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January 1, 2004
Happy New Years!
January 2, 2004
The Economist: How the radio changed its spots.
Ultimately, smart radios could do away with the standards wars that bedevil the wireless industry and so irritate users. The technology would promote innovation by allowing all kinds of new standards to flourish, while concealing the underlying complexity from users who are currently mired in an alphabet soup of incompatible standards.
NY Times: Over and Out, by Cellphone.
This old-fashioned idea, called Direct Connect, helped Nextel become a major cellular player, and accounts for its preposterously low customer-turnover rate (less than 2 percent a year, Nextel says). All that success couldn't help but attract the attention of bigger players...
EE Times: Sensor nets top R&D list for Homeland Security agency.
As the pieces of its R&D agenda fall into place, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security expects to play a significant role in such areas as sensor networks. But a top R&D manager described his fledgling agency's mission as more “demand-pull” than “tech-push,” saying the department will not look to be a driver of technology or markets.
January 3, 2004
WIRED: This Firm Is Not Yet Rated.
When a company or government agency wants to borrow money, they float bonds - aka debt - and independent rating firms like Moody's and Standard & Poor's evaluate the risk of this debt. Risk evaluation is what security is all about.
January 4, 2004
Technology Review: Fiber Optics Takes the Long Way Home.
An odd mix of public utilities, small telephone companies, and real estate developers are backing the new technology. Their resources are miniscule compared with those of the corporate behemoths that provide telephone and cable television service in urban and suburban America. Yet the giants are doing virtually nothing to bring fibers to homes...
January 5, 2004
Useit.Com: Ten Steps for Cleaning Up Information Pollution.
All time-management courses boil down to one basic piece of advice: set priorities and allocate the bulk of your time to tasks that are crucial to meeting your goals. Minimize interruptions and spend big chunks of your time in productive and creative activity.
NY Times: Five Giants in Technology Unite to Deter File Sharing.
Now, five of what industry executives say are the world's most powerful computer, cellphone and electronics companies are planning a new system for protecting digital music, video and software from illicit file sharing that they hope will at least narrow that gap.
News.Com: TiVo sues EchoStar over DVR patent.
San Jose, Calif.-based TiVo said EchoStar's technology violates its "multimedia time warping system" patent, which it received in May 2001 from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Some set-top boxes used with EchoStar's satellite service come with DVR capabilities.
EE Times: Micro drive holds 2 GB.
By increasing storage capacity to 2 Gbytes, Cornice aims to propel its device into a variety of next-generation portable combo products ranging from video cameras and portable GPS devices to camera phones and high-resolution digital still cameras combined with MP3 players.
January 6, 2004
NY Times: A Debate on Web Phone Service.
Mr. Davidson, a former antitrust lawyer appointed to the Florida commission by the governor, Jeb Bush, a Republican, is still weighing his answer. But he says he tends to think that markets are more efficient than regulators - in other words, that laissez-faire can walk hand in hand with "always on."
News.Com: Court ponders Web site-blocking law.
CDT and ACLU lawyers have asked U.S. District Judge Jan DuBois to declare the law unconstitutional and bar Pennsylvania from invoking it again. The hearing before DuBois, which begins Tuesday, is expected to last two or three days.
InfoWorld: Jobs unveils new iPod Mini, GarageBand software.
Apple Computer Inc.'s CEO Steve Jobs unveiled a slimmed down companion to its iPod portable music player during a keynote address at Apple's user conference here in San Francisco on Tuesday. The announcement came at the end of a wide-ranging two-hour keynote during which Jobs covered Apple's broadening range of commercial ventures in the realms of online music, digital media editing software, and even supercomputing.
January 7, 2004
InfoWorld: CES: Digital imaging market set to explode, panel says.
Executives of four companies involved in the industry discussed the problems and potential of digital imaging products, including digital cameras, camera phones, storage media and image management products to store, save and print digital images.
NY Times: Intel to Invest $200 Million in Home Media Networking.
