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June 1, 2001
O'Reilly Network: Hailstorm: Open Web Services Controlled by Microsoft.
Clay Shirky. Rather than subject Hailstorm to some sort of P2P litmus test, it is more illuminating to examine where it embraces the centralization of the client-server model and where it departs by decentralizing functions to devices at the network's edge.
Alan Cooper: Goal-Directed Innovation.
On the other hand, really useful benefits often come without lots of innovation. For example, Amazon continues to stay afloat in hard times for the same reason they grew so rapidly in boom times: because they focus relentlessly on customer satisfaction.
NY Times: Controversial Ruling on Library Filters.
Free speech advocates quickly expressed concern that the E.E.O.C.'s decision is a dangerous precedent that could pressure libraries to aggressively monitor patrons' viewing habits or install filtering software as a means to ward off potential discrimination suits.
Salon: The music revolution will not be digitized.
The power, then, is consolidated squarely back in the hands of the same record industry executives that held the reins before. Everyone with a good idea that doesn't fit into what the music moguls have already deemed appropriate is out of luck.
Internet Week: IBM Uses The Web To Listen To Its Employees.
WorldJam was important for two reasons: the ideas that were generated and the knowledge IBM gained on how to conduct such an event. IBM Research's Social Computing Lab is studying the WorldJam message boards to find out about the behavior of large communities online...
elearningpost: Grassroots KM through blogging.
In this article, we share our experiences with a strategy and technology so simple in design, that it could present the next wave of grassroots KM implementations. We are talking of the "storytelling" as the killer strategy, and "blogs" as the killer technology.
- Salon: From September 29, 1998; Story time.
Scott Rosenberg.
The Economist: Mightier than the mouse?
Emboldened by the popularity of pen-driven handheld computers, such as the Handspring Visor, the Compaq iPaq and the troubled grand-daddy of them all, the Palm Pilot, some computer makers are betting on a market for fully fledged PCs that can be operated with a stylus.
June 2, 2001
EE Times: Microsoft sets sights on future displays.
Credited with having invented the laser printer during his tenure at Xerox Corp., Starkweather these days is busy prototyping his vision of the display of the future so that Microsoft will be ready with the software and graphics structures needed to support it.
NY Times: Online Cohabitation: Internet and Minitel.
The online habits of these three generations mirror a broader transformation in France. To find phone numbers, order a vintage wine, even look for a date, the French are shifting increasingly from Minitel, the national videotex system, to the Internet.
Washington Post: Microsoft, AOL Suspend Discussions to Renew Deal.
Technology giants AOL Time Warner Inc. and Microsoft Corp., escalating their long-running feud, broke off negotiations late today over a major distribution and software-sharing deal, according to sources familiar with the matter.
InfoWorld: Legal sanctions for spam.
With perhaps one exception, it seems likely that any federal anti-spam bill we may see enacted anytime soon will do more harm than good. Why does congressional anti-spam legislation, no matter how it starts, always seem to wind up back at this same flawed idea?
NY Times: Adding Up the Costs of Cyberdemocracy.
To Mr. Sunstein, such polarization is just one of the negative political effects of the Internet, which allows people to filter out unwanted information, tailor their own news and congregate at specialized Web sites that closely reflect their own views.
June 3, 2001
SJ Mercury: Display industry on verge of major leaps forward.
Dan Gillmor. Now, however, we may be on the verge of some major new leaps. Thanks in part to breakthroughs in chemistry, not just information technology, displays seem likely to make more progress in the next decade than they have in the past half century.
Web Informant: Running out of ink.
But maybe it costs this vendor less money to maintain a call center than to implement a web-based inventory system? In a twisted way, this makes sense, given that quite a few web storefronts don't have online inventory status information available to their customers.
June 4, 2001
Random Thoughts: Final Week of Tomalak's Realm
Web Review: Then, Now, Next: Five Perspectives on the Web Development Industry.
Q&A with Jeffrey Zeldman, Jakob Nielsen and others. So dust off those old manuals, development how-to books, single pixel GIFs, and long-forgotten Web projects and renew your perspectives as these five industry leaders provide insight about where the Web has been and where it's going.
MIT Technology Review: Web Behind Walls.
Instead of the multivaried pathways of the World Wide Web, these users will be provided easy access to a much smaller subset of items and options that reflect the network owner's online programming, as well as the offerings of its content partners.
Seattle Times: Microsoft XP to have video-message ability.
There's nothing new about Internet messaging or videoconferencing software. But Microsoft is combining various messaging devices, adding features, putting them behind a simple control panel, and tying it to the operating system.
eWEEK: Microsoft adds Windows Messenger to XP.
Testers who have been dabbling with beta releases of Windows XP that have included as a bundled component MSN Messenger agree that Windows Messenger is just a new name for a set of existing and previously bundled Windows XP beta technologies.
The Economist: Off with their beards.
Almost all of those failed dotcoms tried to find business models that were compatible with the Internet’s traditional free-for-all; but of those that are left, many are now introducing subscriptions and fees. Listening to the Internet’s purists, in other words, has finally been recognised as being bad for business.
NY Times: Paid Placement Is Catching On in Web Searches.
But three years later, as most other companies that depend on Internet ads are foundering, GoTo is thriving — not as a search service itself, but as a provider of search results to other sites. Its paid search listings are now featured on 7 of the top 10 Web portals and search sites...
