May 2, 2005
WIRED: Seoul Machine. Kun-hee Lee's ambition was straightforward: He wanted to transform his company into the world's top consumer electronics brand - the place that makes the coolest stuff. A decade later, he's just about done it. Samsung is ranked number 21 among the world's top brands by the consulting outfit Interbrand, just one notch below Sony.

PC World: First Look: Tiger Lives Up to the Hype. The breakthrough feature in OS X version 10.4--the reason to get Tiger at all--is Spotlight. This whip-smart desktop search tool rummages through your files, folders, e-mail, and certain applications, and then displays results neatly by category.

May 3, 2005
InfoWorld: What TimeDance got right. Jon Udell. Clearly this column is a plea for someone to resurrect TimeDance. I’m aware of several calendar- and event-oriented Web startups, including EVDB and Trumba, but these don’t seem to place ad-hoc shared spaces at the centers of their missions. My guess is that we’ll see new entrants take on that challenge soon.

NY Times: Latest Promotion Vehicle Is a Hand-Held Media Device. Will Anyone Watch? Heavy.com, a large Web host of short films and animation, has started making many of its clips available as free content specially formatted for the game system. The company hopes advertisers will support the free content by paying for quick commercials before or after the downloads, or by providing content in the form of branded entertainment.

May 5, 2005
Technology Review: The 'Nature' of Net Viruses. Two Canadian ecologists at the University of Windsor in Ontario have been studying the way that Internet viruses proliferate to better determine the progress of a real-world intruder -- the spiny water flea, an insect that's native to Russia that has been invading the Canadian lake system for two decades.

May 6, 2005
News.Com: Court yanks down FCC's broadcast flag. One result of Friday's ruling is that, unless it's eventually overturned by a higher court, the fight over digital TV piracy will return to Capitol Hill. The D.C. appeals court noted that the FCC "has no power to act" until "Congress confers power on it" through enacting a law explicitly authorizing the broadcast flag.

May 9, 2005
EE Times: Motorola unveils carbon nanotube emissive display for flat-panel TVs. Motorola Labs, the applied research arm of Motorola Inc., on Monday unveiled a prototype color display based on carbon nanotube technology. Motorola said its prototype could lead to development of large flat-panel TV screens that cost less but sacrifice no performance compared with existing displays.

Useit.Com: Mental Models For Search Are Getting Firmer. In user testing, people tell us that they want search on websites and intranets to work like X, where X is their favorite major search engine. Luckily, all three of the major engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) work the same...

NY Times: Chip Maker Develops Denser Storage Method. The maker of a novel computer memory chip has developed a new generation of its technology, pushing forward in the quest for chips that are smaller and denser, and thus less expensive for use in consumer electronics.

May 10, 2005
PC World: Microsoft Unwraps Windows Mobile 5. Microsoft today unveiled a new version of its operating system for mobile devices that it says offers increased reliability, improved hardware support, and a host of new features to both entertain users and make them more productive.

May 11, 2005
BBC News: BBC eases rules on news feed use. But this relaxing of the licence means a much more open approach, according to the BBC News website editor, Pete Clifton. "We've raised the profile of how we are promoting them and are much more relaxed about other sites making use of feeds, which is an important step," he said.

May 12, 2005
NY Times: The Cellphone That Does Everything Imaginable, at Least Sort Of. Of course, what makes the Monty Python skit so funny is the infinite gulf between the simplicity of the "solutions" and the difficulty of executing them - and that's what makes the A800 a little silly, too. If you reread the previous paragraph but add "sort of" after every phrase, you'll get the idea.

May 13, 2005
eWEEK: Google Toolbar Keeps Controversial Linking Feature. AutoLink remains a key part of the full toolbar release, though Google has modified the feature to give users more options for switching the default sites for the links. Google also has shifted the color of inserted links to distinguish them from other links, a company spokeswoman said.

NY Times: In Console Wars, Xbox Is Latest to Rearm. Three and a half years after it entered the console market with the Xbox, Microsoft yesterday unveiled its successor, the Xbox 360, a creamy white console that is to go on sale in North America, Europe and Japan by the holiday season.

May 16, 2005
BBC News: Designs on less complex mobiles. What the industry should be coming up with are more innovative ways to get at these functions, thinks Mr Jenson, in ways that understand the kinds of experiences people want. It is about simplicity through design.

May 17, 2005
Schneier on Security: Combating Spam. The best solutions raise the cost of spam. Spam filters raise the cost by increasing the amount of spam that someone needs to send before someone will read it. If 99% of all spam is filtered into trash, then sending spam becomes 100 times more expensive.

