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August 1, 2004
SJ Mercury: We the media.
The Internet has made it possible for ordinary citizens to gather, create and disseminate news, shaking up traditional notions of journalism. Mercury News Technology Columnist Dan Gillmor explores this idea and its ramifications in his new book, ``We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People.''
InfoWorld: Tragedy of the network commons.
Jon Udell. As security technologists, we’re easily dazzled by our shiny cryptographic swords. But while we’re brandishing our swords, our users — like Indiana Jones in that famous scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark — might simply pull out their guns and shoot us.
August 2, 2004
Useit.Com: Deceivingly Strong Information Scent Costs Sales.
Usually, of course, it's good when websites have both clearly defined navigation and labels that explicitly state what users will find at the other end of each link. The problem arises when some links are clear (and have strong information scent) and others are vague (and have weak information scent).
August 3, 2004
PC World: Three Minutes With the MIT Lab Director.
Q&A with Michael Bove. It would be really sort of nice if, wherever I was and whatever access means I had to the network, all of my information just appeared to be there. And whatever security issues and digital rights management issues and everything else would disappear in that context.
Wired News: 321 Studios Shuts Its Doors.
"They've ceased operations," said Michael Page, an attorney with Keker & Van Nest, who represented 321 Studios. "They couldn't afford to do business and fight all the legal fights. They essentially got sued out of existence." The company posted a notice on its website.
August 4, 2004
News.Com: FCC lets TiVo users share shows.
But the government ended up granting TiVo the regulatory reprieve. The FCC said at its meeting Wednesday that TiVo's security system will be "appropriate for use" when receiving digital TV signals broadcast over the airwaves.
eWEEK: MSN Desktop Search on the Horizon.
MSN does plan to combine desktop search of e-mail messages and files with its Web search once both technologies are available, said MSN Product Manager Justin Osmer in an interview following the session. Whether that combination will occur when the desktop search product is first launched remains unclear and depends on the timing of MSN Search's switch to its own Web search technology...
August 5, 2004
Good Experience: Budgeting for Advertising and Customer Experience.
I told her that seemed a tad low for an annual budget to be spent improving the site for customers, especially given that the annual revenue of the company was around $50 million. "Well," she responded, "we already spend $30 million a year just on advertising, so there's not much left over."
eWEEK: Yahoo Targets More than Spyware in Toolbar Release.
The Sunnyvale, Calif., company on Wednesday took the beta tag off the Yahoo Toolbar with Anti-Spy and changed its default scanning settings to detect both spyware and adware by default, Yahoo officials told eWEEK.com...
August 6, 2004
The Economist: Access all areas.
At the moment, the entire open access literature is tiny—less than 1% of what is published according to the Public Library of Science. But if governments were to insist that the results of research they fund must be published in an open-access way, that would change completely.
August 7, 2004
First Monday: The devil you don't know.
While there are many hopes embedded in this view (lower costs, wider access, etc.), it appears more likely that Open Access will come about not through a revolution in the world of legacy publishing, but through upstart media built with the innate characteristics of the Internet in mind.
Technology Review: 3D Designs Advance Light Chips.
The dream of building computer chips that use light signals rather than electricity has entered the realm of serious research in recent years with the advent of photonic crystal, a material that blocks and channels light within extremely small spaces.
August 8, 2004
NY Times: A Digital World With Analog as Its Workhorse.
So it turns out the digital revolution is driving strong demand for advances in analog electronics, an arcane realm in which tens of thousands of products translate reality into 1's and 0's for computers and retranslate digital results into forms humans can perceive.
August 9, 2004
Boxes and Arrows: The Information Architecture of Email.
Gmail revealed to me my email behavior — something I hadn’t previously given much thought. By making certain things easier (and others more difficult), Gmail showed me how "typical" email applications weren’t necessarily designed according to how I used them.
News.Com: SBC gets up to speed.
