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May 1, 2001
Inside: In Lively Oral Arguments, Lawyers Put Digital Copyright Act on Trial.
The members of the three-judge federal appeals court in Manhattan seemed fascinated by the arguments they heard Tuesday in a constitutional challenge to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, permitting the session to extend about 30 minutes longer than its scheduled hour.
Internet World: Is Usability Really Worth Anything?
Jakob Nielsen. Is usability really that bad for business? Basically, all usability does is generate more sales, more traffic, and more loyal users. If you lose money on every order you ship or every page view you serve, then increasing the volume will indeed result in a flood of red ink.
Forbes: PDA Phones Multiply.
Among the latest to join the game is Trium, the France-based unit of Japan's Mitsubishi Electric. The company announced its Mondo phone at the CeBIT trade show in Germany in March, and it should begin showing up on the European market in the next month or so.
Time: Why Tax on Internet Sales Could Be Slower Than a 28K Modem.
But anything that shows up in the Senate this week still has to pass both houses of Congress, and anything that increases tax collection — even a tax-law simplification effort like this one — still smells like new taxes in the Republican-led House.
IBM developerWorks: The usability world according to Tog.
When most systems programmers thought the command line was just fine, Tognazzini was thinking about how a well-designed graphical user interface could help boost user productivity -- something very different from computer productivity.
Wired News: MS May Have File-Trading Answer.
During a security workshop on Friday, a Microsoft Research scientist demonstrated how the hidden copyright fingerprint is so securely affixed to the audio that it remains intact even if a jazz song is played aloud on speakers in a noisy room and then re-recorded.
EE Times: Task force asks FCC to open 94-GHz band for commercial use.
Capitalizing on the wide availability of spectrum in the 94-GHz realm, the WCA's Engineering Task Force hopes to make several gigabits of spectrum available to give inexpensive radios an ability to achieve point-to-point data rates of 1, 10 or 100 Gbits/second.
May 2, 2001
Ask Tog: Internet Perspective.
The DSL system is collapsing. The phone companies want nothing to do with real broadband, which would require laying millions of miles of fiber. Satellites can’t help; along with cable, the more subscribers they get, the worse the service gets.
Alan Cooper: The Second-Order Effects of Wireless.
But this flexibility to work where you want is just the first order of change wrought by these new tools. Far more interesting are the second-order effects - those unintended consequences of a new technology which often have a more powerful impact on society...
Boston Globe: Pay to play is the Web's new model.
Some experts don't buy the argument that the main obstacle to paid content is rooted in the public mindset. ''My problem is that it implies that people got into this nasty little habit, and we have to break them of it,'' says Paul Grabowitz, director of the New Media Program at the University of California.
AtNewYork: NYTimes.com Experimenting with Premium Content.
NYTD director of business development Ira Silberstein told atNewYork the plan is to tinker with subscription-only offerings for highly-specific, niche content. "I want to make it clear our NYTimes.com Web site will remain free. Making that a premium product is not a viable business model."
American Journalism Review: Virtual Wite-Out.
The painstaking task of documenting these corrections wouldn't behoove the reader even if it were possible. The notations would either be lost on a remote corrections page, or they'd muddle the main story text. Anyway, how many viewers care about prior gaffes they'll never see?
Builder.Com: Make money by the click.
The key to making micropayments work is finding a system that's easy and inexpensive for you (the vendor) to implement and unobtrusive for customers to use. Read on to learn how micropayments work and to check out our handy data sheets for the companies we profile.
May 3, 2001
Technology Marketing: Qualifying Time.
Aaron Goldberg. You see, we may have been seduced by the visitor counts, but the web's real value as a type of medium is its infinite customizability and effortless depth. Treating what is essentially a one-to-one medium like a one-to-many medium is plain wrong-headed.
Dylan Tweney: Open secrets.
These technical and market forces combine on the Internet to create an environment where information of the most private nature can quickly be disseminated worldwide, in seconds. In other words, "Information wants to be public."
Technology Marketing: Swiss Army PDA.
Michael Schrage. The coming convergence of functionality forces rethinking of fundamental questions about "convenience." Where the tenets of convenience are being questioned can the high-paid harpies of mass marketing be very far behind?
News.Com: RIM to give BlackBerry a voice.
In Europe, the BlackBerry will run on the voice network known as GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications). As a result, adding the ability to make cell phone calls will be as simple as offering a software download and plugging in a headset.
NY Times: I.B.M. Enhances Liquid Crystal Display Process.
The new method is simpler and less expensive and will significantly increase yields in the $20 billion liquid crystal display business, said Praveen Chaudhari, an I.B.M. researcher who specializes in amorphous solids.
Wired News: Out of Print, But Into Digital.
The digital antiquarian began his collection of rarities when he first purchased a first printing of Euclid's Elements. Ten years later, he founded Octavo, a company that uses digital technology to capture images of rare books, manuscripts and other materials on CD-ROMs.
InfoWorld: Pull or push? How about both?
Two new protocols proposed by a researcher at the 10th International World Wide Web Conference here Thursday would provide a way to use both "push" and "pull" techniques to deliver timely information over the Internet in a way that can grow with the number of customers.
May 4, 2001
News.Com: SBC looks to fiber for superfast Net speeds.
But SBC's plans tap into a long-standing vision on the part of the phone carriers to provide a single connection for customers to carry telephone service, high-speed Internet and cable TV signals. BellSouth is already trying this using fiber-optic connections in a small Atlanta community...
NY Times: Continues in Copyright Suit.
