November 2, 1998
Welcome to the launch of Tomalak's Realm!

Random Thoughts: Release 3.0

DDJ TechNetCast: Alan Cooper was interviewed last Friday and chatted it up with Philippe Lourier at "dub, dub dub, technetcast dot com."

• Real; Video Feed and the audio.

November 3, 1998
WSP: The top 10 CSS Problems in IE Problems. In fact, several of the most critical features of CSS1 remain either incorrectly implemented, implemented for only an undocumented selection of eligible HTML elements, or entirely neglected in Internet Explorer.

Anal Retentive? ABCNews.Com posted some test pages for the election to their live servers by accident. News.Com has an article about the accident.

Microsoft Backstage is a subsite at Microsoft that is sharing some of the stories running Microsoft.Com. From the Q&A with Tim Sinclair, general manager of Microsoft.Com: new front page redesign coming and improved black stripe navigational toolbar.

MIT Technology Review: The Web’s Unelected Government. Simson Garfinkel. When you’re part of the group that runs the World Wide Web, it can be daunting to explain to your mother what you’ve done with your day.

November 4, 1998
Random Thoughts: ABCNewsWorthy

FEED Magazine: The Brain's Missing Link. Steven Johnson. Surfers follow links between pages; few actually create those links. And while most PCs come armed with many specialized tools -- the word processor, the spreadsheet, the web browser -- we lack easy ways of drawing connections between fields of knowledge.

November 5, 1998
Today's Links Story: A Standard for Site Organization

ABCNewsWorthy Part II: Drudge is drooling over the fact someone at Starwave was fired over the posting of test pages prior to the election in the US.

RCFoC: The Law of Unintended Consequences

Stating the Obvious: A Standard for Site Organization. I was wondering about the same issues when creating TR with placing the privacy policy and copyright notices, which are now in the /about/ directory.

Freedom Forum: Heh, I looked over the ABCNews.Com test results that were posted early and compared them to the actual results. Looks like someone else did the same thing.

News.Com: Microsoft is buying LinkExchange. For an estimated $250 million dollars in stock.

An interesting sidenote from AdAge, MSN's use of Multimedia Resources: Microsoft research effort intends to up Web's share of marketing pie.

The MSN Online Sales Site is already welcoming LinkExchange members.

Builder.Com: Emerging Web Standards. No matter how much enthusiasm a standard generates among Web builders, if the popular browsers don't support it, the adoption process is dead in the water.

November 6, 1998
Industry Standard: Web Bloopers. Covering the ABCNews.Com incident and the Labor Department release of employment numbers early. I'll guess that the employment numbers were not dummy numbers and they were not used to test their system.

Advertising Age: Razorfish expands into film and broadcast design

Freedom Forum: Nothing quite like Slashdot.org — experience it! Jon Katz.

News.Com: New media largely accurate. But such mistakes remain the exception as the new medium instantaneously sends troves of information worldwide.

CBS MarketWatch has a short blurb on the firing of the ABCNews.Com producer.

November 7, 1998
Web Review: Building a Synonymous Search Index. ...a thesaurus for your Web site works primarily in the opposite direction, mapping many known terms onto one acceptable term per concept.

SJ Mercury: Net Protocol: Possibilities are endless. Dan Gillmor. ...IP will be the basic layer of transportation for all data -- and data will be defined to include anything that contains information, from text to telephone voice traffic to video.

Arizona Central: Mistakes spread at light speed [ABC spokeswoman Michelle Bergman] "The test was supposed to take place safely behind a "firewall" security barrier in the Web setup, but someone shot a few pages out to the public site."

November 8, 1998
I was reading about Web building grows up by Dan Shafer and there's a link to a micropayment program from Digital called MilliCent.

The Web is quiet today, so I'll take a brief excursion to some interesting compilation sites.

The Late Night TV Page does a great job covering the late night circuit schedule on all the major shows. I would pay micropayments for this service.

November 9, 1998
Webmonkey: Company Secrets Revealed in Source Code!

