Internet Changes Everything

December 31, 2003

Web shopping boom: the top presents

Times Online - Online Specials

As retailers complained of low numbers of shoppers in the run-up to Christmas, online sales were predicted to be taking up the slack. Ellen Connolly reports on online shopping's "biggest year so far".

Online shopping scored an unprecedented success this Christmas as Britons opted to snap up presents from the comfort of their swivel chairs.

The trend was echoed worldwide with amazon.com, one of the world's biggest online retailers, setting a single-day record of more than 2.1 million products ordered, or 24 items per second, worldwide.

Britons are predicted to have spent £3.3billion on shopping over the Internet this Christmas, a rise of 80 per cent, according to retail trade body IMRG.

It says that online sales rose 44 per cent in November, 12 times as fast as the bricks and mortar retail sector.

The trends were reflected in shops across the UK - retailers reporting a drop in trade as people decided to avoid the expected high street crush.

A spokeswoman at amazon.co.uk said: "It's our biggest year so far."

Some of the best sellers on the Internet were electronic goods such as digital cameras, PlayStation 2, DVD players and the Apple i-POD digital music player.

Food shopping over the Internet gained in popularity. J Sainsbury, the supermarket, said it had noted a large increase this Christmas in people using its online shopping service – for essentials such as toilet paper as well as the heavy Christmas staples including champagne and turkey.

The retail giant also said that customers were planning ahead for the new year with an increase in sales of condoms and Alka Seltzer.

Kelkoo.co.uk, one of Europe's biggest price comparison sites, said that sales of lingerie and clothes were up fivefold on this time last year.

Amazon.co.uk said that DVD players were the most popular electronic item for UK shoppers. Worldwide, digital cameras topped the electronics list and in amazon.com's the home section the iRobot Roomb robotic vacuum cleaner, and James Bond's Shaver of Choice were top sellers.

During the second week of December, spending by US online shoppers was up 48 per cent compared to the same period of 2002, reaching close to $3 billion, according to a study by Goldman Sachs, Harris Interactive and Nielsen NetRatings.

As a result, online sales in the United States for the first time were expected to surpass $100 billion in 2003, compared to $76 billion in 2002, according to the Forrester Research institute.

December 31, 2003 at 11:08 PM in eCommerce | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

The revolution should not be eulogised

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | The revolution should not be eulogised

Weblogs may not be as innovative as some claim but they do have real potential as a form of personal publishing, argues Rebecca Blood

Thursday December 18, 2003

It is becoming obvious that no one really understands weblogs.
Lots of people know what they are; the number of these reverse-chronological collections of entries has grown exponentially since 1999, when the first automated blogging tools were released. These tools brought online publishing, once the province of the technophile, to the common web-surfer, and in 2003 they are functioning as desktop printing presses for an estimated 1.5 million people.

Weblogs have enraptured masses of people and are routinely described in outrageously overblown terms. They have been discussed quite seriously as the future of academia, journalism, and even democracy. But many over-enthusiastic commentators seem blinded to historical precedent or blinkered by their insistence on describing the new form in terms of familiar institutions.

Enthusiasm abounds. Bloggers enjoy describing themselves as pioneers, though their ideas of innovation are sometimes suspect. "We are writing ourselves into existence," some ecstatically proclaim, as if Pepys and Boswell and the historic legions of their fellow journal-writers had never existed. These bloggers, who tend to use their weblogs as public, interactive diaries, are as enthralled by their discovery of online community as were those who stumbled upon the early computer Bulletin Board Systems in the 1980s and Usenet in the 1990s. The communities that weblogs create and the act of writing every day to a real audience have transformed lives, but such experiences are not unique to weblogs, nor even to the Internet.

Some can conceive of weblogs only in terms of their own experience. "Weblogs are a new form of journalism," cries one such group, composed primarily of professional and aspiring journalists. To be fair, their argument seems to be aimed at peers who might otherwise dismiss their new activity as a frivolous, amateur pursuit. News organisations now frequently maintain their own weblogs - a practice pioneered by the Guardian - and a few independent weblogs contain original reporting, but these are comparatively rare. Weblogs can be used in journalism, but they are not, in themselves, works of journalism.

A weblog is something fundamentally new. Something no one can quite put their finger on, not yet. And those who try to define the phenomenon in terms of current institutions are completely missing the point.

Consider the average weblog. Maintained by an unpaid enthusiast, this site will be updated perhaps a dozen times a day with links to interesting news stories and entries on other weblogs, accompanied by a few lines - or paragraphs - of commentary. A blogger interested in current events may include links to several accounts of one event, noting differences in tone or detail, another may post the occasional recipe or pictures from a recent trip. A blogger may have a thousand readers, but more likely a few hundred or a couple of dozen, some of whom will offer comments of their own, right on the site. The weblog is at once a scrapbook, news filter, chapbook, newsletter, and community.

This is not passive news consumption. Neither is it broadcasting. The average blogger has time to surf the web, but no resources to report stories. Some bloggers will follow a news story to the end, some may lose interest after a few days. Commentary will range from the fully-formed to the random blurt and can freely mix the public and the personal.

All this represents something new: participatory media. And it matters. Not because of its resemblance to familiar institutions, but because of its differences from them.

Weblogs are just too varied, too idiosyncratic, to fit into an existing box. Industry analysts might call this disruptive technology because weblogs have changed personal publishing so profoundly that the old rules no longer apply. We are at the beginning of a new age of online publishing - and I predict that this generation of online pamphleteers is just the first wave.

· Rebecca Blood is the author of The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog (Perseus, 2002). She has maintained her weblog, www.rebeccablood.net since 1999.

December 31, 2003 at 08:25 PM in Blogging & feeds | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

AOL Debuts Lower-Priced Internet Service

Yahoo! News - AOL Debuts Lower-Priced Internet Service

In the continuing saga of, "we are dead, but just don't know it yet", AOL hangs on for dear life with yet another diluted offering, as they transition to a real ISP. Its only a matter of time before the traditional AOL offering loses all its members.

The one thing AOL should/ could think about, is enhanced security for their AOL (non www) offering. Given the issues with phishing and spoofing, it suddenly strikes me that this is one area they could lever their proprietary service. But I see no signs they are thinking of that.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Time Warner Inc.'s (NYSE:TWX - news) America Online unit has launched a preliminary version of a lower-priced Internet service it can pitch to penny pinchers who call to drop the flagship service for a cheaper rival

The modem dial-up service, which debuted earlier this month under AOL's Netscape brand, costs $1 per month until the end of February, according to details on its Web site. It will cost subscribers $9.95 a month beginning in March, compared to $23.95 a month for the full-fledged AOL service.

The new service is a stripped-down and lower-cost version of AOL's flagship service, minus extras such as original programming and high speed Internet music videos.

America Online is offering current subscribers a cheaper alternative after watching millions of irate subscribers flee to lower cost competitors such as the Juno and NetZero services owned by United Online Inc.(Nasdaq:UNTD - news)

In the third quarter alone, AOL lost 688,000 subscribers, or 2 million on a year over year basis.

"At the end of the day, the AOL service just costs too much," said Mark May, an analyst at Kaufman Brothers. "AOL has estimated 10 to 15 percent of the customer that called to disconnect cite price as a reason."

He added, "The Netscape product attempts to address that user."

Time Warner shares lost 8 cents at $17.90 on the New York Stock Exchange (news - web sites).

December 31, 2003 at 05:08 AM in Internet evolution | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Are you sophisticated enough to recognize an Internet scam?

Mercury News | 12/19/2003 | Are you sophisticated enough to recognize an Internet scam?

Computer attacks have moved into the third wave, named by Bruce as "semantic" attacks. ie attacks against the user, whereas the first two waves were against computers and systems.

By Bruce Schneier
Posted on Fri, Dec. 19, 2003
MercuryNews.com

Recently I have been receiving e-mails from PayPal. At least, they look like they're from PayPal. They send me to a Web site that looks like it's from PayPal. And it asks for my password, just like PayPal. The problem is that it's not from PayPal, and if I do what the Web site says, some criminal is going to siphon money out of my bank account.

Welcome to the third wave of network attacks, what I have named ``semantic attacks.'' They are much more serious and harder to defend against because they attack the user and not the computers. And they're the future of fraud on the Internet.

The first wave of attacks against the Internet was physical: against the computers, wires and electronics. The Internet defended itself through distributed protocols, which reduced the dependency on any one computer, and through redundancy. These are largely problems with a known solution.

The second wave is syntactic: attacks against the operating logic of computers and networks. Modern worms propagate and can infect millions of computers worldwide within hours. Traditional computer security has focused on this second wave, which aims to exploit programming errors in software products. It would be a lie to say that security experts know how to protect computers absolutely against these kinds of attacks, but we're getting better. Better software quality, more pro-active patching capabilities and better network monitoring will give us some measure of security in the coming years.

But this new wave of semantic attacks targets the way people assign meaning to content.

Many worms arrive as e-mail attachments. A user receives an e-mail message from someone he knew. It has an enticing subject line and a plausible message body. Of course a recipient is going to click on the attachment. And that's exactly what causes the infection.

People tend to believe what they read. How often have you needed the answer to a question and searched for it on the Web? How often have you taken the time to corroborate the accuracy of that information, by examining the credentials of the site, finding alternate opinions or other means?

People have long been taking advantage of others' naivete. Many old scams have been adapted to e-mail and the Web. Unscrupulous stockbrokers use the Internet to fuel their ``pump and dump'' strategies. In 1999, a fake press release circulated on the Web caused the stock of the Emulex Corp. to temporarily drop 61 percent. More recently, we've seen newspaper archives on the Web changed and fake Web sites purporting to be something they're not.

Against computers, semantic attacks become even more serious, simply because the computer cannot demand all the corroborating data that people instinctively rely on. Despite what you see in movies, real-world software is incredibly primitive when it comes to what is known as simple common sense. Ever increasing numbers of sensors and data collection devices are on the Internet. What happens when hackers realize that these devices can be fed bad data?

People have long been the victims of bad statistics, urban legends and hoaxes. Any communications medium can be used to exploit credulity and stupidity, and people have been doing that for eons. The difference is the scale. A single forged e-mail, a single fake press release, can affect millions.

Current computer security technologies are largely irrelevant against semantic attacks. These attacks aim directly at the human-computer interface, the most insecure portion on the Internet. Defending against them will take more than technology -- it will take education, experience and skepticism. Too many Internet users don't have enough of those three qualities.

BRUCE SCHNEIER is the chief technical officer of Counterpane Internet Security Inc. in Mountain View. His new book, ``Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World,'' was published this fall. He wrote this column for the Mercury News.

December 31, 2003 at 02:34 AM in Online crime, Security, Virus | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

December 30, 2003

An Unrepentant Spammer Vows to Carry On, Within the Law

An Unrepentant Spammer Vows to Carry On, Within the Law

By SAUL HANSELL
Published: December 30, 2003
New York Times

lan Ralsky, according to experts in the field, has long been one of the most prolific senders of junk e-mail messages in the world. But he has not sent a single message over the Internet in the last few weeks.
He stopped sending e-mail offers for everything from debt repayment schemes to time-share vacations even before President Bush, on Dec. 16, signed the new Can Spam Act, a law meant to crack down on marketers like Mr. Ralsky.

Alan Ralsky, who has made a successful business of spamming, is on a hiatus, but says he will soon resume bulk e-mailing in compliance with a federal antispam law. He calls the law unfair, but adds, "You would have to be stupid" to try to violate it.

He plans to resume in January, he said, after he overcomes some computer problems, and only after he changes his practices to include in his messages a return address and other information required by the law, the title of which stands for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing.

That is quite a switch for Mr. Ralsky, who has earned a reputation as a master of cyberdisguise. By his own admission, he once produced more than 70 million messages a day from domains registered with fake names, largely by way of foreign countries - or sometimes even by way of hijacked computers - so that the recipients could not trace the mail back to him.

Most experts in junk e-mail, known as spam, have dismissed the new federal law as largely ineffectual. And many high-volume e-mailers say the law may even improve the situation for them because it wipes away a handful of tougher state laws.

But Mr. Ralsky, who lives in a Detroit suburb, says the law's potential penalties - fines of up to $6 million and up to five years in jail - are making him rethink his business.

"Of course I'm worried about it," he said after the law was signed. "You would have to be stupid to try to violate this law."

No one is saying that e-mail in-boxes will be clean of spam any time soon. But the world is getting to be a much more hostile place for spammers, particularly those who send some of the most offensive messages. The biggest threat is not so much the new law, though it is expected to play a role in stepped-up enforcement, as the increased willingness of prosecutors to go after spammers.

In recent weeks, federal and state authorities have finally gotten the attention of spammers with a series of tough civil and criminal actions.

"These suits sent a shock wave through the spam world," said Steve Linford, the director of the Spamhaus Project, an organization that tracks bulk e-mailers and tries to thwart their moves. "Lots of spammers are asking, 'Are we next?' "

Some bulk e-mailers, like Scott Richter, who was a principal target of a civil suit filed last week by the New York attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, vow to continue. But Mr. Richter has lost some major clients, including mainstream companies like Omaha Steaks.

Still, in the week after the suit was filed, Mr. Richter's company, OptInRealBig.com, was actively sending e-mail messages promoting dozens of products, including laser guns, breast enlargement pills and Christian dating services.

Others say they have been beaten down by blacklists created by antispammers and filtering systems run by Internet service providers.

"E-mail is not working any more," said Brendan Battles, a longtime marketer who has sold CD-ROM's containing long lists of e-mail addresses. "More people are mailing and you get less and less response." Mr. Battles says he has virtually given up the business.

"E-mail marketing is a good thing," Mr. Battles said. "I create jobs. But the media has made e-mail out to be some sort of terrorist plot."

Not long ago, Mr. Ralsky, like many other bulk e-mailers, had high hopes that the new federal law would help legitimize his operation. Just after Thanksgiving, he sat on a cream-colored couch in the basement of his large home in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., an affluent suburb of Detroit, talking of how he expected the new law to make his business easier. He would identify himself, as required, and would honor any requests to be removed from his mailing lists, he said. He said that he was counting on Internet providers, in return, to stop trying to block his messages.

But more recently, Mr. Ralsky said in a follow-up interview by telephone, he has come to the conclusion that the law is more one-sided than he originally thought. Internet providers, he figures, will be able to tag and discard his mail with more certainty.

"The law was not written for a commercial e-mailer," he said. "I don't think what they are doing is fair." He suggested that the law was largely a plot by the big companies that connect homes and businesses to the Internet to keep all the profits from online marketing for themselves.

"I have never once been ashamed of what I do," he said. "I feel this is a business that has afforded me and my customers a better way of life."

At the age of 58, Alan Ralsky seems an incongruous character in an industry largely made up of men from the Nintendo generation.

"I am the oldest spammer you know of," Mr. Ralsky said. "You have a bunch of kids in their late 20's doing this with a lot more technical knowledge than I have. But they don't have any business sense."

Mr. Ralsky started delivering newspapers in his native Skokie, Ill., at the age of 7 and has been working ever since. Both his parents are deaf.

"It was a wonderful thing that I had deaf parents," he said. "I was proud of them and tried to be as helpful as I could, but you do grow up fast."

After a stint in the Army, Mr. Ralsky had a career as an insurance agent and sales manager. Then things began to go awry. In 1992, he served 50 days in jail on a charge related to failing to deliver documents to a group of investors. Two years later he was convicted of falsifying documents that defrauded banks and was ordered to pay $74,000 in restitution.

"I was in a bad business with bad partners," he said.

In 1995, he discovered e-mail messaging.

"I took my last thousand bucks and I bought a thousand dollars worth of spam," Mr. Ralsky recalls. From the e-mail messages he was able to send for that amount of money, he said, "I got nothing, but I said, 'You know what, there is something to this. It can take a small guy and make him the equal of a Fortune 500 company.' "

His first real customer was in the business of selling remote backup systems for computers. The fee was $1,000 to send a million e-mail messages. He found 400 customers for his client. Soon Mr. Ralsky hooked up with a time-share promoter, sending out offers of three-day, two-night Florida vacations.

"From there it just got bigger and bigger and better," Mr. Ralsky said. Travel clubs and time-share offers are a staple of his business, as are debt consolidation services and e-books on how to win government grants. He says he does not deal in pills or pornography.

Mr. Ralsky's mailing list now exceeds 150 million names. Unlike many high-volume mailers, Mr. Ralsky does not claim to send only to people who ask to receive marketing pitches. He says he sees nothing wrong with sending unsolicited mail. He insists, though, that he has always honored requests for removal from his list, something now required by the new law.

"If someone is mad, all they need to do is unsubscribe," he said. "If you don't want to get it, I don't want to send it to you."

This claim is impossible to verify, because nothing in Mr. Ralsky's e-mail messages indicates that they are from him. Anyone who unsubscribed from one of his mailings had no way to know if he stopped sending messages or doubled his mailings to them, as some spammers do.

That will change if he identifies himself, as he says he will to comply with the new law.

As Mr. Ralsky's business has grown, so has the backlash. Antispam organizations, like Spamhaus and the Spam Protection Early Warning System, work diligently to identify the addresses from which Mr. Ralsky is sending e-mail messages and to urge Internet providers to evict him from their networks.

And in 2001, Verizon Online, a unit of Verizon Communications, sued Mr. Ralsky, claiming he violated its policies by sending spam messages by the millions to its Internet customers. Last year, Mr. Ralsky settled the suit, paying an unspecified amount of damages and agreeing not to send mail to Verizon Internet customers again.

Mr. Ralsky then redoubled his efforts to use fake names and other techniques so his e-mail could not be easily traced.

"I have changed the way we mail totally," he said. The spam fighters, he added, "have no idea what I'm mailing. They could never pinpoint it and say this is from Al Ralsky."

Mr. Ralsky said that he was uncomfortable about this deception, but that he had no choice. "Is putting bogus information in your registrations the right way to do business?" he asked. "No. But the Internet world has forced me to do that."

He has done business in two dozen countries, and has never visited any of them. He buys mailing lists from people in Sweden and India. And these days, he says, he sends his mail from computers in China and three other countries.

"I have been hosted in strange places in the world," he said. "For some reason the I.S.P.'s out of this country are a lot more liberal."

But, he acknowledges, they are not necessarily more reliable.

"You get good and bad in this business, and I have had all sorts of people try to rip me off," he said.

Mr. Ralsky also acknowledged that he had used "open proxies"- computers with improperly configured software that allow spammers to relay messages without the knowledge of the computer owner.

"I personally hate mailing with proxies," he said. "It's rough. But you do what you got to do."

Even before the new law was passed and the prosecutors stepped up their actions, Mr. Ralsky said the business was getting harder. It was taking more mail to get the same response. His target is to earn $500 in profit for every million e-mail messages sent; his commission is often 40 percent of the price of each product sold.

And the cost of his carefully arranged international network is going up, even more so now.

"The Chinese have decided that they will follow the law," he said. "We will have to put in our address and a real 'unsubscribe' list,'' at an added cost, he said, of $3,000 a month.

For all the obstacles, Mr. Ralsky said that he did not intend to stop sending bulk e-mail in some form.

"There is too much money involved," he said. "I'm a survivor. And when you are a survivor, you find a way to make it happen."

December 30, 2003 at 12:59 PM in Spam | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Bank of England Hit by Hoax E-Mail Scam

Yahoo! News - Bank of England Hit by Hoax E-Mail Scam

LONDON (Reuters) - The Bank of England said on Tuesday it had intercepted over 100,000 fraudulent e-mails masquerading as computer security software issued by the central bank.

The bogus e-mail, which appears to come from a Bank of England administrator, instructed recipients to download a file attachment designed to protect individuals' banking details from fraudsters.

The Bank of England said it received scores of queries from companies and individuals asking about the e-mail's authenticity. It advised recipients to delete it immediately.

The e-mail comes amid a string of e-mail and Web site hoaxes posing as British banking institutions.

In the past few months, a rash of fake e-mails claiming to be from some of the world's biggest banks have appeared in e-mail in-boxes, attempting to dupe banking customers into divulging their bank details.

A spokeswoman from the central bank said technicians were working with the UK's National Hi-Tech Crime Unit to determine what -- if anything -- the file attachment was capable of, and who may have sent it.

"It appears to come from somebody outside the UK," the spokeswoman said. She added the email address used -- admin@bankofengland.co.uk -- does not exist.

December 30, 2003 at 12:53 PM in Financial Services, Security, Spam | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

A Better Longhorn Through Blogging

A Better Longhorn Through Blogging

An old article which I just came across, but a good one.

October 17, 2003
When Microsoft (Quote, Chart) kicks off its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles Oct. 26th-30th (http://msdn.microsoft.com/events/pdc/agenda.asp), the event will in many ways mark a major shift in transparency about its core products, as well as a major victory for a subtle public relations build-up ahead of the event.
That's because when the software giant hands out DVDs and CDs containing pre-beta builds of core products -- its Windows operating system, SQL Server database and Visual Studio developer tools -- many if not most of the PDC attendees (the savvy ones at least) will already have a working knowledge of what to expect.

That's because when the software giant hands out DVDs and CDs containing pre-beta builds of core products -- its Windows operating system, SQL Server database and Visual Studio developer tools -- many if not most of the PDC attendees (the savvy ones at least) will already have a working knowledge of what to expect.

Thanks to a growing number of Weblogs (blogs) by Microsoft employees, many PDC attendees will arrive with some working knowledge of why the new APIs (define) in the pre-beta version of Windows (code-named Longhorn) are helping to form a radically new development environment, as the blogs say.

Like a developer's version of "Where's Waldo," careful readers of Longhorn-focused and PDC-themed blogs (even "official" sites in Microsoft's own PDC Web pages) can find leaks and juicy tidbits about the builds they will see for Longhorn. The same is true for Visual Studio, code-named Whidbey, and Microsoft's database application, SQL Server, code-named Yukon.

As a result, many might arrive at PDC aware that their own skill sets in the .NET platform could use some upgrades in order to help them develop applications more quickly in a newly-streamlined Windows runtime environment.

Developers that set-up RSS (define) feeds into their own blogs or blog aggregators might arrive already armed with questions about how and why Whidbey is truly more intuitive with code-writers compared to past versions of Visual Studio.

Others will have watched how swiftly Microsoft executives themselves answer questions in the blogging community about whether Longhorn's new file system, WinFS (short for Windows Future Storage), is all that new -- or an older version of its prior NT-based NTFS file system with a SQL Server attached.

If they have read just some of the blogs, developers could arrive at PDC having already held blog conversations about how the use of metadata and relational database formats in the WinFS file system should improve searches for Word files, Excel files, photos or any number of programs that run on the operating system.

By some counts, some 300 of Microsoft's roughly 50,000 employees maintain a blog. Many of them, especially ones run by developers, are filled with tidbits about Longhorn, Whidbey and Yukon and other code-names for key components of Microsoft's products. (Some are listed here, and others can be read here).

That's in addition to the hundreds of dedicated enthusiasts and non-Microsoft employees alike that have launched their own blogs about PDC and Longhorn, which is expected to represent a "major change" in the Windows operating system, now expected in the market in 2006.

The sheer number of employee blogs is enough to make any company watcher sit up and take note, analysts say. But add to the trend the fact that Microsoft is about to hand over to PDC attendees early builds of not just one but three of its major products, and they say what you have is a culture shift of more openness at Microsoft.

But are these mushrooming Microsoft blogs just a calculated PR move by a company that spares no expense on corporate PR and marketing? Or is Microsoft's image just benefiting from a popular form of communication that has hit a zenith in popularity?

Indeed, some company watchers point to internal e-mails to employees by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer that effectively encouraged the use of blogs as a reason the number of employee blogs keeps growing.

But avid bloggers such as Chris Pirillo, who runs the popular Lockergnome technology journal, as well as his own personal blog, argue that the growth of Microsoft-employee blogs is more organic than manufactured.

First of all, he says, if a blog entry about, say, Microsoft's latest Office 2003 release starts sounding too corporate, other bloggers not affiliated with Microsoft "will call it out." The blogging community "has a pretty good bull---- detector," he says.

What has happened over the past year, Pirillo adds, is that non-Microsoft bloggers, some of whom characterize themselves as naturally suspicious of the largest software company in the world, are getting to know a different company through the blogs.

"The more freedom they are given to communicate their thoughts, ideas, frustrations, joys, the more they become a person. That's part of the draw, the power of blogging," he says.

And for a company like Microsoft, with its endless stream of public relations issues, from customers frustrated over weekly security patches for IE buffer overruns, to the lingering anti-trust case over its Windows monopoly, the blogs are helping it manage its image in a new way.

After all, as effective blogs are in "humanizing" a company, they are also an effective instant feedback tool on product reviews, Pirillo says.

Take Office 2003, he adds. "The other day, I was testing and reviewing it -- I happen to live in Outlook," he says of the main e-mail and scheduling client in Office. But Pirillo uses a POP3 (define) server protocol for receiving and sending his mail; he soon realized the latest version of Office 2003 works best with Microsoft's Exchange servers, which are geared for businesses.

He went to his blog. "It annoys me to the point where I believe I'm going to have to switch back to Office 2000. Outlook is not designed for POP3 users. It's only for Exchange users, especially in the new version. This sucks."

Pirillo also noted how he doesn't like the larger font sizes in subject lines in Office 2003 e-mail.

"I don't need to see subject lines from across the room! Eight-point fonts were fine. There was no need whatsoever to change that. It was an idiotic decision," says Pirillo, who also co-authored a Web guide called "Online! The Book."

Give-and-take comments such as Pirillo's are just as important to Microsoft's developers as they are to outside developers that are trying to make sense of a new way of coding for the next-generation Windows operating system, agrees Robert Scoble, whose four-year-old Scobelizer blog is among the more popular Microsoft blogs.

"For one, it's a decentralized community and everybody can participate," says Scoble, a technology evangelist who has been with Microsoft for about five months. "Longhorn blogs were started by a community. The PDC blogs were done by two [non-Microsoft] guys before they started taking off."

As to whether the blogs helped contribute to a sold-out PDC show this year, Scoble says they have helped advance developers' interest and understanding about what could be at stake with the latest pre-betas of Longhorn.

"People believe other individuals, more than, say, a PR firm, or even a press release, because they know the PR has gone through a process," he told internetnews.com. But when Chris Anderson says something about Avalon (the code-name for the new Windows User Interface) on his blog, developers know they're speaking to one of the lead developers of the .NET framework, he says.

Scoble calls this year's conference "an aligning of the planets that I don't think has ever happened in the history of the PDC. Usually there is one major product" at the conference. "Here, the PDC is rolling out three."

With their peek at the builds already waiting in the wings, developers will also be able to give Microsoft critical and early "feedback on the direction of products. We want to make sure they nail it, such as on security, and give developers enough time to realize where the industry's going so they can shift their own skill sets."

And in that regard, he says the Microsoft blogs represent a shift for the company.

"Usually, executives would just leak something or talk about something," he says. "And that would be the only statement you heard from Microsoft until the product came out. Now, an executive can announce something, and immediately the guys working on the product who know the product well can amplify those statements."

Joe Wilcox, a Microsoft analyst for Jupiter Research (whose parent company also owns this publication), doesn't see the Microsoft blogs as a calculated move on Microsoft's part.

There are tons of blogs about PDC, he says, and tons of blogs about Longhorn, and many of them were not set up by Microsoft. "Plus, the Microsoft bloggers have been doing it for a long time. But you could also argue there's blog evangelism about Longhorn and particularly around the developers conference," Wilcox says.

"If you look at the blogging phenomenon it goes back to the early concept of the Web. It wasn't about e-commerce. It was about self-expression. Blogging has revived that."

Now you can read about people's opinions, how they even disagree with those of their employers, says Wilcox who also "finds it funny, ironic even, that Microsoft employees are such prolific bloggers but not necessarily using their own company's software to blog."

But Scoble says Microsoft has not produced blogging software because, for all its popularity, it doesn't represent a compelling business opportunity for Microsoft, at least for now.

The bottom line, he adds, is that the company's PR employees, whose goal is a unified corporate message, are coping with the growth of blogs because for one, the blogs represent their opinions and don't speak for the company (as the blogs' disclaimers say). Plus, he says the PR gatekeepers know that the blogging community is fair about what they write.

"Corporate PR staff want to keep a tight rein on every message. But now they're realizing that this is not their domain anymore," adds Richard Laermer, founder of RLM Public Relations and the author of the PR how-to book "Full Frontal PR."

For all that one reads and can find in the blogs, Scoble says they are helping to convey the message that "Microsoft is moving towards more transparency in the developer process."

December 30, 2003 at 10:46 AM in Blogging & feeds, Corporate Blogging, Microsoft | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Software called Grokker could be the future of search

CNN.com - Going deeper than Google - Dec. 17, 2003

Going deeper than Google

(FORTUNE.COM) -- Loyal readers may remember my passionate enthusiasm a year ago upon the release of a new Web search product called Grokker (Making online searches more useful).
This software tool takes the data culled by an online search and organizes it visually into categories that enable you to quickly dig deeply to find the exact site or information you need. Grokker broke new ground, but later ran out of gas when the Northern Lights search engine, on which it was based, went out of business.

Now Grokker is back as a smarter and less expensive ($49 instead of $99) application that works on top of many different databases, including the all-important Google. I'm as excited this time as I was a year ago. This really could be the future for finding information.

The new Grokker was released Monday by startup Groxis. It makes me wonder if Google really does have search as sewed up as we often assume. When you use Grokker you realize just how brain dead even the best search tools are today.

Grokker is not a Web service but an application that sits on your PC. (A Mac OS X version should be ready in about four weeks, say executives.)

Grokker takes the raw output of a search and organizes it into categories and subcategories. Groxis has put more intelligence into the software this time, so it is not dependent, as it was with Northern Lights, on categories established by others. This means that a wide variety of types of databases can be Grokked-now Grokker can search with six different engines simultaneously -- Yahoo, MSN, Alta Vista, Fast, Teoma, and WiseNet.

It also can organize searches for products on Amazon or for files on your own desktop. Google capability is coming within weeks, Groxis says, as a separate software component that users will add. Soon you will also be able to use it in conjunction with AskJeeves, eBay, social networks like Linkedin, and job site Monster.

Grokker creates a visual representation of a search. When you type in, say, "nanotechnology," Grokker starts organizing data from the multiple search engines. You see a big circle, within which are smaller circles with labels including "conference," "technology," "science," "research," "reports," "news," "molecular," "material," and so on. Each represents a subset of data on nanotechnology.

Click on, say, "molecular," and that circle will enlarge so you can see several further subcircles, one of which is "molecular assemblies." Click on that, and another category becomes visible entitled "molecular assembly sequencing software."

Now you could, in theory, have typed that exact phrase into Google and gotten to the same Web sites. However, in many cases you can't be sure what you're looking for because you simply don't know what's out there. Grokker gives you an easy way to delve into a data set, and it often leads to info-revelations.

For example, a Grokker search of the Amazon database, also using the initial term "nanotechnology," included a category circle labeled "children's books." I would not have predicted that children's books on nanotech existed. But a few further clicks reveal a book entitled "Nanotechnology: Invisible Machines," for 9-12 year-olds, as well as -- even more unexpectedly -- "Submarines and Underwater Exploration," for kids 4-8. If you didn't know to look for it you'd never have found it, most likely.

A search using Amazon's own onsite search tool, in which I asked for books for 4-8 year-olds related to the subject of nanotechnology, found no matches.

Says R.J. Pittman, CEO of Groxis: "Google has indexed several billion pages, but there are between 550 and 600 billion in total on what's referred to as the invisible Web or deep Web. Within a year Grokker will have ten times the reach of Google in terms of available Web pages."

Adds Paul Hawken, the environmentalist and entrepreneur who is chairman of Groxis: "Google can't do it because their technology is based on lists." Hawken came up with the idea for Grokker a couple of years ago when he grew frustrated with the difficulty of finding information about environmental issues. He hooked up with some ace programmers and Grokker is the result.

Groxis may get traction first in the education market. Both the Los Angeles and Chicago school districts have already taken trial licenses to see whether Grokker would be useful for their students. The University of Nevada bought a license for 500 seats, and is putting Grokker in campus computer labs.

The real competition for Grokker is the amazing ability of Google and other search engines to place at the top of a thousand-site list just the one you were looking for. If you're good at stipulating the terms for a Google search you may find Grokker unnecessary. When I used the inferior predecessor I found that there was no reason to use Grokker for the vast majority of searches.

But for some very important projects -- like finding a certain type of real estate broker in a specific region -- it was incomparable. I was able to find a broker in minutes with Grokker that had been completely absent from my Google searches.

In the most personally gratifying moment of the demonstration CEO Pittman gave me last week, he typed in "David Kirkpatrick." There inside the big circle were two other circles representing me and my work at FORTUNE. A smaller circle was labeled "New York Times." That's where a much younger (and very talented) business journalist of the same name writes. Since I've been writing for more than a decade longer than the other DK, it's nice that Grokker figured that out.

Grokker can be downloaded for $49, or you can get a 30-day free trial, at Groxis.com.

December 30, 2003 at 10:06 AM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

E-Banking, Online Bill Paying Growth Ahead

Finance: E-Banking, Online Bill Paying Growth Ahead

A substantial increase in the number of U.S. households paying and viewing bills online suggests a growing comfort with the medium and less concern over the security of such transactions. A report from Jupiter Research (a unit of this site's corporate parent) found that 18.9 million households viewed and paid bills online during 2003 — up from 12.2 million in 2002 — and the figure is expected to soar to 60.6 million by 2008.
The number of U.S. households engaged in online banking will nearly double between 2003 and 2008, according to Jupiter. Well over 29 million households currently take advantage of the convenience of online banking, which is expected to grow to 56 million in 5 years.

Jupiter's forecast indicates that the percentage of U.S. households that only view, and not pay, their bills online will shrink to near extinction. While 30 percent were viewing their bills online in 2001, only 1 percent are expected to still do so by 2008.

Jupiter analyst Bruce Cundiff, the author of the report, explains that the number of "view onlys" will overwhelmingly become online "view-and-pay" (VAP) households as they become more comfortable with online payments in general, and also as more households engage in online banking for bill paying and other banking activities.

"Once consumers begin to receive bills online, we see the logical progression from view only to VAP (the pinnacle as far as billers and consolidators are concerned). We anticipate very little (if any) regression to offline bill viewing and payment, as the number of bills presented online and the number of households engaging in online bill payment will grow dramatically through 2008," Cundiff said.

November 21, 2003

Online Banking Households and Those That Pay Online
	# that Bank Online	% that Pay Online
2003	29.6 million	50%
2004	35.3 million	57%
2005	40.9 million	64%
2006	46.2 million	71%
2007	51.3 million	78%
2008	56.0 million	85%
Source: Jupiter Research

December 30, 2003 at 08:51 AM in Financial Services | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Sweet smell of failure

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Sweet smell of failure

Slightly off topic here, but its New year. There is a certain understated sense of accomplishment in failure which only Brits can understand so as a Brit, this end of year review of Brit's "success" in this arena is a pointed reminder for me!

Tuesday December 30, 2003
The Guardian
That rugby business confused things for a while, but now the stubbornly silent Mars probe Beagle 2 has reminded us what Britain does best: heroic failure. And Stuart Jeffries, for one, is grateful.

Four reasons have been given to explain why the Beagle 2 hasn't sent a signal from Mars. One: it is possible that a computer glitch may have affected transmission timings. Sounds plausible. Two: the probe has a misaligned or obstructed antenna, which thwarted the Beagle from cheering us up with interplanetary signals during the bleak midwinter. Quite possible, if you think about it. Three: there was some catastrophic systems failure during landing. You can see how that could come about. Four: maybe the Beagle made it down, but is in a crater or tilting badly. This sounds the most likely.
These are all good reasons, and any one of them might account for why the probe failed. Instead of phoning home like a good extraterrestrial on Christmas Day, the Beagle snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. But there is a fifth possible reason that none of the experts has considered. It is that the Beagle is British. The Beagle's mission may have been to boldly go where Nasa probes had been before, but let's put that aside for the moment. If there's one thing the British know how to snatch it is defeat and, unerringly, they know where to snatch it from. Britain is a place where trains are cancelled because of such apparently unforeseeable things as snow or leaves; where one of our greatest living sailors (Tony Bullimore) is revered as Captain Calamity; where our leading contribution to the sport of skiing is a man (Eddie the Eagle) who, were he sitting next to you on the bus, might prompt you to get off a few stops earlier than usual; where Alfred the Great let some cakes burn and thus ushered in Britain's virtuoso contribution to world cuisine.

Britain is a land that, when it comes right down to it, is a bit rubbish. The playwright Patrick Marber noted as much when in his play Closer he had one of his characters consider the carpet at Heathrow airport. How could Britain deserve to be taken seriously when the first experience of the place it offered foreigners was the mankiest flooring in Christendom or beyond? It is a place whose devotion to failure is symbolised clearly by its commitment to missing penalties: even when English footballer Stuart Pearce achieved psychic closure at Euro 96 by sticking the ball in the onion bag, shortly afterwards Gareth Southgate reopened newly closed wounds by missing the large net thing a few yards in front of him. Why hasn't the Beagle sent a signal? Because it is British, and because Mars has the wrong kind of clay on its surface. Terribly rich in iron, you see, completely unsuitable for Martian probe landings. British ones, at least.

You may think that you get off the hook because you're Scottish or Welsh. Failure is the English disease, isn't it? Sadly not: to be Scottish, for instance, is to be like the English in terms of failure only more so. Thus, in Irvine Welsh's novel Trainspotting, Renton makes the following point: "Some people hate the English, but I don't. They're just wankers. We, on the other hand, are colonised by wankers. We can't even pick a decent culture to be colonised by. We are ruled by effete arseholes." The Welsh suffer just as much from colonisation by nearby Wankeria, as do those Irish people who have the misfortune to live under England's post-imperial yoke. Indeed, one might well argue that the ability of the effete English nation to colonise anybody is the exception that proves the rule, a rare historical example of Britain transcending its historical destiny.

"Oh really! Come on!" I hear you cry. "I mean, think of Jonny and the boys. Doesn't that remarkable triumph over one of the greatest winning machines in sporting history (Australia) signify that one of the greatest losing machines in said history (England) is emerging in to a bright new future?" It's a good question and one that I can best answer by saying: no, it doesn't. Consider the dreary ineptitude of Chris Tarrant's TV paean to that team, We Are the Champions - The Nation Celebrates on ITV. Britain is a failure at celebrating success, arguably because we are temperamentally ill-inclined to be anything but good losers and are lavish celebrants only of defeats (hence those items of national history you've been expecting to come across for some paragraphs now, namely Dunkirk, the Charge of the Light Brigade and Scott's race against Amundsen).

With the failure of the Beagle 2, one might argue, normal service has been resumed. Britain is back where it likes to be, failing and meticulously analysing that failure. Whole British industries are devoted to this analysis. One of the great postwar British industries is the sitcom, and that industry's greatest products are failures. Basil Fawlty, Del Boy Trotter, Harold (and possibly Albert) Steptoe, Rab C Nesbitt, Frank Spencer, the characters of Dad's Army and Are You Being Served, David Brent and Alan Partridge are all ground-down anti-heroes whose role is to remind the British, reassuringly, of themselves, to confirm what we all know - that we suffer from a British Leyland of the soul.

Perhaps, though, the story is more complicated than this. Perhaps, for every British failure there is a corresponding success. Consider one of the great failures of recent public life in Britain, namely rail transport. Before that was a failure, it was a British success thanks to George Stephenson who, in a very real sense, invented the thing. Rail transport was quite a success for a while - but then there was a very British coup. Let's select just two examples from rail transport's troubled history to clinch that point, and not even mention how long it has taken Eurostar to get up to speed on the British side of the Channel Tunnel. In 1981, British Rail launched its successor to the Rocket, called the Advanced Passenger Train, which swerved so dramatically that it made a trainload of VIPs sick on a demonstration run, a sensation made worse by the gallons of free hooch they had consumed before they approached the first bend. Nicknamed the "queasy rider", the APT was scrapped four years later. No matter. Two decades later, Richard Branson bought a fleet of £11m Italian-built Pendolino tilting trains to trim journey times on the west coast mainline so that trips between London and Manchester would be 38 minutes shorter and those between London and Birmingham 17 minutes less. The problem is that the British track isn't ready for these Pendolinos: only 17 miles of track (between Rugby and Atherstone) is currently capable of serving these state-of-the-art trains and replacement work is more than a year behind schedule. Worse yet, some passengers on Pendolino test drives have complained of vibrations that turned their stomachs.

Then there is our glorious record in martial matters. Before we waded into Iraq, Tony Blair praised the professionalism of the British armed forces. "There is no greater strength for a British prime minister and the British nation at a time like this to know that those forces are among the best in the world," he said. What a success story! No matter that it was the British army that bought 67 Apache helicopters which could not fire their Hellfire anti-tank missiles because debris from the weapon system could hit rotor blades and thus cause the aircraft to crash. No matter that the SA80 rifle, developed by Royal Ordnance and anticipated as a breakthrough assault weapon that would be the best of its kind in the world, jammed repeatedly in hot and sandy conditions. No matter that a naval destroyer, the 3,500-tonne HMS Nottingham, hit a clearly charted rock off Australia. Behind every British success story, perhaps, there is are a clutch of failures jostling for recognition.

Sometimes British failure can be ascribed to our old friend, woeful misfortune. For example, four years before the Wright brothers conquered the skies, a British inventor almost beat them to it. But days before his first attempt at powered flight, Percy Pilcher died in a gliding accident, his design untried. But then, the British have never really eluded misfortune when they have sought to dominate the skies. Concorde was at best a mixed blessing, an innovative triumph that meant the likes of us subsidised the likes of them to have supersonic high jinks. And consider the Comet. The Comet was the world's first jet airliner, designed and built in Britain. After a successful first year in operation in 1952, manufacturers De Havilland had orders for 50 more Comets. Then disaster struck. The British Overseas Airways Corporation temporarily suspended all Comet jet services following the crash off Rome while checks were carried out. Modifications were made and the Comet went back into service. Then another Comet fell into the sea in 1954, killing all on board. Comets were grounded again. Tests found that the plane's fuselage was unable to withstand the pressures of flying. Cracks appeared in the bodywork that caused the plane to blow apart during flight. Although the Comet was redesigned, the Boeing 707 had gone into service by the time it was back in operation and the British jet was doomed to oblivion.

