Bob Brewin

United Parcel Service Inc. plans to spend US$127 million on global deployment over the next five years of a new driver terminal that features built-in cellular, wireless LAN and Bluetooth short-range wireless systems.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has begun testing the use of a health care data-delivery network operated by ePocrates Inc. to transmit bioterrorism-related alerts to doctors equipped with Palm OS-based handheld devices.

New technology, when deployed in the field, sometimes doesn't succeed until users find a simple but powerful reason to embrace it. That's what William L. Schmitt, director of business enablement at the Dallas-based Celanese Chemicals Ltd. unit of Celanese AG, discovered last year.

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. decided last year to outfit 75 U.K. sales representatives with wireless handheld computers equipped with digital cameras.

The Wi-Fi Alliance plans to start interoperability and certification testing this summer of new wireless LAN products based on the still-evolving 802.11g standard, which offers 54M bit/sec. data in the 2.4-GHz band.

New technology, when deployed in the field, sometimes doesn't succeed until users find a simple but powerful reason to embrace it. That's what William L. Schmitt, director of business enablement at the Dallas-based Celanese Chemicals Ltd. unit of Celanese AG, discovered last year.

Gee-whiz wireless technology took a back seat to projects that quickly deliver bottom-line results at the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA) Wireless IT and Internet 2002 Conference in Las Vegas last fall.

CIOs from hospitals large and small remain reluctant to deploy paperless medical record and computer physician-order entry (CPOE) systems, despite a 2-year-old push by 90 major U.S. employers for adoption of such systems to help eliminate medical errors.