|
September 1, 2001
IBM DeveloperWorks: The Principle of Least Astonishment.
When users are astonished they usually assume that they have made a mistake; they are unlikely to realize that the page has astonished them. They are more likely to feel that they are at fault for not anticipating the page. Don't take advantage of this; making users feel stupid is not endearing.
Information Week: Artificial Intelligence To Hit The Mainstream.
OpenCyc product manager John De Oliveira says the work Cycorp is doing is focused on furthering development of Tim Berners-Lee's vision of the Semantic Web, a future incarnation of the Web in which content will be interpreted and manipulated by computers rather than simply read by humans.
Information Week: NTT To Deliver Streamed Video To Cell Phones, PDAs.
NTT DoCoMo and PacketVideo Corp. have jointly developed technology for converting streamed video for delivery to cell phones and PDAs over third-generation wireless networks. The live-video-distribution technology will debut Oct. 1, when NTT launches its hotly anticipated 3G service...
Network World: Satellite satisfaction?
The first-generation consumer satellite data links, which providers call one-way links, let you receive data over the satellite link, but required a phone line to send it. These next-generation links operate two-way, so you don't need a phone line.
September 2, 2001
NY Times: In Technology, Supply Precedes Demand.
Again and again, investors have gone hog wild over new networking technologies, spent a fortune to install them and found themselves with vast overcapacity and ruinous competition. Yet eventually the capacity was always used, often for purposes never foreseen when it was installed.
Useit.Com: Designing Web Ads Using Click-Through Data.
Search engine ads are one type of Web advertising that can actually work. To create the best ads, do quick experiments and redesign ads based on usability principles for online writing. Doing so helped us increase ad click-through by 55% to 310%.
PC World: Intel Pushes Technology to Speed PC Performance.
So PCs must work and communicate well with other devices, says Steve Whalley, manager of the Always Connected computing initiative at Intel. And overall, the PC industry must meet the challenge of turning from technology-driven products to consumer-driven, human-centered ones, he adds.
September 3, 2001
NY Times: House to Focus on Net Access and Competition.
The question posed by the House bill is whether the Bell local telephone carriers should essentially have sole control of Internet access over phone lines or whether competing companies should also have a fighting chance to use those local connections.
Business Week: The Fiber-Optic "Glut" -- in a New Light.
When today's excess capacity is absorbed by the expanding market, says Merrill Lynch analyst Simon Leopold, carriers will be forced to upgrade their networks yet again -- inspiring another round of telecom spending. The upshot? Reports of the fiber glut appear to have been greatly exaggerated.
NY Times: Bricks-and-Mortar Merchants Struggling to Assess Web Sidelines.
According to two recently released reports from Internet consulting firms — one by Forrester Research, the other by Jupiter Media Metrix — bricks-and-mortar retailers that judge their Web divisions solely on the basis of profits may be shortchanging themselves.
Computer User: Senator plans anti-piracy copyright legislation.
Consumer electronics hardware makers, including computer manufacturers, would be required to develop anti-piracy technology to be included in their products under proposed legislation from Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ernest "Fritz" Hollings.
Chronicle of Higher Education: Libraries Criticize Federal Report on Digital-Copyright Law.
Advocates for libraries are criticizing a U.S. Copyright Office report, released late Wednesday, that recommends against revising copyright law to assure that libraries and consumers can lend and archive software and other electronic material they purchase.
September 4, 2001
SF Chronicle: CEO says Safeweb plan will help open China.
Safeweb's plan, if it goes forward, could be a major step toward allowing Chinese to see the Internet's full spectrum and to exchange ideas that are otherwise banned. Think of it as the online version of Radio Marti, the U.S. government's decades-old radio broadcast into Cuba.
Publish: Marketing goes Gonzo.
Q&A with Christopher Locke. The problem is that the commercial world didn't show up [to the Internet] until the audience was already there. The audience didn't come because business was there. The audience came because the audience was there.
Technology Marketing: A Betting Man.
Michael Schrage. But, sooner rather than later, digital marketing will be as ubiquitous as the remote control. Will it be enormously profitable for agencies? Probably not. Will it be enormously beneficial for clever companies and their customers? You bet.
NY Times: Giving the Web a Memory Cost Its Users Privacy.
Cookies fundamentally altered the nature of surfing the Web from being a relatively anonymous activity, like wandering the streets of a large city, to the kind of environment where records of one's transactions, movements and even desires could be stored, sorted, mined and sold.
