers, and resellers.

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A Verizon iPhone in 2010

Judging from reader comments in this space, there are a lot of cellphone owners in America locked into Verizon (VZ) contracts who would buy an iPhone in a minute if they didn’t have to switch carriers to get it.

Verizon has made it pretty clear that it would cut a deal with Apple (AAPL), were it not for a couple of impediments: 1) the contract that makes AT&T (T) the iPhone’s exclusive U.S. carrier, and 2) the fact that Verizon’s network (based on CDMA2000 technology) is incompatible with Apple’s smartphone (which uses W-CDMA (UMTS)).

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Internet TV

Hulu touts about TV anytime, anywhere. But hooking your TV to the Net? Crazy talk!

Funny pages: Hulu offers web video, but doesn’t encourage Net TV. Image: Hulu
I had an epiphany early last year when I visited Hulu for an article David Kirkpatrick and I were writing about the unexpectedly successful young venture.

Watching TV shows on Hulu was such a pleasant experience with Hulu that the company should encourage users to connect their PCs to televisions. Technologically it’s not a difficult thing to do, but it’s not terribly convenient. A PC needs to be near the TV, the remote-control experience isn’t good, and so on. I remember Hulu executives smiling kindly at my suggestion but not offering much in the way of feedback.

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Coleman Research Group’s Healthcare Team facilitates consultations between our clients (institutional investors) and leading healthcare professionals on a wide variety of topics including pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, clinical research, medical devices, healthcare providers, insurance, and regulatory issues.

Our Healthcare network spans technology industries across the globe and includes doctors, researchers, scientists, healthcare executives, consultants, and former regulatory officials.

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Google Health adds telehealth services to the mix

SAN FRANCISCO – Google Health is introducing telehealth services to its platform through a partnership with Boca Raton, Fla.-based MDLiveCare.

The partnership, which was announced Tuesday at the Health2.0 conference in San Francisco, will allow Google Health users with an MDLiveCare HIPAA access to secure video, phone or email telehealth consultations with a board-certified physician or mental health therapist, allowing them to share their medical records with a physician before the appointment and get records after the appointment.

“Patients remember less than 25 percent of what they’re told when they consult with a doctor,” said Bob Smoley, the CEO of MDLiveCare. “By directly synchronizing the information that’s shared during telehealth consultations with electronic patient health records, we’re able to provide patients with a convenient solution to review their physician or therapist encounters, time and time again, which significantly increases patient awareness and treatment compliance. This integration allows us to further empower patients with better access to all of their health information and to provide a service unprecedented in medicine today.”

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New Web site aims to increase price transparency

SEATTLE – PriceDoc.com, a free Web site looking to provide healthcare consumers with price transparency, has launched its pilot program nationwide.

The Seattle-based Web site was originally launched in April with the goal of providing uninsured or underinsured consumers as well as those seeking elective procedures with insight regarding potential healthcare costs from qualified providers.

“Based on our recent experiences, there is a huge demand for what PriceDoc.com brings to consumers and healthcare providers,” said Patrick Bradley, the company’s president and chief operating officer. “Clearly, the idea of transparent medical pricing resonates with both groups.”

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Coleman Research Group’s Technology, Media & Telecom Group facilitates consultations between our clients (institutional investors) and leading technology professionals on a wide variety of topics including semiconductors, data storage and security, computer hardware and software, satellite system operators, telecom equipment, cable and wireless providers, and advertising spending.

Our TMT network spans technology industries across the globe and includes CTOs, CIOs, marketing and business development executives, engineers, buyers, and resellers.

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HTC: Your next fave smartphone?

The largest smartphone maker you’ve never heard of wants to capture the hearts – and dollars – of the U.S. consumer.

Motorola’s (MOT) Droid phone is getting a ton of buzz, and that’s by design. Verizon Wireless (VZ) chief Marketing Officer John Stratton has said the marketing campaign behind its iPhone competitor will be the largest in its history.

But the Google (GOOG)-powered device isn’t the only smartphone the company is likely to begin selling at the start of November. Though no one has officially confirmed, the carrier is expected to announce a second device that will also run on Google’s Android operating system at half the price: the HTC Droid Eris.

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Verizon, Motorola unveil the Droid

(CNET) — Verizon Wireless customers will soon be able to get their hands on the much anticipated Google Android phone called the Droid.

The companies officially unveiled the device at an event here. Like most smartphones of its class, the phone will cost $199 with a two-year contract. And it will be available to consumers starting November 6.