The company's newest venture capital fund is intended to support development of digital home entertainment networks, which would connect digital devices, like stereo systems, portable music players, flat-screen televisions and personal computers, and permit them to share and transfer video, music and information from room to room.
InfoWorld: Interference questions dog broadband over power lines.
Ham radio operators and at least one U.S. federal agency contend that broadband over power lines interferes with their radio signals, and if the radio operators have their way, the emerging technology that could offer Internet users another broadband service choice might not get off the ground in the U.S.
January 8, 2004
NY Times: Microsoft's Latest, Strapped to a Wrist.
For a company whose name begins with the word micro, practically nothing about Microsoft is small. It has huge profits, enormous power and vast ambition. It might come as a surprise, therefore, to discover that the company's latest target for conquest is minuscule indeed: the face of your wristwatch.
Wired News: Child Porn Law Debated in Court.
State attorneys opposing a challenge to the Pennsylvania law that requires ISPs to block access to websites containing child pornography argued to a Philadelphia federal court this week that "a URL is neither a person, nor a real forum, nor a limited commodity."
InfoWorld: VeriSign planning more changes to .com, .net.
While there is general agreement within the technical community that VeriSign has the right to make the serial number changes, there is also suspicion about the move, especially after the feud over VeriSign's controversial Site Finder service in 2003, which redirected requests for nonexistent Web addresses to a Web site maintained by VeriSign.
January 9, 2004
News.Com: FCC: Broadband top issue in 2004.
Based on his comments Friday, Powell has apparently sided with broadband phone providers who say that their technology is anything but a telephone service and that they are still too young to survive the financial burden that fees create.
PC World: TiVo Cozies Up to PCs, Satellite.
TiVo will soon offer new services through its Home Media Option, notably the ability to transfer and burn recorded programs using a PC. At a press conference here at the Consumer Electronics Show, company executives also unveiled several upcoming hardware devices, including TiVo's first high definition-ready device produced in cooperation with DirecTV.
BBC News: Tiny hard drive packs a big punch.
Since then, others have raced to catch up. Hitachi and others now sell one inch hard drives that can hold 1GB to 4GB of data. But Toshiba says it is the first company to break the one inch barrier with its new drive.
NY Times: Verizon Plans Fast Internet for Cellphones.
Verizon Wireless, the nation's largest mobile phone provider, said it would spend $1 billion on the network over the next two years. The move intensifies a game of one-upmanship among the leading mobile phone companies, which are seeking to outdo each other in offering data services over airwaves once devoted to phone traffic.
PC World: HP Will Resell Apple's IPod.
HP will also preinstall Apple's ITunes jukebox software on its consumer PCs and notebook systems. The company will add a desktop icon pointing customers to the ITunes online music store, HP says in a statement released Thursday.
January 10, 2004
EE Times: MIT Media Lab launching consumer electronics push.
The new initiative is aimed at injecting media technology from the fabled Media Lab into the mainstream of the consumer electronics market. The deal will augment MIT's sponsor program and is aimed at giving small- and medium-sized companies access to technology across a wide spectrum of emerging media technologies.
Adaptive Path: Seven Resolutions for 2004.
The Adaptive Path partners share their resolutions for a better user experience in 2004.
January 11, 2004
eWEEK: Senator Preps Bill to Define VOIP, Curb FCC.
Sununu said the legislation was intended to place limits on the FCC's ability to add additional regulatory constraints. The proposed bill will also address the issue of locating a customer for 911 emergencies as well as universal-access restrictions.
January 12, 2004
WIRED: A Taste of Our Own Poison.
Lawrence Lessig. Free trade so enabled is the promised elixir for the woes of developing nations. Open your borders, protect property rights, and prosperity, the Smithies say, will quickly follow. The dirty little secret, however, is that we don't respect the free trade rules that we impose on others.
NY Times: Power Players: Big Names Are Jumping Into the Crowded Online Music Field.
In such a competitive and jumbled marketplace, who will win? Industry analysts are skeptical of those companies that only sell songs online. "We don't see online music sales as a sustainable standalone business," said Joe Wilcox, a senior analyst with Jupiter Research.
