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January 1, 2002
Happy New Years!
January 2, 2002
Darwin: Homepage Improvement.
Scott Kirsner. They're resolutions for improving the usefulness of your corporate website. And unlike your oaths to learn the oboe or stop playing the ponies, these are 10 resolutions that you can easily and quickly act on (or delegate). The best kind, I say.
Network World: Too many standards spoil wireless LAN soup.
Standards bodies and vendors in the U.S. and Europe can't agree, which has led to the fragmenting of the wireless LAN market, much like the mobile telephony market. Further confusing the issue, the U.S. 802.11a standard will be adapted in Europe to conform to that region's regulations...
News.Com: Hard choices for Europe's telcos.
The present market structure in Western Europe--five large integrated incumbents and ten smaller integrated companies--can't be sustained. Most companies will have to embark quickly on the unpalatable task of shedding their assets and stepping away from areas they thought were core businesses.
January 3, 2002
NY Times: Doing It All: One Gadget, Tried Twice.
The industry has been fumbling to figure out what kind of communicator the masses are waiting for. To see how strikingly different the results can be, consider the latest entries: Motorola's V200, descendant of a pager, and the Handspring Treo, descendant of a Palm Pilot.
DaveNet: When to give away the technology.
Let's find a moderate balance that works, and rebuild the industry and not make the mistake again. You can't give away everything and be in business, but you can't start up a new company without seeding the market with some of your brilliance.
Mappa.Mundi Magazine: Mostly Cloudy, Clearing Later: Network Weather Maps.
The Internet cloud is quick and easy to draw and useful to hide the complexity of the networks. But how can one tell what is going on inside this cloud? Perhaps, extending the meteorological metaphor, we could use Net weather forecasts to show oncoming packet storms.
USA Today: FCC set to expand wireless frontier.
Regulators are poised to approve a breakthrough wireless technology despite concerns by airlines and cell phone carriers about interference. The versatile technology, ultra-wideband, is expected to revolutionize industries such as consumer electronics.
Computerworld: AOL denies responsibility for returned Harvard e-mails.
According to the reports, AOL's servers blocked the e-mails because they determined they were spam, or junk mail. However, AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham said the e-mails that were bounced back had nothing to do with AOL's filtering of spam and that they were returned for other reasons.
January 4, 2002
802.11b Networking News: How Networks Mature.
Up until Boingo announced their deals and their software, each network stood mostly alone. There are hundreds of thousands of Wi-Fi networks in the U.S., and only a fraction are public. Of those, only a tiny fraction were interoperable or linked.
Technology Review: Message in a Bottleneck.
Simson Garfinkel. Many people who have never tried wireless messaging think that it’s just another techno-gadget—a technology looking for a market. But as soon as they try it, most realize that it’s friendlier, faster, more reliable, less intrusive and generally a lot cheaper than making a cell-phone call.
News.Com: Lawmaker: Is CD copy-protection illegal?
On Friday, Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., sent a letter to executives of the recording industry's trade association, asking whether anti-piracy technology on CDs might override consumers' abilities to copy albums they have purchased for personal use.
Washington Post: Deals Become Online Models For Learning.
Baker & McKenzie, which employs 3,000 lawyers worldwide, has spent six months testing expensive new software to create a private online environment where lawyers can collaborate with one another and with clients from far-flung locations.
News.Com: Online retailers fumble on customer care.
According to a Jupiter Media Metrix study which measured 250 Web sites, 70 percent of online retailers failed to resolve basic customer requests online within six hours. Customers that went with online-only operations endured the worst treatment, according to the study.
January 5, 2002
News.Com: Microsoft device to bridge TV, PC.
The device is effectively a cross between a Pocket PC-based handheld computer and a TV remote control. Sources said Mira will use Microsoft's Terminal Server, software that governs the exchange of data between a computing device and a central server.
EE Times: Microsoft preps Windows info appliance.
The systems will leverage new terminal-services software that handles the light work of presenting data on a liquid-crystal display, relying on an 802.11b wireless connection to a Windows XP desktop PC that actually cranks out the application-processing work.
MSNBC: Nvidia seizes computers of hackers.
Nvidia, of Santa Clara, Calif., said the teenagers used a number of ruses to obtain information about Nvidia products, including impersonating employees of Microsoft Corp. and other companies that are entitled to technical information about the company’s products.