The British are virtuosos at rubbishing their inventors' attempts at attending to our transport needs. Who can forget the C5 ? Not Sir Clive Sinclair, who invented it and became as much of a standing national joke as that C5 of British politics, Iain Duncan Smith, as a result. Only the other day, the C5 was in the news when thieves who had stolen one from an antiques shop gave the cops the slip, even though the C5 runs on pedal power backed by an electric motor. That's how rubbish Britain is: even our police officers can't catch a getaway car that has a top speed of 15mph. Which, personally speaking, is why I kind of like the place.

So normal service has been resumed. The Beagle continues a grand British tradition. Or does it? After all, the Beagle 2 isn't the only Martian probe to go awol. Nasa's have done so with considerably regularity for five decades, but you don't hear Americans whingeing about national failure as a consequence. In fact it would be nice if they did.

Meanwhile, there's another possibility we haven't considered, namely that reports of the Beagle's failure have been exaggerated. "We need to get Beagle 2 into a period when it can broadcast for a much longer period," said Colin Pillinger, the Open University scientist behind the Beagle project. "This will happen around January 4, after the spacecraft has experienced a sufficient number of communication failures to switch to automatic transmission mode." Victory may yet be snatched from the jaws of defeat. It would be delightfully un-British if it was.

December 30, 2003 at 01:09 AM in World Affairs | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

December 29, 2003

PEW: How many people have created a blog

Daily and Overall Internet Population

Seven percent (7%) of internet users have created a blog at one time or another. On any given day this percentage drops to one percent (1%).

December 29, 2003 at 07:34 PM in Blogging & feeds | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

America's Online Pursuits; who's online and what they do

Pew Internet & American Life Project

PEW are a great source of publi opinion, and as it relates to internet & society. This latest end of year report, covers who is online, and what they do.

Interesting takeaways:
- growth in online base is slowed
- those online have embedded internet as part of their life, especially high-speed users, who now account for 31% of all users.

- Online activity has consistently grown over the course of our research.
Internet users discover more things to do online as they gain experience and
as new applications become available. This momentum often fuels increasing
reliance on the Internet in everyday life and higher expectations about the
things people can do online.

- Despite this growth in activity, the growth of the online population
itself has slowed. There was almost no growth over the course of 2002 and
there has been only a small uptick in recent months to leave the size of the
online U.S. adult population at 63 percent of all those 18 and over.

- Different people use the Internet in different ways. The report is full of
examples of how people in different demographic groups use the Internet for
different purposes.

- Experience and the quality of online connections matter. Those with more
experience online and those who have high-speed connections at home
generally do more online more often than those with lower levels of
experience and those with dial-up connections. The growth of the cohort of
veteran users, those with at least three years of online experience, has
been striking. Nearly three-quarters of Internet users have at least three
years of experience.

- Online Americans' experience with the commercial side of the Internet has
expanded dramatically in spite of the economic slump. Financial and
transaction activities such as online banking and online auctions have grown
more than any other genre of activity.

- Email continues to be the "killer app" of the Internet. More people use
email than do any other activity online. Many report their email use
increases their communication with key family and friends and enhances their
connection to them.

- Big news stories drive lasting changes in the news-seeking audience
online.

Other findings in the report:

- The size of the online population on a typical day grew from 52 million
Americans in March 2000 to 66 million in August 2003 - an increase of 27
percent.

- 87 percent of U.S. Internet users said they have access at home and 48
percent said they have access at work in our August 2003 survey. 31 percent
of Internet users who go online from home have broadband as of August 2003.

- 31 percent of those who use the Internet at home have broadband
connections.

December 29, 2003 at 07:26 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

The economy according to eBay

Yahoo! News - The economy according to eBay

Mon Dec 29, 6:20 AM ET

By Kevin Maney, USA TODAY
In 2003, the nation finally felt worn out. That's the conclusion when looking at the year through the unique lens of eBay, the gigantic, freewheeling online marketplace where one can buy anything from a Beanie Baby to a backhoe.

In a year of lives lost at war and jobs lost to a difficult economy, of a crisis of faith in two institutions - mutual funds and the North American electrical grid - that previously seemed unshakeable, judiciousness took hold.

At the beginning of 2003, BMWs, Gucci and Prada reigned supreme on eBay (EBAY). All were among the 10 most-searched terms. Last year, the No. 1 search was for Gucci.

Here at the end of 2003, the most-searched items have shifted to Fords, anything pink (forget which designer), and gold (the kind you store in a wall safe as a hedge against geopolitical or economic disaster).

There are many ways to analyze 2003. You can sift through major news events. You can chart best-selling books and top-rated TV shows. You can dissect the stock market. But if you want the gestalt of America - the unified essence of this nation at this time - there might be no better place to turn than the massive databases that run eBay.

There sits a repository of culture and commerce unlike any before it. No executive decides what eBay sells. Instead, millions of individuals post items on the Web site in response to shifting nuances in the marketplace. Because it is so fluid, the site captures the collective mood and unique extremes of the 86 million people who use it.

"EBay is the perfect manifestation of everything the Internet makes possible," says Aliza Sherman, a Web pioneer now teaching and writing in Laramie, Wyo. "It is for and by the people. It is organic."

So USA TODAY came here to eBay's campus, where the lobby features a Pez dispenser collection and conference rooms have names like Fiestaware and Matchbook, and asked the company's computer wizards to cut the site's data every which way, looking for trends and oddities that help define the year we're leaving behind.

Of course, it's not perfect. As much information as eBay collects, there's still a lot it doesn't yet know about its marketplace. The company is in the process of installing better ways to mine its data. At this point, conclusions are less an exact science and more artful extrapolation. Using eBay's data to find larger trends is a little like watching a movie trailer and trying to figure out the whole movie's story. Then again, people do that all the time.

In that spirit, some tidbits about 2003 from the eBay files:

• The Aug. 14 blackout in the Northeast shook confidence in the power grid. In the week after the blackout, sales of portable generators jumped 67% vs. the previous week. But it wasn't just a knee-jerk spike. Generator sales on eBay are running at an annualized rate of $12 million, up 191% over 2002. It seems we're sure another outage is coming, and we want to be ready.

• Wireless home computer networks have hit the mainstream. Sales on eBay of equipment for so-called Wi-Fi networks, which can let computers connect to the Internet wirelessly, have grown 243% over 2002. It is the hottest technology category.

• SARS (news - web sites) scared the pants off a lot of people. At the height of the epidemic, in May, eBay's "protective masks" category shot up 118% for the month. Sellers were listing masks singly, by the box and by the pallet.

• People are just stinkin' weird. One listing offered to sell Paul McCartney's germs from a used tissue. After baseball fan Steve Bartman interfered with a pop foul ball in the Chicago Cubs' playoff series, someone tried to sell his personal contact information on eBay. (EBay pulled the listing.)

Currently, you can, if you wish, buy a kangaroo scrotum. It costs about $10.

Downshifting in vogue

Skulking through all the eBay data, though, is the mounting weight of persistent economic malaise.

Though government numbers show the economy is rebounding after more than two years of doldrums, the eBay economy suggests something different. In fact, it seems to show a lag effect. People and companies downshifted as 2003 wore on.

For instance, eBay tracks searched words, which in turn are indicative of what buyers are looking for. Word searches for all of 2002 reflect a society still spending freely. Among the top 10 searches for the year were BMW, Louis Vuitton, Prada and Coach.

Similar terms dominated the top 10 into early 2003, until August, when there was a sudden shift. The Iraq (news - web sites) war was dragging on. Companies were still cutting jobs and keeping raises flat. The blackout hit. California was in political chaos with its recall vote. And just then the luxury names dropped off eBay's top 10, replaced by more mundane words such as Ford, Chevy and diesel.

In September, "salvage" made it to the top 10.

Meanwhile, the economy drove individual sellers to eBay, hoping to make extra cash in tough times. In July, Bill and Peterene Stanhope of Pembroke, Mass., listed a 14-acre island they owned off the coast of Maine. Bill's importing business was suffering, as was Peterene's business of making bookmarks. They needed to sell the island, which they'd bought years earlier, to make ends meet.

For similar reasons, eBay's industrial products market took off in 2003. As an example, doctors and dentists, squeezed by insurance companies, turned to eBay in 2003 to buy medical equipment. In general, medical professionals are wary of buying used equipment. But the category is up more than 100% over last year.

"I don't see any huge economic recovery," says Neal Sherman, whose company, The Advantage Group, uses eBay to liquidate goods for companies and public entities. It recently listed the entire contents of a supermarket, minus the food, and sold a yacht for the state of Maryland for $275,100.

"Take coffee equipment and mixers - a good operator in flusher economic times would buy those new," Sherman says. "When times are tough, they save money and buy it in the aftermarket."

From everything Sherman sees, the aftermarket for used business stuff is turbocharged. For that matter, the economy is exactly why Maryland went through Sherman and eBay to sell the governor's yacht. The state needs cash to offset its budget deficit.

War, Cubs, Arnold

If America 2003 hasn't exactly been a nation of peace, eBay shows we were a nation of pieces.

The war in Iraq began March 19. Those of us at home seemed to want a piece of it. Some individuals tried to use eBay to sell fragments of Baghdad's toppled statue of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). (This was another time when eBay pulled the listings, citing its policy of not allowing profiteering from disasters.) Also after the war started, the site did a brisk business in military model toys, up 50% vs. the year before. Items such as the Iraqi most-wanted trading cards sold well, too.

The war proved a boon to eBay's category for pieces of gold. Sales are up more than 70% over a year ago. People generally buy gold when they believe bad times will drive down the value of the dollar.

In October, when the Cubs seemed on the way to their first World Series (news - web sites) championship in more than 80 years, everyone wanted a piece of that, too. EBay's sales of Cubs paraphernalia shot up more than six times over the year before.

During Arnold Schwarzenegger (news - web sites)'s campaign for California governor, everyone wanted a piece of him. EBay's sales of Schwarzenegger-related items - from a 1969 Iron Man magazine with him on the cover to Terminator 2 talking dolls - climbed 1,500%.

Finally, there was the Feb. 1 Columbia disaster, when the shuttle disintegrated on re-entry. Fragments were scattered across the Southwest. EBay landed at the center of controversy when some people tried to sell pieces of Columbia on the site. The listings were pulled. More legitimately, sales of space-related model kits jumped 95% in February, compared with February 2002.

Best buy? Maybe eBay

Overall, the success of eBay itself says something about 2003.

First, it shows that the Internet revolution didn't end when the 2000 dot-com bubble burst. Sure, a lot of things didn't work and went under - Pets.com, online grocer Webvan. But businesses that made it are transforming markets.

Just look at what eBay and the Internet have done in 2003 to the $300 billion used car business. About $7 billion worth of cars, most of them used, will sell through eBay this year. About 30% of used cars will be sold on the Net. A market that used to be local has become national in a year or two.

The eBay concept is even transforming politics, as seen in the campaign of Democrat Howard Dean (news - web sites). "You can draw a clear connecting line from eBay to Google to the Dean campaign," says Steven Johnson, author of Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software. "All are bottom-up systems organized by lots of individuals acting in small ways, as opposed to top-down systems where a small elite calls the shots."

As a company and phenomenon, eBay continued to grow in 2003. In 1998, its gross merchandise sales - the total value of all transactions - were $700,000. In 2000, at the height of dot-com mania, they hit $5.4 billion. This year? The number should pass $20 billion.

The stock market values the company at about $41 billion - about $11 billion more than the market value of Ford Motor. That says a lot about what society thinks of eBay and its future.

Speaking of the stock market, eBay is in sync with developments there, too. After nearly three years of stock market gloom, the Dow Jones industrial average and Nasdaq turned upward in 2003 - but eBay did even better.

With such news comes the possibility that our humbling will not last.

At the close of 2003, mad cow disease in the USA is a worry. But Saddam Hussein is captured, stocks are up, companies are reporting better profits, and managers seem poised to hire once again. IBM this fall said it will create 10,000 jobs in 2004.

Perhaps we'll soon be in a different mood, and eBay will be there to capture it as the likes of Gucci, Prada and BMW once again rise to the top of our desires.

December 29, 2003 at 10:53 AM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Cyber Blackmail Wave Targets Office Workers

Yahoo! News - Cyber Blackmail Wave Targets Office Workers

Here is a new issue ... targeting of office workers with threats to compromise their PC, and therefore their job. Easy to understand how people could be scared by this tactic, but I hope anyone who gets this, reports it immediately.

Mon Dec 29, 7:21 AM ET

By Bernhard Warner, European Internet Correspondent
LONDON (Reuters) - Cyber blackmail artists are shaking down office workers, threatening to delete computer files or install pornographic images on their work PCs unless they pay a ransom, police and security experts said.

The extortion scam, which is believed to have surfaced one year ago, indiscriminately targets anyone on the corporate ladder with a PC connected to the Internet.

It usually starts with a threatening e-mail in which the author claims to have the power to take over a worker's computer through an exploit in the corporate network, experts said.

The e-mail typically contains a demand that unless a small fee is paid -- at first no more than $20 or $30 -- they will attack the PC with a file-wiping program or download onto the machine images of child pornography.

"They prey on the nice secretary who wouldn't do anything wrong. When she gets one of these e-mails she thinks 'Oh, my goodness what am I going to do?' So she puts it on her credit card and transfers the funds to the (suspect's online bank) account and hopes it goes away," a British detective specializing in cyber-crime told Reuters.

The officer advised against cooperating with the fraudsters. "If a person pays up, say it's just 20 euros, then they have identified a soft target. They may come back for more, next time demanding more money."

HARD CRIME TO CRACK

In the annals of cyber-crime, investigators acknowledge the racket is one of the most difficult to crack. Because the ransom is small, people tend to pay up and keep quiet.

Police said the number of cases is tailing off but because it so often goes unreported, there is little evidence the crime is actually in decline.

According to Finnish computer security firm, F-Secure, a large Scandinavian university was hit earlier this month.

Several university officials received an e-mail from a fraudster who appeared to be based in Estonia, said F-Secure research manager Mikko Hypponen.

The e-mail said several security vulnerabilities had been detected on the university's network and that unless the e-mail recipient transferred 20 euros ($25) to the author's online bank account, he would release a series of viruses capable of deleting a host of computer files.

Hypponen said he advised the university to take the necessary precautions, alert police and not pay. "A lot of these cases are simply bluffing. But I'm sure there are both bluffs and actual cases," said Hypponen.

Police say crime gangs have turned cyber extortion into a tidy business of late.

A preferred tool is the crude, but effective denial-of-service attack on a company's network, capable of crippling it with an overwhelming flood of data.

There are scores of cases of companies -- particularly small and medium-sized firms -- receiving extortion threats that demand the victim transfer money to the fraudster's bank account or the attacks will grow in severity, police said.

Fraudsters also send out streams of menacing e-mails with hollow threats of cyber sabotage. The scam works even if only a handful of the countless recipients follow through and pay up.

"It's getting simpler," said Hypponen. "If you wanted to extort money from a small company you would have had to hack them and convince them you have stolen their information. Here, you don't have to do anything but send an e-mail around."

December 29, 2003 at 10:51 AM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Andrew Sullivan: If it didn't come true, you read it here first

Intelligence: Andrew Sullivan: If it didn't come true, you read it here first

Andrew Sullivan: If it didn't come true, you read it here first
December 28, 2003
It's well known that pundits are always right. We never get a thing wrong. Everything that happens is something we foresaw. That's why you spend good money to read our scintillating thoughts, after all.
If you’d read the prestigious New Yorker only a couple of weeks ago, for example, you would have been informed of the near-impossibility of finding Saddam Hussein in Iraq: “The taskforce’s search for Saddam was, from the beginning, daunting. According to Scott Ritter, a former United Nations weapons inspector, it may have been fatally flawed as well. From 1994 to 1998, Ritter directed a special UN unit that eavesdropped on many of Saddam's private telephone communications.

“‘The high-profile guys around Saddam were the murafaqin, his most loyal companions, who could stand next to him carrying a gun,’ Ritter told me. ‘But now he’s gone to a different tier — the tribes. He has released the men from his most sensitive units and let them go back to their tribes, and we don’t know where they are . . .’ The taskforce, in any event, has shifted its focus from the hunt for Saddam as it is increasingly distracted by the spreading guerrilla war.”

Days later, a tribal ally betrayed Saddam and he is now the most famous captive in the world. The analysis? Courtesy of Seymour Hersh, one of the most celebrated investigative journalists of our time.

Or if you’d read the liberal American Prospect last summer you would have seen the prophetic words: “Every so often in life you have to go out on a limb. So here goes: Arnold Schwarzenegger will not be the next governor of California. What’s more, his loss will represent an important moment in a shift in American politics that has been in gestation for some time now — toward a politics in which voters make decisions more on the basis of their cultural affinities than in response to a candidate’s charisma or fame.” Oh well.

At least they got the war right. Here’s Simon Jenkins in The Times on March 28. The title of the piece was: Baghdad will be near impossible to conquer. Here’s the key paragraph:

“In Baghdad the coalition forces confront a city apparently determined on resistance. They should remember Napoleon in Moscow, Hitler in Stalingrad, the Americans in Mogadishu and the Russians at Grozny. Hostile cities have ways of making life ghastly for aggressors. They are not like countryside. They seldom capitulate, least of all when their backs are to the wall.

“It took two years after the American withdrawal from Vietnam for Saigon to fall to the Vietcong. Kabul was ceded to the warlords only when the Taliban drove out of town. In the desert, armies fight armies. In cities, armies fight cities. The Iraqis were not stupid. They listened to western strategists musing about how a desert battle would be a pushover. Things would get ‘difficult’ only if Saddam played the cad and drew the Americans into Baghdad. Why should he do otherwise?”

So you can’t win them all. Robert Fisk, for one, is sometimes known to have let his disdain for the Americans overshadow the crimes of Arab tyrants like the great leader Saddam. Here he was, once again on the ball, fearlessly using his imagination in the thick of the Iraq war:

“Anyone who doubts that the Iraqi army is prepared to defend its capital should take the highway south of Baghdad. How, I kept asking myself, could the Americans batter their way through these defences? For mile after mile they go on, slit trenches, ditches, earthen underground bunkers, palm groves of heavy artillery and truckloads of combat troops in battle fatigues and steel helmets. Not since the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war have I seen the Iraqi army deployed like this; the Americans may say they are ‘degrading’ the country’s defences but there was little sign of that here on Wednesday.”

It’s worth remembering that Fisk is still published in semi-serious papers and magazines. A man who has got pretty much everything wrong about the Middle East, who spent much of this year writing complete gobbledegook about Iraq, is still a hero of the liberal journalistic class.

But Fisk was in good company this past year; 2003 was, perhaps, best remembered as the year of living erroneously. Even your humble correspondent, who predicted success in Iraq, a Schwarzenegger victory and a strong American economic recovery got a few things wrong. Yes, I thought there would be real, live actual weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Instead, we found merely the infrastructure, history, and plans for future development. Although the case for war rested on deeper foundations — namely, Saddam as the most dangerous weapon of them all — it behoves me to say I got it wrong.

So, of course, did the UN, Hans Blix, MI6, the French government, the CIA, The New York Times, the Democrats and — possibly — Saddam. Maybe his terrified underlings fibbed to him about what they had or didn’t have. Maybe he kept the lie going for fear of being revealed as a paper tyrant. All we know now is that he lost the bluff.

The biggest surprises? No one accurately foresaw the extraordinary rise of Howard Dean and the strength of his internet-based insurrection in the Democratic party. He remains the biggest domestic American story of the year.

No one predicted the amazing resilience of the American economy, powering back to an annual rate of 8.2% growth in the third quarter. Almost no one predicted the astonishing productivity gains either — gains that have kept the recovery relatively job-free but have brought the markets back to frothy exuberance.

Few foresaw the emergence of Schwarzenegger as the governor of the most populous state in America. Few would have predicted no large Al-Qaeda attacks in America. Few could have predicted that The New York Times would admit to having published dozens of fabricated stories by a young affirmative action product, Jayson Blair, in a scandal that helped bring down one of the most arrogant editors in that paper’s history. Or that in such a short time, Hillary Clinton would have emerged as a Democratic leader in her own right, swiftly out of the shadow of her presidential husband.

So, ahem, the predictions for 2004. Bush will be re-elected in a landslide, a revolution will topple the mullahs in Tehran, the Nasdaq will reach 2,500, and . . . oh, never mind.

You wouldn’t believe me anyway. And you shouldn’t. See you next year.

December 29, 2003 at 10:10 AM in Blogging & feeds | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Disappearing Links

Re: Blogging: Disappearing Links

This from Re: Blogging highlights a problem the web has suffered from since inception. The average lifespan of a web page is 100 days .... 100 days has no permanance at all. Internet should be a library, and we should be able to rely on links forever. This is a fundamental flaw, and frankly one of the reasons I maintain this blog for myself. I have all these links archived in my own database ... but then what if I lose interest .... hmmmm.

Electronic archivists "are playing catch-up in trying to keep documents from landing in history's dustbin," says the Washington Post, reporting, on research published in the journal Science last month, found that footnotes from scientific articles in three major journals - the New England Journal of Medicine, Science and Nature – included many Internet references that were no longer valid links, not many months after publication. "Another study, published in January, found that 40 percent to 50 percent of the URLs referenced in articles in two computing journals were inaccessible within four years," says the Post. Brewster Kahle, digital librarian at the Internet Archive in San Francisco: "It's a huge problem. The average lifespan of a Web page today is 100 days. This is no way to run a culture."

December 29, 2003 at 08:57 AM in Blogging & feeds | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

We've Got Blog: How Weblogs are Changing Our Culture

We've Got Blog: How Weblogs are Changing Our Culture and The Weblog Handbook - Fall 2002 issue of Student Affairs Online

Weblogs, or just plain Blogs, are one of the more recent phenomena of the Web. Simply stated, Weblogs are frequently or regularly updated web pages that can be constructed in a variety of formats--as an online diary, offering observations and revelations on daily life; a filtering of Web links with commentary, possibly organized around a central theme; or a site with longer, though-provoking treatises.
Weblogs are the subject of two recent publications by Perseus Press - We've Got Blog: How Weblogs are Changing Our Culture and The Weblog Handbook. Both books offer an excellent primer on this emerging Web-based platform.

Reading through both books one is struck by the different ways Blogs are characterized. An off-beat description by Julian Dibbell, in We've Got Blog, compares weblogs to the Wunderkammer, "a random collection of strange, compelling objects, typically compiled and owned by a learned, well-off gentleman…that reflect[ed] European civilization's dazed and wondering attempts to assimilate the glut of physical data that science and exploration [unleashed] during the Renaissance." Rebecca Blood, the author of The Weblog Handbook and creator of the Weblog "Rebecca's Pocket," (www.rebeccablood.net) sees these creations as a personal vision, with a "focus on whatever is of interest to its maintainer." The appeal of each Weblog, she writes, is "grounded thoroughly in the personality of its writer: his interests, his opinions, and his personal mix of links and commentary."

Most of the almost three dozen essays (excellently cited in the back of the book) in We've Got Blog have appeared on various Weblogs over the past three years. They range from stream-of-conscious ruminations-"Credo of the Web Log Writer," by GeekMan; to more introspective pieces on the nature and purpose of Weblogs - "Portrait of the Blogger as a Young Man," by Julian Dibbell; to published interviews-"The State of the Blog: Parts 1-3," by Giles Turnbull; to other less quantifiable topics.

The writings vary wildly in content and quality, from earthiness and plain-speak to more professionally polished prose. Some of the texts come across as too defensive and preachy, begging for the acceptance of Weblogs as a bona fide form of social, cultural and political commentary, thereby justifying their place in the online world. But, for the most part, We've Got Blog provides the Weblog neophyte with a superb introduction to this realm. The book also contains a helpful glossary of terms and abundant list of Web-based references.

In The Weblog Handbook, Ms. Blood, who entered the Weblog realm in 1999, gives the reader a well-structured, meticulously mapped out tour of Blogs. Chapter 1 delivers a thorough description of Weblogs, providing the newbie with enough information to comfortably understand its underpinnings, variegates, and nuances. From here, the author deconstructs the entire Weblog experience. Subsequent chapters comprise such topics as the motivation in conceiving a Blog, the time and energy required for its upkeep, and a how-to guide in creating a Weblog from scratch.

For most of this highly readable book Ms. Blood is a combination of coach and cheerleader for individuals seeking to enter the Weblog domain. Her enthusiasm for the form can be infectious-I felt like hammering out my own Weblog after completing the book! Throughout she stresses the necessity in finding one's true voice, no matter how the Weblog is organized. Terms such as distinctive, unique, and independence are apt descriptors.

While some of the latter chapters-"Finding An Audience" and "Weblog Community and Etiquette"--may seem elementary to long time denizens of the Web they do contain solid, practical information for those new to Weblogs and the Web itself.

As with We've Got Blogged, there is a plethora of referenced Web sites at the end of each chapter.

Weblogs allow individuals to become publishers. They are personal soapboxes, cable access television programs and Hyde Park's Speaker's Corner all wrapped up into one. Even though Weblogs have begun to be unmasked by the mainstream press their identification level still hovers just below the radar of common acknowledgement by the masses, With the publication of We've Got Blogged and The Weblog Handbook Weblogs, flickering at the edges of societal recognition, should come more into focus for the uninitiated.

Blood, R. (2002). The weblog handbook: Practical advice on creating and maintaining your blog.Cambridge, MA: Perseus.

Editors of Perseus Publishing. (2002). We've got blog: How weblogs are changing our culture. Cambridge, MA: Perseus

December 29, 2003 at 08:47 AM in Blogging & feeds | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Role of blogs in Trent Lotts downfall is not a one off event

This thoughtful piece on the role of internet in current events (Clinton / Lewinsky) and blogs (Lotts downfall) makes a compelling case that traditional media cannot ignore if they wish to survive.
Download file

December 29, 2003 at 08:19 AM in Blogging & feeds, Business Models | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

America Idle - part 2

The Doc Searls Weblog : Sunday, December 28, 2003

Great update to the America Idle piece ... as Doc says ...... gotta think about this some more.

Last June, Simon Dumenco wrote American Idle, a piece that blamed both blogs and TiVo for second-hand opinion manufacture:
It¹s important to know what you¹re supposed to know but you don¹t actually have to know it firsthand...

I¹d argue that certain information-delivering technologies‹like TiVo and blogs‹up the ante so dramatically, and so seamlessly, that they create an entirely different sort of interpassive lifestyle, one that¹s, well, hyperpassive.
A home video library, or a physical collection of information of any sort, exists. The pleasure derives from the ownership of objects, but those objects—the piles of unread papers and magazines and books, the stacks of unwatched videotapes—also constantly taunt you, reminding you of their presence.
A machine removes that punishing presence. A blog, for instance, constantly pushes even slightly stale talking points to the margins (or the bottom of the homepage, or the archive). And while in hope-springs-eternal obliviousness you can always think, in the back of your mind, Oh, I¹ll go back and catch up on what I missed or I¹ll go back and read the article that was linked to, chances are it¹s not going to happen because there won¹t be any tangible evidence of your failure to do so.
What¹s more, a machine erases not only physical boundaries (the information object vanishes) but psychological boundaries as well. The point where you begin and where the machine-generated awareness ends begins to blur. (I¹m starting to feel like I really have watched Tina and Clay.)
The blog reader isn¹t thinking, Jim Romenesko is smart about media for me or Elizabeth Spiers is drolly engaged in Manhattanism for me. The reader is thinking, I¹m smart about media and I¹m drolly engaged in Manhattanism.
And I really hate to do this, but I can¹t help but bring up that kid, Jayson what¹s-his-name, at the Times, who sat in his apartment with a laptop and a cell phone, collected all manner of information from disparate sources, and said to himself not only I am knowledgeable but I am a reporter.
For him, firsthand experience was secondary: Life was blog, blog was life.
I wrote this (among other things) in response to that:
Wtf? Let's get this straight: A TiVo is a machine. A blog is a journal. Like comparing apples and noises.
Phil Wolff responded with an extremely quotable line: RSS newsreaders are TiVo for blogs. He explained,
Newsreaders like NewzCrawler and Radio UserLand do TiVo things. Time shifting. Easier, more complete channel and program selection.Season pass for your favorite shows. Record in the background while playing in the foreground. Save a post to your blog instead of to your VCR.
TiVo needs blogspace community tools: add social filtering (recommendations), feedback, and threads of commentary.
I responded with commentary on the very non-bloglike nature of the consumer electronics world, where TiVo lives:
In our habitat, the one that lives on the Net, we have NewsCrawler, Radio Userland, NetNewsWire Technorati, Blogdex, Daypop and all those other commercial conveniences (among the most inventive of which are commercial entities)l because they build on an underlying environment that nobody owns, everybody can use and anybody can improve. Hence all the invention and innovation.
The consumer electronics habitat, largely defined by cable, broadcasting and entertainment conglomerates and the regulatory agencies they essentially govern, broook no invention or innovation that doesn't come from inside their own labs, from their own engineers, for their own purposes as suppliers, distributors and facilitators of "content."
The fact that TiVo came out of Silicon Valley rather than Japan doesn't make it any less a creature of its category. Nor does the fact that it clearly threatens the business models (e.g. TV advertising) of many of its fellow market inhabitants.
But Phil's metaphor didn't die. Just two days ago, Suman wrote this in response to Phil's post:
And now I want functions in RSS aggregators to record between dates. Record Jon's Radio from December 22nd till today and cache the referred pages so that I can take it on my laptop and read it offline. Or, I will leave my workstation running during holidays and please record all channels that mention the word "HyperChip".
Well, well, we are getting there. With blog recording, page caching and text filtering at our fingertips, the day is not far when we will finally be able to take long holidays and not worry about what we are missing.
The implication: that blogs are indeed media of some kind, and not just journals.
I've always believed that journals were not inside the media circle. There was something about them that was outside, looking in. That they were exceptional, somehow, to the Great Media Machinery by which stuff is pumped from a few producers to a zillion consumers. That the whole producer/consumer industrial model didn't apply. Or at least applied with a degree of conditionality. Now I wonder.
Gotta think about this some more. Meantime I gotta go make breakfast.

December 29, 2003 at 07:57 AM in Blogging & feeds | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

American Idle

American Idle

A thoughful view of modern plagiarism, and who thinks what first.

That Blair kid isn't the only faker in town. With a little creative use of new technology, you no longer need to experience anything firsthand—and people will cheerfully let you get away with it!
By Simon Dumenco
When it comes to pop-cultural literacy, I've lately discovered, it's the thought that counts. It’s important to know what you're supposed to know” but you don't actually have to know it firsthand.

“Oh, my God, did you see Clay Aiken butcher that ‘Starry, Starry Night’ song last night?” a friend asked the Wednesday before the American Idol finale.

“Not yet—I TiVo’ed it,” I said.

My answer somehow satisfied my interrogator. Woo-hoo! I thought. Spared again! I had shown that I wasn’t so clueless I didn’t know that the deeply uncool American Idol had somehow become mandatory viewing for the pop-cultural literati. My response signaled that I was planning on being part of the national conversation surrounding so-bad-it’s-good Idolmania—but I’d been so busy I hadn’t had a chance yet.

The only problem is, I wasn’t really planning on watching it.

Over the past several months, my TiVo had dutifully collected 39 hours of American Idol episodes. And then, just as dutifully, my TiVo had systematically deleted those 39 hours, mostly unwatched. (Unlike a VCR, TiVo can be programmed to automatically erase shows it’s automatically recorded—to make room for more shows you probably won’t watch.)

Tina Brown helped me figure all this out. In Manhattan media circles, awareness of the April 30 debut of her quarterly CNBC talk show, Topic A With Tina Brown, was unavoidable. Endless pre-show hype had culminated in a sweaty-palmed story in Section A, of all places, of the New York Times—as if the television debut of the buzzy British magazine-world refugee was news of national import rather than the Manhattan-chattering-class curiosity it turned out to be.

Talking Tina was a preordained talking point, so I TiVo’ed her show.

And then I didn’t watch it.

“Did you see Tina’s show last night?” more than a few friends and colleagues asked me.

“Not yet—I TiVo’ed it,” I replied. I’d discovered my digital “Get out of jail free” card. Everyone was all too happy to engage me in conversation about the show I had (sort of) planned to watch but now didn’t need to.

The beautiful thing is that by collecting their observations and mixing them together with a few blogged opinions culled from the Web, I was able to hold my own—with ever-increasing authority—in the conversation about Talking Tina.

The blog thing, especially, was key. Because I didn’t have to read, in long form, the endless pontificating about Tina’s TV debut either (it’s a bit like not even bothering to read book reviews but still being able to talk about books). In the same way I delegated the task of watching Tina’s show to my TiVo, I delegated the task of forming an opinion about it to media-news blogger Jim Romenesko (www.medianews.org)—who, come to think of it, had delegated the task of actually thinking and writing about Tina to the assorted opinion-makers he’d linked to and summarized.

“I delegated the task of watching Tina Brown’s show to my TiVo—and the task of forming an opinion about it to bloggers.”

Now I’m very much looking forward to not watching the next installment of Topic A With Tina Brown. Not to mention not watching American Idol 3.

Okay, so as a seemingly knowledgeable conversationalist on any number of pop-cultural and media subjects, I’m a fraud. But I’m perpetrating what’s become a very commonplace deception.

In fact, I first became conscious of the faking-it phenomenon in regards to my own “content.” As a writer for this and other magazines, I find my stuff often gets linked to by assorted bloggers. Over the past year in particular, I’ve noticed more and more of my friends and colleagues saying things along the lines of “I saw you on Gawker” (Gawker.com, the Manhattan-centric and media-crazed white-hot blog du jour). There is, increasingly, no pretense of actually having read what I’ve written, or even having the intention to read what I’ve written. This is a qualitatively different declaration from the pre-blog-era “I saw your piece in New York”—which, if the person hadn’t read it yet, was always tinged with a mixture of guilt and faux anticipation, as expressed in a follow-up statement (“Haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but . . . ” or “Can’t wait to read it”).

“I saw you on Gawker,” though, has a certain hermetic finality. The person saying this, of course, already has a rough idea of what I’ve written about, thanks to Gawker empress Elizabeth Spiers’s pithy summary. So there’s really no pressing need for my purported readers to actually read what I’ve written. Spiers has done that for them! There is therefore no need to feel guilt or any further obligation. Engaging by proxy is virtually as good as actually engaging.

More to the point, though, “I saw you on Gawker” (or Romenesko or iwantmedia.com or mediabistro.com) is a way for the blog reader to say, “Good for you that you wrote something that somebody in a position to know has decided is interesting or relevant or mildly amusing.”

And it works at a subtly self-congratulatory level, too, of course: It’s a way of saying, “I’m clever enough to know that all the clever things I need to know are on [insert blog name here].”

As it turns out, there’s a circle of European-philosopher types—mostly self-described Lacanians (adherents of the theories of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan)—who have recently been parsing this sort of thing. Chief among them is Slavoj Zizek, a Slovenian philosophy professor and worldwide academic cult figure who has promoted the concept of “interpassivity”—a catchall term that Lacanians use to describe everything from laugh tracks on sitcoms (the sitcom laughs for you, relieving you of the obligation of deciding what’s funny on your own) to people assembling home film libraries. “Although I do not actually watch [them], the very awareness that the films I love are stored in my video library gives me profound satisfaction,” Zizek has written of his own interpassivity.

But I’d argue that certain information-delivering technologies—like TiVo and blogs—up the ante so dramatically, and so seamlessly, that they create an entirely different sort of interpassive lifestyle, one that’s, well, hyperpassive.

A home video library, or a physical collection of information of any sort, exists. The pleasure derives from the ownership of objects, but those objects—the piles of unread papers and magazines and books, the stacks of unwatched videotapes—also constantly taunt you, reminding you of their presence.

A machine removes that punishing presence. A blog, for instance, constantly pushes even slightly stale talking points to the margins (or the bottom of the homepage, or the archive). And while in hope-springs-eternal obliviousness you can always think, in the back of your mind, Oh, I’ll go back and catch up on what I missed or I’ll go back and read the article that was linked to, chances are it’s not going to happen because there won’t be any tangible evidence of your failure to do so.

What’s more, a machine erases not only physical boundaries (the information object vanishes) but psychological boundaries as well. The point where you begin and where the machine-generated awareness ends begins to blur. (I’m starting to feel like I really have watched Tina and Clay.)

The blog reader isn’t thinking, Jim Romenesko is smart about media for me or Elizabeth Spiers is drolly engaged in Manhattanism for me. The reader is thinking, I’m smart about media and I’m drolly engaged in Manhattanism.

And I really hate to do this, but I can’t help but bring up that kid, Jayson what’s-his-name, at the Times, who sat in his apartment with a laptop and a cell phone, collected all manner of information from disparate sources, and said to himself not only I am knowledgeable but I am a reporter.

For him, firsthand experience was secondary: Life was blog, blog was life.

The truth is, I’m getting a little blurry myself on some of the boundaries (maybe this column is a cry for help), including the shape and scope of my own argument. If I’m lucky, a clever blogger will summarize this column and crystallize its meaning not only for other readers but for me. (I can’t tell you how many times Romenesko has blogged me and I’ve thought, Oh, so that was my point.)

Meanwhile, I have to ask: Did you read this essay or did you read about it?

December 29, 2003 at 07:54 AM in Blogging & feeds | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

6 Months old

So ICE is coming up on 6 months old now. When I began, I was on Blogger, then moved to Typepad, and now running on Movable Type. MT has expanded the usefulness of the blog immensely because of categories, and their extensive XML library, which when combined with external plug ins provides a powerful tool, which will meet my needs for a while.

I started off with the concept of gathering information which I fond interesting in one place. The best part of blogging for me, is the ability to seamlessly capture other articles or information at the point of hearing/ reading it. Layer on the ability to voice my own opinion and reaction at the time, and thats all there is to my blog.

This replaces the old way of seeking out historical documents when I need something, but the blog makes information gathering seamless and easy.

My original premise was that internet has changed business models for ever, and while I now have only one caegory on that, the other categories seem to have evolved into representations of the changes which bring about the change to old business models.

So one of the attractions for me with MT is the ability to host the site and the data myself. After 6 months, and 311 posts, there is an immense body of knowledge here. Prior to blogs, I would have had all these thoughts, but they would have been fleeting, and later relegated to the "what was that about (insert idea here) again?"

December 29, 2003 at 12:07 AM in My Blog | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

December 28, 2003

Blog Tools - Movable Type is rated #1

Blog Tools

Opinion columnists may not have views any better than your own, but they have one thing you probably don't—an audience. Fortunately, you don't have to convince J. Jonah Jameson to hire you. A blog can help you disseminate your views, and a hosted blog service can help you get started cheaply and easily. You can write about politics, gardening, your cats or anything you like. Depending on the service, you can post to your blog by browser, e-mail, or even phone. Enthusiastic bloggers can post breaking news before Peter Parker makes the scene.

Blogs are everywhere. Doonesbury's Zipper Harris is a blogger. Howard Dean tracks his presidential campaign in a blog (www.blogforamerica.com). Dan Bricklin, father of the electronic spreadsheet, shares his thoughts in a blog at www.danbricklin.com.

For every celebrity blog, thousands are maintained by ordinary people. Launching a blog is about the simplest way to create a personal Web site. Once you've configured your blog's appearance and characteristic options, you simply start posting. The blog software organizes your posts with the newest at the top and a calendar linking to older posts. You can keep the whole thing private, like an old-fashioned diary, or let a few trusted friends view it. But for most bloggers, the challenge is to attract as many readers as possible, and they let in anyone who stumbles upon their blogs.

Themes or skins let you configure your blog's appearance to reflect your personality; if you know a little HTML, you can do some fine tuning. Many services include interactive elements to keep visitors engaged, like the ability to rate or discuss posts. A search function may help you find bloggers with similar interests. Exchanging links or joining blog rings helps drive traffic to your blog. A few services make it easy to display the books and music that currently interest you, with automatic creation of thumbnails and links to Amazon.com. If you sign up as an Amazon.com Associate, you can even make a little money when visitors click through to buy books or CDs you recommend.

You may well need that extra cash from your Amazon affiliation. A successful blog can outgrow a free or low-cost basic service, forcing you to choose a premium service or even set up your own Web site to host the blog. Some bloggers self-host because of concerns about retaining ownership of their blog entries, though hosting services make it clear that you retain all rights to your posts. But like any Web hosting service, a blog host retains the right to delete content it deems obscene or illegal. And some users may simple enjoy hosting their own.

Scholars today study the famous diary of Samuel Pepys for insight into everyday life in 17th-century England. Will your blog be just as famous in a few hundred years? No one will ever know unless you try. You will have some competition: Pepys's diary is back, as a blog, with annotated copies of the original entries appearing daily (www.pepysdiary.com).

You can choose from an assortment of tools that can host your blog for you; we tested the best of the bunch. In addition, we looked at one application for those who prefer to host their own. Read on to see what we think.

A: A picture of the blog's author graces each page.

B: Visitors click on a linked calendar day to view the day's posts.

C: Blog posts are displayed in order, newest at the top.

D: This permalink will still link to the post after it's moved into archives.

E: Visitors click on this link to comment on the post.

F: This link gets an RSS feed of the blog's content.

G: This link goes to the author's profile.

H: Posts from earlier months are automatically archived.

I: This thumbnail links to Amazon.com. If a visitor clicks through and buys the book, the blog's author gets some cash.

J: Recent comments are automatically listed here.

K: Recent posts are automatically listed here.

Blogger, Blog*Spot

December 30, 2003
By Neil J. Rubenking

Category: Blogging Services
Product: Blogger, Blog*Spot
Price: Free
Company Info: Pyra Labs, www.blogspot.com

Editor Rating:

Google purchased Blogger and the Blog*Spot hosting service from Pyra Labs earlier this year. Blogger and Blog*Spot are free now, with features of the former Blogger Pro premium service gradually moving into the free, ad-supported service. But until a feature has been transferred to the free service, there's no way for a new blog to use it. As a result, we couldn't test some premium-service features that haven't yet been transferred.

Posting to Blogger is a snap: Just enter plain text or HTML code in the editor, spell-check it if you like, and click a button. Previous posts are handily listed below, in case you want to edit them. You can click the BlogThis! button on the Google toolbar and quickly post a link to the page you're viewing, with your comments. By the time you read this, the mail-to-blog feature should be available. With a separate subscription to audio Blogger ($3 a month), you can even phone in audio-only posts.

