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Friday, February 28, 2003
FEDS SEIZE WEB SITE
The U.S. government has taken over a Web site as part of a plea agreement. It's a settlement of charges that the site's former owner encouraged the development and sale of computer chips that allow people to play pirated computer games on Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's Playstation 2. The site, ISOnews.com, now carries anti-piracy warnings from the government. Previously, when operated by David Rocci, it provided information about pirated software, game devices and online discussion groups. The 22-year-old man from Blacksburg, Va., pleaded guilty to conspiring to break copyright laws in December.
Posted by Reid
9:11 AM
0 comments  
On databases:
"The big question is if we're ready for the new wave of applications. First, in the medical field, miniature cameras are taking megabyte-size pictures every few seconds in millions of patients. Radio frequency identification tags are beginning to include time, geospatial data and more in real time. Billions of digital images are taken every year. But where are these images and data stored? They are in the file system, not the database."
Not a very informative article by John Taschek of eWeek, but a poignant quote nonetheless.
Posted by Kelly Abbott
8:54 AM
0 comments
Thursday, February 27, 2003
Homeland Security: Hard Sell
From Darwin Magazine's weekly newsletter.
"The Department of Homeland Security is spending $100
million on a public awareness campaign, the jewel of which
is a website that reminds us, among other things, to "Stop,
drop and roll." Is this the best we can do?"
Posted by Kelly Abbott
8:08 AM
0 comments
Wednesday, February 26, 2003
In an effort to get people to pay for music on the Web, AOL has packaged a variety of features into a new music subscription service, launched Wednesday by the online division of AOL Time Warner, as reported on CBS.MarketWatch.com Tuesday.
The service, called MusicNet on AOL, will make available to AOL's 28 million subscribers tiered pricing, ranging from $3.95 per month up to $17.95. The $8.95 service gives users access to more than 250,000 songs. This compares to Yahoo (YHOO) Launch service for $9.95 per month for access to more than 200,000 songs.
AOL's premium package allows a consumer to burn up to 10 CDs, and thus keep the music even if they drop AOL.
Posted by Reid
10:32 AM
0 comments
Tuesday, February 25, 2003
FAST Sells Internet Business Unit to Overture
Fast Search & Transfer (FAST) and Overture Services have entered into an agreement under which Overture will acquire FAST's Internet business unit for $70 million in cash, as well as performance-based cash incentive payments for up to $30 million over three years.
Posted by Reid
11:31 AM
0 comments
Monday, February 24, 2003
Macromedia relaunches Presedia Macromedia has folded Presedia's online presentation tools into its product portfolio and is launching them as Macromedia Breeze, it said Monday. Web development software maker Macromedia, of San Francisco , last month acquired Presedia, a privately-held Sunnyvale, Calif.-based maker of a tool that converts PowerPoint presentations into Macromedia Flash presentations for easy online distribution. Presedia's Express Trainer is now called Macromedia Breeze Training and Presedia's Express Presenter is now Macromedia Breeze Presentation. The Training product is a complete electronic learning package, while Presenter is for the corporate user to create, deliver and share online presentations, Macromedia said.
Breeze Homapage
Posted by Kelly Abbott
8:24 AM
0 comments
Friday, February 21, 2003
USATODAY.COM ASKING FOR INFORMATION
Gannett Co.'s USAToday.com has joined other major newspapers including The New York Times and the Washington Post in asking site visitors to register on the site to provide demographic information. The company wants to collect the data to "enhance advertising targeting capabilities and improve the effectiveness of advertiser messaging," said Jeff Webber, senior vice president and publisher of the Web unit.
Posted by Reid
10:29 AM
0 comments
Wednesday, February 19, 2003
Microsoft Tackles CRM
"Microsoft Corp.'s Microsoft CRM raises the bar for customer relationship management in the small and midsize markets. Unfortunately, it was a low bar to begin with."
Posted by Kelly Abbott
9:00 AM
0 comments
Tuesday, February 18, 2003
You have to appreciate the irony...
GLOGGER
Speaking of acquisitions, Google, the popular search site that's been increasingly broadening its services to its loyal audience, said it's buying Pyra Labs for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition gives Google inroads into the next-generation of individual home pages, and Pyra's Blogger has a million users. According to Blogger's Web site, at http://www.blogger.com/, Blogger is a Web-based tool that helps you publish to the Web instantly -- whenever the urge strikes. Blogger is the leading tool in the rapidly growing area of web publishing known as weblogs, or "blogs."
Posted by Reid
9:12 AM
0 comments
Friday, February 14, 2003
Wired News: Conversation With Marc Andreessen
"It's been 10 years since Marc Andreessen and colleagues at the University of Illinois launched Mosaic, the first browser to navigate the World Wide Web. But according to Andreessen, we're still less than halfway through the generational cycle of adoption that will shape how we ultimately incorporate the Internet into our daily lives."
