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April 1, 2003
eWEEK: Samsung to Invest $1 Billion in New LCD Production Line.
Samsung Electronics last week announced that it has started construction on a new $1 billion mass production line for components of thin-film-transistor liquid crystal display panels.
April 2, 2003
USA Today: New technologies accelerate evolution of the PC.
The talk of taking the design of a desktop personal computer beyond a dull, beige box with a similarly boxy, beige monitor on top has been around for a few years. But with the proliferation of new technologies over the last year, that talk may soon become reality.
April 3, 2003
NY Times: 65 and Just Itching for a Little Convergence.
But inside Sony, there remains the major challenge of balancing the divergent aims of the content divisions, which are fighting to protect their song and movie copyrights, and the gadget makers in the consumer electronics divisions, who are creating products that will allow consumers to swap content.
InfoWorld: Amazon licenses Google technology.
Google's Web search feature and sponsored links will be available on Amazon.com's Web site, thanks to an agreement the two companies announced on Thursday. The deal will let Amazon.com customers search the Web using Google's technology without having to leave the Amazon.com Web site.
April 4, 2003
InfoWorld: Will broadband providers control content?
As the U.S.' Internet architecture moves from dial-up access to broadband, some speakers at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference here Thursday expressed concern that the major cable operators that provide the high-speed networks will control users' access to content.
April 5, 2003
Technology Marketing: The Awful Customer.
Michael Schrage. Virtually all the work I now do with the government is on a expenses-reimbursed, pro bono basis. Patriotism and public service aside, it is cheaper and easier to work for the government for free than to attempt to live profitably as a Beltway Bandit. Washington is indeed a harsh mistress.
April 7, 2003
Useit.Com: Alternative Interfaces for Accessibility.
The key difference between user interfaces for sighted users and blind users is not that between graphics and text; it's the difference between 2-D and 1-D. Optimal usability for users with disabilities requires new approaches and new user interfaces.
April 8, 2003
NY Times: Silicon Valley Hikes Wireless Frontier.
Nor does the move to wireless computing spell the death of the personal computer, any more than the rise of the PC meant the demise of the mainframe computer. But as wireless telephony and computing combine, the center of gravity in digital technology is clearly shifting.
News.Com: Yahoo alights on new search site.
The redesigned graphical interface and search service, called Yahoo Search, will have newfound prominence across the Web portal's collection of sites and will be marketed widely in traditional and online media starting Monday, according to Jeff Weiner, Yahoo's vice president of search.
April 9, 2003
News.Com: Tech giants put chips on security alliance.
The formation of the new group signals the start of a big push to put hardware-based security into a host of consumer and corporate devices. Security has become a much-marketed feature of the next-generation of chips and hardware coming onto the market.
Dan Gillmor: Making More of Handhelds.
Some of the most interesting work in the arena is in the area of handheld devices. By and large, the tradeoff when using them is convenience, such as small size, vs. capabilities, such as an often too-small screen and lack of computational oomph.
April 10, 2003
News.Com: ACLU loses digital copyright battle.
"There is no plausibly protected constitutional interest that...outweighs N2H2's right to protect its copyrighted property from an invasive and destructive trespass," U.S. District Judge Richard Sterns wrote.
News.Com: Report criticizes Google's porn filters.
A report released this week by the Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society says that SafeSearch excludes many innocuous Web pages from search-result listings, including ones created by the White House, IBM, the American Library Association and clothing company Liz Claiborne.
April 11, 2003
SJ Mercury: Cell phone, PDA marry at a price.
The problem in designing communicators is basic and perhaps insurmountable: A good mobile phone is very small and has a dial pad with slightly raised keys for making calls by touch alone. A good PDA has a big screen and lots of function keys.
April 12, 2003
NY Times: In Searching the Web, Google Finds Riches.
Giant portals have long tried to fence in Web surfers and keep them pacified. Google is exploding that strategy by taking advantage of the basic strength of the Internet: the ability to go instantly from one place to any other at no cost beyond the basic connection.
April 13, 2003
NY Times: Apple Said to Discuss a Music Deal, but Not Too Seriously.
The talks between Apple and Vivendi covered the concept of buying as much as a third of the music unit, according to people close to the discussions. But the talks appear to have been just exploratory discussions that did not go far.
April 14, 2003
Useit.Com: Paper Prototyping: Getting User Data Before You Code (Book Review).