Blogger doesn't emphasize community interaction; it alone among our contenders doesn't let visitors discuss or rate posts. Another serious lack in the service: Your Blogger blog is also completely public, with no means to limit access. And the ability to host images hasn't yet trickled down from the premium service to the current free service. But it's free, and that may suffice to convince you to join its 1.5 million registered users.

LiveJournal

December 30, 2003
By Neil J. Rubenking

Category: Blogging Services
Product: LiveJournal
Price: Basic, free; premium, $25 a year
Company Info: Danga Interactive Inc., www.livejournal.com

Editor Rating:

LiveJournal is strongly community-oriented. In fact, you can get a free basic account only if a community member invites you; otherwise you have to pay. You can engage visitors with polls, and the comment system provides a fully threaded discussion area. Visitors can even get e-mail notification of responses to their comments. Enter a full user profile and search for other users with similar interests, link to friends' blogs, even exchange text messages with other LiveJournal users. If you want, you can specify who's allowed to access your entire blog or even individual posts.

Community and content rule in LiveJournal, not fancy formatting. Users typically post entries to their blogs using one of several simple clients, though it's possible to post using a browser. In either case, there's no WYSIWYG editing and no hosting of images, and the spell-checker offers suggestions but can't insert them. This combination of community interaction and simple editing apparently appeals to many. The LiveJournal site's running statistics show over 600,000 active users and over 100 posts per minute.

Radio UserLand

December 30, 2003
By Neil J. Rubenking

Category: Blogging Services
Product: Radio UserLand
Price: $39.95 a year
Company Info: UserLand Software Inc., http://radio.userland.com

Editor Rating:

Unlike in the other services we reviewed, a Radio UserLand blog is created locally using desktop Web server software and then "upstreamed" to the Web, so you always have a local copy of all your content. You can optionally configure it to allow browser-based posting from other locations or posting via e-mail. With the free Picture Tool add-in, uploading a picture is as simple as copying it to a specified folder. If you frequently type particular sequences of HTML or text, you can save them as named shortcuts; a quoted shortcut name in a post will be replaced by the specified HTML or text.

UserLand controls the RSS 2.0 specification, so naturally this product emphasizes RSS (to learn more, see the section "RSS Tools,"). Your own blog is automatically accessible as an RSS feed, or as multiple feeds if you use the Categories feature to organize your posts. The built-in News Aggregator can pull in RSS feeds from any source, including other blogs you subscribe to. Just click to post a news item to your blog and add comments. A HotList displays the 100 most subscribed-to news channels.

Visitors can comment on your posts, but there's little else in the way of community or interaction, and you can't limit access to specific users. Radio UserLand is especially handy if your aim is to air your views on current events.

Tripod Blog Builder

December 30, 2003
By Neil J. Rubenking

Category: Blogging Services
Product: Tripod Blog Builder
Price: Basic, free; premium, $10 to $15 for setup, plus $4.95 to $19.95 a month
Company Info: Lycos Inc., http://blog.tripod.lycos.com

Editor Rating:

Tripod Blog Builder is available to any of the 32 million Tripod/Angelfire members. If you decide to host your blog here, you'll get all the features of a complete Web site. Basic service is free (with ads); premium service drops the ads and adds more storage, bandwidth, and some features. Premium members can have multiple blogs or multiple authors and can control access to an entire blog or to individual posts. Even basic membership includes image hosting, but premium members get an Image Aide tool to automate insertion of images in posts.

Your blog can include a Buddy Page with links to friends and their blogs. Visitors can comment on posts in a fully threaded discussion system, and owners get e-mail notification of new comments. You can enhance your blog by taking advantage of the services available through the Site Builder: Set up a photo album or guest book and link it to your blog page, for example. If you're looking to create a complete Web site, not just a blog, Blog Builder is a good place to start.

TypePad

December 30, 2003
By Neil J. Rubenking

Category: Blogging Services
Product: TypePad
Price: Basic, $4.95 a month; premium, $8.95 to $14.95 a month
Company Info: Six Apart Ltd., www.typepad.com

Editor Rating:

TypePad, the hosted service corresponding to Six Apart's well-regarded Movable Type, has excellent support for content above and beyond simple blog postings. Your blog can include one or more photo albums, which automatically generate thumbnails and attractive display pages. You can easily add books or music to typelists; TypePad grabs a thumbnail and link from Amazon.com. Your typelists automatically appear as sidebars, flanking your blog posts.

TypePad's editor isn't WYSIWYG, so a little knowledge of HTML is helpful—essential if you want to include a photo album image in a post. You can post from your browser, send posts via e-mail, post from your WAP-enabled phone, or even use third-party stand-alone products.

TypePad blogs are inviting and easy to navigate. The service's comment system leaves you in charge; you can enable or disable comments on a per-post basis and hold incoming comments pending approval. Your visitors can read posts or check out your lists of books, music, links, or friends. Link lists to recent comments and recent posts appear automatically. And TypePad produces the best-looking blog we've seen.

Weblogger

December 30, 2003
By Neil J. Rubenking

Category: Blogging Services
Product: Weblogger
Price: Basic, $9.95 a month; premium, $39.95 a month
Company Info: Weblogger, www.weblogger.com

Editor Rating:

Weblogger is a powerful system designed for groups, not individuals. The administrator defines roles: Contributing Editors write stories and edit their own posts, Content Editors can edit posts written by others, and Managing Editors have full site control. New stories e-mailed or posted by Contributing Editors can be held for approval by higher-ranking editors. These powerful features may cause some initial confusion in small, one-author configurations. A Weblogger blog can host images, and inserting them into posts is simple: Just include each image's name in quotes. Links to other posts or to uploaded files are handled the same way.

Visitors can comment on posts in a fully threaded discussion system. Using a free add-in, you can poll your visitors from within a post. There's no support for personal features like buddy pages or searchable interest lists; Weblogger creates a businesslike blog, based on Manila. For a premium, it stores 500MB of content and allows 6GB a month of bandwidth.

Xanga

December 30, 2003
By Neil J. Rubenking

Category: Blogging Services
Product: Xanga
Price: Basic, free; premium, $25 a year
Company Info: Xanga, www.xanga.com

Editor Rating:

Xanga originated back in 1999 as a site for sharing book and music reviews. Driven by member preferences, it quickly morphed into a full-scale blog site, but it retains a marvelous ability to share reviews. Just name the song, movie, or book that interests you and Xanga grabs a link to Amazon.com, including a thumbnail of the cover. Xanga aggregates the links into a Top 50 list. Click the xTools button in the Links toolbar to comment on the site you're visiting, or post to your blog via e-mail. The attractive, fully WYSIWYG editor permits easy insertion of smileys, symbols, and links, and it automates the process of uploading and including images. You can try a free Xanga site, then upgrade to get more features and no ads.

It's easy to locate like-minded people among Xanga's 2.5 million users by checking out its blog rings. Members with similar interests can subscribe to one another's blogs (when someone subscribes or unsubscribes, you're notified). Xanga also gives the ability to subscribe without notification, a way to try a blog without risking offending the blogger by unsubscribing. Visitors can comment on your posts or give "eProps" to especially good ones.

Movable Type 2.64

December 30, 2003
By Richard V. Dragan

Category: Do It Yourself
Product: Movable Type 2.64
Price: $150; free for individuals and nonprofit organizations
Company Info: Six Apart Ltd., www.sixapart.com

Editor Rating:

Do you want to host your own blog? Six Apart's Movable Type 2.64 is an appealing and well-rounded package. This core engine for the hosted version of TypePad is easy to install and use on your own, provided you understand the basics of installing Perl modules and have a little admin expertise.

We installed Movable Type to Windows and IIS 5.0 running with default Berkeley DB support for a database. Powered by Perl, this package is a natural fit for Linux. It also supports connecting to MySQL and Postgresql as database options, though these require downloading and compiling additional Perl modules—not something newbies will want to try. We used ActiveState's Perl 5.8 as our scripting engine for Windows. (Linux users normally get Perl support by default.)

A step-by-step guide helped us get started. Necessary steps include installing the DB_File module from CPAN and configuring your Web server to invoke Perl scripts. None of this requires a black belt in system administration, but it's tricky, and some previous experience with Linux or Perl will definitely help.

After installation, another script quickly generated the necessary database files, and we were up and running. Users of Movable Type get full control over a well-polished blogging system, with good support for XML-based templates to speed up new content. The user interface is largely the same as in TypePad for end users, minus a few admin options.

Movable Type administrators can set up any number of blogs. The only trick is that you need to access the file system on the server, which needs a few new directories—along with permission settings—to get new blogs started. Otherwise, everything can be done in the capable Web interface. The control over notifications and reader comments (including the ability to block troublemakers' IP addresses) is appreciated.

Recent Movable Type customers include About.com, Howard Dean's presidential campaign, and the blog serialization of the Samuel Pepys diary (www.pepysdiary.com) mentioned above. If you have a little Perl experience, you too can customize this slick and powerful personal-publishing system and run it on your own servers with minimal effort.

Choice Blogs

December 30, 2003

Boing Boing
www.boingboing.net
This "directory of wonderful things" is full of offbeat, fascinating, and thought-provoking posts.

Dan Bricklin's Log
www.danbricklin.com
Hosts www.danbricklin.com/log, a blog by the tech guru who coinvented VisiCalc.

The Diary of Samuel Pepys
www.pepysdiary.com
One of the great historical diaries, serialized as a blog.

The J-Walk Weblog
www.j-walk.com/blog
Eclectic collection of information, musings, links, and other "stuff that may or may not interest you," by John Walkenbach, a computer book author.

Longhorn Blogs
www.longhornblogs.com
A non-Microsoft site collection of 46 blogs on the forthcoming version of Windows.

Neil Gaiman's Journal
www.neilgaiman.com/journal/ journal.asp
The popular novelist and comic book author keeps up with his audience.

patrickWeb
www.patrickweb.com
E-tired visionary IBM executive's musings on technology.

PDC Bloggers
http://pdcbloggers.net
Blogs as news coverage, from Microsoft's recent Professional Developers Conference.

Scripting News
http://scriptingnews.userland.com
Tech thinker Dave Winer's blog on scripting languages and more. Claims to be the oldest continually running blog. See also http://davenet.userland.com.

Summary of Features: Blog Tools

December 30, 2003

December 28, 2003 at 11:48 PM in Blogging & feeds | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Shoppers shun high street retailers to hunt for web bargains

Scotsman.com News - Top Stories - Shoppers shun high street retailers to hunt for web bargains

LINDSEY ROGERSON

SHOPPERS have taken advantage of some of the toughest discounting by retailers in years this weekend, despite reports that the numbers passing through shop doors have fallen. But it seems that changing shopping patterns could at least be partly to blame for the ambiguity in the early figures. For not all of this year’s bargain hunters were trotting down to their local high street in search of sales bargains. A record number of UK consumers did their Christmas shopping over the internet this year. Online shopping has risen by 44 per cent in the past 12 months.

The online retailer Amazon and Tesco.com have both said business set new records in the run-up to Christmas.

Half a million people placed orders with Tesco.com in December, with about a third selecting their turkey over the internet.

Non-food web sales jumped 50 per cent on last year.

The trend is expected to be reflected in Christmas sales figures produced over the next few weeks by other internet retailers, which will produce trading statements alongside the UK’s major high street chains.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that canny consumers are increasingly delaying their Christmas shopping and will have succeeded in bagging themselves some bargains this year.

Research from the internet bank Egg suggests that about £9 billion will be spent in the sales this winter.

According to retail analysts the lower-than-expected trading volumes in early December panicked some retailers into massive discounting even before Christmas, especially on clothing lines.

The department store John Lewis slashed the price of some designer womenswear by as much as 50 per cent before Christmas instead of waiting until its annual clearance sale.

The news that trading volumes did not pick up until prices fell will be welcomed by those concerned about mounting levels of household debt, as the figures suggest that consumers are increasingly adopting a more realistic approach to spending.

Only 6 per cent of sale shoppers interviewed by Egg said they intended to spend more than £400 in the sale, with the vast majority of bargain hunters opting for a more modest £50- £200.

Nevertheless, Egg’s research revealed that 54 per cent of Scots expect to feel somewhat blue in the New Year because they have spent too much over Christmas. The average Scot is expected to have notched up almost £800 on presents, food and drink this festive season.

Across the UK, consumers are spending around £54 billion annually on unnecessary luxuries - an amount equivalent to all that is outstanding on credit and store cards - according to IFA Promotion, which carried out the research as part of its campaign to encourage more people to save by highlighting areas where money was simply being frittered away.

Worryingly the research identified a hard-core of "could save, won’t save" individuals, with almost 60 per cent of people refusing to make even modest adjustments to their daily spending in order to put something away for a rainy day - let alone retirement.

Fresh research published yesterday by the high street bank Abbey reinforced these findings. The bank is concerned that only two in five people in the UK are regular savers - saving an average of £161 a month.

Scotland now has one of the poorest saving records in the UK, with the average Scot putting aside just £129 a month or 6 per cent of income.

Angus Porter, Abbey’s customer director, said: "Everyone has events to save for such as births, marriages, education and holidays, so the earlier you start saving, the easier it is."

December 28, 2003 at 10:08 PM in eCommerce | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

We Hate Spam, Congress Says (Except When It's Sent by Us)

We Hate Spam, Congress Says (Except When It’s Sent by Us)

By JENNIFER 8. LEE

WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 Even as Congress was unanimously approving a law aimed at reducing the flow of junk e-mail, members were sending out hundreds of thousands of unsolicited messages to constituents.

The spasm of activity is aimed at attracting voluntary subscribers to the lawmakers' e-mail lists, which would not be subject to House rules that normally impose a 90-day blackout before an election for taxpayer-supported Congressional mass communications.

In September, the House Administration Committee voted, 5 to 3, along party lines to allow e-mail messages to the subscribers to be sent in the blackout period, but maintained the ban on free postal mail from House members to voters. The policy change affected only House rules and was not part of the junk e-mail legislation.

At least 40 House members have bought or agreed to buy e-mail address lists from at least four vendors. The lists, which each have tens of thousands of addresses, are generally created by a process called e-mail appending, taking voter registration files from a member's district. The next step is to cross match them with large databases of names and e-mail addresses assembled by consumer data companies like Equifax, which has a database of more than 75 million e-mail addresses. E-mail addresses can usually be found for 10 percent to 20 percent of the voter file.

Many members of Congress praise the new policy for allowing cheaper and more effective communications with constituents. But consumer advocacy groups say the policy may unfairly give an advantage to incumbents over challengers because it allows elected officials to use government resources to communicate with voters right up to Election Day. In addition, the consumer advocates say, sending bulk e-mail messages to constituents who have not agreed to receive it is essentially electronic junk mail, or spam.

The ability to communicate with constituents at taxpayer expense, the franking privilege, is one of the most cherished and controversial perks of office. For 30 years, advocacy groups have lobbied and sued Congress to try to close loopholes and stop abuses of the privilege.

Critics say the policy has created a significant new loophole.

"The core value is that you don't want to leverage technology to increase incumbent advantage," said Celia Viggo Wexler, research director at Common Cause, a group that has sued to limit franking. "What is troubling is that essentially the House is saying, `O.K., you can communicate with the constituency up to an election, and we're not really going to check what you are saying with them.' The point is without that kind of oversight, it's ripe for abuse."

Before the change, e-mail was subject to the same treatment as regular postal mail. Correspondence sent to more than 500 constituents had to obtain approval from the franking commission and was subject to a 90-day blackout before an election. But individual responses to citizens were not subject to the restrictions.

Congressional officials said the old policy was too cumbersome.

"Anything over 500 e-mails you had to submit that to the franking commission," said Brian Walsh, the Republican spokesman for the House Administration Committee. "There was going to be a delay of a couple of days to get approved. We didn't feel that was consistent with the technology that existed."

The new policy says that lawmakers can freely send messages to voters who have agreed to subscribe to their e-mail lists. To build such lists, House members are sending huge amounts of bulk e-mail messages to their districts in the hope that some voters will subscribe.

The unsolicited messages go out from Congressional offices as often as twice a month. The unsolicited messages, which have to stop 90 days before an election or a primary, are still subject to approval from the franking commission.

"They are regulating commercial spam, and at the same time they are using the franking privilege to send unsolicited bulk communications which aren't commercial," David Sorkin, a professor at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago, said. "When we are talking about constituents who haven't opted in, it's spam."

President Bush signed the law on spam on Dec. 16, and it takes effect on Thursday. It will ban the sending of bulk commercial e-mail using false information like fake names, as well as misleading subject lines and automated harvesting of e-mail messages. It will also require all commercial e-mail messages to include a valid postal address and give recipients an opportunity to opt out of receiving more messages.

The law restricts only commercial e-mail, a sector that accounts for more than half of all e-mail traffic. The law does not apply to unsolicited political messages. It also authorizes the Federal Trade Commission to study the possibility of a "do not spam" list.

Violators of the law will be liable for a fine up to $250 per violation, up to a cap of $2 million, except in extreme circumstances, when the fine could be tripled. Violators could also face up to five years in prison.

Members of the House say their unsolicited e-mail messages are not junk e-mailings, because the messages are directly intended for constituents who have the right to opt out, and the messages have received positive reactions.

"Our experience has been that we get hundreds and hundreds of people who opt in for every person who opts out," said Representative Brad Sherman, a California Democrat who has bought a list. "E-mail has been a great communications device."

From a technology perspective, commercial and political bulk e-mail look startlingly similar.

Advocacy Inc., a consultant in Washington, had its first unsolicited bulk e-mail, sent on behalf of Representative Pete Stark, Democrat of California, initially blocked by America Online's spam filters. AOL later agreed not to block the messages, Advocacy said.

The new policy is fueling an e-mail arms race. Democrats say that the new policy, which was drawn up by the Republicans who control the House, took them somewhat by surprise, but they are catching up.

"The Democrats are worried," said Roger A. Stone, the chief executive of Advocacy, who has been signing up Democratic offices at the rate of about five a week. "I'm dealing with people whose boss said, `Get me some of that Internet.'

December 28, 2003 at 05:10 AM in Spam | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Move to Movable Type - 2

Well, the move is pretty much completed now. The search and archive capability is key. All in all I can see the benefit in MT is the thought which has gone into their XML library. Its well developed, and exendtible. Last point is key; its exendible because the thought and strategy which went into the original development, meant that its relatively simple for MT to extend, but the real proof point is the number of plug-ins.

For example if you select any category, you will see a menu at the top for "previous category", "main" and "next category". This menu is a plug-in from Brad Choate, and it works so simply because of the open-ness of MT.

Open-ness means the original XML tag library (WSDL) was developed from the "outside in"; ie what is the maximum function requirement, including, category, posts, archive etc, then the development of functions within those is just a matter of individual thought and work. That individual work is not limited because the original XML architecture is open and wide enough that it encompasses the detailed individual processes as required.

December 28, 2003 at 04:34 AM in My Blog | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

December 27, 2003

Jackson Web Site Unites, Divides Legal Profession

Yahoo! News - Jackson Web Site Unites, Divides Legal Profession

Thu Dec 25, 7:47 AM ET

By Sue Zeidler
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California prosecutors took the unusual step of setting up a Web site on the Michael Jackson case to alleviate a media frenzy and, in doing so, triggered a debate on use of the Web within the legal community.

Some legal experts said that posting documents detailing the criminal charges against the 45-year-old entertainer was a breakthrough for public access. Others countered that it would undermine the spirit of the law and court proceedings, creating even more of a circus-like atmosphere.

Over the last five years, the Web has often been used to spin the views of one side or another in sensational civil cases, like the Microsoft class-action case.

But lawyers and law professors said it was rare for a governmental prosecuting attorney's office to set up a Web site devoted entirely to a particular criminal case.

Many said they expect it to become a trend, and, while a specialized Web site appears to be an anomaly in criminal cases, media-hounded prosecutors in other high-profile cases like the Kobe Bryant rape case and the upcoming Scott Peterson (news - web sites) murder trial have also put links on their Web sites to documents.

"The Web has been such a driver of information in civil cases, it has really changed defense tactics. The legal battles that now go on over the Web are not insubstantial," said Katrina Dewey, editor of the LA Daily Journal legal newspaper.

"And now, this (trend) just moved it into the criminal arena," she said, referring to the Jackson Web site set up by the Santa Barbara County District Attorney Tom Sneddon at (http://www.sbscpressinfo.org).

To be sure, loads of court case data has long been available on the Web and the legal profession has changed dramatically with the Web's emergence.

People can stay abreast of changes in the law or government agency regulations by using various Web services, like (http://www.watchthatpage.com) which collects data from sites a lawyer or anyone might have special interest in.

Lawyers, journalists and the general public can also get news fed to them with software that scans major legal Web sites and legal online newsletters or Web logs, or blogs, for short.

Law-related blogs -- known as "blawgs" -- have sprung up with the rise of the blogging self-publishing trend in general. Popular blawgs include an appellate court site at (http://www.appellateblog.blogspot.com).

Some law firms create blogs for the sole purpose of making data available to the general public, like the Washington, D.C. firm, Goldstein and Howe, whose popular U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) blog, SCOTUS Blog, is at (http://www.goldsteinhowe.com).

There are a variety of specialist legal sites, including Doug Isenberg's Internet and patent technology law site, GigaLaw.com, at http://www.gigalaw.com/. Nolo Press of Berkeley, California, offers a variety of resources for do-it-yourself lawyers at http://www.nolo.com/.

Other popular court news Web sites include (http://www.thesmokinggun.com) and (http://www.crimelibrary.com), both of which are owned by the CourtTV.com television network.

Many U.S. courts also cite decisions, court news, summaries of recent opinions and docket information.

To get familiar with what various federal courts have online, go to (http://www.uscourts.gov).

But while many law professors said the Internet is a great learning and research tool, some hold more traditional views when it comes to using it as a forum during an ongoing trial.

"Many documents are available online through the courts, but there involves a process in getting them," said William Weston, who is an associate dean and professor of Concord Law School, the nation's first all-online law school where students can earn a law degree wholly via the Internet.

In fact, to most people unfamiliar with legalese, reading documents online is like reading Greek.

In the Jackson case, however, the Web site is specifically designed to be user-friendly and even provides frequently asked questions about the case -- a step considered troublesome by some legal experts.

Weston said he was concerned that people may be compelled to download the documents, editorialize and then spread them further around the Web.

"When you throw details out on the Internet, it diminishes the dignity of the court. It now puts the case in the court of public opinion," said Weston.

Reuters/VNU

December 27, 2003 at 02:10 AM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

December 26, 2003

Japan 3: Technology as it should be

Two simple examples of technology personalisation:

1) ABM Machine: they are silent until you walk up to it, and it immediately greets you and turns on the screen. One bank I saw even has an "avtar' image of a woman greeting you.

2) Ambulance: the usual siren, but at a junction, a voice asking "please stand back and allow us to pass". This is the ultimate in politeness!

December 26, 2003 at 08:57 PM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

The Scobleizer Versus Cerberus the Hound of Hades

The Scobleizer Versus Cerberus the Hound of Hades

By Edward Cone

The most powerful piece of software inside Microsoft may be the $40 application from a tiny vendor called Userland that Robert Scoble uses to write his weblog.
Scoble, part of the Windows marketing team, publishes his personal observations at the Scobleizer Weblog . His daily ramblings, unedited by corporate brass or media handlers, give the world a window into Microsoft, building buzz for its products such as Office 2003 and creating a human face for a company that needs all the humanizing it can get.

"I've gotten email from people telling me they have changed their attitude about Microsoft because of my blog," says Scoble. "It helps me share the company's beliefs." It also helps Microsoft hear what the market is saying, both good and bad. "I link to everyone who hates Microsoft, and I send the negative stuff to the executives," he says.

The blog, which Scoble established before hiring on with Microsoft, comes off like a conversation with a smart friend. He links to other bloggers, makes recommendations about Windows-related products, talks about his own upcoming demo of the next version of Windows, known as Longhorn, and mentions the need to balance his personal and professional lives. Almost anything is fair game. "That is the first Apple marketing in a long time that makes me want to buy an Apple product," he wrote recently about an ad for the iPod music player.

Employee weblogs at Microsoft have the backing of no less than chief executive Steve Ballmer, along with Scoble's boss, senior vice-president Eric Rudder. Yet Scoble is still looking over his shoulder. "It feels like some people are sort of tolerating it," he says. Even now he is supposed to check in with media relations before doing interviews with the press, for example, even though he's already posting his unfiltered thoughts on the Web.

"It's a huge route-around," says Scoble of his site. People used to get information either from company press announcements, or from reporters who managed to get past Microsoft's public relations firm, Waggener Edstrom, which guards Redmond like the hellhound Cerberus at the gates of Hades. Now one person can accomplish things no marketing department ever could.

Still, most companies are reluctant to turn employees into embedded reporters.

Blogging is making an impact in other disciplines. In politics, Howard Dean is generating buzz and bucks via his "Blog for America" site. Journalism is being transformed by amateur writers, like the man calling himself Salam Pax who wrote from Baghdad during the war, and by pros like Dan Gillmor, who blogs and writes conventional pieces for the San Jose Mercury-News. The New York Times is considering featuring weblogs on its site. But business blogging lags behind.

There are some barriers to adoption. Using weblogs means trusting your employees to speak honestly and openly. It means conversing with customers, not just marketing to them. It means even more flattening of your organization.

For public companies, there are concerns about the unauthorized disclosure of financial information. For any company, there is concern about leakage of trade secrets and petty office politics. "The lawyers are scared that I might say something that gets Microsoft screwed," says Scoble. But these concerns can be contained. "There are certainly unwritten or understood rules," says Scoble. "If I post the [prerelease] build of Longhorn, I'd get fired."

Some companies get around the scary stuff by using weblogs behind the corporate firewall. Google this summer purchased weblog software maker Pyra Labs; now, Google employees scattered across the country use blogs to exchange notes and create a shared record of their thoughts – something email can't do.

Jeff Jarvis, president of the Advance.net online unit of Advance Publications, is going farther. His sites use blogs to develop new products, such as reporting outlets for local high school sports, or entertainment news, or weather conditions at the Jersey Shore. "It's a way of unleashing the creativity of your people," says Jarvis, who writes a personal weblog of his own

During the August blackout, weblogs sprang up at Advance to share information within the company — and with the public. Now Advance uses weblog software from Movable Type as its primary backup system for publishing during emergencies.

Can managers stop worrying and learn to love the blog? As the payoff becomes apparent, more companies will open up. When one doesn't, its customers are going to want to know what the company is hiding.

Says Scoble of corporate blogging, "I think it's unstoppable."

EDWARD CONE IS A SENIOR WRITER WITH BASELINE. YOU CAN READ HIS WEB LOG AT EDCONE.COM.

December 26, 2003 at 10:24 AM in Blogging & feeds, Corporate Blogging | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

The internet in a cup

Economist.com

Coffee fuelled the information exchanges of the 17th and 18th centuries

WHERE do you go when you want to know the latest business news, follow commodity prices, keep up with political gossip, find out what others think of a new book, or stay abreast of the latest scientific and technological developments? Today, the answer is obvious: you log on to the internet. Three centuries ago, the answer was just as easy: you went to a coffee-house. There, for the price of a cup of coffee, you could read the latest pamphlets, catch up on news and gossip, attend scientific lectures, strike business deals, or chat with like-minded people about literature or politics.

The internet in a cup
Dec 18th 2003

The coffee-houses that sprang up across Europe, starting around 1650, functioned as information exchanges for writers, politicians, businessmen and scientists. Like today's websites, weblogs and discussion boards, coffee-houses were lively and often unreliable sources of information that typically specialised in a particular topic or political viewpoint. They were outlets for a stream of newsletters, pamphlets, advertising free-sheets and broadsides. Depending on the interests of their customers, some coffee-houses displayed commodity prices, share prices and shipping lists, whereas others provided foreign newsletters filled with coffee-house gossip from abroad.

Rumours, news and gossip were also carried between coffee-houses by their patrons, and sometimes runners would flit from one coffee-house to another within a particular city to report major events such as the outbreak of a war or the death of a head of state. Coffee-houses were centres of scientific education, literary and philosophical speculation, commercial innovation and, sometimes, political fermentation. Collectively, Europe's interconnected web of coffee-houses formed the internet of the Enlightenment era.

The great soberer
Coffee, the drink that fuelled this network, originated in the highlands of Ethiopia, where its beans were originally chewed rather than infused for their invigorating effects. It spread into the Islamic world during the 15th century, where it was embraced as an alternative to alcohol, which was forbidden (officially, at least) to Muslims. Coffee came to be regarded as the very antithesis of alcoholic drinks, sobering rather than intoxicating, stimulating mental activity and heightening perception rather than dulling the senses.

This reputation accompanied coffee as it spread into western Europe during the 17th century, at first as a medicine, and then as a social drink in the Arab tradition. An anonymous poem published in London in 1674 denounced wine as the “sweet Poison of the Treacherous Grape” that drowns “our Reason and our Souls”. Beer was condemned as “Foggy Ale” that “besieg'd our Brains”. Coffee, however, was heralded as

...that Grave and Wholesome Liquor,
that heals the Stomach, makes the Genius quicker,
Relieves the Memory, revives the Sad,
and cheers the Spirits, without making Mad.

The contrast between coffee and alcoholic drinks was reflected in the decor of the coffee-houses that began to appear in European cities, London in particular. They were adorned with bookshelves, mirrors, gilt-framed pictures and good furniture, in contrast to the rowdiness, gloom and squalor of taverns. According to custom, social differences were left at the coffee-house door, the practice of drinking healths was banned, and anyone who started a quarrel had to atone for it by buying an order of coffee for all present. In short, coffee-houses were calm, sober and well-ordered establishments that promoted polite conversation and discussion.

With a new rationalism abroad in the spheres of both philosophy and commerce, coffee was the ideal drink. Its popularity owed much to the growing middle class of information workers—clerks, merchants and businessmen—who did mental work in offices rather than performing physical labour in the open, and found that coffee sharpened their mental faculties. Such men were not rich enough to entertain lavishly at home, but could afford to spend a few pence a day on coffee. Coffee-houses provided a forum for education, debate and self-improvement. They were nicknamed “penny universities” in a contemporary English verse which observed: “So great a Universitie, I think there ne'er was any; In which you may a Scholar be, for spending of a Penny.”

As with modern websites, the coffee-houses you went to depended on your interests, for each coffee-house attracted a particular clientele, usually by virtue of its location. Though coffee-houses were also popular in Paris, Venice and Amsterdam, this characteristic was particularly notable in London, where 82 coffee-houses had been set up by 1663, and more than 500 by 1700. Coffee-houses around the Royal Exchange were frequented by businessmen; those around St James's and Westminster by politicians; those near St Paul's Cathedral by clergymen and theologians. Indeed, so closely were some coffee-houses associated with particular topics that the Tatler, a London newspaper founded in 1709, used the names of coffee-houses as subject headings for its articles. Its first issue declared:

All accounts of Gallantry, Pleasure, and Entertainment shall be under the Article of White's Chocolate-house; Poetry, under that of Will's Coffee-house; Learning, under...Grecian; Foreign and Domestick News, you will have from St James's Coffee-house.

Richard Steele, the Tatler's editor, gave its postal address as the Grecian coffee-house, which he used as his office. In the days before street numbering or regular postal services, it became a common practice to use a coffee-house as a mailing address. Regulars could pop in once or twice a day, hear the latest news, and check to see if any post awaited them. That said, most people frequented several coffee-houses, the choice of which reflected their range of interests. A merchant, for example, would generally oscillate between a financial coffee-house and one specialising in Baltic, West Indian or East Indian shipping. The wide-ranging interests of Robert Hooke, a scientist and polymath, were reflected in his visits to around 60 coffee-houses during the 1670s.

As the Tatler's categorisation suggests, the coffee-house most closely associated with science was the Grecian, the preferred coffee-house of the members of the Royal Society, Britain's pioneering scientific institution. On one occasion a group of scientists including Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley dissected a dolphin on the premises. Scientific lectures and experiments also took place in coffee-houses, such as the Marine, near St Paul's, which were frequented by sailors and navigators. Seamen and merchants realised that science could contribute to improvements in navigation, and hence to commercial success, whereas the scientists were keen to show the practical value of their work. It was in coffee-houses that commerce and new technology first became intertwined.

The more literary-minded, meanwhile, congregated at Will's coffee-house in Covent Garden, where for three decades the poet John Dryden and his circle reviewed and discussed the latest poems and plays. Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary on December 3rd 1663 that he had looked in at Will's and seen Dryden and “all the wits of the town” engaged in “very witty and pleasant discourse”. After Dryden's death many of the literatured shifted to Button's, which was frequented by Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, among others. Pope's poem “The Rape of the Lock” was based on coffee-house gossip, and discussions in coffee-houses inspired a new, more colloquial and less ponderous prose style, conversational in tone and clearly visible in the journalism of the day.

Other coffee-houses were hotbeds of financial innovation and experimentation, producing new business models in the form of innumerable novel variations on insurance, lottery or joint-stock schemes. The best-known example was the coffee-house opened in the late 1680s by Edward Lloyd. It became a meeting-place for ships' captains, shipowners and merchants, who went to hear the latest maritime news and to attend auctions of ships and their cargoes. Lloyd began to collect and summarise this information, supplemented with reports from a network of foreign correspondents, in the form of a regular newsletter, at first handwritten and later printed and sent to subscribers. Lloyd's thus became the natural meeting place for shipowners and the underwriters who insured their ships. Some underwriters began to rent booths at Lloyd's, and in 1771 a group of 79 of them collectively established the Society of Lloyd's, better known as Lloyd's of London.

Similarly, two coffee-houses near London's Royal Exchange, Jonathan's and Garraway's, were frequented by stockbrokers and jobbers. Attempts to regulate the membership of Jonathan's, by charging an annual subscription and barring non-members, were successfully blocked by traders who opposed such exclusivity. So in 1773 a group of traders from Jonathan's broke away and decamped to a new building, the forerunner of the London Stock Exchange. Garraway's was a less reputable coffee-house, home to auctions of all kinds and much dodgy dealing, particularly during the South Sea Bubble of 1719-21. It was said of Garraway's that no other establishment “fostered so great a quantity of dishonoured paper”.

Far more controversial than the coffee-houses' functions as centres of scientific, literary and business exchange, however, was their potential as centres of political dissent. Coffee's reputation as a seditious beverage goes back at least as far as 1511, the date of the first known attempt to ban the consumption of coffee, in Mecca. Thereafter, many attempts were made to prohibit coffee and coffee-houses in the Muslim world. Some claimed it was intoxicating and therefore subject to the same religious prohibition as alcohol. Others claimed it was harmful to the health. But the real problem was the coffee-houses' alarming potential for facilitating political discussion and activity.

This was the objection raised in a proclamation by Charles II of England in 1675. Coffee-houses, it declared, had produced

very evil and dangerous effects...for that in such Houses...divers False, Malitious and Scandalous Reports are devised and spread abroad, to the Defamation of His Majestie's Government, and to the Disturbance of the Peace and Quiet of the Realm.

The result was a public outcry, for coffee-houses had become central to commercial and political life. When it became clear that the proclamation would be widely ignored and the government's authority thus undermined, a further proclamation was issued, announcing that coffee-sellers would be allowed to stay in business for six months if they paid £500 and agreed to swear an oath of allegiance. But the fee and time limit were soon dropped in favour of vague demands that coffee-houses should refuse entry to spies and mischief-makers.

Dark rumours of plots and counter-plots swirled in London's coffee-houses, but they were also centres of informed political debate. Swift remarked that he was “not yet convinced that any Access to men in Power gives a man more Truth or Light than the Politicks of a Coffee House.” Miles's coffee-house was the meeting-place of a discussion group, founded in 1659 and known as the Amateur Parliament. Pepys observed that its debates were “the most ingeniose, and smart, that I ever heard, or expect to heare, and bandied with great eagernesse; the arguments in the Parliament howse were but flatte to it.” After debates, he noted, the group would hold a vote using a “wooden oracle”, or ballot-box—a novelty at the time.

Sweet smell of sedition
The contrast with France was striking. One French visitor to London, the Abbé Prévost, declared that coffee-houses, “where you have the right to read all the papers for and against the government”, were the “seats of English liberty”. Coffee-houses were popular in Paris, where 380 had been established by 1720. As in London, they were associated with particular topics or lines of business. But with strict curbs on press freedom and a bureaucratic system of state censorship, France had far fewer sources of news than did England, Holland or Germany. This led to the emergence of handwritten newsletters of Paris gossip, transcribed by dozens of copyists and sent by post to subscribers in Paris and beyond. The lack of a free press also meant that poems and songs passed around on scraps of paper, along with coffee-house gossip, were important sources of news for many Parisians.

Little wonder then that coffee-houses, like other public places in Paris, were stuffed with government spies. Anyone who spoke out against the state risked being hauled off to the Bastille, whose archives contain reports of hundreds of coffee-house conversations, noted down by informers. “At the Café de Foy someone said that the king had taken a mistress, that she was named Gontaut, and that she was a beautiful woman, the niece of the Duc de Noailles,” runs one report from the 1720s. Another, from 1749, reads, “Jean-Louis Le Clerc made the following remarks in the Café de Procope: that there never has been a worse king; that the court and the ministers make the king do shameful things, which utterly disgust his people.”

Despite their reputation as breeding-grounds for discontent, coffee-houses seem to have been tolerated by the French government as a means of keeping track of public opinion. Yet it was at the Café de Foy, eyed by police spies while standing on a table brandishing two pistols, that Camille Desmoulins roused his countrymen with his historic appeal—“Aux armes, citoyens!”—on July 12th 1789. The Bastille fell two days later, and the French revolution had begun. Jules Michelet, a French historian, subsequently noted that those “who assembled day after day in the Café de Procope saw, with penetrating glance, in the depths of their black drink, the illumination of the year of the revolution.”

Can the coffee-houses' modern equivalent, the internet, claim to have had such an impact? Perhaps not. But the parallels are certainly striking. Originally the province of scientists, the internet has since grown to become a nexus of commercial, journalistic and political interchange.

In discussion groups and chatrooms, gossip passes freely—a little too freely, think some regulators and governments, which have tried and generally failed to rein them in. Snippets of political news are rounded up and analysed in weblogs, those modern equivalents of pamphlets and broadsides. Obscure scientific and medical papers, once available only to specialists, are just clicks away; many scientists explain their work, both to their colleagues and to the public at large, on web pages. Countless new companies and business models have emerged, not many of them successful, though one or two have become household names. Online exchanges and auction houses, from eBay to industry-specific marketplaces, match buyers and sellers of components, commodities and household bric-à-brac.

Coffee, meet WiFi
The kinship between coffee-houses and the internet has recently been underlined by the establishment of wireless “hotspots” which provide internet access, using a technology called WiFi, in modern-day coffee-shops. T-Mobile, a wireless network operator, has installed hotspots in thousands of Starbucks coffee-shops across America and Europe. Coffee-shop WiFi is particularly popular in Seattle—home to both Starbucks and such leading internet firms as Amazon and Microsoft.

Such hotspots allow laptop-toting customers to check their e-mail and read the news as they sip their lattes. But history provides a cautionary tale for those hotspot operators that charge for access. Coffee-houses used to charge for coffee, but gave away access to reading materials. Many coffee-shops are now following the same model, which could undermine the prospects for fee-based hotspots. Information, both in the 17th century and today, wants to be free—and coffee-drinking customers, it seems, expect it to be.


Copyright © 2003 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

December 26, 2003 at 09:48 AM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Broadband so near yet so far

BBC NEWS | Technology | Broadband so near yet so far

I feel this guys pain ... "always on" high speed internet, isn't an automatic utility by any stretch. I believe satellite might be the only way to go in the future.

Neil Croft campaigned to get his local village telephone exchange upgraded for ADSL broadband. But when the village was hooked up, Mr Croft found he lived too far away to actually get it himself.

I am a senior consultant for one of the UK's leading technology service companies, managing projects around the country, so the ability to be able to work from home would be an enormous boost to my productivity.

I am also a serious geek with five computers of my own at home plus my wife's laptop.
All these machines access the internet. My wife works with adults with learning disabilities and does a lot of work creating PowerPoint presentations for educational and communication purposes.

She is always looking for clipart and animations which are rarely small files.

Whilst where we live is not that remote - we can see the M18 from our bedroom window - we like to shop online to save driving the car.

As well as a fast connection, I really want the "always on" element of ADSL (Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line) broadband.

Kick in the guts

When BT announced their ADSL exchange registration scheme in our area, we were very excited.

I immediately registered broadband4maltby.co.uk (now defunct), and together with two other locals, we started our campaign to get enough people interested to get the exchange upgraded.

We posted leaflets through letterboxes, asked shops to put posters in their windows, put posters on lampposts, and we had a service provider pay to put leaflets in the local free press.

After some badgering, a Precision Test Officer was eventually sent out to check the line, which was worse than the line records indicated

I badgered the local press to print articles, but most of those attempts were unsuccessful.
I also lobbied the local and parish councils and local MPs.

Our campaign started around June 2002 and we got the exchange upgraded on 21 May 2003. We were over the moon.

But when I placed my order, it was rejected.

I complained to a publicity contact I had at BT Wholesale who passed me on to an incredibly helpful lady at broadband deployment.

The line checker told me I lived too far away from the telephone exchange, so I could not get the service I campaigned for.

I contacted a friend at BT who I knew, and he confirmed that my line records said I was too far away.

I felt like I had been kicked in the guts.

After some badgering, a Precision Test Officer was eventually sent out to check the line, which was worse than the line records indicated.

Extension hope

As one of the houses behind mine could get ADSL, I waited until he had ordered it and I had seen it working.

Then I ordered a new telephone line to be installed in my other neighbour's garden shed fed from the pole which was nearer the exchange.

I installed an extension down the length of my garden to the shed and put a new socket in my house.
So sure was I that I would get ADSL this route, I even purchased a router for £150 to connect my network at home.

Imagine my dismay when not only did this new line fail the line test, but the reason was the because the exchange-side wire pair took a different route to my enabled neighbour.

There were no spares in the short route and BT were not prepared to swap my pair with a shorter pair.