- Crypto-Gram: From Feburary 15, 2000; Cookies.
Bruce Schneier.
SF Chronicle: Internet phones a rare bright spot at Cisco Systems.
And phone system sales to one of Cisco's favorite kinds of customer -- large corporations -- have actually grown during the first half of the year, according to one market research firm. Cisco estimates it now ships 2,500 of the phones each day, compared with 500 a year ago.
Information Week: Technically Speaking.
Five years ago, it seemed that we'd all be talking to our computers by now, and could throw away those pesky keyboards. What happened? While speech recognition has become ubiquitous with call centers and voice portals, it's a long way from letting us talk to our PCs.
September 5, 2001
NY Times: As Big PC Brother Watches, Users Encounter Frustration.
So what do consumers really want? Despite dozens of surveys of consumer attitudes toward privacy over the years, a nuanced understanding of American attitudes about privacy is only now beginning to emerge. Part of the problem is that no one, in the abstract, is against privacy...
First Monday: Exploring Users' Experiences of the Web.
Despite this incredible growth, browsing the Web is still a relatively neglected activity in terms of research. While there has been a number of large scale quantitative surveys of Web use, only a handful of researchers have looked in-depth at Web browsing as an activity.
Cooper Interaction Design: Putting people together to create new products.
Setting up the right responsibilities in your organization reduces costs and risks throughout the entire product development process. Engineering efforts become easier to manage because you can measure engineers' work against the behavior specification, without mid-course changes.
Darwin Magazine: Sharp Focus.
In my reporting, I fly around the world to interview people in person. Is videoconferencing technology poised to reduce the number of times we have to get on planes? Can it improve collaboration and communication? Or is it yet another technology that's perpetually going to remain five years off?
Computerworld: Israeli bank pushes wireless service despite low usage.
Despite having a mere 100 users per day for his company's year-old wireless service, Meir Shor, CIO at Tel Aviv-based Bank Leumi le-Israel BM, is pushing an IT project that in the next few months will add Web- and wireless-based account aggregation and transaction capabilities.
News.Com: Microsoft shows off research goodies.
At an event recognizing the 10th anniversary of Microsoft Research, Gates indulged his fondness for technology, raising hopes for a world where computers will become more useful. "The message you'll get is one of incredible optimism," he said as he described Microsoft's vision for its research labs.
Interactive Week: ICANN Mulls Cutting Public Input.
In a controversial but not unexpected move, a committee of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers last week recommended cutting from nine to six the number of board members that can be selected by individual Internet users.
September 6, 2001
Doc Searls: Whose side is TiVo on?
The money behind TiVo is glad to buy TV ads showing viewers throwing TV executives out the window, but TiVo will never install anything that poses a threat to the relationships between media and their real market partners: advertisers. And that's why it's doomed.
News.Com: Sony writes swan song for radio service.
"The idea was very innovative," said Sony spokesman Mack Araki. "I think it is fair to say that the products and service were received well by the customers who used it. However, we concluded it is not feasable to generate a reasonable rate of return in the near future."
NY Times: Do Search Engines Expedite the Theft of Digital Images?
But just because something is copyrighted does not mean it cannot be lawfully copied. So the real question is, are there images — or any other works for that matter — that can be legally copied without asking permission?
Washington Post: Gates Calls for a Cut in High-Speed Net Costs.
In an interview, Gates urged government policymakers to meet with representatives of the cable and telephone industries to determine what it would take to provide broadband services for $30 a month, instead of the monthly fee of about $50 that consumers pay...
NY Times: Government Is Wary of Tackling Online Privacy.
Since then, the world has changed, and not just for the dot-coms. Momentum has dissipated in Washington for new laws and regulations that might restrict the use of cookies and other high-technology tools by businesses to monitor Internet users' activities.
CNN: NEC develops fuel cell for handhelds.
NEC Corp. and two Japanese government-affiliated research institutes have developed a fuel cell for use in mobile devices that could mean notebook computer battery life times of several days become commonplace within the next few years.
September 7, 2001
SJ Mercury: Government retreat will take a toll on competition.
Dan Gillmor. The case for splitting up this unrepentant monopolist has only grown stronger since the trial, not weaker. Microsoft has been spitting on the legal system and, with Windows XP and other initiatives, maneuvering without any subtlety to extend its monopoly into new arenas.