Posted by Kelly Abbott
1:27 PM
0 comments
FBI Issues Cyberattack Advisory
"The FBI's cybersecurity arm is warning that the imminent threat of war with Iraq and escalating tensions with North Korea could lead to increased attacks against U.S. networks."
Posted by Kelly Abbott
8:07 AM
0 comments
Be Careful Using Public Kiosks
"A recent incident at Boston College demonstrates why it's a bad idea to use public Internet kiosks, or browsers at cybercafes, for anything but general Web browsing. According to this article, a student at the school was arrested for planting snoopware on computers in public areas. He then used passwords gathered from the machines to commit petty theft."
Posted by Kelly Abbott
8:03 AM
0 comments
Tuesday, February 11, 2003
Freshnews.com Airshare.org was nominated as a Developer’s Resource finalist in the South by the Southwest Awards (SXSW).
Posted by Kelly Abbott
9:27 AM
0 comments
Monday, February 10, 2003
Charity Reworks Processes With VS .Net
"Some enterprise customers may claim Microsoft Corp. has abandoned its original .Net strategy, but don't count the Annie E. Casey Foundation among them. The foundation is using Microsoft's Visual Studio .Net development platform to rewrite a key application related to its grant-making process."
Posted by Kelly Abbott
10:14 AM
0 comments
Microsoft christens XDocs application 'InfoPath'
"Now officially called InfoPath, the application aims to make it easy for end-users to edit forms using the XML programming language. The forms can be used to extract and send business data to and from business applications running on back-end systems, and can help cut down on paperwork and reduce errors associated with manual data entry, according to Microsoft."
Posted by Kelly Abbott
10:00 AM
0 comments
Yahoo! Ushers in the Online Tax Season
"If you walked through the front doors of New York's Grand Central Terminal on Monday afternoon, you found yourself caught between heaven and hell. On your right, behind a sign that read "Tax Hell," nine unhappy-looking accountants with enormous horn-rim glasses were all but buried beneath piles of tax forms, receipts, and adding-machine paper. On your left, behind a sign that read "Tax Heaven," nine cheerful-looking angels with enormous white wings were seated at their laptops, visiting the Yahoo! Finance Tax Center through their Web browsers."
Posted by Kelly Abbott
9:48 AM
0 comments
Slammer: The Fastest Spreading Worm Ever?
"Sapphire doubled its numbers every 8.5 seconds during the first minute of its attack. Within 10 minutes of debuting on 25 January, the worm was observed to have infected more than 75,000 hosts, according to the researchers."
Posted by Kelly Abbott
9:44 AM
0 comments
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, February 10, 2003:
Homepage Real Estate Allocation
Summary:
On average, sample sites evenly distributed valuable screen space between content, navigation, fluff, blank areas, and system overhead. Areas of user interest should occupy more than the current 39%.
Corporate homepages are the most valuable real estate in the world. Space on a big company's homepage is worth about 1,300 times as much as land in the business districts of Tokyo.
How is this valuable real estate allocated? Very inefficiently. Most pixels go to waste.
A homepage really has two main goals: to give users information, and to serve as their top-level navigation for information that's inside the site. However, these two goals accounted for only 39% of the screen space across a sample of 50 homepages.
A third important homepage goal is to tell users the site's purpose and where they are relative to the Web as a whole. Sites typically accomplish this using a logo and a tagline. On the sample sites, these elements were sometimes much too big, but on average, the sites spent an appropriate 5% on welcoming and situating the user. Even including these elements, however, the sample sites allocated less than half the screen space to useful pixels.
Posted by Reid
9:35 AM
0 comments
According to WebSideStory's StatMarket division in a recent release, the majority of Internet sites worldwide are reached through direct navigation - typing a URL in their browser address bar or using a bookmark - rather than through search engines and Web links. As of February 3, 2003, over 64 percent of Internet users arrived at sites by direct navigation, compared to about 53 percent only a year ago. Web links are anything that links from one site to another, including text links and ad banners.
Geoff Johnston, vice president of product marketing for StatMarket, says “The days of Web users randomly 'surfing' to sites is ending. Now, more than ever, people know exactly where they want to go on the Web. This does not mean search sites or other Web links are now less important, because users still have to initially find a site before they can bookmark it. However, having a site worth returning to is becoming increasingly important to businesses."
Change in Global Internet Addressing
_______________________2/03/03 | 2/03/02 | 2/03/01
Direct Navigation__________64.43% | 53.19% | 48.14%
Web Links/Search Engines__35.55% | 46.79% | 51.85%
Posted by Reid
8:45 AM
0 comments
Monday, February 03, 2003
STARBUCKS SUSPENDS ONLINE ORDERING
Starbucks customers in Denver and Seattle will have to buy their coffee the old fashioned way later this month. The company will end a test of its Internet Express service, whereby people could place orders online and pick them up at stores. The company will study results of the experiment, which lasted several months, a spokeswoman told InternetRetailer.com. "We will work on innovations in service delivery, which our customers will see in the future," she said. The test has been considered a success and was highly regarded by customers, she added.
CBS.MW
Posted by Reid
8:33 AM
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