December 1, 2001
EE Times: Alcatel fields PON to deliver triple play of services. Alcatel put the industry's first ITU standard-compliant "fiber to the user" products on display, hoping they'll "take us into the cable access market," said Alcatel executive Mark Klimek. Alcatel believes all-optical PONs can make a so-called "triple play" over one network — delivering voice, data and video...

The Register: KaZaA claims it can't stop users sharing music. The company was yesterday given two weeks to prevent users of its software from sharing material they have no right to distribute to others. Today, KaZaA said it simply can't do what the Judge ordered. Why? Because it has no way of identifying those who use its software.

December 2, 2001
NY Times: European Confrontation Over Privacy Rights on the Internet. A new draft of the law was agreed to late Wednesday by top advisers for the Council of Ministers, in this case telecommunications ministers, from the 15 countries in the European Union. It shows a hardening of the pro-law- enforcement position that was evident in the council before Sept. 11.

IT-Director: Interview: Jakob Nielsen on usability and Intranets. And it makes an enormous difference - so you need people that know how to get a message across effectively, people that can write headlines, people that can convey information. You need professional content developers. They are essential.

December 3, 2001
CIO: People Who Need People. Instead of generating value in the form of increased revenues or even customer loyalty, they just sucked up the resources of employees who could be deployed on other Web projects and used money that could be spent on other applications.

IBM DeveloperWorks: Physician, heal thyself. Ahh, the Web page. A large blank blue field. The source code included a JavaScript hack that redirected me to a different page, as well as an image I could click on to get into their home page -- but the image file didn't exist, so all I saw was a blank blue page.

Fortune: How to Get Broadband Moving Again. Yet these days Benhamou and a handful of other tech leaders are the Bells' new best friends. They find themselves in the unusual position of pushing regulatory changes that would benefit the Bells, which just happen to be among the few telecom companies with money to spend on broadband.

Financial Times: Broadband's failure to connect Europeans. Both the government's Department of Trade and Industry and Oftel, the UK's independent telecoms watchdog, insist that local infrastructure competition still matters, but increasingly the battle to force BT to let rivals into its local telephone exchanges appears to have been lost.

IBM DeveloperWorks: An interface only a mother could love. Nor is the issue exclusive to WAP, although that sorry excuse for a standard has plenty of problems of its own. Instead, I think it's more a product of ivory tower planning and a general inattention to real-world user acceptance testing. And the problem is ubiquitous.

December 4, 2001
Wired News: Real Music, With Restrictions. RealOne Music consumers will be prevented from moving their music from a PC to a portable MP3 player because of digital rights management technology attached to the files. There is a limit of 100 downloads and 100 streams per month from the Warner Music, EMI, and BMG catalogs as well.

Internet World: Deconstructing: Orbitz.com. Terry Swack. The site that offers all this and delivers an understandable, pleasurable, and personable experience will win. Five leading airlines got together and created this new brand to “serve people better” and offer “the most Web-only airfares.”

Fortune: How Kyocera's Smartphone Got Outsmarted. Over time, demand for combined cell phone/PDA devices should grow as their price and weight improve, but Kyocera won't have the market to itself. Samsung, Handspring, and Sanyo have all introduced products in the last year that leapfrog Kyocera's Smartphone, and more are on the way.

• Fast Company: From April 2001; Hard Cell

December 5, 2001
Irish Times: Lessig's lonely crusade against copyright hoarders. Later, in an interview, he was polite but quietly furious. The prime hoarders/holders of copyright are big corporations and he firmly believed US copyright laws had got so out of hand that they were causing the death of culture and the loss of intellectual history.

The Nation: Marketplace of Ideas or Tag Sale? Steven Johnson. The very ethos of the web--a kind of organized anarchy, free of both government and private-sector control--has been gravely injured by recent events: changes in copyright law, changes to the underlying architecture of the net, changes in the competitive landscape of the digital economy.

PC World: Sprint PCS Looks for Mobile Inspiration. U.S. wireless carrier Sprint PCS Group is looking to Japan and South Korea for inspiration and content for its upcoming high-speed mobile Internet service. "The fact that we are here shows the U.S. wireless market is open for your business," Paul Reddick, VP of business development at the carrier...