W3C: Platform for Privacy Preferences Specification 1.0. Working Draft. ...enables Web sites to express their privacy practices and enables users to exercise preferences over those practices.

Industry Standard: Are Online News Sites Cannibalizing Traffic, Credibility?

News.Com: Net stores to lure holiday buyers . If a survey being released today by Visa U.S.A. is a true reflection of shoppers' intent, 46 percent of Internet users expect to shop online this fall.

November 10, 1998
Industry Standard: In Search of the One-Stop Shop. If you want to build a Web site, there are plenty of places to go for help. But the market is extraordinarily fragmented...

Wired News: Netscape's Brain Transplant. The company originally held off committing the new technology to Communicator 5.0 but gave in after growing complaints by developers that its current technology had gotten stale.

Salon: Profiles in cluelessness. Scott Rosenberg. New Yorker coverage of PointCast. Maybe he found an old of issue of Wired flaunting push on the cover?

Wired News: Streaming Media's Salvation. Report from Streaming Media '98.

Webmonkey: Netscape Strikes Back. Navigator 5.0 and NGLayout.

Builder.Com: On the Web, size does matter. Dan Shafer.

November 11, 1998
Yahoo News: Ziff-Davis Introduces New Form Of Web Advertising

November 12, 1998
Today's Links Story: News.Com Redesign

News.Com: Note to our readers. Jai Singh, Editor of News.Com addresses the News.Com redesign.

Salon: HotWired advertiser sponsors a blackout. Someone else notices HotWired's HP turn on the colour campaign.

News.Com: Ad networks welcome MSN to fray

Advertising Age: barnesnoble.com and Salon Magazine have hooked up in an exclusive two year deal

Industry Standard: Is Borders Closing the Book on E-commerce?

RCFoC: The Bandwith Firestorm

NY Times: E-Mail Takes the Stand and Companies Take a Stand on E-Mail

News.Com: Microsoft shelves Chromeffects

Wired News: FedEx Strike May Freeze E-Sales. "We're so deeply in bed with FedEx on the technology side that we'd have to use a separate carrier and add a lot more people to do shipping manually..."

November 13, 1998
FEED Magazine: Dialog On The Net's News Revolution. ...we've brought together four leading newspaper editors to discuss the evolving relationship between newspapers, news, and the Net.

Wired News: Patent May Threaten E-Privacy. Company patent to interfere with P3P?

Upside: Are you Prepared? Q&A with futurist Watts Wacker. We're sitting in one of those rare points in time where what was spills over into what will be. Even though I get to say, "I'm a futurist," I have no clue what's going to happen tomorrow.

DDJ TechNetCast: The first half of the show tackles Digital Property Rights with someone from Xerox PARC talking about the Digital Property Rights Language (as covered in Dec/1998 DDJ).

• Real; Video feed and audio feed.

November 14, 1998
Today's Links Story: A Dull HotWired

Infoworld: Microsoft showcases new text technology. The technology, called ClearType, gives developers greater ability to manipulate pixels. Resolution of fonts, the first functionality Microsoft will address with ClearType, is as much as 300 percent tighter...

New Scientist: Let battle commence. Microsoft's electronic book format against PDF? Dick Brass vice-president of technology development at Microsoft quoted in the InfoWorld article makes an appearance here as well.

Useit.Com: 2D is Better Than 3D. "...because people are not frogs."

November 15, 1998
ZDNN: Multimedia Shock(wave)! Macromedia releases 'invisible' Shockwave. New version of Shockwave player available Monday.

Editor & Publisher: Finding a Language for the Web

• The E&P article refers to the Developing a Grammar for New Media conference held at the American Press Institute on November 8. Jakob Nielsen, Dan Bricklin and Roger Black were a few of the "online gurus" on hand.

Online Journalism Review: No Profit in Content

November 16, 1998
Welcome to all visitors from Scripting News... thanks Dave!

Freedom Forum: Censorship: It's in our genes

Interactive Week: New Ideas Coming Off The Bench At PARC

NY Times: Where Microsoft Wants You to Go. Bringing sites underneath a single MSN banner.