June 5, 2001
The Register: Dead in the watermark, SDMI turns to chips, players?
There are nine joiners, and 27 leavers. The volume of leavers might be telling us something about how well SDMI is doing in its quest for the perfect secure digital music system. The companies involved cover a pretty broad spectrum, and maybe they just lost hope of SDMI ever getting to yes.
SJ Mercury: Targeting piracy of music CDs.
EMI Group on Monday signed a deal with Roxio, the maker of popular CD-authoring software, that would add copy protection to its recipe for burning music discs. EMI will buy an equity stake in Roxio in exchange for it developing new software, due out next year...
Wall Street Journal: Europe's Telecom Firms Paid Billions For '3G' Licenses, Costs Still Loom.
A bigger question is whether many people want the kinds of services that 3G technology promises, and if so, how much they will be willing to pay. Thus, 3G investments are largely an act of faith -- much more so than previous investments in new telephone systems.
Business 2.0: The Java Renaissance.
Clay Shirky. These are young companies, and it is not clear whether they will be able to overcome either Java's earlier limitations on the PC or Microsoft's inevitable resistance. But their willingness to try tells us much about software engineering, and about the PC's place in computing ecology.
Computerworld: FTC member says privacy concerns becoming 'hysteria'.
Citing the example of grocery stores that collect purchasing data from customers who use discount cards, Leary said there will be so much data out there that companies won't be able to use it all in ways that hurt the individual consumer.
Darwin Magazine: Information Waste.
RadioShack wants your address before it will sell you a battery. Mobil knows about it every time you use one of its pumps to gas up. Call center reps ask for your mother's maiden name, your average income and your age. They don't use the data, and forking it over doesn't help you in any way.
Computerworld: Grow Your Site, Keep Your Users.
But sites of eBay's size and growth rate always have special usability concerns, says Kipp Lynch, director of user experience at NerveWire Inc. "You've got this huge amount of data, and there are usually two ways to get at it: search and browse," Lynch says.
June 6, 2001
Wired News: Code-Breakers Go to Court.
This case pits academics and civil libertarians against the recording industry, which believes that without the DMCA, piracy will thrive online, recording artists will not be compensated for their work and America's economy will eventually suffer.
SJ Mercury: EMI gains unlikely partner in latest digital music move.
Dan Gillmor. Roxio's intentions may be pure. But you can't say that about its new partner. The music industry and its Hollywood allies have spent the past several years demonstrating that they want to own not only all of the songs they distribute but also the means of distribution.
News.Com: Net blackout marks Web's Achilles heel.
The unregulated status has left the Internet's "network of networks" to determine its own rules. As financial pressures loom over the companies that run these networks, they are finding less wiggle room available to choose the health of the Net over their own financial realities.
SF Chronicle: N.Y. Times works to keep Web presence.
The continuous news desk, though small, is one of the key signs that the Times still takes the Web very seriously. According to Michael Oreskes, the Times' assistant managing editor for electronic news, the desk operates "like an old-fashioned afternoon newspaper rewrite bank."
Internet World: Will Recording Customer Habits Improve Business Relations?
An independent spin-off of SAP, which has since become a development partner, TeaLeaf developed a proprietary technology that collects all types of customer session data, from form fields and values to messages from the Web site software, in both HTTP and HTTPS environments.
Wired News: PGP: Happy Birthday to You.
Zimmermann and Goen were both worried about a threat that seems quaint now, but was deadly serious a decade ago: The U.S. government's export regulations. In 1991, federal law treated encryption products as munitions, and sending such software overseas was a felony.
June 7, 2001
MIT Technology Review: The Myth of "Internet Time".
Andrew Odlyzko. Internet time appeared to give special power to the first-mover advantage. A company that could quickly establish itself as a pets portal, for example, might be able to gain a high enough market share to discourage competition.
Lighthouse: McKinsey on the Internet: this time they're rational.
The new McKinsey formula occupies 13 pages of the Quarter 1 2001 "McKinsey Quarterly" magazine, under the heading "E-performance: The path to rational exuberance". But it essentially consists of three simple principles and three specific sets of rules.
Wall Street Journal: New Windows XP Feature Can Re-Edit Others' Sites.
In effect, Microsoft will be able, through the browser, to re-edit anybody's site, without the owner's knowledge or permission, in a way that tempts users to leave and go to a Microsoft-chosen site -- whether or not that site offers better information.
Technology Marketing: The Free Web is Gone.
Aaron Goldberg. After considering this problem, it's become clear to me that the existing cable TV model can be used as a starting point for turning the free web into a revenue-generating web. Imagine a system where your ISP offers you a "premium package" of content service...
PC World: Tomorrow's Displays Are Looking Good.
New monitor technologies, including cheap (but comparable) alternatives to plasma screens, are being showcased this week at the Society for Information Display 2001. You won't be able to buy most of the hottest ones for at least several months, but the wait should be worth it.
Internet World: Deconstructing Maytag.com.
Terry Swack and John Shiple. Few sites have such a strong online brand and identity. Browsing products is a sweet experience. The well-structured, cleanly designed site makes finding products very easy, and the tons of information available is clearly presented, which makes ordering simple.