• Useit.Com: From April 29, 2001; Japanese Products Map the Mobile Road Ahead

PC World: Microsoft Research Offers Peek Into Future. trends of faster processors, abundant memory, and massive storage are providing the framework to support systems that work more intimately with people, from sorting your e-mail, to speaking in your own voice, to providing Star Trek holodeck-quality graphics sooner than you might think.

December 6, 2001
Wired News: Big Stink Over a Simple Link. But this week several website owners were wondering whether KPMG's Internet acumen was really worth anything at all, as it announced a policy that seemed to breach the most basic freedom on the Web -- the freedom to link to any site you want to.

Seattle Times: Microsoft covets big slice of cable pie. Attention is now focused on AT&T because the company's board may decide Saturday whether to sell off the broadband unit. But for Microsoft the deal is only part of a larger, more ambitious effort to become part of virtually every major broadband network in the world...

The Guardian: How to stay above the rest. For the past year, British Telecom has been offering consumers broadband net access using ADSL, with a download speed of 512 kbps - enough to smoothly download music and play games online. By the end of next year, it expects to offer Very high bit-rate DSL with download speeds of up to 14 megabits per second...

NY Times: Interface Design Is Trickier Than It Seems. In 10 minutes, Phil had talked me into designing a horror of an interface, something that nobody would ever understand or use. He also gave me a lesson in the difficulty of good interface design that I'd never forget -- and a lasting respect for the people who know how to do it right.

BBC News: Quality leap for e-paper developers. This five-centimetre-square electronic display represents a leap in quality and brings affordable electronic paper a step closer, say its developers, Philips Research. The tiny display uses active matrix technology, the kind used in good quality laptop computer displays.

December 7, 2001
Semantic Studios: In Defense of Search. Peter Morville. There's no doubt that the implementation of search on many sites actually does stink. But to draw the general conclusion that search is an ineffective tool from these specific observations of existing e-commerce web sites is like eating a frozen egg roll and declaring that all Chinese food is bad.

San Francisco Business Times: One on one with Lawrence Lessig, author. We spend a huge amount of money funding neutral infrastructure of highways and assuring that the electricity is neutral among uses. I'm not sure why we couldn't be equally concerned that the information infrastructure is equal among uses so that the greatest opportunity for innovation and creativity.

CIO: Patterns of Progress. As we ponder the future of the Internet, we can learn a lot about where the Internet is headed from the evolution of other networks. A look at the history of the telegraph, telephone, utilities, railroads, broadcasting and highways reveals fascinating patterns that have played out time and again.

802.11b Networking News: Wireless Guerrillas in our Midst. The mainstream media is treating Wi-Fi the way the Internet was treated originally. The technical details coupled with scattered widespread and disparate methods of adoption and deployment lead to articles that try to exemplify a trend, but only illuminate a tiny aspect of it.

EE Times: Interference issues extend ultrawideband debate. Several government agencies have called for a delay on final regulations to review concerns about interference. The Department of Defense and other agencies are concerned particularly about possible interference with the Global Positioning System and other systems.

The Register: UK's broadband future starts here. The issue of broadband availability is viewed by some as one of those revolutionary technologies which people should have access to by right. But the slow development of broadband has caused concern among some business groups, for instance, that the UK could lose out internationally.

December 8, 2001
NY Times: Software Is Free Speech. Siva Vaidhyanathan. And so the essence of the DeCSS case is a debate over the legal status – and in fact the very nature – of these few lines of code. Is the program a machine, subject to government regulation like a car or a gun? Or is it language, protected by the First Amendment?

December 9, 2001
Useit.Com: DVD Menu Design: The Failures of Web Design Recreated Yet Again. Donald Norman. Designers of DVDs have failed to profit from the lessons of previous media: Computer software, Internet web pages, and even WAP phones. As a result, the DVD menu structure is getting more and more baroque, less and less usable, less pleasurable, less effective.

Boston Globe: On Site. But how far can you push hypertext? That's the question that inspires Eastgate's chief scientist, Mark Bernstein, and the question that brought me out to Watertown. During most of the '80s and '90s, Bernstein devoted his energies to pushing the boundaries of hypertext fiction...