BT has announced a couple of trials this month, some long-reach equipment in Milton Keynes and some wireless trials at four locations around the UK.

If these are successful, cost-effective and widely deployed quickly, then I think it is a start at trying to find alternative means of getting broadband to people in my situation.

But by 2005, a 512kbps connection will seem incredibly slow compared to much of the world.

BT do not appear - publicly at least - to have much of a strategy for increasing the available bandwidth to anyone other than those living next to the exchange car park.

ADSL is already "old" technology, and BT or whoever really need to be looking to replace the local loop with something a bit more 21st century.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/3334033.stm

Published: 2003/12/25 04:31:50 GMT

© BBC MMIII

December 26, 2003 at 09:21 AM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Microsoft aims to make spammers pay

BBC NEWS | Technology | Microsoft aims to make spammers pay

A unique approach to fight spam.

The basic idea is to make a sender to pay for e-mail, but the payment is not made in the currency of money, but in the memory and the computer power required to work out cryptographic puzzles.

Microsoft aims to make spammers pay
By Jo Twist
BBC News Online technology reporter

Despite efforts to stem the billions of spam e-mails flooding inboxes, unwanted messages are still turning e-mail into a quagmire of misery.

Spammers send out tens of millions of e-mails to unsuspecting computer users every day, employing a myriad of methods to ensure their pills, loans and "requests for our lord" pleas fox e-mail filters. Some are even turning to prose and poetry to fool the technological safeguards people put in place.

But a group of researchers at Microsoft think they may have come up with a solution that could, at least, slow down and deter the spammers. The development has been called the Penny Black project, because it works on the idea that revolutionised the British postage system in the 1830s - that senders of mail should have to pay for it, not whoever is on the receiving end.

Stamp of approval

"The basic idea is that we are trying to shift the equation to make it possible and necessary for a sender to 'pay' for e-mail," explained Ted Wobber of the Microsoft Research group (MSR).

The payment is not made in the currency of money, but in the memory and the computer power required to work out cryptographic puzzles. "For any piece of e-mail I send, it will take a small amount computing power of about 10 to 20 seconds."

For this scheme to work, it would want to be something all mail agents would want to do

Ted Wobber, MSR
"If I don't know you, I have to prove to you that I have spent a little bit of time in resources to send you that e-mail.
"When you see that proof, you treat that message with more priority."

Once senders have proved they have solved the required "puzzle", they can be added to a "safe list" of senders. It means the spammer's machine is slowed down, but legitimate e-mailers do not notice any delays.

Mr Wobber and his group calculated that if there are 80,000 seconds in a day, a computational "price" of a 10-second levy would mean spammers would only be able to send about 8,000 messages a day, at most.

"Spammers are sending tens of millions of e-mails, so if they had to do that with all the messages, they would have to invest heavily in machines." As a result of this extra investment, spamming would become less profitable because costs would skyrocket in order to send as many e-mails.

All this clever puzzle-solving is done without the recipient of the e-mail being affected.

Bogging them down

The idea was originally formulated to use CPU memory cycles by team member Cynthia Dwork in 1992. But they soon realised it was better to use memory latency - the time it takes for the computer's processor to get information from its memory chip - than CPU power.

That way, it does not matter how old or new a computer is because the system does not rely on processor chip speeds, which can improve at rapid rates.
A cryptographic puzzle that is simple enough not to bog down the processor too much, but that requires information to be accessed from memory, levels the difference between older and newer computers.

It all sounds like a good idea, said Paul Wood, chief analyst at e-mail security firm MessageLabs. "One of the fundamental problems with spam is that it costs nothing to send, but has associated costs for the recipient which include loss of bandwidth, problems with usage, and lost productivity," he said.

"Microsoft's idea is to shift this cost burden from the recipient to the sender, which in itself seems like a reasonable sentiment." But, he said, for such a scheme to be all-encompassing, there would have to be some provision for open standards, so that it is not proprietary to Microsoft.

Work for all

MSR is in talks with various people to put the system into a useful anti-spam product. It could easily be built into e-mail software like Outlook, e-mail servers or web browsers, said Mr Wobber.

"For this scheme to work, it would want to be something all mail agents would want to do," explained Mr Wobber.

And because it is the receiver who sets the puzzle requirement, spammers will not have any advantage by using non-Microsoft products. It is certainly not going to stop all spam for good, admitted Mr Wobber.

"I don't think any one spam scheme is a panacea, we have to use a wide variety of schemes to be successful in stopping spam." "Spam is probably going to get worse before it gets better, and I really hope it does not get to a point that it deters people using e-mail."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/3324883.stm

Published: 2003/12/26 03:29:14 GMT

© BBC MMIII

December 26, 2003 at 09:17 AM in Microsoft, Spam, email | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Web Services - Blueprint

Report from InfoWorld explains the strategy to implement WebServices using examples from General Motors, and reports from Forrester Research. While 71% of companies intend to implement WebServices, the implication is that many are not doing it right.

The concept is to build from the outside in, which tends to be the opposite of how things get done. WebServices are a direct result of internet and internet technolgies.

This quote from the report capures the essence of the strategy required:

The hard part is envisioning
how a given organization’s everexpanding
set of Web services will work
together in an SOA and devising enterprisewide
guidelines for writing the
WSDL interfaces that describe what
each Web service does. An SOA
requires an enterprise to re-examine its
business processes and to devise a strategy
for expressing them in software.

“You need to think about what you
want to make available and start there,”
says Ted Schadler, director of research
at Forrester. “The way that I hear that
expressed from people who have
already done it is, ‘Start with a schema.
Start from the outside in. Start with a
definition of the service.’ ”

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December 26, 2003 at 05:27 AM in Financial Services, Internet evolution, Web/Tech | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

ABC News Online Service Turns to Profit

Yahoo! News - ABC News Online Service Turns to Profit

By Peter Henderson
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Television network ABC's online news division has turned to profit fueled by high-speed Internet subscriptions and advertising, and the news division is moving into cell phone and other new distribution forms, executives said on Thursday.

ABCNews.com struck its first annual profit for the fiscal year ended in September, and began its fourth profitable quarter in October, division chief Bernard Gershon said in an interview with Reuters.

ABC, owned by Walt Disney Co., offers 24-hour news feeds on high-speed Internet subscription services that reach a few million customers, generally as part of bundles of Internet channels from companies like RealNetworks Inc. and high-speed DSL Internet providers.

It also has begun working with a provider of video streams to wireless phones.

"We need to be there for our audience any time, any place, in any way they want to reach us," said ABC News President David Westin, who saw news feeds by wireless e-mail, Internet, cell phones and more.

"There will be very many outlets and there will be relatively modest audiences for any outlet at any time," but collectively ABC would reach a huge number of viewers, he said,

ABC also aims to build a 24-hour news network for digital broadcast television, in cooperation with its affiliates, that would combine local, national and international news and Westin said he hoped to move forward fairly promptly.

ABCNews.com did not give absolute figures for revenue or profit but said revenue growth had averaged about 15 percent to 20 percent annually since the division launched in 1997.

Revenue would grow fastest over the next couple of years in broadband -- or high speed -- subscriptions, followed by narrowband -- or low speed Internet -- advertising, broadband advertising and then wireless revenue, and for the year begun in October it expects an approximately equal split between advertising and subscriptions revenue, Gershon said.

December 26, 2003 at 04:33 AM in eCommerce | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

December 25, 2003

Don't lose sight of the potential value of IT

Microsoft Executive Circle

Every company is in the same trap today, with reduced budgets, yet a need to invest in technology to create value. This article talks of one way to fund technology is to drive out operational costs, through improved infrastructure.

Thinking Smart
Don't lose sight of the potential value of IT
By: Carol Hildebrand

With the intense focus on cost reduction that predominates today, it’s easy to lose sight of the potential value of IT.

The value quandary is hammered home in a survey of 200 global IT leaders, conducted by New York-based Deloitte & Touche and IDG Research Services Group, Framingham, Mass. A full 91% of the respondents say IT value is “critical” or “very important” to their company. But 88% say they’re hamstrung in their ability to create value by a number of factors. The first is money—60% say their budgets will be flat or decline this year. And nearly all (99%) say they’re forced to manage IT on a series of cost-driven metrics such as total cost of ownership (TCO).

“Most CIOs are caught in the ‘cost trap’ when it comes to creating IT value,” says Dean Nelson, national partner for Deloitte & Touche’s Integration, Development, and Infrastructure practice. “Most organizations view IT only in terms of how much they’re spending. But IT also needs to be judged on how business goals are attained.”

But reducing the total cost of technology ownership and adding value to the enterprise needn’t be mutually exclusive. We’ll highlight some examples that prove it can be done.

Have it both ways

Some enterprises are shaving their budgets by finding ways to make their technology setup run more efficiently. For example, Cigna Corp., the insurance giant based in Philadelphia, recently reaped both improved IT value and significant savings from an extensive server consolidation project.

According to Jeff O’Dell, Cigna’s vice president of Technical Planning and Architecture, the project works because the company tackled it in the context of a business problem— driving out operational costs—and chose tools that could do that, while adding value in the process.

O’Dell’s team sought ways to eliminate some of its servers. As in most enterprises, Thinking smart { AGILE e-business } Innovation is spreading throughout Cigna, says Ben Flock, vice president of Application Frameworks and Virtualization. 22 microsoft executive circle fall 2003 many of these computers were being used to run only one software application—leaving much of their power untapped. Each of these underutilized servers cost Cigna money in terms of floor space, maintenance, and so on.

Cigna determined it could get rid of those servers by using components of Microsoft’s Windows Server 2003 platform, such as the .NET Framework common language runtime environment, COM+ partitioning, and application pooling, to achieve “application virtualization.” With application virtualization, multiple applications run on a single server in order to more efficiently use each computer.

Cigna broke from its tradition of waiting to upgrade and jumped aboard the Windows Server 2003 Rapid Adoption Program, through which the company was able to obtain advance code. “Our normal course of action with upgrades is to wait for a product to be out a year,” O’Dell says. “But here we were ready within 60 days of the product’s launch, simply because the business case was so compelling that it warranted the risk.”

Ben Flock, Cigna’s vice president of Application Frameworks and Virtualization, estimates that the project could reduce server sprawl by 25%. He also lauds the other business benefits of implementing an integrated platform. Cigna can now get new applications and products to the business side of the house faster, letting the company respond quickly to changes, he says.

One recent application development took four months from start to finish. “In the past, it would have taken us almost a year to do something like this,” Flock says. “This innovation is spreading throughout the business, and the business side is ecstatic.”

Pulling value from upgrades

Upgrading software is most often viewed as an infrastructural necessity. But played right, software upgrades can move from the cost savings side of the ledger to the business value column.

Take the experience of Kentucky’s Office of Education Technology, in Frankfort, Ky., which is part of the Kentucky Department of Education and oversees the Kentucky Education Technology System (KETS). KETS is a result of a state reform act intended to provide equitable access to technology for all public school students and teachers.

According to Project Manager Chuck Austin, KETS comprises a sprawling infrastructure of more than 4,400 computer servers in 1,400 schools and 176 districts. The original idea was to distribute the computing model across the districts, but Austin grew increasingly frustrated by the difficulties involved in keeping such a far-flung network—managed locally by largely autonomous school districts—stable and secure.

“About three years ago, the wheels started to come off the train,” he says. “Maybe 90% of the districts lacked any kind of configuration management, patch management, or adequate security processes. We spent too much time firefighting. The teachers weren’t comfortable integrating technology into their curricula because they weren’t comfortable it would work reliably.”

KETS was due for a Windows upgrade, and Austin’s team seized the opportunity to reorganize the computer infrastructure. The Kentucky Department of Education is upgrading to Windows Server 2003 and simplifying management by centralizing all servers under a single Active Directory grouping with a subcategory for each of the state’s 176 school districts. (Active Directory, a feature of newer versions of Windows, allows enterprises to organize their networks into a single, centrally managed structure, and automates many network management tasks.)

Halfway through the migration, Austin already sees enormous progress. In districts with the new systems, downtime and helpdesk calls have plummeted.

Holistic helpers

Many enterprises miss a chance to improve IT value because of a piecemeal approach to infrastructural changes. Infrastructural improvements arise on a per-project basis, and thus are viewed from a pure cost standpoint. “Traditional financial analysis may not be helpful when doing the right thing long-term,” says Peter Sampson, vice president and general manager, Enterprise Server Market Development, Unisys Corp., Blue Bell, Pa. He suggests creating an infrastructure plan based on a holistic view of the organization. “Too many CIOs look at projects in isolation,” he says. “Organizations that have fully planned their infrastructure have an easier time implementing new technologies.”

Cigna and Kentucky’s Office of Education Technology demonstrate that this holistic approach can improve TCO while maximizing the value technology brings to the business.

December 25, 2003 at 11:46 PM in Financial Services, Microsoft, Web/Tech | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Embedded is top web word of the year

Yahoo! News - Web Site Picks Year's Most Deeply Embedded Word

By Ben Berkowitz
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A U.S. Web site specializing in language named what it called the top word, phrase and name of the year on Thursday, picking them all from the war in Iraq (news - web sites).

Embedded," as in the reporters assigned to accompany military units during the war, beat out "blog" and "SARS (news - web sites)" as the top word of 2003, Web site yourDictionary.com (http://www.yourdictionary.com) said.

"Embedded was the best word to distill the events of an extraordinary year into eight simple letters," Paul JJ Payack, president of YourDictionary.com, told Reuters.

Previous top words include 2000's "chad" (from the hanging squares of paper on Florida presidential ballots), 2001's "Ground Zero" (the site where the World Trade Center collapsed) and 2002's "misunderestimate" (a presidential slip of the tongue that became frequent comedy fodder).

"Shock-and-awe," the phrase the U.S. military used to describe the type of campaign it would wage in Iraq, topped other Iraq-related terms like "rush to war," "weapons of mass destruction" and "spider-hole" as the top phrase of 2003.

The name most on people's lips during the year was Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), the former Iraqi leader recently captured in a hole in the ground.

He beat out "Ahh-nold" (as in newly-elected California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (news - web sites)) and "W." (as in President Bush (news - web sites)).

The site's lists, created by taking nominations from users around the world and then having them judged by "professional wordsmiths," take some liberties with Bush.

One of 2003's leading words is "Bushisms," to describe the president's oft-satirized verbal style. The site published a list of the president's top-five mispronunciations, including "new-cue-ler" (for nuclear) and "Anzar" (for Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar).

As for 2004, Payack said there was already an early contender. "'Mad cow' was on the list a few years ago, because of what was happening in the U.K. 'Mad cow' could be big next year."

December 25, 2003 at 11:39 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Singapore's DBS Bank Warns of Fake Hong Kong Web Site

Yahoo! News - Singapore's DBS Bank Warns of Fake Hong Kong Web Site

Thu Dec 25, 1:20 AM ET

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong is trying to shut a Web site masquerading as an online banking service for Singapore's DBS Bank, the fourth bank to report a suspicious Web site in Hong Kong this month.

The sophisticated-looking site, at www.dbshk.net, sports the bank's name and logo and has spaces for users to input their account name and password.

DBS Bank (Hong Kong) Ltd. said it had no affiliation with the site, which was still accessible Thursday afternoon. It did not say if any customer had reported losses because of the site, which has an address similar to DBS's www.dbs.com.

"DBS Bank has reported the fraudulent Web site to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the police, who are working with relevant authorities to shut down the fraudulent Web site," it said in a statement issued late Wednesday.

The Monetary Authority, the local banking regulator, said in a separate statement the Web site was hosted overseas and it was liaising with the relevant authorities.

The Hong Kong arms of Bank of China, global banking giant HSBC Holdings Plc, and UK-based Schroders Plc reported suspicious Web sites earlier this month.

December 25, 2003 at 10:54 AM in Financial Services, Security | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Jackson Web Site Unites, Divides Legal Profession

Yahoo! News - Jackson Web Site Unites, Divides Legal Profession

Thu Dec 25, 7:47 AM ET

By Sue Zeidler
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California prosecutors took the unusual step of setting up a Web site on the Michael Jackson case to alleviate a media frenzy and, in doing so, triggered a debate on use of the Web within the legal community.

Some legal experts said that posting documents detailing the criminal charges against the 45-year-old entertainer was a breakthrough for public access. Others countered that it would undermine the spirit of the law and court proceedings, creating even more of a circus-like atmosphere.

Over the last five years, the Web has often been used to spin the views of one side or another in sensational civil cases, like the Microsoft class-action case.

But lawyers and law professors said it was rare for a governmental prosecuting attorney's office to set up a Web site devoted entirely to a particular criminal case.

Many said they expect it to become a trend, and, while a specialized Web site appears to be an anomaly in criminal cases, media-hounded prosecutors in other high-profile cases like the Kobe Bryant rape case and the upcoming Scott Peterson (news - web sites) murder trial have also put links on their Web sites to documents.

"The Web has been such a driver of information in civil cases, it has really changed defense tactics. The legal battles that now go on over the Web are not insubstantial," said Katrina Dewey, editor of the LA Daily Journal legal newspaper.

"And now, this (trend) just moved it into the criminal arena," she said, referring to the Jackson Web site set up by the Santa Barbara County District Attorney Tom Sneddon at (http://www.sbscpressinfo.org).

To be sure, loads of court case data has long been available on the Web and the legal profession has changed dramatically with the Web's emergence.

People can stay abreast of changes in the law or government agency regulations by using various Web services, like (http://www.watchthatpage.com) which collects data from sites a lawyer or anyone might have special interest in.

Lawyers, journalists and the general public can also get news fed to them with software that scans major legal Web sites and legal online newsletters or Web logs, or blogs, for short.

Law-related blogs -- known as "blawgs" -- have sprung up with the rise of the blogging self-publishing trend in general. Popular blawgs include an appellate court site at (http://www.appellateblog.blogspot.com).

Some law firms create blogs for the sole purpose of making data available to the general public, like the Washington, D.C. firm, Goldstein and Howe, whose popular U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) blog, SCOTUS Blog, is at (http://www.goldsteinhowe.com).

There are a variety of specialist legal sites, including Doug Isenberg's Internet and patent technology law site, GigaLaw.com, at http://www.gigalaw.com/. Nolo Press of Berkeley, California, offers a variety of resources for do-it-yourself lawyers at http://www.nolo.com/.

Other popular court news Web sites include (http://www.thesmokinggun.com) and (http://www.crimelibrary.com), both of which are owned by the CourtTV.com television network.

Many U.S. courts also cite decisions, court news, summaries of recent opinions and docket information.

To get familiar with what various federal courts have online, go to (http://www.uscourts.gov).

But while many law professors said the Internet is a great learning and research tool, some hold more traditional views when it comes to using it as a forum during an ongoing trial.

"Many documents are available online through the courts, but there involves a process in getting them," said William Weston, who is an associate dean and professor of Concord Law School, the nation's first all-online law school where students can earn a law degree wholly via the Internet.

In fact, to most people unfamiliar with legalese, reading documents online is like reading Greek.

In the Jackson case, however, the Web site is specifically designed to be user-friendly and even provides frequently asked questions about the case -- a step considered troublesome by some legal experts.

Weston said he was concerned that people may be compelled to download the documents, editorialize and then spread them further around the Web.

"When you throw details out on the Internet, it diminishes the dignity of the court. It now puts the case in the court of public opinion," said Weston.

Reuters/VNU

December 25, 2003 at 10:51 AM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Competition on phones

i-mode is no longer pervasive here. Competition I have seen, is FOMA (owned by do0-co-mo, as is i-mode), au, Vodaphone. Vodaphone is an interesting entry and they are now officially world-wide given their European roots.

December 25, 2003 at 10:46 AM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Japan 2 - technology friendly but not geeks

Japanese are fascinated by technology, but they are not geeks I've decided. Geekdom is reserved for North Americans, where we get too caught up in the technology, versus using it as a tool.

The current i-mode/ FOMA/ au phones all use pictures, but much differently than I have seen before. You can attach pictures to peoples phone number or email address for example, so when they call, the small window on the outside of the phone displays the persons face. A very simple idea, yet very revealing in how they see technology here.

December 25, 2003 at 10:42 AM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Early Word on Amazon "Stores"

E-Commerce Report: Early Word on Amazon ˜Stores"

S in other recent holiday seasons, Amazon.com Inc. this year has successfully peddled the staples - books, music and videos - of online gift shoppers. But how about those alligator tenderloins, Callaway drivers and Mikimoto pearls? Amazon.com is wrapping up its first holiday season in which it has featured such goods and others in distinct "stores," or categories. Since September it has opened four stores: gourmet food, sporting goods, jewelry and watches, and (just last week) health and personal care. Retailers who are participating in the new stores and analysts who have watched them closely said Amazon.com's sales in those categories had shown promise.

"We're hearing that sales are good, not great," said Carrie A. Johnson, an analyst with Forrester Research, a technology consulting firm. "But they're good enough, and that's the key for retailers who've spent a lot of time integrating with Amazon."

Amazon.com's new stores collect items from other merchants, occasionally alongside goods already sold by Amazon. For instance, the jewelry-and-watches store features items from Mondera, Fortunoff and Ross-Simons, with pearl necklaces and other goods stocked and sold by Amazon.com.

When customers make purchases on Amazon.com from another merchant, Amazon.com sends the order to the merchant, which then ships the items. In exchange for offering their goods to Amazon.com's shoppers - more than 15 million visitors a week during the holiday season, according to Media Metrix - merchants typically pay Amazon.com a commission of 7 percent to 15 percent on each sale, according to Forrester. If an item fails to satisfy a customer, it is the responsibility of the merchant that shipped the product to receive the customer service call.

Amazon.com's senior vice president for worldwide retail, Diego Piacentini, would not disclose sales goals for the new stores. But the merchants that have joined Amazon.com have high hopes, if not for sales directly from the partnership, then for increased awareness and acceptance of their goods among mainstream shoppers. The gourmet food category may stand to benefit most from Amazon.com's participation.

"Beyond the big names like Harry & David or Omaha Steaks, this category is incredibly fragmented by small mom-and-pop businesses," Ms. Johnson of Forrester said. "Now the small players have the opportunity to reach many more customers online, and customers can find all of them in one place."

Todd Simon, the senior vice president of Omaha Steaks, agreed. "If you want to buy boar filet, or a tomato sauce that's only available in the Northeast, suddenly, you have access to a variety of small companies that are well known in a region, but who have no way to get a deal with Kroger or Wal-Mart," he said. "This actually disintermediates, to use a word you haven't heard in a while."

Mr. Simon said Omaha Steaks had been "pleased so far" with its Amazon.com deal. "It hasn't become one of our top two or three relationships, but over time, it could," he said.

Internet sales at Omaha Steaks now represent more than 20 percent of overall sales, Mr. Simon said. "And because our online business seems to be heavily skewed toward gift giving," he said, "we're seeing a higher percentage of online sales come now."

Amazon.com should amplify that trend, Mr. Simon said, because of its emerging role as a one-stop holiday shopping destination similar to portals like Yahoo, AOL and MSN, but with a retail pedigree.

For other retail executives who have joined Amazon.com's new stores, the site's popularity as a gift-shopping destination brings both benefits and drawbacks. "There are gift buyers there, but there aren't a lot of golf club buyers there," said Mark Marney, chief executive of TheGolfWarehouse.com, an online retailer based in Wichita, Kan., that is expecting its full-year sales to total $45 million this year, up 40 percent from last year. The company joined Amazon's sporting goods store when it opened in September.

"Our first impression of Amazon was almost exactly how it turned out: we'd sell some apparel, shoes, balls, gifts, but very few clubs," Mr. Marney said.

He said the average Amazon.com order his company receives is about $50, compared with $150 on TheGolfWarehouse.com. "It's incremental business for us. It's not the end all, be all," he said, "but we're still quite happy to be tapping into that gift buyer, who may not have come to us before."

Mr. Marney said refining the Web site might help Amazon.com sell some merchandise. For instance, he said, shoppers on TheGolfWarehouse.com can select up to four club characteristics from pull-down menus, and then be shown a limited array of suitable clubs. On Amazon.com, a shopper can only select two attributes, leaving the customer to wade through a greater selection of irrelevant products, Mr. Marney said. "It's rather primitive right now," he said.

Even if the experience is not ideal for merchants and customers, Amazon.com's entry into these new categories is well timed, said Ms. Johnson of Forrester.

"For instance, we'd predicted jewelry would be big this year for two reasons - more women buying online, and people becoming more comfortable buying higher-end items," she said. "It's the perfect time to do it."

According to the Internet traffic measurement firm Comscore Networks, jewelry and food are among the fastest-growing items selling on the Internet this year. Through the end of November, online sales of jewelry and watches have reached $800 million - a 38 percent increase over last year. Food-and-beverage sales have reached $430 million, an 82 percent improvement from 2002. Sporting goods sales have grown 7 percent, to $990 million.

Ms. Johnson said she had heard reports of technical glitches from executives doing business with Amazon.com. And others said last week that the jewelry category in particular had hit technical snags.

Mr. Piacentini, of Amazon.com, responded: "This is a very complex job. Are there glitches sometimes? We wouldn't be working so hard if there were no glitches. At any given time on our site, zero-point-something percent of our product images have some problems - maybe they don't load the first time. But that's of several million images."

The jewelry store "is one month old," he added. "I'd invite everybody to look at the results one year from now."

As for the sales of alligator meat and Mikimoto pearls, Mr. Piacentini could not provide specifics on sales. But he said the sales and customer satisfaction levels on the site in general were "going very well."

"For the new stores," he said, "rather than focusing on outputs, like sales, we're much more focused on the inputs - things like helping sellers work on things that matter to the customers."

Shmuel Gniwisch, the chief executive of the online jewelry retailer Ice.com, said he had been selling through Amazon.com's apparel store - which also features some jewelry - and would probably join the site's jewelry section early next year. Mr. Gniwisch said he was not threatened by Amazon.com's own jewelry-selling efforts.

"With Amazon in this, people will feel that online is the place to buy jewelry," Mr. Gniwisch said. "And people won't stick to one retailer. They'll look around. And we feel we do this better than anybody else."

Others are similarly sanguine, including Fred Mouawad, president of Mondera, a jeweler in New York that has online and traditional stores. "Whether or not Mondera would have joined forces," Mr. Mouawad said, "Amazon would still have been in the game. The worst-case scenario is that one day we no longer sell on Amazon. But as long as we do, we have a good distribution partner."

December 25, 2003 at 10:38 AM in eCommerce | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Fast Internet Lines Jump 18 Percent in First Half '03

Yahoo! News - Fast Internet Lines Jump 18 Percent in First Half '03

Mon Dec 22, 3:43 PM ETAdd Technology - Reuters Internet Report to My Yahoo!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of high-speed lines connecting U.S. businesses and homes to the Internet jumped 18 percent to 23.5 million lines during the first half of 2003, according to statistics released on Monday.

High-speed Internet service via cable showed a 20 percent jump, narrowly outpacing the 19 percent growth in digital subscriber lines (DSL) offered by traditional telephone lines, according to the Federal Communications Commission (news - web sites).

There were 13.7 million lines served by cable versus 7.7 million DSL lines. The cable and telephone industries have been fiercely competing to offer consumers bundles of services, slashing prices to lure new customers.

All but 3 million of the lines serve residents and small businesses and a solid majority, 16.3 million lines, were receiving service at speeds exceeding 200 kilobits per second in each direction.

Overall growth for high-speed Internet lines for the 12 months ended June 30, 2003, was 45 percent.

December 25, 2003 at 02:44 AM in Internet evolution | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

December 24, 2003

Japan 1

No amount of internet gets you a cup of tea in the morning. So I picked up a coffee instead, by pointing. Its very sobering when communication is so difficult.

Main thing that struck me so far, is the heat ... there must be a 25 degree differential between here and Toronto!

Looked into a couple of banks on the walk to downtown Tsuchiura this morning. Very friendly and low key is how I would characterise the banks. One of the branches if UFJ was full of ABM's in the main branch.

So I took a few pictures which I will publish later.

December 24, 2003 at 11:31 PM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Execution – Part 1

Read Execution by Larry Bossidy on the plane. The books hypothesis is that many company’s fail not because of bad strategy, but because of bad execution. 20% of Fortune 500 Chairmen have been fired in the 90’s for this very reason. This becomes critical, given the pressure on old business models.

He defines execution as the right people, strategy and operations processes, and how these elements are pulled together. Its lucid and an easy read and one which I can see is readily applicable to my own job, particularly as my organisation goes through a significant amount of change, and devotes a large effort to a few core strategies. Execution will be paramount.

Bossidy has the right credentials to know of what the speaks …. He is from GE, and worked there for Jack Welch; known for “getting things done” and running a successful business.

December 24, 2003 at 11:21 PM in Business Models | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

December 21, 2003

Internet Unites Soccer Fans Starved in America

Yahoo! News - Internet Unites Soccer Fans Starved in America

Article doesn't say how many internet users there are but it gives percentages of those using soccer sites. Not surprisingly soccernet.com comes out overwhelmingly on top.

By Steve James

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Trying to get news about soccer in America -- let alone European or Latin American leagues -- is one challenge of being a fan in the United States, where football, baseball and basketball rule.

Take one of soccer's greatest goals: A sweet left-foot volley scored in the 2002 Champions League final by Real Madrid's Zinedine Zidane to help his club beat Germany's Bayer Leverkusen and claim the European crown.

Many diehard soccer fans in the United States never saw it -- unless they had satellite or cable television and were able to watch the match at work during the day. Certainly there was no mention of it on television that night or in any mainstream newspapers the next day.

World stars like France's Zidane, his Brazilian (news - web sites) teammate at Real, Ronaldo, and French star Thierry Henry of Arsenal, could walk unrecognized down any main street in America. Here, David Beckham is known more for his marriage to a former Spice Girl than for his heroics with Manchester United, Real Madrid or as captain of England.

So if you want to wear a shirt with your favorite player's name on the back or watch videos of their greatest plays, or hear interviews, the Internet is the place to go.

The official UEFA Web site (http://www.uefa.com) provides the latest news from Europe's governing body for the sport, as well as updated live scores and radio commentary of Champions League and UEFA Cup matches. The site, with eight language options, also has an official store to purchase replica jerseys of all the top European clubs, from AC Milan to Panathanaikos.

For an annual fee of $39.95, fans get access to full-match video replays of games after they have been played, as well as video archives going back 10 years. So fans can savor that Zidane goal, or Manchester United's dramatic last-minute win over Bayern Munich in the 1999 Champions League final.

The most visited worldwide soccer site, out of an estimated 263, is ESPN's Soccernet (http://www.soccernet.com). Two weeks ago, it accounted for 29.03 percent of all the hits to soccer sites, according to Hitwise, a Web site measurement service that tracks habits of 10 million U.S. Internet users.

Uefa.com was a distant second, with an 8.63 percent market share, and LiveScore.com (http://www.livescore.com) a site devoted to betting online on soccer and other sports results, came in third with a 6.8 percent share.

According to Hitwise, which calculates market share, rather than actual numbers of hits, the top 20 world soccer sites included three clubs -- Real Madrid (http://www.realmadrid.com) in 16th place, Manchester United (http://www.manutd.com) at 19 and Liverpool (http://Liverpoolfc.tv) at 20.

"I check the Man U site fanatically two or three times a week to catch up on the player news, transfers, that kind of thing," said Jack Keane, a Manchester United fan who lives in New Jersey. He owns a Manhattan bar, Nevada Smith's, which shows English Premier League, Italian Serie A and Spanish La Liga matches every weekend.

Keane said he also regularly calls up the UEFA site, as well as Soccer365 (http://www.soccer365.com) and ESPN deportes (http://www.espndeportes.com) a Spanish language site. And he checks out Soccertv (http://www.soccertv.com) for all the schedules of matches available on TV all over the world.

"The biggest complaint from fans in America is that you can't watch matches here. And if they are on TV, it's on pay-per-view," said Keane.

"The papers? forget it," he said, the Internet is the only real way to keep in touch for millions of fans in the United States, united by their immigrant status and love of the game.

The official site of Spanish powerhouse Barcelona (http://www.fcbarcelona.com) is in English, Spanish and Catalan. In addition to news, interviews and match reports, fans can order club apparel, get discounted tickets for the club's other sports teams and visit the Barca football museum.

The Web site for Chelsea, (http://www.chelseafc.com) currently third in the English Premier League, has an offer for a free year's subscription to AOL Broadband, allowing fans to watch videos of all matches and replay goals.

Real Madrid, the reigning European champions, offers visitors to its site (http://www.realmadrid.com) personalized T-shirts from stars like Zidane, Beckham, Raul or Figo. You can also send customized Real greetings cards to friends.

And Inter Milan (http://www.inter.it) features not only a poll on whether the club will win the Italian title, but even offers the team's training schedule.

December 21, 2003 at 05:05 AM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Music industry suffers defeat

TheStar.com - Music industry suffers defeat

An interesting and unexpected turn of events, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia yesterday overturned a trial judge's ruling that enforced a type of copyright subpoena under a law that predated the music-swapping trend.

Its not to say that court is "right" but it doesn't look like the legal process is how this change to music companies business model is going to get fixed.

Court ruling hurts anti-piracy battle

Tougher to track file downloaders

WASHINGTON—A U.S. court has ruled that the recording industry can't force Internet providers to identify subscribers swapping music online, dramatically setting back the industry's anti-piracy campaign.

The three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia yesterday overturned a trial judge's ruling that enforced a type of copyright subpoena under a law that predated the music-swapping trend.

"It's an incredible ruling, a blow for the little guy," said Bob Barnes, a grandfather in Fresno, Calif., who was targeted by one of the earliest subpoenas from the Recording Industry Association of America but isn't among the hundreds who have been sued so far.

The ruling does not make it legal to distribute music over the Internet, but it removes one of the most effective tools used by the recording industry to track such activity and sue downloaders.

The appeals court said the 1998 copyright law doesn't cover the popular file-sharing networks currently used by tens of millions of people to download songs.

The law "betrays no awareness whatsoever that Internet users might be able directly to exchange files containing copyrighted works," the court wrote.

The appeals judges said they sympathized with the recording industry, noting "stakes are large." But the judges said it was not the role of courts to rewrite the 1998 law.

The ruling forces the recording industry to file copyright lawsuits against "John Doe" defendants, based on their Internet addresses, then work through the courts to discover their names.

In another case concerning file sharing, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the makers of Kazaa, the world's most popular computer file-sharing program, cannot be held liable for copyright infringement of music or movies swapped on its free software.

Kazaa said the ruling, the first by a national court dealing with the legality of file-sharing Web sites, affirms not just the legality of its software, but all file-sharing programs.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

December 21, 2003 at 05:00 AM in Business Models | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

December 19, 2003

Spam web tapped Canadians

TheStar.com - Spam web tapped Canadians

OK ... take your best shot .... this slimey evil animal is 3rd most responsible in the world for the spam you get including all those references to extending male body parts. He sent 250 million spams per day ... per day! He is unrepentant, even though Microsoft and the New York Attorney General are suing him. We should all support Microsoft on this.

Computers infiltrated, lawsuits say
Telus, Rogers, Shaw servers utilized

RACHEL ROSS
BUSINESS REPORTER

Dozens of Canadians were unwitting participants in one of the world's most prolific spam operations, according to lawsuits launched yesterday in the United States. And many may still be involved.

Canadian participation in the notorious spam ring became apparent when Microsoft Corp. and New York state Attorney-General Eliot Spitzer announced lawsuits against a group of Internet marketing companies and their executives.

Synergy6 Inc., Delta Seven Communications, OptInRealBig.com and its president Scott Richter all were named in the lawsuits, which allege the spammers used deceptive practices and violated consumer protection statutes.

"The consensus is that he (Richter) is the third largest spammer in the world," Spitzer said at a press conference yesterday, citing a list from the anti-spam organization Spamhaus.

Spitzer estimates Richter generated 250 million unsolicited bulk e-mails per day, often with the help of unsuspecting accomplices. Some of the e-mails promised free diamonds, others promoted pornographic Web sites.

According to documents filed with New York's Supreme Court, the marketing companies infiltrated computers owned by schools, government agencies, corporations and average consumers via the Internet. Once they had control of a computer, the marketers allegedly used the machines to route junk e-mail around the world.

More than 500 servers were used to send the spam, including machines linked to Telus Communications, Cogeco Cable Inc., Rogers High-Speed Internet, Shaw High-Speed Internet, Université Laval and Concordia University.

"They were victimized by this spam network just as the consumers who received their fraudulent e-mails," said Tim Cranton, senior corporate attorney for Microsoft Corp.

Representatives for both Rogers Cable Inc. and Cogeco said the machines involved were owned by their customers — not the companies themselves.

Karen Dosanjh, senior communications manager for Telus Communications Inc., said the company was still looking into the matter and that it wasn't clear who exactly owned the machines with Internet addresses associated with Telus.

"It would be inappropriate for us to comment on this particular case as Telus is not named in the lawsuit and we do not know to what extent our servers were used," Dosanjh said.

Marc Tisseur, manager of desktop support at Concordia University, said the school dealt with the problem months ago. Tisseur said that someone wrote in to complain about the spam originating from the machine named in the lawsuit last June. It was a "work station" used by a secretary at the school, he said.

"We dealt with the problem as soon as we heard," Tisseur said. "The computer has, in fact, been completely reformatted and fixed."

Microsoft set up Hotmail accounts to attract the spam and then tracked down the alleged spammers with the help of the New York attorney-general's office.

Spitzer said he's seeking $500 (U.S.) per fraudulent statement.

"We will drive them into bankruptcy and therefore others will not come into the marketplace to take their place," he said.

Microsoft, which is filing a similar suit, is seeking $18.8 million (U.S.) in total.

"If these people have any money left after the New York attorney-general's lawsuit in New York comes to a close, we will be happy to pursue the remainder," said Brad Smith, senior vice-president and general counsel for Microsoft.

Synergy6 Inc. and OptInRealBig.com did not return calls for comment. Delta Seven Communications could not be reached.

December 19, 2003 at 07:43 AM in Spam | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

December 18, 2003

Windows XP SB2's Firewall Will in Your Face

Yahoo! News - Windows XP SB2's Firewall Will in Your Face

Larry Seltzer - eWEEK

As we reported recently, Microsoft just released a document going into more detail about the features expected in the upcoming Service Pack 2 for Windows XP (news - web sites). The company on Thursday released a beta of SP2 and will ship for real well into 2004. SP2 is basically about security enhancements to Windows, such as the improved Internet Connection Firewall (ICF).

The information in this document is important and in all likelihood reflects the way things will turn out. But everyone should recognize that this document is a beta document for an almost-beta set of programs, and we have to assume there will be differences as the tests of SP2 proceed. Future changes will be reported at a particular MSDN link: The Microsoft Security Developer Center..

In a previousl column, I mentioned that the Internet Connection Firewall will be turned on by default under SP2. Ports not actually being used will be shut by default.

In addition, both RPC and DCOM have been restructured to diminish the possibility of attack and to let the administrator control access rights. Microsoft frequently points out that users with ICF enabled were not vulnerable to Blaster.

The new ICF can be enabled and disabled on a per-interface basis. For instance, you might leave it off for the Ethernet connection, but enable it for your wireless network. You can also make global changes across all interfaces. Through a new UI, command line programs, or programmatically, you can open static ports and perform other configurations, such as basic ICMP options. Logging has been improved to include dropped packets and successful connections.

Beyond just opening a port, you can also restrict its traffic to particular subnets. This feature will be employed by default in some cases, for instance for file sharing and UPnP, both of which will be restricted to the local subnet. This feature should block a lot of attacks that come through the average residential broadband connection. Still, it does leave open the possibility that an otherwise compromised system (for instance one infected with a Sobig-like worm) could compromise other systems on the local subnet. Still, it's one more worthy tool under the belt.

Next page: More New ICF Features.

SP2's Internet Connection Firewall will include a new lockdown feature, tentatively called "Shielded Mode," which blocks all unsolicited inbound traffic. In other words, you could get the data for a Web page in response to an HTTP request, but no incoming HTTP requests would be allowed. Turning something like this on clearly will stop some programs from running, but it's meant for times when you suspect there have been compromises on the network and you need to deal with them, not as a normal mode of operation.

There will be a new ICF Permissions List to which an administrator may add a trusted application. When an application on this list needs to open a port, ICF will open it automatically.

In earlier versions, apps had to call APIs to open the ports. When the application closes, Windows closes the port, relieving the application of the need to do so. Using the Permissions list means that the application need not be run in a security context sufficient to open a port, i.e. with the administrator. The application can run with relatively-low privileges.

If a computer is joined to a domain, you can set up more than one ICF profile for it, with different sets of restrictions. The settings for when you're inside the domain might be more permissive, on the assumption that the network is protected; and when you're not on the domain, such as when you're on the road dialing into the Internet, the policy could be more restrictive.

Incidentally, the standard ICF is IPv4 only; Microsoft's IPv6 stack comes with an ICF of its own in the Windows XP Advanced Networking Pack. That ICF was always on by default.

At boot time, prior to SP2, there is a gap between when the network has started and when ICF begins effective filtering, which creates a window of vulnerability. SP2 adds a new feature called boot-time policy to perform filtering from the earliest points. The system can still perform DNS and DHCP queries and communicate with a domain controller, but other operations are restricted. If ICF is disabled, so is boot-time policy, but it cannot be configured.

Why, you might ask, didn't Microsoft do all this to begin with?

The reason is that turning on a stateful inspection firewall causes some applications to break, and that's something Microsoft has always worked hard to avoid.

In the document, Microsoft is pretty open with the fact that there will be application problems in the default configuration of SP2. This means that there will be problems with Windows that didn't occur in the past. The world has changed.

At the same time, some folks might say that the world changed long ago where it comes to security, and Microsoft didn't change fast enough. They'd have a fair point.

Version 1 of ICF was little more than an item on a feature chart for Windows. Sure, they had the firewall in there because security is important and Microsoft needed to give everyone with Windows some way to protect themselves. But they couldn't bring themselves to go into the deep end of security and make the tough decisions that will put a real barrier against attacks, which at the same time would also increase the security burden on Microsoft.

Let's hope Microsoft will take up that burden by helping customers to work within restricted environments and not to toss protections aside when they become inconvenient.

Security Center Editor Larry Seltzer has worked in and written about the computer industry since 1983.