The lawyers representing Corley, the target of a suit brought by eight leading Hollywood movie studios in a closely watched digital encryption case, did not have a pleasant time of it on Tuesday morning before a three-judge federal appeals panel in Manhattan.
The Economist: Pass the painkillers.
Do mobile phones cause headaches? In the case of 3G telephones, the answer is undoubtedly yes—even though nobody is yet using them. Instead, they are causing technical and financial pain for all the companies around the world that are trying to build 3G networks.
PC World: Samsung Puts Palm, Phone in One Neat Package.
Samsung is joining the smart-phone race, introducing the SPH-I300 digital assistant, which combines a Palm OS-based personal digital assistant with a wireless phone. It should be available for about $500 in August from Sprint PCS, and later from Verizon Wireless.
MSNBC: GE reshuffles its Web strategy.
The shift also is redefining what GE managers do. Those e-business titles are being eliminated; now all managers, even those reluctant to use e-mail, are being rated on their Internet prowess. “It’s not a separate function, it’s a core competency,” says Mr. Reiner.
Webmonkey: Wanna Be a Project Manager?
Red Industries consists of just four people, yet we follow this process carefully because we value our down time. Using this process, we're able to handle large jobs yet still take weekends off. It works for us -- and hopefully it will help some of you avoid another late night at the office.
May 5, 2001
Lighthouse: Automation woes widen the email expectations gap.
When Jupiter dug into email automation software, it found another problem: email automation software mostly just shifts work. Front-line customer service staff do a little less, but a new group of costly staff must update that answer database.
InfoWorld: When should the burden of informing customers of a hacker break-in begin?
We all worry enough about the possibility of a hacker somehow getting hold of our account information from a service provider, so the last thing we need is another worry. But here it is: If your data is compromised, will your service provider warn you promptly?
Wired News: Yahoo Explores Active Ads.
Pundits who were wondering what Yahoo would do to stay alive during a shrinking Internet advertising market can find their answer on the company's homepage. The company's brilliant innovation: replace some of the content with ads.
May 6, 2001
SJ Mercury: Net allows people to help themselves.
Dan Gillmor. I was reminded, once again, of the Internet's most revolutionary feature: In this many-to-many medium, individuals and small groups can, much more easily than in the past, come together to solve problems -- and avoid obstacles erected by the powers-that-be.
Wired News: Mobile IM Plans: Will It Work?.
In the widely anticipated conference, the handset manufacturers said they would work together to create software for mobile phones that instant messaging companies could tweak to let customers send text messages to anyone else in the world...
Technology Marketing: British Telecom's 3-D Jump on Tomorrow.
Thus, the 3-D portal, called "BTopenworlds by Worlds.com," launched last February. "It positions us as forward-thinking and innovative, enhancing our customers' online experience," says Nick Witte-Vermeulen, the creative lead for BTopenworld...
May 7, 2001
Wall Street Journal: Survey Shows Declining Interest In Shopping on Mobile Phones.
In the U.S., few consumers are shopping over the Internet from wireless devices, in part because of the limitations of the miniature displays on most cellphones that connect to the Web. At the same time, suddenly profit-minded Internet companies are frantically conserving capital.
Interactive Week: Digital Patents Go To Court.
The lawsuit, which asks for damages and an injunction against the distribution and sale of Windows Media Player and other products, focuses only on Microsoft - for now. But in the April 26 lawsuit filed in San Jose, InterTrust reserves the right to add other companies.
Industry Standard: Denmark plans to legalize music downloading.
Elsebeth Nielsen, the Danish Minister for Culture, wants to relax the country's private copying law. Danes currently aren't allowed to make any copies of digital media such as CDs. The proposed rules, however, will give Danes more rights then many other Europeans.
Salon: Defending the cookie monster.
Scott Rosenberg. Talk to large numbers of Net users about aggressive marketing, though, and you will probably hear less about spam, which already seems to be accepted as an unavoidable hazard like the weather, than about the dreaded scourge of cookies.
- Crypto-Gram: From Feburary 15, 2000; Cookies.
Bruce Schneier.
NY Times: Privacy Concerns for Google Archive.
With respect to most of the Web pages that Google searches with its 8,000 server computers, it is fair to say that the people who publish those pages understand they are putting information into the public domain. But the history of Usenet is somewhat more complicated.
Wired News: AOL's New Filter on the Block.
AOL had previously contracted with SurfControl to operate its parental controls. While RuleSpace's system will be mostly automated, SurfControl's SurfWatch -- like many filtering products -- relied on human editors to make the final call on which sites should get blocked.
May 8, 2001
Industry Standard: Copyright Thugs.
Lawrence Lessig. If the RIAA believes this is what legislators did when Congress approved the DMCA, then it is time for the courts to remind the RIAA of a few lessons from high-school civics: We don't use the law to punish critics, and it can't be a crime to point out flaws.
Business 2.0: Is Microsoft Smart- or Just Successful?
But Microsoft dismisses any talk that MSR is either ineffective or irrelevant. Boosting the company's here-and-now financials has never been MSR's primary mission. Its grander charter is to look deep into the future of software for big breakthroughs that are tough to achieve.
FEED Magazine: RE: Cory Doctorow.
The idea is that you have a folder on your desktop, you put some things in it you like, and it will fill up with things that you'll probably like. It figures out what you'll probably like by finding peers in the network who have taste similar to you and telling you what they think is good.
Business 2.0: Oxford's Web University.