EE Times: IEEE approves fixed broadband wireless standard. The IEEE has formally approved its air interface standard for fixed broadband wireless systems. Standard 802.16, which is applicable for 10- to 66-GHz systems, sets the stage for the rapid development of wireless high-speed metropolitan-area networks for last-mile access, the IEEE said.

December 10, 2001
NY Times: Striving to Top the Search Lists. And for the merchants trying to put their links to the top of the search listings, it can mean huge headaches. Jockeying for position at the top of the search results "is very important, but it's also a nightmare," said Chris McCann, president of 1-800-Flowers.com, a floral and gift retailer.

PC World: Few Surprises in Store for Holiday E-Shoppers. But few retailers accomplished such ambitious IT goals in time for this holiday season. Analysts say they're still seeing investments in customer relationship management systems, financial applications, and the replacement of aging legacy systems.

Federal Computer Week: Dot-gov by design. Next month, the IRS Web site will have a new look designed to get taxpayers the information they seek in no more than two or three clicks, Carson said. To demonstrate the current site's problems, Carson had top IRS executives search for tax information.

• Contentious: From November 17, 1998; The Digital Daily

December 11, 2001
Wired News: Court: Online Scribes Protected. Online journalism is the same as print, radio and TV news when it comes to free-press protections against charges of libel. That's the decision of the New York State Supreme Court in the widely watched case of the National Bank of Mexico against Narconews.com

Information Week: Communication Aids Design. The engineers would communicate via fax, phone, mail, and E-mail, which was costly because of the time it added to the design phase. Darryl Toni, lead structural engineer at Sikorsky, estimates that improved collaboration strategies have decreased time to market by roughly 40%.

Business Week: Finally, a Hybrid That Really Works. The Treo 180 from Handspring is a breakthrough. It makes a perfectly good, if slightly bulky, phone while offering the full function of a Palm, whose software the Treo uses under license. It is also the first radical redesign of the Palm in its six-year history, offering a tiny, but usable, keyboard for data entry.

Computerworld: NIPC urges heightened attention to domain name servers. The major risk factors associated with DNS failure are a lack of redundancy, misconfigurations and architectural flaws in the way such servers are set up, the NIPC said. Many organizations, for instance, depend on just one name server to handle all requests.

Scientific American: Vertical Leap for Microchips. Such "three-dimensional" chips are now being commercialized by Matrix Semiconductor, a company I co-founded in 1998 in Santa Clara, Calif., with computer scientist P. Michael Farmwald and chip design expert Mark C. Johnson. Sometime in the first half of 2002, 3-D memory circuits will hit the market.

December 12, 2001
Fortune: Make No Mistake? Michael Schrage. An ounce of prevention isn't always worth a pound of cure. Fixing your mistakes may prove a better business investment than preventing them. After all, it's customer perception--not Deming-trained statisticians--that ultimately determines product and service quality.

SearchDay: Google Fires New Salvo in Search Engine Size Wars. News links, when they are found, are returned at the top of a result page. Not all queries cause news links to be displayed. "We're trying to make the coverage better while at the same time not decreasing relevance," said Hölzle. "We're also shortening time between when news happens and we have it."

Business 2.0: Microsoft's Wireless Road Ahead. Q&A with Rick Rashid, senior VP of Microsoft Research. People always used to talk about videoconferencing at your desk. What has happened is exactly the opposite. You don't have virtual meetings in your office; you go to real meetings and you bring your office with you.

EE Times: Wireless rivals recast as bosom buddies. Jeff Abramowitz, executive director of the Wireless LAN Alliance, set the panel's tone by rejecting the notion of a Bluetooth vs. 802.11 debate. In reality, he said, both technologies have their own applications and must coexist to provide end users with options, he said.

Wired News: MS TV: It'll Be Watching You. Soon your television could be watching you far more carefully than you watch it. Microsoft announced on Tuesday it will be using Predictive Networks' technology to track the viewing habits of people who use Microsoft TV interactive television products.

December 13, 2001
Network World: IETF answers critics of proposed Web content altering technology. The Internet Engineering Task Force is forging ahead with plans to develop a standard approach for network intermediaries such as proxy servers to personalize, translate or otherwise alter Web content, despite concerns that such a standard could be used to make unauthorized changes to Web pages.

