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July 1, 2004
News.Com: Sony challenges Apple with 20GB music player.
The consumer electronics giant announced two products late Wednesday: the $400 20GB Network Walkman NW-HD1 and the $500 40GB Vaio Pocket VGF-AP1L. Both players will be available in fall for use with the Sony Connect music download service...
Computerworld: IP address fight in N.J. worries ISPs.
University Communications Inc., a Parsipanny. N.J.-based Web hosting company, earlier this week secured a temporary restraining order that allows it to continue using its current IP addresses -- even after terminating its contract with the assigning service provider.
July 2, 2004
Computerworld: Court rules ISP didn't violate law by capturing, copying e-mails.
In an e-mail privacy case that could have broad implications for users, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the operator of a small ISP operations didn't break federal law when he used special code to intercept and copy some of the e-mail messages his company processed for customers.
July 3, 2004
InfoWorld: Needed: Rapid Internet response.
Jon Udell. Instead, we need to make the network fabric itself more resilient and adaptive. I got a glimpse of how that might happen when I spoke with CloudShield Technologies about its recently announced CS-2000, which the company describes as a server for applications that do deep packet processing at gigabit-per-second rates.
Computerworld: Court rules ISP didn't violate law by capturing, copying e-mails.
In an e-mail privacy case that could have broad implications for users, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the operator of a small ISP operations didn't break federal law when he used special code to intercept and copy some of the e-mail messages his company processed for customers.
News.Com: Sony challenges Apple with 20GB music player.
The consumer electronics giant announced two products late Wednesday: the $400 20GB Network Walkman NW-HD1 and the $500 40GB Vaio Pocket VGF-AP1L. Both players will be available in fall for use with the Sony Connect music download service...
Computerworld: IP address fight in N.J. worries ISPs.
University Communications Inc., a Parsipanny. N.J.-based Web hosting company, earlier this week secured a temporary restraining order that allows it to continue using its current IP addresses -- even after terminating its contract with the assigning service provider.
July 4, 2004
Economist: Life in the vault.
On the other hand, says Mr Huang, “the vision of digital content is a much more compelling one than that of home automation.” And this is why the new chips may turn out to be as important as Intel claims. They are an opening salvo in a battle between the computer and the consumer-electronics industries over who will dominate the digital household.
USA Today: New cell phones get tiny keyboards.
Tiny keyboards are looking like the next big thing in cell phones. As cell phones increasingly become pocket-size mobile computers used for text messaging, e-mail and Web access, phone makers are rushing to add standard Qwerty keyboards to make those functions easier.
July 5, 2004
EE Times: IEEE pushes WLANs to 'nth' degree.
The IEEE 802.11n task group will start sorting through 61 proposals for next-generation wireless LANs in Portland, Ore., next week. The record-setting number of proposals indicates the importance of the work: a technology stake in the delivery of high-rate streaming audio, video and data in a consumer-centric wireless world.
July 6, 2004
Technology Review: Rethinking the Computer.
Now in its fourth year, the project is turning out working prototypes, including workspaces that adjust themselves according to their inhabitants’ habits, location-aware sensors that help people find their way around buildings, and computer chips that configure themselves to best suit different applications.
Fast Company: Thinking Outside The Cup.
This push into music is the start of a daring effort to reinvent one of the world's best-known brands. It is an experiment that asks whether that brand is powerful enough, and Starbucks' relationships with the 30 million customers who pass through its 8,000 stores every week durable enough, that they can be used to completely transform the business.
July 7, 2004
Technology Review: Google Conquers E-Mail.
Gmail shows that Web applications with thin clients can have advantages over software running on your desktop. The most obvious is reliability: Gmail runs on Google’s servers, not your hard drive, and Google almost certainly does a better job than you do with routine maintenance, backups, and the like.
NY Times: Claiming a Threat to Innovation, Group Seeks to Overturn 10 Patents.