Red Herring: Coming soon: ethernet as business model.
More than 250 million ethernet-based corporate networks serve as testimony to ethernet's success. And now this technology is moving beyond the comfort and security of the local network to the enterprise. In doing so, it's taking on bigger challenges and is creating new opportunities for startups.
Atlantic Unbound: Beyond the Tech Bubble.
James Fallows. Next appears, as you note in the introduction, when sophisticates act as if they, of course, never took the hype about the Internet seriously. So while NNT could best be appreciated as a snapshot of an unusual moment in history, Next comes across as contrarian.
EE Times: Struggling fiber-optic industry looks to Congress for relief.
Legislation sponsored by 61 senators would amend the U.S. tax code covering investment credits to give tax breaks to companies that provide broadband Internet services to underserved areas. They would also have to show 10 percent market penetration to qualify for the credit.
InfoWorld: Microsoft Research at work on interface for Web services.
Looking to adapt the GUI to the Internet and the forthcoming generation of Web services and distributed applications, Microsoft Research is at work on a more natural interface, said Kai-Fu Lee, of Microsoft's research team, here at Future Forum on Thursday.
User Interface Engineering: Driving Innovation and Creativity through Customer Data.
Many designers understand that the need for customer input is invaluable, but they perceive the process to be too costly. Without the necessary customer involvement, designers end up developing products based on what designers believe customers need, rather than what they actually need.
September 8, 2001
Wired News: New Copyright Bill Heading to DC.
With the help of Fritz Hollings, the powerful chairman of the Senate Commerce committee, they hope to embed copy-protection controls in nearly all consumer electronic devices and PCs. All types of digital content, including music, video and e-books, are covered.
Donald Norman: Applying the Behavioral, Cognitive, and Social Sciences to Products.
Why the failure? I place the blame squarely upon BCSS itself: students are badly prepared for the demands of a product-driven industry. Faculty are equally ill-prepared, and therefore unable to make a difference – assuming they would even be interested in doing so.
Web Reference: Kelly Goto and Emily Cotler on Web Redesign.
As the Web industry grew and changed, it was apparent many of the sites were going through redesigns, and most of my projects focused on redoing what had been done before. It became a natural topic and a great direction for the book.
InfoWorld: Users reject notion of 'parasitic grid'.
Although some deride the implications of the term "parasitic," at the center of the debate is the impact that so-called free wireless access points based on the 802.11b standards will have on the rollout of third-generation networks.
News.Com: New cable standard may triple speeds.
Under DOCSIS 2.0, cable operators could allow consumers to send more data at greater speeds, a requirement for high-end online video game players and necessary for new services such as Internet-based phone calls, videoconferencing and other future interactive applications.
September 9, 2001
PC Format: Microsoft HomeStation.
Microsoft is working on a top-secret home entertainment device code-named HomeStation. The PC/Xbox hybrid will run a version of Windows to form a home entertainment hub. The device will finally turn the idea of digital convergence into a living room reality.
Interactive Week: Share That Content With Your Neighbor.
P2P streaming delivery networks set up a virtual chain between users who have already downloaded the content. When someone wants the content, that person downloads it from another user — a peer in the network — who is best able to deliver it.
September 10, 2001
Business 2.0: How to Beat Corporate Alzheimer's.
Today, KM is making a comeback on the strength of better solutions -- namely, the humble search engine. In the last few years, search engines, originally developed to comb through the sprawling expanses of the Web, have become remarkably effective at finding bits of data wherever they lie.
Washington Post: AOL Seeks Big Stake In AT&T Cable Unit.
AOL Time Warner Inc. is stepping up efforts to acquire a major stake in AT&T Corp.'s cable system, offering a deal that would give the media company control of the combined operations, according to sources familiar with the proposal.
NY Times: Uncertain Future for Online Cards.
Now that Excite@Home is entertaining any and all serious offers for its media properties in an effort to keep bankruptcy lawyers at bay, the future of Blue Mountain Arts, the electronic greeting card service it bought for $780 million in 1999, is very much in question.
Network World: Proposal could ease wireless upgrades.
A task group of the IEEE is scheduled to vote this month on adopting a proposal by wireless chip maker Intersil that would let future wireless LAN products, such as interface cards and access points, support wireless LANs operating in either of two different radio frequencies: 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz.
News.Com: Intel to ship higher-speed wireless tech.
