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July 1, 2001
Newsweek: Men In Gray.
On its face, the e-Japan initiative makes perfect sense, once you get past the basic contradiction of a top-down initiative designed to create a bottom-up revolution. Unlike previous misguided governmental techno-jihads this seems to embrace seemingly foolproof ideas...
Internet Magazine: The future's bright!
Q&A with Jakob Nielsen. Ultimately, we all need to take our own fate in our own hands and *demand* usability. Refuse to use Web sites that are complex or that pop up too many annoying ads. Only buy consumer electronics products that have been reviewed as being easy to use.
July 2, 2001
Darwin Magazine: Brand New Branding.
Pets.com's demise raises the question: Does branding still matter? And if it does, how has the Web changed branding—and what do companies need to do to adapt to that change? Darwin asked four marketing gurus to share their opinions on the topic.
AskTog: Good Grips: Usability before Branding.
Lately, web companies start out with a branding strategy, use up 90% of their resources developing that strategy, then find out they have neither time nor screen real estate left to develop a useful product. The result? A whole bunch of Flash and little substance.
Online Journalism Review: Cyberspace's First Ombudsman.
His dual roles are to serve as a readers representative and as an internal critic interacting with the site's staff, all with an eye toward improving the news operation's journalism. He works out of his home, a 20-minute commute to the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington...
News.Com: Metricom files for bankruptcy protection.
Metricom spokeswoman Nicole Russell said the company intends to keep the wireless Internet service up and running for the time being. The company said there were 40,900 subscribers to the wireless service at the end of the last quarter.
NY Times: Selling a Vision of the Future Beyond Folders.
The time has come, he said, to fix a problem that has not been addressed in some 15 years: Computers are lousy at organizing our information; the antiquated system of sorting documents into folders and trying to maintain order has fallen apart.
July 3, 2001
Business Week: Friendly Spies on the Net.
How did these two unlikely Netizens connect online? Through a corporate sponsor, one also acting as an authorized eavesdropper. Every recipe the two exchanged, every word of solace they shared since they went online in November, was monitored by researchers at Hallmark Cards Inc.
Information Week: Return On Interaction.
Now, a growing number of private business-to-business communities are being created for internal company matters or communication among business partners... Collaborative discussion forums enable resellers, suppliers, and company representatives to find and fix problems early.
Business 2.0: Hidden Treasure.
Under development in labs at Microsoft and the University of California at Berkeley and available commercially from privately held Intelliseek of Cincinnati, the new software presents marketers with the general trends and themes of discussions and then allows them to zoom in on relevant details.
EE Times: Fiber-to-the-home advocacy group formed.
While the technology has been discussed for a number of years, its deployment has been hampered by its high cost relative to alternatives and by a general perception that applications for the higher data rates just don't exist.
The Register: Broadband Britain: the inside truth.
As someone charged with coming up with proposals and solutions for the broadband problem, Mr Radley and his other advisors in the Broadband Stakeholder Group would be remiss if they failed to examine other avenues of thought, even if these were seen to be politically backward by some observers.
Financial Times: Few competitors seen in UK wholesale broadband.
The provision of key wholesale broadband services will have to be put in the hands of monopoly or duopoly operators such as British Telecommunications, rather than several competitors, according to a leading member of the government's industry advisory group.
July 4, 2001
MSNBC: Copyrights and copywrongs.
Siva Vaidhyanathan. Copyright, when well balanced, encourages the production and distribution of the raw material of democracy. But after more than 200 years of legal evolution and technological revolution, American copyright no longer offers strong democratic safeguards. It is out of balance.
Industry Standard: Microsoft Could Hold Passport to Net.
Passport has been around for years. The technology was acquired by Microsoft when it bought a company called Firefly in April 1998. It's a single-sign-on identity authentication service for Microsoft Web sites and services and for any third-party Web sites and services that choose to support it.
Business 2.0: Design for Process, Not Products.
Jakob Nielsen. Customers of business-to-business sites are often faced with much more difficult decisions than the customers of business-to-consumer sites. A concept such as "getting management approval" doesn't even exist in B-to-C but is core to most B-to-B processes.
Business Week: Q&A with Hallmark's Tom Brailsford.
It's a product that doesn't exist yet because it's a strategic initiative we're thinking about. The community has informed us about that. This is something that's really a work in progress. It's not anything that has any kind of corporate approval.
Editor & Publisher: Measuring Web Audiences Still a Challenge.
Some newspapers continue to criticize these numbers, claiming that they don't adequately measure local markets. Publishers say their own server logs show far more visitors than the ratings services do. Many papers are now developing their own measurement systems...
July 5, 2001
Adobe: Q&A with Jeffrey Zeldman.
There is a tremendous amount of talent in the community. Particularly over the past two years, it seems to have grown exponentially. But what I see lacking in every aspect of Web development (not just design) is an ability to see the big picture...
NY Times: Inside the Virtual Laboratory, Ideas Percolate Faster Than Rivalries.
