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May 1, 2003
CIO: Sleuthing Out Data.
During the past few years, however, several developments have made it much easier to automate or at least semiautomate categorization, sparking a small revolution in the sophistication of enterprise-level search engines and the number and kinds of users a system can help.
Fortune: In the Hands of Geeks, Web Advertising Actually Works.
For all the flash and animation that marketers have put into building Internet ads, the geeks have figured out the real trick: Relevance is more important than style. We're turning to the Internet more and more in the ordinary course of our lives.
May 2, 2003
SJ Mercury: IBM makes nanotech breakthrough.
IBM researchers have created the world's smallest solid-state flashlight -- a tube 50,000 times thinner than a human hair. It emits a glow that is invisible to our eyes, but ideal for devices that use light to send data in fiber-optic cables and the like.
InfoWorld: Wireless gurus: Give us broadcast spectrum.
A group of radio frequency spectrum experts and wireless technology advocates called for the U.S. Congress to reallocate part of the television broadcast spectrum for wireless uses, during a congressional forum in Washington, D.C., Thursday.
May 3, 2003
InfoWorld: Anti-spam panel: Proposed laws aren't enough.
But John Patrick, chairman of the Global Internet Project, said a national no-spam list would be difficult to maintain and wouldn't address spam coming from outside U.S. borders. He urged lawmakers to give technological solutions a chance to work.
May 4, 2003
NY Times: Software Bullet Is Sought to Kill Musical Piracy.
Some of the world's biggest record companies, facing rampant online piracy, are quietly financing the development and testing of software programs that would sabotage the computers and Internet connections of people who download pirated music, according to industry executives.
May 5, 2003
Useit.Com: Making Web Advertisements Work.
So, the secret to success is to make an advertisement fit with the user's goal. To this end, text-only ads are superior because they get right to the point. Fancy graphics exist to attract viewers, but with targeted ads, the viewer's attention is already guaranteed.
NY Times: America's Broadband Dream Is Alive in Korea.
With a hefty push from the government, South Korea's telecommunications providers have built the world's most comprehensive Internet network, supplying affordable and reliable access that far surpasses what is available in the United States, even in those homes that have their own broadband setup.
May 6, 2003
News.Com: Dialing up the next transition.
Q&A with Jeff Hawkins. I could always go back and look at the tactical decisions that I made that didn't work out, but I still believe that this is the future of personal computing. Communicator-like devices will become the center of personal computing, while desktops and laptops will become more like workstations and will be considered accessories to these devices.
SJ Mercury: Microsoft, HP designing communication-centered PC.
The Athens PC has a 23-inch flat-screen monitor so that office workers can view more than one document or Web page at a time while they're working. It comes with a phone handset and a video camera so that a user can make video phone calls.
News.Com: Want to stop spammers? Charge 'em.
Like many victims of dirty air and befouled water, spam recipients are mostly powerless against the polluters. To curb pollution, we need to figure out how to change a polluter's cost-benefit calculations.
EE Times: Microsoft R&D efforts seek to bolster home networks.
Microsoft Corp. announced at its Windows Hardware Engineering Conference here Tuesday three R&D projects that could significantly improve ease of use for sharing audio/video information over next-generation PC home networks.
May 7, 2003
Washington Post: EarthLink to Offer Anti-Spam E-Mail System.
The challenge-response system will be optional and free for EarthLink subscribers, Anderson said. It will allow users to automatically clear the e-mail addresses of friends, family members and other associates in their electronic address books, so those people would not receive the challenge e-mail.
NY Times: Questions and Answers for Korea Telecom's Chief.
We are looking into high fiber as well, but we are not sure if it is price competitive. But fiber is getting closer and closer to people's homes. It's less than a mile now, just a few hundred meters. In another five years, it will be end to end fiber.
SJ Mercury: Microsoft unveils new antispam.
The screen is so flexible it can be rolled into a cylinder about a half-inch wide without losing its image quality. Although it's not quite the dream of single-sheet, electronic newspapers or books that can display hundreds of pages of text, its creators said it's the first flexible computer screen of its kind.
May 8, 2003
News.Com: Microsoft: A separate look for security.
Windows that contain private information secured through Microsoft's Next-Generation Secure Computing Base, formerly known as Palladium, will look different than regular, unsecured windows as a way to remind users that they are looking at confidential material, Peter Biddle, product unit manager for Microsoft...
NY Times: EarthLink Is Sued by Holder of Anti-Spam Patents.
A Silicon Valley start-up yesterday sued EarthLink, the big Internet service provider, saying that EarthLink's latest technology to block unwanted e-mail marketing, or spam, violates two of the start-up's patents.
