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Holiday break time
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Another year down. Let's face it, nothing big happens during
the second half of December anyway (am I just asking for it, or what?).
So, for the next few weeks I expect Up-To-Date to be on hiatus while I
spend my free time doing a few of the things I've been meaning to get to
over the past 365 days. I wish everyone the best during the holiday
season (even the folks I've personally offended at Microsoft) and I'll
return in early '99... -Mike
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Say that again...
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"At the other end of a Web search, is a computer displaying a Web page.
But these discussion groups are different. They are messages from people."
- Eric Hahn, board member of RemarQ Communications (the folks who used
to be SuperNews) explaining to the super challenged (i.e., analysts) the
"difference" between the web and Usenet, as part of their deal to provide
searches to Excite.
"Justin is an unusual person. He has, uh, talents."
- Jay Lichtman, former attorney to high profile cracker-on-the-run,
Justin Petersen.
"If I sign up people my parents recognize, I've done it wrong."
- Brian Brinkerhoff, new VP of Content Acquisition at GoodNoise, on
how he plans to go about signing up bands
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Earnings Reports, IPOs and the like
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Mindspring and DoubleClick selling more shares (while the selling is
good)... All different numbers flying around concerning the exact number
of layoffs at MCI Worldcom, but it's still going to suck for those involved...
Xoom.com (that ".com" is recently added, mind you) has a nice IPO, though
not quite as nice as others, these days. Plenty of talk as well about
how their "we're better than Geocities" numbers aren't very accurate...
Ericsson warned of lower than expected profits and layoffs of 10,000 employees...
Priceline.com raises an additional $55 million from folks like Paul Allen,
George Soros, and Jim Manzi... Oracle blows away expectations and last
year's crappy numbers for their second quarter... Ciena losing more money
that in the past, looking sillier than in the past, but at least they beat
the estimates... SBC and Ameritech have their shareholders' approval for
the merger... TheStreet.com thinking about going public (they've got the
.com, but what will they say about themselves?)... iVillage goes for the
IPO...
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Rumors, Conspiracies etc. of the week...
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IMB to buy AMD (oops, wait, we've heard that one before)... How 'bout
IBM to buy Intergraph (SGI in the hunt as well)... AT&T and Time Warner
talking about carrying local phone service over Time Warner's cable lines...
Handspring is going to be making Pilot-like devices for kids... McNealey
and Ellison to make some big announcement Monday morning (what, not striking
for Wassenaar?) and let's bet it's got something to do with nothing to
do with Microsoft...
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News you should have read elsewhere
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Netscapes ships slimmed down (damn fast) browser "layout engine" and
people get excited momentarily... NASDAQ has decided to try out Windows
NT, to which most normal people responded "oh God, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"...
Microsoft has chosen Barnesandnoble.com to be their premium book supplier
on MSN (which really doesn't seem like that big of a deal - Amazon already
has quite a bit of brand name recognition, plus they've got the music spot
on MSN, and, honestly, do we care that much about MSN?)... AT&T buying
IBM networking business, bringing them closer in that area to MCI Worldcom,
blah blah blah, big deal, lots of money, etc...
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News you could do without
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Folks that Intel laid off in Dupont, Washington, are now being asked
to stick around for two extra months... Getting them young: Microsoft certifies
a 14-year-old as a systems engineer... FACE Intel not allowed to spam 30,000
ex-coworkers, and he's pissed off... Open Source advocates want the government
to consider using Linux (this is news, why?)... Computer companies want
to push forward higher bandwidth... Sprint really is planning on rolling
out ION (so, it wasn't just a big marketing trick after all?)... Geocities
reaches 3 million users... More Y2K problems found in Windows 98... Sun's
new JDK is closer to open source... Meanwhile, Sun is also trying to make
sure Linux software can run on Solaris (which drew a mixed reaction)...
Only half of the counties in the US have Y2K computer plans (now, wouldn't
it be funny if those places included all those middle o' nowhere towns
that all the Y2K paranoids are running to, in order to hide)... Jim Barksdale
to leave @Home's board due to the AOL/Netscape deal... AOL looking to find
someone to build devices for AOL TV... eBay goes offline (nothing to do
with *the* blackout) and when folks complain, eBay kicks 'em off, permanently
(don't mess with eBay, dammit)... Siemens and 3Com in a joint venture to
build computer based office telephones... AOL gets over $30 million from
Bell Atlantic and GTE to carry their online commercial directories... Cendant
is considering selling off its online units, according to company statements...