Traditionally, scientists from different institutions work together by phone, fax and e-mail. But Dr. Teasley's research found that the process can be so slow and frustrating that scientists' most effective collaborative work occurs when they meet informally at conferences or other gatherings.
The Age: Chinese weave a tangled website.
Whatever claim Australia lays to having a special relationship with China clearly does not extend to the official website of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Australia has lodged a formal complaint with China over the blocking of the site after informal entreaties failed.
InfoWorld: UCITA running on empty.
It's a lot harder for politicians to believe these things when they see the tremendous variety of people who oppose the law: corporate IT procurement officers, librarians, engineers and other high-tech professionals, consumer advocates, and so on.
ZDNN: Kodak tangles with Microsoft over Win XP.
When Kodak cameras were plugged into a PC loaded with Kodak software, it was Microsoft's own photo software that popped up--not Kodak's. Camera customers would have to go through a cumbersome process to get Kodak's software to pop up every time, and most would probably just use Microsoft's.
American Journalism Review: Brave Old World.
The differences are that stories are grouped according to the newspaper page or section where they appeared, and do not get updated as news develops. Editorially, the online print edition should mirror the paper that was dropped on your doorstep.
July 6, 2001
The Economist: Patently absurd?
Some believe that, in certain industries, strengthening intellectual-property protection accomplishes nothing positive. Others think that it may actually do some harm. If these economists are correct, patent-holders themselves may soon start clamouring for weaker, and not stronger, protection.
Wall Street Journal: Microsoft Cracks Down On Sharing Windows XP.
The company says its database of PC configurations won't contain any personal information, and will be encrypted so that nobody can misuse it. But Microsoft's bully-boy behavior in the marketplace hardly inspires confidence that it won't somehow exploit this information.
The Economist: Reality check for video-on-demand.
But even if the content owner could pass the $10 streaming cost on to the consumer, it would still lose money on every movie downloaded. Storage costs, service fees to ISPs and CDNs, and other overheads would make the whole business a losing proposition.
News.Com: IBM to specialize in large monitors.
According to a statement from Toshiba and IBM, Toshiba will expand its display business to concentrate on mid-to-small-sized LCDs for devices such as handhelds and cell phones, while IBM will focus on larger, high-resolution LCDs for computer monitors.
Industry Standard: Startup Thinks It Can Lick the Last-Mile Problem.
Actelis may have come up with a solution to the last-mile problem: Its technology enables data to travel over copper lines at speeds as high as 155Mbps, comparable to fiber-optic networks. Last week the company raised a $26 million third round of funding...
News.Com: MSN users seek answers for glitch.
MSN Messenger users started experiencing troubles on Tuesday, with the most commonly reported glitches being connection problems and missing buddy lists of friends. The service appeared to go down completely at 3 p.m. PDT on Thursday...
July 7, 2001
USA Today: Old-fashioned journalism in the Internet age.
I was invited to the Croatian capital to participate in a conference sponsored by the Freedom Forum, a Virginia-based media-research organization, to talk about the promise and perils of online journalism. Thanks to Milosevic, I get to practice what I am about to preach.
Interactive Week: Trade Agreement Draft Has Domain Name Dispute Language.
The draft text of the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement released this week proposes requiring operators of country-code top level domain names in signatory countries to adopt a controversial system for settling trademark disputes over Internet domain names.
July 8, 2001
Useit.Com: Helping Users Find Physical Locations.
The Internet may be virtual, but customers live in physical space and often need to visit companies in the real world. Given this, geography determines business success in a very simple way: Customers can either identify and find your location or they cannot.
NY Times: Dear World: Loose Lips Sink More Than Ships.
Ms. Turkle of M.I.T. says that many Americans equate e-mail with paper mail, which enjoys strong legal, and social, protections against snooping. Even though they know e- mail might not be secure, she said, many people think of it as being like talking with friends in a bar.
EE Times: Programmable IC aims to mend wireless LAN muddle.
The IEEE 802.11 committee will convene in Portland, Ore., in the next week to grapple with the standards proliferation that threatens to splinter the emerging wireless LAN market. The activity comes as one company tries an end run around the problem with a novel design option.
Newsweek: Busting the Web Bandits.
After joining Pay-Pal’s growing antifraud team, Kothanek began making suggestions for a program that would look for suspicious transactions and distinguish them from legitimate ones. They named the resulting software “Igor,” after a Russian mobster who plagued the system last year.
July 9, 2001
NY Times: Pursuing a New Line in Optical Research.
Operators of systems with hollow fibers would not only do away with many of the supporting components of today's networks, they figure that they could cram more lightwaves into the fibers at higher energy levels before dispersion causes the lightwaves to interfere with one another.
The Register: France to spend FF30bn on broadband for all push.
However, the French Government realises that the private sector alone will not fork out for such an investment - especially in more rural areas. That's part of the reason why the French Government is to make available FF10 billion worth of cheap loans to help fund the investment.
Computerworld: Big, Ugly Security.
And as a result, it's usually the messiest, ugliest, most user-unfriendly part of our systems. Is it any surprise that for almost everyone else in corporate life, our cobbled-together, bolted-on security is first and foremost an inconvenience, an irritation, an annoyance.