December 18, 2003 at 12:05 PM in Microsoft | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Major Retail Sites Struggle With Online Performance

Yahoo! News - Major Retail Sites Struggle With Online Performance
Wed Dec 17, 9:00 PM ET

Major online shopping sites continue to struggle in delivering fast service and in completing sales to holiday shoppers, an Internet performance tracker said Wednesday.

Nevertheless, retailers showed some improvement last week in handling the stampede of shoppers, recording an overall success rate of 95.98 percent, which is better than the previous week's six-week low of 93.68 percent, Keynote Systems Inc. said.

Keynote analysts found last week that performance on the sites dropped at the beginning of the workday, improving as the day wore on.

The online holiday shopping season peaks about 10 to 14 days before Christmas, experts say. So expected increases in volume this week could create problems for those sites that have not been tested and readied for the expected shopping rush, Keynote said.

Overall response time last week was 15.03 seconds, which was slower by several seconds than the three weeks before Thanksgiving.

Online consumers spent $8.5 billion in November holiday shopping, up 55 percent from the year-ago period, according to Goldman Sachs & Co., Harris Interactive and Nielsen/NetRatings.

San Mateo, Calif.-based Keynote sells web performance measurement and management services to companies.

December 18, 2003 at 12:02 PM in eCommerce | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Forest Service shifts e-mail plan

Yahoo! News - Forest Service shifts e-mail plan

By Paul Rogers , Mercury News

In a victory for groups that use the Internet to lobby the government, the U.S. Forest Service has decided to drop a proposal to ignore mass e-mails from people commenting on its pending rules and regulations.

The Mercury News first reported in April that the agency (news - web sites), which manages 190 million acres of public land nationwide, was considering blocking bulk e-mails and pre-printed postcards from the public on the grounds that they provided little meaningful comment on decisions about logging, grazing, forest fires and other issues.

But organizations from the American Cancer Society (news - web sites) to the National Wildlife Federation protested, saying the government would be shutting the public out of decision-making.

Wednesday, the Forest Service said it got the message.

"We didn't have any intention of cutting the public out. We want to have responsible government," said Heidi Valetkevitch, a communications specialist with the Forest Service in Washington, D.C. (news - web sites) "And we didn't want people to think we don't care what they say."

The decision not to ignore form e-mails and postcards means that other federal agencies that had been considering similar actions are now less likely to do so.

High-tech civil liberties groups, along with liberal and conservative organizations, hailed the news.

"What they are calling `form letters' is the best and easiest way for people who have busy lives and cannot afford their own personal lawyers and lobbyists to still have their voices heard," said Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties group in San Francisco.

Since the 1990s, hundreds of groups, including the Sierra Club (news - web sites), the National Rifle Association and the AARP, have used bundled e-mail and their Web sites to lobby Congress and federal agencies.

In most cases, interested people simply go to a group's Web site, type their names on a form letter and hit a button to send an electronic letter to Washington, D.C.

The Forest Service tried to stem the flow a year ago.

It crafted a proposal to ban "substantially similar" comments from portions of its rule-making process.

The issue received little notice at first because it was tucked into a 48-page item in the Dec. 6, 2002, Federal Register -- part of a wider proposal by the Bush administration to eliminate rules dating to the 1970s that require the government to write regular environmental-impact studies on national forests.

Environmentalists mounted an unprecedented e-mail campaign three years ago when the Clinton administration proposed rules to ban new logging roads on 58 million acres of national forests.

Now, as they try to keep the Bush administration from rolling back those rules, environmentalists regularly note that the Forest Service received 2.5 million comments on the policy, with more than 95 percent in support. They don't advertise that the vast majority were their identical e-mails and preprinted postcards.

Any show of interest by the public in the government is a good thing, they argue.

"The Forest Service finds it difficult to get masses of Americans to e-mail their support for creating stump fields out of national forests," said Niel Lawrence, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, in Olympia, Wash. "So they have a natural bias against e-mail comments."

Conservative groups said the issue isn't about ideology.

"When they say we are getting bombarded and the response on a particular issue is overwhelming, that is a reflection of real passion from a lot of people," said Ian Walters, communications director for the American Conservative Union, which sends out 120,000 e-mail messages a year to Congress and federal agencies advocating lower taxes and fewer gun laws.

December 18, 2003 at 12:00 PM in email | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Microsoft Joins Spitzer in Suits to Combat Spam

Yahoo! News - Microsoft Joins Spitzer in Suits to Combat Spam

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) and New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer on Thursday attempted to crack down on unsolicited e-mail messages, or spam, with joint lawsuits against a New York marketing firm and one individual.

Seattle-based Microsoft, the world's largest software company, said it and Spitzer were suing New York-based Synergy6 Inc., an e-mail marketing company based in New York, and Scott Richter, who it said is based in Colorado.

Richter is the world's third-largest spammer according to consumer advocacy group called the Register of Known Spam Operations, or ROKSO.

Microsoft, which has gone on the offensive against e-mail advertising touting everything from get-rich-quick schemes to pornographic Web sites, is developing anti-spam technology and also waging legal war against spammers.

Microsoft, whose MSN Internet and Hotmail e-mail services have millions of subscribers around the world, has said that spammers clog its networks with traffic and hurts consumers.

The e-mails appeared to come from a foreign government's defense ministry, from a hospital, and from elementary and high schools, according to the lawsuits filed in New York State court. They also used other people's sender names, false subject lines, fake server names, and inaccurate or misrepresented sender addresses.

Microsoft also said it filed five additional lawsuits against other spammers who allegedly used the same transmission path in New York that originally led investigators to Richter and the spam network.

Richter was not immediately available for comment. Representatives from Synergy6 were also not available.

Spitzer and Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith, who were holding a press conference in New York on Thursday morning, said that Richter and his accomplices in Washington, Texas and New York are responsible for seven spam campaigns, which violate consumer protection statutes in New York and Washington.

The lawsuits said Richter and his accomplices sent spam through 514 Internet addresses in 35 countries across six continents.

December 18, 2003 at 11:57 AM in Spam | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Wal-Mart to Test Digital Music Downloads

Yahoo! News - Wal-Mart to Test Digital Music Downloads

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE:WMT - news) said on Thursday it would begin testing digital music downloads on its Web site, joining a list of companies hoping to profit from the growing demand for such services.

Wal-Mart, the world's biggest company, said customers could download songs for 88 cents per track. Wal-Mart said it would gather customer feedback over the next few months and make any modifications before officially launching the service in 2004

December 18, 2003 at 11:54 AM in Business Models | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Ma Bell remodels for Internet

TheStar.com - Ma Bell remodels for Internet

Bell is a large telcom, and this is a significant move by them, which mirrors one of the big American telcoms a few months back.

Telephone company to drop old technology
Move will allow it to offer new telecom services

TYLER HAMILTON
TECHNOLOGY REPORTER

An aging Ma Bell is getting a 21st century makeover.

BCE Inc., Canada's largest telecom company, announced an ambitious plan yesterday to convert all of its network traffic to an Internet-based infrastructure within three years.

The Montreal-based company said 90 per cent of its customers will be able to access a number of Internet protocol services that treat phone calls and video as "packets" of data, similar to the way we send e-mail and access Web sites through the Internet.

By moving a number of different voice, video and data networks on to a single IP infrastructure, the company said, it will lower capital costs by as much as 25 per cent, simplify the way it deals with customers and be able to offer new multimedia services — including TV and video messaging — that older circuit-switched technologies can't deliver.

"We're embarking here on the remaking, the repositioning, of one of Canada's great companies," said BCE chief executive Michael Sabia, speaking to reporters after the company's annual business review conference in Toronto.

"There aren't that many telecoms in the world undertaking those kinds of commitments in the time frame we are."

Sabia said the company will gradually stop selling certain products and retire older networks, such as Frame Relay, that are showing no growth.

As the plan unfolds, it will prompt "modest" job cuts in 2004 and a reshuffling of about 1,000 staff.

BCE also announced it would spend $650 million in cash to take full control of western-based venture Bell West. Manitoba Telecom Services Inc. will sell BCE its 40 per cent stake in Bell West, a company with $500 million a year in revenue that competes directly against Telus Corp. in the West.

But the focus was on Bell's transformation. Calling the plan a "new chapter" in Bell's 120-year history, Sabia said the changes will touch every aspect of the company and will set a standard by which other carriers will measure themselves.

"Our objective is not to be in the pack — it's to lead the pack," he said. "Every corner of this company is now engaged in what is a very substantial process of change."

Eamon Hoey, a Toronto-based telecom consultant, said BCE will have a difficult time making the transition in less than five years, let alone three.

"I think his major challenge is getting his people on board," said Hoey. "You better have the troops following you, and I think there's a certain amount of uncertainty surrounding that."

BCE's announcement comes as phone carriers across North America face increased competition from cable companies and upstart service providers using IP technology to gain a foothold on phone-company turf.

Telus began its transition to Internet protocol this year. South of the border, AT&T, BellSouth, SBC and Verizon all have plans to offer voice over Internet protocol, or VoIP, telephone service.

Cable companies also have joined the IP race, including Time Warner Cable and Cablevision Systems. Comcast and Cox Communications are conducting residential IP telephone trials, which are being closely watched by Toronto-based Rogers Cable Inc.

Meanwhile, IP telephone newcomers such as Vonage Holdings Group could announce their entry into Canada as early as this week.

Sabia said BCE's plan is to offer the most reliable residential Internet telephone service in the market, not the first. He said the service will be tested rigorously in technical and market trials early next year and a product is expected to be ready in 2005, when Rogers is likely to become a serious threat. The company has asked the telephone regulator to clarify the rules for offering VoIP services in Canada.

Among other announcements:

Bell Mobility will launch a push-to-talk "walkie talkie" service before the summer to compete against Telus's Mike service. President Michael Neuman predicted the service will capture 50 per cent of "net activations" within two years.

Services will be introduced next year that let mobile phone customers roam between cellular and Wi-Fi public "hotspots."

Bell will begin an IP television trial with Microsoft Corp. in 2004. It will launch video on demand and more high-definition TV channels through ExpressVu. It will begin supplying a TV service to 300 apartment buildings next year using "very high-speed DSL" technology.

One analyst attending the conference, who asked not to be named, said BCE's IP strategy is a "must do" move that doesn't equate to a long-term growth strategy and will lead to higher capital expenses next year.

"Sabia is setting up the right defences, but they're not offences," he said, adding that BCE will merely be replacing older circuit-switched products with newer IP-based services. "I don't see where the additional revenues are coming from. They're going to cannibalize themselves."

Additional articles by Tyler Hamilton

December 18, 2003 at 07:54 AM in Business Models, Telecommunications | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

December 17, 2003

The best of British blogging

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | The best of British blogging

The Guardian's second British blog awards announced tonight in UK. Rather interesting choices, with Call Centre Confidential a clear winner? More seriously Rob Gardiners nyclondon.com is worth a visit for the outstanding B&W photograpy, with an example below.

The Guardian's second British blog awards found the country's webloggers in fine form, with last year's high standards maintained. Simon Waldman, chair of the judges, hands out the accolades

Thursday December 18, 2003

Rob Gardiner's image of Olafur Eliasoon's Weather Project at Tate Modern helped to earn him the best blog photography award

These have not been easy awards to judge. Deciding whether one blog is "better" than another is never straightforward, but as both the quality and diversity in the blogging universe increases, that decision is only getting harder. In almost every category, the judges were divided.
All the blogs mentioned here are exceptional. They are a testament to the growing richness of British blogging. They demonstrate great design, good writing and smart use of links to provide a series of windows on worlds we would otherwise never know about. This was exactly the intention of the awards when we first began them in 2002.

In the best design category, the winner is Rob Hinchcliffe and Euan Mitchell's The Big Smoker. They narrowly beat Paul Cleghorn's The Bunker. Both blogs combined good looks and clear presentation. But the Big Smoker was a little bit more elegant, sticking to a simple colour scheme and black and white photography for extra effect.

Black and white also featured in the winner of the best use of photography category. This went to Rob Gardiner and nyclondon.com for the stunning quality of his photography. We also commended two others in this category: Camerantics, which also featured among the judges' selections in the best design category, and Apparently Nothing - both full of arresting images and enough to make the average aspirant snapper (like me) sick with envy.

The under 18s category was incredibly close. It was a choice between the slightly surreal, chatty writing of Olivia Fairweather's Magnetic Kid Liv, and the remarkably mature A Teenager Blogs by Max Munton. Olivia's writing was excellent and exceptional. But, in the end, we felt Max Munton was running a better overall blog: good design, regular updates, and intelligent writing full of personality. And he's only 17.

In the best specialist category we saw evidence of the increasing number of top quality niche weblogs. Annie Mole's London Underground Tube Diary won respect for its humour and detail. But the prize went to Phil Gyford's remarkable Pepys' Diary. The project started on January 1 this year: Gyford will put a new entry of the 17th-century London-based diarist's work on the web every day for the next 10 years. As one of our judges said: "The audience is entranced: just look at the number of 'annotations' each entry receives."

The best written category threw up a number of gems. The three winning titles were all very different. Stuart Hughes is the BBC reporter who lost his leg to a landmine in Iraq. Since February he has been keeping a brilliant blog called Beyond Northern Iraq (not endorsed by the BBC). It is an excellent daily take on happenings in the Gulf written by someone with personal experience, providing a really good read with smart links.

If anyone landing on Earth wanted to get a true picture of working life in 21st-century Britain, they could do worse than start with Call Centre Confidential, the life of an anonymous team leader at an unidentified call centre ("Next stop Bombay").

The winner in this category however is , the diary of a London call girl. There's obviously a prurient and titillating element, but the quality of her writing took her blog well beyond that. Some judges were concerned it was a work of fiction, but even if it is, it remains an impressive piece of writing.

As Bruce Sterling, one of the judges said: "Archly transgressive, anonymous hooker is definitely manipulating the blog medium, word by word, sentence by sentence far more effectively than any of her competitors. It's not merely the titillating striptease aspects that are working for her, but her willingness to use Belle de Jourthis new form of vanity publishing to throw open a great big global window on activities previously considered unmentionable ... She is in a league by herself as a blogger."

Once we started sifting through the entries, it became clear we should have a Special Judges award. And there was no doubt that this should go to Darren Shrubsole's LinkMachineGo. It fell between the stools of best specialist, and best written. But it is one of the great wonders of the British blogging world: an understated, but always readable collection of links. If you're ever stuck for something interesting on the web, you'd be hard pressed to find a better starting point than this.

December 17, 2003 at 11:25 PM in Blogging & feeds | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Microsoft Revamps for Next Major Windows Release

Yahoo! News - Microsoft Revamps for Next Major Windows Release

Tue Dec 16, 3:38 AM

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. said on Tuesday that it is reshuffling its Windows business and creating a new group that would dedicate itself to developing Windows, the world's largest software maker's core operating system.

A new group, the Windows Core Operating System Division, will focus its efforts on developing technology for the next release of Windows, code-named Longhorn, Jim Allchin, group vice president in charge of Microsoft Platforms Group, said in a memo sent to employees.

Longhorn, Microsoft's next big bet in software, will involve an overhaul not only of Windows, but also Microsoft's next largest franchises, its Office and Server software products. Microsoft has declined to provide a launch date for Longhorn, but many expect it to debut in 2005 or 2006.

Windows is Microsoft's largest group, where the software for desktop computers alone accounted for $10.4 billion, or nearly a third, of the company's revenue in its latest fiscal year.

The new division will focus on development of Windows while the other groups will be aligned along product lines.

Other Windows subdivisions managed by Allchin will be grouped along product lines, and Brian Valentine, a Microsoft veteran, will head up the new Windows Core group, according to the memo obtained by Reuters.

Analysts covering Microsoft have pointed out that the software giant's products were becoming increasingly diverse and harder to integrate despite the fact that they need to work more closely together to compete in the market place.

The reshuffle was aimed at integrating development more closely, Allchin said in his memo.

Such integration is also a key part of making Microsoft's software more secure and reliable, a promise that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates (news - web sites) made in his Trustworthy Computing initiative launched in early 2002.

December 17, 2003 at 09:03 PM in Microsoft | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Microsoft to Unveil Further Legal Action on Spam

Yahoo! News - Microsoft to Unveil Further Legal Action on Spam

Microsoft working with the New York AG department to take legal action against spam.

Wed Dec 17, 5:23 PM ET

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news), the world's largest software maker, said on Wednesday that it was cooperating with New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in a bid to crack down on spam, or unsolicited e-mail.

Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith and Spitzer were set to hold a joint news conference in New York on Thursday, said Sean Sundwall, a Microsoft spokesman.

"I can confirm that the announcement will be about cooperation with the New York Attorney General on spam," Sundwall said.

Microsoft, which has gone on the offensive against e-mail advertising touting everything from get-rich-quick schemes to pornographic Web sites, is developing anti-spam technology and also waging legal war against spammers.

Microsoft's Smith has said that Microsoft would work to fight against spam on all fronts, including its ongoing efforts to protect consumers by using better technology such as blocking and filtering tools, and also collaborate with other Internet businesses.

In June, Microsoft filed 15 lawsuits in the United States and the United Kingdom against spammers, claiming that they were responsible for flooding its MSN Internet service with more than 2 billion unsolicited e-mail messages.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates (news - web sites) vowed in an open letter in June to make the fight against spam, or unsolicited e-mail, one of the No. 1 software maker's top priorities.

On Tuesday, President Bush (news - web sites) signed the first national anti-spam bill into law, outlawing some of the most annoying forms of junk e-mail and setting jail time and multimillion dollar fines for violators.

December 17, 2003 at 08:47 PM in Microsoft, Spam | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

A Look into Banking Trends for 2004

Bank Systems & Technology > A Look into Banking Trends for 2004 > December 16, 2003

A good review of 2004 trends. One which catches my attention is the relationship between customer satisfaction with internet banking, and customer retention.

A Look into Banking Trends for 2004
Alenka Grealish, Manager of the Banking Practice, Celent
December 16, 2003

For over a couple decades, IT has been an integral part of a financial institution's competitive advantage. Throughout the 1990s, efficiency and cost-cutting were the primary objectives of IT. Thanks to relatively strong performance during the economic downturn, banks have been able to increasingly apply a strategic approach to their IT decisioning process. Consequently, in the IT ROI equation, revenue enhancement will be gaining equal weight to cost-cutting. Given this trend, Celent Communications expects that the majority of the 4 percent of growth in banks' IT spending in 2004 will be invested in "what can be" rather than "what is."
The Branch Renaissance Continues
More banks are recognizing that the branch is still the cornerstone of retail banking. As banks focus their efforts on growing revenues through sales of more complex higher-margin services and products, they are finding that the branch is the most effective delivery channel. The direct personal interaction provided at the branch creates the best environment for selling these products. Banks' ability to leverage the branch, however, has been impeded by legacy systems and outdated applications that are no longer sufficient to support innovative delivery strategies. Consequently, in order to successfully harness the branch's sales potential, banks will increasingly implement upgrades in branch technology.

Multi-channel Integration Is Moving off the Drawing Board
Multi-channel integration is garnering the attention of a growing number of banks. Although it is far from becoming a mainstream exercise, it is moving away from the early-adopter phase to being a feasible initiative for most banks to undertake. The question is not if but when. Second-wave adopters are moving gradually, due to the complexity and cost of integration. Many of these banks are gaining additional fortitude to move forward by relying on third-party solution providers. Internet banking and call center platforms are proving to be ripe targets for integration.

A Few Intrepid Banks Will Undertake a Core Banking Replacement Project
Faced with the high costs and integration challenges associated with running the antiquated core banking systems, banks are beginning to consider replacing these vital systems. A core system replacement is perhaps the most risky, as well as costly IT project a bank can take on, however, causing many banks to move cautiously. Celent expects that over the next few years, an increasing number of banks around the globe will begin to take on such projects. Many of these will consider for the first time a third-party solution, as opposed to building new proprietary solutions, which are believed to be too costly and risky. Once the world's largest banks successfully complete these projects, setting an example for the industry, other smaller banks are likely to follow.

The Payment Czars Will Gain Authority
By 2004, most of the top 50 US banks will have a senior executive appointed to the role of Payment Czar or head of a payments council. Payment Czars will play an increasing role in shaping banks' strategies in the changing payment space. The vast majority will not be able, however, to supersede business lines, and will still lack P&L responsibility. A few organizations, mostly very large banks, will be strengthening or building up a distinct payment business line across retail and wholesale payments.

Check Imaging's Potential Is Unleashed
With the signing of Check 21 into law, the full potential of check imaging technology can be realized. Check processing in the U.S. is at an historical watershed. Check imaging, which had an ignominious start in the 1990s, has been staging an incredible comeback driven by economic and technological factors. It began generating ripples in the late 1990s with re-pass image capture and is currently propelling a tidal wave, which will sweep in check truncation and image exchange.

Improvements in Internet Banking Will Forge Ahead Banks are increasingly convinced that Internet banking's ROI can extend beyond simple cost-to-serve equations and direct revenue models. Driven by enhancements in Internet banking's user-friendliness, Internet banking's ROI now encompasses generating revenues indirectly by improving customer satisfaction with Internet banking, which in turn, has proven to translate into greater customer retention and higher balances. Banks' demands also include lowering cost-to-serve through self-service features with broad appeal (e.g., check image access and e-statements) and customer support features that not only improve customer service representatives' effectiveness but also their efficiency (e.g., online chat).

Automation of the Loan Process Will Expand
As interest rates inch up, banks are scrambling to develop marketing and IT strategies geared towards maintaining strong growth in originations. Next-generation solutions will provide users with greater work process automation capabilities and better integration with third parties, thereby eliminating many of the manual processes still in place today. A large portion of the typical loan process is still conducted via phones and faxes, creating bottlenecks and unhappy customers, who expect greater speed. New solutions will also be better integrated with the front end, creating greater straight-through processing.

Small Business Need Not Be the Underserved
Until recently, small businesses have been chronically underserved by banks. The classic example is the application of a retail Internet banking solution to serve these businesses, which has been the leading cause of low adoption to date. Banks, however, are increasingly recognizing they could garner a larger share of small businesses' financial services spending if they implement appropriate technology. In an effort to better serve them and attract their business, banks will deploy at an increasing rate Internet banking solutions built specifically for small businesses. Small business online banking adoption is therefore expected to grow beyond its current 12 percent level to reach over 20 percent by 2005.

Cash Management Will Jump on the Browser Bandwagon
While most banks already have large corporate banking solutions in place, a large number of transactions are still being completed on Windows-based solutions. Many banks have announced plans to migrate all of their customers over to browser-based solutions now that full functionality is available through this channel. Consequently, the number of transactions completed online is expected to grow steadily over the next year. Cash management solutions themselves are also evolving, with the greatest advancements being made in FX capabilities, loan originations, and trade finance.

Banks Will Continue To Spend on Compliance Solutions
Much confusion regarding the USA PATRIOT Act and its implied affect on the banks has resonated through the banking industry over the past two years. Today, however, the confusion has subsided as final regulations have been posted for many sections of the Act and speculation is no longer needed. Although a clearly defined roadmap is still missing for financial institutions, we are beginning to see banks revise or implement their compliance procedures. Banks will focus on solutions that will assist them in detecting money laundering both at the account and transaction levels. Much emphasis will also be placed on ID verification procedures to assist them with correctly identifying and authenticating their customers across channels.

Alenka Grealish is the manager of the banking group at Celent Communications, a financial services technology research firm based in Boston. She can be reached at agrealish@celent.com.

December 17, 2003 at 07:51 AM in Financial Services | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Universal willing to try 'unlimited burn' sales

TheStar.com - Universal willing to try 'unlimited burn' sales

Finally a breath of sensible talk from a music distribution company and one of the biggest. A recognition that their world has changed, and their very survival depends on development of new business models which will satisfy the needs of musicians, distribution companies and consumers.

I remain convinced that rational consumers are not looking for free music; they are seeking convenience. The "free" concept is a leftover from the dot com era, and anyone who still believes commodiy goods ought to be free is niave.

Option offered on music downloads
Move aimed at adding customers

TYLER HAMILTON
TECHNOLOGY REPORTER

Universal Music Canada, the country's largest record company, has decided to test out an "unlimited burn" model for people who pay to download music off the Internet.

The move comes on the heels of a warning from the Canadian Recording Industry Association, which has vowed to file lawsuits "as soon as possible" against people who make large volumes of songs available for upload through music-swapping networks such as Kazaa.

By lifting restrictions on copying digital songs for personal use, Universal said it hopes to draw more traffic to legitimate fee-based sites such as Puretracks.com, which, to the frustration of many users, currently limits to three the number of times a person can "burn" or copy a music file.

"We have a very specific message we want to deliver to our customers and to music fans," said Graham Henderson, senior vice-president of business affairs and e-commerce for the Canadian subsidiary of Universal Music Group.

"If you're buying from a legal site such as Puretracks, you've chosen to honour the integrity of our artists and the music we make. So we're going to reward you with what you've been asking for all along — unlimited burns."

Industry analysts say the music companies are engaging in a lure-and-deter strategy that makes legitimate sites more attractive as pirate sites become riskier to use. The goal is to find that elusive consumer "sweet spot" — the right conditions to convince people to pay for, rather than steal, music.

It's an approach that appears to be working in the United States, where a combination of legal scare tactics and legitimate download options have had an impact on illegal file-trading.

Kaan Yigit, president of Toronto-based Solutions Research Group Consultants Inc., called the decision by Universal Music a step in the right direction. He said initial analysis of site traffic on Puretracks probably found that too many people were surfing and listening to music, but not enough were buying.

"You can't fight your own consumer. You have to figure out a way to work with your customers and satisfy their needs," said Yigit, adding that consumers tend to be psychologically turned off just by the concept of restrictions.

"It's like a car that has a speed indicator that goes to 240 kilometres an hour. If it was cut off at 150 km/h, the psychology of it is that you're getting something that's limited."

Henderson said the offer of unlimited burns will initially be part of a three-month trial that could be extended indefinitely. It will apply to Puretracks and any other legitimate download sites that appear later.

Services such as iTunes, MusicMatch and Napster 2.0 are expected to become available in Canada some time next year. Industry watchers said other music companies are likely to follow Universal's move.

Universal, a financial backer of Puretracks, said it is working to address concerns that Puretracks' service is too closely tied to Microsoft Corp.'s audio file format.

"We can safely say that Puretracks will be available across all platforms in the new year," said Henderson. "The tide is turning. That means we, the industry, need to start being a little more flexible and start trusting (consumers) a little bit more."

Henderson admitted that Microsoft's digital rights management technology, used by Puretracks to control how files can be burned and transferred, is "leaky." To get around restrictions, users need only burn a CD once then copy those tracks back on to their computer.

Universal has taken several recent steps to improve its relationship with music buyers. In September, the company dropped its list price for top CDs to $14.98, while prices for developing artists fell to $9.99.

Yigit said price remains a stumbling block to wider acceptance of online music purchasing. Puretracks and U.S.download sites currently sell most of their songs for 99 cents each.

"The 99-cent price point is still high," he said.

A survey earlier this month from global research firm Ipsos-Insight found that online users believe digitally distributed music should be about $5 less than the price of store-bought CDs. The "acceptable price range" for a full-length album download — about 12 songs — is between $5 ans $9.99, or roughly 40 cents to 80 cents per track.

Yigit said until prices fall, consumers will continue to be drawn to free file-sharing networks.

Brian Robertson, president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, said that the emergence of Puretracks and other legal download services makes it more justifiable to crack down on music pirates.

Robertson said the industry has high hopes for legitimate download sites. "We believe the online legal services are going to be the transition point for the industry."

December 17, 2003 at 07:29 AM in Business Models | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

December 16, 2003

File-sharing suits come to Canada

Looks like Canadians can expect legal action soon relative to people who share music through P2P networks like Kazaa, and eDonkey.

MATHEW INGRAM
Globe and Mail Update

Taking a page from its U.S. counterpart's playbook, Canadian Recording Industry Association president Brian Robertson says the CRIA plans to start suing Canadian users of file-sharing networks. This raises similar kinds of questions as the U.S. action did -- including whether such lawsuits will help the problem or not. But there is also a uniquely Canadian question, which is: Can a legal challenge even succeed, given the significant differences between Canadian copyright law and U.S. copyright law?

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has launched more than 340 lawsuits against individual music downloaders since it began a legal crackdown on Internet piracy in September. In the latest wave, the association filed 41 new lawsuits in early December and sent out 90 letters to users of various file-sharing networks such as Kazaa and eDonkey notifying them they could be subject to future legal action.

This legal attack was the latest in a series of escalating battles against digital music downloading, which began with lawsuits against the actual networks themselves, including Napster and MP3.com. Those services were shut down, but others -- such as Morpheus, Kazaa and iMesh -- quickly sprang up to take their place.

Some of these networks have been harder to shut down, however, because of the way they are configured. Kazaa's distributed file-sharing system, for example, makes it harder to prove that the network itself is liable for any copyright infringement that takes place, as opposed to the centralized Napster system. With that avenue blocked to some extent, the RIAA decided to target individual music downloaders with lawsuits.

This move has been more than a little controversial, in part because the industry group has chosen some odd targets for its legal onslaught — including a 12-year-old honour student from a low-income family, and a 71-year-old retired gentleman whose computer was used by his grandchildren (Mr. Robertson said each of these users had more than 1,000 files shared). In most cases, the individuals who received notices of legal action have settled with the RIAA and paid thousands of dollars in fines.

Although the record industry says its legal attack has reduced the number of people using file-sharing networks, it's far from clear whether suing individual music downloaders will make a dent in the phenomenon. Some surveys show that activity on Kazaa has decreased, but the Electronic Frontier Foundation said recently an estimated 65 million people are still sharing their files on such digital networks.

Some have also wondered whether suing 12-year-olds isn't likely to just backfire and create worse publicity for the industry. Mr. Robertson, however, said in an interview that targeting such users may have actually helped spread the message and added to the 'shock and awe' of the industry's campaign. "It did escalate the media coverage somewhat," the CRIA president said.

So far, the Canadian association has spent several million dollars on an 'instant message' campaign aimed at Kazaa users (which Mr. Robertson said reached over 550,000 users) and a series of ads aimed at stigmatizing file-sharing networks. But so far there has been no legal action. In part, that's because Canadian copyright law makes it harder to prove that a file-sharing network user has broken the law, or in what way.

The main difference between Canadian and U.S. law is the copyright levy, a fee paid in Canada whenever you buy a blank recordable compact disc, or a music player that has internal memory. That fee was just increased by the Copyright Board, at the request of the music industry. Now, buyers of digital music players such as the Rio or the Apple iPod will pay between $2 and $25 extra depending on the amount of storage in the device, as well as the 21-cent levy per blank recordable CD. The fees are collected in a fund to be used to compensate Canadian artists and copyright holders.

The wording of the Copyright Act and several Copyright Board rulings suggest that Canadians are legally allowed to download music for their own use, because of the copyright levy. Whether they are able to share that music with others on the Internet is less clear. Some analysts believe that while downloading is covered by the Act, sharing files would fall into the category of distributing copyrighted material "by telecommunication," which is prohibited.

Mr. Robertson said that the CRIA lawsuits will specifically target uploading of music rather than downloading -- although he added that he thought it was "a little indiscreet" for the Copyright Board to state in its recent decision on the copyright levy that paying the fee made downloading legal under the Act. "But even they agree that uploading is entirely illegal," the CRIA president said. "That's where you get the widespread distribution." While the RIAA went after users with more than 1,000 songs, Mr. Robertson said the CRIA had yet to determine who specifically it would target for lawsuits.

It remains to be seen whether a Canadian court will agree that uploading is prohibited by the Copyright Act, or that downloading is legal -- or even that it is possible to divorce one from the other. It could also be difficult to prove that Kazaa users knowingly distribute music, since the software used on such networks normally shares all a person's downloaded files automatically. Of course, the CRIA may hope that users decide to settle rather than going to court, as they have in the United States.

Whether a CRIA digital piracy lawsuit actually makes it to court or not, one thing is clear: file-sharing in Canada could soon get a lot more interesting.

E-mail Mathew Ingram at mingram@globeandmail.ca

December 16, 2003 at 05:48 PM in Internet evolution | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

December 14, 2003

Fooling Movable Type

O'Reilly Network: Fooling Movable Type [Nov. 05, 2002]

A great description of MT and its capabilities. Particularly the flexibility as a content managment system. Vignette, are you worried yet?

Fooling Movable Type
Scot Hacker
Nov. 04, 2002 05:43 PM
Permalink
URL: http://journalism.berkeley.edu/projects/election2002/
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I've fallen in love with Movable Type over the past few months, using it both for my personal weblog and for the J-School's not-yet-public Intellectual Property Weblog. The deeper I dig into the software, the more I realize how flexible it is, and ways it can be coaxed and cajoled into resembling a Content Management System. When the charge came for me to build a site on which journalism students could publish their 2002 election stories, I decided to see just how far I could push it. We've got 25 pre-election stories up on the site already - many more will roll in over the next few days.

But MT is not a full CMS, and we had to work around a few significant limitations.

News sites and weblogs have enough similarities that the project was possible, but enough differences that problems still arose. I was able to use MT's "Categories" feature to create regional election returns departments. I was able to disable comments and TrackBack, and modify MT tags so that headlines were linked to story bodies rather than the usual timestamp/permalink. I removed the calendar object that's present by default, and enabled the new search engine in MT 2.5.

As soon as you try to automate something like this, you impose a system on an organic process that may or may not be compatible with the technology. The biggest problem is in how a news site like CNN features stories differently than a "blog"-style site like slashdot. "Real" news sites place the most important story at the top of the page. Blog-style sites put the most recent story at the top of the page. That's a critical difference, but MovableType does not let you "weight" stories to live higher on the page than others. The only way I could think of handle this was to output the homepage to a hidden URL, then have the actual homepage be manually updated based on output to the automatically generated index. So in the end, we have a mostly-automatic publishing system, rather than fully automatic. That's okay - technology never has taken the place of the human editor.

Another issue that bit us was the fact that Movable Type assumes that the person posting the story is also the author of the story. In our case, we had about 40 student authors and two people posting stories to the Movable Type back end. Thus, in order to get the bylines right, our posters had to create an author for each student, post the story as themselves in draft mode, then change the story author from within Power Editing mode. A big hack. For our needs, we wanted separate fields for author name and email address, distinct from the poster.

Then a professor threw me a curveball by announcing that some stories would have double bylines. Since the system was set up to link one author to one email address, this raised the question of how to generate email links from bylines. We decided to create authors that consisted of two names but with one email address. Obviously this wouldn't fly in the "the real world," but was good enough in a pinch.

Short story: We were able to get a database-backed publishing system up and running in record time, and the posting students loved working with it - light years easier than it's been in previous election years, and we've got a quasi-dynamic site that can be updated on a moment's notice without any HTML skills. And we came to learn that Movable Type is not a full-blown CMS, though it shares enough traits with CMSs to act like one in many ways. Movable Type's homepage says:

What is Movable Type? It is a decentralized, web-based personal publishing system designed to ease maintenance of regularly updated news or journal sites, like weblogs.

Yup.

Scot Hacker is the author of O'Reilly's MP3: The Definitive Guide, Peachpit's "The BeOS Bible," and countless articles for print- and Web-based technology publications.

December 14, 2003 at 05:15 PM in Business Models | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Internet Summit Makes Call to 'Wire Up' the World

Yahoo! News - Internet Summit Makes Call to 'Wire Up' the World

The UN Sponsored World Summit on the Information Society wound up with a call to spread the use of internet, but notably, did not approve any funding to do so.

Fri Dec 12, 1:07 PM ET
By Richard Waddington

GENEVA (Reuters) - More than 170 countries approved an ambitious call to extend the Internet and the benefits of information technology to the poorest corners of the world Friday, but dodged some of the difficulties of doing so.

In particular, they put off a decision on whether to set up a special fund to finance the necessary infrastructure, for which African countries had lobbied hard.

The first World Summit on the Information Society wound up three days of lofty speech-making by endorsing a declaration of principles and 29-point action plan.

The declaration committed them to using telecommunications technologies, such as the Worldwide Web and cellular telephones, to boost economic growth and meet United Nations (news - web sites) development targets for eradicating extreme hunger and poverty by 2015.

"The declaration represents a sort of constitution for the Information Society which must contain a social dimension and foster development," said Swiss President Pascal Couchepin, whose country hosted the U.N.-sponsored gathering.

Around 90 percent of the world population is not connected to the Internet, depriving them of a 21st-century resource and digging a "digital divide" between rich and poor. But richer states, notably Japan and the European Union (news - web sites), which generally did not send top government officials to Geneva, resisted calls for a "Solidarity Fund" to close the gap.

As a compromise, states agreed to study the issue further and report back before the follow-up summit in Tunis in 2005.

Senior U.N. officials also agreed it was better to explore improved use of existing resources from the World Bank (news - web sites) and other sources before rushing into new finances.

"It must take its place in line along with health and education. It has to be linked to investment in these areas otherwise it would be just a waste of public money," said Mark Mallock Brown, head of the U.N. Development Program (UNDP).

Also postponed was a showdown over Internet management, with developing countries such as Brazil pressing for a greater role for the United Nations or intergovernmental agencies in a business currently left to the private sector in rich states.

The liberal democracies won a tough battle in the preparation stage to have press freedom and the right of access to information enshrined in the summit documents.

But activists said it was ironic that while most Western leaders stayed away, the summit was attended by a number of figures, including Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, whose governments have been accused of hobbling local media.

They promised to campaign for the second summit to be withdrawn from Tunisia unless there was a sharp improvement in the human rights situation in the North African state.

(Additional reporting by Robert Evans)

December 14, 2003 at 12:38 PM in Internet evolution | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

December 13, 2003

Forging the missing multimedia link

Globetechnology

This will be big in 2004 - connecting your music, PC and stereo.

It used to be a chore to get multimedia content from your computer to a stereo or home theatre system - you could string messy wires, or use low-powered FM transmitters that offered poor quality and performance. All that has suddenly changed as vendors rush to corner the market on a new type of home electronics gear based on WiFi networking technology.

These products are still in their infancy, but I'm betting that they'll be one of the hottest consumer electronics categories in 2004. The market is still so new, in fact, that manufacturers and marketing gurus disagree on what to call the equipment. The gear is classed as anything from a "streaming media server" to a "home entertainment gateway," but it all has one thing in common - WiFi wireless technology.

No matter what they're classed as, these products have the same goal: Make it easy to get music, photos and video files from your computer to a stereo or home theatre. That includes offering simple setup routines and eliminating the need to string audio or network cables between your desktop PC and home entertainment centre - pieces of equipment that are typically located in different rooms.

Despite the fact that we're looking at the first generation here, which typically means there are some rough edges to smooth out, the selection of WiFi multimedia gear is impressive. I've tested various units over the past few weeks, and in general the designers have done a fantastic job taking the complexity of wireless networking and multimedia playback, and boiling it all down to produce systems that aren't much harder to set up than a piece of stereo equipment.

The performance is great too. Once you've tried one of these products, you'll see why I don't think I'm going out on a limb with my prediction about how popular streaming media servers are going to be. Lots of people have music, photo and video files piling up on their PCs thanks to the proliferation of MP3 players, digital cameras and DV camcorders, and having instant, random access to it all through a home theatre is fabulous. Once you've spent a few days being able to play any multimedia file on your PC from the comfort of your couch, it's extremely hard to go back to CD players, VHS machines and paper photo albums.

I've ripped my entire CD collection to MP3 files, for example, but until recently I ended up listening to the tunes on a portable player or when I was working at my PC. Using an entertainment gateway, I can call up any one of the thousands of songs on my PC's hard drive in a couple of seconds — searching by artist, song title, genre, and so on, whatever made the most sense at the time — and play it through my home's audio system. Now that's what I call a jukebox.

I can also run playlists that suit my mood, play all the songs from a certain album or artist, or hit "shuffle" to just play randomly from my whole song collection. No more racks of CDs to root through, no more stacks of discs sliding around on top of the stereo cabinet, no more handling albums and risking a track-trashing scratch. The first day I hooked up a home multimedia gateway, my home CD player (which used to be on constantly) started to gather dust and has barely been touched since.

Setup was done in different ways with different players — sometimes through a wire connected to a PC, sometimes on a separate display screen; sometimes network settings are auto-detected, other times you have to enter some information manually - but in every case the process was simple. It would be about as complicated as setting up a DVD player for most people. The most involved part of the setup — dealing with (gulp) network settings - is only applicable if you have wireless security (WEP encryption) activated, and/or more than one WiFi network operating in the area. But even then, it's as complex as setting the clock on a VCR - all you have to do is select the appropriate network ID (SSID setting) from a list of the ones detected, then punch in your level of WEP encryption (64- or 128-bit), and then type in the WEP hexadecimal password. These are all things you'll know about if you activated your WiFi security settings on your home network. After that, you install and activate the server software on the PC where your files are stored, and you're up and streaming. The whole process should average less than 15 minutes, even for novices.

But while these systems are extremely attractive for home entertainment afficionados, there are some things to be aware of before you plunk down your cash.

My one caution is that as I've said, this market is new — almost all the products out there right now have been released within the past couple of months. As a result, you're buying first-generation technology. As products mature, vendors tweak their designs to smooth out any bugs, add features and make things easier to use. For those thinking of getting a wireless home media server, I'd be tempted to see what improvements are made in the next few months, because this gear is only going to get better.

But if you're like me and simply can't wait to mesh the entertainment potential of your computer with the audio-visual excellence of a high-powered home stereo or theatre system (and let's face it, you wouldn't have read this far if you weren't with me on this one), then read on. Here's my advice after testing several systems, and the links in each section will take you to full reviews of each product.

The Gear

Home entertainment gateways can be broken down into two basic groups. There are those that need to be connected to a TV as well as speakers, and those that don't. Both cost about the same amount of money — the going rate when I wrote this column was in the $300 to $400 (Cdn) range — but they have different capabilities.

The gateways that don't need to be linked to a television display obviously only play audio files. They're specifically designed for sound systems in rooms where there's no television, or for people who have a home theatre system but no interest in streaming photos and videos from a computer.

I tried three different systems that don't need a TV, and each has its strengths and weaknesses.

