CHICAGO TRIBUNE – In the mid-80s, cellular phones were a dubious status symbol. They were costly to use and as unwieldy as cinder blocks, which made them impractical for most people. But the novelty of having one drew attention. Today, however, there are more than 140 million wireless phone subscribers in the U.S., and economies of scale have turned the cell phone into a common household tool. Yet for those who appreciated the early phone’s exclusivity, the current crop of plastic-clad handsets is big on utility but low on prestige. Now some mobile phone-makers seek to regain exclusivity with a new line of high-end phones. “People who wear custom-tailored suits and drive Rolls-Royces were tired of pulling a cheap plastic phone out of their pockets,” said Nigel Litchfield, chief executive of Vertu,…

CHICAGO TRIBUNE – If Sony or American Express have their way, your wallet will find a permanent home in a drawer. You will carry your driver’s license, cash, credit cards and family photos on a single card (or in your cell phone) and make purchases by tapping a few buttons or waving the card in front of a reader. Although this vision isn’t quite ready for prime time, two basic technologies have emerged as the most promising standards for making wireless purchases an everyday reality. But a lack of interoperability between companies, and public skepticism, could hinder widespread acceptance. Radio-frequency identification and infrared are being tested in pilot programs by credit card companies, hardwaremakers, cellular providers, banks and soft drink companies. Sony Corp. is putting its formidable clout behind a proprietary RFID…

CHICAGO TRIBUNE – When a video-game tester named Beta-7 began suffering from blackouts and uncontrollable fits of violence, he launched a blog to campaign against the release of the game causing his problems. After four months of battling gamemaker Sega, Beta-7 mysteriously disappeared. Sound like the premise to a thriller? It was a hoax. Beta-7 (www.beta-7.com) was part of a new marketing trend that uses fake blogs to promote products. Conceived by the New York office of Portland, Ore.-based advertising agency Wieden & Kennedy, the blog was intended to create a buzz for Sega’s “ESPN NFL Football 2K4” game and draw attention away from Electronic Arts’ “Madden Football 2004”–the game that dominates the segment. “We had to come up with something that EA wouldn’t do and with a smaller budget. We knew…

CHICAGO TRIBUNE – Derek Ellis has been getting a lot of unusual requests. The account manager at PTE Distribution Inc. in Willowbrook typically makes prototypes of potential new products for big companies like Procter & Gamble Co. But lately he has been doing more work for smaller firms and even some entrepreneurial-minded individuals. One woman in particular, he said, wanted to scan her face so she could sell custom dolls with her likeness. “You can create anything you can dream of for not an awful lot of money,” Ellis said. His firm is using a technology called rapid prototyping, which can quickly produce a smorgasbord of different models for a variety of applications. Those include new designs for industrial equipment or to test an idea for a new mobile phone. They can…

CHICAGO TRIBUNE – The next time you shop at your favorite online store, do not be surprised if you are asked how the kids are doing before being offered the exact thing you want in just the right size and color. Simply giving shoppers a cookie for their PC when they visit a site is not enough anymore. These days, online retailers are using software tools that highly personalize the shopping experience in an effort to more frequently woo customers. The new approaches are a far cry from the days of counting visitors to a Web site. Now, as the Internet continues to evolve as perhaps the richest source of information on consumer behavior, marketers want to tap that potential to pinpoint what customers want. Online merchants have gone from counting visitors…