Technology Review: Cryptographic Abundance.
Moore’s Law—the rule of thumb that the number of transistors on a chip doubles every 18 months—has delivered a 100,000-fold increase in computational power in the past 25 years. We are therefore rapidly approaching the time when cryptographic operations will be cheap and easy, commonplace and unremarkable.
January 6, 2002
SF Chronicle: Three in one.
Celine Pering sat for hours near busy intersections or near entrances to subway stops in Europe and Japan, examining how people used their cell phones. She also hopped into the cars of friends and family of Handspring workers, snapping pictures and taking notes on drivers who were dialing.
Seattle Times: CES: Buzz is on home-media centers: "On the show's opening day tomorrow, Gates is expected to announce that Microsoft and Samsung are developing a "media center" based on its Windows operating system. On the same day, former Microsoft executive Steve Perlman is expected to launch a home-entertainment platform he developed with support from Allen and AOL Time Warner."
January 7, 2002
LA Times: CDs That Block Copying May Herald a Revolution.
Federal law gives copyright owners the exclusive right to copy and publicly perform their works, but it also allows the public to make "fair use" of those works. Copyright was designed to give people an economic incentive to create new works, but the courts recognized that absolute copyright is a kind of monopoly on information.
Useit.Com: Site Map Usability.
Most site maps fail to convey multiple levels of the site's information architecture. In usability tests, users often overlook site maps or can't find them. Complexity is also a problem: a map should be a map, not a navigational challenge of its own.
News.Com: Gates to show XP entertainment interface.
Instead of the usual Windows desktop, Freestyle features a series of large buttons, visible from across a room, that in conjunction with a remote control can be used to launch a video, play a music file, access digital photos, watch and record TV programs, and view DVDs.
NY Times: The Battle of the Boxes: PC vs. TV.
Moxi's digital set-top box is designed to function as a home media server, integrating the functions of several devices — digital video recorder, CD player, DVD player, MP3 music player — with an Internet connection and a high-speed wireless home network.
PC World: Toshiba Pushes CD Storage to 30GB.
Toshiba has developed a new rewritable optical disc with a capacity of 30GB per-layer, per-side, and a companion read/write optical head that incorporates a blue laser, the company announced on Monday. These new developments will be publicly unveiled at the international Consumer Electronics Show...
January 8, 2002
Computerworld: EFI, MIT sue Microsoft, IBM, others over imaging patent.
The lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Texarkana Division, alleges that the 94 companies have illegally incorporated the software into several consumer devices, including digital cameras and photo scanners.
NY Times: Future Uncertain for Feedback Sites.
Some see them as mere hangers-on, though others say these companies deserve at least some praise for having lasted this long. Whatever the case, these sites continue to experiment with new approaches in an effort to achieve sustained profits, much like the sites they track.
PC World: Maxtor Unwraps Mammoth Hard Drive.
The Personal Storage 3000XT, which provides enough room for about 13 hours of digital video, 160,000 high-resolution images, or 40,000 MP3 music files, costs $399.95 and is targeted at professional as well as home users, Maxtor says in a statement released at the Consumer Electronics Show...
Computerworld: Start-up advances public access wireless LAN prospects.
Dayton also said the mobile data networks of the future will be a combination of high-speed wireless LANs and medium-speed wide-area cellular networks. Cellular operator Sprint PCS Group has bought into this idea, making an undisclosed investment in Boingo.
January 9, 2002
Washington Post: Who's Holding Back Broadband?
Lawrence Lessig. These experiments in innovation are now over. They have been stopped by lawyers working for the recording industry. Every form of innovation that they disapproved of they sued. And every suit they brought, they won. Innovation outside the control of the "majors" has stopped.
EE Times: Group looks to head off Napster-like video services.
Looking to stave off a potential video versions of services like Napster, a newly formed group of movie makers and systems companies will meet the week of Jan. 14 in Los Angeles in an effort to resolve issues related to preventing the unauthorized rebroadcasting...
Business Week: A "Speed Bump" vs. Music Copying.
Q&A with Edward Felten. Given that you'll never be able to prevent copying, the question is, what can you do to minimize it? What can you do to make consumers happy enough with legitimate use of the system that they'll be willing to pay for it?
The Register: Gates pitches Mira and 'Freestyle' XP extensions in home.
