staff, urlman, capt. bob:
staff, yeah did you notice that there was 125,000 shares traded in the last hour of trading on friday. might have some small news this week. hopefully they will have completed porting of jvm this week as promised. on schedule according to last word i received.
i truly believe that the biggest news, when we look back a year from now, may in fact be the visa announcement re java. i at first was dissappointed when it began to dawn on me that psc1005 will be too expensive for smartcards (this may not be altogether true as i'll explain). however, when i spoke to paul about it he gave me another perspective. he thought the visa release was very positive since java smartcards would be upon us very quickly. it was paul, without being specific of course, pushed me in the direction of smart card/ encrypted readers.
urlman, while i saw your reference to the wired article and the reference to an add-on device to pcs, i think this is too limited a view. additionally, i dn think add-ons are the way to go or, at best will only be temporary. i may be wrong but with respect to the pc/nc market this will eventually be incorporated in the fashion of a pcmcia slot where you will slide in your smart card for id/access capabilities. i think this is the way it will work with smart phones and other internet access devices as well.
urlman: here's a terrific site, which will lead you to many others, regarding smart card technology- compinfo.co.uk. some other sites are:
ait.world.com
slb.com
verifone.com
slb and siemens have both adopted java in this area. the other leader in this area, gemplus, i dn think has but they just announced a joint venture arrangement with ibm within the last month and we all know what a big advocate of java ibm is. be sure to go to the ibm site linked to the first url i gave you. when you begin to read all this you will begin to see the many varied applications intended for smart cards. they are huge in europe (see the finland piece in the verifone site as an example) and everyone appears to be drooling over the US market where we have only gotten a taste. i think you will then begin to perceive the importance of the visa java announcement, IMHO.
also don't forget internet tv that's coming. check out article in latest Upside re various competitors. think we'll eventually learn about some ptsc activity in this area.
i'll be out of pocket myself this upcoming week so i'll expect some good follow-up and input on my return. bob
PS almost forgot about promised explanation. check out commentary about CASCADE consortium and what i understand to be there work on a 32bit smartcard. this group appears to be led by gemplus (dn know if any change do to its linkup w/ ibm). |