Wired News: Tor Torches Online Tracking. Tor has been completely rebuilt since the Navy initially designed it in the late '90s. The EFF began backing Tor last week, and its creators are now hopeful they will be able to add servers and attract new users, thus bolstering the system's privacy and security benefits.

May 18, 2005
Scott Berkun: Why you must lead or follow. When someone is leading, and doing it well, the most valuable thing for others to do is to get behind their effort and support it. A smart capable leader can only be effective if there are other capable people that choose to put their own energy behind the leader’s decisions...

May 19, 2005
eWEEK: Strider HoneyMonkey: Trawling for Windows Exploits. The project, code-named Strider HoneyMonkey Exploit Detection, is being created by the Redmond, Wash., company's Cybersecurity and Systems Management Research Group to help the software giant find the source of zero-day exploits targeting the Windows XP operating system.

News.Com: VeriSign to put more backbone into the Net. Ultimately, VeriSign intends to have machines handling traffic sent to the "J" DNS server in more than 200 additional locations, a shift from its original strategy of having a few servers in several data centers at key Internet hubs.

May 20, 2005
eWEEK: 'Google Earth' Ready to Travel the World. During a media event at its campus, Google unveiled plans to release Google Earth within the next few weeks. It will replace the current Keyhole desktop software with a client that incorporates Google's local search and driving directions service on top of a bird's eye view of the world.

PC World: Samsung Shows 40-Inch OLED Display. Samsung Electronics has developed what it says is the world's first organic light emitting diode (OLED) display that measures 40-inches across the diagonal. OLEDs have been viewed as a potential replacement for LCDs and PDPs in some applications for several years.

eWEEK: Study: Phishers Get More Sophisticated. A technical study of phishing techniques published this week by the Honeynet Project has found that large numbers of users are still being readily tricked into visiting fake sites designed to harvest banking and financial details, despite massive efforts to educate consumers.

May 23, 2005
PC World: Samsung Replaces Hard Drives With Flash. Because Samsung is a major manufacturer of flash memory chips, it can likely source the chips internally at a lower price. Even so, it will be difficult to compete with hard drive makers on cost. Laptop drives at capacities of up to 30GB can easily be found for less than $200.

May 24, 2005
EE Times: Samsung LCD chief predicts 100-inch TV screens. Taking his cue from Alvin Toffler, Samsung Electronics' LCD President and CEO Sang-Wan Lee boldly predicted Tuesday (May 24) a "third wave" of liquid-crystal display development that would propel annual flat-panel LCD TV sales to 100 million by 2010 and yield screen sizes exceeding 100 inches.

News.Com: Publishers balk at Google book copy plan. In the letter, the association posed a series of detailed questions to Google about the project and its scope, given that the company is making a copy of books still in copyright without explicit permission from each publisher, creating the potential for financial harm to its members.

May 25, 2005
IBM developerWorks: The science of not hurting the user. Ergonomics is a field full of superstitions and rumors. Fads are commonplace. People do a lot of things which may or may not really help; they even do a few things which hurt. Failure to take ergonomics seriously can have real, permanent effects.

EE Times: Skype positions itself as 'enhancement' VoIP. The Europe-based firm is positioning itself as an "enhancement" service to existing telephone service and not as a "replacement" service. "We're an enhancement like fax," said Kelly Larabee, a Skype spokeswoman in the U.S. "You should know that Skype is not an emergency service."

May 26, 2005
SF Chronicle: Nokia's wireless Internet tablet comes without a phone. The Nokia 770 is a handheld computer intended to give consumers a simple way of hopping on the Internet. Priced at $350, Nokia says it is creating a whole new product category by offering a Web-browsing platform for home use with the versatility to travel to local, wireless hotspots.

May 27, 2005
CNN: Tech will cause a real estate crash. Given the nature of real estate, he warned that even a drop in demand by 20 percent could cause prices to be cut in half. Nielsen said that technology would make it ever more attractive to live in small towns and rural areas, which would undermine many of the advantages currently held by big cities...

PC World: Intel's New Pentium D Equipped with DRM Capability. Officially launched worldwide on May 26, the new offerings come digital-rights-management-enabled and will, at least in theory, allow copyright holders to prevent unauthorized copying and distribution of copyrighted materials from the motherboard rather than through the operating system as is currently the case.

May 31, 2005
eWEEK: Intel Wagers on WiMax. The unclear road map and lukewarm commitment from equipment makers raise questions about the viability of WiMax in the enterprise and have industry insiders urging users to be wary of the technology, at least for now.