January 13, 2004
EE Times: HP, Dell endorse BD while HD DVD backers stress early production.
At the Blu-ray technology update during the Consumer Electronics Show here, Hewlett Packard and Dell endorsed the Blu-ray disk system, marking the first time the U.S. IT industry has backed the proposal. The companies called BD "revolutionary technology" that provides high capacity while taking full advantage of HDTV.
USA Today: Penn State launches pilot online music service for students.
As spring semester classes got under way Monday at Penn State, more than 2,600 students had registered for the Napster 2.0 service, which comes free with their tuition. All 17,000 on-campus resident students are eligible to use it.
Business Week: Yahoo's Risky Antispam Gambit.
A unilateral move from a powerful commercial entity such as Yahoo, however, threatens to overtake the Internet's governing bodies and could effectively cede control of e-mail technology standards to the mammoth ISPs.
January 14, 2004
EE Times: Silicon, not just software, key to pervasive media.
The irony is that while software gets the glory, it's silicon that's at the heart of the industry's next darling: pervasive media. And with the tech industry's shift from a compute- to a media-centric model, fundamental electronics design — particularly for the consumer markets on which many global economies are staking their turnaround hopes — is enjoying a renaissance.
eWEEK: Eolas Discussing Browser Patent With Linux Community.
Doyle declined to provide further details about the companies or individuals involved in the discussions or what exactly would be covered in any agreement or partnership with Linux players. But if all goes well, he said, an announcement could come within the next month or two.
NY Times: China Poses Trade Worry as It Gains in Technology.
But as China moves to expand its own technology industries, the government has taken unusual steps that are leading to new trade tensions with the United States, according to Silicon Valley executives, trade experts and United States officials.
January 15, 2004
Scientific American: Why Machines Should Fear.
But Norman calmly wipes his napkin over the spill without comment. Although he still calls himself a user advocate, these days he focuses less on the failures of modern technology and more on its potential, envisioning a world populated by well-performing, easy-to-use and even emotive machines.
NY Times: Recording Studio in a Box.
But even in version 1.0, GarageBand is an exciting breakthrough. Not so much for established musicians (although even they may find it useful for practicing, experimenting with arrangements, and rough-draft composing), but for musicians who are yet to be established.
January 16, 2004
EE Times: Innovation to drive chip performance curve.
The audience keenly listened as Meyerson told how a dramatic rise in power density, brought about by the traditional brute scaling of process technology dictated by Moore's Law, has already yielded silicon that could iron a pair of pants and is on a curve heading toward supernova.
January 17, 2004
InfoWorld: MIT Spam Conference looks beyond filters.
While last year's event provided a forum for those championing the use of spam filters to stop unwanted e-mail solicitations, the 2004 Spam Conference was notable for discussions of a whole spectrum of spam-fighting tools, from the use of authentication to verify e-mail senders, to lawsuits that target individual spammers.
A List Apart: The Perfect 404.
Welcome to the world of the Error 404 page. You’ve requested a page — either by typing a URL directly into the address bar or clicking on an out-of-date link and you’ve found yourself in the middle of cyberspace nowhere.
January 18, 2004
SJ Mercury: Companies tossing aside consumers' freedoms.
Dan Gillmor. At the giant Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early January, the evidence was mixed. While new technology is adding some useful features to consumer electronics, tech companies -- by embracing Hollywood-dictated restrictions on how digital content is used -- have allied themselves with a greedy cartel at the expense of their own customers.
Washington Post: We Can Trap More Crooks With a Net Full of Honey.
Michael Schrage. It underlines a growing reality: In our high-tech, multimedia era, deception and deliberate misrepresentation are going to become integral tools for public institutions and private enterprise to use in protecting their networks, their information and other valued assets.
January 19, 2004
Good Experience: Five Ideas for 2004.
I have five ideas for you to consider this year. They're not exactly predictions - you can get those almost anywhere, this time of year - but rather thought-starters for you to consider as the new year begins.
NY Times: Television Commercials Come to the Web.
