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November 1, 2001
eWEEK: Broadband Seen as Catalyst.
Illustrating the inextricable ties between the technology and telecommunications industries, Eric Benhamou, chairman of the board at 3Com Corp. and Palm Inc., urged policy-makers last week to stimulate broadband network deployment as a means of bolstering the tech sector.
CIO: Distance's Demise.
Q&A with Frances Cairncross. Companies—and investors—have yet to adjust to the slimmer margins brought about by greater price transparency and more competition. And also to the fact that they will become niche specialists rather than vertically integrated behemoths.
Wired News: Victory for DVD Code Cracking.
But since a federal appeal is still pending in a similar New York case involving the right to publish the DVD descrambler -- called DeCSS -- it's still unclear whether the "code is speech" defense sung by many techno-libertarians will provide them any shelter from the law.
CNN: TV networks sue maker of digital video recorder.
The three major television networks on Wednesday sued the maker of the first Internet-ready personal digital video recorder, saying the ReplayTV 4000 allows people to make and distribute illegal copies of television programs.
News.Com: Rival browsers benefiting from MSN gaffe.
The squabble also prompted an outcry from Berners-Lee, who holds the 3Com Founders Chair at the Laboratory for Computer Science at MIT. His response was surprising, given that Microsoft is a member of the W3C and the consortium has an unofficial policy of refraining from singling out individual members.
November 2, 2001
Good afternoon. Today is the third anniversary of the site. Thanks for reading and all the support over the past three years. Lawrence (tomalak@tomalak.org).
Salon: Dumpster diving on the Web.
Kahle's geeky democratic ideal -- all the information! for everyone! all the time! forever! -- is the same formula that has made so many other Internet utopia engines -- think Napster -- run headlong into the restrictions of old-fashioned copyright law.
Wired News: Stealing MS Passport's Wallet.
By cobbling together a handful of browser-based bugs with flaws in Passport's authentication system, Slemko developed a technique to steal a person's Microsoft Passport, credit card numbers -- and all, simply by getting the victim to open a Hotmail message.
Darwin Magazine: A Failure to Communicate.
Wouldn't it make more sense if the computer could collect the information itself, carry out process-oriented jobs without being told and adapt to the user's needs rather than vice versa? DARPA thinks so.
EE Times: Darpa kick starts wearable computer initiative.
At the center of the activity, the DARPA has released a request for proposals that aims to bring together people and technologies in the textile and electronics industries to forge the tools, processes and fundamental technology needed to build a new class of wearable systems made of fabric.
Online Journalism Review: Online News on a Tightrope.
The Online News Association's second annual conference in Berkeley, Calif., last weekend showed an organization with the talent and pluck to tackle the considerable challenges facing the online news industry, though growing pains were still very much in evidence.
November 3, 2001
Semantics: Pandora's Portal.
Peter Morville. It begins with a seductive whisper into the ear of an IT manager. Wouldn't you like to control the chaos that is your intranet? Haven't you dreamed of providing unified access to all corporate knowledge? Come with me. I have the answer. Right here in this tiny box.
Fortune: A Handful of Convergence.
Stewart Alsop. Cell phones use too much power; handheld computers are too big; the user interfaces are so different they can't be combined; and the resulting products, not surprisingly, have been duds. But now the geeks may have figured it out!
EE Times: Microsoft nixes certification for 5-GHz wireless LAN chips.
Atheros Communications Inc.'s plans to announce that its 5-GHz wireless LAN chip has received the coveted Windows Hardware Quality Labs certification from Microsoft Corp. is mired in uncertainty. Microsoft apparently will only grant the certification to devices that also support 802.11b...
November 4, 2001
Dan Gillmor: A Fraudulent, Cynical Settlement.
This deal, assuming it takes hold, is not even a wrist slap. It's a love letter to the most arrogant and unrepentant monopolist since Standard Oil. It's an invitation to keep on plundering and whacking competition in the most important marketplace of our times, the information marketplace.
November 5, 2001
interesting-people: Intel and Broadband Deregulation.
David P. Reed. The genius of the Model T Ford was that it was within reach of much of the population, and they could either buy it outright or "finance" it based on their own personal credit. Now personal credit has rarely been used to finance telecom.
