August 1, 2003
News.Com: End of the road for SMTP? In other words, SMTP trusts too much--and that has spam foes, security mavens and even an original architect of today's e-mail system agitating for an overhaul, if not an outright replacement, of the omnipresent protocol.

The Economist: Light on the horizon. The first commercial holographic memory should be on the market next year, and more are expected to follow. When that happens, there may be a ballooning of computer storage capacity that will make existing disks look like leaflets compared with the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Boxes & Arrows: Report Review: Nielsen/Norman Group's Usability Return on Investment Peter Merholz and Scott Hirsch. simply, the authors do not make a strong business case for usability—a requirement for passing the muster with the accountants and senior managers who have ultimate accountability for profit and loss in a business.

NY Times: Efforts to Stop Music Swapping Draw More Fire. But on Thursday, Senator Coleman suggested that the statute, part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, should be re-examined: "Knowing that we have made it possible to rubber-stamp subpoenas, we have to look at how the law is being used," he said.

August 2, 2003
Ed Foster: UCITA Effort Dropped by its Sponsor. That’s good news indeed, but UCITA opponents are well aware it is by no means total victory. NCCUSL is not so much throwing in the towel as acknowledging the fact that UCITA is completely stalled, particularly because of its rejection by the American Bar Association earlier this year.

August 3, 2003
SJ Mercury: New ring: voice calls over Net. Dan Gillmor. But my move into what's called ``voice over Internet Protocol'' (VoIP) -- making voice calls on the Net as opposed to the long-established circuit-switched system -- is a lot better for me than for the traditional phone companies whose services I've replaced.

NY Times: In DSpace, Ideas Are Forever. A number of universities, from the California Institute of Technology to M.I.T., are creating ''institutional repositories'' designed to harness their own intellectual output. M.I.T.'s archive, perhaps the most ambitious, is called DSpace.

August 4, 2003
Newsweek: Pirates of the Internet. Steven Levy. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, giving the opening testimony, argued otherwise, calling file-sharing networks a grave security risk to this nation. In reality, the hearing was nothing but one of several signs of a new hardball offensive against file-sharing for the same old reasons: protecting the business model of the record labels.

News.Com: The future of a scare campaign. But the most daunting obstacle to the recording industry's dogged efforts to rid the Internet of music piracy is a lawsuit that Pacific Bell Internet Services (also known as SBC Communications) filed against the RIAA last week.

NY Times: If You Liked the Web Page, You'll Love the Ad. Two Internet companies, Google and Overture, have made a brisk business of selling ads that appear alongside Web search results. But so far, the big customers for these ad services have been online merchants and operators of search sites.

Boston Globe: Testing the Tablet. Marketing professor Philip M. ''Perry'' Lowe, 59, leans forward at his table and taps on the screen of a Toshiba Portege 3500 Tablet computer with a thick stylus. To most people, the Microsoft-powered Tablet is another high-tech gadget. To Lowe, it's a piece of marketing history. And he is working to make sure.

NY Times: Phone Access Charges Scrutinized. Now that investigators are scrutinizing MCI over its reported tactics for avoiding paying network access fees to local telephone companies, some analysts and executives are suggesting that it is also time to look more closely at the access charges themselves.

August 5, 2003
EE Times: Smart antennas set to take off. Established infrastructure vendors are starting to integrate smart antennas into their designs as wireless operators exhaust conventional methods of increasing their network capacity, said Andy Fuertes, senior analyst at Visant and author of the study.

Eric Rescorla: Should we dump SMTP? While it's true that SMTP is pretty weak in the authentication department, and at least plausible to argue that authentication could suppress spam, the argument that the problem is SMTP doesn't really hold water. The basic problem is network topology.

News.Com: Motorola, NEC trumpet wireless combos. When used inside an office, the phones tap into a Wi-Fi wireless network to make calls that travel, in part, over the Web rather than over a telephone network. Outside the Wi-Fi network's 300-foot range, the handsets switch calls automatically to a cellular network, which offers the same data features and voice calling, but at much slower speeds.

August 6, 2003
News.Com: Ticketmaster privacy policy slammed. The ticket service, which holds a lock on advance ticket sales for most major entertainment events, is taking heat from consumers for a privacy policy that does not let online ticket buyers opt out of receiving e-mail pitches from an event's producers and other businesses associated with it.