Interactive Week: The Password Plague.
Who knew that managing passwords could be so unbelievably expensive? Boeing did. The aerospace company recently estimated it was spending millions of dollars a year - Boeing would not provide an exact number - in support costs and lost productivity because of password management tasks.
NY Times: Sites Are Offering Data in Lieu of Sales.
Retail Web sites, for example, are becoming known as a way for companies to test and monitor their customers' purchase patterns, gauging early demand for items and funneling that information back to the companies' brick-and-mortar stores...
Adweek: CBS MarketWatch Disses Clicks.
The site is currently in negotiations with third-party research firms, including Dynamic Logic and Diameter, to develop pre- and post-campaign research methodologies comparable to those used for researching offline campaigns.
July 10, 2001
Industry Standard: VeriSign to Enhance Security for Microsoft's .Net.
On top of Microsoft's Passport authentication service, Mountain View, Calif.-based VeriSign will offer secure encryption services and digital certificates for payment transactions and confidential business communications. It also plans to develop new .Net-based Web services.
Wired News: Why Webvan Drove Off a Cliff.
On Monday, the Foster City, California, company said that it closed all operations and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. In the announcement, which came just a year and a half after Webvan's remarkably successful IPO, the company said it has no plans to re-open.
The Guardian: ISP wins Bulger injunction challenge.
Demon had argued in the high court that it should not be held responsible for material posted on its web pages that could be in contempt of the injunction, which is designed to prevent Thompson and Venables from becoming the victims of revenge attacks.
MIT Technology Review: Internet2: The Once and Future Net.
Today, 185 universities and research labs are breezing along on a parallel network to the public Internet called Internet2. Launched in 1996, Internet2 offers super-fast connections to two fiber-optic backbones and networking protocols that ensure data arrives at its destination without loss or delay.
Internet Week: Security Haunts The Wireless Web.
Just think about how many people you know who are now using Palms or other personal digital assistants and talking about the cellular Internet when only a few years ago they were barely online. But with this huge transformation comes a disconcerting issue: security.
Network World: IETF stays course on international domain names.
The IETF's Internationalized Domain Name working group was sidelined this spring by the discovery of a patent that appeared to cover the group's work. Now the IDN working group is forging ahead with a scheme for converting foreign language characters into U.S. ASCII equivalents...
Industry Standard: Oh I-mode, Where Art Thou?
In media reports Tuesday morning, an NTT DoCoMo spokesman was quoted as saying that the company was "not yet able to say when it will launch the service" in Europe. Because a joint venture with KPN Mobile aimed at developing I-mode in Europe has not yet been established...
July 11, 2001
Salon: CueCatastrophe.
Scott Rosenberg. The Internet industry and all of its "new economy" hype has now taken enough pulverizing criticism that it's worth re-examining the animus against it. After all, what were many of the highest-profile dot-coms that soared and then crashed really up to?
SJ Mercury: Small investors biggest victims of Net stock hype.
Dan Gillmor. A reckoning is a fascinating, and sometimes terrible, thing to watch. We're in the reckoning phase of the great technology bubble of the late 1990s. Every week brings news of people and organizations that are being brought to account for their actions.
MIT Technology Review: Work the Problem, People.
While researchers tap Internet2 to extend collaboration between universities and push the limits of new Internet technologies, another group of social scientists is looking at how Internet2 is affecting those who use it—in effect, researching the researchers.
News.Com: Standards group ignites common-code war.
After years spent goading Netscape Communications and Microsoft into complying with guidelines recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium, standards proponents say they are turning their attention to companies that make Web authoring tools.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Microsoft examines Messenger.
MSN product manager Bob Visse said the company will study how to prevent similar breakdowns, which threaten consumer confidence in the company's ambitious Internet-based plans -- the .NET initiative and related HailStorm set of Web services.
July 12, 2001
ZDNN: Librarians targeted in latest copyright battles.
Publishing houses that had ringside seats to the Napsterization of the music industry are increasingly concerned that their material, too, may be freely swapped in digital form. As a result, their primary target is the most obvious place to get free books: the public library.
Computerworld: CNN to cease personalized Internet news service.
In an e-mail message to subscribers today, Atlanta-based CNN said it will cease operations on its personalized Internet news service, myCNN, as of July 23. CNN urged subscribers to myCNN to set up an account with a similar service through Netscape, which will deliver CNN news.
ABCNews.Com: Recording History.
Nowadays, the seeds of future history may be flowing in huge volume from Web designers and content providers directly into peoples' homes, and the Library of Congress and other archivists are trying to create new systems to ensure the information is saved. It's a big job, they say, but also a big opportunity.
News.Com: Whois at heart of congressional hearings.
People representing privacy groups, trademark holders, copyright owners and software makers will testify before the committee, which is using the event as a fact-finding mission. There is no specific Whois-related legislation planned.
Internet Week: Exodus Users On Alert.
If a hardware or software vendor goes away, customers can make do with their installed systems, noted Dan Agronow, vice president of quality control, testing and operations at Exodus customer Weather.com. "If your hosting provider goes out, your Web site is down," Agronow said.