The list of targets was drawn from 200 submissions solicited through the Web site of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, based in San Francisco. It includes patents covering telephone calls over the Internet, streaming audio and video, and online testing.
July 8, 2004
PC World: Symantec Opens Its Security Center.
Some say that protecting companies and governments from unanticipated cyberattacks is similar to finding a needle in a haystack. But at Symantec's Security Operating Center in Alexandria, Virginia, protecting clients from worms, viruses, and other computer-related threats is more like plucking a specific needle from a mound of needles in a haystack.
eWEEK: Legislators Scramble to Prevent VOIP Regulation.
For Pickering, acting quickly to prevent states from dragging VOIP into these problems on a piecemeal basis will lay the groundwork for Congress to sort through them in a comprehensive manner beginning next year.
Useit.Com: Beyond the Buy Button in E-Commerce.
The biggest challenge in e-commerce is to create trust. On the Web, your company is completely virtual. People can't touch the product. They don't get impressed by your big building or fancy décor. They don't get schmoozed by your high-wattage salespeople. They simply see a few glowing pixels on the screen.
July 9, 2004
IBM developerWorks: Policy, scourge of the people.
Policy isn't set by a person or a group of people. Policy is a force of nature. No human set that policy. No one had any input into it. It just happened. One day, the CEO came into his office and spied a binder on his desk. He didn't know where it came from. Perhaps it was left by elves.
Scripting News: Yahoo has acquired Oddpost.
Oddpost turned the idea of what you could do with a browser upside down, by producing a clone of Microsoft Outlook in JavaScript and DHTML running in MSIE. Since then, they have labored in relative obscurity, growing a customer base, raising VC money, adding people, and staying out of the way.
July 10, 2004
Technology Review: Swimming Upstream with Uploads.
Cable companies have been aggressively upgrading their cable modem services to provide 2- and 3-megabit-per-second downloads, and some DSL providers have doubled their standard rates to 1.5 megabits per second, but upstream increases have been incremental.
July 11, 2004
SJ Mercury: Glimmer of hope in copyright measures.
Dan Gillmor. The copyright wars continue. For a change, I have some modestly good news from the front lines. One horrible piece of legislation before Congress is under attack, albeit belatedly. And one excellent bill is gaining strength, albeit slowly.
July 12, 2004
Computerworld: The Land of the 'Free' Hot Spots.
Dan Gillmor. Despite Apple's quality-control problems and the occasional application I'd like to use that runs only on Windows, I'm still a Mac user and will probably remain one for the most part. The reason I wonder if it's too late for Boingo to be useful for me is that I have doubts about the entire business model of charging for Wi-Fi access.
Adaptive Path: Six Design Lessons From the Apple Store.
Jesse James Garrett. As the newest of Apple’s five "flagship" retail stores, the San Francisco Apple Store reflects the company’s latest thinking about how to translate its brand identity from its software and hardware products to the user experience of a retail environment.
July 13, 2004
Fortune: A PC Pioneer Decries the State of Computing.
So what is Kay trying to build now? Nothing less than "a new way of doing objects, operating systems, and networks, that makes use of the infrastructure we already have." Kay's ultimate dream is to completely remake the way we communicate with each other.
eWEEK: ICANN Committee Calls for Permanent End to SiteFinder.
Crocker said his committee addressed the technical issues around SiteFinder and whether VeriSign's effort to redirect Web users to other sites was appropriate, not whether ICANN has the authority to stop it. The basic conclusion of the 78-page report: "Don't do this," Crocker said.
July 14, 2004
News.Com: Tech, Hollywood heavyweights create content coalition.
The alliance marks the culmination of years of tentative and often suspicious contact between the high-tech industry and Hollywood. It will be aimed at developing specifications to protect copyrighted content such as movies inside home networks.
News.Com: IM giants drop some barriers to peace.
The companies will announce that later this year Microsoft's Live Communications Server, which offers instant messaging for corporate users, will connect with AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and its own MSN Messenger.
July 15, 2004
eWEEK: Do Small Devices Equal Big Threat?