Microsoft has so far been fairly successful in perpetuating its role as such, and quite probably will be able to stretch its life some more with these latest repackagings. It should also be taken into account that non-PC web appliances have so far largely bombed, so the opposition isn't really there.
EE Times: LinCom boards bandwagon for dual-mode 802.11.
Practically every startup with 802.11a plans is now promising to provide some kind of dual-mode chip set, said Navin Sabharwal, vice president of residential and networking technologies at Allied Business Intelligence Inc.. But none will actually ship such a combo product until the third or fourth quarter...
January 10, 2002
NY Times: The Internet's Invisible Hand.
For all that growth, the Net operates with surprisingly few hiccups, 24 hours a day — and with few visible signs of who is responsible for keeping it that way. There are no vans with Internet Inc. logos at the roadside, no workers in Cyberspace hard hats hovering over manholes.
SJ Mercury: The next big thing? Home media servers.
A single electronic box called a ``home media server'' could, in the very near future, control every form of digital entertainment and information in your home. This year's Consumer Electronics Show, which ends its four-day run here Friday, turned into a kind of baby shower for the home media server...
InfoWorld: AOL alerts users on news, sports, stocks.
AOL unleashed a new content delivery service Thursday dubbed AOL Alerts, which sends customized information to members via e-mail and AOL Instant Messenger as well as over mobile and handheld devices. AOL members can receive alerts on news, sports, weather, and stocks....
uiweb: The role of project managers in interface design.
This is a post I made to the chi-web public dlist a few years ago. It's surfaced here to help answer a common question I get: how do you integrate design into a development team? It's a good description of the role that project managers can play in the design and engineering process.
January 11, 2002
EE Times: Content protection plan targets wireless home networks.
At stake here, said Leon Husson, executive vice president of consumer businesses at Philips Semiconductors, is the "free-floating" copyrighted content that will soon be "redistributed" or "rebroadcast" to different TV sets throughout a home by consumers using wireless networking technologies...
NY Times: Divining the Future of Law and Technology.
Of course the legal puzzles created by the realm of cyberspace haven't ended. So it's appropriate that this last installment is about the future. What are the 2-3 major Internet law and policy issues that are likely to crop up in 2002?
January 12, 2002
News.Com: Taking on Uncle Sam over encryption.
Q&A with Daniel Bernstein. The government two years ago made a big exception to the previous regulations, a nice exception allowing publication of strong cryptographic software under certain constraints. The problem is that even with this exception the regulations still pose all sorts of problems for me.
LA Times: The Curse of Complexity.
Electronics manufacturers, which are introducing thousands of new products this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, say they're continually working to simplify mat-ters for their customers. But some industry analysts say the situation will get worse before it gets better.
January 13, 2002
SJ Mercury: `Google effect' reduces need for many domains.
Dan Gillmor. The most interesting from a domain-name point of view is this: With the rise of search tools that unerringly bring you to the page you want, the need for a highly specific domain name -- one that a casual Web user would be able to guess -- has practically disappeared.
InfoWorld: Bride of UCITAstein.
The one thing I've learned in all these years of observing the process that created this monster is that no matter how much it seems to change, it never really does in the long run. There are just too many mechanisms allowing it to snap back into its old form when no one's looking.
January 14, 2002
NY Times: A Vision of the Office of the Future.
BlueSpace, which I.B.M. designed with the furniture company Steelcase, represents their joint vision of how technology might solve myriad frustrations of daily work life, from uncomfortable temperatures to hard-to-find colleagues to cramped meeting space.
EE Times: Mobile operators not sure how to charge for data services.
A recent survey of hundreds of operators by Chorleywood Consultants, shows that the majority of mobile carriers want to save costs by extending the normal five year life-span of current billing systems by up to 10 years. This means that many operators will continue to operate billing systems that are designed for voice calls...
Scientific American: Intellectual Improprieties.
How badly does the patent office err? Gregory Aharonian has made his reputation by lambasting the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for issuing patents without making a thorough search of the existing literature to determine the novelty of a proposed invention--a key criterion for granting a patent...
Seattle Times: Fiber-optic lines languish under scarred city streets.
But before they could hook the network to their customers, they ran out of money. Today an estimated 95 percent of that cable lies "dark" — completely unused — often just yards from the homes and businesses it was supposed to connect. After paying $1 million a mile or more to build their networks...