Beginning tomorrow, more than a dozen Web sites, including MSN, ESPN, Lycos and iVillage, will run full-motion video commercials from Pepsi, AT&T, Honda, Vonage and Warner Brothers, in a six-week test that some analysts and online executives say could herald the start of a new era of Internet advertising.
January 20, 2004
USA Today: Worst spammers unfazed as law trips other e-mailers.
The law's intent was to ban billions of junk e-mail messages sent daily. But there have been unintended consequences. Companies that don't technically spam but send commercial e-mail are scrambling to change tactics so they don't break the law, which went into effect Jan. 1.
Federal Computer Week: Census tries PDAs, Web technology.
In preparation of the 2010 census, U.S. Census Bureau officials are running at least two tests to evaluate new methods and procedures including data collection technologies, such as the Internet and personal digital assistants.
January 21, 2004
Fast Company: Image Conscious.
Before joining IBM, Wattenberg had created SmartMoney.com's "Map of the Market," which paints a dynamic portrait of Wall Street activity. Now, working in the company's Collaborative User Experience group in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he and his team write software that guides users through thickets of information via pictures.
News.Com: Yahoo studies up on search
The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company on Monday formed Yahoo Research Labs, a team of scientists that will investigate and develop future Internet technologies, said Gary Flake, the group's principal scientist. A top priority is Web search and related advertising...
Network World: Bell Labs shows way to keep mobile location private.
The Bell Labs software aims to help real-time wireless communication providers and their customers cope with the conflicting demands of accessibility, personalization and privacy. Numerous Europe and the U.S. operators already offer a range of so-called location-based services...
January 22, 2004
News.Com: AOL tests caller ID for e-mail.
The online unit of media giant Time Warner last week implemented SPF, or Sender Permitted From, an emerging authentication protocol for preventing e-mail forgeries, or spoofing. The trial involves the company's 33 million subscribers worldwide and is the first large-scale test for the protocol...
EE Times: Opinion: Industry pursuing home networking or chaos?
True to supersession tradition, five of my six panelists stayed "on message" with Bush-like doggedness, each nakedly promoting the proprietary position of his own company while feigning interest in an industry-wide issue. Most endearing was the panel's lip service to "the consumer."
NY Times: Now Where Was I? New Ways to Revisit Web Sites.
He and Harry Bruce, an associate professor at the university, are leading a project called Keeping Found Things Found that they say grew out of frustrations voiced by Internet users. People would tell him that they often had to repeat a search for information that they had found once but were unable to locate again...
January 23, 2004
Ask Tog: Panther: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
For a long time, people have been writing me, asking that I do an in depth review of OS X. I held off because I really didn't think OS X was ready for prime time. That's all changed. OS X, in the form of the Panther release, is more than ready. This is a review, then, of what Mac is doing right and where they still need to improve.
Technology Review: 10 Emerging Technologies That Will Change Your World.
For each, we’ve identified a researcher whose ideas and efforts both epitomize and reinvent his or her field. The following snapshots of the innovators and their work provide a glimpse of the future these evolving technologies may provide.
January 24, 2004
NY Times: The Tyranny of Copyright?
Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media scholar at New York University, calls anecdotes like this ''copyright horror stories,'' and there have been a growing number of them over the past few years. Once a dry and seemingly mechanical area of the American legal system, intellectual property law can now be found at the center of major disputes in the arts, sciences and -- as in the Diebold case -- politics.
January 25, 2004
SJ Mercury: Online reference to reach milestone.
Dan Gillmor. Wikipedia, an encyclopedia created and operated by volunteers, is one of the most fascinating developments of the Digital Age. In just over three years of existence, it has become a valuable resource and an example of how the grass roots in today's interconnected world can do extraordinary things.
Useit.Com: How Big is the Difference Between Websites?
I recently read through a huge pile of reports on usability studies. My main goal was to compute statistics about usability project outcomes for my three-day camp on usability in practice to help frame participants' expectations for the studies they'll run when they get back home.
January 26, 2004
NY Times: That Gibberish in Your In-Box May Be Good News.
