It’s a sad day for employees and former employees of Nortel. Today, the company announced that it will liquidate and sell its businesses, ending its efforts to restructure in bankruptcy court.
After 114 years in business, it’s a sobering end to a company that once had so much life. At one point, the company was valued by investors at $250 billion, but that was before the dot-com bust and accounting scandals. The company is forced now to liquidate in order to pay its creditors and ex-employees to whom it owes severance and pensions. The first piece of the business to be sold off is its lucrative carrier networks division and a wireless research unit. These are being picked up by Nokia Siemens for a bid of US $650 million.
I spent nearly 15 years working at Nortel, starting in college as a paid intern in the corporate communications group. During my tenure there, I managed customer and community relations, enterprise public relations, and product marketing for contact center solutions, mobility, and unified communications solutions. Nortel offered many outstanding learning opportunities and enabled me to develop valuable skills which helped to advance my professional career long after my departure from the company.
I have many fond memories of my time at Nortel. The good times were amazing. The people were top notch. In fact, I have many life-long friends that I met during my time at Nortel.
Even though I’ve been gone for a few years now, I mourn the loss of a company that was once a bright shining star in the industry — a company that brought much joy and career growth into my life.
Although Nortel will continue to exist until its businesses are sold off, this story is quickly coming to an end…goodbye, my friend. You will be missed.
How many times have you reached for your cell phone only to find that the battery was drained or almost dead? That used to happen to me all the time until I got a new phone with a longer battery life. It’s not as frustrating now, but I still have to remember to charge the phone every 3-4 days.
What this world needs is a phone that charges itself. Seriously, we are busy people, and cell phones are a necessity these days. There’s nothing worse than needing your mobile phone and not having it because the battery is dead.
Cell phone owners across the world may have a reason to rejoice in the near future. Nokia is working on an answer to this plaguing problem. They have invented a cell phone that recharges itself by using ambient radio waves from the air. It can pick up all the bits and pieces of waves from TV, radio, and other mobile phone systems and convert that electromagnetic energy into electrical current that can then be used to recharge the phone’s battery.
How cool is that?
Currently the phone doesn’t harvest enough power to keep a drained battery alive during an active call, but it does provide enough juice to slowly recharge the battery while it’s in standby mode. Imagine that…never being forced to plug your phone in again and recharge it! Whoohoo!
The only bad news is that we have to wait about three to five years for the technology to be commercialized, so don’t throw away your charger just yet.
Are you searching for a great Father’s Day gift for your Dad? If so, don’t give him a wimpy tie or cheap cologne. C’mon…you can do better than that. Your Dad is the best. Why not give him a gift that matches his awesomeness?
Lucky for you, this year you can show him how much you really care by giving him a gift that stands above all others. Check it out:
Okay, okay…I know it’s a shameless plug for my company, but it’s also freaking hilarious. I saw it today, and it cracked me up. I just had to share it.
BTW, if you still want to pick up an ASR-9000 (aka “awesome in a box”) for your Dad, I know where you can get one.
Each night I log-in to the wonderful world of the Internet. Sometimes it’s to catch up with friends online or find something to entertain me; other times it’s to locate interesting fodder to write about in my blog. When I go online, there are a few sites I love. Since you’re supposed to share the things you love with your friends, here are my five faves:
Hulu.com — yes, I’ve written about the virtues of Hulu before, but it’s worth mentioning again, especially now that there’s nothing good to watch on TV except Burn Notice. Hulu lets you watch your favorite shows online for free. The site also offers a variety of older movies for viewing. For more info, check out my previous post, “Nothing on TV?”.
FaceBook — it’s the ultimate social networking space. Here you can waste countless hours connecting with friends, family, and people you haven’t spoken to in years. I’ve reconnected with friends from college and high school on FaceBook, and it allows me to stay in touch with close friends even when I’m really busy. There are also countless applications, games and surveys to keep you busy — if you’re into that type of thing.
TripAdvisor — are you planning a Summer vacation? Don’t do it without TripAdvisor. It’s the ultimate vacation guide because it offers real reviews from real travelers. I don’t go anywhere without checking TripAdvisor first. It can help you determine the best location to stay, and the reviews will tell you if a hotel property is really as good as it looks on the website.
Google Reader — this is my favorite RSS reader. It aggregates the RSS feeds from various news sources and blogs one place so I can easily read all of them without having to go to multiple sites. It even has a widget for iGoogle enabling me to read it from my Google home page — love it!
CNN.com — this is one of my favorite sources for news stories and articles. The site displays stories from various news sources, and it offers a good variety of US, World, Political, Entertainment, Science, Health and Business news.
How cool is this? University of Wisconsin doctoral student Adam Wilson recently sent a Twitter message by using his mind instead of his hands. Using a cap equipped with electrodes that monitor brain activity, he simply concentrated on the letters he wanted “typed” and then focused on the word “twit” at the bottom to post the tweet. “Spelling with my brain,” was one of the first messages sent.
The way it works is interesting. All the letters are displayed on the computer screen, and they flash individually. When the letter on which you are focusing flashes, your brain registers that change. This momentary change in brain activity is read by the electrodes in the cap, and the corresponding letter is typed on the computer screen.
Wilson wants to use this technology with patients suffering from “locked-in syndrome”, a neurological condition that paralyzes people but leaves their mind intact. It provides an efficient way for them to communicate in a normal fashion, and at a distance. Twitter also provides the opportunity for these individuals to interface online with people who wouldn’t necessarily know that they are disabled, which could be empowering.
While they don’t know when this might be commercially available or how much it would cost, it does have the potential to change the way we interface with computer systems in the future. Wouldn’t it be great if I could just type this blog using only my thoughts instead of my hands? Maybe one day, I will.
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