Briefly
Holiday sales booming for Nintendo DS
Midway through the holiday shopping season, the Nintendo DS handheld video game player is emerging as this year’s must-buy item, the Tickle Me Elmo of 2004. Nintendo Co., of Japan, released the $149 portable game player — which features a dual screen and wireless capability allowing up to 16 players to compete against each other — in the U.S. on Nov. 21, and the entire 800,000-unit shipment sold out by Thanksgiving, retailers say. In the weeks since, eager fans have been forking over more than $300 for the devices on eBay and other online auction sites. Nintendo’s U.S. base in Redmond has been flooded with DS-seeking callers. “No one, including retailers, anticipated this kind of demand,” says George Harrison, senior vice president of marketing for Nintendo’s U.S. unit. Last week, Nintendo said it will airlift an additional 400,000 units to the U.S. by year end.
New domains approved for Internet
New York The Internet’s key oversight agency gave a preliminary nod Monday to new domain names targeting mobile services and the jobs market. Sponsored by leading mobile phone and technology companies, including Nokia Corp., Microsoft Corp. and T-Mobile, the “.mobi” domain would set apart Web sites and other services that are specially designed to work around the limitations of cell phones, including their smaller screen size and data capacity.
“Microsoft.mobi,” for instance, might carry smaller photos or fewer graphics than the main site at Microsoft.com.
The “.jobs” suffix, meanwhile, would go to members of the human resources community.
A company might keep job postings at “Company.jobs,” rather than force visitors to navigate the main site, whose home page tends to have only general information about a company and its products.
GM, DaimlerChrysler to jointly build hybrids
Detroit General Motors Corp. and DaimlerChrysler AG, two of the world’s biggest automakers, are teaming up to develop fuel-saving hybrid technology for a range of vehicles that will help them compete with hybrid-vehicle leaders Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co.
Hybrids draw power from two energy sources, typically a gas or diesel engine combined with an electric motor. Demand has grown worldwide because of concerns about the dangers of global warming and decreasing natural fuel supplies.
GM and Chrysler both sell a small number of “mild” hybrid pickups, but the systems are less advanced than those used on cars sold by Toyota and Honda.
Toyota, Japan’s No. 1 automaker, said in October it would double the allocation of Prius hybrid cars for the U.S. market in 2005, part of a companywide goal to sell 300,000 gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles worldwide by the end of next year. The announcement coincided with the sale of the 100,000th Prius in the United States, where they went on sale in the summer of 2000. Honda last week began selling its third hybrid car in the United States, a high-performance version of its popular Accord sedan. In early August, Ford Motor Co. began producing a hybrid version of its Escape SUV, the world’s first gas-electric hybrid SUV.
Microsoft offers desktop search software
Seattle Microsoft Corp. on Monday became the second tech-industry giant to offer software for searching through computer desktops — a technology it claims is vastly superior to that launched by Google two months ago.
“We wanted to take this effort to the next level,” said Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s corporate vice president in charge of its MSN online division. “We provide an incredibly fast, precise way to answer your questions.”
The free software – included in the new MSN Toolbar Suite and compatible with the Windows XP and Windows 2000 operating systems – is designed to let computer users find the information they’re looking for without scrolling through thousands of e-mails or file folders. Instead, they will be able to search for keywords located in virtually any type of file, from e-mails to instant messages to PDFs, just as easily as they conduct searches on the Internet.
After getting feedback from users in the United States, Microsoft expects to launch the Toolbar Suite globally early next year.
Desktop-searching has become an incredibly competitive field. Two months ago, Google Inc. launched a version of desktop-searching that it described as the “photographic memory” of the computer, able to recall Web pages, e-mails and other files viewed by the user. Yahoo last week announced plans to launch its version in January; Ask Jeeves plans to announce a service this week; and AOL is also expected to offer desktop-searching.
BellSouth to begin door-to-door campaign
Atlanta One telephone company is picking up where salesmen of vacuum cleaners, vinyl siding and insurance left off.
BellSouth Corp. plans to go door-to-door soliciting residential customers throughout its nine-state territory by early next year.
The effort, which the Atlanta-based company is already testing in select markets, comes amid growing competition from cable providers. The federal do-not-call list also has made it more difficult for telemarketers, like phone companies, to do business, said Tad Neeley, an industry analyst for research firm RHK in San Francisco.
“The telcos are just losing customers; they’ve got to be aggressive,” Neeley said. “They’ve got to find ways to attract new customers. I think this is a real risk on the nuisance side, but they probably don’t have a choice at this point.”
Several hundred salesmen will eventually be part of the effort, the company said.