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The article features the small cosmetics company Ahava which utilizes the elemental resources in the Dead Sea in Israel and Jordan. It is stated that Ahava started when Ziva Gilad sold plastic bottles of mud and salt crystals to tourists. It notes that Ahava exported its products to Europe and the U.S. where their efforts caught the attention of Shamrock Holdings Inc., which acquired 20 percent of their stake. It also mentions the political and ecological challenges faced by the company.

The article discusses the failure of the South Korean based Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. to establish itself as a brand in the mobile phones market. It states that after 1995, Samsung emphasized on quality management and technology innovations through increased research and development spending. It discusses Samsung's struggles to grow its cell-phone market share in the U.S., Latin American and Indian markets, despite technological marvels such as the first MP3 and Wi-Max phones. The job of making Samsung cell phones famous abroad has been given to marketing expert Geesung Choi, who has stated that the company will cater to the high end of the low-end market. Also discussed are Samsung's investments in digital technology helping its profit margins.

The article offers suggestions for people in the U.S. on how to plan for old age while living good life in younger days. It is suggested that to make sure one has enough money for one's retirement days, one is supposed to maximize one's 401(k) contributions, invest in index funds and growth stocks. It is advised that buying Uruguayan real estate is fairly straightforward because foreigners have the same property rights as locals. One can also invest in wind and solar energy. It has been stated to look for land that is close to transmission lines and where the wind blows with an average velocity of at least 17 mph.

The article focuses on several Web 2.0 startups included in the Next Net 25 list of the journal "Business 2.0," and trends driving them. The companies have been divided into five categories that embody the spirit of the Next Net: social media, video, mobile, online advertising, and enterprise applications. The Web site www.stumbleupon.com was launched by Garrett Camp, Justin LaFrance, and Geoff Smith in 2002. StumbleUpon now has 2 million registered users. The Web site www.turn.com, founded by Jim Barnett and John Ellis, provides online advertisers with precise, automated advertisement targeting combined with a system that requires them to pay only for specific desired results.

This article presents information about several businessmen and executives whose ideas are changing the world. Blake Krikorian, co-founder and CEO, Sling Media, enabled people to remotely watch programming streamed from their home TVs. Krikorian's startup sells the Slingbox, which redirects TV signals over the Internet to be viewed on laptops and mobile phones. Mike Morhaime is co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment. The popular online game "World of Warcraft ," developed by Morhaime's company, is creating the planet's biggest virtual world. Richard Branson, chairman, Virgin Group, is the ultimate entrepreneur who found success by extending Virgin's energetic brand to businesses as diverse as music, wireless telecom, and air travel.

A chart is presented that lists the fastest-growing public companies in the U.S. technology sector.

The article presents the author's views on improving work environment. The work environment plays an important role in the way employees perform their works. But there has been little effort by companies to encourage interaction and communication among employees. An important aspect that companies should give attention to is the fact that office design influences the way employees interact and communicate, and its development will prove beneficial in the long run for business success.

The article provides information on business-friendly destinations and locations in the U.S. where businesspeople can arrange for meeting potential clients and investors. It provides names of coffee shops, bars and restaurants located in seven U.S. cities where businesspeople can hold their informal morning, afternoon and evening meetings and provides information on how to get around the cities. In Boston, Massachusetts, businesspeople can meet at Espresso Royale Caffae at Newbury Street for breakfast and coffee, Silvertone Bar & Grill at 69 Bromfield Street for Lunch, Simon's Coffee Shop in Massachusetts for the afternoon meeting and at Salts in Cambridge for dinner.

The article presents an interview with Padmasree Warrior, chief technology officer and executive vice president at Motorola Inc. When asked what Motorola is doing to gain market share from Nokia Corp. in particularly Asian countries, Warrior said that Motorola is actually gaining market share in many of the regions that it had focused on, like Latin America and North America. Warrior told that Motorola has created a Web-based system called Innovate, through which it handles its 25,000 engineers.

The article evaluates the mobile Wi-Max service from Sprint Nextel.

The article focuses on the uses of Bluetooth technology in telecommunication systems. Pairing up Bluetooth devices is considered as a laborious process requiring as many as 15 steps. According to Stuart Carlaw, an analyst with New York-based ABI Research, the most significant challenge that Bluetooth has faced is making the technology more usable, especially when it comes to setting up connections. It is reported that the sales of Bluetooth enabled mobile headsets alone are expected to reach $14 billion within three years-aided by an increasing number of bans on driving while talking on handsets. It also offers information on various Bluetooth aided services.