Why don't design teams use paper prototyping? Is it because it's so expensive and time consuming that project managers regrettably decide to allocate resources elsewhere so they can ship on time? No. Paper prototyping is one of the fastest and cheapest techniques you can employ in a design process.
April 15, 2003
EE Times: Cryptographers sound warnings on Microsoft security plan.
Whitfield Diffie, a distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems Laboratories, said an integrated security scheme for computers is inevitable, but the Microsoft approach is flawed because it fails to give users control over their security keys.
Washington Post: Lawsuits by AOL Escalate Fight Against Junk E-Mail.
America Online Inc. has launched an intensified legal assault on junk e-mail by filing five lawsuits against more than a dozen individuals and companies accused of being major purveyors of "spam."
April 16, 2003
Dan Gillmor: Honeypots Work, but Raise Legal Questions.
The deployment of "honeypot'' snares to trap and study malicious computer hacking is gaining credence in the networked world. But the practice, however useful, raises legal and ethical issues.
Crypto-Gram: Automated Denial-of-Service Attack Using the U.S. Post Office.
Bruce Schneier. Attacks like this abound. They arise when an old physical process is moved onto the Internet, and is then automated in some unanticipated way. They're emergent properties of the systems. And they're going to become more prevalent in the years ahead.
April 17, 2003
Publish: Q&A with Jakob Nielsen.
I expect all information to be available on the Web. We will need micropayments and other forms of payment solutions, but once we have that, you should be able to find anything you want on the Web. Currently, much of the best information is still locked up because it doesn't pay to just give it away.
PC World: Microsoft Research Offers Peek at Future.
Researchers showed off some of those technologies--it's much too early to call them products--at an in-house mini-trade show Wednesday at Microsoft's Mountain View, California, campus. Rick Rashid, senior vice president of Microsoft Research, reported on the organization's current projects.
April 18, 2003
Semantic Studios: Trust by Design.
Peter Morville. In recent months, I've become a big fan of the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab and the Web Credibility Project. Their studies regarding how people evaluate a web site's credibility show the critical importance of information design and structure.
Washington Post: Homeland Security Dept. Fills Privacy Post.
The privacy rights community generally views O'Connor Kelly as a consensus builder, but it is too soon to say how much influence she will have in protecting Americans' privacy rights, said Ari Schwartz, associate director at the Center for Democracy and Technology.
April 19, 2003
Adaptive Path: Site Navigation: A Few Helpful Definitions.
But collaborating with your team on the design of a navigation system can be difficult unless you all share the same vocabulary when talking about the different parts that make up the navigation UI.
April 20, 2003
InfoWorld: Unfinished business.
Some gripes just won’t come to a neat conclusion. That’s particularly clear this week as I write my last The Gripe Line for InfoWorld and try to tie up a few loose ends that won’t stay closed.
April 21, 2003
Useit.Com: Low-End Media for User Empowerment.
Almost every Web usability study we've ever conducted found that low-end media forms are superior to high-end media forms. Even the few exceptions to these findings confirm the phenomenon underlying low-end media's superiority: users want to be in control.
EE Times: Sony lays out its 'Cell' investment strategy.
Sony has its eye on top server vendor Intel Corp., which looms as a key competitor in the network sector. Kutaragi predicted bottlenecks in broadband networks would not be solved using existing PC technology. Hence, he said the Cell processor is designed to break that network bottleneck.
NY Times: New Demand Seen for Data Storage.
The renewed emphasis on keeping records in a way that will satisfy regulators has become a sales opening for makers of storage hardware, which have been struggling with falling prices for years, to package higher-margin software for managing data with their disk and tape drives.
April 22, 2003
News.Com: A mosaic of new opportunities.
Ray Ozzie. Even though our current use of PCs, productivity tools, e-mail and the Web seems quite sophisticated, we've only just begun to understand how to apply them and effectively realize their benefits. The next 10 years will find us moving decidedly from an era of personal productivity to one of joint productivity and social software.
Wired: Inside the Soul of the Web.
Mankind's questions unscroll day and night on a computer screen in an office hallway in Mountain View, California. Workers here at Google were once fascinated to watch the queries climb up and off the screen, two per second, 173,000 per day. But they rarely stop to glance anymore.
April 23, 2003
NY Times: Internet Is Losing Ground in Battle Against Spam.
