Up-To-Date the Y2K Issue
from the up-to-date dept
Yes, that's right, the Up-To-Date newsletter is back. Click below for the latest (and first one since October). Hopefully, they'll come out a little more regularly these days.********************************************************************* UP-TO-DATE ********************************************************************* The not always serious, not always weekly update on the High-Tech Industry Special Y2K "We're Still Here" Issue ********************************************************************* Yes, that's right. We still exist. -------------------------------- Techdirt Up-To-Date Still Exists -------------------------------- Right. So, Up-To-Date has taken just a small bit of an unexpected hiatus for the last couple of months, but it does still exist and is hopefully making a bit of a comeback now. I hope this newsletter showing up in your inbox isn't a huge surprise for the folks who subscribed way back when and never saw anything for it. Sorry about that. As some of you know I've been pretty busy working on some other projects. I may try to shorten up the newsletter a bit, as well as consider having a few folks help out. One other option is simply to take the web content and put it into the newsletter (which is what a lot of folks think Up-To-Date is anyway). If you have any thoughts on this, let me know. The web site, however, has continued to grow quite nicely. For those of you (and you know who you are) who still think that Up-To-Date and the web site are the same thing, they're not. I have to thank all of the folks who help me with the web site and make sure that when I do slack off with that, it still goes on. That's one of the reasons I'm looking for a few folks to help out with Up-To-Date from now on. Not exactly sure the form that will take, whether it's guest writers or folks who can focus on a specific section, but if you're interested in helping out, please let me know. One last note on subscribing and unsubscribing: I'm looking at some new programs for running this list, so this is not permanent, but I know that whenever I go on a bit of hiatus and come back, a few of you realize that you really can't stand the newsletter after all and want to unsubscribe. Send email to unsub@techdirt.com or (if you're feeling particularly bitter towards me) ihatethisnewsletter@techdirt.com and it will all be squared away. Also, during the hiatus we did have a little glitch one day which erased the list of subscribers. I switched to a backup list, and I *think* every name was restored, but if you told friends to subscribe recently feel free to tell them again, just in case. If you haven't told friends to subscribe, why haven't you? You think I do this for fun? My ego has to be fed fresh email addresses... --------------------- Techdirt on the Web --------------------- Let us know about your post-Y2K feelings in the latest poll: https://www.techdirt.com/pollBooth.pl?qid=posty2k The most idiotic business plans of 1999 (and feel free to nominate more): https://www.techdirt.com/articles/991229/1752229_F.shtml Teaching kids to read via the internet: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/991229/1219206_F.shtml Which dot com commercials were the best?: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/991228/1238247_F.shtml And, as always, there's plenty more stuff at https://www.techdirt.com/ updated most every weekday. -------------------- Say that again... -------------------- "They spend thousands of dollars on this food that they're never going to use." - Muri Croft, a 12-year-old kid showing that he was smarter than most of the world, on adults pre-Y2K hoarding. ------------------- Special Y2K Report ------------------- So, let's see, nothing happened. The world didn't end. The power didn't go out. Nothing blew up. The only looting I was able to do was at the house of the party I went to for New Year's. Even the Techdirt web site, which we can't even get to show the right time of posts on a normal day, stayed up. All in all a huge disappointment for most of us who expected at least a few tragedies and catastrophes "far from here" to make our days a little more interesting. Of course, there are thousands of little bugs and things that happened, and everyone is warning that we still need to be cautious, but I don't think anyone really cares about that stuff. It was a big non-event. Now we have to live through a couple weeks of stories about babies being born one-hundred years old, or late video fees that say the renter owes $90,000 in back payments. Now it's time for fallout. Watch as lawsuits start with investors angry with their companies for spending "too much" on Y2K fixes. This is the fun we get for living in a wonderfully litigious society. ------------------------------------------ Earnings Reports, IPOs and the like ------------------------------------------ Sony planning a 2-for-1 split... Qualcomm with a $1,000 price