Wired News: Germany Makes Move to Flat Rate.
The two met last Friday in Berlin more to discuss a movie sources said, than to talk business. But Levin made a fresh case for Schroeder so that Germany can move beyond its current stagnant situation of customers paying mostly minute-to-minute access charges, as does much of Europe.
July 13, 2001
uiweb: Critical thinking part 3: project management.
It's true that design specifications are difficult to write, and that good ideas are fleeting and rare, but until the design is in it’s final form, it’s far from finished. Much can happen between the moment the designer finishes the expression of the idea, and when the development team has finished building it.
Lighthouse: Accept responsibility to make your online project work.
This project definition becomes the starting point for a back-and-forth dialogue with the development team. Business management and technologists refine the project together. Only here, says Thomas, can the software team start writing code.
NY Times: User Agreements and a 'Timeless Issue'.
The ruling, which was issued on July 5th, is one of the first decisions to directly address whether a person's mere use of a Web site -- without first reading legal fine print and clicking an "I agree" button -- can constitute consent to an agreement the use of the site or its products.
Network World: Internet too complex to secure, says exec.
When he goes to Washington, D.C. next week to testify before the U.S. Congress on computer and Internet security, Bruce Schneier, the CTO of Counterpane Internet Security, would like to tell them that such efforts are currently done poorly and with the wrong goals.
News.Com: Web, music giants march to different tunes.
In contrast, the music labels and their Internet partners are busy creating comprehensive online music services that respect copyright holders. But these major players are not interested in working with each other--and that could create a balkanized market that consumers find confusing.
Editor & Publisher: What Makes a Web Site Credible.
Ultimately, the project hopes to educate both Web publishers and consumers. For example, the project might do a report on how Web sites use cookies. The Consumers Union would likely survey Web sites to see how they use cookies and whether or not they disclose that information to their users.
July 14, 2001
EE Times: Cisco rallies industry for next-gen Internet.
Marshaling a star-studded partners roster, Cisco Systems Inc. this week rallied support for Internet Protocol version 6, an effort that backers hope will ignite broad acceptance of the next-generation Internet spec.
Newsweek: Calling The Net.
This, believe it or not, is just about the most popular way to use the Internet in Japan. Elsewhere in the world, cell phone Net access is a dream still to be realized. But for 8 million Japanese today, the mobile phone is the only way onto the Internet.
Fortune: Meet the New Cable Guy.
They're planning nothing short of a broadband revolution. Narad wants to turn today's typical cable television system--a combination of optical fiber and coaxial cable--into a switched digital network offering speeds of 100 megabits per second...
July 15, 2001
Computerworld: Black Hat: Users warned about wireless LAN holes.
A cryptologist who helped discover several gaping holes in the international wireless LAN standard and the encryption algorithm meant to protect such networks yesterday detailed the vulnerabilities that could be leaving corporate systems open to hackers.
Industry Standard: Check, Please.
In the case of the New York Times, the new policy was announced in a tone of deep and sad regret at the loss of historical completeness. We were almost dared not to notice that the publisher could have chosen to offer the writers in question some compensation for the reuse.
TechTV: Looking at Cyberlaw.
The following is an excerpt of an interview "CyberCrime" co-host Alex Wellen conducted with the professors and students about such controversial topics as copyright protection on the Internet, the digital distribution of music, cybercrime, jurisdiction, free speech, and privacy.
July 16, 2001
Salon: Why can't Johnny respect copyrights?
Classroom indoctrination is one way of targeting the Napster demographic. But can it work? To get a glimpse of this possible future of British elementary education, one must wade through a study produced by the task force's Intellectual Property Group...
Seattle Times: Knowledge-sharing platform proves wise move for AskMe.
If sharing knowledge enabled such gains, Procter & Gamble made them happen through technology. The Cincinnati company recently began linking 18,000 research and development employees through a global intranet called nnovationNet.
NY Times: Online Journalism Comes of Age.
But the Internet has made it possible to offer a quick first draft of print journalism, a format in which readers have come to expect facts and interpretation. By requiring a writer to show his or her hand earlier and earlier, the Internet has helped expose the raw nature of the news-gathering process.
News.Com: Search engines accused of deceptive results.
Commercial Alert, a 3-year-old group founded by consumer activist Ralph Nader, asked the FTC to investigate whether eight of the Web's largest search engines are violating federal laws against deceptive advertising.
MIT Technology Review: A Standard for e-Comments.
With no clear revenue plan, Third Voice became yet another dot-com casualty in April. The W3C hopes that by pushing the technology as an open-source solution, Annotea will take root as a useful "metadata" application--a way to provide information about online information online.
Interactive Week: Announcement To Boost Free-Space Optics.
Free space optics should get a boost in visibility today with the announcement that heavyweights Cisco Systems and Corning have invested in a small startup that uses beams of light to transmit data between buildings.
July 17, 2001
Industry Standard: Broadband Could Add $500 Billion to Economy-Study.
