TRG's Commentary

TRG's consultants are constantly researching developments in their respective technical fields and geographic regions - for their clients' needs as well as to sate their own professional curiosities. Below are abstracts, analyses and presentations that TRG's own consultants have developed in subject areas they engage.

Capacity Glut at the Backbone Doesn't Mean the Market for Optical Switching Technology Is Saturated

TRG's Director of Technical Assessment Dr. Scott Moore Argues that Optical Networking Equipment Requirements for Metropolitan Area Networks Are Far From Sated

Excesses in dot-com land and mis-steps in the telecomms industry in overbuilding backbone networks have precipitated a meltdown in the industry. Yet, there is an enormous unfulfilled market in metropolitan area networks (MAN) that presents an enduring opportunity for optical telecomms manufacturers and network developers.

Digital Media Provokes Rethinking of Copyright's Boundaries

TRG's Director of Research and Blue Spike CEO Scott Moskowitz Ask How Copyright Can Be Protected Without Destroying Market-Cultivating Fair Use

If every digital (or digitizable) IP object is free for the taking the moment it appears on the Web, does copyright have any more meaning? Of course it does and always will - yet many of the technical solutions proffered to control copyright confront conventions of fair use that have contributed to market-making dialogue among consumers. Time to assess the consequences of locking up IP too restrictively.

Automated Payment Schemes = e-Commerce That Pays

TRG's Director of Research Explores the Subject of Retail Payment Systems

Dancing bears and empty chat rooms do not an enterprise make. The difference between an e-commerce entrepreneur and a grinning Cyberspace mogul is that the latter goes into business on the Web knowing how he is going to be paid. Let us count the ways to make the till chime.

Interactive Television Ready for Prime Time?

TRG Examines the Technical and Industrial-Political Questions of Grafting the Internet's Functionality Onto Auld and Venerable Television Technologies

Interactive Television has been in the drawing board since the 1960s, yet build-out costs have always attended the failure of ITV pilots. With a great deal of the technology falling in price and the Internet providing a common channel for interactivity, the dream of ITV seems not so fantastic any more. Most of the technical issues are solved problems - though the remaining standards issues are troubled fields of contest.

Burning the Jolly Roger

TRG's Director of Research Surveys Technical Solutions to Vexing Piracy Exposures

You've heard the rants about the World Wide Web destroying the publishing and entertainment industries as free copies of everything appear everywhere. TRG's research indicates there are powerful means of mitigating piracy exposures inherent in Internet technologies - for everything from software to text.