JUST when she should be celebrating her success as a best-selling author, Debbie Rodriguez’s world has taken a dramatic turn worthy of any work of fiction.

The hairdresser, who was featured in Scotland on Sunday in April, is the author of Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind The Veil, which reached the New York Times non-fiction bestseller top 10, and had its film rights bought by Columbia Pictures.

It told the inspirational story of her journey to Afghanistan to train local women to assert themselves by opening their own hair salons. It also charted her own reinvention and marriage to a former Mujahedin fighter.

Now, though, Rodriguez is back in America, having fled her new home in the wake of repeated threats against her and her family, as part of a conservative backlash that has resulted in the murder of a number of prominent Afghan women.

The dream turned sour when Rodriguez returned to Afghanistan last month after a US book tour. She said she and her 25-year-old son were met with so many threats, including kidnapping and imprisonment, that she feared for their lives and those of people near them.

Days after their arrival, private armed guards hid them in borrowed clothes and whisked them on to a plane.

“It was out of a scary movie,” said Michigan-born Rodriguez, 46, who is now in California. “All I was thinking about was my son - what a horrible thing I had done to my son. We were both petrified.” Now her life, the beauty school and the Oasis Salon she was running are all in flux. She is not sure who to trust - including her now-estranged Afghan husband.

“There was somebody, we don’t know who it was, who was trying to cause problems with the school, first saying I was running a brothel, then saying I was a missionary,” she said.

Rodriguez’s book told harrowing tales of Afghan women who came to learn her trade after surviving subjugation, poverty and abuse. Their real names were concealed, but a British edition initially printed photos of women at the school.

“The girls and I have talked at great length about what the repercussions could be,” Rodriguez said. “They all knew there was a possibility that extremists or the government or anybody who decided they don’t want women to tell the truth could become a problem. We didn’t think it would become a problem so fast.”

All this happened as attacks against women seem to be escalating in Afghanistan, in what is thought to be a cultural backlash as women gain independence. Two prominent female Afghan journalists - Zakia Zaki, who ran Peace Radio, and 22-year-old television reporter Shekiba Sanga Amaaj - were killed this month.

Rodriguez said two women carrying the British edition of her book turned up last month threatening women at the school. She still does not know whether the threat was from the government, extremists or someone wanting to extort money.

Revelations in the book include Rodriguez’s account of helping one young woman fake her virginity on her wedding night. Other women talk about being forced as children into arranged marriages, others of their struggle to escape abusive men.

Rodriguez said she is still in contact with the Afghan hairdressers, who fear for their lives. Following reports that the women had not received promised proceeds from her book, she said she was sending money and trying to help a couple of them relocate.

Despite their ongoing hardships, Kristin Ohlson, the book’s co-author, says Rodriguez had no choice but to flee the country.

“Some people are critical of Debbie now because she fled Kabul in a panic. They accuse her of ripping off her girls’ stories and then running off to enjoy her fortune,” she said via e-mail from Kabul. “This is so unfair.

“For one thing, they have no idea how terrifying it is [in Afghanistan], even when you don’t think you are a target.

“One thing that’s certain is that high-profile women are not very safe here… Debbie has never been a low-profile woman… and I don’t blame her for getting herself and her son out of the country in the way that she did.”

Nicknamed ‘Crazy Deb’ in her hometown of Holland, Michigan, Rodriguez first travelled to Afghanistan with a humanitarian aid group in 2002. There, she realised hairdressing skills were in high demand, and eventually joined forces with the Beauty Without Borders women to start the school in 2003.

Rodriguez said the Kabul Beauty School has trained about 180 women and she is now trying to get ownership transferred from her Afghan husband to a non-profit organisation that would continue her work. Throughout her book, Rodriguez is bold but naive, big-hearted but tough, both heroine and victim. In one chapter, she is travelling solo in a burka through the dangerous Khyber Pass. To the shock of the men sharing her taxi, she whips off her veil and lights a cigarette.

Yet, in several scenes, she’s trying to strengthen her arranged marriage to her Afghan husband, who has another wife and eight children in Saudi Arabia.

She agreed to the marriage because she said she was lonely and casual dating is not an option for women in Afghanistan. Ohlson said she hopes the book at least helps the rest of the world understand the daily struggles of life in Afghanistan.

“I’m not sure people realise how the wounds from the war are still festering, how the Taliban ethos still constricts women’s lives so terribly,” Ohlson said. “So my hope for the book is that people keep thinking about the Afghan people and trying to help in whatever way they can.”

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At first blush, the iPhone from Apple, the new microprocessor family from Intel and the ubiquitous Google search engine have nothing in common. One is a gadget, one is an electronic part and one is a service.

Yet all of these products - much acclaimed for their creativity - depend on obscure process innovations that, while highly complex and lacking glamour, are an essential part of establishing a winning edge in commercial electronics. The success of Apple, Intel, Google and scores of other technology companies has as much or more to do with their process innovations as the products that inspire loyalty among fans and admiration from foes.

Processes are the stuff in the proverbial “black box,” the alchemy unseen by consumers or the inelegantly termed “end users” who buy computers, cellphones, cameras and all manner of digital devices and services.