Customers can pre-register for the device now. John Stratton, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Verizon Wireless, said at the event that the device could be pre-ordered, but Verizon’s public relations team said he mispoke, and users can simply put their name on a list to get more information about the device.

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Coleman Research Group’s Consumer Goods & Services Group facilitates consultations between our clients and leading consumer goods, retail, and services professionals a wide variety of topics including consumer products manufacturers, electronics, automotive OEMs, international retail chains, leisure goods and services, and more.

Click here to learn more about Coleman Research Group’s Consumer Goods & Services Group.

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Avon Reports Third-Quarter Results

Avon Products, Inc. (NYSE: AVP) today reported third-quarter 2009 total revenue of $2.6 billion, 4% lower than that of 2008’s third quarter, but up 7% on a local-currency basis as foreign exchange pressured growth by 11 percentage points. Beauty sales in the third quarter of 2009 were 3% lower versus the prior-year period, but increased 8% on a local-currency basis. Active Representatives grew 10%, with growth in all regions. Units overall rose 5% versus the prior-year quarter and Beauty units increased 6%.

Avon’s 8% local-currency growth in Beauty sales included gains in all categories: fragrance, color cosmetics, skin care and personal care grew 9%, 17%, 1%, and 7%, respectively. On a reported basis, these growth rates were -4%, +4%, -8% and -4%, respectively.

Third-quarter 2009 gross margin of 62.6% was 50 basis points below that of the prior-year quarter. Strong manufacturing productivity gains, benefits from the company’s Strategic Sourcing Initiative, and strategic price increases offset most of 140 basis points of unfavorable transaction-exchange impact on 2009 gross margin.

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Goodbye Mirdles! Freshpair Launches Stylish Men’s Shapewear Department

NEW YORK, Oct. 29 /PRNewswire/ — For the past eight years, Freshpair.com has been helping women look slim and sleek with an extensive shapewear department. Women have had push-up bras and shapewear for years. Freshpair decided it was time men had some options to help them look better under their clothes as well - be it slimming down or bulking up. In October, Freshpair launched their men’s shapewear department: www.freshpair.com/mens/shapewear.html, full of stylish ways for men to look leaner and more sculpted (plus styles that enhance the male anatomy).

Until now, men have not had many options when it came to shapewear. Men’s girdles (aka mirdles) have been around for over 25 years, but these garments were strictly functional - not fashionable. Freshpair is now offering shaping tops and bottoms for men from designer labels that look more like regular underwear and t-shirts. Men can wear many of these compressive items to the gym, under work clothes or alone with jeans.

“According to our recent poll, 79% of men said they were unhappy with their current body, citing their love handles as the main problem area. Of that 79%, 61% said they would be willing to try men’s shapewear if it looked like normal clothing,” reported Freshpair President, Michael Kleinmann. “The styles in our new Men’s Shapewear Department will definitely hide love handles, back bulges and man boobs, while looking stylish and modern.”

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Coleman Research Group Testimonials

“I have had great success working with Coleman Research Group. Their targeted searches yield experts who provide fresh insight on a given situation. For this project, CRG put me in touch with industry professionals who knew how to value the assets of big box retailers.”

~ Analyst at a $1.2B Long/Short Fund New York City

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Coleman Research Group’s Technology, Media & Telecom Group facilitates consultations between our clients (institutional investors) and leading technology professionals on a wide variety of topics including semiconductors, data storage and security, computer hardware and software, satellite system operators, telecom equipment, cable and wireless providers, and advertising spending.

Our TMT network spans technology industries across the globe and includes CTOs, CIOs, marketing and business development executives, engineers, buyers, and resellers.

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Smartphone security threats likely to rise

Worms, spam, viruses and hackers — they’re not just for your desktop or laptop anymore. According to internet security experts they could be well on their way into your pocket or purse.

The popularity of smartphones — like the Blackberry, iPhone, Palm and the emerging Droid — is on the rise and shows no signs of letting up.

And that’s making the phones a sweeter target for online ne’er do-wells looking to, at the very least, cause mischief and, at worst, rip off unsuspecting phone owners.

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Net neutrality faces political, legal hurdles

Net neutrality supporters may be celebrating the Federal Communications Commission’s unanimous vote Thursday to begin developing open Internet regulation, but the battle is far from over as the yet-to-be-written regulation is already facing Congressional opposition and will also likely be challenged in court.