June 8, 2001
Random Thoughts: Next Step
Salon: A spam cop goes AWOL.
Questions about ORBS's behavior always centered on the problem of how to handle e-mail abuse. But more generally, ORBS symbolized the ongoing struggle between the Net's tendency to encourage individual freedom and the necessity of combating anarchy.
NY Times: Cable Giants Refuse to Sell Ads to Internet Competitors.
Verizon, the phone giant operating primarily in the Northeast but in many other parts of the country, too, said that in addition to Time Warner's refusal to run Verizon's D.S.L. advertisements in New York City, Comcast had refused such advertisements in Philadelphia, New Jersey and the Washington area.
News.Com: IM rivals mute on messaging plans.
But now, in a sign that frustrations over cooperation are fading, IM developers such as Microsoft are moving ahead with independent plans for the technology, leaving AOL Time Warner and others to go their own way or follow their lead.
MSNBC: AT&T is scaling back plans for interactive TV services.
In the meantime, AT&T has been testing advanced software from a Microsoft competitor and, subsequently, AT&T officials concluded that consumers weren’t ready for many of the advanced features that the phone and cable company envisioned offering.
Computerworld: Software for the 4th Dimension.
Hochheiser's TimeFinder software has a visual interface that lets users manipulate simple graphical tools to query huge databases and then lets them see the results represented on a graph. One mouse click replaces the typing of multiple parameters, reducing procedure time and the chance of introducing errors.
The Economist: Think thin and crispy.
Meanwhile, 3G is under attack on another front. “The 3G Squeeze”, a recent report by Merrill Lynch, says that 3G is in danger of being squeezed between so-called 2.5G technologies and wireless computer-networking technologies such as 802.11b...
Online Journalism Review: Have You Tried Advertising Online?
That attitude is not limited to one company. In fact, while mainstream thinking tends to lament the failure of Internet advertising to support Web sites, some media analysts offer a different outlook: They're optimistic, and they're giving good reasons for it.
June 9, 2001
O'Reilly Network: New Wireless Standards Challenge 802.11b.
Some of these standards have been kicking around for a year or more and are about to be commercially deployed; others are new, and may supplant 802.11b entirely. These specs include 802.11a and 802.11g from the IEEE, and the commercially supported HomeRF and Bluetooth protocols.
InfoWorld: Apple padlocks UI decor.
And why should Apple object now, given that this same "reverse engineering" took place years ago when user-created themes first started showing up? It's certainly a strange move on the part of a company that has supposedly found the open-source religion.
Inside: Irreverent Web Pioneers Suck and Feed Suspend Publishing, Laying Off 21.
Automatic was formed last July by the merger of Suck and Feed, plus the purchase of altculture.com. The company is now seriously considering selling all four sites, including Plastic, and spinning off Automatic as a software consulting firm that would sell the engine behind Plastic's reader community.
News.Com: ISPs complain they're shut out of cable ads.
The issue extends well beyond Time Warner and the small ISPs; even the giant phone companies that offer DSL services say they are routinely--although not universally--closed out of cable television advertising in areas around the country.
NY Times: Customer Service by E-Mail.
Such happy endings are rare in an era when travel providers have earned ever lower marks for customer service. The fact that the complaint was resolved through the Web is even more remarkable since, according to travel industry analysts, many travel sites offer poor customer service.
June 10, 2001
SJ Mercury: Stand up to service providers.
Dan Gillmor. Largely without our understanding of the consequences, or even knowledge that it's happening, we're moving functionality and data to the center of networks. And as we hand control -- if not outright ownership -- to third parties, we're taking some big chances.
Useit.Com: Avoid PDF for On-Screen Reading.
Forcing users to browse PDF documents can reduce your website's usability by about 300% relative to HTML pages. This is my rough estimate, based on watching users perform similar tasks on a variety of sites that used either PDF or regular Web pages.
June 11, 2001
Salon: More lights go out on the Web.
Scott Rosenberg. These sites chose, with sensible enough reasons, to remain in their niches rather than try to conquer the world. Oops -- now that strategy doesn't seem to have worked for original-content Web sites struggling to survive, either.
Photo District News PIX: The End of the World as We Know It.
Jeffrey Zeldman. Try launching and sustaining a print magazine sometime. Try promoting your company via TV commercials. You will flee back to the Web, where the price of entry is low, and where you can actually engage in dialogue with your readers or customers.
NY Times: AOL Plans the Digital Smorgasbord.
It is a future in which the union of America Online, which helped pioneer "all you can eat" Internet access, and Time Warner, which lives on magazine renewals and cable subscribers, delivers a media smorgasbord to every home in the nation.
digitalMASS: First rule of knowledge management? Better know who needs what.
It's just not a problem that companies feel must get solved right now. Not when they're focused on cutting costs by any means necessary. That makes it an inauspicious moment for the debut of Lotus's $395-per-user Knowledge Discovery System.
BBC News: Computers play catch-up.
Why am I still using a keyboard rather than dictating this text? Why am I using notes written in shorthand in a separate notebook rather than on a smart tablet that converts them into quotes. Just what is so difficult?
American Journalism Review: E-mail Debate.
E-mail has become a vital newsgathering tool for reporters and editors around the country, but many still shy away from using it in place of the telephone to interview sources. Instead, they say e-mail is best used to complement the phone...
