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Hellooooooooo! Remember me?
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Okay, so the hiatus went on for slightly longer than expected.
But, now Up-To-Date is back in all its glory. It may still be a bit
rocky, and more true to its "not always weekly" claim, but it's back.
I especially want to thank David Lundell for the excellent job he did in
his guest issue. I'm hoping he'll help me out on future issues.
I also want to thank the many many people who kept signing up over the
past two months despite the lack of content. Welcome aboard!
I hope you remember signing up for this... :) Back to the good stuff:
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Say that again...
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"How do they justify it? Just because it's easier to make a copy
of software than a desk or a book."
- Sarah Alexander, Microsoft spokesperson on software piracy.
Perhaps, Sarah, it's because they realize it doesn't cost Microsoft anything
if they make a copy (unlike stealing a book or a desk)...
"They gave me a condescending explanation of how the Internet works,
and then said it could take up to a month for the email to arrive. 'That's
just the Internet, you know. Not our fault.'"
- Another satisfied MSN user on the expert advice he received from
Microsoft's customer support folks after they blocked email from their
own users as spam. A move that, unquestionably, was their fault.
"Once a company has leased line access, a much larger number of employees
can be given Internet access."
- Petra Gartzen, Dataquest analyst. And you wonder why people
pay for their reports?
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Internet goes to Business School
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A conference held in New York City to determine the future on online
advertising said that the common cost metric for banner ads, CPM (cost
per thousand), was doomed to failure. The "visionary" panel of speakers
felt that a more revolutionary metric, named (get this) "return on investment"
would be used in the future. *Gasp* What this means, of course,
is that someone who understood finance finally sat down and realized that
folks were spending $1,000 for a bunch of ads and seeing a $5 return...
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Earnings Reports, IPOs and the like
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SyQuest is planning to get rid of half of its workforce as it's really
not making any money (oops)... GeoCities opened a bit late, and with much
hesitation, but that didn't stop investors from doubling the stock.
In totally unrelated news (a fact that most investors seemed to miss) the
Fed (with its wonderful sense of timing) announced an agreement they had
with GeoCities about GeoCities misuse of its users' private info... Applied
Materials announced better than expected earnings, that were still half
of last year's... Adobe warned that next quarter's earnings would be lower
than expected, and as a sacrifice to the financial community fired anyone
with a good title... CitySearch avoided embarrassing itself with an Internet
IPO that merely shot up 50% instead of 200% and took the last minute offer
to be bought out by Ticketmaster Online... DoubleClick competitor 24/7
Media went public and did well, despite the press wishing otherwise...
Allaire, the makers of Cold Fusion and HomeSite has filed to go public...
CompUSA announces quarterly losses slightly worse than expected... 7th
Level posts a loss that can't be compared to expectations, because there
weren't any. Why weren't there any? Mostly, I think, because
people really don't care...
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Rumors, Conspiracies etc. of the week...
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Would you believe I don't have any good ones this week? Now that
I'm back, though, I need everyone to get back into the habit of giving
me the dirty secrets their companies are trying to hide...
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News you could do without
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A coalition calling itself the Web Standards Project has formed to
stop fragmentation of the web due to different standards used by the different
browsers. In response to this, Microsoft and Netscape patiently ignored
the coalition, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future...
Oracle lost yet another exec, this time to Netscape (didn't feel like his
company was sinking fast enough?)... Earthlink, the struggling "other ISP"
has been chosen by Apple, the struggling "other computer company" as their
default ISP for the iMac... RealNetworks and Inktomi in a deal (or, as
Wired so vaguely put it "the maker of RealAudio and a web caching company"
- it's nice to know Wired thinks we're all dumb)... Bell Atlantic workers
aren't quite as serious as their GM counterparts when it comes to really
"sticking it" to management (though US West is trying to show up their
Eastern counterparts now)... People asking Apple to free the MacOS source
code... Microsoft wants the antitrust suit to be dismissed... Does anyone
care about the Netscape-Citibank deal? I didn't think so... Home
Depot to open up shop online... Zapata buys yet another web site... Excite
makes a pact with IDT for internet telephony (hey, isn't that just copying
Yahoo!?)... Bill Gates and Paul Allen planning to unload nearly $1 billion
in Microsoft stock... Sportsline and CNN seem to think people don't have
enough free email accounts and decide to throw their hats into the ring...