Customers of SBC Yahoo DSL Express now get an upload speed of 256kbps, up from 128kbps. For its more expensive DSL Pro tier, SBC has raised uploads to 416kbps from 384kbps. By late fall, SBC says, it will have raised DSL Express and DSL Pro upload speeds further, to 384kbps and 512kbps, respectively.
August 10, 2004
SJ Mercury: AT&T's new wireless broadband a preview of good things to come.
The dream of wireless broadband became a reality in the Bay Area on July 20, when AT&T Wireless launched a service with the clunky name 3G UMTS.As with all new wireless services, 3G UMTS is expensive and has a limited coverage area. But it's a tantalizing preview of some amazing changes just around the corner.
News.Com: Cox hoists broadband speed limits.
The Atlanta-based cable giant boosted download speeds for basic high-speed Internet service to 4 megabits per second, compared with the 3mbps it previously promised. It also increased upstream bandwidth to 512 kilobits per second from 256kbps.
August 11, 2004
Computerworld: User Interfaces: The Next Generation.
Broadly speaking, such technologies are designed to allow computers to accept gestures, motions, speech and facial expressions as data input methods along with the mouse clicks and keystrokes. Many of these technologies are coming from small companies and are first developed for highly specialized applications. But as the technology matures and costs come down, expect to see it break into broader markets...
InfoWorld: AOL, Yahoo rolling out sender authentication.
In September, AOL will verify the source of incoming e-mail using a component of Microsoft Corp.'s Sender ID authentication architecture. Yahoo will use its DomainKeys authentication technology to sign all e-mail coming out of the company's mail servers by the end of 2004, according to spokesmen for the companies.
August 12, 2004
Extreme Tech: Into the Future of Computer Graphics.
Vendors not only show off their product lines, but many of their technical employees attend the numerous courses, panels, and research paper discussions to gain knowledge and get a glimpse of graphics techniques that may eventually be implemented in future products.
NY Times: All Thumbs, Without the Stigma.
To be sure, Dr. Tenner notes that research shows the thumb does half the overall work of the hand. But its typing prowess has emerged only with text messaging. As cellphones evolved into devices that fit in a palm, the thumb wound up in an opportune position for both dialing and text messaging.
August 13, 2004
New Scientist: iTunes wireless music streaming cracked.
Johansen figured out the secret encryption key used to secure the wireless link between a computer and an Airport Express base station and lock other systems out. His program, JusteForte, uses this key to send MP4 digital audio files from a Windows computer to an Airport Express base station.
EE Times: Computing graphics spotlight shines on Microsoft.
The leading name in computing graphics these days isn't Pixar or Nvidia or 3Dlabs. It's Microsoft Corp. With the help of sophisticated algorithms and computing techniques, the company is finding new ways to manipulate pixels and re-create reality.
August 14, 2004
IBM DeveloperWorks: Crash.
When I use software applications, even expensive ones, on Mac and Windows systems, I'm always quite shocked. I've never quite adjusted to people saying things like "Oh, sometimes it just doesn't start. Just double-click it again until it comes up."
August 15, 2004
Crypto-Gram: Websites, Passwords, and Consumers.
Criminals follow the money. Today, more and more money is on the Internet. Millions of people manage their bank accounts, PayPal accounts, stock portfolios, or other payment accounts online. It's a tempting target: if a criminal can gain access to one of these accounts, he can steal money. And almost all these accounts are protected only by passwords.
August 16, 2004
Useit.Com: When Search Engines Become Answer Engines.
Increasingly, the Internet user experience is becoming one of dipping a toe into websites rather than truly "visiting" them. Using search engines as their Web interface, people simply grab query-related nuggets from sites, but don't engage with the sites themselves.
Adaptive Path: 8 Quick Ways to Fix Your Search Engine.
Jeffrey Veen. Often, the most dramatic change they could make was in the design of the search and results interfaces. In some cases, as the old saying goes, this was like putting lipstick on a pig. But cleaning things up does help users find answers to their queries.
August 17, 2004
NY Times: Trying to Take Technology to the Masses.
