Engineers’ Must-Reads This Week
(November 20-27, 2007)

Disaster and opportunity
(SunStar Cebu, 11/25/2007, Nini Cabaero)
Student-faculty teams from schools all over the country are taking that challenge in an innovation program of Smart Communications Inc. The challenge is called the Sweep or the Smart Wireless Engineering Education Program.

Arroyo activates virtual self in Second Life
(Inquirer.net, 11/26/2007, Alex Villafania)
MANILA, Philippines -- President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is now literally “in the game.”

Under the Hood: Blackberry wins handset data-rate bakeoff
(EE Times, 11/26/2007 Gregory Quirk)
In recent years, the consumer electronics industry has seen a steady trend toward convergence. In the past, users carried several separate devices--from cell phones to portable music players, PDAs, video players and cameras--in order to meet all their communications and media needs. Today, a single product can perform all these functions, reducing the amount of money spent by consumers and the amount of space taken up by the products needed to perform the tasks.

Safety-conscious automakers push IC system-level approach
(EE Times, 11/26/2007, Anne-Francoise Pele)
Paris -- The ability of microcontroller- and microprocessor-based systems to satisfy automobile customers' needs for comfort, safety, information and entertainment in the car is fueling an explosion of applications and of cooperation between automakers and chip companies.

Technology researcher predicts growth in use of 3G
(Engineering News, 11/20/2007 Christy van der Merwe)
The corporate use of 3G wireless broadband provided by mobile networks has "rocketed", in contrast to WiFi - small networks that allow wireless access to the Internet, which has slowed, technology researcher World Wide Worx said at the Mobility 2007 survey.