The institute will study Internet-related topics such as the digital divide, privacy and Internet-enabled healthcare. The faculty will be world-renowned, the university says, attracting experts via permanent teaching appointments and by offering senior visiting appointments.
Darwin Magazine: Do You Really Need a Customer Czar?
Some top execs can't imagine life without a CCO; skeptics contend that for many organizations, creating another seat at the boardroom table could very well be a recipe for disaster. Does your company need a CCO? Or is this a management fad you'll want to take a pass on?
Business 2.0: Better Data Brings Better Sales.
Jakob Nielsen. B-to-B sites often try to get away with approximate pricing, because of the assumption that the two companies will meet in person to negotiate. Even so, users still like detailed price information that discloses how much each feature or option will cost.
May 9, 2001
SJ Mercury: Truth squad needed to combat Internet lies, commercialization.
Dan Gillmor. How should we combat such lies? A group of about two dozen Internet pioneers and activists was exploring that question and others related to the future of the Net at a gathering last weekend in a Los Angeles suburb.
Computerworld: Complete the Revolution.
Q&A with Michael L. Dertouzos. It's already happening. Microsoft has announced Hailstorm, a user-centered computer environment, as they call it, part of their .Net system. Ultimately, successful prototypes of human-centered systems will cause start-ups and big companies to go after the new forms.
The Register: France backs Jabber IM for 3G parlez-vous.
The Instant Messaging wars could be over sooner than you think, thanks to an inspired investment by the French. The open source instant messenger project Jabber has been blessed with a major investment from a leading telco, namely France Telecom...
Industry Standard: Business Gets Brainy.
Much to the ire of their academic colleagues, doctoral candidates who once competed over a shrinking pie of academic slots and research grants are being snapped up by companies before they can finish their dissertations. Graduates are eschewing New Guinea and Bora Bora for Motorola and Intel.
O'Reilly Network: A Wireless Long Shot.
Is there a better way than digging a ditch 21 miles long and dragging in the local authorities and Pac Bell. A group of local tech heads are working on shooting an 802.11b signal into the high hills 21 miles northwest of Sebastopol, using off-the-shelf equipment.
SJ Mercury: SBC to unveil fiber-optic plans.
However, new technology has lowered infrastructure costs to the point where it is economically feasible to connect small businesses and, potentially, homes with fiber, said Ross Ireland, SBC's senior executive vice president of services.
Internet World: E-Books and the Metaphysics of Copyright Law.
Attorneys for book publisher Random House and e-book upstart Rosetta Books on Tuesday fielded these questions from a federal judge as he tried to sort through philosophical arguments in the first legal dispute over who has the right to publish electronic versions of books...
May 10, 2001
Business 2.0: Not Forcing the Issue.
An increasing number of companies are turning to their online user communities to help them build and sustain their brands. The motivation is simple. It's an opportunity to create all-important buzz and disseminate information to their core base of users-with virtually no marketing costs.
uiweb: Critical thinking in web/interface design part 2: idea generation.
However, everyone can develop their own creative thinking skills, and can provide an environment that supports creativity. The best teams know how to balance quality engineering practices with a creative and supportive work environment.
PC World: Fiber Optics Fans Foresee Lightning-Fast Web Access.
The latest innovation comes from phone giant SBC Communications, which has announced plans to pipe lightning-fast fiber-optic broadband Internet access to small businesses and select homes. The speed boost from using fiber optics is considerable--transmissions hit up to 10 gigabits per second...
Industry Standard: Pro-Bell Bill Limps Forward.
Getting the proposal through the Senate is likely to be extremely difficult. Leading members of the Senate Commerce and Appropriations Committee, like Ted Stevens and Ernest Hollings are firmly opposed to the bill, siding with opponents like AT&T, WorldCom and Covad Communications...
Computerworld: Ricochet Wireless Faster Than Advertised.
In an era of endless techno-hype, the high-speed Ricochet mobile wireless service from Metricom Inc. stands out for delivering more than it promises, according to users. But those same users are frustrated because its availability is limited to only 15 U.S. markets.
May 11, 2001
Bob Frankston: The Internet is Not Television.
Unfortunately, these myths feed into a "common sense" feeling that that the Internet is an extravagance that must be contained. In fact, just the opposite is true. The reason that the Internet has contributed so much to the economy is that it is not like the old way of doing things.
NY Times: Judges Seek Answers on Computer Code as Free Speech.
In what may signal a heightened significance for a case testing the constitutionality of a 1998 digital copyright law, a panel of appeals court judges has asked both sides of a case to answer a list of 11 questions on whether computer code can qualify as free speech.
Forbes ASAP: The Humane Touch: Bad Design Can Be Costly.
Jef Raskin. The saying among IT professionals used to be, "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." Now it's, "Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft." Sometimes we forget that whenever you do exactly what everybody else does, you lose an opportunity for a competitive advantage.
Industry Standard: Content Sites of the World, Unite!
By banding together and coalescing into a formidable network that can unite all business and technical functions under one roof and letting each site focus on the only thing at which it should excel: produce material people want to read and discuss.
NY Times: Does a Parody Site Go Too Far?
At the heart of the dispute are two intriguing questions that might be more suitably posed to an English professor than a judge. What, precisely, is a parody on the Internet? And may a domain name that uses someone else's trademark be considered part of the joke?
EE Times: 5-GHz wireless LANs hit the ground running.
The emergence of a 5-GHz option somewhat sooner than many had expected has cast doubt on the viability of current 802.11b implementations, as well as on the relevance of the 802.11g IEEE Working Group, which is striving to increase the data rate in the 2.45-GHz band...
