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March 1, 2004
IEEE Spectrum Online: The End of Spectrum Scarcity.
In fact, there's every reason to think we're on the cusp of a spectrum explosion—one that will trigger major shifts in investment, business models, and services. In the spectrum-rich future, wireless connections for new voice, music, and video services should abound, benefiting consumers and businesses alike.
uiweb: The problems with training (and what to do about it).
Through all this we learned that there are two essential ingredients in great learning experiences: A team of smart energetic people committed to doing something good, and a thoughtful plan, crafted with creative energy and smart logistical planning.
eWEEK: Spam Tide May Be Turning.
Because CSRI, SPF and other anti-spoofing technologies are still in the early stages of deployment, content-based anti-spam tools aren't dead yet, of course. However, we believe IT managers should shift focus to participating in the pilot programs of e-mail identification systems and spend less time looking at the current crop of content-filtering tools.
Network World: Doubts dog Microsoft spam plan.
To underscore the challenges presented in creating a standard for authentication of e-mail senders, the IETF had no luck with six other specifications that addressed the issue. But interest is high, with more than 8,000 companies testing or having implemented SPF alone...
March 2, 2004
NY Times: Yahoo to Charge for Guaranteeing a Spot on Its Index.
The practice, called "paid inclusion," has long been a part of many search engines including Microsoft's MSN search function and Ask Jeeves. But Google, which last year surged ahead of Yahoo to become the No. 1 site for searching on the Internet, disdains the practice as misleading.
Useit.Com: Risks of Quantitative Studies.
When I read reports from other people's research, I usually find that their qualitative study results are more credible and trustworthy than their quantitative results. It's a dangerous mistake to believe that statistical research is somehow more scientific or credible than insight-based observational research.
March 3, 2004
NY Times: Justices Hear Arguments on Internet Pornography Law.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday about Internet pornography, one of the most vexing issues at the intersection of technology and First Amendment rights. Neither side got a free ride from the justices in the discussion of the Child Online Protection Act...
InfoWorld: NTT DoCoMo develops speech recognition without speech.
NTT DoCoMo Inc. lifted the lid Tuesday on its five-year-old research and development center in Japan and demonstrated a couple of the technologies the operator is working on, including a speech recognition system that doesn't require speech.
eWEEK: Microsoft Committed to IM Interoperability Asserts Exec.
Microsoft Corp.'s instant messaging architect Paul Haverstock stated the case for messaging interoperability at the opening keynote address of the Instant Messaging Planet Spring 2004 Conference and Expo here Wednesday.
March 4, 2004
WIRED: Some Like It Hot.
Lawrence Lessig.This doesn't mean that there are no questions raised by the latest piracy concern - peer-to-peer file-sharing. But it does mean that we need to understand the harm in P2P sharing a bit more before we condemn it to the gallows.
Technology Review: Losing Control of Your TV.
Simson Garfinkel. Even though I don’t watch much broadcast TV, I am still strongly opposed to the broadcast flag. The first reason is “mission creep.” Having successfully lobbied a regulatory agency to put anti-consumer copy protection technology into the television set, what’s to stop a greedy content industry from asking for more?
InfoWorld: Intel's CTO to meet Chinese government over WAPI.
Pat Gelsinger, chief technology officer of Intel Corp., is to meet with Chinese government officials during the next few days to discuss Intel's concerns over China's national wireless LAN security standard and an impending June 1 deadline for compliance with the standard.
News.Com: Microsoft wants to know who your friends are.
Inner Circle, Cheng believes, is one answer to that. It's not really a breakthrough in computer science as much as it is an exercise in cultural anthropology. Many people have folders today for their most important contacts, but they often drag e-mails in one by one.
March 5, 2004
PC World: Looking Into Flash's Future.
In his keynote address at this week's FlashForward 2004 conference here, Macromedia chief software architect Kevin Lynch presented the company's Flash road map, which he sees leading far outside the browser. The first example of Flash's broadening range was the Macromedia Central information-management tool that debuted last summer.
News.Com: Eolas loses patent claim in Microsoft case.
The patent agency's preliminary decision, if upheld, also means that Microsoft will not be required to make changes to its Internet Explorer Web browser that would have crippled the program's ability to work with mini-programs that work over the Internet, such as the QuickTime and Flash media players.