Snazzy products are the stuff of legends, romanticized by “early adopters” and skewered by neo-Luddites. Yet while these products bring glory to companies, novel processes are often more important in keeping the cash registers ringing.

The proof of this proposition is that while companies often spend millions to advertise and market new product designs and innovations, they guard intensely the details of their process innovations.

Consider the question of Googles greatest business secret. Is it the algorithms behind its search tools? Or is it the way it organizes vast clusters of computers around the globe to answer queries so quickly? Perhaps predictably, Google wont disclose the number of computers deployed in its vast information network (though outsiders speculate that the network has at least 450,000 computers).

I believe that the physical network is Googles “secret sauce,” its premier competitive advantage. While a brilliant lone wolf can conceive of a dazzling algorithm, only a superwealthy and well-managed organization can run what is arguably the most valuable computer network on the planet. Without the computer network, Google is nothing.

Eric Schmidt, Googles chief executive, appears to agree. Last year he declared, “We believe we get tremendous competitive advantage by essentially building our own infrastructures.”

Process innovations like Googles computer network are often invisible to the public, and impossible to duplicate. Yet successful companies realize that maintaining an advantage depends heavily on sustaining process innovations. Great process innovators often support basic research in relevant fields, maintain complete control over the creation of every aspect of a product and refuse to rely on outside suppliers for important components.

Certainly, there are exceptions to these patterns, but even companies like Apple that buy essential processes on the open market nevertheless invest in gaining a working knowledge of the technologies and an understanding of where they might go.

Intel treats its process innovations as a competitive weapon, striving to create a “new generation” every two years. That enables the companys chips, even if there were no changes in their design, to perform better and cost less to make.

Consumers are usually blind to the importance of novel processes. Even when they learn about these innovations, they think mostly of the product.

“The average consumer doesnt care what processes are used,” said Mark Bohr, an Intel physicist who oversaw what is arguably the most important advance in decades in the technology for making microprocessors.

Faced with ever-faster chips that threatened to explode into flames, Intel searched desperately for new processes to make microprocessors. Enter hafnium, a rare metal. Designers led by Bohr in Hillsboro, Oregon, chose it to replace silicon oxide, the venerable insulator in chips and a material used in making glass. Bohr also helped to identify new materials, whose identity Intel is keeping secret, for the crucial transistor “gates” that sit atop a chips insulators.

On Nov. 12, Intel will begin shipping its first chips using the new processes. Gordon Moore, Intels co-founder, recently declared that the hafnium-and-gate process innovations should allow his so-called Moores Law, whereby chips grow ever faster and less expensive, to hold true for some time.

Despite the immensity of the achievement, Bohr is relatively anonymous, even within Intel. “The work of process development comes second to creating new designs for chips,” he said.

If process innovations are unheralded, consumers may misunderstand how technological change works.

“Process innovation tends to receive less attention from the informed public for the same reason that incremental innovation tends to receive too little attention: It is more difficult to encapsulate in a press release or photo opportunity,” said David Mowery, a business professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a scholar of technological change.

NEW YORK: The laser printers used in homes and small businesses may be compact, reliable performers, but when it comes to looks, they tend to be drab. The appearance of printers has always taken a back seat to their ability to turn out steady streams of text.

Now Samsung has introduced a sleek, low-standing laser printer meant to include good looks along with performance: its case has a dazzling, high-gloss ebony finish reminiscent of a Steinway grand piano. The printer is unusually slim, too. Its components have been miniaturized so that it is only about 5 inches, or 13 centimeters, high.

The printer (model ML-1630, $199) uses black ink only. Introduced last month, it is on sale exclusively at Apple retail stores for three months, and will be widely available afterward. A slightly taller all-in-one version scans and copies as well as prints (SCX-4500, $299). The machines work with both Macintosh and Windows-based computers.

Samsungs innovative design might be a good way for the manufacturer to distinguish itself in a crowded field, said Ken Weilerstein, an analyst at Gartner, the market research firm.

“Theres a lot of competition in personal printers as more vendors have entered the business, most notably Kodak,” Weilerstein said. Eastman Kodak introduced a line of consumer printers earlier this year, joining Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Brother and other brands on the market.

So far in 2007, more than six million printers meant for homes have been shipped to market, Weilerstein said. But in general, the printers are designed more for performance, price and compatibility than looks. Appearance is basically an afterthought, he said.

The Samsung printer comes with a heavy piece of protective plastic over its lid. Peel it off, and there is a black surface that is shiny enough to have come from an Art Deco interior of the 1930s.

The printer is easy to install. The toner cartridge slides directly into its slot in the machine, clicking into place immediately. The input paper tray, which opens with the press of a small button, holds 100 sheets.

I tried the printer with a Mac. The computer recognized the printer immediately after installing it. The quiet printer produced about 17 pages a minute.

If aesthetics are of no concern, for the same $200 you might consider another brand of laser printer, like the Brother HL-5240. It is far bulkier than the Samsung, but the standard input tray holds 250 pages, and it prints 30 pages a minute. The toner (TN-550) costs about $50 online and yields about 3,500 pages, for a cost of 1.4 cents a page; the Samsung costs about 3.5 cents a page.