May 12, 2001
eCompany: Is the World Ready for 3G?
For all the hype, for all the money spent paying governments for spectrum rights, for all the cash earmarked for equipment, no one has any clue whether people really want to do all this with their phones. Which is one reason the entire industry is watching DoCoMo's every step.
hypergene: When in ROAM: Why wireless executive still don't get it.
The collective mind of many wireless executives at the ROAM conference was one of great uncertainty. As a result many carriers and 3rd party providers have sought solace in the one thing that won't save them — technology.
News.Com: Union Pacific rails against Microsoft game.
John Bromley, public affairs director for Union Pacific Railroad, touched off a vigorous flame war this week on the Trainorders.com railroad enthusiasts site by posting a warning against fans distributing any content for the game that uses Union Pacific's name or logo.
News.Com: AT&T's hand caught in spam jar?
Anti-spammers say they suspect e-mail traffic originating from the filtered block is evidence that AT&T has entered into a "pink contract" with BeaverHome guaranteeing delivery of unsolicited commercial e-mail in violation of the company's official spam policies.
May 13, 2001
Useit.Com: Search: Visible and Simple.
When they can't find a reasonable place to go next, they often turn to the site's search function. This is why you should make search available from every page on the site; you cannot predict where users will be when they decide they are lost.
SJ Mercury: Time to bury proposed software law.
Dan Gillmor. To the dismay of Lockyer and some of his other anti-UCITA colleagues, Microsoft and other backers of the legislation have been working to persuade the attorneys general of Kansas and Oklahoma to buy into a modified form of the law.
InfoWorld: MS incites UCITA breach.
If you're an MSN user who happens to live in Maryland, you've been violating Microsoft's terms of use for over six months now, as well as the laws of your state -- laws that, not coincidentally, include the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act.
May 14, 2001
MIT Technology Review: May the Best Interface Win!
Simson Garfinkel. It would be nice if the financial markets would reward the companies with the best interfaces, but there are so many other factors determining a company's success or failure that usability invariably plays second fiddle to issues like marketing and financial acumen.
NY Times: Traffic Does Not Always Equal Profit.
With so many corporations and consumers relying on Vicinity for services, one might expect to see more signs of life from its balance sheet or stock charts. Instead, the company is a prime example of how difficult it is to make money purely on monthly visitor traffic...
Internet World: Patricia B. Seybold’s The Customer Revolution.
Her views on the importance of running a customer-centric business come full circle these days, at a time when more and more customers are driving changes throughout industries with their desires, demands, and access to information.
Industry Standard: All Talk, No Action.
For years, pundits have foreseen a day when we'll toss out our keyboards and talk directly to our computers. Users would be untethered from their PCs. Millions of novices would join the computer revolution, no longer intimidated by complex interfaces.
Industry Standard: BT Delays Launch of 3G Service.
Technical problems have forced British Telecom to delay the rollout of the world's first commercially available third-generation wireless service. BT was due to launch a service on the Isle of Man this month, offering voice services and point-to-point video streaming...
May 15, 2001
Industry Standard: Japan Set to Reject Amazon Patent.
In both cases, the patent office found "prior art" – evidence that others had the idea first. In the case of the "one-click" concept, the prior art consisted of an earlier Japanese patent application and a 1996 book, User Interface Design by Alan Cooper.
MIT Technology Review: Breaking the Metro Bottleneck.
It's there that the information gusher narrows to a relative trickle, because the metro loop is every bit as tangled as downtown rush-hour traffic. If the broadband revolution is ever to be a reality, the metropolitan bottleneck must be broken.
Internet World: Hope for Mobile Internet Investments.
Jakob Nielsen. Even though $125 billion may well be too much for 3G licenses, there is no reason to worry that users will not want 3G mobile services. It is true that WAP has been a great disappointment, but that does not prove that the mobile Internet is a bad idea.
MIT Technology Review: Mobile Web vs. Reality.
Given the huge expense to license new broadband spectrum from national governments, technical and regulatory battles over which emerging communications protocols to use, plus the need to overhaul cell towers and mobile devices, some experts wonder whether the benefits are worth the trouble.
BBC News: Mobiles mean money, probably.
Mobile phone firms have not wasted their money spending billions on licences for third-generation networks. The annual Technology Forecast from PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that 3G networks will turn out to be money-earners for mobile phone companies.
Business Week: Picture This: A Password You Never Forget.
It's one of several applications that rely on graphical images for the purpose of authentication. All of these graphical solutions are built on the premise that the brain remembers images more easily than letters or numbers.
Industry Standard: Sony and AOL Team Up.
Sony and AOL Time Warner have formed a sweeping strategic alliance aimed at transforming Sony's PlayStation 2 from just another videogame console into an entertainment appliance infused with online communications and gaming features.
May 16, 2001
SF Chronicle: Anti-piracy program for digital TV.
Intensifying a battle with Hollywood and broadcasters over new anti- piracy technologies, television makers have told federal regulators they are backing a new copy-protection scheme that could bring jarring changes to the way consumers watch TV.
Washington Post: Copyright Holders vs. Telecoms.
Hollywood studios and major record companies are squaring off against Internet service providers and other communication companies over a proposed international treaty aimed at resolving questions of legal jurisdiction in the global economy.
The Tech: Lessig Examines Law And Freedom Online.
What would help protect the code, Lessig said, is “an account that shows why the innovation and creativity that we have seen comes from this [code] that built neutrality, end to end, in its core.” It is this story of the potential of the Internet...