Ask Tog: It's Time We Got Respect. "I have met the enemy and he is us." When Pogo mouthed these words so many years ago, he must have been thinking of software designers, or interaction engineers, or human interface folks, or whatever we who create the interaction model for our products are calling ourselves this week.

EE Times: BT researchers develop 'SMS with feelings'. The technology allows interactive toys to be linked to mobile phones so that SMS communication can be displayed through the toys' actions. The aim was to make the texting experience become more personable and fun.

August 7, 2003
NY Times: AOL's Makeover Reviewed. Who could have imagined that AOL, once a blinking, tacky Times Square of self-interested commercialism, would ever come with an On-Off checkbox for AOL's own "member-only special offer" pop-up ads - with Off as the factory setting?

August 8, 2003
Good Experience: Usability Professionals Must Disappear. Instead of singing "me me meeee" about their job title (and, for that matter, their peculiar UX-centered research methods), usability professionals should disappear - like any good interface - and just serve the company and the various groups inside it.

SJ Mercury: Leaving the phone company out of the loop. International communications carriers are feeling the heat as telephone calls they used to charge hundreds of dollars for can now be made for nothing. But they're not alone: VoIP is also giving the Baby Bells fits as they get their first real taste of competition at home.

InfoWorld: Ultrawideband renews high-speed wireless hopes. In this context, UWB would most likely be a complement to higher-throughput 802.11 standards. Such standards, currently in the works, promise 100Mbps shared bandwidth over a large coverage area. To capitalize on this promise, however, the enterprise will have to wait until UWB emerges from its working-group phase.

News.Com: Comcast to extend 3mbps trials. The new 30-day trial will begin Thursday in Pittsburgh for subscribers who pay $42.95 a month on top of basic cable TV service. A separate 3mbps test is already under way in Knoxville, Tenn. A company representative would not comment on whether Comcast plans to eventually offer 3mbps service to all of its subscribers.

August 9, 2003
Washington Post: AOL Changes Strategy On Software Rollout. America Online is abandoning its strategy of making major changes to its AOL software as part of a single annual release in favor of rolling out fresh upgrades as soon as the new features are ready, company officials said this week.

News.Com: Court blocks some file-trading subpoenas. A Massachusetts court has blocked several recording industry subpoenas that are aimed at college song swappers, saying the universities involved are not immediately required to divulge the alleged file traders' identities.

August 10, 2003
SJ Mercury: Dean puts Web into campaign politics. Dan Gillmor. Teachout, 31, heads ``Internet outreach'' for a campaign that is rewriting some of the rules of politics. Dean's team isn't the first to use new media in a national race. However, more than any previous campaign, the people running this one truly get the meaning of the Net.

August 11, 2003
Useit.Com: Information Pollution. Each little piece of useless chatter is relatively innocent, and only robs us of a few seconds. The cumulative effect, however, is much worse: we assume that most communication is equally useless and tune it out, thus missing important information that's sometimes embedded in the mess.

NY Times: The Bandwagon to Fight Spam Hits a Bump. Suddenly, public support for a do-not-spam list began to build. A bill to create such a registry, which had little support earlier this summer when it was introduced by Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, is at the center of much of the spam debate in Washington.

News.Com: Midlife crisis for the hard drive. Drive makers, for example, may face pressure to cut prices, and market dynamics may favor technology followers rather than leaders. It's also possible industry players will focus less on density gains and more on smaller drives for fast-selling items such as music players and laptops.

NY Times: Internet Providers Question Subpoenas to Stop File Swapping. The NetCoalition letter instead focuses on the details of how the record industry is carrying out its goal of filing thousands of subpoenas in the coming months. It asks for a meeting to discuss how the industry trade group ensures the accuracy of the subpoenas, how it decides whom to target, and it raises concerns over the cost of compliance.

August 12, 2003
InfoWorld: Blaster worm spreading, experts warn of attack. A new worm that exploits a widespread vulnerability in Microsoft's Windows operating system continued its spread on Tuesday, making Monday's outbreak the most serious since the appearance of the SQL Slammer worm in January, according to security experts.