NY Times: Struggling With Shipping Fees.
Now, while merchants have spent most of the last year applying tourniquets to their financial operations, they have yet to find the right touch with shipping and handling fees. Charge too much, and the customers vanish. Charge too little, and the balance sheet bleeds.
June 12, 2001
NY Times: Microsoft Is Ready to Supply a Phone in Every Computer.
Weaving improved versions of features Microsoft already offers, like online video meeting software and Internet voice chat, and integrating them with a more sophisticated version of the company's identity system, known as Passport, Microsoft asserts that it will transform the very nature of the telephone.
Internet World: Next Steps for Web Usability.
Jakob Nielsen. Only the individual contributors can do so. As long as they don't understand the basic principles of interaction design for an online medium, the Web will continue to be unacceptably difficult to use. We need to root out complexity at the source.
Editor & Publisher: Sites Integrate Discussion With News.
As newspapers rethink their community publishing efforts, some publishers are putting renewed emphasis on story feedback. Instead of concentrating on building Web sites for community groups, they're looking to get the community involved on the main pages of the newspaper site.
Information Week: Busier Networks Create Smoother Traffic Flow, Says Bell Labs.
Conventional wisdom held that the busiest networks would experience even more "bursty" behavior, requiring larger packet buffers to help Internet routers manage traffic volatility. But Bell Labs' research shows the opposite is true: High-capacity networks have more regular traffic.
Network World: Web site accessibility goes mainstream.
A federal government initiative aimed at making Web sites accessible to people with disabilities is raising awareness of accessibility issues among corporate Web developers and spawning software that helps fix accessibility problems.
Internet World: Zaplets Move Beyond Consumer Phase.
Zaplet CEO Alan Baratz says that of the first eight customers for the product, four are using the hosted model and four have licensed the software, but he expects the balance to tip in favor of licensed software as customers start using the technology for more-important business processes.
June 13, 2001
SJ Mercury: Working toward the final resource.
Dan Gillmor. Unlike most of us, Allen is in a position to do something about it. Over the past several months, his representatives have quietly contacted some top people in the technology and research communities to begin brainstorming a ``Final Encyclopedia'' for our own times.
Web Techniques: Freedom in Structure.
How do we focus on interactivity and still let our imaginations play? I think it's a matter of knowing the medium from a theoretical standpoint as well as a practical one. We need to remember what the Web is, how it's structured, and what it was originally meant to do.
MIT Technology Review: Mining for Meaning.
All these postings add up to a trove of public opinion that sociologists, linguists and market researchers would love to analyze; and software projects at IBM and the University of California at Berkeley are beginning to develop the analytical tools they'll need.
Network World: When private peering arrangements go bad.
Cable & Wireless terminated private peering network agreements with 14 ISPs, including troubled PSINet, which Cable & Wireless said no longer met the ISP's peering requirements. Private peering is the act of two ISPs establishing dedicated connections to their respective networks.
Newsbytes: ICANN To Gauge Privacy Concerns Over 'Whois' Database.
The study, to be conducted by the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is directed at anyone who has ever used the service and will be used to assess whether changes should be considered to the current Whois policy adopted by ICANN.
News.Com: Online ads get in your face.
But the flip side is that publishers risk alienating readers and seeing their own traffic numbers fall--a fear that for years convinced many Web sites to avoid splashy pitches. For now, the pendulum has swung far in the advertisers' direction.
June 14, 2001
digitalMASS: Useful tool or sinister plot?
Still, I think the real problem with browser Smart Tags is that few people will use them. Hardly anyone really surfs the Web anymore. Usually, we go straight to our favorite sites. We have no interest in idly clicking a few extra links, Microsoft's or anyone else's.
Wired: MS Poised for Music Domination.
But what looks like Microsoft's muted attempt to compete with other music services appears to be a red herring. While other companies are focusing on getting music from retailer to customer, Microsoft appears well on the way to making its media delivery system indispensable.
Online Journalism Review: Privacy Disclosure on News Sites Low.
Only a little more than a third of media Web sites are posting information about their privacy policies, even though about two thirds of them are tracking people's movements online or collecting personal information, according to a detailed study of privacy practices at hundreds of online news sites.
IBM developerWorks: Tips for creating an effective and informative resource.
The value of FAQs is their ability to bring the most popular information to the forefront of a site for fast, easy access. The idea is that users will not have to sift through loads of content to find information or wait for a response to a question from a contact person.
Lighthouse: Interview with a content management heretic.
Q&A with Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Ovum. In fact, most available content management systems leave you with a lot of work to do. "Most vendors don't have the full solution," he says. A year or two ago, vendors could skate over that in sales presentations. Now buyers are wising up to the systems' weaknesses.
June 15, 2001
Random Thoughts: So It Goes
SJ Mercury: Microsoft's Smart Tags threaten Web.
Dan Gillmor. Microsoft, tone-deaf to the damage it's doing, seems surprised at the furor it touched off when CNet and the Wall Street Journal reported this latest attempt to grab even more control over desktop computing and online capabilities.
Online Journalism Review: News Sites Get Copyright Fever.
While CCC and iCopyright have a head start among online publications, several other newcomers are angling for a piece of the action. It may be a big pie: the American Society for Industrial Security estimates that stolen information costs U.S. businesses more than $300 billion annually.