The Economist: The next society.
Peter Drucker. Just as unskilled manual workers in manufacturing were the dominant social and political force in the 20th century, knowledge technologists are likely to become the dominant social—and perhaps also political—force over the next decades.
Darwin Magazine: Culture of Collaboration.
But not every company is positioned to take advantage of the tools. The danger for many is overspending on collaborative technologies without making the cultural and organizational adjustments necessary to derive any benefit from them.
NY Times: Networks See Threat in New Video Recorder.
Whether the media companies' suit will succeed is anybody's guess. But whatever the courts rule, personal video recorders are not likely to go away. TV executives worry that the recorders threaten to do to their industry what Napster has done to the music business...
News.Com: Aerie sees Ricochet network as a utility.
Under Aaronson's proposal, Aerie would partner with local governments and allow them to sell the service directly to their citizens, or use resellers to do the job, Aaronson said. Aerie itself plans to use traditional resellers to sell the service, he added.
November 6, 2001
Bob Frankston: Beyond Telecom.
As long as we allow the incumbents to use their control over both connectivity and services/content to thwart competition in services/content, we will suffer economically. And we will also have a system that is fails to enhance our security because traditional systems are brittle rather than resilient.
Star Tribune: The U's Gopher system was the early way around the Net.
Gopher was a hit. Universities and libraries all over the world quickly began using Gopher. The University of Minnesota eventually adopted it, too. With Gopher, users could quickly find, search and retrieve information and resources from computers connected to the Internet.
Christian Science Monitor: Profit vs. innovation.
Lessig, a law professor at Stanford University, is easily the most recognizable name in Internet law. A fierce opponent of government regulation or monopoly business that would check scientific progress, Lessig is a strong believer in the idea that technology ought to serve some collective good.
MSNBC: Apparel sellers try new Web gizmos.
Although all e-commerce sites — and offline stores — bring out new products and services in time for the holiday shopping season, these high-tech devices are especially popular at apparel sites, because they must convince a shopper to buy a shirt without trying it on or even touching the fabric.
The Register: WLANs hit 22Mbps.
TI worked hard to make ACX100 the first deployable high rate technology in the 2.4GHz spectrum, which Buffalo has now confirmed with its AirStation product. This is a small victory for TI after its snubbing by the IEEE on 802.11g - a product has yet to ship featuring Intersil's OFDM technology.
November 7, 2001
Salon: Internet liberation theology.
In "The Future of Ideas," Lessig, who is perhaps most famous for his brief tenure as a court-appointed "special master" in the Microsoft antitrust trial, also sees dominant players exercising control through the law, technical standards and political might to resist the change that might otherwise take place.
Darwin Magazine: Why do Intranets Fail?
The fact that many internal corporate websites go unused—or worse, waste employees' time—is vexing, given the alluring promise of intranets. The same technology that made the Internet a revolutionary communications tool was supposed to revolutionize the corporation as well.
Network World: TheBrain puts information in its place.
Imagine having all of your enterprise's digital information available through one screen. No more digging for documents through a hierarchy of file folders. That's what TheBrain Technologies says it is offering enterprises with its latest software release, the Java-based Enterprise Knowledge Platform...
Washington Post: FCC To Ease Airwave Restrictions.
Federal regulators plan to lift a cap on the amount of airwaves a single mobile telephone company can own in a market, a move that will open the door to a new round of consolidation in the highly competitive industry.
Glenn Fleishman: Google Alchemy: Word into HTML.
Google quietly updated all of its distributed indexes this weekend with a major change: the company now extracts and indexes the text from many file formats, including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PostScript, RTF, Lotus files, WordStar 2000, RFT, MacWrite, and on and on.
November 8, 2001
SJ Mercury: Judge says Yahoo is not subject to French ruling in Nazi memorabilia case.
U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel found Yahoo is protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Underscoring the ``novel and important issues arising from the global reach of the Internet,'' Fogel wrote the case had implications for ``policy, politics, and culture that are beyond the purview of one nation's judiciary.''
Financial Times: BT to test mesh radio in battle to dominate broadband.
