Technobabble

Business Week has an interesting article about Apple's profit margins on the iPod Nano . Apparently it costs $90.18 in materials and $8 to assemble the 2 GB Nano which retails for $199. That's almost 50% profit margin! No wonder the iPods are a real cash cow for Apple. The article also lists some of the companies who benefited from the Nano such as Cypress Semiconductor ( CY ), Portal Player ( PLAY ) and Samsung.

The British Library has an interesting project called Turning the Pages . They have put up digitized versions of original editions several books and manuscripts. For example, one can find the first edition of Lewis Caroll's Alice in Wonderland and Leonardo Da Vinci's sketches . The BBC has a brief description of the project and the technology used.