NY Times: Workplace: Cultures Clash as AOL Switches to Its E-Mail.
Rather than logging on to the network by typing in a name and password, employees will also need to type in a number that appears on a digital card. Because the number changes every few seconds, the device adds a level of security to the e-mail system, but it also creates headaches for employees.
Industry Standard: VeriSign May Ditch Domain Deal.
The current controversy is just the latest in a long-running series of hardball conflicts between the government and VeriSign over management of the Internet's domain-name system. In every previous dispute, VeriSign or Network Solutions have come out on top.
The Register: Eurocops want seven-year retention of all phone, Net traffic.
The official EU body that represents the member governments will recommend the long-term retention of personal data at a meeting with the European Commission later this month, according to documents leaked to London-based civil liberties journal Statewatch.
Webmonkey: Supercharged Beta Test.
A controlled beta test and its associated research results will help you refine the final version of the site. Issues that are identified can be addressed before launch, increasing the likelihood that the site will succeed when it is released into the general marketplace.
May 17, 2001
SJ Mercury: Proposed international law treaty puts rights at risk.
Dan Gillmor. Some nations' laws deny rights we take for granted in the United States and some other democracies. If critics are correct, the Hague Convention would turn local laws into international fiats, making the most restrictive laws anywhere the effective law of the Internet.
NY Times: Congress Getting a Preview of Online Music Service.
Rob Glaser, the acting chief executive of MusicNet, a joint venture of Mr. Glaser's company, RealNetworks, and three of the five major record companies plans to demonstrate MusicNet, which is scheduled to be offered to consumers in the late summer.
Online Journalism Review: Blogged Down in the PR Machine.
But consider the harried, overworked PR rep. She's struggling to set up interviews for dozens of legitimate journalists from print, broadcast, and, yes, even online outlets, and suddenly she has to deal with someone claiming to be a writer for NUblog. What is a "NUblog," anyway?
Computerworld: UCITA opponents slow software licensing law's progress.
Opponents of the controversial UCITA software licensing law appear to have succeeded in stalling the bill in states where it's being considered this year, robbing the vendor-backed measure of the early momentum it gained last year following relatively quick adoptions in Maryland and Virginia.
NY Times: Intel Is Set to Announce a Chip of Many Functions.
Intel plans to announce on Thursday that its engineers have made a chip that combines the central functions of the next generation of wireless devices onto one piece of silicon, an advancement that Intel says will lead to smaller and faster consumer products.
Business Week: Broadband's Next Wave: Wireless?
Baby Bells, DSL providers, and cable companies should take note of Zucco's doings in the land of Hans Christian Andersen. Why? It's no fairy tale: The MMDS systems that Spike and others are building could turn the broadband market upside down in coming years.
NY Times: A Search Engine Goes Beyond Google.
The new search site, iLOR, began operating five weeks ago. The site, which takes its name from "Internet lore," does not focus on collecting relevant search results; it has left that task to Google, whose technology it has licensed.
May 18, 2001
NY Times: Hacker Gadfly at Center of New Suit.
Ford is not amused. The company filed suit late last month, claiming that Corley infringed and diluted or tarnished its "Ford" trademark. In addition to requesting an injunction barring Corley from pointing from his anti-GM domain name to the Ford home page...
News.Com: Music anti-piracy group issues official shrug.
At its last meeting in January, the group said it was putting its plans on a fast track, hoping to have technology on the market by Christmas. Friday's announcement marks the failure of that effort, as companies with different goals were unable to agree on a technology plan.
Computerworld: Q&A: User interfaces still need work, design expert says.
It's a mistaken assumption that the Web is more usable than Windows. [Business-to-business] apps are hard to use -- harder than Windows. There are user interaction problems everywhere because everything is different, whether it's sorting data, searching data [or] selecting objects.
Wired News: Music Licensing Battle Hits DC.
To Glaser, the problem is a straightforward one: Up to eight different rights must be negotiated before a single song can be placed on a server and made available for downloading. Because not all music publishers are prepared to offer these licenses...
InfoWorld: Forrester Research says the Web will die.
In a report released Thursday, the research firm predicts that the Internet will experience a second round of expansion that will move it beyond the browser to become a more interactive and pervasive medium which Forrester calls the "X Internet."
Business Week: A Wireless Generation Gap.
Why the change of heart? Analysts now think 4G systems will prove far cheaper than 3G, since they can be built atop existing networks and won't require operators to completely retool. Even better, they won't require carriers to purchase costly extra spectrum...
May 19, 2001
Industry Standard: Thumbs-Up for VeriSign-ICANN Pact.
The Commerce Department announced Friday that it has signed off on a new agreement between VeriSign and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers that allows VeriSign to keep full control of its lucrative ".com" Internet domain name business until at least 2007.
Web Review: Zeldman: Taking Your Talent to the Web.
Q&A with Jeffrey Zeldman. Learn these new methods now and begin planning your transition from the hacked-together, browser-specific Web you know, to an emerging, multidimensional, accessible Web built on shared technological standards.
MIT Technology Review: Little Big Screen.
That critical distance, known to insiders as the "last three feet," could put at risk the billions of dollars invested in wireless connectivity. Even if vendors solve the challenges of the last mobile mile, it could all be for naught if they cannot cover the distance between the hand and the face.
Adweek: Creative Thinking.
Freeman believes that overall the industry needs to make a deeper commitment to creating more compelling, entertaining, relevant and powerful content within ads--either within the newly sized units or in the traditional banner rectangle.