The C300 Network MP3 Player from CD3O is a cool idea that uses audio instead of visual control cues. It has a voice synthesis system built into its PC-based media server software that reads the song name, artist, genre and other audio file information over the stereo's speakers. The voice is pretty rough — it sounds like Stephen Hawking is the DJ — but the company says it plans to upgrade the voice through a free software update. The music quality is superb, though, and the remote control makes playing and finding songs a snap.

Creative, the PC-audio giant, has an alternative called simply the Creative Wireless Music. It uses a dual-radio system - songs are streamed to the player via WiFi, but the stereo-top box also connects to the handheld remote via a separate radio link. The remote has a small viewscreen like the one on a portable MP3 player, so you have your song list and playback controls in the palm of your hand. And like most Creative products, the emphasis is on premium audio quality — from the optical outputs to the gold-plated RCA jacks and low-noise/low-distortion signal. It has the most comprehensive and friendly software suite of all the units I've seen so far, with solid utilities for everything from creating playlists (which most other players are dismal at), to ripping CDs into MP3 files, to handling a wide variety of constant- and variable-bit-rate file formats. The player also tracks your listening habits, automatically creating playlists of new songs in your music library, songs you listen to the most frequently, and so on.

The latest product from Slim Devices is so new that the company was only able to lend me a one of its SqueezeBox players for a day. Even so, what I saw (or rather, heard) during that brief period was impressive. The SqueezeBox has a display built into the front of its receiver, which shows track and playback information in bright blue digital characters. The sound quality and remote are top-notch, and if you're the type of person that likes to fiddle with software add-ons - and even crack the case and get busy with a soldering iron and some custom components - this is the media server for you. There's an open-source development community supporting the player already, and the hardware and software are both extremely flexible when it comes to custom tweaks (which bodes well for future upgradeability). The Squeezebox works with everything from Windows PCs and Macs to Linux and Solaris machines, but supports a limited number of music file formats — if you've got lots of WMA or encrypted AAC files on your PC, Mac, Linux or Unix machine, take note.

TV Needed

Then there are the systems that require an external display — in other words, a television screen.

All the TV-enabled media servers I tried could stream music, video files and photos over the wireless network. They could also display a photo or a slideshow from your digital photo collection while music was playing — very cool, especially if you have to have your television on anyway. It's a handy way to revisit all those digital photos on your hard drive, and it means you can probably stop buying and storing those bulky paper photo albums.

Still, media gateways that tie in to a TV are a double-edged sword. On one hand, they let you stream both audio and visual content through a device that costs about the same as an audio-only gateway, so you're getting a lot more features bundled in for the same price. But you also have to have your TV running in order to select songs and control the playback. That means your television set is going to be on whenever you're listening to music, which in my case is a lot. That'll run up your electricity bills over the course of a year, and that bill could get a lot bigger if you have a widescreen TV. Replacement bulbs for projection televisions cost hundreds of dollars, and plasma screens have a nasty tendency to get a ghost image burned into their screens if something like a seldom-changing menu is displayed for long periods at a time.

Video-capable media servers typically require a fast WiFi connection, too. The audio-only units I tested ran fine on plain old 11-megabit-per-second 802.11b WiFi, but all the video-enabled receivers either strongly suggested or outright required a 54 Mbps WiFi connection (usually 802.11g, but a few worked with 802.11a as well). This means that if you have an 802.11b wireless gateway/router at the core of your home network, you'll have to update it to get the most out of systems that tie into your TV as well as stereo.

This point is of crucial importance if you already have a WiFi network, even a new one. Audio-only units typically run on 802.11b WiFi, which means they also work with the faster 802.11g standard (it's backwards compatible). The new 802.11a standard isn't backwards-compatible with 802.11b, so if you have a newer 802.11a access point or gateway/router, you'll have to make sure you buy a streaming server that works with that particular type of WiFi network. All the video systems I tried supported 802.11g, but only a few had dual-standard radios that also worked with 802.11a networks.

Adding a TV screen to the mix gives your streaming server a lot more entertainment potential. With every unit I tried, the video quality was excellent. But look for a unit that has both coaxial (RCA-type) outputs and S-Video outputs. The RCA jacks allow a streaming device to work with any TV, but the S-Video port located on most new TVs will give you much higher image quality. This is especially important when viewing menus, because a TV screen's resolution is much lower than that of a computer monitor, and text will tend to shimmer a bit if you're connected through a coaxial plug. If you connect via S-Video, though, the text is usually much crisper and easier to read — important when you're perusing menus of song, photo or video files.

SMC's EZ-Stream Universal Wireless Multimedia Receiver is one of the most affordable devices for streaming multimedia content wirelessly from your PC to your home theatre. The remote is easy to use and has some time-saving shortcut keys. The video is crisp and the device can stream Internet radio stations live from your PC to your stereo — although until the company delivers a promised software update, configuring the menu of Internet radio stations is a clumsy and difficult process. The EZ-Stream also ties into third-party software instead of a package specially built and integrated with the player, and supports a limited number of music file formats. But setup is a breeze, and it supports several 802.11 wireless standards.

The Rolls Royce of streaming media systems is Prismiq's MediaPlayer. It has a PC Card slot so that you can add your own WiFi card, rather than a built-in radio like other players. This increases the cost, but means you can upgrade the player as faster WiFi radio standards are released in the future. It ships with a remote control but also has a full wireless keyboard as an option. The keyboard is a must-have, because besides playing audio, video and photo files, this unit lets you surf the Web, do instant-message chat and check Internet e-mail on your TV via your PC's Internet connection. If you're looking for a way to link your PC's content and Internet capabilities to your home theatre system, this is one of the most comprehensive systems available — and one of the easiest to operate. The streaming audio and visual quality is lovely, and the menu system is excellent — it's clear, simple to operate, and Prismiq is the only vendor to include a way to tweak the display's contrast and brightness through the player, rather than altering your TV's actual picture settings (which can affect how TV programs look).

Amoisonic's Net DVD Player adds a different twist to the AV-component equation. Instead of producing a standalone player, the company built a streaming media server into a DVD player. There's a PC Card slot on the back of the unit to add a WiFi card (like the Prismiq MediaPlayer) for upgradeability. The DVD player and streaming media server's capabilities mesh beautifully, and the hardware is easy to use and supports a variety of audio/visual file formats. It also takes up less space in your entertainment unit than adding a standalone multimedia streaming receiver.

This is the approach I think most vendors will adopt in time. You'll buy your streaming media player built into an amp or video player, because once the technology goes completely mainstream — and again I'm betting it will — a wireless gateway will add lots of features at little cost to audio/visual components. In the meantime, though, adding a separate component is a viable way to go and it doesn't lock you into a certain wireless networking system for the life of an audio-visual component — important, since the media-streaming gateway market is still so new and has some maturing to do.

A few more things to watch for

Whether your media server is TV-enabled or an audio-only model, look for a unit with coaxial and/or optical digital outputs. All the units I tested came with RCA stereo jacks, but most had digital outputs to allow for multi-channel surround sound, too. Of course, you'll also need a digital input on your stereo's amplifier to take advantage of this kind of connection.

The remote is another thing to look closely at. It's the way you interact with the system, so it's got to have lots of shortcut buttons to things like playlists, along with an easy way to input words for music and media searches. Otherwise, using the streaming music player is going to be a chore.

Hardware design is important, but the PC software package is a crucial element of a streaming media system. There's really not much to the hardware when you come right down to it, other than the style of the box — they all contain a WiFi card, a remote control system, audio outputs and sometimes a video link. But the software is the key to setting everything up, making it work, and managing your media collection, and not all software packages are created equal.

The biggest weakness is in the area of creating playlists from your song collection. For some reason, every vendor except Creative has convoluted processes for making a simple playlist. Most of the time, the problem cropped up because the media server software was simply paired with a third-party generic player, such as MusicMatch. If the playback, music catalogue management and media server aren't integrated, you have to jump through some hoops to get everything to work, including specifying where playlists are stored on your system and that type of thing. If you're not comfortable tinkering with software file settings to get everything working, I'd strongly suggest getting a streaming media system for which the hardware maker has made its own software package.

Recommending a particular player based on software is difficult, though, because the devices are all so new and the makers are furiously releasing updates and improvements. What was hard to use in my tests may be easy in the next update. In short, a bit of research done at the time you come to actually buy a player, delving into what the software can do and how easy it is to use, is crucial with this type of product.

And while some media server software can support multiple players all pulling different audio streams from the computer simultaneously, others can only handle one player per PC. Some can stream music to several receivers at the same time, but it's the same stream of music — like a radio station broadcasting one signal to many receivers. If you have a large home where several people could want access to tunes in different rooms at the same time from the same PC, and if they're unlikely to agree on what to listen to, your best bet is to look for a system that supports multiple receivers.

As I've said several times in this column, streaming media servers/home multimedia gateways are a brand new type of product, and each model on the market now has particular strengths and weaknesses. Even so, they're all surprisingly solid and "mature" for new products — they're leading-edge without the nasty bleeding-edge element of brand new technology, which is unusual. There's already lots of competition out there, too, which suggests to me that it's going to be a product category that will go through some very fast evolutionary changes. This is all great news for the consumer — you can take your pick from a number of really useful and attractive first-generation streaming systems now, or wait a bit and they're only going to get better.

December 13, 2003 at 12:22 AM in Internet evolution | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

December 12, 2003

Net telephony gains popularity

Globetechnology

Its difficult to believe the results of this report, because I just don't sense it in my own experience. But if true, then we have a significant change occuring in how telecommunications are being managed.

Net telephony gains popularity: Report
Associated Press

NEW YORK — About 13 per cent of international voice traffic is now carried by Internet telephony, the low-cost, feature-rich technology lately being introduced to consumers.

Although less than one-fifth of 1 per cent of U.S. phone lines use a "Voice over Internet Protocol" phone service such as Vonage, the technology is making huge inroads behind the scenes, in long-distance networks and at big companies, according to a new report by TeleGeography.

The 13 per cent of global phone traffic that analyst Stephan Beckert estimates is now transported via voice over IP accounts for nearly 24.5 billion minutes a year. In 2002, voice over IP's share of international traffic was 10 per cent; it was 4 per cent in 2000.

TeleGeography said its research "suggests that VoIP can transform a century-old business in just a few years."

December 12, 2003 at 11:17 PM in Internet evolution | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

On-line spending jumps 35% despite security concerns

Globetechnology

eCommerce spending is getting significant despite apparent reservations about seucrity.

On-line spending jumps 35% despite security concerns

By RICHARD BLOOM
Globe and Mail Update

The amount of money spent on-line by Canadians rose sharply last year, even though the vast majority of shoppers continue to have ''reservations'' about sending their banking information over the Internet, according to data compiled by Statistics Canada.

In its annual study on household e-commerce, Statscan revealed Canadians spent more than $2.4-billion on-line in 2002, up 35 per cent from $1.8-billion the year before.

The number of people that shopped on-line also grew, with about 2.8 million Canadian households ordering items via the Internet compared with 2.2 million a year earlier, Statscan said.

"The $2.4-billion in orders placed over the Internet represents only a tiny fraction of the $656-billion in total personal expenditure in Canada last year," Statscan noted.

"However, the new figures confirm that households are increasingly using the Internet as a method of purchasing products from Canadian and foreign vendors."

Reading materials was the most-popular category of purchases, as shoppers ordered items from sites such as Indigo.ca, the e-commerce arm of Toronto-based Indigo Books & Music Inc., and Amazon.ca. The Canadian arm of Internet stalwart Amazon.com Inc. was launched in the summer of 2002. About 27 per cent of on-line purchases involved books, magazines or newspapers, the report said.

Travel sat in the No. 2 spot -- leapfrogging the clothing, jewellery and accessories segment -- garnering 18 per cent of all purchases, up from 14 per cent in 2001.

Clothing, jewellery and accessories, which was No. 2 in 2001, came in just under 18 per cent while computer hardware was 14 per cent.

But despite the surge in spending, Canadians remain uncertain about e-commerce.

"More than three-quarters . . . indicated that they were concerned, or very concerned, about financial transactions conducted over the Internet, the report said."

Other highlights of the report:

For every $10 spent on-line, $6.36 was spent on Canadian websites.

The average amount spent per household was $876, with an average of $146 per order.

Ontario made up 49 per cent of the $2.4-billion total, up from 42 per cent in 2001; B.C. followed in second place, doling out 18 per cent of the national total.

December 12, 2003 at 09:40 PM in eCommerce | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

MasterCard selects vendors for PayPass roll-out

finextra news: MasterCard selects vendors for PayPass roll-out

12 December 2003 - MasterCard has selected technology from Amtel and On Track Innovations (OTI) for its PayPass card scheme, in a first step towards large-scale production of contactless chip payment cards in the US.

MasterCard has signalled its plans to incorporate contactless chip technology in its debit and credit cards following successful trials of PayPass in Orlando, Florida. The new solution, in which consumers tap or wave their cards at specially equipped merchant terminals, proved ideal for quick payment environments where speed is essential, such as fast food restaurants, gas stations, drug stores, supermarkets and movie theatres.

MasterCard PayPass functions using a secure contactless microprocessor chip and an antenna. Atmel has been selected to supply the secure contactless microcontroller and has partnered with OTI to provide the contactless solution expertise including the operating system, application support and inlay technology.

The contactless chip used is an 8-bit secure microcontroller from Atmel's AT05SC product family, currently used for a variety of banking applications. The chip features 40KB ROM, 2KB EEPROM, hardware DES and is compliant with lSO-14443B and ISO-7816 industry standards. Atmel and OTI provide the chip in both a contactless module form and in an inlay form, for ease of card embedding by suppliers.

December 12, 2003 at 07:24 AM in Smart Cards | Permalink | TrackBack (99) | Top of page | Blog Home

December 11, 2003

Learning Lessons About Overseas Support

New Economy: Learning Lessons About Overseas Support

Learning Lessons About Overseas Support
By LAURIE J. FLYNN

Published: December 8, 2003

ELL'S recent decision to direct some customer service calls to help desks in the United States, rather than to its call center in Bangalore, India, shows how companies with customer support operations overseas are having to tread a fine line with their clients, some of whom are still surprised to talk to technicians on a different continent.

To analysts and consultants, the outsourcing of technology jobs is a trend that will only grow. In Dell's case, some of its most coveted business customers complained to management that Indian technical support workers relied too heavily on scripted answers and were unable to handle more complex computer problems. While most questions phoned in by home computer users tend to be fairly straightforward - like how to update software or install a wireless adaptor - greater expertise is needed to respond to corporate network problems.

A spokesman for Dell, Barry French, said the company was responding to concerns from business customers when it decided last month to route calls from many large business customers to American call centers, though he maintained that it would not be sending fewer calls over all to its operation in India.

"We just flipped a switch," he said, explaining that some consumer calls that had been handled by domestic call centers would now be sent to India.

"What companies are finding is that offshore can be good for generic, commodity services," said Howard Rubin, executive vice president of the Meta Group Inc., a consulting firm. "Corporate customers have problems very local to their applications and very specific to their companies."

Analysts say that along with skill considerations, some companies may be worried about criticism from labor groups and some customers who object to sending jobs overseas. Governments are under particular pressure. This year, half a dozen states are considering that workers hired under state contracts be American citizens or documented workers.

Stephen Lane, research vice president for information technology services at the Aberdeen Group in Boston, said, "There is a backlash and it's building, particularly in sectors like information technology that is still being hard hit by the economy."

Clearly, information technology workers will face more difficulty as technology jobs move to cheaper labor markets abroad. According to a new survey by IDC, a market research company, nearly a quarter of information technology services will be sent offshore by 2007, sharply higher than the 5 percent of technology services being handled offshore this year.

The first wave of offshore outsourcing began with the movement of customer-service call work to offices in India, Malaysia and Indonesia, but American companies are also beginning to send back-office work, like the processing of forms, abroad as well.

While the outsourcing of technical service jobs is reminiscent of the movement of manufacturing jobs overseas in recent decades, analysts say the difference is that the change in the technology industries is occurring faster. And the jobs that are beginning to leave are considered white-collar jobs that have traditionally been protected from competition with foreign workers.

"Companies are getting more aggressive about it," said Chris Disher, an outsourcing specialist with the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. "The economies are straightforward - you get an $80,000 engineer for $12,000," he said, alluding to wages in India.

The challenge for the United States technology companies, according to industry consultants, is to distinguish between the tasks that can be effectively handled offshore and those that cannot. Some, like Dell, have learned that they need to be sensitive to the reaction of their customers.

"In times like these, your business is attached to customer sentiment," said Atul Vashistha, chief executive of NeoIT, a California company that advises companies on outsourcing to India. "It's primarily a question of market timing."

"There are truly some areas where complexities'' make sending work offshore difficult, Mr. Vashistha said. He recounted the experience of one client, a skateboard manufacturer with almost all its customers teenage boys, that found sending its support services overseas disastrous. The cultural nuances, and the constantly changing jargon of skateboarding, made it necessary for support calls to be handled by like-minded young American men. The company, which Mr. Vashistha declined to name, moved its support operations back to the United States last year.

By contrast, Scotiabank, a Canadian company, has kept its customer service operations in Canada, using technology to keep labor costs low. Higher customer satisfaction is worth the slightly higher cost, said John Parkinson, chief technologist for the Americas region at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, a consulting business that works closely with the bank.

Many offshore call centers are becoming more sensitive to the need to tutor workers in American customs as a crucial part of their training. Some workers in customer service jobs in Bangalore, for example, are being instructed to watch reruns of "Friends" to acquaint themselves with the cultural norms of American consumers, said Mr. Disher, the Booz Allen specialist. Trainees at many firms are also asked to read American newspapers and magazines, and are coached on American consumer habits.

Still, many callers do not seem to care where the help desk is. "Most of the time, they're just happy to be talking to a human," Mr. Parkinson said. "The vast majority of people are indifferent to whether it's an American if they're getting good service."

December 11, 2003 at 10:19 PM in eCommerce | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

At I.R.S., a Systems Update Gone Awry

At I.R.S., a Systems Update Gone Awry

Its hard to imagine an $ 8bn technology project.

At I.R.S., a Systems Update Gone Awry
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

Published: December 11, 2003

fter five years, a project to replace the Internal Revenue Service's aging file-keeping computer system with modern technology is so far behind schedule that the I.R.S. has told the prime contractor that unless it improves its performance by the end of the month, the government may have no choice but to fire it.

The project, which was expected to cost $8 billion when completed, has spent less than $1 billion so far, but it is already 40 percent over budget for what it has done, according to the I.R.S. Oversight Board, an independent watchdog body that Congress created in 1998.

Most taxpayers are younger than the computer system that the I.R.S. relies on to maintain its master files on individuals and businesses - all the records of who they are, where they are, their income, taxes paid, and the amounts they still owe or are owed as refunds.

The I.R.S. says it can still process returns and send out refunds on time, but its dependence on the 1960's-era Assembler and Cobol computer languages makes it difficult to investigate and resolve taxpayers' problems. Finding a record using the existing system can take a week; the new system is supposed to do the job in seconds.

"This is not about a one-time delay," said Larry Levitan, chairman of the Oversight Board. "Every single major project under way experienced a significant delay in time and overrun in budget - not two or three out of five, but five out of five. What we have here is a five-year track record of absolute consistency of cost overruns and delayed deliveries."

Big computer modernization projects often run late and cost more than anticipated. But even given the size of a system for the I.R.S. - one that must keep track of 200 million taxpayers and an increasingly complex tax code - the project is not succeeding, according to the board and to senior I.R.S. executives. The contractor, the Computer Sciences Corporation of El Segundo, Calif., must show improvement before the end of the year or face losing the contract, they said.

"If they don't produce we will make a change," Mark W. Everson, the I.R.S. commissioner, said of the contractor, even though experts at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh said that starting over with a new company would "probably result in different but no fewer problems along the way" - and delay the new system, which is called the Customer Account Data Engine, by two or three years.

"I would not enter lightly into rupturing the relationship," Mr. Everson said. "It is not a desirable outcome to abandon the relationship, but that does not mean we won't do that if we have to."

Paul M. Cofoni, president of the Computer Sciences unit running the project, CSC Federal Sector, said "in the early part of the program we did a poor job of defining" what needed to be done. But that was in large measure because the I.R.S. had no records of many changes to its old system, he said, and was reluctant to approve specifications for the new system until it could be sure the system would be able to find and display all the old information.

Mr. Cofoni said that many of those problems were being addressed.

"I can actually see daylight now," he said in a telephone interview. "We were given an action list of 46 items to be done in 30 days, and 85 percent of them were. We're at the point where we are starting to deliver, and when we're done people are going to say this is an outstanding, award-winning system."

In a report being distributed to the Bush administration and Congress, the Oversight Board said that it had not seen improvement in three years, and added that Computer Sciences' performance "must be monitored very closely and if significant improvements are not demonstrated quickly a change should and must be made."

Mr. Levitan of the Oversight Board said that the project was "losing credibility with Treasury, with the Office of Management and Budget and with Congress."

Five years into the project, some aspects are as much as 27 months behind schedule.

While the project to modernize the main file-keeping computer has encountered serious problems, other technology projects have worked, including a system developed by Computer Sciences that tracks the status of refunds and quickly routes calls from taxpayers to appropriate people to answer questions. Mr. Everson said this had allowed him to put more I.R.S. executives on the troubled project, although, as a result, the agency had to set aside ancillary modernization projects.

Mr. Levitan and others said that Congress needed to let the I.R.S. hire more executives who understand computers. Mr. Levitan said the agency relied too heavily on a single executive, Fred L. Forman, for computer management expertise. Dr. Forman, a former executive with American Management Systems, joined the I.R.S. in the middle of 2001 as an adviser to the modernization project and now serves as an associate commissioner.

"The I.R.S. needs 10 to 15 Fred Formans," Mr. Levitan said. "They have got some good people, but they don't have nearly enough to manage the program."

Major corporations often upgrade their systems as technology improves. The I.R.S. went four decades with the same system because two previous modernization attempts, the most recent in the mid-1990's, failed, costing taxpayers $4 billion. Much of the problem involves the risks associated with moving from one system to another. The current plan, begun in 1998, was to build the new system, import data and then turn off the old system.

But Charles O. Rossotti, the tax commissioner from 1997 through 2002, found that approach fraught with danger. Mr. Rossotti, the founder of American Management Systems, who was brought into the agency after the earlier modernization efforts failed, wanted to keep the old system going as data was moved to the new system in segments, beginning with the simplest tax returns, the one-page Form 1040EZ's, to insure reliable access to taxpayer records.

Mr. Levitan said that Mr. Rossotti brought technological coherence that has averted disaster. But he also says a collapse is inevitable without a new system, because the few people who could keep the old system functioning are close to retiring.

Delay in F.B.I. System

WASHINGTON, Dec. 10 (AP) - The F.B.I. is facing serious delays and cost overruns as it struggles to upgrade a computer system so agents can better share intelligence information and investigative files.

A key system component developed by the Computer Sciences Corporation, known as the Virtual Case File, was originally expected to be running by Saturday. Now, officials say, it will likely be several months into 2004 before agents have access to it.

In addition, the F.B.I. acknowledged that the price tag for the overall system could top $626 million, far above the original projected cost of $380 million.

The delay and higher cost figures were reported Wednesday by The Chicago Tribune.

December 11, 2003 at 10:11 PM in Web/Tech | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

AT&T Joins Fray for Cheaper Calls Through the Web

AT&T Joins Fray for Cheaper Calls Through the Web

The move to converge voice, with data (internet) continues as the telcoms realise they cannot count on the old business model with its fees and very high consumer costs. It will be interesting to see how the pricing models evolve in this new arena, and how the call quality evolves too.

AT&T Joins Fray for Cheaper Calls Through the Web
By MATT RICHTEL

Published: December 11, 2003

he battle over the future of telephone service will break wide open today with an announcement from AT&T that it plans to offer unlimited long-distance and local calling using Internet technology at a lower cost than conventional phone service.

The move, disclosed by industry executives close to the company, comes after announcements this week from Time Warner Cable that it would provide phone service in many areas where it offers high-speed Internet connections and television access and from the BT Group of Britain that it would offer Internet-based telephone service to its customers.

Together the moves highlight the sudden embrace by telecommunications companies in the United States and around the world of an initially derided technology that they now say is destined to shake the competitive foundations of an industry that generates hundreds of billions of dollars. For consumers, the shift is likely to mean lower prices and enhanced telephone features with about the same quality of voice delivery.

The emergence of Internet-based telephone calling is expected to ignite a regulatory and political firestorm among the major communications companies. The technology raises new privacy and security questions that regulators will have to grapple with. At the same time, it has the ability to shift or eliminate tens of billions of dollars in fees and taxes now paid by telecommunications companies.

In the case of AT&T, the company hopes to avoid at least some of the $11 billion in fees it now is required to pay to send traditional voice traffic over the lines of its local phone company competitors, which control access to millions of homes and businesses.

David W. Dorman, the chief executive of AT&T, is scheduled to announce the company's plans today in a speech in New York to Wall Street analysts.

Industry executives close to the company said that Mr. Dorman intended to refer to Internet-based phone calling as "the most significant fundamental new technology shift in telecommunications in decades."

The company has not yet disclosed a price for its new unlimited nationwide phone service, which will be available only to people who already have high-speed Internet access installed in their home or business. Still, the announcement by AT&T, the nation's largest long-distance company, shows the technology should quickly move beyond the handful of small companies that now deliver telephone calls as Internet traffic.

"This certainly is a significant event," Kate Griffin, an analyst with the Yankee Group, a market research firm, said of AT&T's impending move, noting it may well be the most aggressive effort yet by a major telephone company.

"We've been waiting for years for companies to announce their roll-out plans," she said. "Now everybody is jumping in."

The rush has been set off by sharp improvements in the technology that allows telephone calls to be carried over cable lines, and, in an unconventional and less expensive way, over existing telephone lines. What the technology does is change a voice signal into data — resembling the form used to deliver e-mail messages, digital music and Web pages — that can be sent across a variety of networks, including cable and telephone lines, satellite and even electric utility wires.

The Internet-based services allow customers to use their regular telephones, but plug them into boxes that translate voice traffic into Internet data packets. Callers would keep their existing phone numbers.

There are some substantial advantages to this technology. It not only is less expensive to install and operate, it can offer consumers the ability to manage telephone calls in new ways. For instance, through a computer, consumers could program their phone not to ring at certain hours, to forward calls to a mobile phone, and to allow certain numbers to ring through but not others.

The pricing for Internet-based calling is just emerging, but it is clear that the service will undercut traditional phone prices and should lead to lower prices in the future. Customers of conventional unlimited calling plans now pay about $50 to $70 a month, excluding taxes and surcharges. Time Warner Cable charges $49.95 for its service in Maine; Vonage, the largest Internet-based telephone provider, charges $35 for unlimited calling.

On the broadest level, the ability to turn voice messages into digital data cuts the tether between the existing telephone lines and calls. Once the voice signal becomes digitized, it can be sent over a host of different lines, opening competition to numerous telecommunications providers.

But the service has disadvantages, at least for now. Internet-based calling is not as reliable and it is subject to interruption in a power failure.

Vonage has around 75,000 customers in the United States. It sends its traffic over the public Internet, which has led to incidences of dropped calls, among other problems. AT&T expects to overcome most of those problems by relying on its own private data networks.

Still, the service has other drawbacks. For the time being, it would be available only to people who have high-speed Internet access in one of the top 100 metropolitan areas, either through cable or D.S.L. lines, a market that AT&T puts at 23 million households. That access is spreading rapidly and should be available to millions of other Americans soon.

Over all, there are only about 100,000 Americans who use Internet-based telephone access today, according to the Yankee Group.

But the entry of the biggest companies in the industry is giving rise to a major business and regulatory fight. At the core of the debate is the question of whether Internet-based traffic should be regulated and taxed.

For the major players, it is also a fight over the allocation of billions of dollars of access fees that telecommunications companies pay one another for access to one another's lines. Those fees are permitted as part of federal regulation of telephone calls.

Under AT&T's plan, it would continue to piggyback on a portion of the networks operated by the local phone companies. But it would be sending calls over that network in the form of Internet traffic, not traditional voice traffic. Signals sent as Internet traffic are not regulated by the government, and thus do not carry the same access charges.

The telephone companies are arguing that AT&T should have to continue to pay. "If we carry your traffic, you ought to pay for it," said Eric Rabe, a spokesman for Verizon.

This issue could well be decided by the Federal Communications Commission, which began hearings on the topic last week.

December 11, 2003 at 10:07 PM in Internet evolution | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Globalizing Internet Brings Unexpected Problems

Yahoo! News - Globalizing Internet Brings Unexpected Problems

Thu Dec 11,10:51 AM ET
By Bernhard Warner, European Internet Correspondent

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations (news - web sites)' push to transform the developing world into tech-ready nations could partly backfire, delegates to an IT summit aimed at bridging the "digital divide" said on Thursday.

The overwhelming consensus at the U.N.-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) summit this week is that bringing the Internet and telecoms innovations to the world's poor is a noble cause that needs embracing now.

But there are unpredictable consequences that also need to be considered, experts said.

"There are a number of non-trivial issues that come with overcoming the digital divide," said Alan Greenberg, a Canadian IT consultant who works with the World Bank (news - web sites) on programs aimed at bringing new technologies to the developing world.

"Security is one of them. Whether it be viruses or worms, or various forms of fraud, they will be coming to developing countries too. There are no barriers," he said.

The need for international measures to fight computer virus outbreaks and step up prosecution of "cybercriminals" has been a constant topic of the three-day event -- particularly among representatives of the developed world.

This cautionary note contrasts sharply with the pleas from heads of state in poorer countries for the West to urgently step up technological aid to developing countries.

THE NEW ELDERS

Bridging the gap between the technology "haves" and "have nots" is a crusade that began in the late 1990s, and this summit is testament to its slow but steady progress.

The U.N.'s ambition is to help eradicate poverty and create stable state democracies by using new technologies to improve access to vital information.

Poor communities from India to Nepal can report success stories of how the Internet has brought advances in farming, schools and healthcare.

But the march of technology has had some unforeseen social consequences too, as news written in languages incomprehensible to all but a few gets beamed in daily.

One Indian fishing village in the Tamil Nadu region that relies on the Internet for weather updates has one terminal for 7,000 inhabitants, said Rajamohan KG, an advisor for the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, a tech aid group.

Because the children have -- like everywhere else -- the greatest facility with the Internet, they often have access to information vital to the village's fishermen. "They are respected, like the village elders," he said. Others called the English-language-dominated Internet a potential threat if it fails to reflect the planet's diversity.

"I cannot fail to mention the importance of using the information society to maintain our planet's rich linguistic and cultural diversity," Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga told UN delegates in an address on Wednesday.

Other dignitaries used the occasion to urge software developers to embrace open-source software programs, or customizable computer applications that can be tweaked into a local language of configured for specific needs.

But open source software, while cheap or free to install, has its drawbacks, as one delegate from SchoolNetAfrica (www.schoolnetafrica.net) pointed out.

Sara Kyofuna, a spokeswoman for the group that is looking for a donation of a million PCs for the continent's classrooms, said open source software is too complicated for some schools to run, and, if something goes wrong, there are no support staff.

"Problems arise. We now know that if something works in Uganda, in Mozambique it will frustrate you to zero," Kyofuna said.

December 11, 2003 at 09:04 PM in Internet evolution | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Virginia Arrests Man for Spam E-Mail Under New Law

Yahoo! News - Virginia Arrests Man for Spam E-Mail Under New Law

Couple of interesting points here:
1) This guy is number 3 spammer in the world & I am sure we have all received emails from him.
2) Interesting stats:
- Roughly 50 percent of the world's Internet traffic passes through Virginia
- AOL now blocks up to 2.4 billion spams each day

Thu Dec 11, 4:59 PM ET
By Andy Sullivan

DULLES, Va. (Reuters) - Virginia authorities said on Thursday they had arrested and charged a North Carolina man for sending "spam" e-mail in the first use of a new state law that could bring penalties of up to 20 years in prison.

Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore said Jeremy Jaynes had been arrested earlier Thursday in Raleigh, N.C., on four counts of using fraudulent means to transmit spam.

Kilgore told a news conference that officials were in negotiations for the surrender of a second man, Richard Rutowski, on the same charges.

Jaynes and Rutowski are charged with violating limits on the number of messages a marketer can send and falsifying routing information. Both are illegal under the Virginia law that carries penalties of 1-5 years in prison and fines of up to $2,500 on each count.

The two sent more than 100,000 messages in a 30-day period this past summer touting penny stocks, low mortgage rates and software to erase Internet browsing records, Virginia officials charged.

Jaynes, who uses the alias Gaven Stubberfield, ranks as the eighth-worst spammer in the world, according to the anti-spam watchdog group Spamhaus. Neither man could immediately be reached for comment.

Although the suspects are based in North Carolina, Virginia is asserting jurisdiction because they sent messages through computers located in the state.

Roughly 50 percent of the world's Internet traffic passes through Virginia, home to big Internet companies like Time Warner Inc.'s (NYSE:TWX - news) American Online unit and MCI (Other OTC:WCOEQ - news).

"These criminals are harming businesses in Virginia, and that concerns us," Kilgore told the news conference at AOL headquarters in Dulles, Va., outside Washington.

Spam has grown from a minor annoyance to a major threat to the stability of the Internet, experts say, and now makes up more than half of all e-mail traffic.

AOL now blocks up to 2.4 billion spams each day, a company spokesman said.

At least 36 states have some sort of spam law on the books, and President Bush (news - web sites) is expected to sign the first national measure into law as early as next week.

Several Internet providers, including AOL and EarthLink Inc., have sued spammers for damages, and New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer charged a Buffalo man earlier this year with violating identity theft and forgery laws for sending spam. That charge could carry up to seven years in prison.

But Thursday's action was the first time an accused spammer was charged under specific e-mail laws, Kilgore said.

Some anti-spam activists have criticized the national bill because it would override tougher laws in states like California and Utah, which require online marketers to get explicit permission before sending e-mail.

Kilgore said Virginia's anti-spam measure, which went into effect on July 1, will not be affected by the national law.

Virginia's computer crimes unit would continue to pursue spammers. "They are major targets of my office and I will go after them one by one," he said.

Scott Richter, a bulk e-mailer who ranks No. 3 on Spamhaus's list, told Reuters he was not worried by the arrest because he said he does not break any laws.

"I'm happy to see law enforcement cracking down on people who use false headers and I wish they could get all of them," Richter said. He added that he sends large amounts of commercial e-mail but does not disguise routing information and takes pains to comply with Internet providers' policies.

"I was just at AOL's office a month ago," Richter said.

AOL officials declined to comment on their relationship with Richter or say whether he had visited their offices. "We are aware that he follows the legal developments (of anti-spam laws) very closely," AOL Assistant General Counsel Charles Curran said.

December 11, 2003 at 09:00 PM in Spam | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Government boost for open source

vnunet.com Government boost for open source

Boost for Sun Microsystems, as the British Government extend a pilot for running 500,000 desktops on Java. The deal is predicated on lower cost of ownership, as they hope to divert funds towards healthcare.

It will be interesting to see if that promise comes true.

The UK government has signed a contract with Sun Microsystems to extend its trials of open source software.
As part of the deal with Whitehall buying arm the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), Sun will run a series of pilots of its Java Desktop System in the New Year. The NHS is one of the public sector bodies taking part in the trial.

The plans complement a similar initiative launched by the OGC with IBM in October to test open source server software in nine departments, agencies and local authorities.

The OGC hopes that open source will open up the government IT marketplace to wider competition and offer significant potential for savings.

If open source is to be accepted as a viable alternative to proprietary software, it is essential it can effectively run the 500,000 desktop computers used by UK civil servants, according to the OGC.

The deal with Sun provides competitive pricing for the whole public sector, and offers alternatives such as thin clients.

"If successful, these trials could significantly extend the choice of IT systems in the government marketplace," said OGC chief executive Peter Gershon.

"The public sector is alive to the possibilities inherent in this innovative approach, which would allow us to free up resources for delivery."

Richard Granger, director general of NHS IT, said: "Our evaluation of the Java Desktop System holds the promise of allowing a greater share of NHS funding to flow directly towards improved levels of patient service."

December 11, 2003 at 08:25 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

December 10, 2003

Securing ATMs and Other Embedded Devices

Microsoft Monitor: Securing ATMs and Other Embedded Devices

This makes sense for most installs of Windows in a corporate environment. Everyting is turned off and only the parts required are activated.

December 09, 2003
Securing ATMs and Other Embedded Devices
According to a late-Monday Reuters story, here, August’s Nachi worm infected ATM machines running Windows XP Embedded. This latest news, while coming many months later, hits just as Microsoft tries to dig out from a nasty six months of Windows security problems.

But, the old news doesn’t necessarily reflect the current state of Microsoft’s security efforts. The news media likes to wag accusing fingers at Microsoft for security missteps. As I blogged last week, the news media is less likely to report Microsoft’s ongoing improved security efforts.

Some technical background: Windows XP Embedded is a modular version of Microsoft’s flagship operating system built for devices that run embedded processors, such as ATMs, cash registers or slot machines. Customers use a special installation process that essentially builds a custom-version of Windows for their device. They can load as many or as few features as needed, including adding or skipping components like Windows Media Player or Internet Explorer. Customers also can choose the extent of networking features that would allow the device to connect to corporate networks or the Internet. Windows XP Embedded devices connecting to other computers or the Internet are potentially susceptible to viruses the same way computers running the full version of the operating system might be. Like Windows XP, Microsoft provides regular security and maintenance updates for the embedded OS. You can find them here.

But, companies manufacturing Windows XP Embedded devices face unique problems distributing updates, which could increase security vulnerabilities during a virulent attack. That’s assuming the devices are configured to connect to other systems or the Internet; the risk approaches zero for devices that don’t connect to anything. In the case of ATM machines, the manufacturer supplies products to banks, which would distribute them to multiple locations. Those ATMs would still need to be managed, which moves into a sticky area of responsibility, depending on the financial institution’s contract with the device supplier or manufacturer. Banks might not recognize that the embedded operating system in their ATMs would need ongoing updates, as that might not have been the case when the devices ran IBM’s OS/2. But, Windows is the most popular operating system and a favorite target of hackers. At the same time, Microsoft is closing security vulnerabilities in Windows XP, which means ongoing updates.

Assuming someone is even taking responsibility to manage and update the ATM machines, distributing patches to devices scattered among different locations may not be all that easy. Assuming the devices are networked, patches might be distributed from a central location. The larger problem would be standalone ATMs, such as those found in shopping malls, which might connect over a dial-up connection to a remote network. These devices might need to be updated onsite by a technician.

There also is the larger question of how well the devices were configured in the first place. In the case of Nachi, which sought to remove the Blaster virus, Windows XP’s firewall should have stopped the worm; also a readily available patch would have prevented infection. Embedded devices shipping with the enabled firewall should have been safe from Nachi. I would recommend that companies shipping Windows XP Embedded devices to at least make sure there is firewall protection and even self-updating antivirus software.

The larger concern is this: Already, spammers are using consumer PCs to spread spam by way of Remote Access Trojans, or RATs. What happens when these RATs infect embedded devices that aren’t regularly checked, maintained or updated?

While Microsoft bears responsibility for making Windows as secure as possible, customers also must share responsibility. In the case of Windows XP Embedded, manufacturers have granular control over which features they choose to enable or not. In some ways, that gives them more control over security than PC manufacturers and buyers. That said, Microsoft may need to step up its educational efforts with embedded customers the same way the company has with consumers. Connected systems, regardless of operating system, will always be susceptible to attack--at least as long as there are criminals hacking into systems or releasing viruses.

My strong recommendation: As long as Microsoft continues to issue fairly regular security patches, the company needs to work more closely with embedded manufacturers and their customers to ensure they put in security software and patching mechanisms.

Posted by Joe Wilcox at December 09, 2003 10:19 AM

December 10, 2003 at 09:30 PM in Microsoft | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

High-Speed Internet Price Wins Versus Speed

Yahoo! News - High-Speed Internet Price Wins Versus Speed -Forrester

Good news for high speed users, as more folks make the move, and prices will come down to more reasonable levels.

I think "High Speed" is a misnomer, and "normal speed" would be a better name for it .... dial up should only be for trips away from home/ office.

High-Speed Internet Price Wins Versus Speed -Forrester
Tue Dec 9,11:08 AM ET

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - High-speed Internet customers care more about price than speed of service, according to a study by Forrester Research Inc., which could give telephone companies an edge over cable rivals in the race for customers.

As high-speed Internet service becomes more mainstream, the latest customers are more price sensitive than the techno-geeks who were the first to abandon dial-up modems for faster, always-on links to the Web, according to the study released on Tuesday.

"Mainstream consumers of broadband are more price-sensitive, lower-income, and less technology-optimistic than early adopters," wrote Forrester analyst Jed Kolko, who expects the importance of price to become more pronounced over the next several years.

High-speed digital subscriber line (DSL) services offered by telephone companies cost roughly $30 a month, compared with cable modem (news - web sites) services that cost $40 to $50 a month, the firm said.

Telephone companies such as SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE:SBC - news) also have run recent promotions that cut monthly rates to $26.95 in an effort to attract customers -- who are less likely to change carriers when they buy both phone and Internet services from one company.

To offset shrinking demand for local telephone services, carriers have pushed into newer markets, such as Internet and long-distance services. Carriers also hope their discounted packages of telephone, wireless (news - web sites) and data services will help thwart competition from cable television companies, which are creeping into the local telephone market.

Although DSL and cable services have enjoyed subscription growth of 35 percent and 31 percent, respectively, in the first three quarters of this year, Forrester said it expects future customers will lean even more toward DSL.

Still, cable television companies dominate the high-speed Internet market, with roughly 65 percent of subscribers using cable-modem-based services and 35 percent using telephone companies' DSL product, according to analyst Cynthia Brumfield at Pike & Fischer.

December 10, 2003 at 07:49 AM in Internet evolution | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Measures Access to the Information Society

Press Release on ITU World Telecommunication Development Report 2003

The full ITU press release on the "digital divide".

Press Release

International Telecommunication Union
For immediate release Telephone: +41 22 730 6039
Fax: +41 22 730 5939
E-mail: pressinfo@itu.int

ITU World Telecommunication Development Report 2003
Measures Access to the Information Society
Monitors Impact of ICTs on Global Development Goals
23 e-Indicators Included to Overcome the Digital and Statistical Divide
Geneva, 4 December 2003 — A lack of timely and comparable data on access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) is a major barrier to understanding the depth and causes of the digital divide or a gap in ICT access within and between richer and poorer nations. This is especially relevant given that global leaders are gathering next week for the first World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) to boost ICT access in underserved economies and forge ways so that powerful ICT tools can serve higher socio-economic goals.