Is that cell phone a Trojan horse? It might be, according to a recently released report, "How to Tackle the Threat From Portable Storage Devices," by The Gartner Group discussing the security risks associated with the proliferation of small USB- and Firewire-enabled electronics and peripherals.
Wired News: More Disks Lost at Los Alamos.
Losing track of secrets is getting to be a nasty habit at the United States' leading nuclear weapons lab. For the third time in just eight months, classified disks have been reported missing at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
July 16, 2004
EE Times: IEEE 802.3 forms residential Ethernet study group.
While wireless LANs have been pitched as a key networking solution in the home, many developers in the communication and consumer electronic sector have eyed the possibility of using copper-based Ethernet has a means for connecting devices and streaming media around a home.
The Economist: Background illumination.
Ambient Devices, a start-up company spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is taking a novel approach to solving this problem. It has devised a subtle way to embed the display of information in a range of household objects that would not look out of place in a funky furnishings catalogue.
July 17, 2004
InfoWorld: HailStorm was before its time.
Jon Udell. Sooner or later, we will wind up delegating the management of these facts to services acting on our behalf. HailStorm was the right idea. But the dawn of this century was the wrong time and Microsoft was the wrong company.
July 18, 2004
New Scientist: Polite computers win users' hearts and minds.
The trick, according to a researcher who has analysed users' responses to their computers, is to make operating systems and software more "civilised" by saying sorry more often. That way people won't feel they are stupid or at fault, so they become less apprehensive about using computers, and perhaps more productive and creative.
July 19, 2004
NY Times: The New Miniature Computers (They Also Make Phone Calls).
The cellular industry's long pursuit of ever-more minuscule phones has shifted into reverse, giving rise to bulkier wireless handsets with larger color screens and small versions of standard qwerty-style computer keyboards to send e-mail and instant messages.
SJ Mercury: Intel unveils `significant' PC development under the hood.
The object of Intel's hyperbole is a new family of chipsets, the sub-processors that surround Intel's main Pentium processor and help with crucial tasks such as audio, video and storage. There are about a half-dozen improvements in PC performance associated with the new chipsets.
July 20, 2004
Useit.Com: Card Sorting: How Many Users to Test.
Fidelity Investments has one of the world's best usability teams, led by Dr. Thomas S. Tullis, senior VP of human interface design. Tullis and co-author Larry Wood recently reported the results of a study measuring the trade-off curve for testing various numbers of users in a card sorting exercise.
eWEEK: Intel, Oracle Boost Liberty Alliance by Signing On.
The Liberty Alliance announced on Monday that it has signed up the world's biggest chip maker—Intel Corp.—and its database king, Oracle Corp. The Liberty Alliance is a global consortium devoted to developing an open, federated identity standard.
July 21, 2004
Adaptive Path: ROI Is Not a Silver Bullet.
While some large-scale web projects can effectively be quantified in terms of ROI, more often user experience improvements are an ongoing and iterative process. Design competence is an intangible asset that requires more specific valuation techniques.
Internet Week: Verizon Takes On Cable With High-Speed Optical-Fiber Net.
In announcing partial pricing for the rollout--already underway in sections of Texas, California, and Florida--Verizon said slower speeds of 5 Mbps uplink and 2 Mbps downlink and 15 Mbps/2 Mbps will have monthly prices of $39.95 and $49.95, respectively. Pricing for the 30 Mbps/5 Mbps service will be announced later...
July 22, 2004
Washington Post: TiVo's Plans Lead to Fight On Copyrights.
The battle is one of several being waged in federal agencies and on Capitol Hill this summer, as content companies such as the movie and music companies seek to keep control of copyrighted works that increasingly can be digitally stored, copied, manipulated and distributed by users.
PC World: Microsoft to Enforce Antispam Plan.
Microsoft will soon put some bite into its Sender ID antispam plans. The software giant will check e-mail messages sent to its Hotmail, MSN, and Microsoft.com mail accounts to see if they come from valid e-mail servers, as identified by the Sender ID, according to a company executive.