March 6, 2004
A List Apart: CSS Sprites: Image Slicing’s Kiss of Death.
Dave Shea. And now, with a bit of math and a lot of CSS, we’re going to take the basic concept and apply it to the world of web design. Specifically, we’re going to replace old-school image slicing and dicing (and the necessary JavaScript) with a CSS solution.
PC World: Experts Question Microsoft's Caller ID Plans.
Just a week after Microsoft's Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates unveiled a plan for securing e-mail communications, leading e-mail authorities, legal experts, and at least one Internet service provider are expressing concerns about the e-mail sender authentication plan, known as Caller ID.
March 7, 2004
SJ Mercury: This Is Your Life.
Microsoft researchers are working on technology that captures and organizes daily life with the same compulsive orderliness they apply to office documents. It begins with the SenseCam, a device Microsoft researcher Lyndsay Williams calls ``a black box recorder for the human body.''
March 8, 2004
NY Times: A Software Program Aimed at Taming File-Sharing.
The record industry is hoping that a little magic will solve its problems with online piracy by file sharers. The Recording Industry Association of America has been talking up a company named Audible Magic to lawmakers and regulators in Washington in recent weeks...
Computerworld: ICANN president wants group to focus on Internet basics.
At the Rome meeting, the group finally formed the Country Code Name Supporting Organization, which will act as a global policy arm of ICANN. Twomey is also working to reorganize ICANN to bring it closer to his global view of the body, and he hopes to soon have offices sprinkled across different continents.
March 9, 2004
Fast Company: The Google of Email?
This powerful feature makes folders largely unnecessary. If you insist on filing, Bloomba still lets you. But Bloomba's search functionality and its limitless storage capacity ensure that you'll never need to file a message again, and that you'll always be able to find what you're looking for in a matter of seconds.
BBC News: EU backs tighter rules on piracy.
Before the vote, critics said the law was flawed as it applied the same penalties to both professional counterfeiters and consumers. But a late amendment limited them to organised counterfeiters and not people downloading music at home.
News.Com: Kodak sues Sony over digital cameras.
It appears Kodak may have more than just Sony in its crosshairs. Meuchner said the camera maker is interested in licensing its technology to companies that may be using its intellectual property, but declined to name those manufacturers or say whether it is in discussions with them.
March 10, 2004
IBM DeveloperWorks: Businesses behaving badly.
Whenever you change your policy or behavior, stop and think about how users will respond to it. Sometimes offending a customer is not worth the minor convenience a business gains from a new method. If the customers leave, they stop giving you money. No customers, no business.
News.Com: Consumers challenge FCC antipiracy rules.
A coalition of groups, including the American Library Association, the Consumers Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is suing the Federal Communications Commission over rules adopted last year aimed at blocking digital TV piracy.
Wired News: E-Mail Providers Slam Spammers.
Most of the lawsuits were filed against "John Does" -- unknown spammers -- but Les Seagraves, chief privacy officer at EarthLink, said that the four ISPs are only a "couple of subpoenas away from showing up at these spammers' doors and handing subpoenas directly to them."
March 11, 2004
Fast Company: Hold The Phone.
Just as the Internet revolution made it more efficient and less expensive to ship gigabytes of data from one place to another, Internet telephony is making talk even cheaper. It's also turning the staid, underappreciated telephone into a more powerful and flexible device.
The Guardian: Emotional about design.
The sequel, Emotional Design, is based on the idea that there are three levels at play in design: visceral, behavioural, and reflective. It's still true that, on a rational level, products should be functional, but now he explains why they should be beautiful and have an emotional impact as well.
NY Times: Intel to Miss China Deadline on Standard for Wireless.
Intel's not meeting the Chinese timetable reflects a larger objection on the part of Intel and other American technology companies, which have been up in arms since China announced last year that it wanted to develop a separate national standard for short-range wireless networks, known as Wi-Fi.
March 12, 2004
Technology Review: Home Is Where the Server Is.
Simson Garfinkel. Well, I’ve had a server in my basement since 1995, and frankly, I wouldn’t want to live without it. Always running, my server holds my personal files, my music collection, and all of the digital data that I’ve been building up over the past 20 years.