Los Angeles Times: News Web Sites' Quandary: Using Ads Ethically

November 17, 1998
Today's Links Story: Amazon Expansion

Builder.Com: Add Search to your Site

TechWeb: Netscape Buys Web Page Directory. NewHoo is headed for Netcenter.

Industry Standard: OpenPGP Gets to Second Base. IETF raises OpenPGP to proposed standard status.

NY Times: Beyond Bestsellers: Online Buyers Mine the Backlist

ZDNN:: New-media gurus find cyber punctuation ... a slippery proposition. Coverage of the Developing a Grammar for New Media conference from last week.

News.Com: Amazon branches out and up. Videos and a gift store.

TechWeb is back up after a few hours offline. No note posted on what exactly happened.

November 18, 1998
Adweek: Clement's Time. Studio Archetype's Clement Mok bridges the gap between man and machine.

Adweek: Trading Spaces. CKS' merger with USWeb shows how interactive shops are redefining themselves.

Webmonkey: The Internet According to Oracle

Salon: Windows on the wane? Scott Rosenberg. A PC world with open source and information appliances.

Useit.Com: From August 1, 1997; Too Much Loyalty and Quality May Harm You

News.Com: Egghead.com promotes revamped site

November 19, 1998
Web Review: The Rebol Alliance

Salon: The Copyright Boomerang. Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Contentious: Indexes: An Old Tool for a New Medium. The November articles are available now.

ZDNN: AOL considering switch to HTML. ...the online service is planning to move away from its proprietary computer language, dubbed Rainman, and produce content in HTML...

Industry Standard: Ad Explosion Doesn’t Bother Web Surfers

Wired News: EFF Site Gives Up the Ghost. EFF website has hardware problems.

Wired News: Judge Blocks Anti-Smut Law. Federal judge temporarily blocks Child Online Protection Act.

Editor & Publisher: TV News to become commonplace on Web

November 20, 1998
devhead: Test Your Competition. Jakob Nielsen. How to run a competitive usability study to learn where your competitors' sites work and don't work.

Industry Standard: Sign It and Weep. Lawrence Lessig. Humility should be our first principle when legislating about cyberspace: We should be honest about how much we don't yet know. Although 2B would facilitate tight control of information on the Net, we don't know whether tight control makes sense.

Freedom Forum: 'Orwellian' technology no match for today's invasive corporate technology, assault on privacy. Jon Katz.

Wired News: Inktomi: Searching for AOL. Licences search technology to AOL for ICQ service.

November 21, 1998
ZDNN: Friedman: Silicon Valley "suicidal" to back antitrust suit against MS

SJ Mercury: Impressions of the trial from a ringside seat. Dan Gillmor.

TechWeb: Copyright Issue Grows With Recording

Industry Standard: AOL Real Estate: Cash, Check or Through the Nose?

November 22, 1998
NY Times: America Online Is Said to Be Readying a Bid for Netscape

News.Com: Comparison shopping in the Information Age

News.Com: AOL, Netscape discuss browser deal. From last week when discussion was just a browser deal. Some comments at the bottom talking about an AOL equity investment in Netscape.

Bloomberg: America Online May Buy Netscape for About US$4 Billion, Press Reports Say

November 23, 1998
Salon: Strange Webfellows. How do AOL and Netscape look together?

Wired News: An Anne Murray Extravaganza. CRTC New Media Hearings.

DaveNet: Cookies Were Wonderful. Cookies were deployed before any standards body could object.

TechWeb: Microsoft Challenges Sun's Jini Technology

RCFoC: Fall COMDEX, 1998

Wired News: AOL/Sun to Build Internet Device

Forbes: Hunter? Or Prey? Swedish site developer sets up before companies like USWeb arrive.

Wired News: Thanks, Mozilla. Like nothing there had ever been in history.

News.Com: RealNetworks ships streaming software

Wired News: Database Guru Shines Anew. James Gray awarded Turing Award for work on SQL.

November 24, 1998
Online Journalism Review: Portals are Power. What should concern them deeply is power over the flow of information.