The new technology, called mesh radio, could enable it to compete with cable television operators and satellite broadcasters in providing broadband internet access - at lower cost. As base stations are not required, costs for mesh radio are lower than other broadband systems.
Network World: Telework gets strong backing from new consortium.
Last month the Software Productivity Consortium - a group of over 100 private and public organizations ranging from AT&T to Xerox, and including many defense and civilian government agencies - created the Telework Consortium, an umbrella organization dedicated to accelerating the adoption of telework.
NY Times: A Paternity Dispute Divides Net Pioneers.
Now a dispute is churning around credit for a modern scientific breakthrough: packet switching, the technology that breaks all data that travels over the Internet into discrete bundles that are then sent along various paths around the network and reassembled at their destination.
November 9, 2001
PC World: Will the Web Someday Link Food, Bodies?
Forrester coined the term X Internet to describe a future Internet of "executable" and "extended" services and applications delivered online. The X Internet won't be brand new, but rather an evolution of today's Internet of static Web pages and clumsy e-commerce processes.
Media Guardian: BT and the failed revolution.
Everybody in the industry is blaming somebody else, and they each have a different view of what went wrong. The only thing the industry as a whole agrees on is that the UK is falling behind the rest of Europe in broadband access, and this could jeopardise British business's competitive position.
Computerworld: UCITA opposition turns up heat.
UCITA's opponents are hopeful that the most contentious part of the proposal, electronic self-help, will be dropped. That provision allows vendors to electronically disable software for a breach-of-contract violation. Users say it's a ticking time bomb that will increase litigation and create undue risk.
InfoWorld: Fast shows off near real-time indexing.
Fast Search & Transfer ASA will launch an upgraded version of its Alltheweb.com search engine on Monday that offers near real time searches in over 3,000 online news sources. Fast has added a new search "vertical," allowing specific news searches.
Computerworld: Novell's new wireless LAN connects 2,000 employees.
Young said he created a single wireless LAN that runs outside Novell's corporate firewalls to give employees easy wireless Internet access without the need for complex security maneuvers. At the same time, Novell's wired corporate network is protected from unauthorized wireless access by hackers.
November 10, 2001
InfoWorld: UCITA: a security threat.
In its essence UCITA encourages the development of vulnerable information systems. The most obvious way in which it does this is the infamous electronic self-help provision, the one that allows software publishers to leave secret backdoors and time bombs in their programs...
EE Times: Group backs ZigBee as pervasive wireless spec.
ZigBee, which originated as a "Lite" offshoot of the HomeRF specification, operates in the unlicensed 2.4-GHz band and is based on direct spread-spectrum technology. It offers a data rate of less than 220 kbits/second over a longer distance — up to 75 meters — than Bluetooth.
News.Com: MobileStar network back on.
MobileStar, the wireless service provider for about 500 Starbucks cafes and dozens of hotels, is back in business about a month after it shut down. "MobileStar has returned to business as usual," the Richardson, Texas-based company said in e-mails it began sending to customers earlier this week.
November 11, 2001
NY Times: Machine-Made Links Change the Way Minds Can Work Together.
All three are examples of the way in which the intelligence of the Internet can be greater than the sum of its parts. For years, the Internet has served as a tool for communication; when the Web came along in the early 1990's, it added a multimedia component to the Internet, with images, music and text.
Useit.Com: Beyond Accessibility: Treating Users with Disabilities as People.
It's time we moved beyond technical accessibility when discussing how to improve the Web for users with disabilities. We should consider these users as users: As people who have jobs to perform and goals to accomplish when they use websites and intranets.
NY Times: Making Better Toys and Jumbo Jets by Sharing the Rough Draft.
The technologies that Equity uses are part of a raft of innovations changing how companies design products, thereby opening the door for greater collaboration, shorter cycle times, higher quality and wider customizing. These innovations are often grouped under the rubric "rapid prototyping."
November 12, 2001
Newsweek: The End of the Net.
Q&A with Lawrence Lessig. But every major change that’s going on right now around the Internet is a change to undermine that neutrality, so those who control the legal system or control the physical network are able to veto innovations they don’t like.