The Economist: Wi-Fi's big brother.
Heavyweights such as Intel, Nokia and AT&T are lining up behind the standard. Sean Maloney, the head of Intel's telecoms division, says it will put “the next 5 billion users” on the internet. But whereas WiMax has promise, says John Yunker, an analyst at Pyramid Research, it is currently surrounded by much confusion and "a ton of hype".
March 13, 2004
A List Apart: Zebra Tables.
Semantic markup and CSS have replaced tables as layout tools. Tables are now relegated to their original role: displaying data stored in records (rows) and fields (columns). However, their new status doesn’t mean that they still can’t be the targets of a designer’s styles and a developer’s hacks.
PC World: In the Wings: Smaller, Smarter Phones.
A few vendors of mobile devices are dropping hints of new handsets making their debut at the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany next week, and the selection includes phones that pack even more features, like megapixel digital cameras and multimode connections, into ever-smaller devices with ever-longer battery lives.
March 14, 2004
InfoWorld: Making e-mail identity work.
Jon Udell. The truth is we’ve had plenty of innovation through the years. What we’ve lacked is follow-through. Consider S/MIME digital signatures. It’s very likely that your e-mail client supports them. But it’s overwhelmingly unlikely that you’ve ever digitally signed an e-mail message.
NY Times: Balky Old New York Embraces Technology.
From rationing street salt to sending out daily e-mail messages on parking rules, once-lumbering bureaucracies are adopting the latest scientific advances as a means of cutting costs, increasing efficiency as well as ensuring greater accountability after a series of corporate and government corruption scandals.
March 15, 2004
Useit.Com: Why Consumer Products Have Inferior User Experience.
As more products become computerized, some cross-fertilization is inevitable and even stagnant industries will hire people familiar with usability. Until this happens, reviewers will continue to expose difficult designs, and we'll all be forced to settle for buying the least-mediocre products.
Wired News: Speed Meets Feed in Download Tool.
A demo publishing system launched Friday by a popular programmer and blogger merges two of this season's hottest tech fads -- RSS news syndication and BitTorrent file sharing -- to create a cheap publishing system for what its author calls "big media objects."
PC World: Groove Gets Into File-Sharing.
New in version 3.0 are secure file- and folder-sharing capabilities; a Groove LaunchPad for easier organization and navigation; and expanded user alerts. A new forms-building tool lets users easily create applications for capturing, tracking, and sharing information among users.
March 16, 2004
Slate: Plug and Play.
Current Communications won't reveal the specifics of what made its technology perform as promised, but in general terms, what's historically hindered the deployment of "broadband over power lines" is that the electrical system was designed to transmit electricity and nothing else.
Technology Review: Designed and Made in China.
Michael Schrage. More than any other country in the world, China is about the diffusion of improvements in production processes rather than improvements in end-user technology. Chinese industrialists—and postindustrialists—are on a long march to turn low-cost manufacturing capacity into faster-growth innovation capability.
March 17, 2004
InfoWorld: Lessig: Be wary of 'IP extremists'.
Citing a decision last year by the World Intellectual Property Organization to cancel a meeting on the role of open source in world intellectual property law, Lessig said that the argument over intellectual property law has become unnecessarily polarized...
PC World: Viruses Try New Tactics.
A tricky new type of virus is surfacing, taking a twist on the usual trap set by e-mail messages: It appears in attachments that are not typically used for viruses, applies a password to avoid detection, and fools victims into entering the password and becoming infected.
BBC News: EU aims to improve net searching.
It is hoped that eventually the project will develop search engines that can emulate the human ability to assess the context of information presented and sort out irrelevancies before delivering the results. Project SEKT is made up of 12 partners from the world of commerce and academia.
March 18, 2004
CIO: Model Hacker Behavior.
Forget about patches. Researchers at the Florida Institute of Technology are looking for ways to fight hackers by modeling their methods, or "exploits." The research could eventually lead to new types of security tools capable of stopping attacks that hackers haven't even invented yet.
InfoWorld: Experts downplay Phatbot danger.
Antivirus experts at two security companies said that Phatbot was a low level threat, one day after a Washington Post report warned of hundreds of thousands of infections from the program and cited an alert issued by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
March 19, 2004
uiweb: Programmers, designers and the Brooklyn Bridge.