Intel executives plan to market technology that uses both wireless standards, but eventually they see 802.11a as the eventual winner. Like most emerging technologies, Frye believes 802.11a products will first become popular in the corporate market before entering the home.
Interactive Week: N+I Dials WLAN Phones.
The phones, which use the 802.11b WLAN frequency, are about the size of standard wireless phones. On display at this week's NetWorld+Interop tech show in Atlanta, they provide the same functionality as traditional desk phones, but with greater mobility.
September 11, 2001
This site is taking a break today. Watch Scripting News for the latest. Lawrence.
September 12, 2001
Donate to the Red Cross from Amazon, PayPal, Yahoo, the Red Cross website or 1-800-HELP-NOW.
Computerworld: After the attack: IT working to keep data online, resources safe.
Still reeling from the shock of multiple attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside of Washington, U.S. companies are responding quickly to assure that their people are safe, that IT facilities remain online and that disaster preparedness and recovery plans are in place.
Wired News: Anti-Attack Feds Push Carnivore.
Just hours after three airplanes smashed into the buildings in what some U.S. legislators have dubbed a second Pearl Harbor, FBI agents began to visit Web-based, e-mail firms and network providers, according to engineers at those companies who spoke on condition of anonymity.
September 13, 2001
Wired News: Congress Mulls Stiff Crypto Laws.
The encryption wars have begun. For nearly a decade, privacy mavens have been worrying that a terrorist attack could prompt Congress to ban communications-scrambling products that frustrate both police wiretaps and U.S. intelligence agencies.
PC World: Will Attack Hurt Net Privacy?
Government officials have not yet revealed any plans to curtail individual freedoms online. But concerned privacy advocates are urging authorities to take a long-term view of any new eavesdropping proposals.
Online Journalism Review: Commercial Sites Struggle to Keep Current.
In the wake of the massive attack on the World Trade Center, businesses, government agencies and individuals relied on the Internet to reach loved ones, and co-workers as cellular and land-bound phone service proved sporadic after the disaster.
September 14, 2001
Dan Bricklin: The Internet is now a dominant tool for regular people.
For many people, the general Internet is on par with other, older public information sources, and sources they have relationships with or an affinity for are trusted even more. The huge rush of people to the Internet during times of tragedy or rapidly unfolding events that are of deep importance to them shows this.
September 15, 2001
Wired News: Amateur Newsies Top the Pros.
Computers and digital communications were too few and far between in Yugoslavia for the strife in Kosovo to have been a real Internet war. But one of the most striking things about the terrorist attacks in Washington and New York was the outpouring of outstanding Internet coverage from ordinary citizens.
September 16, 2001
SJ Mercury: Technology has potential to spread freedom in Africa.
Dan Gillmor. But technology is also helping reporters in Zambia, South Africa and other nations to bring corruption and misbehavior into the cleansing light of day. It's connecting people with their relatives in distant places. It's helping people to learn, collaborate and communicate.
Crypto-Gram: 11 September 2001.
Bruce Schneier. Both sides of the calendar debate were wrong; the new century began on 11 September 2001. All day I fielded phone calls from reporters looking for the "computer security angle" to the story. I couldn't find one, although I expect several to come out of the aftermath.
September 17, 2001
NY Times: Internet Surpasses Its Original Goal.
Nearly 40 years after it was conceived as a method of maintaining communications in the event of an attack on the United States, the Internet — long since broadened past that purpose — last week had the first real test of its original goal.
Useit.Com: Mobile Devices Will Soon Be Useful.
This month's DEMOmobile conference indicated that mobile devices are becoming increasingly useful and are poised to move beyond early adopters and enter the mainstream. The conference highlighted several key changes and industry trends.
NY Times: I.S.P.'s Curb Terrorist Postings and an Anti-Islamic Backlash.
Whether it is Web sites supporting terrorism, or backlash anti-Islamic messages posted on Internet bulletin boards, some material has forced the Internet access providers to step up their screening efforts or rethink their standards of what sort of material is acceptable.
CIO: That's the Ticket.
Michael Schrage. Organizations that truly want to change in ways that matter surely need managers and leaders--but they also need tour guides. A firm that wants to become more innovative shouldn't be hiring and acquiring innovators or going off to "innovation classes"...
September 18, 2001
uiweb: The myth of optimal web design.