January 15, 2002
Washington Post: Does Fast Internet Need a Push?.
But whether, and how, the government should push broadband along will be fiercely debated. The broadband highway is littered with special interests and strewn with potholes. Like Mehlman's dinner companions, most Americans so far are staying off the road.
Seattle Times: No rush to join in the faster Net race.
A fake rock on Queen Anne shows the complexity of a single neighborhood installation. To place a 4-foot-tall metal relay box that brings cable Internet service to about 700 homes, city rules require AT&T to send letters to all residents within 300 feet.
BBC News: Net's servers under scrutiny.
A row is brewing over the reliability and security of the servers that direct much of the net's traffic. Some of the organisations that oversee the net's domains are calling on the internet's ruling body to give guarantees about the safe running of these crucial servers.
eWEEK: AOL Quietly Launches "Magic Carpet".
But Enderle was skeptical that the Screen Name Service would sweep the market. "You would expect the sites to accept Yahoo or Microsoft's technology as well," he said. "It's similar to if you want to take Visa, MasterCard, or American Express. You don't want to risk losing a customer over a technology."
January 16, 2002
Bob Frankston: The Tragedy of the .Coms.
I’m glad to see more emphasis on the fact that “.com” names are nothing more than a lousy keyword system. But unlike most such bad designs, this one is foisted off as fundamental technology and does real damage by infesting the Internet.
News.Com: Xbox may spawn entertainment hub.
Prudential Securities analyst Hans Mosesmann, who covers graphics chip maker Nvidia, released a report Tuesday, stating that HomeStation, a multifunction consumer appliance that has been the subject of rumor and speculation for everal months, is real and could dramatically change the PC market.
Web Techniques: Raise Your Standards.
At the very least, you should know what the recommendations are and understand them. Once you know the rules, you have more freedom to innovate and break them, or follow them to find out how adherence can strengthen your work.
PC World: Hitachi PC Makes a Fashion Statement.
Hitachi will roll out a wearable PC and companion head-mount display for business users in February, the company announced on Tuesday. The WIA-100NB Wearable Internet Appliance will allow workers to access the Internet or intranets and to browse data while keeping their hands free.
January 17, 2002
Fortune: Why Weeds?
Michael Schrage. Designing for adaptability, adoptability and diffusion is a black art. However, it’s a black art whose magic matters more and more in an era where choice is the rule and not the exception. The more choices you have, the more your values matter.
News.Com: Studios nearing anti-copying tech for TV.
They say they'll have a standard ready by the end of the first quarter of the year. That's an ambitious timetable for an issue that has caused considerable tension between Hollywood and electronics companies--and even between studios themselves--over the last year.
SJ Mercury: Handspring's phone-PDA combo is a dud.
Handspring's much-touted new Treo 180 ``communicator'' at $399 -- the latest attempt to merge a personal digital assistant with a mobile phone -- turns out to be yet another kludge that's too much of a PDA to be a good phone and too much of a phone to be a good PDA.
News.Com: Seeing isn't believing for fixed wireless.
The new technology, however, uses an antenna that compresses the radio waves carrying Web access into a smaller, more precise beam. The result is a system that can blast a signal through foliage or even a stucco wall. The systems require antennas to be only about 50 to 100 feet aboveground.
January 18, 2002
Business Week: The Power of Smart Design.
Dennis Boyle, senior design engineer at IDEO. His mission: To make high-tech simple. "People don't want to read a manual. They don't want something confusing that makes them look dumb," he says. "What regular people want is a product that does a few things really well."
The Register: Philips moves to put 'poison' label on protected audio CDs.
Netherlands giant Philips Electronics has lobbed a grenade into the audio copy protection arena by insisting that that CDs including anti-copying technology should bear what is effectively a plague warning. They should in Philips' view clearly inform users that they are copy-protected...
MSNBC: Seeking spoils from broadband push.
Now the lobbying is paying off. Both President Bush and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle are preparing ambitious programs to give more Americans fast Web connections — raising the prospect of a government-supported gusher of sales for computer and telecom companies.
Scientific American: Telecom's Man of the Moment.
The lot of the $950-billion communications industry hangs on the signals emanating from the eighth-floor office of the agency's glistening glass and brick headquarters, a short jog from Congress and the White House. CEOs and lobbyists faithfully trek to pay homage to Powell...