The article offers information about businessmen and industrialists, who are regarded as contrarian thinkers. It is stated that the contrarian insight of Samuel Brannan, who was the first publicist of the California Gold Rush, considered shovels to be a good investment. Aaron Montgomery Ward founded the world's first mail-order business. His strategy of cutting out on the middleman, is followed by many companies like Amazon.com Inc. Safety razor inventor King Camp Gillette's strategy has been replicated by many companies like Hewlett-Packard Co. and Sony Corp.

The article focuses on the cellphone industry in the U.S. Competition increases, revenue from basic voice services drops, and providers need cool applications to differentiate themselves. That makes 2007 the year when Silicon Valley becomes the power player in the $118 billion U.S. cell-phone market. Google is about to launch cell-phone search ads in the U.S. early this year after testing the Apple Phone in more than 10 countries. The Virgin Mobile service provides 4 million users with up to 75 minutes of free airtime a month.

The article focuses on the growth in the home automation industry. In October 2006, AT&T Corp. launched a remote home-monitoring service to let users control home lighting and appliances via live video, viewable on phones of Cingular Wireless LLC or their personal computers, for $10 a month. Palo Alto, California-based iControl Networks raised $5 million from Intel Capital and VC firm Charles River Ventures in April 2006 and launched its first product, a $400 starter kit and a $15 monthly service that provides PC and cell-phone access to a home-monitoring system, in May 2006.

This article presents information about the concept of cashless transactions. The market is invisible, but it's huge. An estimated $103 billion of social money--for example, split dinner checks and cab fares--is traded every year. A growing group of startups and established players like PayPal, MasterCard, and Cingular are betting that the cell phone is about to become king of small, on-the-go, cashless transactions. Total worldwide mobile payments will reach $24 billion this year and $55 billion by 2008, according to technology analysts at Celent. PayPal Inc. has a leg up in the social money game. In April 2006, it launched PayPal Mobile, a free service that lets PayPal users send as little as a penny to each other by text message and buy from merchants who display a special text-to-buy number. Mobile payments will be an exploding market, predicts Kevin Dulsky, senior director at PayPal Mobile. Then there is a technology called nearfield communication (NFC), which offers secure short-range payment between phones and payment terminals. Nokia Corp. already has an NFC phone on the market.

The article evaluates the Zeo sleep coach that could train one to sleep well from Zeo.

The article presents information related to Skout, founded by Christian Wiklund in 2008. With $1 million in seed money, the company developed a free social network that allowed anyone with a global positioning system-ready cell phone to view photos uploaded by nearby Skout members, along with their geographic distance. Skout became a dating database that more than 2,000 people browse every day. Analysts are impressed with Skout's multiple revenue streams.

The article reports that Aaron Vronko launched Rapid Repair with a business school classmate, Ben Levy. Both shared an interest for repairing broken cell phones and MP3 players. By 2008 the company had 15 employees and was repairing some 500 gadgets a week through online orders. The new business began retrofitting old iPods with a 240GB hard drive for the price of a new device. The company has tapped into the market for expanded iPods.

The article reports that Beeologics LLC, a Miami biotech startup that aims to create vaccines for all viruses that could lead to colony collapse disorder (CCD). It is a collaboration between Eyal Ben-Chanoch, a tech entrepreneur who helped design the first Intel Pentium chip, and Ilan Sela, an Israeli expert on sequencing the genomes of bee viruses. The pair saw a crisis no other company was responding to and gathered 10 top researchers to work on a cure.

The article evaluates the projector, PicoP, from Microvision Inc. in collaboration with Motorola Inc.

The article provides information about the online phone service company, Pudding Media, at San Jose in California. It has developed a technology in which customers using laptop computers to make calls, will be presented with advertisements based on their telephonic conversations. The calls will be free of cost. It is stated that Pudding could be a benefit for the voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) industry after losses encountered by it due to price wars and decline in customer membership. The service does not actually record conversations but recognizes the voice and matches the advertisement using a technology created in Kfar Saba, Israel. Chief executive and co-founder of the company, Ariel Maislos, wants to enable contextual advertisements on cell phones if the service is successful.

The article evaluates the iCache electronic device from ICache.

The article evaluates the Slacker digital music player from Slacker Inc.

The article reports that telecommunications companies will soon offer services that will allow cellular telephone users watch live television programs on their handsets. Verizon Wireless's service, V Cast Mobile TV, will offer eight channels, including MTV, ESPN, and Comedy Central, alongside networks like CBS. Both service providers hope the new services will offset declining revenue from ever-economical voice services. AT&T Corp. will also launch similar services next winter.