Consumers would benefit from online home shopping, entertainment, traditional telephone and health care services, as well as reduced commuting, adding $200 billion to the economy if half the country has the high-speed service or $400 billion if almost all Americans have it, the study said.
MSNBC: Studios agree on digital protection.
Under the deals reached between the two studios and the electronics giants, certain instructions and restrictions could be embedded in digital content such as movies. The agreements essentially set up several classes of protection, according to people familiar with them.
Fortune: The E-Factory Catches On.
When fully implemented, e-manufacturing uses electronically transmitted knowledge to design products, transmit orders, procure components, and drive production machines, and to follow it all up with remote product maintenance in the field.
Wired News: ISPs' Free Ride Over in Sweden?
Anders Lövbrand says he's found a steady source of income for indigent content providers: ISPs. Internet service providers would be worthless without the online media they distribute, figures the 26-year-old Swede, yet content providers aren't getting a fair slice of the revenue pie they help bake.
News.Com: Windows XP could draw Net phone companies into battle.
Although the importance of Microsoft's telephony software is questionable, companies are rushing to respond to the potential influence of its entry into the market, especially because of the mass-distribution power of the Windows operating system.
July 18, 2001
SJ Mercury: Case highlights law's threat to fair-use rights.
Dan Gillmor. Software that breaks encryption schemes is not, by itself, a certain sign that its purpose is to help people make illegal copies. We have the right to make personal copies of copyrighted works. That's fair use, and fair use is enshrined in our law.
News.Com: Russian crypto expert arrested at Def Con.
The bureau acknowledged Tuesday that it had arrested security researcher Dmitry Sklyarov for what it said was a violation of the DMCA. The arrest came a day after Sklyarov outlined the problems plaguing e-book formats and Adobe's PDF format at the Def Con hacking conference.
Wired News: All the News That Fits.
People can learn to accept data-dense television, according to UCLA psychology professor Philip J. Kellman, director of the school's cognitive science research program. Information delivered to the eye and ear is less confusing than that coming from two visual or auditory sources, he said.
Salon: Thank God for the Internet.
Q&A with Michael Lewis. And the Internet is a great celebration of doers and it also enables anybody to do it. So it enables Matt Drudge and anybody else; it just opens up the fields. It lets lots of people do to journalism what Jonathan Lebed did to Wall Street -- make it look foolish...
Wired News: Who, What, Where, Why and Web.
Pressure to teach technical skills is not new to journalism schools. Some faculty have been complaining about the button-pushing required in broadcast journalism for years. But the anxiety surrounding the Internet is different, perhaps because the demands are greater.
ZDNN: Microsoft pulls back on Java support.
Prerelease copies of Microsoft's new Windows XP operating system, which goes on sale this fall, drop the software needed to run Java-based programs. Java software is used to create some of the animated and interactive features of Web pages and hand-held devices...
July 19, 2001
Dan Gillmor: A Challenge to Computer Makers.
This is a move with little or no cost for the OEMs but tremendous potential benefits for their customers. Microsoft is trying to reduce diversity in computing. Java is one way to maintain the little that's left, and maybe grow it.
Wired News: Hacker Arrest Stirs Protest.
Web pages immediately sprouted to demand the release of Dmitry Sklyarov, who was visiting the United States to describe his work at the Defcon hacker convention in Las Vegas. Newly minted activists set up a mailing list, launched a defense fund, and trashed Adobe Systems...
NY Times: Cracking the Code of Online Censorship.
Mr. Finkelstein contends that filtering is not only inherently flawed but that in many cases it even acts as a deliberate censor. Many of the Web sites on the blacklists — feminist sites, gay and lesbian information sites, health sites and religious sites — are more political than pornographic in nature.
SJ Mercury: Welcome screen for AOL lacks depth.
They should be so concerned about premature brain-death -- among their editorial corps. Pardon my rant, but does the cotton candy on the welcome screen truly reflect the breadth of content available from the world's dominant online service?
Information Week: Meeting The Capacity Challenge.
But building and managing the infrastructure to ensure that there's enough capacity to handle the traffic can be difficult. For some companies, the answer is to outsource the entire Web operation to a hosting company that can provide additional servers and bandwidth to handle spikes in demand.
Wired News: Fixing a Hole Where Spam Comes In.
Typically, the spam hole can be blocked in a matter of hours. But if ISPs don't communicate well, or one fails to respond to another's complaint, the blocks can go on for weeks, as in this case. When they do, some legitimate e-mail can easily get caught in the trap.
July 20, 2001
Salon: Revenge of the file-sharing masses!
Scott Rosenberg. It's this year's mass Net movement: the Napster diaspora. As predicted, the crackdown on Napster is now leading directly to the widespread adoption of alternatives that are less legally and technically vulnerable to the kind of attack that has hamstrung Napster.
Interactive Week: Copyright Tug O' War.
The collection societies counter that until technology has been designed and implemented to prevent unauthorized reproductions of copyrighted works, levies on equipment will be necessary to ensure that owners of intellectual property get their due.
Darwin: Paste Makes Waste.