The design and engineering of modern technology, software and the web has bred a hubris that anything older than a few years can’t possibly be relevant, and I think it’s a mistake. To argue this point, there is no better place to start as a basis of comparison and learning than the story of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Good Experience: Debating The Page Paradigm.
Anything that helps create a good experience is worthwhile. Anything else must be discarded. Job titles, methodologies, and breadcrumb links are good only to the degree that they help create a good experience for the customer.
Economist: The car that screens your calls.
The idea is to monitor the driver's activity via the steering wheel, pedals and indicators (turn signals), and assess the complexity of the current manoeuvre using a set of predefined rules. If this complexity exceeds a certain threshold, the system filters out unnecessary distractions...
EE Times: UWB group remains deadlocked.
For the fourth consecutive time, the IEEE 802.15.3a task group on ultrawideband technology failed to break a protracted deadlock. What little progress was proprietary rather than within the standards process itself.
March 20, 2004
InfoWorld: Inside Symantec’s Fishbowl.
From the outside, it’s a bland brick building in a bland brick industrial park, one of hundreds that blossomed during Northern Virginia’s continuing technology boom. A small sign admits to its occupation by Symantec, but gives no indication of the digital drama that lies within. None, that is, until you enter the Fishbowl.
March 21, 2004
eWEEK: ICANN to Review 10 Top-Level Domain Name Proposals.
The Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers on Friday announced it has received proposals for 10 new sponsored top-level domains. The new categories include support for mobility, regions and adult-entertainment.
MSNBC: AOL blocks spammers' Web sites.
Although AOL has joined hands with Internet service competitors EarthLink Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. to sue spammers and to develop new technologies for blocking spam, AOL is alone in its move to try to cut off access to commerce Web sites advertised via spam.
March 22, 2004
EE Times: New design rules: Yield to consumer.
In the old days, a tiered system of gatekeepers protected designers from the sometimes-fickle demands of the consumer; now those barriers are gone. Engineers and engineers-turned-CEOs knew just what technology the world needed; today the world calls the shots.
Network World: Verizon Wireless talks high-speed data rollout.
Verizon Wireless plans to make its BroadbandAccess mobile data service available to one-third of its U.S. wireless customers this year, the company announced Monday at the CTIA Wireless trade show in Atlanta.
March 23, 2004
Scientific American: Interview with Leonardo Chiariglione.
I don't see these systems as a solution in the long run, because they put too many limits on the users. The music is watermarked or encrypted with Digital Right Management algorithms and is then decrypted by your player. The problem is that every store has its own proprietary system, which is incompatible with the others.
Wired News: Pay Once, Share Often With LWDRM.
The basic idea of LWDRM is that the consumer will be allowed to copy music clips within a framework of fair use. At the same time, the consumer will be totally responsible for anything that happens with the music file once the certificate is attached to it.
MSNBC: All Eyes on Google.
Steven Levy. Typical Google big-think. But skeptics are saying that Google's increasingly varied roster of services shows that the company is losing focus. And that its bottom-up style causes chronic disorganization. CEO Schmidt isn't worried. "I believe the disorganization is a feature," he says.
Good Experience: Google = Good Experience.
Yet the reason for Google's success is anything but traditional. Google's approach to business is simple, a single rule that - if applied consistently across all channels, interfaces, and products - will yield tremendous results: Create a good customer experience.
March 24, 2004
EE Times: Copy protection plan squeezes home users.
Almost 30 companies are participating in the DVB copy protection subgroup, including the BBC, BskyB, Disney, Intel, Micronas, Microsoft, Panasonic, Philips, Sony and Warner Bros. Mapping the technical spec to fit consumers' social and private behavior at home, however, is a tricky business.
NY Times: More Lawsuits Filed in Effort to Thwart File Sharing.
Of the 532 people accused of illegal file sharing by the industry, 89 were using networks at universities including New York University, Stanford, Georgetown and Vanderbilt. The others used commercial Internet service providers to reach the Internet.
March 25, 2004
Poynter Online: Eyetrack Is Not a Solution.
For media company managers and staff, this Eyetrack research will provoke important discussions and help guide sites in redesign and navigation decisions. It is likely that there will be some findings that will raise questions and concerns. Fundamentally, however, the Eyetrack results are just one more tool to help journalists do their jobs better.