May 9, 2003
InfoWorld: Interview: Macromedia CEO discusses upcoming Royale tool.
Our goal all along has been to make the Web more usable for people. We're now seeing thousands of Web sites based on our technology that are fundamentally better. And this is causing growth in our business.
May 10, 2003
Adaptive Path: Fifteen Tips for Remote Collaboration.
It will always be easier to rally a group of people who work in the same building, but you can accomplish just as much (or more) with a motivated remote team. Getting team members motivated in the first place and holding their interest are your goals. Here are fifteen quick and useful tips to get you started.
EE Times: Next Windows PCs will sport media server software.
Longhorn, which will debut in 2005, will have the capability to transcode media between a wide variety of formats and support plug-ins for any proprietary network transport types, said Jason Flaks, a technical evangelist in Microsoft's eHome division.
May 11, 2003
NY Times: 'New Media': Ready for the Dustbin of History?
The companies that spent hugely on the "digital convergence" of media and Internet-era computing, AOL Time Warner and Vivendi Universal, which bought Mr. Diller's media properties, are in turmoil. And their visionary architects, Stephen M. Case at AOL Time Warner and Jean-Marie Messier at Vivendi Universal, have been ousted.
JD Lasica: The Times' clueless jab at new media.
It's true that the yelping of pundits who predicted that the digital revolutioin would doom the book publishing business or create fundamental changes in the movie or publishing industries overnight was off-base from the start, and if Lohr had confined his thesis to that subject, he might have been on target.
May 12, 2003
The Economist: On the tube.
Though the recent chip is certainly impressive, the reason for getting excited about Nantero is not so much the present as the future. Unlike silicon, which is pushing against its physical limitations, carbon-nanotube technology is in its infancy.
May 13, 2003
Fortune: This Is Not a Cellphone.
Wi-Fi, it seems, is finally moving into corporate phone systems. The firms that use it are still pioneers, mind you: Makers of Wi-Fi handsets, including Symbol Technologies and SpectraLink, shipped a measly 30,000 units last year...
May 14, 2003
NY Times: Verizon Sets Up Phone Booths to Give Access to the Internet.
Verizon said that subscribers to its high-speed Internet access service would be able to go online wirelessly at no charge when they are near a Verizon phone booth in Manhattan.
PC World: Intel Previews Its Notebook of the Future.
Intel's Mobile Platforms Group has built a nonworking prototype of a concept idea known as "Florence" for future notebook designs, said Nick Oakley, an industrial designer in the group. The main idea is to combine the portability of the Tablet PC with the ease of data entry provided by a laptop's keyboard...
May 15, 2003
Crypto-Gram: Encryption and Wiretapping.
This wiretapping report provides hard evidence that a closed security design methodology -- the "trust us because we know these things" way of building security products -- doesn't work. The U.S. government hasn't encountered a telephone encryption product that they couldn't easily break.
May 16, 2003
The Economist: Batteries not included?
Miniature fuel cells, which generate electricity by reacting hydrogen with oxygen, can do much better than batteries—at least in a laboratory. The question is whether they can ever do so in the real world. This was the subject of a conference organised last week in New Orleans by the Knowledge Foundation.
News.Com: FCC does wireless spectrum shuffle.
In its late Thursday announcement, the FCC said it's working to allow spectrum in the 5GHz band to be leased for a variety of wireless radio services, such as cellular and networking. It is also attempting to improve the process of transferring licenses.
May 17, 2003
InfoWorld: SpamBayes knows spam.
Thomas Bayes, a Presbyterian minister and mathematician born just over 300 years ago, would be shocked to see most of the e-mail messages that bid for our attention nowadays. He would be thrilled to know, however, that his statistical inference theorem has inspired a potent counterattack.
May 18, 2003
SJ Mercury: A new brand of journalism is taking root in South Korea.
Dan Gillmor. OhmyNews is transforming the 20th century's journalism-as-lecture model, where organizations tell the audience what the news is and the audience either buys it or doesn't, into something vastly more bottom-up, interactive and democratic.
May 19, 2003
The Register: The blog clog myth.
To get in Google, you have to be on the net. Get some good incoming links from popular websites, and you'll do well. In the meantime, a lot of verbiage has flown about, a lot of hits have been generated for the Register, and a degree of notoriety has been gained for its reporter.
Useit.Com: Convincing Clients to Pay for Usability.
You can't know in advance whether the designers assigned to your account will create something as nice as the agency's other designs, but you can assess whether they know how to run a project and whether they understand user-centered -- rather than ego-centered -- design.