David Weinberger. It's clear what's needed: a standard way (in XML, naturally) of representing threads. After all, threads are of unique importance to the Web. They give conversations their persistence. They are the fundamental way those conversations are organized.
The Chronicle of Higher Education: Harvard University and 3 Publishers Develop Experimental Online Archive.
While finding long-term solutions to archiving text presents more modest problems, archiving the other objects that electronic journals increasingly contain presents a much greater challenge. These include sound and video files, computer simulations and computer data sets.
Interactive Week: China Reportedly Shuts Down 2,000 Internet Cafes.
China has shut nearly 2,000 down Internet cafes across the country and has ordered 6,000 to suspend operations and make changes, state media said on Friday. Anonymous cybercafes are popular because they allow people to evade tough content laws...
Fast Company: Don't Shout, Listen.
A year ago, it was a stodgy, nondescript site where no one other than investors and job seekers had any reason to go. Today, when you log on to it, you see a consumer-friendly portal that proudly announces P&G's responsibility for "more than 300 brands you know and trust."
July 21, 2001
Wired News: Adobe Tries to Quell Protest.
In an effort to derail protests planned for next week, Adobe representatives have agreed to meet with a civil liberties group to discuss the case of a Russian programmer charged with illegally bypassing the company's copy protection methods.
CIO: How to Analyze the Analysts.
All that might seem more benign if the research weren't so expensive. According to an exclusive CIO and Darwin survey of 200 CIOs, the average company spent $552,600 last year on analyst firms. That's a helluva lot of money to be spending on information that may turn out to be wrong...
Lighthouse: Brief encore from the subscription model.
Outside these narrow constraints, online subscriptions have rarely worked, and seem unlikely to work now just because business owners need the cash. Even Jupiter's analysts say that "the majority of [new] stand-alone subscription offerings will fail, or at least fail to reach any critical mass of users".
July 22, 2001
SJ Mercury: Finland blazing trails in mobile communications.
Dan Gillmor. Some of the most intriguing ideas about tomorrow's mobile communications and commerce are coming from the people of this small Nordic nation, whose influence on the world's telecommunications stage has long outweighed the size of its population.
Useit.Com: Tagline Blues: What's the Site About?
Summarizing a website's purpose is thus much harder in B2B than in B2C. That's why they pay copywriters the big bucks, or so you would think. On closer examination, it seems that most sites pay their copywriters to obscure the site's purpose rather than state it clearly.
July 23, 2001
Argus ACIA: Q&A with Seth Gordon.
Now that I have chosen a stable of favorite and most often used sites, as a consumer and general web user, IA is less important to me. I have invested time to learn my favorite sites inside and out, regardless of their intuitiveness. They have earned my wallet share...
News.Com: AOL to detail IM plans.
In advance of the report, the company on Friday said it is close to announcing a partner for testing links between its leading AIM service and other IM networks. As part of the test, AOL will use one of the proposed technologies submitted as a standard to the IETF...
SJ Mercury: Ideo gives technology a human touch.
These teams are taking the firm's core strength -- a deep understanding of how people really use things -- and applying it to a variety of design challenges from hospital walls to HTML pages. ``Culture and innovation need not be constrained to products and technology,'' said Tim Brown, Ideo's CEO.
News.Com: Alanis Morissette berates major labels.
In an incendiary keynote speech at the Jupiter Media Metrix annual Plug-In music conference Monday, the platinum-selling pop star highlighted the shattered promise of the online music revolution, blaming everyone from major record label executives to radio stations and music publishers...
USA Today: Study: Net use doesn't increase depression, after all.
Using the Internet at home doesn't make people more depressed and lonely after all. A new, longer follow-up from a study that linked Web use to poor mental health — heavily publicized three years ago — shows that most bad effects have disappeared.
Industry Standard: Next: The Future Just Happened.
Yet Lewis isn't content to settle on the small observations and revealing insights that previously served him so well. Instead, he seems intent to squeeze every last drop of Bigger Meaning from his subjects.
ZDNN: Microsoft's Stinger software creates.
The software maker will announce Monday that it invested an undisclosed sum in Sendo, a U.K.-based handset maker that is one of the four companies developing prototypes for a combination cell phone and personal digital assistant that will run on Microsoft software...
July 24, 2001
Online Journalism Review: Search Engines and Editorial Integrity.
Many of us in the new media industry have watched in despair during the past few months as several major search engines have abandoned all pretense at editorial integrity by adopting deceptive, misleading advertising practices at the expense of their users.
eWEEK: With HailStorm brewing, AOL readies 'Magic Carpet'.
Just like Passport, Magic Carpet works on a very simple premise -- eliminate the need to remember multiple names and passwords while browsing the Web. Using an existing AOL login, a Web site can instantly and securely access all associated visitor information.
Washington Post: AOL Begins Test to Share Instant Messaging.
The 11-page report, however, was short on details about the trial and did not say when AOL would open its system to rivals; instead, the company devoted much of the report to why interoperability is technically difficult to achieve and fraught with risk to users' privacy and security.
Salon: Save Java!