Votes at the FCC for the proposal to get the ball rolling on new rules to protect an open Internet hadn’t even been cast when Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, introduced legislation on Thursday morning that would block the agency from regulating the Internet. McCain said that Net neutrality rules would stifle innovation and hurt the job market.

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Coleman Research Group’s Healthcare Team facilitates consultations between our clients (institutional investors) and leading healthcare professionals on a wide variety of topics including pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, clinical research, medical devices, healthcare providers, insurance, and regulatory issues.

Our Healthcare network spans technology industries across the globe and includes doctors, researchers, scientists, healthcare executives, consultants, and former regulatory officials.

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Psychiatric Meds for Infants Linked to Later Behavior Problems

Researchers report that infant rats given commonly prescribed drugs to treat mood disorders, pain and epilepsy develop behavioral problems in adulthood.

Earlier studies showed that brain cells in young rats die after they’re given the drugs. The cells are in parts of the brain that control mood, cognition and movement.

The new research, which was scheduled to be presented this week at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Chicago, aimed to determine if the drugs would also affect behavior.

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Production Problems Plague Delivery of Swine Flu Vaccine

Some children and teens are more likely than their peers to become addicted to the Internet, and a new study suggests it’s more likely to happen if kids are depressed, hostile, or have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or social phobia.

Teenagers who use the Internet so much that it interferes with everyday life and decision-making may be addicted.

Although an Internet addiction is not an official diagnosis, signs of a potential problem include using the Internet so much for game playing or other purposes that it interferes with everyday life and decision-making ability. (The diagnosis is being considered for the 2012 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the “bible” of mental ailments published by the American Psychiatric Association).

Past research suggests that 1.4 percent to 17.9 percent of adolescents are addicted to the Internet, with percentages higher in Eastern nations than in Western nations, according to the study published Monday in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

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Coleman Research Group’s Technology, Media & Telecom Group facilitates consultations between our clients (institutional investors) and leading technology professionals on a wide variety of topics including semiconductors, data storage and security, computer hardware and software, satellite system operators, telecom equipment, cable and wireless providers, and advertising spending.

Our TMT network spans technology industries across the globe and includes CTOs, CIOs, marketing and business development executives, engineers, buyers, and resellers.

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Facebook, Twitter users beware: Crooks are a mouse click away

If you’re on Facebook, Twitter or any other social networking site, you could be the next victim.

Experts say cybercrooks are lurking just a mouse click away on popular social networking sites.

That’s because more cyberthieves are targeting increasingly popular social networking sites that provide a gold mine of personal information, according to the FBI. Since 2006, nearly 3,200 account hijacking cases have been reported to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, a partnership between the FBI, the National White Collar Crime Center and the Bureau of Justice Assistance.

It starts with a friend updating his or her status or sending you a message with an innocent link or video. Maybe your friend is in distress abroad and needs some help.

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The tech catastrophe you’re ignoring

Sometimes, it may shock you to learn, journalists misjudge the scale of threats.

I remember working on a Scottish newspaper in the mid-1990s, when the first minor outbreak of mad cow disease in humans, which happened in Scotland, hit the headlines. One day, an editor who wrote a lot of those headlines read a menu from the company cafeteria. “Thank goodness, they’re not feeding us beef,” he announced triumphantly, his health campaign won. Then, without a trace of irony: “Great. I’m just off for a cigarette.”

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Coleman Research Group’s Business and Financial Services Group facilitates consultations between our clients (institutional investors) and leading business and financial services professionals on a wide variety of topics including consumer credit trends, banking and investment services, insurance, residential and commercial real estate, student lending, and regulatory issues.

Our Business & Financial network includes an elite assembly of current and former CFOs and senior executives, accountants, former regulatory officials, academics, and top-level industry consultants.

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Dell’s Extreme Makeover

When a wave of mergers swept the tech industry in 2004, Michael S. Dell promised investors they wouldn’t see his computer company anywhere near a negotiating table. “When was the last time you saw a successful acquisition or merger in the computer industry?” he asked at the time. Five years later, it’s a different story. Round Rock (Tex.)-based Dell is weeks away from closing its largest acquisition ever, a $3.9 billion deal for tech-services provider Perot Systems (PER). The chief executive says more deals are likely, and this won’t be the end of his changes in strategy. “Everything’s on the table,” he says.