"A close link exists between the digital and statistical divide", says Michael Minges, Head of the Market, Economics and Finance Unit at ITU and lead author of the report. Sixty per cent of all Internet user surveys are carried out in the world’s wealthiest economies, for example, while in the 59 poorest economies, not a single Internet user survey has been conducted. Countries that understand their ICT situation have also identified their strengths and weaknesses and adopted appropriate policies. In the Republic of Korea, for example, detailed analysis of computer and Internet use match the country’s rapid transformation into an information society.

To help governments overcome this data divide, the newly-released World Telecommunication Development Report (WTDR) offers the world’s first comprehensive toolkit on how to measure access to ICTs.

Useful examples that can guide governments seeking ways to harness ICTs tool for development are highlighted in the report, which was compiled by the International Telecommunication Union. It also shows how ICTs can foster achievement of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, or goals set by heads of state in 2000 to alleviate poverty, disease, hunger and other pressing social problems.

The report includes 23 e-ITU indicators based on findings from analyses, surveys and existing data (Table 1).
This basic statistics list provides a global norm for compiling comparable data to track the emerging global information society.

The report also highlights national digital divides that exist within businesses, schools and governments around the world. In Chile, 93 per cent of large businesses have Internet access, higher than the European Union average. But the corresponding figure in small Chilean firms is only 37 per cent. While Mexico’s top secondary schools provide one computer for every 12 students—better than Germany, where the figure is one to 14—the corresponding ratio for Mexico’s bottom quartile of schools is 59 students for every computer. Government access to ICTs—the sector where indicators are least standardized and available—shows similar disparities. In Peru, 81 per cent of central government agencies have access to the Internet while only 21 per cent of local government offices have such access.

ICTs: A tool to meet the Millennium Development Goals
ITU’s effort to identify indicators for measuring ICT access reflects a growing trend by the international community towards the use of transparent and concrete measures for monitoring country performance. The United Nations adopted a set of development targets, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000 to track progress towards the reduction of poverty, hunger and other pressing areas. Access to ICTs is included in the MDGs and pinpointed in Target 18: "In cooperation with the private sector make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communication."

"Of all the MDG targets, most progress was achieved with number 18 over the 1990s", says Esperanza Magpantay, a Statistical Officer at ITU and a co-author of the report. Fixed and mobile telephone networks (total teledensity) have grown more dramatically over the last decade across the developing world than in the entire period before that date. A standout is East Asia (which includes China), where total teledensity levels in 2002 were more than 24 times higher than ten years prior.

ICTs are powerful tools to meet the Millennium Development Goals. Numerous success stories circulate about ICTs dramatically improving and even saving lives. Such accounts raise awareness but also need to be translated into indicators to measure the impact of ICTs within and across countries. Although frameworks to determine the socio-economic benefits of ICTs are in their infancy, the Report proposes specific indicators that could help gauge the impact of ICTs on specific MDGs.

Take Goal 2 of the MDGs, which is to ‘Achieve universal primary education’. Based on Nepalese experience, the report suggests tracking the number of primary school teachers trained by ICT-based education. In 2001, 4’430 primary school teachers were trained in Nepal using radio-based distance education. Since the current student-to-teacher ratio is 40, an additional 176’616 primary school students could be enrolled through this initiative, thus boosting net primary school enrolment rate by 5.7 per cent. (For further examples see Table 2).

Measuring World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) goals
The draft action plan of the World Summit on the Information Society proposes ten goals focusing on ICT access, targeted at achievement by 2015. The report shows that many of these targets are, or could soon be met in terms of infrastructure availability. So, while most of the world’s inhabitants will, in theory, have access to most ICTs in the future, their ability to use ICTs will depend largely on knowledge and affordability. Around 95 per cent of the world’s population, for example, is covered by terrestrial radio broadcast signals, 89 per cent are covered by television service and 81 per cent of the world’s population have access to either a mobile cellular signal, a telephone in their home or live within walking distance of telephone service.

Harmonizing statistics and carrying out surveys
While some developed nations are racing ahead in information society measurement and tracking many factors including infrastructure, access and usage, most developing nations are struggling to produce even basic indicators. "The number of Internet users in most developing countries is usually based on government guesstimates or vague estimates", says Vanessa Gray, ITU Telecom Analyst and a co-author of the report.

When developing nations do conduct surveys, they are finding the number of Internet users has often been vastly underestimated. This is confirmed by recent Internet user surveys emerging from Latin America and the Caribbean. In Jamaica, for example, an Internet user survey pointed to 23 per cent of the population using the Internet, while the penetration rate before the survey was estimated at only five per cent. A similar phenomenon occurred in Peru, with a survey finding twice as many Internet users in the Capital (Lima) alone than had been previously estimated for the entire country. In Mexico, a recent Internet survey also found twice as many users than earlier estimates. These findings suggest that the digital divide may not be as wide in some places as earlier assumed.

While there are few Internet surveys for developing nations, richer nations are over-surveyed with often conflicting results. At least six Internet user surveys have been conducted in Spain, for example, producing figures ranging from over 50 to less than 20 per cent of the population being online. Internet penetration levels compiled by national statistical offices in Europe are, on average, thirteen per cent below those published by market research organizations.

Statistical compendium
The report also features the new ITU Digital Access Index (DAI) to measure the overall ability of individuals in a country to access and use new ICTs. The index uses eight indicators to rank 178 countries, which makes it the first truly global ICT index. The DAI can be used to benchmark country performance, measure the digital divide and track MDG target 18. See the release issued 19 November 2003.

A 100-page statistical annex covering a range of data for 182 economies in 20 statistical tables is also included in the report. These "World Telecommunication Indicators" include data such as the number of telephone subscribers, television households and Internet users. The report is also a practical toolkit with dozens of definitions and examples of indicators used to measure access to ICTs, plus examples of model surveys that governments can use to improve their statistical practices.

Finally, the report proposes several suggestions to overcome the statistical divide:

Countries can improve their statistical landscape by conducting surveys, compiling statistics and making them readily available. Australia, for example, has a "Measures of a knowledge-based economy and society" portal.
Government agencies involved in ICTs must work closely with national statistical offices. The communications ministry of Chile, for example, regularly compiles and produces analytical reports on data collected by the national statistical agency.
Transparency, clarity, timeliness and relevance are critical to harmonize statistics. Governments need to look to other countries and draw on existing experiences for questionnaires and surveys.
Developed countries and multilateral agencies should assist developing nations to compile ICT indicators by providing technical assistance and material resources. In 2004, ITU will hold several statistical workshops to provide such assistance. With five other international agencies, ITU also co-organized a statistical meeting on monitoring the information society just prior to WSIS.
Mechanisms to meet national monitoring targets should include the creation of a global information society portal, with links to country-level ICT statistics, model surveys and other relevant material.

Table 1: The e-ITU indicators
1
Percentage of households with electricity
13
Student to computer ratio

2
Percentage of households with a radio
14
Percentage of schools with Internet access

3
Percentage of households with a television
15
Percentage of government offices with Internet access

4
Percentage of households with a telephone
16
Percentage of government offices with a website

5
Percentage of households with a personal computer
17
Percentage of government employees with Internet access

6
Percentage of households with Internet access
18
Main telephone lines per 100 inhabitants

7
Percentage of population covered by mobile telephony
19
Mobile cellular subscribers per 100 inhabitants

8
Percentage of population that use a computer
20
Internet access tariff (20 hours/month) as percentage of per capita income

9
Percentage of population with access to the Internet
21
International Internet bandwidth per inhabitant

10
Percentage of businesses with computers
22
Broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants

11
Percentage of businesses with Internet access
23
Internet users per 100 inhabitants

12
Percentage of businesses with a website

Table 2: How ICTs can impact the MDGs
Selected examples

MDG
Indicator
Impact

Goal 1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Increase in income from ICTs
A 1999 study of Village Pay Phone (VPP) owners in Bangladesh found that profits from providing phone service constitutes 24% of these households’ total income.

Goal 2. Achieve universal primary education
Primary school teachers trained by ICT-based education
In Nepal, 4’430 people were trained as primary school teachers using radio-based distance education in 2001. Based on the current student-to-teacher ratio of 40, an additional 176’616 new primary school students could be enrolled once these teachers complete their training. This would raise the net primary school enrolment rate 5.7%.

Goal 3. Promote gender equality and empower women
Females enrolled in ICT-based education as percentage of total female tertiary enrolment
Open Learning Australia (OLA) offers higher education through a combination of distance and on-line teaching. In 2002, there were 6’129 students enrolled in OLA of which 56.9% were female. This is higher share than in overall higher education (54.9%). As a result of OLA enrolment, female tertiary school enrolment is 0.8% higher.

Goal 4. Reduce child mortality
Percentage of parents of small children using ICT-based health tools
Baby CareLink is a telemedicine program for parents of infants in the United States. A 1997-99 evaluation of 56 patients found those parents who used Baby CareLink reported a 10% higher quality of care than those who did not use Baby CareLink.

Goal 5. Improve maternal health
Percentage of maternal health workers using ICTs
A July 1999 evaluation of a maternal health project in the Tororo district of Uganda based on radio technology, found that maternal mortality dropped 50%.

Goal 6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Percentage of adult population adopting health lifestyle after exposure to ICT-based health information
A September 1998 evaluation of an entertainment-education radio soap opera on HIV prevention in St. Lucia found that condom imports rose 143% after the program was aired.

Goal 7. Ensure environmental sustainability
Teleworkers as percentage of total in employment
There are 38’700 teleworkers in Ireland (2.3% of total in employment). As a result, CO2 emissions from car use are 2% less. If all those in Ireland who say their job lends itself to teleworking (28% of total employment) could telework, there would be a 30% reduction in CO2 emissions.

For more information contact Mr M. Minges, lead author of the report.

December 10, 2003 at 12:46 AM in Internet evolution | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

U.N. agency says digital divide overestimated

Modbee.com | The Modesto Bee

A new report sugests the "digital divide" is less than originally thought. It suggests a large part of the issue is MIS and flaws in the reporting.

By JONATHAN FOWLER, Associated Press

Last Updated: December 4, 2003, 06:14:00 PM PST

GENEVA (AP) - The extent of the technology gap between richer and poorer nations may be smaller than believed because of flawed statistics on Internet use, the U.N. communications agency said Thursday.
The annual study by the International Telecommunication Union came a week before the start of the agency-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society, a gathering of world leaders in Geneva.

"Everyone's going to be talking about the digital divide, and how massive it is," said Michael Minges, co-author of the study. "Is the digital divide as big as we think? The answer is 'No.'"

Part of the Dec. 10-12 meeting is set to focus on ways to finance extending the Internet in developing countries, many of which support the creation of a special fund. Some industrialized countries object.

Even if participants agree to launch a fund, its effectiveness could be undermined unless the summit also focuses on ways to get accurate data from all nations, Minges said.

Currently, few of the world's poorest nations even try to find out how many Internet users they have, and their statistical offices, polling agencies and telecommunications bodies need more help to start looking.

"The number of Internet users in most developing countries is usually based on government guesstimates or vague estimates," said Vanessa Gray, another co-author of the 242-page World Telecommunication Development Report. "We're not saying that there's no more digital divide, but the main problem is that there is too little information."

In Jamaica, a recent study found 23 percent of the population used the Internet - almost five times more than authorities believed. In Peru, a survey found twice as many users in the capital, Lima, than had previously been estimated for the entire country.

Some countries have based their count of Internet users on the number of telephone subscribers. But in Mexico, surveys have found that while just 2 percent of the population are telephone subscribers, close to 70 percent say they have used the Internet.

To help harmonize data collection, the ITU has suggested a 23-point list of extra measurements. Statistics offices should include things like the percentage of households with electricity and the number of people who use computers in school or at work, as well counting telephone lines, it said.

December 10, 2003 at 12:42 AM in Internet evolution | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

December 09, 2003

Choosing the internet we want

TheStar.com - Choosing the Internet we want

Supreme Court ruling on copyright will affect our service from theWeb. By Richard Owens
Do Internet service providers (ISPs) communicate material found on the Internet to "the public" — their subscribers? Or are they merely passive conduits, like the telephone companies who enable our voice communications?

You would be forgiven for not having spent a great deal of time thinking about this issue. It is unlikely to loom large for even the most enthusiastic Internet user. Yet its significance is deep.

This is one of the issues before the Supreme Court of Canada as it considers the appeal of the Canadian Internet Providers (CAIP) vs. Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) case.

This case will also address whether Canadian copyright laws can apply to infringing material on computers outside the country, and whether or not ISPs are entitled to store popular web pages on their facilities to speed delivery. How these questions are decided will affect our Internet service and the future of the music industry.

In 1995, SOCAN asked the Copyright Board of Canada to certify a "tariff," known as Tariff 22, requiring ISPs to collect and pay royalties to SOCAN relating to the value of Canadian music copied over the Internet. The reasoning is essentially that, since ISPs make money from providing access to the Internet and the Internet is attractive because of music file sharing, ISPs logically should help bear the financial burden of stolen music.

The scale of industry losses resulting from digital pirating of music is a matter of debate. However, there can be little doubt that file sharing is having a significant impact on the music industry.

While levels of sympathy for that industry vary, the fact remains it has clear legal rights, which are being infringed with ease and on a vast scale, because of the Internet.

It is unfortunate that, under the blank media levy provisions in our Copyright Act, there is perhaps an argument that some of this copying is permitted. A successful certification of Tariff 22 would make more such copying clearly legal.

The tariff approach is the roughest of justice. It implicitly sanctions intellectual property rights violations in exchange for an opportunity to tax. This will not help respect for intellectual property.

Tariffs are in place in Canada so that the purchase of blank CDs, cassette tapes and other media requires a payment to the Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC).

Yet that collective has not yet been very successful at distributing the monies it has received to the artists who are supposedly entitled to them.

Experience with similar levies in Europe has not been better. Moreover, the tariffs themselves create economic disincentives to legitimate activity — non-infringing uses of blank media, and of the Internet.

Another tariff system — one that allows Canadian cable television systems to appropriate and rebroadcast television signals — was also unsuccessful in dealing with the challenges of the Internet.

Jumptv and iCrave tv each separately sought a tariff to permit rebroadcasting of television broadcast signals over the Internet. Jumptv was shut down for copyright infringement by a U.S. court; iCrave tv eventually withdrew its application.

Unsurprisingly, the existence of this so-called retransmission tariff creates friction with the entertainment industries, particularly when there appeared to be a risk that it could legitimately be used to allow material to be reused on the Internet.

In spite of these manifest deficiencies, the scale of the piracy problem is so telling that at a large, recent gathering of industry and legal experts at Harvard University Law School, sentiment seemed to run in favour of a similar system for the United States.

This was widely seen as the only way to allow the Internet to coexist with the entertainment industry.

In the eyes of many, however, it might be better than the spectacle of a blizzard of subpoenas issued against our youth for downloading songs.

Clearly, the threat of enforcement of copyright alone has not been enough to stop piracy. Implementation of international copyright treaties has been stalled in Canada for some time.

These treaties have resulted in U.S. laws that clearly protect ISPs in providing their services, and which toughen intellectual property laws (the Digital Millennium Copyright Act). While the wording of these laws has been criticized, they at least represent decisive and timely legislative action. Our laws have some catching up to do (perhaps laws will always be catching up to the Internet).

Laws alone, of course, are not the answer, though; effective and acceptable digital rights management technologies must play the crucial role in protecting intellectual property.

We are lucky to be expecting the guidance of the Supreme Court of Canada to difficult issues relating to the scope of ISP responsibility for copyright infringement.

Such guidance will add considerably to our ability to deal with these issues.

But, important though it is, the decision can do no more than tighten a few loose ends in a wondrously complex puzzle of rights, technology and policies.

We need a more vigorous debate about what sort of an Internet we want.

Whatever vision that is, it is unlikely to be entirely well served by our continued, slow adaptation of laws written before it existed.

December 9, 2003 at 11:55 PM in Internet evolution | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Move to Movable Type

Internet Changes Everything

Still some formatting of templates to go, but getting there. Over the next few days, will be finished, but meantime, any catgory or archive pages which look wierd, it'll be fixed soon.

December 9, 2003 at 06:55 PM in My Blog | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

US - Latest Gomez Internet Banker Scorecard

Latest Gomez Internet Banker Scorecard Reveals Accelerating Online Dynamism

Chris Musto, Gomez, Inc.
December 9, 2003

The Q4 2003 Internet Banker Scorecard saw the proportion of Scorecard banks offering online document delivery continue to rise, with 67% offering online check imaging as of the October 17, 2003 Q4 Scorecard deadline. Notably, several banks also launched account-based e-mail alerts and inter-FI transfer functionality. Here's a look at key Scorecard findings:

Citibank Regains Primacy

Citibank regained the top spot in part through the April 2003 introduction of check images, along with the roll-out of additional transfer functionality such as inter-FI transfers and a new on-time bill payment pledge. Bank of America vaulted into second place Overall in part due to the introduction of online statement delivery and real-time transaction synchronization between the Web and ATM channels.

Citibank's top finish for Overall Score came despite the bank losing its edge in Ease Of Use, where it dropped from first to fifth. The bank's offering is a mixed bag when it comes to usability. On one hand, the bank receives credit for steps that make it easier for those applying online, and provides a useful summary of account information on the secure homepage along with shortcuts to various tasks. On the other hand, the bank suffers in the Design subcategory of Ease Of Use due to lapses in the overall site architecture.

E*Trade - A Fast-mover Once Again

After overhauling its offering since the Q2 '03 Scorecard, E*Trade tied with SouthTrust for the largest movement in Overall Score. Each bank gained eight spots, with E*Trade moving from fifteenth to seventh and SouthTrust moving from twenty-seventh to nineteenth. E*Trade, which has made its offering easier to use, also introduced online check imaging and bi-directional inter-FI transfers for banking customers. Citizens & SunTrust Return

This edition of the Scorecard sees the return of Citizens (twenty-seventh Overall) and SunTrust (twenty-fourth Overall). SunTrust's offering now features check and deposit slip imaging as well as statement imaging, though, unusually, SunTrust has separated its statement delivery into a separate online service, which in turn can be used as a launching point for online banking and other services from SunTrust and its partners.

As these moves suggest, banks continue to evolve their online offerings at a fast pace. Indeed, since the Q4 Scorecard deadline, Bank One merged its online banking and brokerage offerings, while Citibank rolled out a program of activating checking accounts for new customers without first receiving a signature card. Fleet and National City, meanwhile, each rolled out online check imaging after our deadline.

As banks continue to refine and sometimes overhaul their offerings, there is increasing fragmentation in what Scorecard banks offer. Increasingly, banks are creating offerings that reflect business goals particular to the bank, such as what Citibank has done in prioritizing cross-border intra-FI transfers and what E*Trade has done with the promotion of two-way inter-FI transfers on the account management homepage.

Indeed, E*Trade Bank is one of several banks that will be interesting to watch for its use of the online offering to further the bank's specific business goals. E*Trade Bank has grown its deposits many-fold since its acquisition of Telebanc in January 2000. While the bulk of deposits have poured into accounts other than checking accounts, E*Trade appears interested in growing its checking business. Not only does the bank now offer online services, such as check imaging and a check register, focused on checking customers, but CEO Mitch Caplan recently announced that E*Trade will be converting its ATM fleet to deposit-taking machines, taking advantage of recent check imaging legislation to scan items at the point of deposit.

Other banks that bear watching include Wells Fargo, which has created an increasingly dynamic online delivery strategy featuring pre-approved offers and other targeted cross-sells, and Charter One, which has announced plans to move to a platform that will tightly integrate aggregation and inter-FI transfers.

Another bank to keep an eye on is First National Bank of Omaha. The bank, which shows a strong bias towards in-house development and operations management and competes with much larger players in the co-branded credit card market, has dramatically improved an offering that features increased support for its credit card and retail bank customers.

Gomez expects the dynamism shown in this and previous editions of the Scorecard to continue, as those banks not now offering online document delivery add it. Moreover, we expect banks to continue moving off the Web site through account-based alerts, and to increasingly tailor online delivery to their business goals for each individual customer and prospect.

Chris Musto is vice president of research at Gomez, Inc., an Internet benchmarking and improvement strategies firm in Waltham Mass. He can be reached at cmusto@Gomez.com.

December 9, 2003 at 06:14 PM in Financial Services | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Anti-Spam Laws Too Feeble, Say Campaigners

Yahoo! News - Anti-Spam Laws Too Feeble, Say Campaigners

Tue Dec 9, 6:56 AM ETAdd Technology - Reuters Internet Report to My Yahoo!

By Bernhard Warner, European Internet Correspondent
LONDON (Reuters) - Anti-spam crusaders are stepping up criticism of a host of new national laws they say will do little to stop the torrent of junk e-mail messages that promise a better sex life and riches to share with Nigerian exiles.

New legislation, set to be enacted most notably in Britain and the U.S. in the coming weeks, is the latest step by lawmakers to define permissible e-mail communications between marketers and consumers.

But critics say that by allowing some forms of mass e-mails -- such as in the United Kingdom where the new legislation permits the spamming of corporate e-mail users -- the laws will generate confusion and open up the floodgates for abuse.

"The whole problem with these laws is that they are geared to spammers being honest and respecting laws. And of course there are no honest spammers -- the whole profession is based on deceit," said Steve Linford, founder of anti-spam organization The Spamhaus Project.

The UK law, which goes into force on December 11, has also been criticized for carrying what critics call a low $8,700 fine for offenders who send messages to consumers without their consent.

"This is a bargain for spammers," said Linford. "Some of them make 20,000 to 30,000 pounds ($34,798 to $52,197) per week."

With unwanted messages accounting for at least half of all e-mails sent, fighting spam has risen to the top of most developed countries' legislative agendas this year.

Spam has gone from a nuisance to a security concern too as a new wave of nasty missives pack a computer virus program capable of taking over an unsuspecting computer user's PC. Police say the new tactic has triggered a cyber crime wave.

The biggest criticism is that a patchwork of new national laws will force spammers further underground. The nuances of technology enable them to disguise their location to make it appear as though their messages originated in countries that have not criminalized the practice, such as the Caribbean or Eastern Europe.

U.S. CONCERNS, EUROPEAN LAGGARDS

A new federal law for the United States, the undisputed spam capital of the world, could go into effect before year-end. It too has attracted critics who say it pre-empts stronger state laws that would have permitted individuals to sue spammers in civil cases.

Europe, meanwhile, has a mixed scorecard.

In September, Italian lawmakers imposed tough new regulations that call for fines of up to $110,100 and a maximum prison term of three years. In Sweden, a draft law would impose a fine of up to $684,300.

But nine member states, including France and Germany, have failed to meet an EU deadline of December, 2002 to outlaw spam. Last week, the EU threatened to fine laggard nations.

The move against spam has to be a global initiative, industry observers say.

"EU legislation against spam is a step in the right direction, but with most unsolicited e-mail coming from Asia and the US, it is like putting a windbreak in the path of a hurricane," said Colin Gray, European managing director of Atlanta-based e-mail security company CipherTrust Inc.

It's a costly storm. Gray estimated spam costs European businesses $3.04 billion per year.

December 9, 2003 at 10:34 AM in Spam | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

December 07, 2003

WinFS - a definition

WinFS

WinFS
"WinFS" is the code name for the next generation storage platform in Windows "Longhorn." Taking advantage of database technologies, Microsoft is advancing the file system into an integrated store for file data, relational data, and XML data. Windows users will have intuitive new ways to find, relate, and act on their information, regardless of what application creates the data. Also, "WinFS" will have built-in support for multi-master data synchronization across other Longhorn machines and other data sources. The platform supports rich managed Longhorn APIs as well as Win32 APIs.

December 7, 2003 at 09:26 PM in Web/Tech | Permalink | TrackBack (27) | Top of page | Blog Home

The Dean Connection

The Dean Connection

The Dean Connection
By SAMANTHA M. SHAPIRO

Published: December 7, 2003

Last February, Clay Johnson, 26, took a trip from Atlanta to the Dominican Republic to visit his girlfriend, Merrill, who was studying linguistics at a university there. He carried an engagement ring in his pocket, but when he arrived, he said, Merrill was cold and distant, and he never gave it to her. Before he left, Merrill told him that she didn't love him anymore.

He returned to his apartment in Atlanta, where he worked as a freelance technology consultant. His place was also serving as a storage space for Merrill's possessions, in boxes, and as a temporary home for her two cats. He was allergic to the cats. He stripped to his underwear, lay on the floor in a fetal position and remained there for days, occasionally sipping from an old carton of orange juice. ''I was completely obliterated,'' he says. ''I didn't know something like that could actually cause physical pain.''

Johnson's friends kept calling, trying to think of something that would get him out of the house. Finally they hit on one: Howard Dean.

Johnson had been talking about Howard Dean for about a year. He had never voted, but after his mother developed cancer and could no longer afford her health insurance, he became interested in politics. When he looked at the various Democrats running for president, he felt drawn to Dean right away. He liked the health care plan that Dean had instituted in Vermont and his forthright style, and later appreciated Dean's clear opposition to the war in Iraq.

At his friends' urging, Johnson attended a Dean gathering last spring. Sixty people showed up, more than could fit in the coffee shop that Meetup.com had selected for them. So they gathered in the parking lot instead. Everyone took a turn saying why he or she liked Howard Dean. Someone handed out Dean stickers, and then people broke up into twos and threes to chat. Johnson spent most of the meeting talking with a young Duke graduate named Julie Reeve, who, he says, was ''really smart.'' She was also, he says, ''the most beautiful girl I have ever seen.''

Johnson didn't think he had much of a chance with Julie Reeve, but at least he had a reason to get up off the floor. He threw himself into the Dean campaign. He began knocking on doors, reading books on precinct districting and setting up databases. He saw Reeve at campaign events, and even went out with her a couple of times apart from their campaign activities, but he couldn't tell if she liked him.

In May, the Dean campaign posted a notice on its Web site saying that it needed a programmer familiar with social-network software to work in the headquarters in Burlington, Vt. Johnson quit his job, put the money from Merrill's engagement ring toward a Volkswagen Passat and headed out to Burlington.

ohnson's story is actually one of the more conventional at the Dean headquarters; he arrived with a paying job that he had secured in advance. Alex Perkins, a 32-year-old policy coordinator for the campaign, quit his job, sold his house in Seattle and showed up at the campaign office offering to work free. Austin Burke, 22, who researches the other candidates, drove from Phoenix -- it took him six days -- and then just wandered around Burlington asking where the Dean office was. Matthew Bethell, 20, a British university student, left London and took the year off to volunteer full time in New Hampshire, even though he can't vote in American elections.

Long before Howard Dean was considered a plausible candidate for president, he seemed to emit some sort of secret call that made people, many of them previously apolitical, drop everything and devote themselves to his campaign. Even after the campaign's 45 official intern positions were filled, people kept showing up -- mostly young people, but also senior citizens in R.V.'s and middle managers from Microsoft.

At the headquarters of most political campaigns, there's a familiar organizational structure: a group of junior employees carrying out a plan devised by a bunch of senior advisers. The Dean headquarters feels different: a thin veneer of Official Adults barely hovers above a 24-hour hive of intense, mostly youthful devotion. When the adults leave, usually around 10 p.m., the aisles between cubicles are still cluttered with scooters and dogs; when they return in the morning, balancing just-microwaved cinnamon buns and coffee, they climb over pale legs poking out from beneath their desks and shoo sleeping volunteers off their office couches.

For each person who decided to arrive unannounced at the Dean office, dozens more stayed home and appointed themselves director of one unofficial Dean organization or another. There are now 900 unofficial Dean groups. Some of the activities undertaken on behalf of Dean qualify as recognizable politics: people hand out fliers at farmer's markets or attend local Democratic Party meetings. Others take steps of their own invention: they cover their pajamas with stickers that say ''Howard Dean Has a Posse'' and wear them to an art opening, or they organize a squadron to do ''Yoga for Dean.'' They compose original songs in honor of Dean. (About two dozen people have done that; another man wrote a set of 23 limericks.) They marry each other wearing Dean paraphernalia. Overweight supporters create Web pages documenting, in daily dispatches, their efforts to lose 100 pounds in time for Dean's election. One woman, Kelly Jacobs of Hernando, Miss., took it upon herself to travel around the Memphis area for 15 weeks, standing on a single street corner for a week at a time, to promote Dean. I saw a middle-aged man at a garden party in New Hampshire preface a question to Dean by saying he was associated with Howards for Howard. Dean nodded, as if the man had said he was with the AARP.

This national network of people communicates through, and takes inspiration from, the Dean Web log, or blog, where official campaign representatives post messages a few times a day and invite comments from the public. The unofficial campaign interacts daily with the campaign in other ways as well. When Jeff Horwitz, a full-time volunteer, needs help compiling the news articles that make up the staff's daily internal press briefing, he e-mails a request for help to a list of supporters he has never met, asking them to perform Internet news searches at certain times and then e-mail him the results. ''Ten people will volunteer to give me a news summary by 8 a.m.,'' Horwitz explains. ''People in California, which means they have to get up at 4 a.m.'' A number of campaign staffers are in regular contact with Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, 14, who lives in Sitka, Alaska. Growing up on a remote Alaskan island, Kreiss-Tomkins has become especially adept at finding pen pals and online friends, and he now uses that skill on behalf of the Dean campaign, recruiting supporters through the Internet and then sending lists of e-mail addresses to the campaign.

Joe Trippi, Dean's campaign manager, says the campaign's structure is modeled on the Internet, which is organized as a grid, rather than as spokes surrounding a hub. Before joining the campaign, Trippi was on a four-year hiatus from politics, during which he consulted for high-tech companies, and he can be evangelical on the subject of the Internet and its potential to create political change. (A team of Internet theorists -- David Weinberger, Doc Searls, Howard Rheingold -- consults for the campaign.) Trippi likes to say that in the Internet model he has adopted for the campaign, the power lies with the people at ''the edges of the network,'' rather than the center. When people from the unofficial campaign call and ask permission to undertake an activity on behalf of Dean, they are told they don't need permission.

The latest holy grail of the tech industry is the idea that people can fuse the virtual communities and digital connections of the Internet with real, human life. Investors are pouring money into Web sites and software programs that claim to perform this function, like Friendster, which lets users visually represent their real friend networks online, and Meetup.com, the site that has helped build the Dean campaign. Meetup.com takes its inspiration from books like ''Bowling Alone,'' by Robert D. Putnam, about the decline of American public life; its founders claim that the regular monthly meetings arranged through its site (gathering any group from Wiccans to dachshund lovers to, more recently, supporters of political candidates) can help heal the disintegration of the American community.

Techies since the 70's have waxed utopian about the computer's potential to change the way we relate to one another and to restructure power dynamics. And Joe Trippi, a veteran of several losing presidential campaigns, has tried to build a grass-roots base before, most successfully for Jerry Brown. Although it remains to be seen how significantly the Dean campaign can affect political participation, it has clearly shifted traditional party power, at least for the moment. Last January, the campaign had $157,000 in the bank and the open disdain of major institutions of its party. In May, the Democratic Leadership Council's chairman and president described Dean as a member of the ''McGovern-Mondale wing'' of the party and publicly declared that he was detrimental to the Democratic Party. By organizing its national network of Yogis, Howards, Dykes and Disney Employees for Dean, the campaign built an alternative to institutions like the D.L.C. Dean has raised $25 million, mostly through small checks -- the average donation is $77 -- and those checks have placed Dean at the top of the Democratic fund-raising pack.

Dean's opponents have begun to mimic the trappings of his campaign. Many of the Democratic candidates now have blogs. Even President Bush has one, though comments from the public -- an essential element of Dean's blog -- are not allowed. The Dean campaign tracks online contributions with the image of a baseball bat (at one point, the Web site added a new bat for every $1 million raised); shortly after the Dean campaign raised its first million dollars, John Kerry's campaign took up the Web icon of a hammer. But Dean's Internet campaign dwarfs those of his rivals. In the third quarter of 2003, Kerry raised in the vicinity of $1 million online; Dean raised more than $7 million. A typical post on the Kerry blog receives, on average, 18 comments, while Dean blog posts generally receive more than a hundred. The Dean Web site is visited with roughly the same frequency as the White House Web site.

There seems to be something in Dean's personality that inspires this sort of response. Although his spontaneous, unscripted manner has led some critics to label him as erratic, gaffe-prone and even mean-spirited, the young people at the Dean offices often compare the former governor to a favorite uncle, and speak tenderly about his frayed sweaters and raincoats. They think his jokes are funny. I watched one evening as Walker Waugh, a recent graduate of Williams College, sat wrapped in a blanket in front of a bank of televisions at the Burlington headquarters, laughing hysterically at footage of a 1993 Dean appearance on public access TV that he had been assigned to catalog. ''I'm sending this to all my boys,'' he said. ''They'll love it.''

Part of Dean's appeal is that he behaves in recognizably human ways. He talks with real emotion and seems to respond to events (if sometimes poorly) as they come. In this election season, Dean's responsive, even angry, voice has had political resonance. Many Dean supporters objected not just to the war in Iraq itself, but also to the Bush administration's failure to even maintain the appearance of listening to the massive protests and U.N. resolutions. By contrast, responsiveness is the essential sound of the Dean campaign. It is embodied not only in Dean himself, but also in the blog, which creates the impression of a constant dialogue between supporters and campaign staff, and in the organizing on the ground.

The campaign sees political involvement in the way ''Bowling Alone'' does, as related to participation in civic organizations -- to people getting together socially. People at all levels of the Dean campaign will tell you that its purpose is not just to elect Howard Dean president. Just as significant, they say, the point is to give people something to believe in, and to connect those people to one another. The point is to get them out of their houses and bring them together at barbecues, rallies and voting booths.

Dean supporters do not drive 200 miles through 10 inches of snow -- as John Crabtree, 39, and Craig Fleming, 41, did to attend the November Dean meet-up in Fargo, N.D. -- to see a political candidate or a representative of his staff. They drive that far to see each other.

I attended one meeting of a handful of Dean supporters in the basement of the public library in Hooksett, N.H. It felt as much like a support group as a political rally. As they did at Clay Johnson's meet-up in Atlanta, everyone went around the circle describing what drew them to Dean, usually in very personal language. Bob and Eileen Ehlers haltingly explained the problems their children, in their 20's, have with health insurance, while Tony Evans nodded sympathetically. No one was asked to volunteer at a phone bank, although people were asked to bring their friends into the campaign.

After the meeting ended, everyone lingered in the library to talk. Greg DeMarco, a computer salesman, told me, ''My wife and I have met more people in Hooksett through the campaign than we have living here.''

Eileen Ehlers agreed: ''I don't know what it is -- maybe that the town has no sidewalks and no physical center, just strips, but people just don't talk to each other like we do here. People come to Hooksett to sleep, and go to work somewhere else. But the brilliance of the campaign is that it is leaving behind a community.''

The official representative of the Dean campaign that night in Hooksett was Lauren Popper, a 24-year-old actress who temporarily left her boyfriend and career in New York City to work as an organizer for the Dean campaign in Manchester, N.H. She was motivated to volunteer for a weekend in part because she admired Dean's policy of having every new mother in Vermont visited by a state social worker, but she stayed for other reasons. Popper broke into tears several times while trying to explain what they were.

''The thought that he'll be president is a side effect,'' she said. ''This campaign is about allowing people to come together and tell their life stories.''

oward Dean's campaign headquarters in Vermont are housed in the new breed of suburban structure typical of the landscape Eileen Ehlers described. The small, newly minted office building is poised where the brick-lined streets, bike shops and diners of Burlington end and the highway strip begins. Although the office is near Lake Champlain and leafy hills lurching toward winter, it could be anywhere.

The software that is supposed to bridge the gaps in the contemporary landscape is maintained here by three often-barefoot boys. They frequently work through the night, as piped-in soft rock fills the empty lobby. When you ask them how long they've been working, they respond in increments like ''40 hours'' or ''three days, with naps.'' During these spans of time spent in front of the computer, they may at any given point be coding software, corresponding with Internet theorists and venture capitalists or just firing off instant messages to one another that say, ''Shut up.''

When Clay Johnson drove to Burlington, it was to work in this cubicle. He now happily perches, for longer hours and for less money than he made in Atlanta, in front of two enormous monitors whose background image is a photo of Howard Dean opening his arms wide to a crowd.

Johnson works with Zack Rosen, 20, who organized a group of programmers to invent software to help the Dean campaign while on his summer vacation from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After it was featured in Wired magazine, the Dean people recruited him to come to Burlington and work on it full time. The third man in the cubicle is Gray Brooks, 21, who has deferred his sophomore year at a small Southern Christian college to work for Dean.

The cubicle where Johnson, Rosen and Brooks work looks a lot like a dot-com start-up from the mid-90's: preternaturally pale-skinned young men, crazy hours and slightly messianic rhetoric. The men take turns sleeping in an easy chair with torn upholstery and appear to subsist almost entirely on donated food. A supporter sends over a peck of apples and cider doughnuts, and Brooks soon has seven apple cores piled by his desk; when Joe Trippi returns from dinner with a journalist, takeout containers of his half-eaten soup are deposited on Brooks's desk. Brooks augments this diet with pasta that he says he doesn't have time to cook. (''Try some,'' he says, holding out a piece of raw ziti. ''If it had salt on it, you'd think it was a potato chip.'')

Brooks, Johnson and Rosen are overseen, loosely, by Zephyr Teachout, 32, the campaign's director of Internet organizing. Teachout is a slight, freckled lawyer; she darts around the office in a pair of silver shoes with the balletic, boyish energy of Peter Pan. (''Have you seen how fast her hands move?'' Rosen asks. ''She'll click a mouse three times instead of once. I could watch her operate all day.'') Because she runs Dean's Web effort, Teachout finds herself keeping company mostly with the 21-and-under set. She lives with Rachel, 18, an intern. She says that Tim Singer, 17, a volunteer who is still in high school, was ''one of my best friends this summer'' and that Michael Whitney, 19, one of the founders of Students for Dean, now known as Generation Dean, is ''like a little soul mate.'' (''We even have the same haircut,'' she says, accurately, shaking her short shaggy hair out over her face.)

Teachout, sitting at the very edge of her seat, tells me that ''the revolution,'' as she calls it, has three phases; the first is Howard Dean himself, the second is Meetup.com and the third is the software that Rosen, Johnson and Brooks work with: Get Local, DeanLink, DeanSpace. ''DeanSpace,'' Teachout says, ''is the revolution.''

Brooks oversees the Get Local tool. He drove from Alabama to Burlington at the beginning of last summer, after hearing Dean on the radio just once. He researched Dean's policies, and he liked them a lot. ''But the strongest thing was that I could tell he is a good man,'' Brooks says gravely. ''And if a good man were president, it would change everything in ways we can't even imagine.''

Since he was 6, Brooks has been either a Cub Scout, a Boy Scout or an Eagle Scout -- he emphasizes that they are distinct institutions -- and he has the demeanor of a handsome, sturdy golden retriever puppy. When he rides his bicycle through Burlington's silent streets on his way home, he always notes the hushed face of the church he passes. Brooks doesn't have time to go to church right now, he says, and he doesn't expect to until Dean is in the White House. He misses church, and he misses his friends in Alabama, and he misses the paying summer job he gave up at Glacier National Park in Montana and the way the night sky looks there. But he knows he is doing the most important thing he could be doing. ''Even when I am being lazy, it is important,'' he tells me, ''because I am recharging my strength to work more for Howard Dean.''

Get Local is a program that lets supporters organize local events independent of the campaign. The software allows supporters to contact one another and plan gatherings, as well as download fliers they can customize with phrases like ''Dean, this spud's for you.'' Brooks monitors the efforts, making sure no one inserts bad words on campaign signs or organizes for nefarious purposes. He also composes missives to be fired off to Dean supporters' cellphones.

Teachout recruited Johnson to create DeanLink, a version of Friendster for the Dean campaign. On Friendster, users are able to see friends of friends up to four degrees of separation and read the comments their friends have written about them. DeanLink invites supporters to link to one another in the manner of Friendster -- ''Introduce yourself! Make a new friend'' -- and also to invite friends from outside the campaign to join. DeanLink lets supporters know one another as more than an e-mail address or a name on a mailing list; they can check out one another's photographs and interests online. They can also post flattering comments about other supporters, a move cribbed from Friendster's ''testimonials.'' (Julie Reeve, Johnson's crush from Atlanta, for instance, writes on Johnson's DeanLink page that he is ''fun to work with.'') Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins has about 500 DeanLink pals.

Zack Rosen was a creator of DeanSpace, ''the revolution itself.'' He started the project, originally called Hack for Dean, after reading about Dean on the campaign Web site for 20 minutes. ''I just knew this is the guy,'' Rosen says. He recruited an unpaid team of nearly a hundred programmers, including his friends Neil and Ping, to write software for the campaign that would allow the many disparate, unofficial Dean Web sites to communicate directly with one another and also with the campaign. Typically, to reproduce information from one Web site to another, a user has to cut the information by hand and paste it into each Web site, a laborious process. The software that Zack's group built allows any Dean Web site to reprint another's stories, images and campaign feed automatically, as if they have a collective consciousness. It also will provide a ''dashboard'' for the people in Burlington, where the campaign can track patterns on its unofficial sites and observe which content is most popular.

The effect that Teachout says she hopes the software will create sounds like the experience of being in a tight-knit community: seeing people you know, responding to them, being acknowledged. Teachout speaks about these ideas as if she is reinventing the concept. She says that Meetup.com, is emerging as the ''ritual'' element of the new Dean community. ''It's like church, the central place where people go to get inspired.''

Teachout likes to ''thesaurusize'' words on the computer. Right now, she tells me, she is hard at work looking for a word to replace ''citizen.'' ''It would be a word to describe someone for whom politics is a part of their personal life and social life,'' she says. ''I think I am going to ask the bloggers for suggestions.''

It's not hard to imagine that if the year were 1999, Rosen, an ambitious college kid with an exciting new software idea, could be easily recast in the role of child tycoon. But Rosen isn't mourning being born a few years too late. It is not clear to him who owns the programs he invented -- the Democratic National Committee? Howard Dean? -- but he doesn't really care.