Whether you are designing an intranet web site, or a microwave oven, you have at least three sets of overlapping criteria to deal with: Business objectives, user experience objectives, and resource limitations. These aspects create lines of both synergy and tension.
News.Com: PCs, servers hit by virulent worm.
Known as "Nimda" or "readme.exe," the worm spreads by sending infected e-mails, copying itself to computers on the same network, and compromising Web servers using Microsoft's Internet Information Server software. Analysis of the worm is still in the early stages, experts said.
MSNBC: In wake of attacks, Web site owners rethink potentially dangerous details.
But in the aftermath of Tuesday’s tragedy, the presence of such information on the Internet raises an important question: Will the terrorist attacks have a chilling effect on what is available on the Internet, out of fear that terrorists could use the medium to launch future attacks?
Wired: Pocket Monster.
Talk to people here and you begin to realize that i-mode succeeded not because Japan is a mutant market but because its creators made all the right assumptions about how to set up a mobile data service and sell it to the public.
Web Review: Lessig Slams Bovine Culture of Complacency.
On the infrastructure level, technologies like policy-based routing and content filtering are attempting to move the Internet to something more like cable TV. Meanwhile, the duration and scope of powers enjoyed by copyright owner are steadily increasing.
September 19, 2001
Darwin Magazine: The Hole in the Ordinary.
David Weinberger. And watching TV together as a nation, with all of us hearing the major networks at the same time, provides an informational substratum unheard of 100 years ago. But the Web provided something new on the planet: a first person news medium.
Online Journalism Review: Media Critics See Web Role Emerge.
Even more fascinating, she said, were the eyewitness reports posted by New York-based Webloggers, whose descriptions were often accompanied by images and video from the scene of the attacks. "They illustrated how news sources are not restricted to what we think of as the traditional news media..."
InfoWorld: Major new worm poses serious threat.
The worm, called Nimda, can spread via e-mail attachments, HTTP, or across shared hard disks inside networks, Thompson said. The worm can infect all 32-bit Windows systems because it scans systems for between 10 and 100 different vulnerabilities and exploits them when found...
New Scientist: Controlling encryption will not stop terrorists.
But experts say that trying to control encryption may be a waste of time and effort. Terrorists are, they say, far more likely to use steganography, which involves obscuring messages from detection in the first place, as well as straightforward codeword-based messages.
Time: Wi-Fi Gets Going.
The instigators of the revolution are two standards that allow machines to talk to one another, known as Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11b or, more popularly, Wi-Fi. Both connect gadgets cheaply by accessing a swath of free radio spectrum over which to exchange digital data.
Wired News: Hollywood Loves Hollings' Bill.
In interviews Monday, representatives of the Walt Disney Company and News Corp. defended a draft of the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act as a reasonable compromise that will spur high-speed Internet access and boost hardware sales.
September 20, 2001
Wall Street Journal: Microsoft Plans to Open Its Passport Service to Rivals.
But the initiative is bound to generate considerable skepticism, in part because Microsoft has in the past been accused by rivals and some privacy groups of making additions to the Kerberos technology to maker it harder for companies to use non-Microsoft software.
LA Times: Firms Turn to Meetings Without the Traveling
To keep things going, many companies are turning to videoconferencing, the technology touted years ago as the movement that would end corporate travel. It never did and it never will. But videoconferencing is on the rise, and experts said last week's events will further accelerate its use.
Forbes ASAP: Why Is Broadband So Narrow?
That is why Lyne and a growing number of other business leaders in Chicago believe this financial bottleneck can best be removed by leveraging the spending power of government. Mayor Daley is the moving force behind a broadband-to-the-neighborhoods effort called CivicNet.
InfoWorld: A punitive puppeteer?
While we're on the subject of license enforcement, let me throw in a term one alert reader just spotted in the license for FrontPage 2002. "You may not use the Software in connection with any site that disparages Microsoft, MSN, MSNBC, Expedia, or their products or services ... " the license reads in part.
News.Com: Spectrum off-limits after attack.
Analysts now say the industry will just have to face the fact that more spectrum is not on the table for the foreseeable future. But the government will most likely try to compensate the industry in some way, namely by lifting spectrum cap restrictions, according to analysts.
Fast Company: China Unicom's Long-Distance Leap.
But in China, where phone networks are less advanced, it represents an opportunity to leapfrog generations and land smack in the middle of the most advanced telecom technology in the world. Guangzhou plays host to the vast majority of China's Internet telephony.