And with good reason. The company Michael Dell started in his college dorm and built into the preeminent personal computer maker has fallen on hard times. As the center of the tech industry has shifted from the PC to the Internet, Dell has struggled mightily to find its place. While Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), IBM (IBM), and other rivals transformed themselves in recent years by acquiring new companies and capabilities, Dell long stuck with its old playbook of cranking out PCs as efficiently as possible. It’s hard to remember that in 2005 Dell was valued at $100 billion, or more than HP and Apple (AAPL) combined. Today, it’s worth $30 billion, less than a third of its rivals’ market values.

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Smart Global Infrastructure Plays

Investors in infrastructure are taking a broader view of the kinds of stocks they want to own these days. That’s partly in response to the slow pace at which U.S. government stimulus money is being funneled into public projects. It’s also attributable to fund managers’ hunger for stocks with more predictable cash flow and earnings prospects that are less tied to the strength of the economy overall—in other words, companies that enjoy a monopoly on facilities and services that get paid no matter how poorly the economy is doing.

Rapid economic growth and rising standards of living in developing countries such as China, India, and Brazil, and the accelerating trend toward urban living are driving the need to invest in core infrastructure systems such as water, electric power, and telecommunications.

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Coleman Research Group’s Technology, Media & Telecom Group facilitates consultations between our clients (institutional investors) and leading technology professionals on a wide variety of topics including semiconductors, data storage and security, computer hardware and software, satellite system operators, telecom equipment, cable and wireless providers, and advertising spending.

Our TMT network spans technology industries across the globe and includes CTOs, CIOs, marketing and business development executives, engineers, buyers, and resellers.

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The hot new musical instrument: Your smartphone

Often in the middle of the night, while his wife sleeps beside him, John Sheridan picks up his iPhone from the nightstand and shakes the device like it was a conductor’s wand on fire.

John Sheridan of Florida creates music on his iPhone while his wife sleeps beside him. Sometimes he goes on like this for more than an hour at a time. There’s a point to this midnight madness, though.

By day, Sheridan is a 53-year-old real-estate agent in Florida. But by night, he’s an iPhone musician.

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Tweet it through the grapevine: Twitter’s making wine

Twitter may lack a business strategy, but it does have a wine strategy — and it does not come in 140 grapes.

The microblogging service, valued at $1 billion and known for its 140-character “tweets,” announced Thursday it’s launching a wine label: Fledgling Wine. Twitter is partnering with Crushpad, a custom winemaking service in San Francisco, to produce the wine; a portion of the proceeds will go to Room to Read, a non-profit supporting reading programs and libraries in Asia and Africa.

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To learn more about Coleman Research Group please visit the Coleman Research Group website or at any of the links below:

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Coleman Research Group’s Knowledge Broker

Coleman Research Group’s Technology, Media & Telecom Group facilitates consultations between our clients (institutional investors) and leading technology professionals on a wide variety of topics including semiconductors, data storage and security, computer hardware and software, satellite system operators, telecom equipment, cable and wireless providers, and advertising spending.

Our TMT network spans technology industries across the globe and includes CTOs, CIOs, marketing and business development executives, engineers, buyers, and resellers.

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Deaf users sound off on Sidekick outage

When the T-Mobile Sidekick started having data problems two weeks ago, it was a big pain for nearly all of the company’s roughly 800,000 subscribers. But it became particularly rough for the many deaf people who have been among the Sidekick’s most loyal fan base.

“It was severely limiting and made me very dependent on others,” Carla McCraw, a Web designer from San Antonio, Texas, said in an e-mail interview. “This loss of independence was very stressful on me.”

McCraw said she relies on her Sidekick to manage everyday tasks, from keeping up with closures at her son’s day care to whether soccer practice will be rained out.

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Ford charges electric, hybrid strategy

BOSTON–Ford Motor expects to manufacture as many as 2 million all-electric and gas-electric vehicles in the next 10 years, betting that rising oil prices and consumer interest will sustain a long-term transition to new technologies.

The company has set a goal of making 10 percent to 25 percent of its fleet “electrified” by 2020, which represents somewhere between 800,000 and 2 million cars, said Nancy Gioia at a media event here on Wednesday. Ford announced on Wednesday that Gioia will hold a newly created position of director of global electrification, which covers hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and battery-electric vehicles.

Plug-in electric vehicles promise to offer a much lower cost-per-mile than gasoline cars and deliver substantial environmental benefits. But in the near term, hybrids will likely represent the largest volume in the mix of technologies, said Gioia at the event.

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