USA Today: Cisco chief: Future may lie in virtual networks.
Q&A with John Chambers. (In a virtual network organization) you do only what adds sustainable value. You outsource what others would be better at, but you tie all this together using a network. Applications tie together to create the ultimate killer application, which is the virtual network organization.
ZDNN: Europe: Time to crunch the cookies?
The use by some Web site operators of files to track Web surfers' Internet activity is the digital equivalent of trespassing, and may constitute an invasion of privacy under European law, said Per Haugaard, a spokesman for the commission.
- Crypto-Gram: From Feburary 15, 2000; Cookies.
Bruce Schneier.
PC World: Intel Pushes Wireless Roaming for PCs.
When the company launches its intelligent roaming technology some time in 2002, it will also allow users to seamlessly switch between wireless LANs and use wireless wide area networks including third-generation and 2.5G mobile systems, he said.
Network World: ICANN meet addresses domain name security.
Prompted by concern over the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers this week will host a special meeting on the security and the stability of the Internet's naming and addressing systems.
November 13, 2001
Fast Company: Disrupter - Akira Ishikawa.
So here is Ishikawa's barrier: Nearly everything we know about the delicate, exacting process of building microscopic transistors on silicon is geared to making flat computer chips. Until Ishikawa, no one had tried to etch a semiconductor's tiny circuitry onto a curved surface, much less onto a sphere.
Financial Times: IBM increases focus on privacy and security.
The company has more than 3,200 researchers and eight research and development centres around the world. It said that significant numbers of researchers would be redirected to work on technologies that would help large corporations implement privacy policies within their IT systems.
Chicago Tribune: Broadband dream hits snag.
After years of extolling the nirvana awaiting us once American households get so-called broadband connectivity to the Web, telecommunications executives have become deeply frustrated that a lot of Internet users are saying no thanks.
ZDNN: Bug secrecy vs. full disclosure.
Bruce Schneier. Since full disclosure has become the norm, the computer industry has transformed itself from a group of companies that ignores security and belittles vulnerabilities into one that fixes vulnerabilities as quickly as possible.
Computerworld: Sept. 11 Web archive project a model for companies.
While large, established businesses around the globe have for years saved much of their history -- on paper, through advertisements, with brochures and more -- it's unclear whether they've been as thorough with their first forays onto the Web. But doing so is important, according to experts.
November 14, 2001
Cooper Interaction Design: Whole lotta thwarting going on.
In essence, nobody wants to automate the misery. But they can't help themselves. In fact, they pile it on. That is why it is particularly important for new content-management systems to understand and appreciate the often bewilderingly heterogeneous practices people use to manage content.
Semantic Studios: The Speed of Information Architecture.
Whatever the justification, someone commits to a take-no-prisoners redesign that obliterates all elements of the prior site. In the worst cases, an entirely new team is assigned to "do the job right this time," assuring no organizational learning whatsoever.
EE Times: Microsoft gathers partners for home-network initiative.
Microsoft Corp. will take a deeper step into consumer electronics this January when it launches a so-called e-Home initiative at the Consumer Electronics Show, where it will roll out new technology to connect PCs and digital consumer devices using emerging home networking technologies...
News.Com: Yahoo adopts paid search listings.
The Internet portal said it plans to integrate Overture's paid listings, or "sponsor matches," with its directory pages by Thursday. The service lets advertisers bid for placement in query results rather than rely on natural listings or editorial recommendations.
PC World: Virtual Keyboards Let You Type in Air.
Call it air guitar meets computer keyboard. Two firms here at Comdex, Samsung and Senseboard, are showing off gizmos that attach to your hands and track your finger movements so you can type without a keyboard to input data into a personal digital assistant or other handheld device.
November 15, 2001
Web Techniques: Inside Salon Premium.
Scott Rosenberg. Obviously, ours isn't the only way to build a for-pay site. But our experiences—the strategic decisions we made, the operational choices required to carry them out, and the technical solutions we adopted to make it all happen—should benefit anyone thinking of taking this path.
Computerworld: Vinton Cerf on the future of e-mail.
I think people are beginning to realize that privacy is of real value and that it would be helpful if encrypted e-mail were as easy to generate as the encrypted link we all use on the World Wide Web when filling out e-commerce forms.