Broadcast.com to webcast earnings conference calls for Nasdaq... Folks
are so interested in finding out the sordid details of the FBI's investigation
of Frank Sinatra that they completely overwhelm the APB.com web site...
Once again the IRS has decided to modernize its computer systems (wait,
we've heard that before)... Datek's stock exchange... Iomega fined nearly
a million dollars by the FTC... Network Solutions and the company that
has Real Names (has *anyone* actually used this service) make a deal...
The Times Mirror Company, who has already thrown more money at web ideas
that haven't gone far, has announced plans to spend *even* more, next year...
All those former Compaq execs can't make up their mind, jumping from one
startup to another (the latest is Tricord Systems)... Sun claims the new
MS JVM has a bug (will they *never* be satisfied?)...
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Surprises:
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John Koskinen, chairman of the US Commission in charge of fixing the
Y2K problem has announced that he has booked a flight on the last day of
1999 and the first of 2000 to prove that he has confidence in planes being
able to fly on those days. Somehow, I get the feeling he'll have
plenty of room to stretch out... South Carolina dropped out of the MS/DOJ
lawsuit because of AOL/Netscape, and it makes big news for all of approximately
4 seconds (making even less news is the info that MS apparently donated
$20,000 to the SC Republican party)... Marc Andreessen *interviewing* for
a job with AOL????... Sun bans benchmark tests, but then claims they won't
really (really!) enforce it (unless it's done by someone evil, like Microsoft,
I'm sure)... CNN voted as the best news web site, while CondeNet (described
succinctly as "god-awful") voted the worst, by Netquide... Sony attempting
to rewrite old contracts to guarantee they have the rights to online distribution
of musicians' music... Lycos decides to open its own branded store (rather
than just extort insane rents from online companies, now they *also* want
a piece of every transaction)... Big confidence builder: the British Gov't
is warning citizens to hoard food for Y2K... Blue Mountain Arts suing Microsoft
for automatically sending email from their domain into the trash for anyone
using Exchange...
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(Mis)Uses of Technology:
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Clarion and Microsoft's AuotPC is on sale in a few test cities now
(including here in San Francisco, but I'll pass, thank you)... Russian
scientists have developed microbes that will eat astronauts' dirty underwear
(this is worthy of being printed, you ask? AP thought so)... The
Paul McCartney web cast... A sitcom about Matt Drudge...
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Studies:
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The Yankee Group has gone out on a limb and predicted that Internet
sales this year will be bigger than last year (and I'll go out on a limb
and predict next year's will be *even* bigger! Perhaps we should
explain to the nice folks at Yankee the term "emerging" market)... Folks
at BCG say their study shows that spending this year online increased to
three times that of last year... Meanwhile, Marketing Corp. of America
sees that nearly 10% of Americans made purchases online in the week following
Thanksgiving... PricewaterhouseCoopers (just call it PWC already) has declared
that 1999 will be the year of "bandwidth"... A survey from 1-800-Flowers
says that 2/3 of customers make online purchases from a home computer,
and most are not concerned with security issues... According to our friends
at Jupiter (some of whom read the quick news summaries here in Up-To-Date)
most folks looking for news online just read quick headlines and summaries,
and rely on other media for the details... IDC predicts that computer sales
will grow this quarter, thanks mostly to increased European sales...
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Overhype
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Amazon's "Shop the Web" initiative... The folks at Be Free made big
news this week by "anticipating" a patent in a business they're not even
in. The company that helps other companies set up affiliates is thinking
about doing very targeted advertising, scaring privacy advocates to no
end (talk about free publicity)... Intel licensing Pentium processor design
to the US Dept. of Energy to make radiation proof processors... The fact
that Lycos has decided to sponsor the first team in the new Collegiate
Professional Basketball League (which, from my understanding is not Collegiate,
is only borderline professional, and certainly isn't much of a league with
only one team)... Stealing cars with PalmPilots made *way* too much news
this week considering that (1) the original story about Pilots and cars
came out about 3 weeks ago and (2) the fact that the same is true of just
about any programmable infrared device such as Universal Remotes and HP
calculators.... The new Disney/Infoseek Go.com, and its lack of pornographic
advertising...
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Predictions:
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It's about that time when all the big tech magazine print their predictions
for '99 and ignore how badly they missed in '98. I won't make any
big predictions for '99 except that there will continue to be plenty for
me to write about.
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Too much free time:
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Certainly one of the more useful online tests:
http://www.alienabductions.com/abductalizer/zqframe.html
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