target?... ------------------------------------------------ Rumors, Conspiracies etc. of the week... ------------------------------------------------ Net2Phone thinking about offering free domestic calls... Wired Magazine is thinking of buying back the Wired.com domain from Lycos... ---------------------------------------- News you should have read elsewhere ---------------------------------------- Priceline is planning to launch its YardSale operation for locals to barter over crappy second hand items (billion-dollar opportunity in those old board games and Atari 2600 cartridges)... So, it seems that some of those e-commerce companies that couldn't deliver based on their promises may have broken some US federal laws written in the 1970s and directed at catalog companies (class action suits, here we go)... -------------------------- News you could do without -------------------------- President Clinton seeking stricter laws for the sale of prescription drugs over the internet (no more buying Viagra off of eBay, apparently)... AT&T going to court to try to keep Bell Atlantic out of the long distance market in NY... Value America restructuring (read: laying off everyone) as perhaps the beginning of the e-commerce shakeout is finally happening. Of course, pretty quickly, Paul Allen and some Fed Ex execs jumped in to try to prop up Value America (throwing good money after bad)... CMGI kept on purchasing right through the New Years, picking up Equilibrium and yet another online advertising company... TD Waterhouse went down for a bit... C I Host, a fairly large web hosting firm was down for quite some time (but they insist it had nothing to do with Y2K - it was just plain and simple stupidity on their part)... Well, now that everyone has stopped using Netscape, they're planning on releasing a new version... Gateway gives up on Amiga (as if this ever made any sense?)... Now that everyone's learned why online shopping sucks, Wal-Mart launches their new site (and in my very quick check of the site I discovered that all it sold me were error pages)... Metricom's Ricochet.net domain hijacked for a couple of days... ------------ Surprises: ------------ Real Networks basically shut down Streambox with injunctions based on copyright infringements... Real Networks also made news by making an agreement with Yahoo! to remain on Broadcast.com (a necessity, and the fact that Yahoo was threatening to pull Real support shows just how much power they have)... MP3.com for some odd reason (and no one understands why, even if they pretend to) bought SeeUThere.com (one of a number of evite wannabes)... In this age of free ISPs a new company is about to offer free DSL connections supported by (what a surprise) advertising... ABC makes "unknown" dot coms pay for Super Bowl ads upfront... ------------------------------- (Mis)Uses of Technology: ------------------------------- Harris Bank, in Chicago, is apparently testing out banking applications on wireless devices... ---------- Studies: ---------- Forrester came out with a report that said this holiday season was a fine time all around for online merchants... A study from Enamics reports that nearly 25% of online shoppers abandoned purchases due to delays or confusion... ----------- Overhype ----------- Microsoft forgetting to pay the passport.com renewal bill. Yes, this was funny momentarily (as was the Slashdot reader who paid it for them), but in this week with no news, this got way too much coverage... -------------- Predictions: -------------- Well, now that we've finally made it to 1900 I expect good things to happen over the next hundred years... okay, that joke is too lame to even follow through with. ------------------------ Too much free time: ------------------------ Too much fun for words, it's virtual bubble wrap. Pop away: http://www.urban75.com/Mag/bubble.html ********************************************************************* Up To Date is written by Mike Masnick from whatever news he hears from whatever sources they happen to come from. It is not intended for any uses other than as one of many possible ways to follow what's going on in the hi-tech industry. I certainly wouldn't rely on it as your only source of info. And, of course, my comments may not accurately reflect reality. Finally, an explicit warning about investing: I do not, under any circumstance, consider any piece of information in this newsletter "investment advice" and neither should you. If you would like to subscribe to the email version please send an email to utd-sub@techdirt.com with "Subscribe Up-To-Date" in the subject heading. Up To Date is also available on the web at https://www.techdirt.com/uptodate/ If you want more in depth, daily up dates, along with your own commentary head over to https://www.techdirt.com/ Comments are always welcome! Email: feedback@techdirt.com *********************************************************************
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