NY Times: Europe Moving Toward Ban on Internet Hate Speech.
The 43-nation Council of Europe is trying to ban racist and hate speech from the Internet by adding a protocol, or side agreement, to its cybercrime convention, which was stamped for ratification on Thursday. The convention is scheduled to be formally ratified at a meeting in Budapest Nov. 23.
BBC News: French bureaucracy takes online leap.
France is about to launch an electronic government initiative that will give every citizen a personal internet portal allowing them to pay taxes online, register a child for a state school, or be reminded that their regulatory car inspection is due in a month's time.
November 16, 2001
NY Times: Was the French Ruling on Yahoo Such a Victory After All?
Goldsmith said that Judge Fogel's decision has not changed the fundamental nature of the jurisdictional dilemma posed by the Internet. "If you are a global Internet company [with foreign assets] doing business in many countries, you have to follow local laws," he said. "I don't know why that's shocking."
Wired: Meet the Bellbusters.
A quarter-century after the seeds of the Internet came alive at 3 am in the Stanford engineering lab, Judy Estrin is convinced that these perennial infatuations with circuit-switched panaceas are symptomatic of a deeper disorder: a flagging commitment in both public and private sectors to evolving IP.
The Register: IP conference: copyright law has gone too far.
While Barlow talked about the philosophy of information freedom - how information becomes more valuable when it's shared, unlike physical goods - Boucher took the more pragmatic approach by talking about what's going on in Washington and what changes he believes need to happen.
MIT Technology Review: The Next Computer Interface.
That's why many researchers—at universities and startups like Gelernter's Mirror Worlds as well as giants like Microsoft and IBM—are searching for alternatives. They're examining metaphors taken from other media, such as books or diaries or film...
News.Com: Wireless group tentatively OKs speed boost.
Because of 802.11a's release, some tech executives felt the new 802.11g standard was not needed. They also fear that a third standard would confuse and frustrate consumers if they buy wireless networking products that are not compatible with each other.
November 17, 2001
InfoWorld: A stalking horse?
Ed Foster. In fact, the SSSCA is such an unrelieved nightmare that I've had trouble taking it seriously. Surely after all the publicity generated by the Dmitry Sklyarov affair and other abuses of the DMCA, Congress won't actually consider this hard-wired version.
Technology Marketing: Starbucks Moves Ahead With Wireless Plans.
Now, though, the project seems back on track. On Monday, VoiceStream Wireless announced it has struck a deal to buy MobileStar. While this will take up to 60 days to be approved by the bankruptcy courts, VoiceStream will provide financial assistance in the interim to keep MobileStar in business.
MIT Technology Review: All the News That's Fit for You.
At its tenth anniversary this fall, Microsoft Research unveiled prototype software that analyzes and indexes news footage. Q-Video, as Microsoft calls it, lets viewers find a CNN story as easily as a New York Times article.
November 18, 2001
Lighthouse: Of Google, Amazon and Weblogs: reputation management evolves .
Yahoo, LookSmart and others used paid editors to build lists of the Web's best sites. But that model could't deliver quality and still remain economically viable. While Yahoo and its ilk turned to the business of being "portals", the Web waited for other solutions.
November 19, 2001
NY Times: Companies Compete to Provide Saudi Internet Veil.
To critics of the sale of content filters, software company executives say that they are only providing politically neutral tools. "Once we sell them the product, we can't enforce how they use it," said Matthew Holt, a sales executive for Secure Computing...
LA Times: U.S. Aiding Broadband Despite Strong Growth.
The bills have sparked an outcry from many policymakers and some consumer groups that say the measures are handouts that essentially reward years of foot-dragging and obstruction by the Baby Bells. The Bells' competitors, including Sprint Corp. and more than 100 other rivals, are howling as well.
Technology Review: Unwiring the Web.
Although companies like Texas-based Wayport and MobileStar have provided wireless access in places like hotels, airports and coffee shops, the new cooperatively run networks are, for the first time, allowing users to surf in outdoor public areas.
Computerworld: Disney IT official touts 'wireless' Magic Kingdom.