The article offers information on the HotSpotAt Home service started by T-Mobile International AG in the U.S. It allows the cell-phone users to make calls via a Wi-Fi signal. It features the Nokia 6136 and Samsung t709 dual-mode phones that make calls over a Wi-Fi signal when possible and switch to a cellular network when out of the Wi-Fi range. The service can be availed for $20 a month on a regular cell plan and offers the users unlimited talk time in range of the company's 8,300 Wi-Fi hotspots across the country. The users also get a T-Mobile router for making Wi-Fi calls at home. AT&T Corp. and Sprint Corp. are likely to launch similar plans within a year.

The article presents information on Voxiva, a real-time epidemic-tracking system for isolated places with little or no technology. India purchased Voxiva to track the spread of disease after the tsunami, Rwanda is using it for HIV, and Indonesia has started a pilot program to help speed up reporting of avian flu. The Institute for OneWorld Health, a nonprofit pharmaceutical company, is using Voxiva to test a new drug for the sand-fly-borne disease leishmaniasis. Voxiva can be accessed through the Web, cell phones, landlines and even radio. Voxiva was founded by Paul Meyer, Pamela Johnson and Anand Narasimhan.

The article presents information related to the current status of real estate in the U.S. The nationwide housing slump was most evident with the fact that the median sales price for existing U.S. homes slipped to $225,000 in August 2006. It is however opined that the impact of housing downturn on the American residential real estate assets will not be much extensive. A study conducted by professor Joseph Gyourko, the Wharton School's director of real estate research, has found several ways for investors to make safe real estate bets in the dangerous housing market.

The article presents an overview of bath and body product company L'Occitane Inc.'s initiative for the cause of blinds. After watching a blind woman sampling perfumes, Olivier Baussan, the founder of L'Occitane, decided to start a perfume school for visually impaired teenagers in Manosque, France in 1998. Every year, during June, 5-10 teenagers are sent to France for attending a weeklong workshop, where the pupils are taught the history of fragrance making from a French perfume maker. Baussan started his career by selling essential oils in Provence in 1976. L'Occitane has 650 stores across the globe. It has also donated to charities for the blind.

The article reports that camel's milk, a food which has been consumed for thousands of years in Africa and the Middle East, will soon bloom into a $10 billion industry. The harvesting of the camel's milk, until recently, was limited to nomads with buckets. Now, a dromedary dairy industry is being created by a Kenyan company, Vital Camel Milk, in the hope of exporting to the West. In 2005, camel's milk was hailed by researchers as a new superfood, which packs 10 times more iron than cow's milk and has antibodies which help fighting cancer and Alzheimer's disease. The dairy experts at the United Nations's Food and Agriculture Organization have predicted $10 billion in annual sales for camel's milk products by 2016. According to Holger Marbach, founder of Vital Camel Milk, once people recognize the healthy effects of camel milk, the market will be endless.

The article reports on an attempt made by educator Dan Feshbach to address the educational needs of kids with autism with the help of a computer-generated character named Timo. This incurable developmental disorder which affects skills such as communication, social interaction and perception of others' emotions; already afflicts nearly 1.5 million children and adults in the United States. Since releasing Animated Speech's Timo software in April 2005, Feshbach has sold more than 2.000 copies. The product costs $99 for a home version and starts at $350 for schools. Timo has mousy brown hair and a tendency to tell long, repetitive stories. But with more than 100 "strings," mathematical parameters controlling his jaws, tongue, lips and other features; his programming can simulate both speech and facial expressions.

The article informs that the Israeli startup Algatechnologies is cultivating red algae in the middle of Israel's Arava desert, taking advantage of cheap land and year-round sunlight with more than 60 miles of water-filled tubing. Algatechnologies and Hawaii-based Cyanotech Corp. are the two main suppliers of natural astaxanthin. The worldwide market for its food and cosmetics uses is $20 million and growing. But red algae are also crucial to salmon diets, and a bigger opportunity awaits in the $240 million astaxanthin fish-feed industry. When algae grow in the desert, anything is possible.

Describes several services one can use on cellular telephones that are offer tours of cities. Celebrity-narrated tours created by Candide Media Works's Talking Street service; Assertion that cellphone tours are a fast-growing market for location-based travel information; Service offered by Spatial Adventures that is customized for specific tourist spots.