September 21, 2001
Online Journalism Review: A Scorecard for Net News Ethics.
With more people than ever following the news on computer screens, perhaps now is a propitious time to step back from the enormity of the past week's events to take a longer view. Let's pause to consider how the Internet is shaping journalism ethics, and how the Internet ethic is steering journalism in new directions.
Washington Post: To Attacks' Toll Add a Programmer's Grief.
In a telephone interview from his home in Burlingame, Calif., Zimmermann said he doesn't regret posting the encryption program on the Internet. Yet he has trouble dealing with the reality that his software was likely used for evil.
The Register: Why Microsoft's Open HailStorm promises flatter to deceive.
In fact, seasoned watchers including Jeremy Allison - co-lead of the SAMBA project - interpret the "concessions" as extending the requirement for Microsoft's partners to include proprietary technology in their .NET compliant web services. So what was new, today?
Wired News: China Quietly Unblocks U.S. Sites.
An official at the Ministry of Public Security, which oversees Internet control, refused to discuss why it blocks or unblocks any sites. Yet one key Chinese expert said the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the United States may have provided the impetus.
Interactive Week: Google Buys Xerox PARC Spin-Off's Assets.
Search engine Google on Thursday announced that it will buy the intellectual property assets of Outride, an online information retrieval technologies developer that was spun off from Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center.
News.Com: New DSL standard offers faster speeds.
Although DSL speeds vary widely, the new G.SHDSL could be two to three times faster than most versions of DSL targeted at business customers. The G.SHDSL standard also can deliver data farther than earlier DSL technologies, which are limited to a relatively short distance.
September 22, 2001
Fortune: Small-Scale Heroics.
Those folks begged to be sent to New York. The untrained volunteers were thanked and then turned away. But if Silicon Valley couldn't supply brawn during a national disaster, it could supply bits--and companies large and small did so with a vengeance.
Argus ACIA: Q&A with Peter Bogaards.
Everybody with a background and experience related to people and their communication can become an information designer. If you have a passion for the motives, needs, emotions, cognition, circumstances and values of people, you are more than half way there.
IBM DeveloperWorks: What's with the attitude?
When users complain about sites, webmasters frequently respond with hostility, derision, condescension, or just plain silence. No wonder users rarely bother to complain. Bad attitudes stand between the site you created and the site your users want to use.
September 23, 2001
SJ Mercury: Today, there's safety in spreading out.
Dan Gillmor. We can't, and shouldn't, entirely abandon the urban centers. Cities will be important for many decades or even centuries to come. But we can, and must, recognize a new reality. Safety once resided in large numbers. In tomorrow's world, there will be more safety in spreading out.
NY Times: Concern Over Proposed Changes in Internet Surveillance.
Significant and perhaps worrisome changes in the government's Internet surveillance authority have been proposed by legislators in the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Indeed, so much is happening so quickly it's hard to keep track of the legislative process...
SJ Mercury: Oracle boss urges national ID cards, offers free software.
Broaching a controversial subject that has gained visibility since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Oracle Chairman and CEO Larry Ellison is calling for the United States to create a national identification card system -- and offering to donate the software to make it possible.
Newsweek: Did Encryption Empower These Terrorists?
Before September 11, commercial interests, privacy advocates and most in the government had reached a sort of common ground, balancing high-tech with threats. Cryptography was regarded as a fact of life, one with some benefit to national secruity as well as risks.
Wired News: Infected DSL Users Get 86ed.
Frustrated with users who can't or won't configure their computers to stop the spread of worms and viruses, some broadband access providers have now decided to cut service to customers whose machines are infected with worms such as Code Red and Nimda.
September 24, 2001
NY Times: Travelers Warm Up to Videoconferencing.
But even as fears of flying began to recede and airline schedules returned to near normal, there were signs that the moment of crisis might be prompting a nation of road warriors to consider supplementing travel with teletechnology as a general practice.
Interactive Week: Expert: Net Is Vulnerable.
Part of the problem is that the Internet was basically built by people who liked each other, he said. "Now there are people out there who are adverse to us, who don't like us. And they have access to the Internet's technology, too. So there is a vulnerability, and it is not trivial."
EE Times: Technologies trade privacy for greater security.
Whether such concepts could be extended to work in conjunction with national ID cards for 280 million people, however, is another matter. "Can you issue national identification cards? Certainly," said Crowell of Cylink... "The question is, will they be useful?"
