Unclutter Your Briefcase
On-the-go executives who need to recharge their umpteen mobile gadgets can start leaving all but one power cord at home. The iGo Juice ($119) can recharge most major-brand laptops by plugging into U.S. wall outlets (and foreign ones with a standard adapter), airplane armrests or car cigarette-lighter sockets. And for an extra $19, iGo's less than imaginatively named Peripheral Powering System can simultaneously charge most handheld devices and mobile phones. The Juice comes with a sleek vinyl techno-Dopp kit, so you can tote your slimmer, trimmer recharger in style. Warning: although this company's products can adapt to virtually any major-brand mobile device, you'd better check the compatibility charts on igo.com
TV EXPORTS A Chinese David Letterman?
All rise. The judge enters--she's 25, loquacious and the cutest jurist her show's producers could find. This Chinese Judge Judy is deciding if a Beijing man can keep a donkey in his apartment. This is what News Corp.--which entertains America with dwarfs pulling jumbo jets--is bringing to the Middle Kingdom. The company is reformatting hit shows from abroad and adding "rock-'n'-roll energy" to Chinese TV, says Jamie Davis, head of News Corp. in China. There's Wanted! In China to help catch murderers and Late Night Talk with a Letterman knock-off reading Top 10 lists. But censors have refused to clear a Friends-style show with allusions to premarital sex. Although News Corp. won the right to beam its Mandarin-language channel, Starry Sky, across the country to certain hotels and apartments, it is unclear whether Rupert Murdoch will be allowed to reach China's 95 million ordinary cable subscribers. The Communist Party will be the judge on that one. --By Matthew Forney/Beijing
UPDATE They Don't Sniff Wine, They Gulp
Move over, Gallo. The title of world's largest vintner will soon go to Constellation Brands, whose Canandaigua Wine subsidiary was featured on our cover in October. Constellation is swallowing Australia's largest vintner, BRL Hardy, to form a global giant that will boast $1.7 billion in annual wine sales. Based in Fairport, N.Y., Constellation already owns such mass-market wines as Almaden and Inglenook and was running a joint venture with BRL before deciding to buy it for $1.4 billion. "There is no Coca-Cola, Microsoft or Nestle of the winemaking world," says BRL managing director Stephen Millar, who will run the combined wine operations. "We certainly intend to be just that."
C+ New Grades for Governance