Fortune: Good Network, Bad Data.
Michael Schrage. Why do networks facilitate their own befouling? Because their designers neglect to account for the true costs of disclosure. When the perceived costs of reasonable disclosure exceed their perceived benefits, then distortion and deception reign.
Crypto-Gram: Honeypots and the Honeynet Project.
Bruce Schneier. The moral of all of this is that there are a staggering number of people out there trying to break into *your* computer network, every day of the year, and that they succeed surprisingly often. It's a hostile jungle out there...
Chicago Tribune: Britannica.com fixated on fee service.
Syndication, not free content, is the name of the game these days and will account for between 15 and 20 percent of the company's revenues over the next three years, Britannica syndication director Mia Ahmann said.
Wired News: Salon: Last One Standing.
Salon is now the last one standing: the only original online mag that's still alive and isn't owned by a multinational corporation. And Talbot thinks that despite the company's financial problems, Salon's uniqueness engenders a certain must-keep-it-alive ardor among its readers...
June 16, 2001
Inside: Send In the Clones.
The much-anticipated ''print clone'' -- an electronic duplicate of an ink-and-paper publication -- will begin to appear on computer screens this summer, delivered over the Internet. But even though consumer demand for the product seems promising, digital copyright battles may spoil its debut.
Fortune: The Man Who Bought the Internet.
It's all part of Sclavos' master plan to build what he calls cyberspace's "first utility"--a company that handles all the boring but complicated and necessary details of life in the Internet Age. In effect, Sclavos has erected the Web's largest toll booth...
CIO: Dial K for Knowledge.
So while the old BT may not have needed the service it calls "intellact," the BT of today certainly does. Intellact essentially takes many of the resources of the old research library, adds a few more sources, organizes them and puts the whole thing online...
EE Times: Sony backs wireless technology startup.
Systemonic AG, a digital signal processing startup in Dresden, Germany, has snagged Sony as a backer of its technology, which Systemonic said can be used to build communications chips for 5-GHz wireless LANs.
June 17, 2001
CIO: SimManager.
In real life, Chen is a manager in the office of leadership at Motorola's headquarters in Schaumburg, Ill. His hectic "first day on the job" was a four-hour multimedia management simulation that Motorola uses to assess and develop its middle managers across the globe.
I Can't Stop Thinking: Coins of the Realm, Part Two.
Scott McCloud. As I write this, there's still no reliable, widely-adopted micropayments system, and no popular model yet in the place for selling bits. Until that point is reached, there really is no "new economy," just the old one running around like a chicken with its head cut off.
Darwin Magazine: Real-Time Feedback.
Until now, however, it's been difficult for customers to do much more than cast their opinion to the cyberwind and hope that it has the desired impact. Enter new types of organizations that help customers give feedback quickly, easily and in an organized manner.
June 18, 2001
Good Experience: The Hidden Stage of User Experience Projects.
Added together, all five stages take up less than 50% of the time in the project. What is the "hidden stage" of their user experience work, the work that consumes more time than everything else put together? One word: Politics.
MIT Technology Review: Wireless LANs Go Public.
In coffee shops, hotels and airports around the world, "hotspots" of wireless local-area network Internet connectivity are popping up. For business travelers, they're a way to quickly go online without scouting out a dataport or fussing over wires.
digitalMASS: Beyond batteries.
The company he’s beginning to build, Lilliputian Systems, plans to offer generators the same size as today’s cell phone and laptop batteries, but with an increase in performance of at least ten-fold, and possibly as much as fifty-fold.
SJ Mercury: IBM's Almaden Research Center marks 15 years of innovation and impact.
While the facility, nestled into the south San Jose foothills adjacent to Santa Teresa County Park, is the company's prime lab for storage technologies and information management, it also does work in a broad swath of computer science, physical science and materials science.
ZDNN: The path to the U.S. fiber cable glut.
But now, Level 3 has hit a wall even Mr. Crowe may have trouble overcoming. The company's original ambition--to build history's largest, most advanced fiber-optic network to carry exploding amounts of Internet traffic--is now part of one of the biggest gluts the country has ever seen.
CIO: Building on IT.
From design and planning to procurement and production, companies in every corner of the architecture, engineering and construction industry are undergoing a foundation-to-roof renovation of the building process, rejuvenating traditionally low-tech approaches with Internet-enabled IT.
EE Times: Thomson offers digital audio codec.
Thomson Multimedia plans to license the codec, which consists of an MP3 core with a technology called Spectral Band Replication wrapped around it, to semiconductor manufacturers, jukebox software providers, digital audio portable device and computer companies.
June 19, 2001
Computerworld: Kill This Piracy Plan.
In sum, there is no real need for Microsoft to collect this information. The lofty motive is a sham. Product Activation won't do diddly to stop piracy, but it will force you to be more aware of it. That's a good enough reason for Microsoft to have you waste your time.
Dan Bricklin: A Taxonomy of Computer Systems and Different Topologies.
We all know that P2P relates to some sort of topographical difference in using computers and networks compared to what was common in the near past. What we struggle with is "what is that difference?" What I think is that people want to think that there is one new topology and that's what's happening.