Mappa.Mundi Magazine: Imagining the Inner Workings of the Internet.
Of course data packets do not have a physical form, so one has to invent an imaginary form for them. Creating this imaginary, visual vocabulary to explain the inner workings of the Internet was the challenge tackled in the 1999 short film, Warriors of the Net.
EE Times: Chip set bridges 802.11a and .11b wireless LANs.
Along with combining the two standards, Synad has overlaid extra features to allow a wireless-LAN-enabled laptop or personal digital assistant to seamlessly hand off from an 802.11b zone into a 802.11a zone without loss of data.
September 25, 2001
Slashdot: Philip Zimmermann and 'Guilt' Over PGP.
In the interview six days after the attack, we talked about the fact that I had cried over the heartbreaking tragedy, as everyone else did. But the tears were not because of guilt over the fact that I developed PGP, they were over the human tragedy of it all.
NY Times: Disputes on Electronic Message Encryption Take On New Urgency.
To experts like Dorothy E. Denning, a professor of computer science at Georgetown University who supported the Clinton administration's key escrow efforts, the issue was properly settled and should not be reopened. "We had all those debates a few years ago at a time when we could rationally debate it..."
News.Com: Web publications place ads first.
Now publishers including Salon.com and Microsoft's MSNBC.com require readers to look at a sponsor's ad for several seconds before they can see the story they came for. In some cases, readers must click on a link within the ad to reach requested content.
Wall Street Journal: Business Procedures for Internet Are in State of Flux After Attacks.
This big drop in online spending comes at a particularly bad time for Yahoo and other Web sites. They were already reeling from an ad-spending slump that started last year. Yahoo has had to cut its rates repeatedly this year, advertisers say.
News.Com: It's the people, stupid.
Too many products, and many start-ups, fail because they don't focus on a simple reality: Humans will need to use and like the product or service. Too often, technologies and products are created because they can be, not because they should be.
The Register: E-minister calls for lower broadband prices.
The elusive E-Commerce Minister Douglas Alexander today called on the telecoms and Internet industry to cut prices and help stimulate demand for broadband. In particular, he singled out BT to "exploit (its broadband) investment more aggressively" in a bid to get Broadband Britain on track.
September 26, 2001
O'Reilly Network: In Defense of Cities.
Clay Shirky. Cities are not isolated things so much as the large-scale intersection of countless small forces, forces which in aggregate give cities the kind of homeostasis and adaptability that have made them such surprisingly long-lived features of human life.
InfoWorld: Sun, others to issue competitor to Microsoft's Passport.
The Liberty Alliance Project intends to create a universal digital identity service based on open standards. Users should be able to log in once and be authenticated for all the online services supporting the Liberty standard.
Wired News: China Re-Blocks News Sites.
China's Ministry of Public Security, which oversees the nation's Internet censors, refused to explain why it blocks or unblocks certain sites. Yet many question whether any coherent explanations even exist. As CNN's Beijing Bureau Chief Jaime FlorCruz insisted, "There's no rhyme or reason."
The Register: Broader surveillance won't prevent terrorism -Schneier.
"You can either build a system right or build it wrong and watch everybody," said Schneier. "Broad surveillance is generally the sign of a badly designed system of security." Instead of relying on collecting more data, counter terrorism agencies should put more effort into human intelligence.
Forbes ASAP: The Tragedy Of The Commons.
Daniel McFadden. The solutions that resolve the problem of the digital commons are likely to be ingenious ways to collect money from consumers with little noticeable pain, and these should facilitate the operation of the Internet as a market for goods and services. Just don't expect it to be free.
September 27, 2001
NY Times: In the Next Chapter, Is Technology an Ally?
Q&A with Ray Kurzweil, Lawrence Lessig and others. The Sept. 11 tragedy will accelerate a profound trend already well under way from centralized technologies to distributed ones and from the real world to the virtual world. Centralized technologies are subject to disruption and disaster.
ZDNN: E-commerce without frontiers.
Greg Papadopoulos, CTO of Sun Microsystems. The natural tendency will be for Internet service providers to give preferential treatment to their own services and those of their business partners. What we need is a universal identity system that doesn't play favorites.
News.Com: VeriSign empire's new territory: Net IDs.
VeriSign, which already supplies a large chunk of the security software used on the Internet, is quietly building a digital information and infrastructure empire. In the process, its Internet services are rapidly becoming the necessary underpinnings for other companies' lofty ambitions.