InfoWorld: Verizon jumps into consumer VOIP with VoiceWing.
Verizon's VoiceWing service, which transports calls partly over the open Internet, is geared toward consumers and has a basic price of $39.95 per month. Another Verizon VOIP service, geared toward small businesses and enterprises and probably debuting next year, will run over a fully managed network to better ensure call quality...
July 23, 2004
AskTog: Holistic Design: PalmOne Tungsten T3 Case Study.
Primarily because the handheld community is not taking a holistic approach to supporting their customers. This, in turn, is resulting in lost sales for the developers and retailers and a declining trend for handhelds in general. Three weeks ago, I bought a pair of Palm Tungsten T3 handheld computers for my wife and myself.
July 24, 2004
NY Times: Microsoft May Sell Slate, a Pioneer in Web Magazines.
According to company executives, Microsoft is considering a sale of Slate because the model of creating a Web magazine of cultural criticism and political analysis to attract visitors to its MSN Network has little business salience in an age dominated by search applications.
July 25, 2004
SJ Mercury: Humanitarian effort yields brilliant technology, teamwork.
Dan Gillmor. Led by Cmdr. Eric Rasmussen, a Navy doctor who has been working on humanitarian projects for years, the team demonstrated some of what's possible. The technology ranged from advanced wireless networking to powerful collaboration tools. Some came from companies selling proprietary products. Others were based on open-source projects...
July 26, 2004
EE Times: Municipal fiber network will use World Wide Packets gear.
A municipal broadband project here has chosen World Wide Packets Inc.'s Lightning Edge equipment as the basis of a city-wide, fiber-to-the-home architecture called iProvo. Following the approval of a bond issue in June, the communications department of Provo's energy division began city-wide deployment of fiber rings...
Technology Review: Less Lost in Translation.
Although the wizard can help with translation, it is not, strictly speaking, a machine translation tool. It is more akin to the grammar checkers familiar to users of common word-processing programs—but enhanced to work with people not native in English.
July 27, 2004
News.Com: Judge: RIAA can unmask file swappers.
U.S. District Judge Denny Chin ruled Monday that Cablevision, which provides broadband Internet access in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, can be required to divulge the identities of its subscribers sued over copyright violations.
July 28, 2004
Wired News: Group Warns DVRs Endangered.
To fight the impending rule and to stoke backlash from TV viewers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation earlier this month launched the Digital Television Liberation Project to guide people on how to make their own personal video recorders from off-the-shelf parts.
News.Com: The keyboards of tomorrow?
The FrogPad is one of a small number of alternative input devices that retrofit keyboards for a world on the go. The 20-key gadget is about the size and shape of a hand. Soon it will come with a clamshell case that will let people plug in a smart phone and use the whole kit like a mini laptop.
July 29, 2004
Wired News: Spam Foes Band Together.
Mitchell said that the private-sector organization will give highly placed spam fighters and strategists a direct line to their counterparts in other countries in order to disseminate information, coordinate tactics and make it more difficult for junk e-mailers to hide their operations.
InfoWorld: NIST says DES encryption 'inadequate'.
The advent of massively parallel computing has rendered DES inadequate to protect federal government information, NIST said. The institute, part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, is proposing that the government withdraw Federal Information Processing Standard certification for DES...
July 30, 2004
News.Com: Is Real's iPod "hacking" legal?
RealNetworks' release of its Harmony software this week has changed that. The company has simulated the FairPlay software well enough that songs from its own store can now be played on the iPod. After several days of silence, Apple said Thursday that it was "stunned" at the move.
July 31, 2004
The Economist: Faster, cheaper, better.
Interest in these high-powered beasts waned in the 1990s, as computing talent was drawn to the internet. This has been changing in recent years. The ability to build powerful computers cheaply, combined with growing commercial demand for high-end computing power, is creating a renaissance in the field of supercomputing.
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