Mr. Reddy, a pioneering researcher in artificial intelligence and a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, plans to unveil at the end of this year his new project, called the PCtvt, a $250 wirelessly networked personal computer intended for the four billion people around the world who live on less than $2,000 a year.
Good Experience: Customer Experience Review: Verizon, Time Warner, PC Richard.
They say that moving is one of the most stressful events in life. Having just completed a move, I can attest to this fact; but not from the exertion of packing and unpacking boxes. Despite the many boxes, the physical move was a breeze, compared to the customer experience of setting up the technology in the new apartment.
eWEEK: Faster Wi-Fi Standard Nets Second Proposal.
A proposal for the next-generation 802.11n standard, originally floated by Agere Systems, has now won support from heavyweights including Intel, Matsushita and Toshiba. The group, called TGn Sync, will challenge the WWiSE consortium, a second collection of companies including Broadcom Corp. and Texas Instruments Inc.
August 18, 2004
Wired News: This Headline Is Not for Sale.
Rising from this volatile mix of competing interests is a product called IntelliTxt by Vibrant Media. It works by underlining certain words in an article so that when a reader runs his cursor over one of them, an ad springs up. For example, in a story on antivirus software, words like "virus," "security" and "worms" might be highlighted.
August 19, 2004
Computerworld: Cryptanalysis of MD5 and SHA: Time for a new standard.
Bruce Schneier. But there's an old saying inside the NSA: "Attacks always get better; they never get worse." These techniques will continue to improve, and probably someday there will be practical attacks based on these techniques. It's time for us all to migrate away from SHA-1.
Wired News: P2P Services in the Clear.
Peer-to-peer file-sharing services Morpheus and Grokster are legal, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday. The decision is a blow for record labels and movie studios which sued the peer-to-peer operators claiming that the services should be held liable for the copyright infringement of their users.
August 20, 2004
Cooper Interaction Design: Well-designed products.
A common affliction plaguing many of us interaction designers is the propensity to complain and kvetch about every piece of software on our computers, cell-phones and cars. And it's true—there is a lot of bad software out there. To offset this sometimes irritating tendency to critique and redesign everything we see, I'd like to offer a selection of software that I consider to be truly well-designed.
eWEEK: Eolas Says Browser Patent Fight Isn't Over Yet.
Despite reports saying that Microsoft and the W3C have Eolas Technologies on the ropes in their patent battle over basic browser technology, Eolas sounded an upbeat note Thursday. The company's lawyers on Thursday received an "office action" from the U.S. PTO, and they say the notice may have only reset the clock on the IP fight.
August 21, 2004
InfoWorld: Collaborative knowledge gardening.
Jon Udell. To CTOs, though, I’d say that both are collaborative systems for building a shared database of items, developing a metadata vocabulary about the items, performing metadata-driven queries, and monitoring change in areas of interest. In the case of Flickr, an item is a photo; in the case of del.icio.us, it’s a URL.
August 22, 2004
Useit.Com: Informational Articles Must Ask For the Order.
Numerous companies are now producing informative websites that are rich in content and thin in commercial messages. This is good, because users are more interested in facts than hype. Unfortunately, many of these sites are so focused on providing information that they lose the sale.
August 23, 2004
The Economist: On the same wavelength.
On one side, therefore, are notions of radio frequencies as scarce resources that can be used by only one transmitter at a time and are worth lobbying and paying billions for; on the other side is the idea that any number of transmitters and receivers can peacefully co-exist on the airwaves and that spectrum should therefore be open to all—not individual property, but rather a commons.
August 24, 2004
Fortune: Sony's New E-Book.
At last, a truly exciting new chapter in electronic books has begun. Unfortunately it has begun only in Japan, in kanji and katakana. It has some annoying quirks, and it costs about 40,000 yen, or roughly $375. But it's exciting anyway because it is the first electronic book reader to use a new "electronic paper" technology that's nearly as effortless to carry and read as a paperback, and the product is bound to be released over here soon.