Washington Post: Web-Page Collection Preserves The Online Response to Horror.
Now far-flung volunteers from New York to the District of Columbia and the state of Washington are joining the Library of Congress and Internet Archive in San Francisco to create a special digital archive, one that aims to re-create what appeared online...
Newsbytes: Intel Seeks FCC Aid In Promoting Broadband Deployment.
According to Intel's pleading, the "true benefits" of broadband will require faster transmission speeds than 200 kbps upstream and downstream. These benefits include video on demand, file sharing and peer-to-peer computing, all of which need faster access, the company asserts.
News.Com: Yahoo to unveil Webcasting services.
Yahoo said it would offer two packages. Virtual Conference will provide live or on-demand viewing via the Web that can be accessed by thousand of individuals at numerous locations worldwide. The service can be customized to run a pay-per-view broadcast or include interactive tools...
September 28, 2001
Forbes ASAP: It's Right Before Your Eyes.
Jef Raskin. Dell, Compaq, Sony, IBM, and all the others should make portables that use plug-in displays when they're on your desk and eyeglass-mounted displays when they're not. Our friends in Cupertino, California, might call them the Apples of your eye.
The Economist: Seeing is believing.
If appearances were tricky in 1878, they have just become trickier still. By doubling the resolution of existing liquid-crystal displays, IBM has created a monitor which, when viewed from 18 inches away or farther, shows images that the human eye finds indistinguishable from the real thing.
EE Times: Single wireless LAN spec in peril.
Prospects for a harmonized global wireless LAN standard appear bleak, as political and legal barriers emerge in Europe and Japan to block adoption of the IEEE-802.11a WLAN specification, backed robustly in the United States. Indeed, some 802.11a supporters are coming to accept a three-standard world...
New Scientist: Hacker re-writes Yahoo! news stories.
Freelance security consultant Adrian Lamo demonstrated that, armed only with an ordinary internet browser, he could access the content management system used by Yahoo!'s staff use to upload daily news. Lamo added the false quotes to stories to prove the hole was real...
News.Com: Yahoo hints at Web-based office tools.
The giant online portal is hosting a survey on its Web site that asks questions based on a hypothetical "full-featured suite of office productivity tools available online through a browser, handheld devices and Web-enabled cell phones."
September 29, 2001
EE Times: Copy protection bill divides industry, Hollywood.
A draft copy-protection bill backed by Hollywood heavyweights is triggering an outcry from PC and consumer electronics companies who say the legislation would force them to relinquish control of key system design technologies.
PC World: Three Minutes With Security Expert Bruce Schneier.
There has to be a market incentive to provide security. Either you lose sales, or you get sued. But there is no such product liability in software. If Microsoft produces an insecure product and your data gets stolen, they are not liable. I think consumers should be livid about this.
Wired News: Charting Virtual Worlds.
For years, cartographers and designers have tried to help by creating maps of cyberspace. The results have been mixed, but now the fruits of their labors have been collected in a handsome new coffee-table book, the Atlas of Cyberspace.
News.Com: Free wireless Net access for the masses.
But Lohmann cautioned that a number of Internet service providers require that subscribers sign agreements that limit the use of the service by third parties. Excite@Home, AT&T and Time Warner, three of the nation's biggest providers of cable Internet access, all limit the sharing of a single connection.
September 30, 2001
SJ Mercury: Webloggers offer views media can't.
Dan Gillmor. Via e-mails, mailing lists, chat groups, personal Web journals and non-standard news sources, they received valuable context that the major American media couldn't, or wouldn't, provide. They were witnessing -- and in many cases were also part of -- journalism's future.
Useit.Com: Deferred Hypertext: The Virtues of Delayed Gratification.
Navigating a full browsing session to find information can be unpleasant and slow, particularly on mobile devices. Instead, issue a deferred request and have the information arrive later, as done by some SMS systems.
DaveNet: Patents and the W3C.
The W3C was a source of courage in re software patents, and it appears they're caving in. If you think, as I do, that patents have no role in the future of Internet standards, please make your point of view heard. The deadline for comments is today.
SJ Mercury: Tech devices leave many befuddled.
Millions of consumers find themselves in the same frustrating scenario, saddled with glitched PCs, cell phones and digital assistants that they can't operate. All too often, their response is to give up -- and stop buying. The problem boils down to one word: usability.
| 