According to Khan, Disney World, which includes the famed Magic Kingdom and Epcot Center, is part of an interconnected world that includes as many as 200 wireless access points hidden throughout the park. The access points are used to facilitate the flow of information and data behind the scenes.
NY Times: New Math for Fiber Optic Networks.
The carriers' argument, which has been bouncing around the troubled telecommunications industry for most of this year, is that a distinction must be drawn between the total fiber put in the ground and the fiber that is currently equipped to transmit voice, video and data.
November 20, 2001
Foreign Policy: The Internet Under Siege.
Lawrence Lessig. Yet old ways of thinking are reasserting themselves within the United States to modify this design. Changes to the Internet's original core will in turn threaten the network's potential everywhere—staunching the opportunity for innovation and creativity.
News.Com: What constitutes "fair use"?
Marc Canter. I'm not a lawyer, but I've spent a lot of money on them over the years, and as far as I understand the battles over copyright law, the one thing consumers have is their right to "use" their purchase of someone's copyrighted materials "in a fair way."
Washington Post: Screening Free Speech?
While many perceive the Internet as a public sidewalk where people are protected by federal law, it really operates more like a collection of private buildings run by for-profit businesses that have the legal right to screen their content as they please.
Technology Review: Digital Cash Payoff.
Rather, the company's rapid adoption by millions of small businesses and individuals operating chiefly on Internet auction site eBay is largely credited to Levchin's more recent obsession: developing financial surveillance software that closely monitors PayPal's customers...
Web Review: The Return of Micropayments.
Despite the potential benefits, there is a debate about whether micropayments are feasible. Whereas prominent figures like Jakob Nielsen and Nicholas Negroponte point out the potential in micropayments, others argue that consumers don't want them.
November 21, 2001
NY Times: As Debate on Privacy Heats Up, Sales Don't.
Zero-Knowledge's decision came just as another company, Network Associates, said that it was looking for a buyer for a subsidiary, PGP Security, which sells a leading encryption product. What law enforcement officials have been unable to do, the market has done for them.
EE Times: Microsoft puts CE staff in the line of fire.
To ensure that the developers truly address the users' issues, Microsoft has even assigned its own people to watch the news groups as spectators and look for any questions that go unanswered. If issues are left unresolved, the "spectators" prod the developers to respond.
News.Com: Retailers spruce up sites for holidays.
Throughout the summer and fall, they dressed up the home page and quickened the checkout process. They simplified a 15-item "product parade" that scrolls across the bottom of the site so that dial-up users--who account for more than half of FAO Schwarz's online customers--won't get impatient.
NY Times: To-Do List for Christmas: This Year, the Little Things.
Rather, Web retailers preparing for the holidays spend their days wrangling with much more subtle and unglamorous details, like optimizing their e-mail marketing campaigns, tweaking their site navigation and adjusting prices to attract the right mix of customers.
November 22, 2001
Happy Thanksgiving!
November 23, 2001
LA Times: Talkin' to Me? Not If AOL Has Its Way.
The fact is that AOL doesn't make any money from instant messaging at the moment, but it hopes to one day "monetize" the system. And to maximize its profit, it needs to keep people from using other products. Hence the move to block interoperation.
BBC News: China cracks down on cybercafes.
The Chinese authorities say they have closed more than 17,000 internet cafes as part of a sustained campaign to tighten controls on the internet. Another 28,000 have been ordered to install special monitoring software.
News.Com: Why tech innovation is under threat.
Q&A with Lawrence Lessig. It's the owners of the pipes, the cable companies, acting in the way I just described, but also, given the power to discriminate that the cable companies have, the telecoms are pushing bills in Congress to be freed of the traditional regulations that require that they remain neutral.
Computerworld: Thirty countries sign cybercrime treaty.
Civil rights groups and Internet service providers have strongly objected to the treaty, which they say contains vague language, imposes heavy burdens on providers and was drafted in a secretive process that did not allow enough public input.
November 24, 2001
Fortune: Think Globally, Fund Locally.
Michael Schrage. They need local productivity and global economies of scale. So what kind of digital divides are acceptable for citizens of the same global enterprise? Can you run emerging markets on networked hand-me-down PCs? Should you?