Q&A with Clay Shirky. As I was talking to my friends in the software industry, people who have been around a long time and know a lot of people, I realized that none of us knew anyone at the computer manufacturers. We've never had to talk to them before.
Forbes: Isn't It Cheaper To Give It Away?
And while it has posted a per-article charge, Inside.com is doubtless hoping that users will opt for its $3.95 monthly subscription fee, or $39 annual fee instead. That's because the cost of processing the single-article tab will eat up most, if not all, of the revenue.
Computerworld: Kmart, Wal-Mart take control of online counterparts.
Both retail giants established separate, independent companies in 1999 to sell their merchandise online. While Kmart provided little specifics on the merger in its announcement, Wal-Mart said it wants to more tightly integrate its stores with the online retail operation...
News.Com: Adobe: Free the Russian programmer.
Adobe backed down from the case after protesters in several U.S. cities demanded the release of Sklyarov and after a Monday meeting with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties group that agreed to represent Sklyarov.
MIT Technology Review: Fault-Tolerant File Storage.
That earth-shaking experience got Theimer, then an operating systems researcher at Xerox PARC, thinking about how to make computer file storage systems radically more fault tolerant. His work has helped to lead to Farsite, a fail-safe storage technology being created at Microsoft.
July 25, 2001
NY Times: Privacy Group Is Taking Issue With Microsoft.
But privacy advocates worry that Passport is a product brimming with public policy issues and ripe for abuse. And, they argue, the way that Microsoft's preview versions of Windows XP emphatically steer users to sign up for Passport is heavy-handed, if not deceptive.
News.Com: eBay, AuctionWatch call a truce.
Although AuctionWatch is one of the top auction service companies--its members list some 2 million auctions on eBay each month--the San Bruno, Calif.-based company has been at odds with eBay for much of the last two years because of AuctionWatch's search engine.
Financial Times: Sony branches out into ADSL internet access.
Sony's ADSL service will charge less than half the price of a rival service offered by NTT, the dominant telecommunications carrier, but slightly more than one offered by a joint venture between Softbank, the leading Japanese internet investment group, and Yahoo! Japan.
News.Com: Sharper Image redirects Net shoppers.
San Francisco-based Sharper Image has set up a virtual shopping mall featuring links to more than 80 other merchants, including high-profile names such as Nordstrom, the Gap, Brooks Brothers, Dell Computer and Office Depot.
Internet Week: Spectrum Search Puts Military In Hot Seat.
The nation's military says it can't give up spectrum for 3G because it could harm national security. The wireless industry, on the other hand, says if the military doesn't participate fully to find more spectrum, it could harm the nation's leadership in advanced Internet services.
The Register: Is this the rival to Google?
So what's the fuss about? Well, it looks as though it may give Google a run for its money. It's certainly improves on Google's methodology in one sense but it may end up being the ideal search tool if you know exactly what you are after.
July 26, 2001
LA Times: Taming the Wild, Wild Web.
But doing so almost inevitably means bringing more of the network under commercial control. For consumers, the change might mean faster downloads of video clips and Webcasts. But it also might mean a raft of fees for special services and the appearance of "gatekeepers"...
News.Com: Microsoft's stake in the AOL-Amazon deal.
According to a source within AOL, Monday's deal was aimed at boosting the company's e-wallet and related authentication services by tapping Amazon's e-commerce technology--a key element behind the e-tailer's reputation for strong customer service.
Network World: IBM unveils Reliable HTTP.
The new protocol - dubbed HTTPR for Reliable HTTP - ensures that a message gets delivered over the Internet to its destination application only once, or gets reported as undeliverable. HTTPR is geared toward business-to-business communications over the Web...
eWEEK: Making 802.11 standards work together.
802.11g, then, is stalled at least until September, which is when the next IEEE meeting takes place. 802.11a has a more definite product road map, but some IT managers wonder whether they should forgo 802.11a and wait for 802.11g.
EE Times: Copper proposals tout Ethernet versus ADSL.
The 100BaseCu technology is the second generation of the company's Etherloop technology, originally developed at Nortel Networks. Unlike ADSL, which transmits a constant bit rate, Etherloop operates in burst mode, transmitting only when there's data to be sent.
NY Times: Professor Who Once Found Isolation Online Has a Change of Heart.
He has new data from a more recent survey that in many respects contradicts his original research. Following up with the subjects of his first study, he found that the symptoms of depression had declined and that loneliness no longer appeared to be significantly associated with Internet use.
July 27, 2001
Upside: AOL wants to confiscate your Passport.
While AOL Time Warner has been using the system largely to coordinate memberships across sites that it owns, including Netscape.com, the Harry Potter movie site and You've Got Pictures, it plans to deploy the system much more aggressively to outside sites...
News.Com: The Webification of TV is happening.
Kevin Werbach. Like fish swimming in water, we spend so much time watching TV that we don't notice how much it has changed. Broadcast and cable television have become more graphically rich, more hypertextual and more real time, in large part due to the influence of the Web.
Interactive Week: Report: 'Pop-Under' Ads Mostly Ignored.