MSNBC: Sprint cuts off Conxion Web host. The tiff revolves around what’s known as “peering” relationships between Internet access providers. Generally, the various providers hand off data back and forth between each other without charging access fees, figuring it all pretty much evens out in the end.

• Network World: From June 11, 2001; When private peering arrangements go bad

Network World: IETF debates lawsuit risks of U.S. copyright act. The Internet's premier standards-setting body is concerned that its participants could be subject to criminal or civil lawsuits under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act as they develop security protocols that can be used to protect copyrighted materials on the `Net.

The Economist: Mightier than the pen? In its long history, it has evolved from a sharpened stick scraping cuneiform on tablets of Sumerian clay to become, in turn, a quill, a metal-tipped implement, a ball-point and a felt-nib. What is there possibly left for it to evolve into?

December 14, 2001
NY Times: Experts Say Decision Could Undermine Online Journalists. Even more troubling, the critics say, may be an emerging double standard in the way courts treat traditional print publishers and their online offshoots, especially when it concerns printing a controversial address in a newspaper vs. linking to it from a Web page.

Wired News: Russian Hacker Charges Dropped. Dmitry Sklyarov, 27, had been charged in the first criminal prosecution under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. He could have faced up to five years in prison and a $500,000 fine. Sklyarov will be required to give a deposition in the case and possibly testify for either side...

Good Experience: Simplifying the PC. Unfortunately, the Mac didn't come outfitted like this; I had to take matters into my own hands to get it this way. My point is that the major software companies are probably never going to give users the tools they need to enjoy an optimal PC experience.

Computerworld: Founders of the Web Standards Project take a hiatus. After three years of working with Web browser makers to create standards that would improve Web browsing for users, the organizers of the grassroots Web Standards Project are taking a hiatus to recharge their energy before taking on the next part of their crusade.

News.Com: Well-funded display developer downscales. The company came close to manufacturing several times, going so far as to build a 340,000-square-foot plant in San Jose in the late 1990s. But continued challenges with FED technology and market conditions prevented it from ever creating a product.

December 15, 2001
News.Com: Canada canvasses digital copyright bill. Canada allows retransmission of broadcasts for satellite and cable companies under compulsory license, which permits the use of copyrighted material under a royalty rate set by law. It has been unclear, however, whether Internet retransmissions are covered by the current rules.

BBC News: Test run for future phones. It was among the first to have entirely digital telephone exchanges, and it was there that BT trialled its high-speed net service. And now the Isle of Man, along with Japan, Monaco and Korea, is one of the few places where 3G mobile phones are being tested.

December 16, 2001
Crypto-Gram: Judges Punish Bad Security. Bruce Schneier. This is where the legal system can step in. I like to see companies told that they have no business putting the security of others at risk. If a company's computers are so insecure that hackers routinely break in and use them as a launching pad for further attacks, get them off the Internet.

News.Com: For wireless ISPs, small is beautiful. While the large flameouts from companies such as Metricom leave the impression that wireless Net access is dead, scores of smaller operators are sitting on profitable businesses that could become small gold mines if a predicted consolidation takes place in a few years.

December 17, 2001
SJ Mercury: Whatever its faults, Segway offers reason for optimism. Dan Gillmor. The addition of sensing to computation will make computing ubiquitous in the future, says Paul Saffo, a director of the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park. ``Unless computers can observe and interact with the environment, there's no point to ubiquity,'' he says.

NY Times: Europe's Wireless Vision Is Dashed. Instead, the new world order has turned Europe's telecommunications industry on its head. Operators have dug a hole in the form of billions of dollars in debt issued to pay for new licenses and networks. And the expected windfall in extra revenue may not materialize for years.

Network World: NTT to launch wireless LAN service in Tokyo. NTT Communications plans to launch in April 2002 an Internet access service in Tokyo based on a network of wireless LAN hotspots in restaurants, hotels and other facilities. Under the service, called Hi-Fibe, customers will pay NTT Communications a flat monthly fee for access at all participating locations.

News.Com: RSA beefs up wireless security. The new technology, called Fast Packet Keying, "enables you to encrypt each packet of data with a different key," Vergara said. The technology has been approved by the IEEE standards body as an addendum, or patch, to the 802.11 standard.