Washington Post: FBI Develops Eavesdropping Tools.
The Magic Lantern technology, part of a broad FBI project called "Cyber Knight," would allow investigators to secretly install over the Internet powerful eavesdropping software that records every keystroke on a person's computer, according to people familiar with the effort.
November 25, 2001
SJ Mercury: Law and the Internet: more worries than hopes.
Q&A with Lawrence Lessig. The instant reaction to the Sept. 11 episode has been to assert strong controls over the technology. When you reduce its diversity and decentralization, in my view, you weaken the Internet's strengths and you sacrifice much more than you intend to in the name of security.
Lighthouse: "See the Destruction of Email Messaging from the Comfort of Your Home!!!"
Jupiter suggests several tactics which businesses can use to reach customers by email, some designed to give customers more control over the messages they receive from marketers. But the sheer numbers suggest a problem that the current system may not be able to fix.
Useit.Com: The 10 Best Intranet Designs of 2001.
By comparison, intranets have been slower to improve. The main reasons are that intranets continue to be poorly managed and lack the budgets required for a redesign that would let them reach the entire company and properly accommodate its applications and mass of online content.
November 26, 2001
Business Week: The People's Company.
But the people's passion prevails at eBay because the people are firmly in charge. Its customers--the 38 million buyers and sellers who trade on its site--wield the kind of influence over the online auction site that most consumers and businesses could never dream of exerting on conventional companies.
The Register: Can Club Nokia thwart .NET?
Club Nokia is an overlooked part of the phone services jigsaw, but one that will be increasingly important as the Finnish giant focuses its artillery on Microsoft, and tries to coalesce an array of carriers and terminal suppliers to unite against a common enema.
The Chronicle of Higher Education: New Company Besieges Colleges With Notices About Copyright Violations.
College lawyers say there are a number of problems with NetPD's notices. Georgia K. Harper, the University of Texas System's top intellectual-property lawyer, says the notices do not point out that NetPD is an agent of the copyright holders and do not contain electronic signatures -- and both attributes, she says, are required by the copyright act.
InfoWorld: Judge sets appeal hearings in Sklyarov case.
The case of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov, charged with violating copyright law by writing software that strips copy and use restrictions out of Adobe Systems Inc. e-books, crept forward Monday as dates were set next year for a pair of hearings.
November 27, 2001
Wired News: Why Copyright Laws Hurt Culture.
The idea that copyright exists for the benefit of artists, musicians, writers or programmers, he argues, is now laughable. New laws such as the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act are "not speaking for those who create, but those who hold massive amounts of copyright," Lessig said.
News.Com: Google may let surfers rank search results.
Two weeks ago, Google began quietly testing a Web page voting system that, for the first time on a large scale, could eventually let Web surfers help determine the popularity of sites ranked by the company's search engine.
Wired News: 'Lantern' Backdoor Flap Rages.
The criticism raised a well-known point in security circles: Security software, including PGP and anti-virus products ware, is either looking out for your interests or those of the government. It can't do both. But on Monday, Network Associates denied contacting the FBI.
Internet Week: Exodus Runs Short Of Options.
As thousands of customers wait for Exodus Communications to emerge from bankruptcy proceedings, it appears likely the hosting provider will be acquired by a big carrier or integrator. The leading candidates are believed to be Cable & Wireless and EDS, which are eager to expand their hosting businesses.
Computerworld: WorldCom launching satellite ISP.
WorldCom is pitching the satellite service to business customers, emphasizing applications like multicasting, data-casting and interactive services for remote users. WorldCom will offer enterprise business customers virtual private network services, to allow remote users secure access to corporate networks.
PC World: Web Designers Should Stop Searching.
Web-site designers should understand their users' way of thinking, introduce them to content they didn't know they were looking for, and--most of all--keep them from using the search function, according to a report released on Monday by Web research firm User Interface Engineering.
November 28, 2001
SJ Mercury: Chinese government of two minds on Net access.
Dan Gillmor. It's no surprise that a repressive government, even one that has been opening up its economic system in recent years, would do such things. But China's Internet control-freakery has some interesting limits -- and in key ways openness is as much a policy as constriction.
