pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=49368ad014b9b9c000f32a1cmaxX=240maxY=180" border="0" alt="GoogleEngineersFlickr.jpg" title="GoogleEngineersFlickr.jpg" width="240" height="180" /Google was never quite the engineer company its public relations and human resources teams made it out to be, but as Google gets serious about cutting costs, that myth of a decentralized company run by its engineers -- which was, in fact, more true at Google than most anywhere else -- grows ever fainter./p pFor example, remember Google's 20% rule? The one that allowed engineers to spend a fifth of their time on any project of their choosing?/p pGoogle CEO Eric Schimdt's not even pretending its real anymore. Here's the money quote from a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122826503489174369.html?mod=testMod"the emWall Street Journal/em's rehash/a of Google's cost cutting campaign:/p p style="padding-left: 30px;""We have to behave as though we don't know" what's going to happen, says Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt. The company will curtail the "dark matter," he says, projects that "haven't really caught on" and "aren't really that exciting." He says the company is "not going to give" an engineer 20 people to work with on certain experimental projects anymore. "When the cycle comes back," he says, "we will be able to fund his brilliant vision."/p pGoogle's finally getting smart about allocating human resources and capital. Here's what that means in the short term:/p ul listrongA sense of urgency about diversifying the business/strong, which means new priorities include display ads, mobile ads and enterprise software.br / br / /li listrongNon-revenue generating products will starve/strong if they're not killed altogether. Project the company is just "fiddling with," Schmidt told the WSJ will get "will get "naturally smaller as people get plucked off."br / br / /li listrongReigning confusion./strong One Google current operations manager told the Journal: "It's not exactly clear where that bottom line is now. I don't think they know that either."br / br / /li listrongDispirited engineers./strong Google no longer belongs to the dreamy engineers and it's going to make them feel bad. Quoth the Journal: "Some engineers complain they can no longer tap the employees and machines they need to develop their ideas. This is no small issue among elite programmers, many of whom joined the company for the chance to work on such projects, according to current and former employees." br / br / /li listrongCramped quarters./strong Google will close offices in Dallas and Denver.br / br / /li listrongShutting off services/strong. Search sandbox SearchMash, virtual world Lively and Google Page Creator will soon be gone. Google Audio Indexing and Google Notebook could follow.br / br / /li listrongMore grunt work./strong Google wants to "significantly" cut its 10,000 its contractor workforce and somebody has to pick up the slack./li /ul pstrongSee Also:/strongbr /a href="../../2008/12/analyst-google-revenues-will-shrink-till-2010"Analyst: Google Revenues Will Shrink Through 2010 (GOOG)/a/p pemPhoto: a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/martl/"heartbeaz/a/em/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/BzXnDzVKiHF6zgl2tf7YN5K3ChU/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/BzXnDzVKiHF6zgl2tf7YN5K3ChU/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=XmWD4eRa"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=XmWD4eRa" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=lTa8Hl8i"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=Aed7roJ9"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=80" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=tfC8lN7u"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=tfC8lN7u" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=FI2XZbt7"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=131" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=XH6hlZlr"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=336" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=aL0Z2JDG"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=EXj8iuBF"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=50" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~4/qU-Ti-ZVFNQ" height="1" width="1"/

Many thanks to our outgoing guestblogger Dale Dougherty, who contributed a number of superb posts here over the past couple of weeks, and appeared in an episode of Boing Boing tv today. Thank you so much, Dale! We'd now like to give a big welcome today to our next guestblogger, Clay Shirky. I first met Clay, geez, like 10 years ago? When I was working with Jason Calacanis at Silicon Alley Reporter magazine in New York City. The internet media business was a shiny, dazzling new orb we all stood around and gazed upon, slack-jawed and doe-eyed and hopeful. Clay was one of the most inspiring and insightful personalities I knew during those years -- that much has not changed. Clay is the author of the superb new book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. He teaches at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, where he works on the overlap of social and technological networks. We're very excited to have him on board for the next couple of weeks. Welcome, Clay!...br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=8c67ca103a41fcac0fec03af8e9a9544p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=8c67ca103a41fcac0fec03af8e9a9544p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=8c67ca103a41fcac0fec03af8e9a9544" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

div align="center"a href="http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_viewamp;newsId=20081201005109amp;newsLang=en"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="0" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2008/12/medion-gopal-x5535.jpg" //abr / div align="left"Medion has been cramming a href="http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/24/medions-gopal-p4425-navigator-sports-fingerprint-scanner/"fingerprint scanners/a into a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/29/medion-launches-5-inch-gopal-p5430-gps-in-europe/"its GPS units/a for a little while now, but it looks like it's now firmly committed to the technology, with its latest batch of models each packing the extra level of security. Those include the GoPal P5235, P5435 and X5535, which each boast a 5-inch touchscreen display, voice recognition, and live traffic updates, plus a nearly identical appearance. The P5435 one-ups things slightly over the P5235 with some handsfree Bluetooth calling, while the X5535 goes all out with a built-in gyrometer that promises to pick up some of the slack when the GPS signals drop out. No word on a price or release date for any of 'em just yet, unfortunatley, but we wouldn't expect the base model to be too far off the $269 that the nearly identical model that a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/29/medion-launches-5-inch-gopal-p5430-gps-in-europe/"just hit Europe/a demands.br /br /[Via a href="http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/12/01/medion.intros.secure.pnds/"Electronista/a]br //div /divpFiled under: a href="http://www.engadget.com/category/gps/" rel="tag"GPS/a/pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/01/medion-intros-three-new-fingerprint-scanning-gps-units/"Medion intros three new fingerprint-scanning GPS units/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.engadget.com"Engadget/a on Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:16:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href=http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_viewamp;newsId=20081201005109amp;newsLang=enRead/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/01/medion-intros-three-new-fingerprint-scanning-gps-units/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/forward/1387582/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/01/medion-intros-three-new-fingerprint-scanning-gps-units/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/C5zv2--JMy1v0m-YLpSUMnsHkdg/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/C5zv2--JMy1v0m-YLpSUMnsHkdg/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?a=KVbV4uwc"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?i=KVbV4uwc" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?a=QhRFZzAt"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?i=QhRFZzAt" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~4/8wR4gRxUWMs" height="1" width="1"/

Medion has been cramming fingerprint scanners into its GPS units for a little while now, but it looks like it's now firmly committed to the technology, with its latest batch of models each packing the extra level of security. Those include the GoPal P5235, P5435 and X5535, which each boast a 5-inch touchscreen display, voice recognition, and live traffic updates, plus a nearly identical appearance. The P5435 one-ups things slightly over the P5235 with some handsfree Bluetooth calling, while the X5535 goes all out with a built-in gyrometer that promises to pick up some of the slack when the GPS signals drop out. No word on a price or release date for any of 'em just yet, unfortunatley, but we wouldn't expect the base model to be too far off the $269 that the nearly identical model that just hit Europe demands.

[Via Electronista]

Filed under: GPS

Medion intros three new fingerprint-scanning GPS units originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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