This week Compaq really did buy Altavista.com, though they're too embarrassed
to say how much it really cost... Intel, after first vehemently denying
rumors that Xeon was to be delayed, wasted no time in announcing Xeon was
to be delayed... Russia's not worried about the Y2K problem, because they've
got "special technology"... Dell, always a step ahead, promised to protect
its consumers from online credit card fraud and theft... A British company
has discovered that Windows 98 will often mess up *every* New Year (not
just Y2K), and jump two days forward or one day back. MS, after looking
into the problem, agreed that it could happen in some cases, and promised
a bug (er... feature) fix... Los Angeles Unified School District was accused
by the Business Software Alliance of pirating software... Independent filmmaker
Peter Hall has decided to sue Earthlink for $7 million after they mistakenly
disabled his account, thinking he was a spammer...
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Surprises:
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Lycos in an attempt to actually distinguish itself from competitor
portals (um... that's "hub", please) went on the community trip this week:
first a deal with iVillage for a "women's web" site, and then picking up
WhoWhere/Anglefire for a measly $133 million... Sun offering Solaris free
for non-business use... Microsoft flipped out when they heard the press
can actually sit in on Bill Gates' deposition. What're they afraid
of? If MS didn't do anything wrong, then what's the problem?... Mentor
Graphics attempts an unsolicited takeover of competitor Quickturn Design
Systems... InfoSeek buys virtually unknown Quando... Kellogg's (yes, the
cereal people) have created their own Internet portal... Platinum Technology
buys Memco Software... A whole crew of ex-Compaq folks leave GK Intelligent
Systems in a massive vote of no confidence... Connectix sold QuickCam to
Logitech...
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(Mis)Uses of Technology:
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Yes, this has gone too far: open heart surgery on the net... Sony has
stopped selling its NightShot camera after enterprising users discovered
that the "night vision" camera had the "added bonus" of being able to see
through people's clothes... Planetary Motion has announced its email-by-phone
service is now available in 13 cities...
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Studies:
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Mirabilis, snapped from the jaws of success by a jealous AOL, has their
highly dysfunctional website pushed into the top 25 according to Relevant
Knowledge... The study by Spyglass on what people surf at work had some
interesting results, but not nearly as interesting as the different spins
that reporters put on it: Wired reported the amazing fact that most
(75%) time workers spent surfing was used for business purposes (as they
put it: "mouses to the grindstone!"). CBSMarketWatch, however, reported
that (my goodness!) 25% of surfing at work was just plain goofing off.
Shows a difference in outlook, I guess... Nielsen Media and AOL have conducted
a survey showing households with Internet access don't watch as much television...
Relevant Knowledge has found that people are staying online longer... The
Securities Industry Association says that Wall Street is probably ready
for Y2K... A new study by the Standish Group International has found that
45% of software features are never used, 19% rarely used, 16% sometimes
used, 13% often used, and 7% always used... A study by Yahoo! Internet
Life magazine shows that 55% of computer users use email more often than
long distance phone calls, and 33% more often than they make local calls
(not quite sure how one measures that)... eSchwab and E*Trade are losing
market share according to a study by Piper Jaffray and CS First Boston...
Network Wizards has found that 36.7 million machines were connected to
the Internet, which is a significant improvement over the beginning of
the year (29.7 million) and the same time last year (19.5 million)... Dataquest
has released new forecasts saying that rapid Internet growth will continue
for the next four years...
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Overhype
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The Pope using Real Audio. Get over it... The Hollywood Stock
Exchange. I haven't seen so many articles about one pointless web
site in ages. Who cares?... A bit too much on the new Ken Barnes'
"Microsoft Lexicon"... The Woodstock webcast on Infoseek...
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Predictions:
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Priceline's patent for "buyer-driven" commerce won't last. Can
you believe that for all this time that people have been on the planet,
"buyer-driven commerce" hasn't existed? Who hires these folks for
the patent office anyway?... Apple's next quarter won't look so nice (though
I wouldn't put it past Steve Jobs to convince investors otherwise) due
to the spending on iMac advertising...
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Too much free time:
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Insults just aren't the same as they used to be (hit reload):
http://alabanza.com/kabacoff/Inter-Links/cgi/bard.cgi
And a bonus one, for those of you happen to know who Spam King Sanford
Wallace is: http://www.sanfordwallace.com/djspammy.html
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