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Anyway, they all missed out on one big piece of information in my mind. The horse that won the race, Da' Tara, is owned by none other than L-1 Identity's CEO Robert LaPenta. If you remember, L-1 was formed out of the joining of Viisage and Identix in 2006 and L-1 is also the company that purchased Bioscrypt for $44 million last year. It would seem, at least from an outside view, that life is pretty good for LaPenta these days.
The same, unfortunately, can't be said for Big Brown.

It's the weekend, and I'm waiting for my iPhone to finish syncing, so here's a short post.

Yes, I'm an early adopter, I'll admit it. I bought one, and then proceeded to fill it up. I have 3500 contacts, 25% I use regularly, but can't find this "modified" group. I have 7500 songs, 10% I'm listening to, but not any single 10%.

What's happening? It's been 20 minutes already and I expect it to take even longer. I'm late to pick the crew up for tonight's bike ride.

What does this have to do with security? You just don't know when an appliance will be out of resources until you use it in the situation that you are in. The iPhone is one of the most efficient h.264 video decoders on the market, but its resources are optimized for audio and video, not syncing with complex contact databases.

I really think this appliance, once Version 2.0 is introduced later this month, will be "the killer appliance," even if corporations take the usual six months to integrate its Exchange Server features.

But oh, the video! Right now, YouTube is even somewhat tolerable for viewing video clips online. Imagine getting near immediate access to video stored online...the beauty of an SaaS (Software as a Service). I believe two key technologies will change the Security Industry - better wireless connectivity (3G, WIMAX will all help) and the popularity of the SaaS, making video available through portals, rather than servers.

But right now I'm still waiting!

I think this may be every security practitioner and law enforcement officer's worst nightmare.

When we were at ISC West last year, our suite at the Wynn had a mini-bar innovation that was...surprising. If you picked up the pack of peanuts, or any other drink or snack, from the tray and didn't put it back in its place within 30 seconds, it would be added automatically to your room tab.

A TripAdvisor visitor to the Wynn put it this way: "The refrigerator in each room is now "wired" to be touch sensitive. Moving any item for more than a few seconds, incurs a charge automatically, whether the item consumed or not!"

Looks like Nebraska Furniture Mart is using a similar technology from MTI Interactive called Lift to activate a product presentation on a nearby display screen whenever a customer picks up a cell phone or digital camera.

It's useful for the Furniture Mart to be able to present videos on a screen to a customer with the product in their hands, but wouldn't it be oh-so-much better for them to integrate Lift with their video system so they could collect information rather than just sending it out? I know, it's a paradigm shift.

Imagine this: Lift also triggers recording of surveillance video, and could record customer reactions to, say, a series of three sales presentations so they could determine which was most effective and then play that one more often. Ditch the presentation everyone walks away from, keep the one that engages people and leads to sales (link in the POS, too, so you can review different time periods with different sales presentations being served)...

Lift is new technology, and it's impressive. But it's old-school thinking to think that making a sales pitch is enough. Let the customer passively tell you how you're doing, and you're in a whole new millenium.