Wall Street Journal: In Battle to Control the Internet, Microsoft Emulates Its No. 1 Enemy.
Cash-rich Microsoft, with determined management, popular Web sites and a new strategy to link its core Windows software with new Internet services, is mounting a much broader attack on America Online, a unit of AOL Time Warner Inc. And this time, it has more chances to win.
Network World: Start-ups go on attack vs. denial-of-service threat.
The jockeying now begins in earnest to convince ISPs, data center operators and corporate customers to invest in this first generation of hardware/software appliances that watch for attacks and report back on what to do about such activity.
Kevin Werbach: Triumph of the Weblogs.
The authority of Weblogs comes from their readers and from the ease with which they can be updated, he points out. Weblog journalists can refine their thoughts almost continually. They are constantly talking with their audience, who are also talking with one another.
SJ Mercury: S.J., AT&T to square off over lack of cable modem access.
In San Jose, the self-proclaimed capital of Silicon Valley, roughly two-thirds of city residents can't get high-speed Internet access over their cable lines. These residents are stuck with an antiquated cable network incapable of carrying high-speed Internet data.
June 20, 2001
Washington Post: A Data-Mining Bonanza Squandered?
Financial firms are scrambling to hire companies such as EMC Corp., Oracle Corp., Compaq Corp., Veritas Software Co. and International Business Machines Corp. to create storage and retrieval systems that can manage the tons of information received each day and make it usable in an instant...
Newsbytes: Broadband For All - Canada's 'New National Dream'.
In unveiling the much-anticipated report of the task force, David Johnston, president of the University of Waterloo in Ontario and chairman of the blue-ribbon panel, defined broadband access as two-way connectivity of at least 1.5 megabits per second.
InfoWorld: Ray Ozzie, others spell out evolution of peer-to-peer computing.
Dan Bricklin, founder of Trellix agrees, saying, "P-to-p isn't just for file sharing." He said wireless technology based on the 802.11b standard is one example of a technology that will drive demand for p-to-p communication and collaboration between individuals, but in a decentralized ad hoc manner.
Information Week: TrustE Proposes Privacy Symbols.
The privacy symbols will be assigned to Web sites by TrustE and other accredited third-party oversight groups, says a TrustE spokesman. The symbols, which have yet to be designed, will provide information such as whether or not a site uses personal data for marketing.
InfoWorld: Avoiding design snafus.
Despite the potential benefits of collaborative design, the technology can come with pitfalls. For example, security is one of the more daunting challenges coming out of increased collaboration between manufacturers and suppliers around the design process...
June 21, 2001
Computerworld: Bots for businesses and more.
Just when you thought the dawdling economy and high-tech layoffs had knocked all the fun out of IT, along comes a seminar on bot (short for robot) technology and intelligent agents that helped reinvigorate a sense of wonder among attendees.
Industry Standard: Sony's Entertainment Blast: A Broadband Portal.
This fall, Sony plans to launch an extensive broadband entertainment portal on the Web. Company executives are showing off a preview to the media and analysts at an Internet conference this week in Long Beach, Calif. Should someone tell them it's not 1999 any more?
The Guardian: New media gets the message.
According to Clay Shirky, "venture capital damaged online media." Most such companies put money into net companies expecting to lose it or make back 30 times their investment in two years, he explains. Content sites were never going to offer those kinds of returns.
News.Com: Microsoft pushes Passport in Windows XP.
A new feature introduced in the latest test version of Microsoft's Windows XP operating system requires people to establish an account with the software maker's Passport authentication service to use new instant messaging and telephony features.
Good Experience: Microsoft's Smart Tags Threaten the User Experience.
To me, this underscores the problem we're beginning to face as Microsoft attempts to extend its self-serving, user-hostile monopoly to the Web. Smart Tags are likely just the first in a series of much bigger threats Microsoft makes to the online user experience.
Salon: Google à go-go.
Q&A with Monika Henziger, director of research at Google. That's also what lots of our future work concentrates on: trying to understand better what documents are about, and also trying to understand better what the user queries are about. The problem is that most user queries are very short...
June 22, 2001
The Economist: Broadband blues.
The irony is that, while the world’s telecoms firms spend a fortune building 3G networks, even though they are not sure that anybody wants them, in many parts of the world they seem unable or unwilling to provide broadband connections at reasonable prices, even though customers want them.
Web Reference: Accessible Sites.
Q&A with Doug Isenberg, Jeffrey Zeldman, and Jakob Nielsen. Section 508 uses the government procurement process to ensure that technology acquired by the federal government is accessible to the disabled. Sites that are found to not comply could face legal action.
A List Apart: Much Ado About Smart Tags.
By adding smart tags to web pages, Microsoft is interposing itself between authors and their audience. Microsoft told Walter Mossberg "the feature will spare users from 'under-linked' sites." Microsoft is in effect deciding how authors should write, and how developers should build, websites.
Interactive Week: The Gestalt Of Data.
Where business intelligence can aggregate data so it's easily recognized and usable in real-world applications, data visualization gives the aesthetic interface to that data, and provides a view that may draw attention to details that might otherwise be missed in text readouts.
Computerworld: Experts: Banks and brokerages must jump into wireless.
Scott Ellison, an analyst at IDC, recommended that CIOs and other executives begin consulting customers and marketing departments to find out what services will most quickly be accepted. He also said companies should use customer trials and feedback before making wireless services generally available.
