Well, if the history of past purchases such as Hyperion and Business Objects is any indication, the new parent company will gut them by laying off nearly all of their employees (especially the designers), add the products to their own catalog, and never seriously upgrade those products again.

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But the older, vague requirements appeared to gain teeth with the move to create a national catalog of products that would receive preferential treatment for procurement.

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If you thought the catalog's products were humorous, the list of rejects is downright silly.

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Uncommon Goods includes in its online catalog a lot of products made from recycled material.

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People can flip through Etsy products as they would a product catalog.

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That inspired me to try other new products, like the first wireless telephones, the first telephone answering machines, the first air purifiers, and eventually this led to a full color catalog of new technology products, and later, 200 retail stores.

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Timothy Simon designs products -- well, gizmos, really -- for high-end catalog retailers like Brookstone and the Sharper Image, as well as for Honeywell and Siemens.

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