EE Times: Standards group nixes TI wireless LAN proposal.
Recent rulings by the Federal Communications Commission and the impending launch of 5-GHz (802.11a) alternatives mean that the failure of the Working Group to reach a consensus could make its work to define an 802.11g standard irrelevant, according to some observers.
May 20, 2001
SJ Mercury: Professor's battle exposes abysmal copyright law.
Dan Gillmor. The law at issue is the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Felten was one of many researchers who took up a music industry challenge last year to look closely at a technology the record companies are considering to prevent unauthorized copying of digitally recorded music.
Industry Standard: A Fight for the Top of the TV.
TiVo execs are hoping that their advertising push combined with Microsoft's will boost sales across the board. "There's a huge education component of any marketing strategy that's going to require a big investment from multiple players,'' notes Keast.
PC World: Sony Unveils PCs Equipped for TV Video Recording.
Although you can't edit out commercials, the bundled Giga software gives you much the same functionality as a TiVo or Replay personal recorder. You can program the unit to tape TV shows directly, or you can make selections from TV listings on a designated Web site...
May 21, 2001
MIT Technology Review: "Everyone is Wrong".
Q&A with Martin Cooper. The real question is, how is this industry going to evolve into a healthy competitive situation, when today it's so mired in monopolistic thinking? We're very fortunate that the Internet has come along. The Internet is full of people trying to figure out what customers want.
Industry Standard: I-Mode May Charge for Content.
Kiyoyuki Tsujimura, managing director of NTT DoCoMo's global business department, acknowledged in a speech that DoCoMo was considering charging I-mode content providers, which it has not done during the past several years while it built a customer base of some 23 million users.
NY Times: Pact Raises Competition Questions.
The contract — between Icann, and VeriSign Inc., — is the latest turn in a long, complicated process that continues to raise questions over whether the government's decision to move from a monopoly to market competition has truly opened the field to other players.
Industry Standard: NBC Cues Up the Net.
Now Digital Convergence, the Dallas company behind the CueCat, has a new gadget. CueTV is essentially a cable that connects a television to a PC. The link allows broadcasters to send a signal that directs PCs to promotional sites on the Internet.
Interactive Week: IPv6: So Far, Few Takers.
Last year's anticipation that wireless service providers would sanction construction of overlay IPv6 backbones has yet to bear fruit. Sales of IPv6 bandwidth from existing overlay service providers are largely supporting experimental, not commercial, services.
NY Times: Has the Web's Audience Peaked?
A recent report by Telecommunications Reports International, a Washington research firm, said the number of residential Internet customers declined 0.3 percent last quarter, to 68.5 million. It was the first such decline since the company began tracking online use in 1980...
May 22, 2001
Business 2.0: Enter the Decentralized Zone.
Clay Shirky. The IT workers of any organization larger than 50 people are now in an impossible situation: They are rewarded for negative events-no crashes or breeches-even as workers are inexorably eroding their ability to build or manage a corporate sandbox.
MIT Technology Review: Digital Renaissance: Convergence? I Diverge.
Rather, thanks to the proliferation of channels and the increasingly ubiquitous nature of computing and communications, we are entering an era where media will be everywhere, and we will use all kinds of media in relation to one another.
Business Week: Scaling Bandwidth to Fit the Job -- in Real Time.
Q&A with John Wroclawski, research scientist at MIT. The little box, wherever you are, looks around, sees what services are available, and, based on an understanding of availability and what you are trying to do at that instant in time, negotiates on your behalf for service.
Scientific American: Talking to Computers.
So ubiquitous are the computer monitor, keyboard and mouse that hardly a person alive in the industrialized world cannot relate to that setup. And yet a host of new technologies that promise to make personal computing even easier are emerging.
USA Today: High court to test Net porn law.
The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether a federal law designed to shield children from Internet pornography is constitutional. The case will test whether Congress, in its zeal to protect minors, is stifling material intended for adults.
Computerworld: IBM goes full-throttle with wireless technologies.
IBM's message was decidedly upbeat despite admissions by company officials that some U.S. business customers are pushing them for proof that wireless projects will be productive and practical amid harder economic times when companies are announcing layoffs and unimpressive earnings.
Internet World: Deconstrucing Dell.com.
Joy Busse and Kara Coyne. Recommendations generally work, but attempting to deviate is challenging. Finding software that is not part of a default system is difficult. You are confined to offerings based on the size of the business you initially chose.
May 23, 2001
Salon: Miles of aisles.
Scott Rosenberg. But right now, with the media determined to kick the Web while it's down, it can be useful, in a contrarian sort of way, to celebrate some of the achievements of the commercial Internet industry that we might tend to take for granted.
BBC News: 3G 'lemmings' face tough future.
The trouble for UK operators is that, having such a high proportion of pre-pay as opposed to contract customers, they have little information about customer lifestyles and spending habits. In an attempt to remedy this, some telecoms firms are now hiring psychologists to help guide strategy.
News.Com: Net TV firm set to guard Canadian border.
JumpTV, which has yet to turn on the most controversial part of its service, says it will avoid the lawsuits by limiting its viewership to Canadians, with technology that purports to pinpoint Web surfers by country, region and even ZIP code.
Computer User: Copyrights won't save digital content.
Despite its looming demise, Napster has placed users in complete control of content for perhaps the first time ever. And that's not something that they are likely to forget, a new study from Forrester Research indicates.
FEED Magazine: David Gelernter's New Desktop.