August 25, 2004
Wired News: Copyright Bill Needs Big Changes.
In response to a request from a Senate committee, consumer electronics companies and public-interest groups on Tuesday submitted changes to a controversial copyright bill that would hold technology companies liable for encouraging people to infringe copyright.
August 26, 2004
SJ Mercury: FCC chief can take a bow for work in wireless arena.
Dan Gillmor. The Everwave service is also something of a testament to Powell's tenure at the FCC. The commission has been more an ally than enemy for people who want to expand the use of wireless technologies in a world still dominated by wired lines.
PC World: First Look: Danger Sidekick II.
Two long years later--an eternity in tech time, during which PalmOne's Treo 600 supplanted the original Sidekick in many mobile users' hearts--the Sidekick II is finally here. Fans of the original model will find much to like, but critics of the first aren't likely to be swayed by its evolutionary successor.
August 27, 2004
eWEEK: Court Dismisses VeriSign's Case Against ICANN.
The judge ruled that VeriSign Inc. could not prove its core antitrust claim against the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, dismissing outright the antitrust allegation and declining to rule on the validity of the six remaining claims.
EE Times: NEC develops high-resolution 3D display.
NEC Corp. unveiled a new LCD structure for 3D displays that promises high resolution at 470 horizontal pixels per inch. NEC presented the technology at the Asia Display/IMD '04 exhibition this week in Daegu, South Korea. The prototype, a 2.5-inch low-temperature polysilicon LCD, has a new pixel arrangement called HDDP...
August 28, 2004
InfoWorld: The human information filter.
Jon Udell. In last week’s column, I mentioned del.icio.us, Joshua Schachter’s “social bookmarking” service. Since then, I’ve explored the service more deeply in a series of blog entries. Using del.icio.us, I’m now able to process information in dramatically more efficient ways. Let’s look at some of the reasons why.
August 29, 2004
Boxes and Arrows: Location and Presence in Mobile Data Services.
Even if these projections are overly optimistic, location-awareness and presence will surely change the way people use networked services. We, as designers, need to start thinking about the ways that mobility and location-awareness could enhance each service and application we design.
Computerworld: Industry groups propose alternative to copyright bill.
The new proposal, sent to Hatch and other sponsors of his bill this week, exempts Internet service providers, investors and others whose services could be used for copyright infringement. It also allows for the recovery of full legal costs of the party that wins a lawsuit, in an attempt to discourage frivolous lawsuits.
August 30, 2004
Useit.Com: Mastery, Mystery, and Misery: The Ideologies of Web Design.
Behind a website's superficial appearance lies its fundamental understanding of user behavior in an interactive service. Choices such as whether the "buy" button is red or orange or whether the navigation menu runs across the top or down the left side are much debated, but make at most a few percent difference in usability. In contrast, the design ideology can make or break a site.
Computerworld: Microsoft won't ship WinFS with Longhorn.
Microsoft said WinFS will be delivered after the Longhorn release. Greg Sullivan, a lead product manager at Microsoft, said WinFS will follow the Longhorn "client" operating system release but Microsoft doesn't know when it will be complete.
August 31, 2004
News.Com: XM Radio pulls PC hardware amid piracy concerns.
Before being quietly discontinued this month, the XM PCR was one of several hardware devices sold by XM Satellite Radio to give its more than 2 million subscribers satellite radio reception. In conjunction with a third-party software title called TimeTrax, however, the PCR let listeners download songs to their personal computers.
InfoWorld: Spammers using sender authentication too, study says.
But Wong, who co-authored both the SPF and Sender ID standards, said that stopping spam was never the intention of SPF or Sender ID. The technology is merely a way to stop one loophole spammers use: source address spoofing. Evidence that spammers are publishing SPF records is a good sign, Meng said.
eWEEK: VeriSign Takes ICANN to State Court.
In the state lawsuit, VeriSign is accusing ICANN of violating the terms of the 2001 .com registry agreement between the two organizations by blocking or interfering with VeriSign's attempts to start new registry services.
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