January 19, 2002
Washington Post: AOL in Negotiations to Buy Red Hat.
AOL Time Warner Inc. is in talks to buy Red Hat Inc., a prominent distributor of a computer operating system, an acquisition that would position the media giant to challenge arch rival Microsoft Corp., according to sources familiar with the matter.
Louis Rosenfeld: Top Level Tiff.
These have been devised to address the growing demand for domains, much like new area codes help solve scaling problems for the telephone numbering system. But like area codes, the scheme is klugey, patchy and probably quite confusing for most.
Wired News: Will U.S. Release Grip on ICANN?
As of now, ICANN, a California-based company, has no real power when it comes to its key function, which is making decisions on root names, the address system of the Internet. For a new top-level domain name to be added, the Commerce Department must sign off on the decision...
LA Times: Just Beyond Our Windows.
Tired of operating personal computers like this? A lot of researchers are, and they're trying to change the way people interact with the ubiquitous beige boxes by creating virtual spaces that take into account the way people behave in the real world.
January 20, 2002
Web Informant: The new digital home hub.
The sexy Apple iMac, Microsoft's Freestyle and Mira technologies and delivery of the latest Sony Vaio desktops all portend great things for the well-connected home. The trouble is, while each of these efforts have some promise, all are ultimately doomed to failure.
Useit.Com: Field Studies Done Right: Fast and Observational.
Field studies are one of the most valuable methods for setting a design project's direction and discovering unmet user needs. But studying and questioning users does no good if you tell them the answers--because then you won't truly learn anything new.
Computerworld: Anticiparallelism.
Microsoft Corp. researcher Eric Horvitz says he's trying to figure out "what a computer should worry about when its thumbs are twiddling." Computers spend a huge amount of time twiddling their digital digits, wasting computational resources, he says.
January 21, 2002
SJ Mercury: Web services raise security, privacy concerns.
Dan Gillmor. We'll have a programmable Web that lives up to its early promise as a multi-directional, writable medium, not the generally read-only collection of pages we have today. But the attraction dims in the light of some fundamental questions, the answers to which remain far too unclear.
ReadMe: Crisis of the (Virtual) Commons.
News websites — where discussion boards and chat allow readers (at least in theory) to question the official record, bicker with columnists, or offer dissenting political views — should be where democratic discourse is at its most vibrant.
SF Chronicle: Surfing faster with fiber.
Although more than 10 million U.S. households now have DSL or cable modem service, making Internet access as common as SUVs in upscale communities, a few neighborhoods around the country are now experimenting with even faster links...
January 22, 2002
O'Reilly Network: How the Wayback Machine Works.
Q&A with Brewster Kahle. What's amazing to me is the fact that the hardware is free. For doing things even in the hundreds of terabytes, it costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. When you talk to most people in IT departments, they spend a couple hundred thousand dollars just on a CPU...
News.Com: AOL's Netscape sues Microsoft.
In some ways, the Netscape lawsuit is trying to achieve where the government failed to do so at trial, such as proving Microsoft tried to extend its Windows monopoly to the browser market.
Semantic Studios: Innovation Architecture.
We can't tap the distributed creativity of our customers, employees and partners without building some trust and freedom into our online communities and marketplaces. Perhaps what we need is a new model for thinking about the practice of information architecture and the systems that we design.
uiweb: Leadership in collaboration: film making and interaction design.
Any group of people can do work together, but it takes the right approach and team philosophy for that group to produce good work. Collaboration is critical in any creative pursuit involving groups of people, from film making, to urban architecture or even web and software development.
News.Com: Amazon settles music patent dispute.
In a confidential agreement, Amazon and Intouch settled a lawsuit pending against the Internet retailer. Remaining defendants are Liquid Audio, Listen.com, DiscoverMusic and Entertaindom, a now-defunct unit of AOL Time Warner's Warner Music Group.
January 23, 2002
Wired: Broadband Cowboy.
There's no sensible reason why Americans shouldn't have inexpensive, ubiquitous, high-performance broadband access, Hendricks says. Using technologies that are already available or in fast-track development, everyone could enjoy reliable, fully symmetrical wireless at T1 speed or better.
Business Week: Why Should Broadband Get a Tax Break?
If broadband is the next big thing, as its backers keep telling us, it doesn't need federal subsidies. Once the industry provides what consumers see as good value for their money, they'll buy the service. Customers will be happy, and those who sell it will be rich. And that's how it should be.