Darwin: A More User-Friendly Direction. Ben Shneiderman. Consumer pressure would push companies to produce improved designs that are more reliable, learnable and usable. Then improved testing would eliminate more of the problems and quality control would become an obsession. When the software was shipped, it would be more likely to work reliably.

WIRED: Would You Like Wi-Fi With That? Paul Boutin. If you want to see the right way to serve wireless access, find a Schlotzsky's Deli. The Austin, Texas-based sandwich chain figured out the secret of making money from Wi-Fi: Give it away.

NY Times: Jury Rules Against Microsoft in Patent Case. A federal jury awarded a former University of California researcher $521 million today in a lawsuit against Microsoft that asserted its Explorer Web browser infringed a patent for sending software applications over the Internet.

August 13, 2003
Freedom Forum: White House urges high court to reinstate Net porn law. Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard Law School professor who specializes in Internet law, said yesterday that the high court would likely struggle again with what to do. "From the government's view, it can't hurt to appeal because it's essentially a roulette wheel," he said.

August 14, 2003
Discover: Can Anyone Make Wireless Work? This year Discover invited a panel of distinguished guests to discuss the future of wireless technology at an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers symposium in San Francisco. Eric Haseltine moderated the discussion.

August 15, 2003
Crypto-Gram: New Book: Beyond Fear. If I can name one overarching goal of the book, it's to explain how we all can make ourselves safer by thinking of security not in absolutes, but in terms of trade-offs -- the inevitable expenses, inconveniences, and diminished freedoms we accept (or have forced on us) in the name of enhanced security.

CIO: Spin Control. As devices get smaller and storage needs grow, researchers are eagerly looking for new ways to pack multiple gigabytes of data into increasingly tinier spaces. One potential solution, proposed by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and the University of California, takes data storage down to a new level by using the orientation of spinning electrons to store data.

August 16, 2003
Technology Review: Software Radio. Electrical engineer Vanu Bose is using software to make wireless devices smarter. In May, the company he founded and heads, Cambridge, MA-based Vanu, demonstrated a prototype handheld able to send and receive both walkie-talkie and digital police-band signals.

August 17, 2003
SJ Mercury: New wave of newsreader software makes sense of the Web. Dan Gillmor. I won't get into the technical details of RSS. The important thing to understand is that it provides a valuable structure for individual pieces and collections of information, a structure that lets people combine and view them in more useful ways.

August 18, 2003
Useit.Com: Mobile Devices: One Generation From Useful. The Sidekick is also known as the "Danger Device" or the "Hiptop." When I saw an early Danger demo two years ago, I was excited about its potential. Now, after actually using it, I've concluded that one or two more generations of device designs are needed to achieve true usability.

NY Times: Start-Up Plans to Introduce Alternate Wi-Fi Technology. The company said it hopes to create markets by seeking out consumer wireless equipment companies serving local area networks, hoping that in a hotly contested marketplace, a higher-speed, greater-range option will soon prove advantageous, even if it is not compatible with existing software.

August 19, 2003
Washington Post: FCC to Allow Video on AOL Messenger. A source familiar with this week's decision said that the commission's three-member Republican majority decided in favor of lifting the ban while the two Democrats dissented. The result of the vote, which is not required to be conducted in a public session, is expected to be announced in the next 48 hours.

News.Com: Microsoft's in-house sociologist. Q&A with Marc Smith. Microsoft has a big investment in online communities, and has not had until recently many tools to enhance that investment. What Microsoft wants around communities is what every enterprise does, which is a peer-support, knowledge-management application.

August 20, 2003
WIRED: PowerPoint Is Evil. Edward Tufte. At a minimum, a presentation format should do no harm. Yet the PowerPoint style routinely disrupts, dominates, and trivializes content. Thus PowerPoint presentations too often resemble a school play -very loud, very slow, and very simple.

News.Com: New ruling protects ISPs, Web operators. The ruling, handed down Aug. 13 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, overturns a decision by the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. That ruling alarmed ISPs and Web site operators, because it delineated the first significant exceptions to the Communications Decency Act...

InfoWorld: Microsoft to lock down MSN Messenger network. Sundwall would not comment on what type of agreement Microsoft would want with third-party IM software providers. "We are very interested in interoperating with all third parties, there just needs to be a formal agreement," he said.