Earlier this month, when Internet experts met in Cambridge, Mass., for the 2004 Spam Conference, they showed just how far the science of spam fighting has come. For all the recent talk of suing spammers and compiling a national do-not-spam list, most speakers were putting their hopes in technological, not legal solutions.
EE Times: Philips unit unveils 'rollable' displays.
Promising ultra-thin displays so skinny and flexible they could be rolled up inside a pen or a mobile phone, Polymer Vision, a new technology incubator established by Philips Research, unveiled Monday what it claims is the thinnest, most flexible, active-matrix display so far.
January 27, 2004
SJ Mercury: Intel's Widespread Wireless Vision.
The emergence of WiMax is the clearest sign of a brewing revolution in ``fixed wireless,'' a general term for several methods of delivering high-speed data and voice services to a large number of homes and businesses -- often with a range as far as 30 miles. Download speeds can be very fast -- as fast as the T1 and T3 lines popular among businesses.
EE Times: Multimedia card striving to become universal memory.
The market for flash memory is booming. While the total capacity produced worldwide in the last year was some 11 million terabytes, the total is set to explode to about 105 million terabytes by 2007, according to market researchers Gartner Dataquest.
InfoWorld: New, fast-spreading worm spells Doom.
The worm surfaced Monday and has been given several names by antivirus software vendors, including Mydoom, Novarg, and Mimail.R. Experts don't all agree on the worm's payload, but they do agree that it is spreading faster than Sobig-F, the worm that topped the charts for the most widespread e-mail worm last year.
January 28, 2004
WIRED: Stop Making Pills Political Prisoners.
Lawrence Lessig. Indeed, so long as inventions are protected by the monopoly rights we call patents, price discrimination is a brilliantly humane idea. It already works to some degree, of course, to save millions of lives. The hard question is, Why doesn't it work better?
Steven Johnson: Our Fragmented Web.
I find this to be one of those bizarro bits of conventional wisdom, where exactly the opposite is true. The reason we have so many filters and personalization tools is because the web has created a veritable Cambrian explosion of diversity, funneled directly to your home -- social, political, sexual, ethical, you name it.
January 29, 2004
News.Com: Portable memory format gets set for launch.
A consortium of consumer electronics manufacturers next week will unveil a format for memory cards that will be smaller than Secure Digital cards, which are the size of postage stamps. The cards will connect to computers and other devices through a universal serial bus connector.
NY Times: Phones, Too, Get TV Time.
Sprint has a couple of suggestions (if you're a gadget freak, please pull over to the side of the road): "cellphone TV" and "camcorder phones." Yes, it's true: video has now come to the very small screen.
InfoWorld: Microsoft: change to IE will block some Web URLs.
Microsoft will soon release a software update for IE that will end that browser's ability to accept Web URLs that hide the address of the Web page being displayed using the "@" symbol. The update will remove a feature that is being exploited in scams that use spoof Web sites to harvest personal information from unsuspecting Internet users...
January 30, 2004
uiweb: How to manage smart people.
Over the years I’ve experienced many mistakes and successes in both how I was managed, and how I managed others. What follows is a short distillation of some of what I’ve learned. There's no one way to manage people, but there are some approaches that I think most good managers share.
News.Com: Tech giants lock down wireless content.
CMLA aims to ease piracy concerns among movie studios and record labels over a growing number of devices capable of connecting to wireless networks, including cell phones. According to one source familiar with the plan, the DRM scheme will be built into mobile handsets...
Wired News: E-Vote Still Flawed, Experts Say.
The authors concluded that Diebold's software would need to be rewritten to satisfy security standards but could be made sufficiently secure in time for Maryland's March primary election. Raba's "red team" exercise marked the first time someone tested the security of the Diebold voting machines during a simulated election environment...
January 31, 2004
Computerworld: Trademark lawsuit filed against Google keywords.
American Blind argues that Google, by selling keyword-based advertising to competing retailers when Google users search on American Blind or American Blinds, is violating the company's trademark. American Blind had threatened to file the lawsuit last year.
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