Network World: Lobbying group outlines big-pipe dream.
"No one believes in their heart of hearts that the government is going to provide money for something like this," Nolle says. "But if a push for broadband is going to be achieved, you need some sort of government agenda, because it won't happen naturally."
NY Times: Satellite Start-Up for Apple Co-Founder.
Emerging from an early retirement he began more than a decade ago, Stephen Wozniak, one of Silicon Valley's legendary computer designers, has caught start-up fever and is forming a company to develop consumer products based on wireless and global positioning satellite technologies.
January 24, 2002
News.Com: Trust, but verify, Microsoft's pledge.
Bruce Schneier. While we congratulate Microsoft for this change, let's not forget the two forces that led them to this decision. Don't think it's some magnanimous gesture for the Internet; Microsoft is too smart to spend all those resources out of the goodness of its heart.
Computerworld: Eight Ways to Get Ready for Mobile Usage.
Dan Gillmor. The U.S. is lagging behind Europe and some parts of Asia, where wireless has transformed businesses in small and large ways. But ultramobility is coming fast here, and companies need to be ready with some rules of this new data road. Here are eight observations and suggestions...
Wired News: An Odd Broadband Offer in Oz.
This is broadband the way it should be -- a competitive free-for-all on the content side, but delivered through a monopoly data carrier that sweats the technical details. At least, that's the "open-access" business model broadband provider Transact Communications...
Network World: IT CEOs push for broadband policy.
Specifically, the group called on government officials to declare an aggressive broadband vision, to focus on regulation that would offer incentives for high-speed Internet deployment, to commit to further research and development in this area, and to promote industry action...
The Register: NTT researchers predict 10Gbps wireless.
At the moment, for instance, the sustained 1.25Gbps signal generated in the laboratory has a range of just 50cm. But as spectrum becomes ever scarcer over the next several decades, the motivation to refine this technology will undoubtedly intensify.
January 25, 2002
David P. Reed: Asking fundamental questions.
If technology improves, the regulations become unnecessarily strict. When we make better radio systems, the old ones become obsolescent, and wasteful. We could improve the entire system by junking the old stuff, and replacing it all with functionally compatible systems, based on new insights and design.
EE Times: Ultra-wideband developer backs DOD restrictions.
A key stakeholder in the regulatory debate over approval of ultra-wideband services said Friday that it backs the U.S. Department of Defense's position on how to prevent interference by emerging wireless technologies. The compromise clears away one obstacle to the FCC's approval of UWB services...
BBC News: Flat-screen iMac wows design guru.
Apple's new iMac has won the endorsement of the influential computer design guru Don Norman. "I searched it thoroughly and studied it carefully looking for problems or flaws," he said. "I couldn't find anything. It is brilliant design," he told the BBC World Service programme Go Digital.
News.Com: Palm to unveil wireless device.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company has been trying to build up the hype around the upcoming i705 over the last two weeks by sending e-mails to handheld owners and to others who have expressed interest. In the e-mails, Palm has hinted at the device's capabilities and expected due date.
January 26, 2002
Online Journalism Review: Niches of Trust.
We scoped out three sites practicing varying forms of consumer journalism and community news: The Car Place, Theme Park Insider and Consumer World. All are run by current or former print journalists who put the public interest above the bottom line.
January 27, 2002
Lighthouse: A redesign recipe for tough times.
The recent boom has ensured that most of the Web sites that are needed have already gone up. The end of that boom has deadened any sense of urgency among organisations still planning their first site. And it's a rare Web site built in the past four years that couldn't use substantial improvement.
Fortune: AOL's Formula: Does It Add Up?
And he isn't saying that he'll get that $159 in 2002, or even in 2005. What he's saying is that in the long term, in a decade or so, his guesstimate is that a U.S. household will pay the AOL division up to $159 for a monthly cornucopia of interactive entertainment, information, and communications services.
January 28, 2002
Context Magazine: Beyond the Horizon.
Two modern practitioners of the craft—David Brin and Bruce Sterling—say science fiction can help penetrate the murk of the future partly because writers follow technological possibilities to their dramatic extremes, taking them further than most people are constitutionally capable of doing.
News.Com: Verizon Wireless unleashes 3G service.