Users can browse this stream of cards or search by keyword, topic, or file type. Scopeware is an elegant alternative to the current desktop, an interface that, in Gelernter's view, is still mired in a bygone era when megabytes were scarce and CPUs lethargic.
EE Times: Compaq's MultiPort module serves 802.11b and Bluetooth.
Users can now easily slide in a newly developed wireless connectivity module, based on either 802.11b or Bluetooth, with antenna and radio in a single assembly, without concerns for RF interference, according to Compaq.
May 24, 2001
FEED Magazine: A Case of Stolen Identity.
Clay Shirky. Instead of creating a neutral arms race, where spoofers and their discoverers both get newly powerful tools, the Net has handed the spoofers huge advantages while forcing potentially corrosive distrust on the average citizens.
Fortune: I Know What You Mean. And I Can't Do Anything About It.
Michael Schrage. In all these cases, the employee has access to valuable information. Each one possesses the "knowledge" to do the job better. But the knowledge and information are irrelevant and useless. Knowledge isn't power; the ability to act on knowledge is power.
Argus ACIA: An Interview with Vivian Bliss, Microsoft.
We recognized the level of pain caused by increased use of the corporate intranet as the information system by both content creators and users. We went from 128 pages in 1995 to 2.3 million pages in 1998. A change in the user interface would not suffice.
Webmonkey: Object-Oriented Publishing.
Jeffrey Veen. We all wonder how we can set up our sites to simultaneously grow and stay up to date, and we struggle with finding ways to manage the flow of content through our sites while developing new features, or redesigning existing ones.
Publish: Online R&D.
Now Procter & Gamble is testing out a new tactic by aggressively using its Web site to obtain consumer feedback and thus speed up product testing. "To use your own Web site for market research is relatively unusual," says Marissa Gluck, a senior analyst for Jupiter Media Metrix.
Wired News: VeriSign Ends Critical Discussion.
The company that manages databases for the Internet's most popular names has shut down an e-mail discussion list that had turned into a forum for its critics. VeriSign Inc. made the announcement on the "Domain-Policy" mailing list Thursday.
May 25, 2001
eCompany: Is Your Data Taking the Scenic Route?
One key ingredient of Yahoo's speed is that its servers have long been hosted by a company that has excellent data-sharing arrangements with other ISPs. Because of these so-called peering agreements, Yahoo's pages take the express route from their servers to your browser.
Mappa.Mundi Magazine: Flowing From Site to Site.
Knowledge of how much data traffic flows between different points on the globe is pretty much non-existent today. There are very few publicly available traffic maps and those there are tend to be country-level aggregations or just limited to a single company’s network.
MIT Technology Review: Building a Better Backbone.
But much of the cutting-edge research being done today on fiber optics goes into improving the capacity of the system's "backbone": the fattest of the fat data pipes, which whip data across continents and connect urban centers.
Online Journalism Review: Blogging as a Form of Journalism.
Weblogging will drive a powerful new form of amateur journalism as millions of Net users take on the role of columnist, reporter, analyst and publisher while fashioning their own personal broadcasting networks. It won't happen overnight, and we're now seeing only version 1.0...
The Economist: How to skin a potato.
Yet interactive TV is a fledgling creature, and its bosses are still trying to work out quite what it is for. Europe’s experiment so far suggests one conclusion: it is simpler to persuade digital viewers to try out snazzy interactive services than it is to make them spend money.
EE Times: TI takes WLAN development overseas.
Texas Instruments Inc. plans to open a wireless LAN development center here, its first outside the United States. The Dallas-based company's Indian development center will focus on system-level hardware and software based on the IEEE-802.11 wireless standard...
May 26, 2001
Fortune: What If Napster Were Based in China?
Michael Schrage. The Internet is global, right? What if Napster were based in, say, China rather than the good old U.S. of A.? Suppose the Chinese government gave its full legal blessing to Napster-like file sharing and encouraged Napster knockoffs within its Great Walls?
Computerworld: FTC sides with Amazon.com in privacy dispute.
The Federal Trade Commission sided with Amazon.com Inc. in a dispute with two privacy groups that accused the online retailer of deceiving its customers by changing its privacy policy to permit disclosure of personal information to third parties.
eWEEK: Microsoft, AOL ink Windows XP pact.
America Online Inc. and Microsoft Corp. have reached a tentative agreement under which the AOL 6.0 client will be bundled into Windows XP, sources close to both companies said late Thursday. The agreement was due to be reviewed and signed by both parties this week...
May 27, 2001
SJ Mercury: America needs commitment to nationwide broadband.
Dan Gillmor. So it's time to bite a national bullet. It's time to run high-capacity glass fibers to every home. America needs to embark on its most important public-works project in a half century, to provide the most important infrastructure for the new era.
Useit.Com: Salary Survey: User Experience Professionals Earn Good Money.
A survey of 1,078 user experience professionals finds that usability specialists make more money than designers and writers in the same field. In all three areas, salaries are highest in the U.S., lower in Canada and Asia, and much lower in Europe and Australia.
May 28, 2001
NY Times: I.B.M. Meets With 52,600, Virtually.
None of the ideas gathered stood a chance of being as novel as WorldJam itself, which computer experts said required a marriage of technology and management that went far beyond any previous test of using the Internet to share information within giant organizations.
Fast Company: Lear Won't Take a Back Seat.
Between the initial concept and the production-ready design lies a painstaking clay-modeling process that typically involves at least a half-dozen costly iterations. But by shifting much of that process to a virtual-reality environment, Lear has cut the product-development period to a year and a half.
