Smart -- Freedonia Group, an industrial market research firm, predicts that the worldwide demand for smart cards will increase by 11 percent by 2006. This includes the use of memory-only pay telephone cards as well as multifunction smart cards.
Layoffs -- OpenTV, the iTV technology company that bought BettingCorp. last week, is cutting costs by laying off employees at PlayJam, its pay-per-play games channel. The layoff will affect less than 10 people.
Betfair's Fair -- August 28-30, Betfair is hosting the second Chester Racecourse's August Festival of Racing, Food & Drink, which will feature three days of thoroughbred racing as well as cooking demonstrations and 25 fine food exhibitors.
Pick'em -- SPORTSBETTING.com will again offer its $500,000 Gridiron Pick'em contest this NFL season. Contestants pick which teams will win each game on a given week and rank those games according to confidence. The highest score wins a $100 SPORTSBETTING.COM betting account and advances to the second part of the contest, which involves predicting the outcome of the 11 playoff games. Other prizes include trips to the Pro Bowl for the three contestants with the best season score, and $500,000 for any contestant who correctly predicts the outcome of all playoff games in part two.