In a report issued on Thursday, Jupiter Media Metrix said that pop-under ads are able to generate wide reach, but are mostly ignored by Internet users. The study found that as many as three-fourths of Internet users tune out intrusive pop-under ads...
InfoWorld: Startup could allow ISPs to steal Windows space.
A startup with a key patent that gives it control over space on the Windows-dominated desktop says it has developed a product that will allow Microsoft competitors to squeeze their way on to PCs, just as AOL Time Warner plans to do through deals with PC makers.
News.Com: Net music faces patent squeeze.
The patent in question belongs to Intouch Group that has sued Amazon, AOL Time Warner's Entertaindom, Liquid Audio, Muze, Listen.com and Loudeye Technologies' DiscoverMusic, accusing them of infringing its patent covering a potentially wide range of downloadable and streaming music.
July 28, 2001
News.Com: Digital rights company snags patent.
ContentGuard said the digital ticket is a set of tamper-resistant codes that are put in a computer or embedded onto cell phone chips or plastic cards similar to credit cards. The code validates whether a person has certain rights to access specific digital content.
Fast Company: Starbucks Brews a New Strategy.
This time, Starbucks is tying its online efforts closely to its central mission: building customer loyalty around cappuccinos, lattes, and other fancy beverages. "We aren't in the business of selling Internet access," says Darren Huston, senior vice president for new ventures. "Our job is to sell more coffee."
July 29, 2001
The Register: TV Go Home says Odlyzko.
It's always a delight to report new research from our favourite comms brainiac Andrew Odlyzko, and a fresh draft of Andrew's ruminations on the future of TV over Internet has popped up at his page at AT&T Labs, where he's of course a chief scientist.
SJ Mercury: Don't write off Internet commerce.
Dan Gillmor. Technology has given retailers new tools for efficiency and customer support. Shopping habits have changed irrevocably. We're not returning to the old way of doing things, at least not willingly. What are some of the lessons from the first era of online retailing? Here are five.
July 30, 2001
NY Times: Jail Time in the Digital Age.
Lawrence Lessig. Using software code to enforce law is controversial enough. Making it a crime to crack that technology, whether or not the use of that ability would be a copyright violation, is to delegate lawmaking to code writers. Yet that is precisely what the D.M.C.A. does.
Industry Standard: Get With The Program.
"HTML is good for what it does. Java is good for what it does," Young declared. "What the Web needs is a merger of the two." Curl, he claimed, will deliver everything these ubiquitous Internet languages offer and more. The audience, about 60 strong, was skeptical, Berners-Lee or no.
News.Com: Hotel chain offers wireless Net access.
Wyndham and Summerfield Suites hotel chains also offer WiFi access, but Four Seasons says its project is one of the most ambitious in the hotel industry. The chain simultaneously launched a program offering T1 line access to most individual hotel rooms.
SF Chronicle: Mystery links.
TOPtext is an example of "contextual advertising," the latest attempt by online advertisers to reach the eyes and minds of Web surfers. TOPtext turns existing words on a Web page into hyperlinks that redirect a computer user to the advertiser's site.
NY Times: Modest Growth Prevails on the Web.
But analysts said that those Web merchants that had set more modest growth goals in the first place — and had other things going for them, like products people actually wanted to buy — had generally fared better than their "growth at any cost" counterparts.
Business Week: Office Depot's E-Diva.
Building Office Depot's online offering was the hardest thing she has ever done. She went against the grain--persuading senior management not to spin off the online effort as a separate "silo" but rather to incorporate it as the backbone of the company's supply chain.
July 31, 2001
MSNBC: Digital copyright act harms research.
Richard Smith. What bothers computer researchers about the DMCA is that it is a legal minefield that can trip up anyone investigating the security and privacy features of commercial software products. Sklyarov’s arrest confirms our worst fears about the DMCA.
Boston Globe: 'If I were the editor'.
Jon Katz. For all information media, especially those of us in the now ancient form called print newspaper, the challenge is to reconnect with the young. Without them, no medium will survive. At the Globe, we still present a world divided into news, sports, business, and arts sections.
MIT Technology Review: Lessons e-Learned.
Q&A with Richard Larson. A lot of my colleagues say asynchronous learning is revolutionary, but cave drawings are an example of that. The artist shared what he knew about buffalo, or what-have-you, and the painting made it asynchronous. The printing press revolutionized asynchronous learning.
Industry Standard: Yahoo Lends a Hand With Sony's Internet Strategy.
The electronics and entertainment behemoth struck a strategic alliance with the Internet portal in order to beef up its Web presence and create a unifying Web site that will bring the company's film, music and electronics units under one umbrella.
WebWord: The Usability of Usability.
Q&A with Jared Spool. As a profession, we need to spend a lot more resources on basic research. We need to stop thinking that there are pat, one-size-fits-all solutions to every problem. And we need to align ourselves with the business goals more directly.
ZDNN: Stop spammers--pay for your e-mail.
David Coursey. How much would you pay to do away with spam--the unwanted messages that clog your e-mail box? Would you be willing to pay a penny for every e-mail you send? That's about what I think it would cost to do away with this menace to personal and business communication...
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