Networld World: Effort afoot to provide wireless LAN roaming.
A group of leading vendors is working to iron out the technical and financial details needed to let mobile wireless LAN users connect to almost any wireless ISP, similar to the way cell phone users can roam and use multiple carriers to complete calls.
Fast Company: Change Is Sweet.
And at the epicenter of that effort lies the Internet. The "Internet changes everything" rhetoric of yesteryear may have lost some of its currency, but Nestle leaders are relying on the Net to help them overhaul much of what the company does...
NY Times: Returns Pose Problem for E-Tailers.
Yankee's projections, however, suggest that return rates will grow more aggressively than many pundits previously foresaw. While total online sales will triple between now and 2004, the Yankee Group predicted, online returns will jump fourfold.
May 29, 2001
Industry Standard: The 'X' in What's Next.
With great fanfare, Forrester Research announced last week that the Web is dead. With so many failing dot-coms, that news wouldn't be so hard to believe - if it weren't that Forrester has spent the past few years touting it as an engine of unrelenting hypergrowth.
Web Techniques: Stalk Your User.
Jeffrey Veen. Contextual inquiry is an increasingly popular method for discovering this information. Also known as ethnographic research or field studies, the idea is deceptively simple: Build useful products and watch your users as they work.
Context Magazine: Please Stand By; We're Experiencing Technical Difficulties.
All have been touted for years—some for more than a decade—as having the potential to revolutionize business by giving consumers new ways to purchase goods, gather information, and get service. Yet the combined effect of the technologies has so far been almost imperceptible.
USA Today: 'Mouse-trapping' locks Web users in a virtual maze.
Yet that's exactly what a growing number of Web sites do to unsuspecting surfers, who enter a site only to discover that the Back button on their Web browsing software has been disabled to prevent them from turning around and leaving.
EE Times: e-Japan strategy to propose 4G mobile systems.
Japan is poised to propose concepts next month for "fourth generation" phones that would enable transmissions at 100 Mbits/second. The proposal is expected to be a main R&D plank of the e-Japan platform promoted by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
O'Reilly Network: Introduction to IPv6.
Switching to a different protocol version that does not have these problems of course requires for a "better" version to be available. And actually, there is a better version. Version 6 of the Internet Protocol fulfills future demands on address space, and also addresses other features...
May 30, 2001
Internet World: Ins and Outs of Begging for Money.
Jakob Nielsen. The Honor System is much less useful for traditional Web sites that do not relate to emotional issues. Most Web sites are utilitarian and therefore have a hard time engaging users enough that they will be compelled to spend the time and effort to go to a different Web site and make a donation.
Web Techniques: Looking Back to Move Forward.
Good application design requires thought about intent, context, and technology. Intent is what the user wants to do with an application; context is the user's environment and how he or she got there; and technology is how the application is delivered...
MIT Technology Review: Pixel Perfect.
Despite the controversy, Microsoft has received its first major ClearType patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The software giant says the new technology will be key in its attempt to revolutionize electronic books—portable computer screens displaying pages of text.
Washington Post: High-Speed Wireless Gets Test.
Japanese mobile-phone giant NTT DoCoMo plans to start a limited trial run Wednesday of its much-anticipated "third generation" service, which promises data transmission at speeds as much as 40 times as fast as current wireless technology.
Computerworld: FTC staff slaps Amazon's wrist in second data privacy dispute.
Privacy advocates today sharply criticized the FTC after its staff decided not to recommend any penalties despite finding that online retailer Amazon.com Inc. and its Web navigation subsidiary, Alexa Internet Corp., engaged in data collection practices that "likely were deceptive."
May 31, 2001
eCompany: The High Price of Search Technology.
The problem is, it's difficult and expensive to get a search engine working properly. In a perfect world, customers could just type their questions into the search box and get coherent answers back. Too bad that ideal is so hard to achieve.
AskTog: How to Deliver a Report Without Getting Lynched.
The finest set of recommendations will be rejected if the form in which they are received is seen as hostile or belligerent. I recently received a copy of an unsolicited report sent to a firm that seemed unimpressed with the writer's efforts. The reasons why are instructive to us all.
Online Journalism Review: Weblogs: A New Source of News.
As more people take up Weblogging and more of us come to rely on blogs to help us shape our own personal media universe, media organizations would do well to incorporate them into their Web sites as an important new addition to the journalistic toolkit.
NY Times: PowerPoint Invades the Classroom.
In the coming weeks, students from 12th grade to, yes, kindergarten will finish science projects and polish end-of-the-year presentations on computerized slide shows filled with colorful animation, bold topic headings and neat rows of points, each introduced with a bullet mark.
News.Com: Sprint's wireless Net struggles to keep pace.
Curcio is one of a growing, increasingly vocal group of Sprint customers around the country complaining that the company's high-speed wireless Internet connections aren't working as promised and that Sprint hasn't followed through on repeated promises to fix problems.
ZDNN: Toshiba dazzles with new organic display.
One of the world's major manufacturers of LCDs, Toshiba announced on Wednesday its first prototype of a polymer OLED display that supports 260,000 colors. The 2.85-inch display is targeted for production in portable devices, such as cell phones and handheld computers, in April 2002.
News.Com: Companies ally for secure e-mail.
The alliance -- and better interoperability -- could give PGP a much needed boost among computer users, he added. Though PGP is used widely among people who encrypt their e-mail, the vast majority of computer users don't use encryption at all.
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