August 21, 2003
Wired News: Net Analysis Gets Turbo Boost. The images created by monitoring a million Internet users busily browsing look like a colorful mandala. But the point of this exercise is not to create digital art. Engineers and scientists routinely use such simulations to analyze and improve network performance and security, but those efforts have been hampered by the time and computing power required to perform large-scale simulations.

NY Times: In Frayed Networks, Common Threads. Taken together, the blackout and the worm underscore a far-reaching challenge in managing modern technological societies: the difficulty of reaping the benefits of networks - railroad networks, airline networks, telephone networks, power networks and computer networks, among others - while minimizing their vulnerabilities.

August 22, 2003
EE Times: FCC ruling could spark broadband deployment. The Federal Communication Commission followed up on a promise made to the communications sector earlier this year by announcing new unbundling rules that could spark increased rollout of broadband services in the U.S. while keeping voice service competition alive at the local level.

August 23, 2003
BBC News: Fighting viruses on the frontline. It is a job that requires constant vigilance and many security firms run network monitoring centres to keep an eye on their customers' networks and the shifting tide of computer vandalism and crime. The operation centres are the frontline of the information war.

August 24, 2003
Forbes: The Wonderful World Of Wirelessness. In this fifth annual E-Gang survey, profiling unsung heroes of high tech, FORBES looks at five people helping foster the next phase of the wireless revolution. They're toppling some of the biggest obstacles to a Wireless Everywhere world...

Fast Company: 5 Technologies That Will Change the World. We set off in search of those people who were bold enough to think that the world might at some point be ready to take a giant leap again and to believe that innovative technology can still put serious distance between a leader and the rest of the pack.

August 25, 2003
News.Com: DVD-copying code loses free speech shield. The state's high court overturned an earlier decision that said blocking Web publishers from posting the controversial piece of software called DeCSS, which can be used to help decrypt and copy DVDs, would violate their First Amendment rights.

Cooper Interaction Design: The Origin of Personas. Alan Cooper. The Inmates Are Running the Asylum, published in 1998, introduced the use of personas as a practical interaction design tool. Based on the single-chapter discussion in that book, personas rapidly gained popularity in the software industry due to their unusual power and effectiveness.

Useit.Com: Usability 101. Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. The word "usability" also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process.

August 26, 2003
NY Times: Court Rules That Trade Secrets Can Outweigh Free Speech. Yet the state Supreme Court's ruling is a narrow one, legal experts said, and it mostly sets the stage for further legal scrutiny of the balance between rights of free speech and intellectual property at a time when digital copies of software, music and movies can be made and distributed effortlessly over the Internet.

August 27, 2003
NY Times: Sleuths Try to Stay Step Ahead of Online Worms. Mr. Hypponen, the director of antivirus research at F-Secure, is widely considered one of the best antivirus researchers in the world. He is quick to point out that combating a major virus quickly becomes a joint effort of all those involved in antivirus research, regardless of their competitive position.

August 28, 2003
Discover: Built-In Spam. Steven Johnson. Software designers are quietly integrating commercial transactions into ordinary applications. Before too long your spreadsheet may start selling you stock tips, and for the low, low price of $1.50, your word processor might offer to clean up that last paragraph you wrote.

• Peter Seebach: From August 15, 2001; Sherlock users, Ur 0wn3d!

August 29, 2003
The Economist: Re: That movie. However, his colleague John Palfrey says that it would not surprise him if a lawsuit were brought against an organisation which unknowingly but negligently transmitted a virus. And if you think virus writers are scary, you have clearly never met a tort lawyer.

BBC News: Hi-tech tome takes on paperbacks. The brushed metal device is about one centimetre thick and looks like an oversized handheld computer. The technological tome is dominated by a screen and a series of touch sensitive strips that allow the reader to navigate through the book.

August 30, 2003
IBM developerWorks: And in this corner: Copy protection versus usability. Peter Seebach. Copy protection, and programs to try to defeat it, have been with us since the days of the Commodore 64. Throughout time, users have always experienced problems with programs which would be usable except for their copy protection.

August 31, 2003
SJ Mercury: Spamming sleazebags ruining e-mail. Dan Gillmor. The responsibility for this debacle is everywhere: malevolent creativity by those who take advantage of lousy software and the Net's open nature, not to mention clueless users, systems administrators and Internet service providers.