Cooper Interactive Design: Common Myths about Web Design.
Some of the most common myths about Web design follow. These myths have found their way into business and technical organizations, and are—to some degree or other—taken at face value by management, marketing, engineering, and sometimes even Web designers themselves.
March 26, 2004
NY Times: U.S. Online Gambling Policy Violates Law, W.T.O. Rules.
The decision stems from a case brought to the W.T.O. in June 2003 by the tiny island nation of Antigua and Barbuda. The nation, which licenses 19 companies that offer sports betting and casino games like blackjack over the Internet, argued that United States trade policy does not prohibit cross-border gambling operations.
InfoWorld: Postini antispam patent could cause headaches.
If enforced, the patent, which covers an e-mail "pre-processing service" could grant Postini legal ownership of a wide range of antispam and e-mail security methods. However, some industry experts doubt that the patent, filed in September 2000, will stand up to legal scrutiny.
March 27, 2004
InfoWorld: Security innovation is alive and well.
But the healthy economy has started adding new players to the industry, and those new players are coming from places we used to think of being old adversaries or from places we never associated with technology.
March 28, 2004
eWEEK: MSN Details Plans for Blog, News Search.
The two services—MSN Newsbot for news and MSN Blogbot for blogs—will likely come out ahead of MSN's introduction later this year of it own algorithmic Web search engine to compete with Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc., said Karen Redezki...
SJ Mercury: Plugged in may take on a whole new meaning.
Several companies have launched trial programs in the past year, and many more are watching intently from the sidelines. One recent industry survey found that a third of electric utilities were either using broadband-over-powerline technology, known as BPL, or considering it.
eWEEK: Advanced Speech Research Sounding Sweet to IBM.
IBM is barreling forward with its research on advanced technology to make speech applications and Interactive Voice Response systems more powerful than ever, said Gary Cohen, general manager of IBM's Pervasive Computing group.
March 29, 2004
Useit.Com: Productivity in the Service Economy.
Many service economy jobs could enjoy substantial productivity growth through better application of information technology. For example, every time you check in at the airport, you wait several minutes as the agent frantically taps away at a hidden computer. Most of this time is wasted due to airline software's horrendous usability.
eWEEK: What Is Bill Gates Thinking?
Q&A with Bill Gates. Now, because I have this big LCD screen and I've got ClearType, I had the article in reading mode and as I was reading I was typing the comments. And the average number of comments I wrote per paper were over double when I was commenting while I was reading, versus reading it completely and then commenting.
March 30, 2004
WIRED: Moore's Second Law.
What we need is a fourth axis of development - a systematic improvement of overall system efficiency, from the individual silicon gate, through motherboards and displays, all the way up to the Internet itself. How do we do it? Exhaustively.
eWEEK: Google Getting Personal with Search.
Both of the services are available from the Google Labs site; Google did not provide details on when they would be launched as full products. "Today, Google takes the first step in providing personal search results based on users' preferences," Larry Page...
NY Times: Broad Gains in Online Shopping.
The data provide context for the maturation of the online retail industry, which is expected to sell roughly $120 billion worth of goods this year, according to Forrester Research. The data also indicate that lofty expectations of broad e-commerce by the late 1990's were not unrealistic, just premature.
EE Times: Sony studio bets on Blu-Ray; Nokia mixes radio, TV and cellular.
A studio affiliated with Sony Corp. on Monday became the first to officially commit to launching its new titles on the Blu-ray high definition disk format. Meanwhile, a new business unit of Nokia said it is developing separate services that mix cellular data with FM radio and digital broadcast TV.
March 31, 2004
News.Com: Judge: File sharing legal in Canada.
In his ruling Wednesday, Finckenstein rejected that request on several grounds. In part, he said the recording industry had not presented evidence linking the alleged file-swapping to the ISP subscribers that was strong enough to warrant breaking through critical privacy protections. But he also questioned whether CRIA had a copyright case at all.
First Monday: Finders, keepers?
That leaves a great deal of information in a middle ground. The information might be useful somewhere at sometime in the future. Decisions concerning whether and how to keep this information are an essential part of personal information management. Bad decisions either way can be costly.
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