Rosen says the true purpose of the Internet is to allow people to connect, and he isn't surprised there wasn't money to be made on that premise. Through his long fluorescent nights, Rosen takes breaks from coding to gaze happily at the personal e-mail messages Dean supporters compose and send using Dean software. ''Look,'' he says wistfully, the light of the computer reflecting off of his glasses. ''This is Nelson. He spent real time on this letter. Look how long it is.''

Rosen is one of the more diehard programmers at the Dean office. He can easily discourse for half an hour about ''open-source political campaigns'' or the possibility of using cellphones to overthrow dictatorships or ''recursive hard core CS225 data structures.'' But he surprises me by saying he never would have come up with the Dean software, or left school, if his first serious girlfriend (like Johnson's crush also named, coincidentally, Julie) hadn't broken up with him last spring.

''The worst thing is we aren't even friends,'' he says glumly. ''I invited her to be my friend'' -- he gestures to his computer monitor -- ''I mean on Friendster. No word yet.''

Behind Rosen, Johnson is peeking at pictures of his own Julie, Julie Reeve, posted on the Dean Web site. ''She's the 'A,' '' he says giddily, looking at a group of Dean supporters spelling out D-E-A-N in front of CNN headquarters.

In September, Johnson returned to Atlanta for a Generation Dean rally. ''I cried when I got there and saw 1,000 people,'' he says, a huge leap from the 60 who came to the April meet-up. ''The rally really showed people how much they had underestimated Dean.'' It was a big day all around; scheduled speakers cancelled at the last minute, and Johnson was asked to improvise onstage for nearly an hour about Governor Dean.

Shortly after Johnson's speech, he said that Merrill, his ex-girlfriend, approached him. ''I told her, 'Merrill, I am not in love with you anymore,' and turned and walked away,'' he says. Later that night, he kissed Julie Reeve for the first time.

Brooks has a woman up on his screen, too. His desktop image, always lurking behind whatever project he's working on, is a picture from a newspaper of a young woman alone on a train. She reminds him of a girl he knows named Julia. ''We wrote letters all summer,'' he says. ''It kept me going, to get real mail, you know?''

Brooks's hard drive crashed this summer, taking with it his digital pictures of Julia, so he downloaded the photo of the woman on the train. Above his desk, littered with the shells of hundreds of sunflower seeds (they came in plastic bats, donated by a supporter), Brooks has taped a quote from Robert Louis Stevenson, which he recently read into Julia's voice mail: ''So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.''

Rosen, Johnson and Brooks work with headphones on. When they pluck them off or accidentally unplug them, ballads bleed into the quiet office. ''When the human touch is what I need, what I need is you,'' a computer wails one night at 4 a.m. ''Sometimes, when I look deep in your eyes, I swear I can see your soul,'' another computer chimes in. Watching them work from their battered easy chair, I find it impossible to tell if they are gazing at the filmy, pixilated image of a Julie or the face of a new Dean supporter or a line of code; whether the peer-to-peer communication they are struggling with is related to the 2004 election and the fragmentation of American public life, or is something more private.

In late October, Teachout decided to do an odd thing for a director of Internet organizing; she left the office to tour around the country for six weeks (accompanied by 21-year-old Ryan Davis) in an Airstream bus. Her dream was to meet the people whom she has been talking to every day on the telephone and over the Internet.

Teachout says she has been wanting to do something like this since March. ''When I was falling in love with our grass roots,'' she says, ''I thought, If I get fired, I am going to go on the road and meet all of them. Once the idea occurs to you, how can you resist?'' Teachout says she would pore over pictures that people posted on the Web from Dean meet-ups, just ''to get a sense of the characters involved.''

I ask her if the people she hopes to meet on her trip are her friends.

'' 'Friend' is an odd word,'' she says slowly. ''I mean, these are the people who populate my imagination.'' She mentions one blogger, a frequent poster from San Francisco. ''Sally in SF,'' Teachout says, ''is as much a part of my life as my sister.''

She struggles for a better word than ''friend'' to describe the relationship -- she still hasn't found a replacement for ''citizen'' either -- and settles on ''correspondent.'' ''What's happening is an unusual and unprecedented correspondence between the campaign and us,'' she says. It takes me a moment before I realize that when she says ''the campaign,'' she doesn't mean the people running the headquarters in Burlington. She means the people she's going to visit in her Airstream.

Samantha M. Shapiro last wrote for the magazine about settlers in Israel.

December 7, 2003 at 09:17 PM in Politics | Permalink | TrackBack (273) | Top of page | Blog Home

Stanford to offer blogs to all students

Lawrence Lessig

By next Fall, Stanford will join Harvard by offering a blog for all students.

Dave Winer spoke at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society’s lunchtime series. The talk will be archived here soon. There was a great turn-out keen to learn from the master, and the master taught well — mixing genuine and useful insight with an idealism that is too rare around here.
Law students begin life as idealists, and there’s an obvious and powerful idealism in the Winer’s arguments. I’ll point to my favorite parts when the talk is posted. Meanwhile, I was happy to tell him that the Center will be copying his experiment at Harvard next fall, and offering a blog for every entering student in the law school. Turow’s One L, or even Alex Wellen’s Barman will be nothing in comparison.

December 7, 2003 at 09:00 PM in Blogging & feeds | Permalink | TrackBack (7) | Top of page | Blog Home

New Economy: Dell Moves Some Customer Service Operations Back to the U.S.

New Economy: Dell Moves Some Customer Service Operations Back to the U.S.

Interesting turn of events, as political implications produce a move to bring work back to the US. Probably not a bad thing.

Dell Moves Some Customer Service Operations Back to the U.S.
By LAURIE J. FLYNN

Published: December 8, 2003

ELL'S recent decision to direct some customer service calls to help desks in the United States, rather than to its call center in Bangalore, India, shows how companies with customer support operations overseas are having to tread a fine line with their clients, some of whom are still surprised to talk to technicians on a different continent.

To analysts and consultants, the outsourcing of technology jobs is a trend that will only grow. In Dell's case, some of its most coveted business customers complained to management that Indian technical support workers relied too heavily on scripted answers and were unable to handle more complex computer problems. While most questions phoned in by home computer users tend to be fairly straightforward - like how to update software or install a wireless adaptor - greater expertise is needed to respond to corporate network problems.

A spokesman for Dell, Barry French, said the company was responding to concerns from business customers when it decided last month to route calls from many large business customers to American call centers, though he maintained that it would not be sending fewer calls over all to its operation in India.

"We just flipped a switch," he said, explaining that some consumer calls that had been handled by domestic call centers would now be sent to India.

"What companies are finding is that offshore can be good for generic, commodity services," said Howard Rubin, executive vice president of the Meta Group Inc., a consulting firm. "Corporate customers have problems very local to their applications and very specific to their companies."

Analysts say that along with skill considerations, some companies may be worried about criticism from labor groups and some customers who object to sending jobs overseas. Governments are under particular pressure. This year, half a dozen states are considering that workers hired under state contracts be American citizens or documented workers.

Stephen Lane, research vice president for information technology services at the Aberdeen Group in Boston, said, "There is a backlash and it's building, particularly in sectors like information technology that is still being hard hit by the economy."

Clearly, information technology workers will face more difficulty as technology jobs move to cheaper labor markets abroad. According to a new survey by IDC, a market research company, nearly a quarter of information technology services will be sent offshore by 2007, sharply higher than the 5 percent of technology services being handled offshore this year.

The first wave of offshore outsourcing began with the movement of customer-service call work to offices in India, Malaysia and Indonesia, but American companies are also beginning to send back-office work, like the processing of forms, abroad as well.

While the outsourcing of technical service jobs is reminiscent of the movement of manufacturing jobs overseas in recent decades, analysts say the difference is that the change in the technology industries is occurring faster. And the jobs that are beginning to leave are considered white-collar jobs that have traditionally been protected from competition with foreign workers.

"Companies are getting more aggressive about it," said Chris Disher, an outsourcing specialist with the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. "The economies are straightforward - you get an $80,000 engineer for $12,000," he said, alluding to wages in India.

The challenge for the United States technology companies, according to industry consultants, is to distinguish between the tasks that can be effectively handled offshore and those that cannot. Some, like Dell, have learned that they need to be sensitive to the reaction of their customers.

"In times like these, your business is attached to customer sentiment," said Atul Vashistha, chief executive of NeoIT, a California company that advises companies on outsourcing to India. "It's primarily a question of market timing."

"There are truly some areas where complexities'' make sending work offshore difficult, Mr. Vashistha said. He recounted the experience of one client, a skateboard manufacturer with almost all its customers teenage boys, that found sending its support services overseas disastrous. The cultural nuances, and the constantly changing jargon of skateboarding, made it necessary for support calls to be handled by like-minded young American men. The company, which Mr. Vashistha declined to name, moved its support operations back to the United States last year.

By contrast, Scotiabank, a Canadian company, has kept its customer service operations in Canada, using technology to keep labor costs low. Higher customer satisfaction is worth the slightly higher cost, said John Parkinson, chief technologist for the Americas region at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, a consulting business that works closely with the bank.

Many offshore call centers are becoming more sensitive to the need to tutor workers in American customs as a crucial part of their training. Some workers in customer service jobs in Bangalore, for example, are being instructed to watch reruns of "Friends" to acquaint themselves with the cultural norms of American consumers, said Mr. Disher, the Booz Allen specialist. Trainees at many firms are also asked to read American newspapers and magazines, and are coached on American consumer habits.

Still, many callers do not seem to care where the help desk is. "Most of the time, they're just happy to be talking to a human," Mr. Parkinson said. "The vast majority of people are indifferent to whether it's an American if they're getting good service."

December 7, 2003 at 07:53 PM in eCommerce | Permalink | TrackBack (17) | Top of page | Blog Home

Yahoo! News - Negotiators Clear Hurdles to Internet Summit

Yahoo! News - Negotiators Clear Hurdles to Internet Summit

The United Nations are now involved in deciding on management of the internet, and it is to report back by 2005. Internet has become embroiled in human rights issues tied to have's and have-nots around the world. This could be a good thing if internet becomes a catylst to improve some poorer countries.

Sun Dec 7,10:03 AM ET
By Richard Waddington

GENEVA (Reuters) - Envoys struck last-minute deals on human rights and managing the Internet to allay fears that this week's world summit on information technologies would become a battle between rich and poor states, officials said Sunday.

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was called to help close the "digital divide" between developed and developing countries, but it quickly became embroiled in issues of press freedom and how to administer the Web.

Negotiators were forced to call a round of preparatory talks for the December 10-12 meeting in Geneva to be attended by over 60 heads of state and government because of deep outstanding differences.

Some developing countries, including Brazil, had pressed for international organizations to have a leading role in operating the Web, which is run by the private business community in developed states.

On human rights, concerns arose that some states, among them China and Iran, were trying to qualify the right to freedom of expression by juxtaposing it with references about duties to the community -- both of which are spelt out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

But late Saturday, negotiators representing nearly 200 countries reached agreement on two draft texts -- a declaration of principles and an action plan -- to be put to their governments in Geneva.

On Internet management, states agreed to ask United Nations (news - web sites) Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) to set up a working party to investigate and report back by 2005, when a second summit will be held in Tunis.

The only outstanding question was whether countries would agree to launch a special international fund to help poorer states, particularly in Africa, finance the development of information technology networks.

"We do not agree on a few words about the financing but the two declarations are 95 percent approved," said Swiss senior government official Marc Furrer, who brokered the negotiations on behalf of the host government.

He said he was confident further discussions on the issue ahead of Wednesday's start of the summit would resolve the issue.

"All are agreed that something needs to be done (to help poorer countries)," he told a news conference.

Most heads of state and government attending the summit will be coming from developing countries. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was one of the few European leaders expected, but pulled out last week to attend to domestic political matters. ((Editing by Lisa Vaughan; Reuters Messaging: richard.waddington.reuters.com@reuters.net)

December 7, 2003 at 07:49 PM in Internet evolution | Permalink | TrackBack (1) | Top of page | Blog Home

December 05, 2003

Yahoo! News - HSBC Reports Fake Web Site in Hong Kong

Yahoo! News - HSBC Reports Fake Web Site in Hong Kong

Spoof sites are not going to go away. There is a fundamental issue here which has the potential to re-shape the web.

HSBC Reports Fake Web Site in Hong Kong
Fri Dec 5, 4:39 PM ET

HONG KONG (Reuters) - A Web site made to look like the Hong Kong home page of global banking giant HSBC Holdings Plc asked customers to type in their User ID and password, the bank said on Friday.

The site, which was no longer accessible on Friday evening, is the latest in a string of bank-related scams to hit Hong Kong in recent months.

"The fraudulent Web site attempts to replicate the personal financial services pages of HSBC's Hong Kong Web site," HSBC said in a statement.

The portal's address, www.hkhsbc.com, was similar to that of HSBC's Hong Kong Web site, www.hsbc.com.hk.

Sporting "HSBC" and the bank's logo at the top, the site included a hyperlink to a logon page asking customers to type in their online banking User ID and password.

An HSBC spokeswoman told Reuters the bank had received no reports from customers of losses because of the site.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the territory's de facto central bank, and Hong Kong police were looking into the case.

"As the Web site is hosted overseas, the HSBC and the HKMA are liaising with the relevant overseas authorities to take appropriate action," an authority spokesman said, declining to reveal the host of the site.

It was not clear whether authorities had blocked the Web site or its owner had withdrawn it.

Bank frauds in the city in recent months have included fake Web sites and cash dispenser cards.

December 5, 2003 at 10:37 PM in Online crime | Permalink | TrackBack (30) | Top of page | Blog Home

Yahoo! News - Peer-To-Peer Group Floats Scheme to Pay for Music

Yahoo! News - Peer-To-Peer Group Floats Scheme to Pay for Music

An innovative way to solve the music download dilemma. Whatever the final model, it won't be based on $25 CD's imho.

Thu Dec 4, 6:13 PM ET
By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Internet users who copy music through "peer-to-peer" networks should pay a flat fee to compensate musicians and record labels whose songs they download, a technology trade group proposed on Thursday.

The proposal by the Distributed Computing Industry Association is intended to nudge the popular peer-to-peer networks toward respectability and forge peace with the record labels that have hounded them and their users in court.

Under the proposal, peer-to-peer users would pay a flat monthly fee to the networks or to Internet service providers, which would be divided up among the record labels and musicians whose songs were downloaded.

Music fans could eventually be charged small amounts for downloading individual songs, or pay slightly more for "channels" featuring one style of music.

DCIA chief executive Marty Lafferty said a $5 fee could generate $200 million per month for the ailing recording industry, which has seen CD sales plunge in the last several years due in part to the popularity of the peer-to-peer services.

"It's truly a band-aid to get it started," said Lafferty, who said DCIA developed the plan in consultation with record labels, Internet service providers and other interested parties despite several lawsuits pitting one group against another.

The Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites) said peer-to-peer networks must prevent users from trading copyrighted works and stop making pornography available to minors if they want to be taken seriously, echoing a letter sent by several U.S. senators last month.

"Until the larger industry accepts the recommendations recently outlined by six respected U.S. senators, there will continue to be questions about how seriously they want to become legitimate," RIAA spokeswoman Amy Weiss said.

DCIA's reputation could prove a stumbling block as many peer-to-peer companies see the trade group as a front organization for Sharman Networks, which produces the popular Kazaa peer-to-peer software, and its partner Altnet, a digital-media company. Altnet is owned by Brilliant Digital Entertainment Inc. .

DCIA's first proposal, released in October, would have relied on Altnet's copy-protection technology to get users to pay for music.

One executive said the flat-fee system could work but that DCIA was simply trying to force other companies to use Altnet.

"There's always a hidden agenda with them," said Wayne Rosso, president of Optisoft SL, which makes the Blubster and Piolet peer-to-peer clients.

Lafferty said DCIA has added two more member companies, Digital Commerce, a peer-to-peer sports media company, and Claria Corp., which makes the controversial Gator advertising software. But he acknowledged that relations with the rest of the peer-to-peer industry were rocky.

"It's almost as if they view Kazaa with its much larger market share as threatening to them, much as some smaller software companies view Microsoft (Corp. )," he said.

December 5, 2003 at 03:54 AM in Business Models | Permalink | TrackBack (10) | Top of page | Blog Home

Yahoo! News - Qwest to Launch Internet-Based Calls Monday -CEO

Yahoo! News - Qwest to Launch Internet-Based Calls Monday -CEO

Qwest offering internet phone calls (VoIP) next week. $35 pm for unlimited calls. Expect to see more of this, and it will dramatically change how we view the telephone.

Qwest to Launch Internet-Based Calls Monday -CEO
Thu Dec 4, 6:26 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Qwest Communications International Inc. (NYSE:Q - news) will launch on Monday in Minnesota consumer telephone service via high-speed Internet lines.
The company has already signed up customers for the service and plans to expand the service to other states that makes up its home territory by the end of the first quarter or early second quarter of 2004, Qwest CEO Richard Notebaert said on Thursday.

"We've been signing up customers and we'll have the service up and running next week," he told reporters. Notebaert declined to say how many customers the company had already signed up or make any projections of expected subscribers.

Telephone carriers ranging from upstarts to the household names are rapidly trying to shift calls to high-speed Internet lines, using so-called Voice over Internet Protocol technology for a more efficient and cheaper way to route calls. Certain fees and taxes do not necessarily apply to those calls.

The company is launching the service in Minnesota in part because of a recent federal court decision that barred state officials there from enforcing strict telephone regulations on the service which utilizes the less regulated high-speed Internet lines.

Qwest will likely offer the service at a price close to rival Vonage, which also offers service in Minnesota and charges about $35 a month for unlimited calls. Qwest has been offering business customers the service since 2001.

The Denver-based company will also roll out some new pricing plans on Dec. 15, likely to offer consumers unlimited, any-distance telephone calls combined with high-speed Internet service and other services.

"That's what the customer is pretty much telling everybody, 'I want my broadband, I want my voice, I want it unlimited, I don't want to deal with measurements and services, I don't want to deal with minute plans,"' Notebaert said.

He denied that the company was kicking off a price war, which had been feared as the carriers enter each others' markets. Telephone companies have been battling fiercely to sign up customers for any-distance service plans.

Shares of Qwest, the No. 4 U.S. local telephone carrier that serves states from Minnesota to Washington, closed down 1 cent to $3.56 on the New York Stock Exchange

December 5, 2003 at 03:48 AM in Business Models | Permalink | TrackBack (37) | Top of page | Blog Home

December 04, 2003

Head Out (Wirelessly) on the Highway

Head Out (Wirelessly) on the Highway

A fascinating glimpse of how the web lifestyle is really taking hold in unexpected places with wireless as the catalyst.

Head Out (Wirelessly) on the Highway
PULL OVER - Claude Lanthier at a truck stop with Wi-Fi Internet access near Park City, Utah. "I love the privacy of it," he said.

By JEANETTE BORZO

Published: December 4, 2003</em>

LIKE many business travelers, Lance Tindall enjoys using the wireless technology called Wi-Fi to connect to the Internet when he is on the road. But Mr. Tindall, who works for Crete Carrier of Lincoln, Neb., does not travel with a briefcase. Nor does he log on from an airport lounge. Parked at a truck stop, he browses the Internet from his 18-wheeler.

Mr. Tindall, a 41-year-old long-haul truck driver, is one of a growing number of truckers enjoying Wi-Fi connections, or hot spots, spreading to truck stops across the United States and Canada.

"I connect just about every day, and every connection on the road now is wireless," Mr. Tindall said in an e-mail interview. Calling Wi-Fi "a godsend," he added, "You don't even have to leave the truck to connect."

Business travelers are at the forefront of the Wi-Fi craze. The number of Wi-Fi users in North America is expected to exceed four million this year, up from 1.9 million in 2002, said John Yunker, a Wi-Fi analyst for Pyramid Research of Cambridge, Mass. More than 65 percent of current users are business travelers, he added.

To long-haul drivers - there are more than three million of them in the United States alone, according to the American Trucking Associations - the truck-stop hot spots are the equivalent of those offered in business hotels, because the truck cabs are not only workplaces but often sleeping quarters as well.

And the truck stops are often the equivalent of five-star establishments. The Flying J truck stop near Lebec, Calif., along Interstate 5 in the mountains dividing Los Angeles from the Central Valley, not only has a fueling station, for example, but also a restaurant, an inn, 18 showers, a store, a barber shop and space for 285 18-wheel diesel trucks to park overnight.

Of course, while the Wi-Fi access may persuade the truckers and other travelers to stop, it also gives them one less reason to get out of their vehicles.

"I love using Wi-Fi from the truck," said Claude Lanthier, 46, whose cab has an 8-by-7-foot room with about nine feet of headroom. With two bunks, a microwave and a television, the cab is an after-dinner haven for Mr. Lanthier, a nonsmoker who doesn't like smoky cafes and often travels with his wife. "I love the privacy of it. If it's bad weather, you don't even have to get out of the truck."

Truck stops have offered various Internet options for years, but the connections have often been slow and expensive, and required drivers to go inside.

"There was no mobility," said Jeff Norman, a 28-year-old trucker from the Detroit area who used a Flying J data port to log on before Wi-Fi became available. "If I had to go to the bathroom, I had to pack everything up. It is so much easier with Wi-Fi."

Flying J, an oil and travel services corporation based in Ogden, Utah, introduced Wi-Fi service in May, and has expanded coverage to 145 of its 160 travel plazas across the continent. It plans to join forces with terminals owned by corporate-truck fleets across the continent with the goal of reaching 300 locations within three or four months.

Another company, Truckstop.Net of New Plymouth, Idaho, began providing commercial Wi-Fi service at truck stops in August. It plans to expand its network from 25 stops to 300 by year's end.

TravelCenters of America, based in Westlake, Ohio, is testing Wi-Fi at its truck stop in Monroe, Mich., and is "planning on rolling out a network within six months," said Don Wilson, a project manager. Eventually, it hopes to bring Wi-Fi to all of its 153 stops in the United States and Canada.

Wi-Fi service, available by subscription for terms from 15 minutes to a year, provides a new source of revenue for the truck stops. It can also attract truckers who might otherwise continue farther down the road to fuel up or take a shower.

"We expect it to be profitable," says JJ Singh, Flying J's vice president for financial and communications services. "And we hope it will provide another way to grow loyalty to our brand."

Mr. Tindall, the trucker for Crete Carrier, appreciates Wi-Fi for its convenience.

"It is good for updating directions, routes, road construction updates," he said, and for sending or receiving faxes "without having to stand around inside a truck stop and wait."

Mr. Tindall, a Persian Gulf war veteran from Edwards, Mo., also travels with a digital camcorder for shooting pictures and movies that he views, edits and e-mails from his laptop computer. In the event of an accident, he can easily transfer photos of the damage to the laptop and e-mail them to the company "so they can see the damage right away and decide where to get you fixed," he said.

Martin Fisher, a 39-year-old Canadian trucker who sometimes works as a photographer, recently picked up a load of damaged goods, but he did not have to worry much about lost time or disputed claims.

"I was able to take pictures and send it to my dispatcher right away," Mr. Fisher said.

James Page of Abbyville, Kan., is using his yearlong subscription to Flying J's Wi-Fi service to keep up on his finances. "I do all of my banking online because I am on the road for more than a month at a time," he said by e-mail.

Others favor Wi-Fi as a way to pass the time while waiting to pick up a load. Mr. Norman, a trucker who is often gone from home for as long as three weeks, passes some of the time lingering in Arthurian legends: his favorite online game is Mythic Entertainment's Dark Age of Camelot.

Many truckers use the Internet simply to stay in touch. With a brother in San Diego and a sister in Ottawa, for example, Mr. Lanthier - who once swapped the central processing unit and motherboard out of his home computer to upgrade it to a Pentium 4 system that "is fast like you wouldn't believe" - said Wi-Fi is a great way of communicating with the family.

Indeed, Mr. Fisher said, "The only problem with Wi-Fi is that it isn't everywhere yet."

December 4, 2003 at 08:28 PM in Web lifestyle, Wireless | Permalink | TrackBack (160) | Top of page | Blog Home

Government of Canada Newsroom - Choose Your News

Government of Canada Newsroom - Choose Your News

Wow - Government of Canada actually impresses me with RSS feeds. This is their press release vehicle which I believe is one obvious and easy use of RSS.

December 4, 2003 at 04:25 PM in Corporate Blogging | Permalink | TrackBack (37) | Top of page | Blog Home

Silicon Valley - Dan Gillmor's eJournal - RSS Enables Simple 'Headline News' on the Run

Silicon Valley - Dan Gillmor's eJournal - RSS Enables Simple 'Headline News' on the Run

Dan Gillmor has uncovered an excellent application of RSS for a mobile device to pick up news headlines.

RSS Enables Simple 'Headline News' on the Run - posted by Dan Gillmor 12:12 AM

I'm beginning to envision the future of "headline news" -- RSS style on handhelds.

UPDATED
This is a new Treo 600, which Handspring (now PalmOne) loaned me while I'm in Hong Kong for experimenting with new journalism ideas. I found an RSS reader for it, and show you here what it looks like.
I'm using the GPRS data connection via a local mobile phone company, downloading RSS into the reader. It scoops up only the Title and Excerpt fields (or a part of the actual posting if no Excerpt is there) from the blog's RSS feed, and displays text only, which is perfect for this application.
This is a great start, being able to read this way. But the two-way Web means I need better ways to write, too. My blogging software doesn't give me an easy way to make a quick posting into just those two fields, with an extremely low-bandwidth page that's easily readable on the handheld.
Does any blogging package have such a feature? Add a quick photo upload from the phone and we're really talking about something incredibly useful.
This has real potential, I think.

December 4, 2003 at 09:02 AM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (13) | Top of page | Blog Home

TheStar.com - Industry urged to help secure U.S. cyberspace

TheStar.com - Industry urged to help secure U.S. cyberspace

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge threatens government intervention if private industry doesn't comply with better security for internet. 85% of the internet infrastructure is owned by private industry, and the security isn't adequate based on an October test event.

Industry urged to help secure U.S. cyberspace

Co-operate or face regulation, executives told

`Few lines of code' like `handful of bombs' to hackers

NEW YORK—U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge yesterday urged private industry to do its part to secure the Internet infrastructure that has become critical to national and economic security.

Speaking before a gathering of executives at the National Cyber Security Summit in Santa Clara, Calif., Ridge warned the United States' reliance on computers has made cyber targets attractive to terrorists, and that they are well aware that "a few lines of code could ultimately wreak as much havoc as a handful of bombs."

"Everything from electricity grids to banking transactions to telecommunications depends on secure, reliable cyber networks," Ridge said. "The continued success of protecting our cyberspace depends on the investment and commitment of each of you and the businesses you represent."

The private sector owns 85 per cent of the country's critical infrastructure, including the computer networks that underlie them, security department officials said. As such, the agency's cyber security division has sought to build a public-private sector alliance that will drive improvements in security practices in both the private and public sectors as well as among average computer users, while co-ordinating efforts to respond to cyber crises.

The agency's efforts are guided by the Bush administration's February "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace," which set goals for government and industry, but rejected the idea of new government regulations.

Several members of Congress have since floated proposals to mandate minimum security requirements, including one by Congressman Adam Putnam that would require public companies to undergo third-party cyber-security audits and report results to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Assistant secretary Robert Liscouski, also speaking at the summit, promised to advocate for industry against regulation, but warned that if the private sector fails to step up to the responsibility, legislation will naturally follow.

"If that's what you want, I promise that's what you will get," he said.

In October, the department staged a cyber-war game that simulated an attack on computers, banks and utilities. The event showed communication was not smooth enough between the agencies, Ridge said.

The department is looking to improve crisis response, while studying how critical infrastructures are dependent on cyberspace, U.S. Cyber Security director Amit Yoran said.

dow jones news

December 4, 2003 at 03:54 AM in Security | Permalink | TrackBack (16) | Top of page | Blog Home

December 03, 2003

Amazon.com Syndicated Content

Amazon.com Syndicated Content

Amazon have RSS feeds now used to advertise selections, eg new DVD's. Amazon are promoting this cabability so that the feed can be used to syndicate Amazon content on other peoples sites as a live updatedable chunk of code.

"At Amazon, we want to see Web services work. We believe they are important to the future of the Internet. To help stimulate Web service innovation, we now offer software developers the opportunity to integrate Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk features and content directly into other Web sites using either SOAP or XML over HTTP. Partner with the leader in e-commerce and join the Web services revolution today!"

December 3, 2003 at 04:51 PM in eCommerce | Permalink | TrackBack (10) | Top of page | Blog Home

Socialtext -- Enterprise Social Software

Socialtext -- Enterprise Social Software

Not a bad definition of corporate Social Software.

Social Software: I don't know if I got my point across, so let me make it here. Our business model is antithetical to traditional enterprise software. Top-down software, with lines of code as barriers to entry, process and ontology that users are expected to fit themselves into, long sales-cycles and inordinate TCO -- is by all accounts dead and leaves users stranded with email.
The reason for this is the rules and opportunties have changed. You can't screw your customers. You can't lock them in. You can't ask them to take significant risk up front. Risk is shared with customers by providing incremental proof of value in-line with them taking risk on you.
While startup costs have declined, some have increased. Notably, its harder to sell traditionally (top-down) and you can't raise barriers to entry by locking-in your customers. The only entry point is bottom-up. The only marketable barrier to entry today is network effects.
The business model shares risk with customers, provides software as service, provides trial and open source options, maps to security requirements, is priced in-line with value, grows organically and above all, meets user needs without false constraints.
What Social Networking and Social Software have in common is people trying to connect. Someone please tell me what is more fundamentally valuable than that.

December 3, 2003 at 02:55 PM in Corporate Blogging | Permalink | TrackBack (44) | Top of page | Blog Home

business blog seminars consulting b-blog consultant- 12/03/03

business blog seminars consulting b-blog consultant- 12/03/03

"Transparency, even internal status transparency, is a new and hard thing for today's business culture." This quote nicely sums up one of the challenges for corporate knowledge management.

We've tried over the last 2 years to replace status reports with blogs at a e-commerce company I do consulting for. Success has been mixed. Even though most of the people are engineering staff (i.e. technical people who should have no problem with the 'geekiness' of today's blogging tools), getting them to document in real time what they do has been more difficult than I anticipated. Transparency, even internal status transparency, is a new and hard thing for today's business culture. I think this will shift in time as people become more used to the idea of making themselves more transparent. Not only will the tools get easier to use, but the idea of being transparent (internally at least) will become more and more common just as the idea and culture of email took a while to take hold. Remember the executives who got their email printed out by their secretaries? Just as this is perceived as being quaint today, so too will today's resistance to internal transperancy be perceived as quaint in the future.

December 3, 2003 at 02:26 PM in Corporate Blogging | Permalink | TrackBack (34) | Top of page | Blog Home

IT Spending - 2004

A cautious 1.7% increase in IT spending expected in 2004.

Forrester Research -
Dec 3rd, 2004

IT execs plan a 1.7% budget increase in '04
Despite improving economic signals, CIOs' budgets do not yet reflect the improving picture -- at least not yet. In a survey of technology decision-makers at 818 North American firms with at least $500 million in revenues, 32% said they will increase IT spending next year, compared with 19% who said they will decrease spending. On average, these executives plan only 1.7% increases over 2003 budgets.

Consumer sectors will lead
IT executives in retail, telecom, insurance, leisure and entertainment, and healthcare expect above average growth. Chemical and financial services companies expect below average growth in IT budgets. When asked to describe the direction of their firms' budgets, respondents cited eCommerce investments as having the most upside.

December 3, 2003 at 02:15 PM in Internet evolution, Web/Tech | Permalink | TrackBack (14) | Top of page | Blog Home

Status Reports

This effectivley makes the case for blogs for each project manager as a means of proiding the right level of strucuture for status reports. It provides a very realistic view of how difficult it is to get proper status reports withot interfering with the work at hand.

Thursday, November 20, 2003
Status Reports 2.0

At a start-up, there are two organizational inflection points which drastically change communication within the organization. The first change occurs around fifty or so people -- this is the moment when, if you're an early employee, that you first see someone in he hallway that you do not recognize.

This is troubling to you because, until that point, not only knew everyone on a first name basis, but you also knew what they were about... what they were responsible for... what floated their boat. Now, there's an unknown quantity in the building.

This awkward, but necessary evolution of the organization, passes. You accept the fact the company is growing and you decide to focus your attention just on your group.... who cares what those schmoes over in the support group are doing, anyhow? You've got an engineering organization to build.

The second organization inflection point happens somewhere around two hundred... two hundred and fifty. The problems identified during the first inflection point are serious problems now. Fiefdoms have been created in your organization and they're not talking to each other. What made your organization great early on, great communication, is still going on.. it's just going on inside of each of your organizations and not across them.

Executives in these larger organizations may be the first to recognize this when they're meeting with these different organizations and get the impression these individuals teams don't work for the same company.

So, the executives panic. They have an offsite where they talking about cross-functional communication and teamwork. They come back, promote some would-be-holistics to be Directors to improve communication, reorganize the company, and then... they do it... they curse the organization with busy work... busy work in the form of Status Reports.

I've managed a variety of different sized organizations. In the larger ones, inevitably, I've had a meeting with my managers where I've needed to explain what my Status Report policy is. I've always started this conversation with this same preface, "I'm sorry, but we've got to do Status Reports."

Why am I apologizing? Clear communication is a good thing and status reports are just good, clean communication, right? No, they're not. The reason I'm apologizing is because by instituting or supporting a Status Report policy, I'm admitting, "I do not have a better solution to facilitating good communication than busy work in the form of Status Reports. Sorry. I'm pathetic."

The idea of Status Reports is not a bad one. Generally, I ask for the following information on a weekly basis. Highlight, low lights, and any open issues. Pretty simple. Think of it as a weekly litmus test. The first few weeks with a new group, I tend to get stellar Status Reports from the team. Lots of detail... lots of energy... lots of content. It's clear the manager and the team spent time on the report.

Two months later, Dullsville. The very same people who were generating content rich Status Reports are now sending bullet lists that really don't change on a weekly basis. I stop reading them, they stop writing them, and we're back in the Land of Poor Communication where we perpetuate the fact that everyone hates Status Reports.

This needs to be fixed.

To me, their are two major consumers who need Status Reports. The first consumers are the executives/overseers/managers. This is your senior management crowd who want a high level overview of where all that money is going. You want to keep this group in the loop because they sign the checks, they can be very good at discerning warning signs from seemingly vanilla Status Reports, and they also usually are big influencers on strategy... this is key when you want them on board when you're proposing that two month slip to improve quality.

Due to the fact these folks see a lot of Stats Reports, there's a requirement for the data to be somewhat normalized via a familiar template otherwise they're going to get frustrated spending their time figuring out what information is being conveyed rather than acting on it.

The other major consumer for Status Reports is, well, everyone else in the company. Actually, let me rephrase, the other consumer is everyone else in the company who wants to read your status report. I'll explain...

Right now, you probably send your status report to some group of people or a mailing list which goes "to the right people". The definition of the "right people" is likely based on role in the organization... the managers... the leads... whoever is supposed to have cross-functional visibility.

Here's the problem with this group you've selected.

Let's say you've had an open issue on your status report for four weeks now. It's gone on long enough that you manager is starting to bring the issue up at your 1:1 and she's getting frustrated that your answer to "What progress has there been?" is SHRUG. The correct answer to your four week open issue is sitting in the head of JoeBlow Engineer who sits nowhere near you. He is completely outside of your management food chain and he can save your weeks of effort and possible executive embarrassment. How in the world are you going to get to this guy?

Sure, if you've got a solid list of recipients for your Status Report, there's a good chance that someone might make the connection between your Open Issue and JoeBlow, but, chances are, that manager has grown jaded about Status Reports JUST LIKE YOU.

You're waiting for the punch line here, you think I've got some solution and, well, I don't. What I do have is a rough knowledge of many of the emerging information management tools and I know there is a solution which:

- Makes it easy/attractive for larger organizations to share their information
- Provides a facility to publish scheduled structured reports to executive-types

Let us first talk about two tools:

WIKIS

Wikis provide a solid, flexible backbone for information gathering and distribution, but they are geek. Average computer users will not find them accessible. This means that any solution based on Wiki technology will mostly benefit engineering. I'm ok with that.

Wikis intentially don't provide structure which means chaos rules. That's great for a random mix of evolving information, but, at the end of the week, someone has to generate a Status Report and that person's life will be easier if they don't have to do a damned thing.

My gut feeling is that while Wikis are a great tool for organic information evolution, they're not going to play nice in the Status Report world. Not only because of their lack of structure, but I believe the content would be biased the moment those who provided content discovered the Wiki was being pruned for Status Report data.

WEBLOGS

I can see three possible implementations here:

1) Everyone on the team has a weblog
2) "Leaders" have weblogs
3) Project or aggregate weblogs

Weblogs don't have the level of collobartion has a Wiki, but they can be more structured. Plus, a variety of linking technologies varying from simple links to TrackBack technology provide some of the interconnectiveness that Wiki's do so well.

A big issue with the weblog is initiating that first conversation within it that doesn't sound like, "Hey guys, we've got a team weblog now and, well, speak up so I have to do less work on status reports."

There needs to be some creative incentive for individuals to write stuff down. For the Wiki, there is the promise that if you write it down, maybe you can avoid future lame redundant questions. For the weblog, the timely conversational style of the medium keeps the content focused on news of the moment and that's really the question; is news of the moment interesting to an engineering organization?

What I'm curious about is if anyone has had any success using web-based collaboration tools as a means of augmenting or replacing status reports. I know Wikis have successfully emerged as semi-structured information repositories... have they evolved into anything? How in the world can I get out of writing Status Reports?

<a href="http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2003/11/20/status_reports_20.html ">Story</a>

December 3, 2003 at 02:11 PM in Corporate Blogging | Permalink | TrackBack (31) | Top of page | Blog Home

Nigeria recovers 'fraudster' cash

It seems I was too quick to assume Nigeria would do nothing. But its sounds like they are still only paying lip service to the huge amount of crime which comes out of that country.

Nigeria has recovered some $200m from conmen in the past eight months, its anti-corruption commission says.
Nigeria is rated the world's second most corrupt country and has become notorious for its fraudsters.

They send out letters and e-mails offering to deposit millions of dollars in bank accounts but instead they use the bank details to make withdrawals.

President Olusegun Obasanjo last week set up a special panel to fight economic crimes on the internet.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) was set up earlier this year specifically to tackle the advance fee fraud, known in Nigeria as the "419 scam".

Its chairman Nuhu Ribadu also said that 200 suspects had been arrested and 40 cases were in court.

He also said that the commission had reduced the scale of oil smuggling in the past two months.

"We are going after them and we will smoke them out to face the full wrath of the law," he said.

Nigeria is one of the world's major oil producers but the price of petrol is much lower than in neighbouring countries, so there is a huge black market in oil.

December 3, 2003 at 01:57 PM in Online crime | Permalink | TrackBack (21) | Top of page | Blog Home

Yahoo! News - Web Virus Authors 'Winning Battle'--Microsoft

Yahoo! News - Web Virus Authors 'Winning Battle'--Microsoft

Wed Dec 3, 1:22 PM ETAdd Technology - Reuters Internet Report to My Yahoo!

By Mark Trevelyan, Security Correspondent
WIESBADEN, Germany (Reuters) - Creators of computer viruses are winning the battle with law enforcers and getting away with crimes that cost the global economy some $13 billion this year, a Microsoft official said Wednesday.

Counterfeit centers are shifting from California and Western Europe to countries including Paraguay, Colombia and Ukraine said David Finn, Microsoft's director of digital integrity for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

In Asia, pirate plants have emerged in Vietnam, Macao, and Myanmar (Burma) in addition to more established facilities in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.

"So far they are getting away with it. They are winning by a considerable margin. Very few have been identified or prosecuted or punished," Finn said.

He cited estimates by Business Week that financial damage this year from bugs like the Blaster worm and the SoBig.F e-mail virus, which crashed systems and disrupted Internet traffic around the world, would total some $13 billion.

The cost of protecting networks against such cyberattacks was put at $3.8 billion.

Finn also said neither civil lawsuits nor criminal prosecutions were doing an adequate job of stamping out software piracy and seizing the multimillion dollar profits it generates.

Finn said the number of counterfeit Microsoft products intercepted had more than doubled to four million units this year from 1.75 million two years ago. But the value of pirate software seized -- $1.3 billion over three years -- was "a small fraction of what's really out there."

He estimated the profit margin on counterfeit software at 900 percent -- nine times higher than for distributing cocaine.

SOBERING PICTURE

Finn was addressing a cybercrime conference in Germany at which experts presented a sobering picture of progress against hackers, fraudsters, drug runners, child pornographers and other assorted criminals exploiting the World Wide Web.

Britain's top high-tech crime officer told Reuters in an interview that drug dealers and arms traffickers were recruiting experts from the computer industry using cash inducements or threats.

"Organized crime is identifying those kinds of skills and buying them in," said Len Hynds, head of the National High-Tech Crime Unit.

"I know of sophisticated drug-trafficking organizations, arms-trafficking organizations that are now making use of hacking skills and hacking into the servers of unsuspecting businesses so that they can then launch attacks and hide their activity and their illicit material."

He said "we shouldn't be surprised" if terror organizations were looking to recruit computer expertise.

Hynds said gangs were recruiting people with IT skills not only to help them commit cybercrime but to secure their own communications networks and avoid detection.

"Organized crime, whatever its commodity, is driven by a desire for profit, and often its Achilles' heel is its communications processes. We're aware that organized crime is now using sophisticated methods to make its communications more secure, and it will recruit people to assist in the process."

He said companies needed to recruit more carefully.

"They need to look at how they recruit staff, how they vet staff, how they recruit consultants who may only be with them for a very short period of time. Although remote attack is becoming more prevalent, it's still a fact that most threats come from inside a company," he said.

Hynds said British police were also seeing a sharp rise in 'spoof' Web sites of financial institutions, intended to dupe customers into revealing their account details and passwords.

He said the number of cases had risen to 40 so far this year from just seven in 2002 and the fake sites had become "far more sophisticated."

December 3, 2003 at 01:40 PM in Virus | Permalink | TrackBack (13) | Top of page | Blog Home