Washington Post: An Open Door to the E-Mailroom.
The e-mail system at one of the nation's leading money managers operated on the Internet for months with little security, giving outsiders access to messages containing confidential financial data, passwords and employees' personal information.
June 23, 2001
Mappa.Mundi Magazine: Mapping how people use a website.
We focus on one particular visualization system developed by Fry called anemone. It shows how people use a website by integrating page structure and dynamic usage data via a simple visual metaphor of a branching, growing organism.
Wired News: Tomorrow Never Looked So Cool.
Chin up: things will get better soon. That's the feeling one comes away with after examining the efforts of Hewlett Packard and IBM, companies that began demonstrating this week some of the technologies they think will make the next five years as fun as the last five.
Newsweek: The Son Comes Out.
During the last few months Son had not been pursuing his hobbies of golf or the tea ceremony, but “cancelled all my appointments” to work overtime on Yahoo BB, a new company with a mission to wire up millions of Japanese with broadband ADSL Internet connections.
June 24, 2001
SJ Mercury: Big business, big government face `the power of everyone'.
Dan Gillmor. Something important is happening on the computer screens and mobile communications screens of the world. The telephone is a great one-to-one medium. Modern media, which began with Gutenberg's press and now includes broadcasting, is about one-to-many communications.
Useit.Com: Error Message Guidelines.
Established wisdom holds that good error messages are polite, precise, and constructive. The Web brings a few new guidelines: Make error messages clearly visible, reduce the work required to fix the problem, and educate users along the way.
June 25, 2001
ZDNN: Tech industry looks to broadband for salvation.
Likening the task to the 1960s effort to put a man on the moon, John Chambers, chief executive of Cisco Systems Inc., is asking that the federal government commit to making broadband connections available to every home by 2010.
digitalMASS: Fact vs. fiction.
Barry Bycoff, the CEO of the Waltham software company Netegrity, agrees that leaders of high-tech companies are spinning some pretty incredible tales of why customers can’t live without their hardware, software, or services, even during a downturn. His analysis? "It’s all bulls--t."
InfoWorld: IBM ramps up speech technology products and research.
In the belief that speech technology is a big, fast-moving, and diverse market, IBM will put its stake in the ground over the next two quarters by giving its portfolio of voice recognition systems a new umbrella term -- Conversational Services.
Industry Standard: High Court to Publishers: Pay for Electronic Use.
The landmark case, New York Times Co. vs. Tasini, pitted the Times, along with Lexis-Nexis, Time Inc. and others, against six freelance writers who said their individual copyrights were infringed on when publishers redistributed their work electronically without further compensation.
Fortune: The Next Telecom Meltdown.
In fact, they remain addicted to the fallacy that burying more fiber will create a demand for services. Now they have taken their battle to the streets--literally--in a rush to build fiber networks for moving data in big cities. Things will be different this time, they claim.
Interactive Week: Have-It-Your-Way Web Sites Start To Catch On.
From breakfast kibble to makeup to cars, big companies such as Ford Motor, General Mills and Procter & Gamble have launched Web sites to give customers the ultimate buying experience: the ability to acquire self-designed products for a premium.
June 26, 2001
Salon: Assimilating the Web.
Scott Rosenberg. AOL controls the subscriber lists and a huge chunk of the content; Microsoft controls the consumer operating system and browser. Anarchy? No way -- this is a bipolar Cold War, waged with software standards and lawsuits and marketing blitzes.
Interactive Week: NAP Set To Open in Miami.
The giant switching station, launching this week in Miami's Overton neighborhood, is the first large Network Access Point to open since the federal government mandated for as part of its exit from the Internet several years ago. It's the first ever to be "carrier-neutral," run by a consortium...
Computerworld: BellSouth touts new Internet network facilities in Florida.
In a move aimed at resolving network latency issues in the Southeastern U.S. and speeding up Internet connections between the U.S. and Latin America, Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp. today announced that it had turned on new network access point facilities in Florida.
Network World: Starbucks wireless network a sweet deal for MobileStar.
The initiative is a boon to MobileStar Network, the ISP responsible for the wireless LAN connectivity in each Starbucks stores and the backbone network connecting the shops to the Internet. MobileStar expects Starbucks will account for 50% of its network footprint by 2003.
Interactive Week: Office Depot Site Picks Up Speed.
Today, Luechtefeld is regarded as one of the top movers and shakers on the Internet. She has an eye for detail and takes a hands-on approach to monitoring the Web site. Each day, she checks the site's sales, performance and customer service feedback.
Editor & Publisher: Online Publishers Association Formed.
Twelve Internet content companies have established the OPA to represent their interests before the advertising community, the press, the government, and the public. The founding members, which come from the newspaper, magazine, broadcast, and online-only industries...
June 27, 2001
Interactive Week: EU Mandates Internet In Every Home.
European Union telecoms ministers backed a proposal on Wednesday to bring the Internet to every citizen's house. Under the plan, operators will have to guarantee ``functional'' Internet access, even in remote geographical areas, which may not guarantee adequate economic returns.
SJ Mercury: Messaging technology offers new options to widen Web.