EE Times: SBC shifts focus from DSL to passive optical nets
The headaches involved with Project Pronto, which was to extend digital subscriber line service to remote terminals, led SBC to turn its attention to moving passive optical nets deeper into residential and business neighborhoods, Ireland hold his IEEE Globecom audience here.
The Chronicle of Higher Education: MIT Begins Effort to Create Public Web Pages for More Than 2,000 Courses.
In the process, officials at MIT are finding that professors' skill levels vary dramatically when it comes to using the Web in their courses -- which could make it difficult to create a system that is flexible enough to meet everyone's needs.
Financial Times: Supreme Court asked to rule on online porn law.
The case revolves round a federal law aimed at shielding children from online pornography. The ACLU, which, along with website operators, brought the suit, claims the law unconstitutionally restrains free speech because it also prevents adults from seeing pornography they have a legal right to access.
PC World: HP Labs Still With It at 35.
The Labs' mission is to help HP stay ahead of the curve by researching technologies that will carry it years into the future, in areas like computer chip design, data storage, digital photography, printing, and streaming rich content over wireless networks.
Internet Week: Macy's Doubles Conversion Rate.
Rather than try to match shoppers' search requests against a text catalog of goods, IntuiFind 4 runs keywords through “linguistic module” software that corrects spelling mistakes or translates phonetically similar keywords to the terminology in the product database.
November 29, 2001
NY Times: Free Music Service Is Expected to Surpass Napster.
Several Internet music ventures backed by the record industry are poised to start next week, with others to follow in the next two months. But the long-awaited subscription services will enter an online world where the free music swapping they are meant to counteract is at record levels.
Financial Times: Intellectual property: The internet's undoing.
Lawrence Lessig. This change alters a crucial premise of the original internet: that no one should exercise control over the platform to set "policy" about how the network would develop. By permitting such a fundamental shift, governments are allowing the enclosure of the innovation commons. That will destroy innovation.
NY Times: 2 Copyright Cases Decided in Favor of Entertainment Industry.
The entertainment industry won two closely watched cases yesterday that pit owners of copyrighted works against the people who develop technologies that can be used to copy those works. Both cases involve challenges to a 1998 federal copyright law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act...
MSNBC: Web sites ramp up ad annoyances.
A series of tactics that impose Web advertising on users — and often impede them from getting to the information they want — is changing from an exception to more common practice as advertisers try to capture consumer attention for longer periods.
SJ Mercury: Scientists endorse tax credits for developing high-speed Internet networks.
The report, by the National Research Council, says the value of ``broadband'' Internet access for educational and economic uses is worth federal help, even when telecommunications companies have difficulty justifying the expense.
November 30, 2001
ZDNN: Here's a cure for bandwidth blues.
Kevin Werbach. The concept is that wireless frequencies could be shared among many users rather than assigned in exclusive licenses to individual companies. Smart devices subject to rules ensuring that no one player could hog the airwaves would replace networks defined by governments and service providers.
Computerworld: Cell carriers pursuing wireless LANs worldwide.
Analysts said Voicestream's agreement to acquire Richardson, Texas-based Mobilestar, as well as China Netcom's entry into the wireless LAN market, signals a shift in the development and operation of 11M bit/sec. service in such "hot spots'' as airports and hotels.
Newsbytes: California Appeals Court Upholds Message Board Speech.
The appellate court found that postings on an Internet message board constituted a "public forum," as defined in the anti-SLAPP statute. The court further ruled the defendants posted opinions as shareholders of ComputerXpress, not competitors, and the matter was therefore "an issue of public interest.
NY Times: Considering 'Community Standards' and Internet Pornography.
Now, some lawyers are betting that the community standards rule may be in for a shake up when the Supreme Court issues a decision in a case it heard this week concerning the government's attempt to regulate obscene material for minors in cyberspace.
Network World: Troubled Exodus sells out to Cable & Wireless.
Hosting provider Exodus has agreed to sell the bulk of its business to Cable & Wireless for about $575 million in cash and the assumption of about $180 million in liabilities, Exodus announced in a statement Friday.
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