News.Com: In-boxes that fight back.
The problem with CR systems is that one company, Mailblocks of Los Altos, Calif., claims to own all rights to the concept and hopes to prevent anyone else from selling such a system without paying hefty licensing fees.
May 20, 2003
NY Times: Unsuspecting Computer Users Relay Spam.
"The spammers have mutated their techniques," said Ronald F. Guilmette, a computer consultant in Roseville, Calif., who has developed a list of computers that are forwarding spam. "Today, if you are trying to do a really mass spamming, it is de rigueur to do it in an underhanded manner."
May 21, 2003
News.Com: Cracking the great firewall of China.
Q&A with Bennett Haselton, Peacefire. As for us, we could take the cop-out and say that we just make a tool and we don't care how it's used, but instead we use the opportunity to take a stand and say that we actively support the use of the software to help defeat home and school blocking programs.
Network World: Microsoft, Symantec give different recipes for frying spam.
The centerpiece of Gates' antispam plan was a proposal to establish global independent trust authorities that could certify legitimate e-mail solicitations, champion best practices and serve as a mediating body for customer disputes. Legitimate e-mail solicitation firms would receive a "seal" identifying them as a trusted sender.
May 22, 2003
News.Com: Anticipating a post-Web, post-PC world.
Kevin Werbach. The basics of the new today are that powerful digital devices are becoming pervasive and inexpensive; they're becoming commodities. Services are available networked across the Internet and use common software. The world is heterogeneous, complex and decentralized.
May 23, 2003
NY Times: Phone Companies See Their Future in Flat-Rate Plans.
That future may be at hand, only a few years behind schedule, as a result of the telephone industry's declining economic fortunes, increasing competition and recent technological advances.
EE Times: Time Warner deploys voice-over-cable.
But costs associated with implementing these solutions and a tough economy have pushed most cable operators to focus on digital TV and cable modem service. With Time Warner, one of the nation's largest cable operators, rolling out services, interest in VoIP could once again be growing in the cable sector.
May 24, 2003
InfoWorld: FCC proposal could boost Wi-Fi.
Posted last week, the FCC proposal would add 80 percent (255MHz) to the 300MHz of spectrum currently available in the 5GHz band. The additional spectrum would reside in the middle band, from 5.470GHz to 5.725GHz.
May 25, 2003
Technology Review: Excuse Me, Are You Human? (excerpt).
Simson Garfinkel. If you have signed up for an e-mail account recently, you may have been forced to do something quite demeaning: prove that you are a human being. It’s all part of the multipronged war being waged against purveyors of unsolicited e-mail, or spam. But this is one weapon that would best be abandoned.
May 26, 2003
ExtremeTech: Spreading The Digital Word.
Since the idea of reading books online is something that has still not taken root, the concept of cheaply reproducing books especially classics is a welcome one. Kahle's motto – "universal access to all human knowledge," might be idealistic, but it is a concept many developing countries like India, China and Egypt are starting to adopt.
NY Times: AOL Says F.C.C. Rule Holds Back Its Instant Messaging.
As Internet instant messaging heads beyond simple text to audio-video interactions, AOL Time Warner says it is in danger of falling behind, partly because of conditions the government set in approving AOL's acquisition of Time Warner more than two years ago.
May 27, 2003
News.Com: Spam blockers may wreak e-mail havoc.
Unfortunately, many current challenge-response systems are poorly designed, which could wreak havoc on mailing lists and other legitimate communications. This could make e-mail far less useful than it is today.
May 28, 2003
Wired: Copy Protection Is a Crime.
David Weinberger. The usual criticism is that the scheme gives too much power to copyright holders. But there's a deeper problem: Perfect enforcement of rules is by its nature unfair. For contrast, consider how imperfectly rules are applied in the real world.
May 29, 2003
NY Times: Electronic Order in the Court.
As a result of an initiative by federal and state judges, Judge Kaplan's courtroom is one of many across the country where computer technology is becoming as much a fixture as the American flag.
May 30, 2003
News.Com: Nullsoft unveils file-sharing software.
Called Waste, the software became available on Nullsoft's Web site on Wednesday, just days shy of the four-year anniversary of being acquired by AOL. Waste is a software application that combines peer-to-peer file sharing with instant messaging, chat and file searches.
May 31, 2003
NY Times: In Agreement With Microsoft, AOL Gets Cash and Flexibility.
AOL Time Warner and Microsoft presented the agreement they announced Thursday as a new era of cooperation between two longtime rivals. But on closer inspection, the terms of the deal largely require Microsoft to cooperate with AOL while inviting AOL to reciprocate at its pleasure.
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