The Google car is nothing more than a mashup of widely available technological innovations, and similarly bold killer apps will upend every information-intensive industry.

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Recently, for a consulting client, I did a rough comparison between their customer base (which tended to be young, information-intensive companies) and a benchmark comparison set from the mainstream economy.

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The pattern began in the 1950s, when hugely expensive mainframe computers were first used to save correspondingly huge sums in information-intensive functions in the financial-services industry, then in accounting, payroll and inventory-control tasks in other big organisations.

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Further, as manufacturing moves toward a more information-intensive, automated, and flexible future, it is returning to the US. With new materials, new techniques and demands for mass-customization, manufacturing will increasingly rely on knowledge, design capabilities, innovation and research.

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Determining eminence and influence can be technically complicated and resource-intensive because of the many terabytes of information that you need to discover, store and analyze.

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New online content aimed specifically at cellular customers will likely be less graphic-intensive and contain useful day-to-day information, such as telephone directories and information about restaurants, entertainment, and the location of gas stations, for example, Turley said.

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That is iMac desktops are the hub from which your mobile devices can sync and share information, but the hub provides greater storage and a larger screen for more labor-intensive "processing" such as document or photo album creation.

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