December 18, 2001
Fortune: Finding the Perfect Spam Catcher. Most of us cope by hitting the delete button, but Paul had more resources at hand, and launched Brightmail in late 1997. Brightmail's chairman believed that Internet access companies could use spam-filtering as a competitive advantage and that Brightmail had the best spam-trap around.

• O'Reilly Network: From December 9, 1999; Q&A with Tim Pozar, Brightmail

Wired News: A Call to End Copyright Confusion. Hollywood executives fret that without strong copy protection in widespread use, digital versions of movies will be pirated as readily as MP3 audio files once were with Napster. With the SSSCA enacted, the thinking goes, U.S. technology firms will have no choice but to insert copy-protection technology in future products.

Web Techniques: Groundwork for Project Success. The best way to make a project successful is to start well. Bringing your project in on target is challenging, but certainly possible if you know how to go about it. If you can learn to communicate your value effectively to project stakeholders, you'll produce more successful projects...

December 19, 2001
SJ Mercury: Scrap new telecom bill and fix the old one. Dan Gillmor. The nation's telecom companies have failed miserably to deliver high-speed Internet access to American homes. But the public caught a break late last week when key members of the House of Representatives delayed a vote on legislation that would have made things worse.

InfoWorld: Local Baby Bells blamed for broadband blues. If these issues are not addressed soon, the Dec. 14 report alleges, there will be further job losses in the telecom and technology sectors, lack of new investments there, and a broadband future that will not be able to support high-speed, two-way applications.

EE Times: Qwest halts expansion of DSL footprint. Qwest Communications International Inc. will not be adding any new digital subscriber line service areas to its current network. The company halted its physical-plant expansion in November, when it contacted its contractors and froze all expansion of networks.

MSNBC: Google targets catalog business. Catalog shopping may never be the same. Google, one of the Web’s most popular search engines, is quietly building a searchable database of scanned product images from thousands of mail-order catalogs, hoping to leverage it into a new revenue stream by cutting deals with retailers...

The Register: Intel poised to roll out 54MBps WLANs in Europe. The units have two slots which will take cards "close to mini-PCI," so initially they'll sell in Europe with one filled with an 802.11b card, and as and when central and country approvals are granted (which won't be all at once) you can just go out and buy the 802.11a version.

December 20, 2001
802.11b Networking News: Public Space Wi-Fi's Transforming Event. Instead, they are aggregating the network infrastructure of other companies and wrapping it up through a single user account, a single bill, and a single set of pricing. Dayton summarized the new firm's thrust: "Boingo Wireless is a non-infrastructure wireless ISP."

The Guardian: Sentries at the gate. But if technology can be used as an additional policeman on the use of copyright material, these men also argue that digital and internet technologies, such as peer-to-peer based communication and file exchange programs, have the potential to create a more diverse and open culture.

SF Gate: The Chinese Connection. But we're not doing anything. Instead, Western corporations are gladly supplying China with the very tools it needs to maintain the status quo of surveillance and stifled civil liberties. And they'll continue to do so, as long as there's profit in it.

Business 2.0: UnexcitedAtHome. Dylan Tweney. No, the real problem is not with broadband technology, but with the inevitably cyclical nature of the business. A lot of optimism about broadband's future -- as well as incessant hype -- led to a period of massive infrastructure buildup and investment, which far outstripped demand...

December 21, 2001
EE Times: Copy protection stalemate slows broadband deployment. The two camps have struggled for nearly five years to come up with a copy protection solution that prevents illegal copying of blockbuster movies while allowing hardware manufacturers the flexibility to build plug-and-play devices to view them.

MSNBC: U.S. probes Hollywood Net ventures. A civil subpoena obtained by The Wall Street Journal describes the Justice Department’s focus as being “a joint-venture agreement that may substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in the market for video-on-demand services and related movie products.”

Wired: May the Source Be With You. Lawrence Lessig. Copyright law doesn't require the release of source code because it is believed that software would become unprotectable. The open source movement might throw that view into doubt, but even if one believes it, the remedy (no source code) is worse than the disease.

Computerworld: Microsoft to use AT&T Comcast stake to push advanced services. Users and analysts hope Microsoft's interest in using AT&T Comcast as a vehicle for its software will help rectify AT&T Broadband and Comcast policies that inhibit the use of cable broadband services by remote workers and telecommuters.