Wired News: AOL to Canada: Hands Off the Net. "The nascent interactive new-media market is vibrant, competitive, and growing rapidly in an environment subject to free-market forces and not intervention by government and regulators..."

ClickZ: A New Job For A New Age. The Chief Web Officer.

DaveNet: Questions for AOL

Mozilla.Org: fear and loathing on the merger trail. Jamie Zawinski at Mozilla talks about the AOL/Netscape deal.

News.Com: AOL buys Netscape for $4.2 billion 4.2 billion dollars and the Sun side deal is on.

SJ Mercury: AOL stands to gain a talent pool. Dan Gillmor.

Microsoft Press Release: Microsoft Signs Amazon.Com As Premier Music Merchant On MSN Shopping

Webmonkey: The Affiliate Network Lowdown

Peter Merholz: Whither "User Experience"?

Builder.Com: Microsoft yields to standards bearers, drops ill-advised Chromeffects. ...Microsoft showed it can be swayed by the Web builder community, even when the feedback comes late in the product cycle.

November 25, 1998
Red Herring: E-commerce Holiday Hostilities Begin. Barnes and Noble have been sitting on an agreement with MSN to be their exclusive book retailer and will be released right right after Amazon's deal to be MSN's exclusive music merchant.

Industry Standard: Carl, the Amazing Talking Mime. Carl Steadman.

FEED Magazine: Thoughts on AOL acquisition of Netscape

The Economist: Keep the Change. Smart cards.

Industry Standard: I-Builders Don't Care. On AOL/Netscape.

Editor & Publisher: Web Advertisements Increase with Directories

Stating the Obvious: Pure Play. Open letter to AOL, Netscape and Sun.

Freedom Forum: Helping librarians with Internet access. Jon Katz.

NY Times: Competition on the Internet

November 26, 1998
Boston Globe: Book shopping at cyberstore. Simson Garfinkel.

SF Chronicle: Shopping the E-Mall. Comparison shopping on the Web.

November 27, 1998
Wired News: A Clever New Way to Search? IBM Search Engine Process Technology.

NewMedia Magazine: Identity Crisis. Nathan Shedroff.

Mozilla.Org: Steve Case on Mozilla We will contribute too -- in part, by maintaining the autonomy of mozilla.org.

News.Com: Holiday shoppers expected to flock online

November 28, 1998
NY Times: Electronic Cash for the Net Fails to Catch On. Companies that process credit card transactions have found more success than the wallet-based businesses.

November 29, 1998
Online Insider: AOL/Netscape and IE5

Salon: We Were Burning. Book review. Japan and high-tech.

Forbes: The big "what if". Do you need a futurist?

Useit.Com: The value of keeping pages alive forever. It is common experience among webmasters that they keep getting hits on URLs that were put out of service several years ago.

SJ Mercury: Inner Net Workings

November 30, 1998
NY Times: White House Unveils E-Commerce Plans. The new goals include pushing companies to work with consumer and privacy advocates, developing guidelines that ensure shoppers have the same protections in "virtual malls as they now get in regular malls..."

Online Journalism Review: Online Newspapers as Cyber Cannibals? Generally, cannibalization is a "red herring, a non-issue," Nisenholtz believes. "When you have similar products in the same market, they tend to help each other grow the market."

Freedom Forum: Interactive experiment: putting yourself up for a vote. Jon Katz.

NY Times: Internet Commerce Study Stresses Self-Regulation. The report -- the foundation of the administration's new Internet commerce policy -- argues for stronger consumer protection and privacy rights...

Ask Tog: Special Holiday Issue. The December roundup of content is in beta for another day. New within-page/off-site icons for links.

ZDNN: Online retailers unleash holiday ad push. "The money is coming from advertisers who are trying to drive traffic to their sites during peak holiday season..."

Advertising Age: Publishers must set rules to preserve credibility. But if sites continue down the slippery slope of integrating or even disguising the advertisers' message in editorial content, it won't be long before users begin to doubt the value of what they're reading.