Dan Gillmor. There's no reason that the data connections can't go in both directions, as they do with instant messaging or other examples of ``peer-to-peer'' technology. When machines can stay in touch with each other in this way, the Net gets a lot more open -- and interesting.
NY Times: Europe Panel Is Rethinking How It Views E-Commerce.
In a surprising reversal, officials at the European Commission say they will listen to public concerns and are considering abandoning a long-held position on a core legal issue surrounding Internet commerce: whose laws apply in cross-border disputes.
Interactive Week: Schwab Offers Natural-Language Search.
Schwab settled on Cambridge, Mass.-based iPhrase Technologies' search engine, which allows queries to be submitted in plain English. The search engine can comb through analyst and research reports, and company information on file with the brokerage house.
ZDNN: Microsoft faces second patent claim.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company has about 80 other patent applications pending and may expand the suit if it receives other relevant patents. InterTrust is seeking unspecified damages and asking a judge to prevent Microsoft from shipping products that contain the disputed technology.
News.Com: New IBM monitor is detail-oriented.
The T220, which offers more than 9 million pixels on a 22.2-inch screen, will give people the ability to view large amounts of data in detail, according to IBM. In fact, the company said, the T220 displays 12 times more detail than current monitors.
June 28, 2001
Wall Street Journal: Microsoft Will Abandon Controversial Smart Tags.
Wednesday, after weighing this hostile reaction, Microsoft decided to kill the planned feature, at least for this year. Officials at the company said Smart Tags won't appear in the final version of Windows XP, due out Oct. 25, or in the stand-alone version of the new Web browser...
WebWord: Understanding the Art and Science of Web Design.
Q&A with Jeffrey Veen. I would try to make it as invisible as possible. For most people today, using the Internet means sitting at a desk and hearing the modem screech and bringing up a browser and squinting at a screen. That seems about as appealing as getting out to turn a crank to start your car.
Online Journalism Review: Content Management for the Masses.
Some recent announcements by CMS providers signal particularly good things for the small publisher or lone journalist looking to enhance (or establish) their Web presence. If the current trend continues, low budget news sites soon could enjoy systems that rival the best money can buy today.
WebWord: True Simplicity: Krug-o-rama!
Q&A with Steve Krug. In my experience, if you can get them to pop in for a quick look even CEOs and VPs will end up changing their plans and staying, since it's usually the first time they've seen someone actually using their product, and it's immediately clear to them just how invaluable this input is.
Wired News: EU Ratifies Long Data Retention.
The agreement reached Wednesday in Luxembourg by the Telecommunications Council -- representing all 15 EU nations -- could, among other things, mandate that Internet service providers store logs for up to seven years, which police agencies could obtain without too much trouble.
SJ Mercury: Ricochet rebounds as reliable product.
When I first wrote about Ricochet in October, the quality of service was erratic and the cost was beyond reach of anyone without a no-questions-asked corporate expense account. There have been two big changes that got me interested in taking a second look.
June 29, 2001
Fortune: Internet: Internal Threat?
Michael Schrage. Giant Financial Service Firm discovers a digital dilemma. Some of its very best brokers have posted their own Websites to alert, advise, attract, and support clients. This mushrooming of internetworked money-management media rivals GFSF's own branded site. What to do?
- CIO: From April 1, 2000; End Game.
Q&A with David Weinberger.
The Economist: The glass ceiling.
But that is what a group of researchers at Lucent Technologies’ Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, have done. And they have found that the limit is far beyond the reach of today’s technology, which means that there is plenty of scope to increase capacity in future...
NY Times: Invisible Publishing Sparks a Lawsuit.
A snippet of invisible Web page text has prompted a lawsuit by a Belgian company against Women.com Networks Inc. The suit shows how far Web site operators will go to capture and maintain prominent placement in Internet search results.
Computerworld: Visa sets technical specifications for online authentication.
Visa International Inc. this week announced the worldwide rollout of technical specifications designed to support payment authentication services for online credit card transactions while leaving retailers free to use their own mechanisms for processing payments.
Industry Standard: Wireless Secrets and Lies.
The Continent's major telecom players have spent the last few years wandering in a financial desert, searching for an elusive oasis they are convinced will revive them. That oasis is the wireless Internet, specifically in the form of the ultimedia and much-anticipated 3G mobile phones...
EE Times: Fixed wireless ready for wide rollout.
Bolstered by hints that the Federal Communications Commission is unlikely to take away their spectrum, developers at a packed industry conference this past week said fixed broadband wireless systems are now primed for major deployment.
June 30, 2001
Cooper Interaction Design: Beating the Checkout Blues.
You've got good products at good prices, the site navigation is straightforward, the product information is rich, appropriate, and easy to find, and everyone likes the clean, uncluttered visual design of the site. So why do more than half of your customers abandon their full shopping carts?
Computerworld: Tide Seems to Be Turning Against UCITA Measure.
Dan Gillmor. Big businesses that buy IT gear and services realized, not a moment too soon, that the legislation was a disaster because it shifted power away from customers into the hands of the sellers. Uniform laws that whack customers aren't pro-commerce.
Cooper Interaction Design: So You Want To Be An Interaction Designer.
The first thing to keep in mind is that interaction design is a new discipline that is still being defined in the academic setting. There are only a few institutions in the world offering degree programs specifically in "interaction design..."
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