Indeed, the spam problem defies ready solution. The Internet e-mail system, designed to be flexible and open, is fundamentally so trusting of participants that it is easy to hide where an e-mail message is coming from and even what it is about.
- Industry Standard: From December 31, 1998; The Spam Wars.
Lawrence Lessig.
Good Experience: Leonardo da Vinci, Disciple of Experience.
500 years ago, da Vinci understood the power of experience. Academic pedigree is fine, but a direct grasp of experience is essential. Analyzing and learning from direct experience is innately more powerful than hiding behind obscure academic methods.
Wired News: Baby DMCAs Punish Copy Crimes.
Nearly five years after the federal government enacted the DMCA legislators in several states are proposing bills that place restrictions on devices that aid in copyright infringement. In some cases, those laws are passing.
April 24, 2003
The Guardian: EMI to sell music downloads.
Under the deal, consumers will be able to make permanent copies of songs and transfer them to recordable CDs, portable music players and their hard drives. Consumers can also purchase singles online once they hit the radio airwaves.
April 25, 2003
InfoWorld: Judge tosses case against P-to-P networks.
In an enormous blow to the music and motion picture industries, a Los Angeles federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against file-sharing services Grokster and StreamCast Networks Friday, saying that they can not be held culpable for illegal file trading done over their networks.
News.Com: Verizon gets 14 days to ID file-swapper.
The decision closes a second round of fighting in district court over the Recording Industry Association of America's attempt to subpoena Verizon for information about a subscriber accused of offering music files for download using Kazaa.
PC World: Dell, Good Technology Tease of Deal.
Dell Computer and Good Technology are hinting of an important partnership they'll announce next week. The prospect of Dell's fast-growing Axim handhelds wed to Good Technology's wireless synchronization service could benefit both products, analysts say.
April 26, 2003
NY Times: Entertainment Industry Loses in Web Case.
The decision puts the brakes on the momentum the entertainment industry had previously enjoyed in its legal efforts to block file-swapping services, which have made it easy for consumers to acquire copyrighted material free.
April 27, 2003
Silicon Valley: New weapon for spam: bounty.
Spammers beware. Larry Lessig wants to put a price on your head. The Stanford law professor will team with Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, on Monday to unveil a bill that would require unsolicited commercial e-mails to be identified as advertising -- and then put a bounty on anyone who breaks that law.
April 28, 2003
NY Times: E-Mail Service Providers Unite in Bid to Stop Spam.
But even though these systems sidetrack several billion pieces a day, they miss so much more that spam has become a leading source of complaints from users. Many studies show that the quantities of spam have at least doubled in the last year so the companies have agreed to cooperate with rivals.
Useit.Com: Will Plain-Text Ads Continue to Rule?
Text-only ads on search engines have become particularly successful in recent years, and non-search sites are now experimenting with this format in hope of replicating that success. However, it's doubtful that their efforts will work because non-search sites lack the equation's crucial element: users' single-minded goal to leave the site as quickly as possible.
NY Times: Apple Said to Be Entering E-Music Fray With Pay Service.
Apple itself has provided few details of its new service, but people in the music industry and analysts said users would be charged 99 cents to download individual songs drawn from the catalogs of the big record labels.
News.Com: A modest proposal to end spam.
It's a great idea in theory. But I doubt it will work in practice. If Congress even gets around to enacting it, instead of some of the competing antispam bills, I think Lessig will have to kiss his current job goodbye.
April 29, 2003
ZDNet UK: Moore's law 'is biggest threat to privacy'.
Today, Zimmerman sees surveillance as the biggest threat to civil liberties and nowhere, he believes, is this more egregious than in the UK. "You have millions of CCTV cameras here. Every citizen is monitored, and this creates pressure to adhere to conformist behaviour."
April 30, 2003
Fortune: Intel's Andy Grove: The Next Battles in Tech.
Q&A with Andy Grove. The consumer-electronics/media industries are two closely related businesses ripe to be transformed. If it was as important as warfare, and you spent big bucks the way the military does, you could come up with a wholesale reengineering of consumer electronics into an industry that was completely digitally based...
NY Times: Spam Sent by Fraud Is Made a Felony Under Virginia Law.
Such anger from computer users is even causing some in the industry to support federal legislation, if only to avoid having to deal with a patchwork of state anti-spam laws. More than two dozen states have anti-spam laws, but enforcement problems and low penalties have made many of the laws ineffective.
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