With the launch, Verizon Wireless becomes the first U.S. wireless carrier to offer commercial service from a third-generation network. The new Express Network service will enable laptop computers and PDAs to access the Internet, intranet and e-mail.
Information Week: New Way To Work.
Which of these dreams of a future office will become a reality in the next decade? No one can say for certain. But because today's prototypes and predictions often become tomorrow's buying decisions, some IT managers are paying close attention to the ideas under discussion.
Microsoft Backstage: Taking Control of Web Content.
Project manager Greg Bader, development manager Brandon Blazer, and software design engineers Allan Revenig, Tad Orman, Narasimham Adhikari, and Swamy Kanakala are part of the team building taxonomy management tools to simplify finding precisely the data you need on Microsoft.com.
January 29, 2002
eWEEK: Nervous Philips Bringing Web Hosting In-House.
Philips, one of the world's largest electronics companies in the world, was hosting its primary e-commerce data center at an Exodus Communications Inc. facility in Weehawken, N.J., when the Web-hosting firm declared bankruptcy on Sept. 26.
NY Times: In Another Big Bankruptcy, a Fiber Optic Venture Fails.
Global Crossing Ltd., which spent five years and $15 billion to build a worldwide network of high-speed Internet and telephone lines, filed for bankruptcy protection yesterday, unable to find enough customers to make its network profitable.
Computerworld: Privacy group urges states to halt Microsoft's Passport.
Saying the federal government isn't doing enough to ensure consumer privacy, the EPIC has sent an open letter to the attorneys general in all 50 states to stop what it claims are Microsoft Corp.'s unfair and deceptive business practices surrounding the company's Passport service.
News.Com: Google distances itself from pop-ups.
"It seems like we're seeing increasing confusion from users...in response to the Web-wide proliferation of pop-ups. We thought this was a good time to explain that Google does not show pop-up ads," said Matt Cutts, a software engineer at the company.
January 30, 2002
SJ Mercury: Government, Big Business battling another foe: liberty.
Dan Gillmor. That was before Sept. 11, when so many Americans decided that liberty mattered far less than safety. Since then, Big Brother has reasserted his increasingly absolute right to snoop and pry and invade the deepest recesses of our bank accounts and private lives.
SF Chronicle: Search Me.
Put simply, the search and directory firms have put their futures in question by flouting time-tested business practices that require an absolutely clear separation between editorial content and advertising. Most search and directory firms are now paying mere lip service to those rules.
News.Com: Time to rewrite the DMCA.
Rick Boucher. At the time, libraries, universities, consumer electronics manufacturers, Internet portals and others warned that enactment of the broadly worded legislation would stifle new technology, would threaten access to information, and would move us inexorably towards a "pay per use" society. That day is now close at hand.
InfoWorld: IBM's 'Babble' and 'Loops' research projects eyed for collaboration.
IBM Research here at Lotusphere opened its doors to show lab projects and design concepts of future collaboration and messaging systems, including tools to let users interact online with information and people in more intuitive, visual, and socially relevant fashions.
January 31, 2002
Bob Frankston: Connectivity: What it is and why it is so important.
The rise of the Internet in the 1990's (though the process actually started decades earlier) has demonstrated that we can now treat both telephony and television as streams of bits over a packet network. In the network itself all packets are treated the same with no special handling for audio or video streams.
PC World: Three Minutes With Google's Eric Schmidt.
Technology is always evolving, and companies--not just search companies--can't be afraid to take advantage of change. When was the last time a computer or network was built to take advantage of cheap bandwidth, cheap DRAM, and plentiful PCs?
NY Times: Record Companies on the Defensive.
The major record companies, which two weeks ago surprised analysts by seeking a temporary suspension in their copyright lawsuit against Napster, were about to face potentially damaging inquiries into their own behavior on maintaining copyrights.
News.Com: AOL blocks instant messaging start-up.
But in the past 24 hours, an elaborate game of cat and mouse has developed between AOL and Trillian creator Cerulean Studios--as the start-up has repeatedly released new software designed to get around the block, prompting AOL to rush in and stop people from using it.
InfoWorld: Anti-spam movement gains steam.
Truste, a San Jose, Calif.-based nonprofit organization known for its Web site privacy certification, and ePrivacy Group, a privacy consulting firm in Philadelphia, have joined forces to launch the new "Trusted Sender" program to identify commercial email that meets privacy standards.
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