NY Times: Wireless Deal Falls Apart in Congress. The $16 billion deal to transfer more than 200 highly coveted airwave licenses to the nation's largest wireless telephone carriers collapsed today after Congress failed to adopt legislation that was necessary to make it happen.

MIT Technology Review: Project Oxygen's New Wind. Q&A with Rodney Brooks and Victor Zue. Oxygen tries to ensure that the technology and artifacts are human-centered by attending to their needs and wants in a way convenient to them rather than to the computers. We want to radically change the way humans deal with their information-related activities.

December 22, 2001
802.11b Networking News: Why Software Matters. Boingo's software dips down below where the Web (even with Java) can go into protocol layers below applications. By using these lower layers, Boingo is employing standards to tie together disparate wireless network operators. The point is: anyone can do what they're doing; they just have to do it.

• Useit.Com: From September 16, 2001; Mobile Devices Will Soon Be Useful

Financial Times: Brussels in local loop legal action. The law obliges EU member states and incumbent telecoms to open up their physical infrastructure to rival companies, which can then use ordinary telephone lines to provide high-speed internet access. But there has been limited progress since the law came into force.

December 23, 2001
SJ Mercury: 2001: a year shaped by one day. Dan Gillmor. We will always view 2001 through the lens of Sept. 11. The distortions, minor and major, have warped the way we see ourselves and the world. Silicon Valley and the technology arena felt the attacks as much as any place or industry.

December 24, 2001
Useit.Com: User Payments: Predictions for 2001 Revisited. Rarely have my predictions for a new year been as accurate as my Alertbox for Christmas Eve 2000, entitled The Web in 2001: Paying Customers: "2001 will be the year that website operators come to their collective senses and start charging customers for service."

NY Times: A Cybernaut Plans Software for Navigating TV. He aims to do that through a nonprofit software project, NetTopBox, whose name is a play on the term set-top box — the appliance that currently brings cable television into the home. Elements of NetTopBox are to begin appearing the next few months, Mr. Malamud said.

December 26, 2001
CIO: What's New for 2002? To that end, we've compiled a list of technologies we think have a shot at making it big in 2002. The current economic climate makes the crystal ball even cloudier than normal, of course, but these apps seem headed for the big time sooner rather than later.

LA Times: Hallmark Settles Patent Lawsuit. Hallmark Cards Inc. settled a patent suit by Tumbleweed Communications Corp. that accused the largest greeting card company of infringing patents for sending greeting cards over the Web. Hallmark agreed to license Tumbleweed's technology for Hallmark.com products.

CIO: How to Build a 1.5 Terabyte SAN for Less than $35,000. Goldstein is also a closet IT guy. To store all those space-hogging audio clips, he built a 1.5 terabyte storage area network. He did this without a SAN vendor and for less than $35,000, a third of what vendors charge for equipment alone—never mind pesky consulting and integration fees.

December 27, 2001
NY Times: And the Password Is . . . Waterloo. And even those who are vigilant about guarding passwords may be giving away more than they think. The problem is that computer passwords have evolved into the personality test of a networked society, as millions of people try to sum up their essence through a few taps on the keyboard.

Online Journalism Review: Net News Lethargy. With few exceptions, the result is not so great. While the online sites are good at adding depth and breadth to the coverage of events on the home front and in Afghanistan, most are extremely slow on breaking news and highly dependent on wire coverage.

InfoWorld: Carriers moving to 3G alternative in 2002. Chief among those strategies will be a move by carriers like Sprint and VoiceStream -- and possibly AT&T Wireless -- to offer an alternative to their current third-generation plans via low-cost, high-performance access to data over Wi-Fi solutions.

December 28, 2001
NY Times: The Year in Internet Law. As in years past, the common element in the experts' responses seemed to be a sense that Internet law -- and cyberspace itself -- is still unfolding and that new battle lines are forming even as old conflicts are settled. Following are edited excerpts from e-mails written by six legal experts...

USA Today: Net service firms gain access to AOL cable lines. AOL Time Warner has been seeking agreements with other companies all year to meet the government requirements for two more Internet providers in each market. The FTC approved the first batch of providers on Dec. 21, the agency nnounced Thursday.