Saturday October 10 1998
A variety of interesting Things this week, from the emerging
Chinese Government presence on the Web to the ongoing Clinton
affair. Of course Microsoft gain an honorable mention (?)
due to the ongoing government inquiry. Our feature article is on
the news, the online news papers and the emerging personal
publishing on the Web.
ONLINE NEWS
The emergence of the Web as a power in the
gathering and dissemination of the news is not good news for the
giants of the information age although sites such as CNN and the London Times, as well as
the news services like APP and Reuters, are there there is
also a new happening on the Web, the individual online news
services ranging from news services of quality with a a local
slant such as the THE TEXAS
GAZETTE to the Drudge
report they are out there. This is not a comfortable
situation for the big boys of the information age as they for the
first time have real competition a person operating alone can
compete for the same audience as a major corporation.
This situation has given rise to everyone from
the IRA to the Cow Liberation
Army having a direct contact with the larger population,
without the interpretation of the media moguls having the role of
filter to the information, thus, I believe giving us, the people
for most likely the first time in history access to information
from the source. We may in fact be the most informed
generation in history, exposed to ideas so diverse that we will
have to exercise for the first time real judgment and examination
of our long held opinions.
IMPEACHMENT VOTE
The US House of Representatives today voted
258-176 to launch a formal impeachment inquiry against President
Clinton. It will be only the third such investigation in US
history.
* Full text of the resolution is at http://thomas.loc.gov/home/hres581.html
* An explanation of the impeachment process is at http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2556486372-7d3
EBOOK STANDARDS
The world's leading publishers and
Microsoft joined together to establish open technical
standards for electronic books. The announcement was made at the
world's first electronic book ("eBook") conference,
sponsored by the US National Institute of Standards and
Technology. The firms are collaborating on a common set of file
specifications which lets an ebook be read on all devices
adhering to these standards. See http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1998/Oct98/EbookPR.htm
HUBBLE GOES BOLDLY
The Hubble Space Telescope has peered deeper
into the universe, and time, than ever before, showing galaxies
as they were 12 billion years ago, only two or three billion
years after the Big Bang. The galaxies are part of an area called
the Hubble Deep Field, found in 1995, which contains the most
distant galaxies detected. More details plus pictures at http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/1998/32/
INTERNET TRENDS
* The Washington Post recounts the gripping
story of how Microsoft won over America Online - now a key part
of the government's antitrust lawsuit. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpsrv/washtech/daily/oct98/aol100898.htm
AOL GOES DOWN UNDER
Offering an initial 100 free hours online, the
giant America Online launched in Australia yesterday. Shares of
the leading local ISP, Ozemail, promptly fell 16%. AOL is
launching in association with the German media company
Bertelsmann, and is spending about $30 million to establish a
beachhead in Australia. Free AOL sign-up disks were given away at
Sydney railway stations this morning
More at http://www.aol.com.au/html/pr_7-10-98.html
VIRTUAL BANK
CompuBank, the first virtual US bank to
receive a charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the
Currency and approval from the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation, launches in all US states. It has no physical
branches. As well as the usual bank services, features include
real-time access to accounts 24 hours a day, viewable transaction
history for the last year, and online wire transfers.
See http://www.compubank.com
YAHOO DOES WELL
Yahoo reported Q3 results well above Wall
Street expectations. Net income was $16.6 million, compared to
$681,000 a year ago. Revenues tripled to $54 million. Traffic
averaged 144 million page views a day in September. See http://www.yahoo.com
TEENS STOMP ONLINE
Almost half of all US teenagers, more than 9
million of them, will be online by the end of the year,
comprising 16% of the total online. A report from eMarketer says
the number of young people accessing the Net will triple by 2002.
See http://www.emarketer.com
CHURN, CHURN
16% of Internet users plan to change their
ISPs within six months because of slow log-in times, busy signals
or high prices, according to a survey by World Research Inc. See http://http://survey.com
IMAGINEERS WANTED
Imagination could be the most important
management skill next decade as the Internet changes conventional
ways of doing business. A report from Mainspring suggests the
radical reshaping of pricing and distribution systems is not
about to stop, and whole new business models have appeared, such
as Priceline.com’s name-your-price way of selling airline
tickets and cars. See http://www.mainspring.com
TRUST US
Large US Internet sites including AOL, Yahoo,
Excite, Infoseek, Lycos, Microsoft and Netscape, plan to run 200
million advertising messages for the rest of October to educate
consumers about online privacy. The campaign, known as the
Privacy Partnership, is coordinated by TRUSTe, a non-profit group
which says it wants to build trust in the Web. Net News detects
more than a hint of panic in the air – if the Net industry
can't regulate itself over privacy, the government says it will
do it for them. See
http://www.truste.org/partners/
BORDERLESS WORLD TALKS
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development is holding a Borderless World ministerial conference
in Ottawa this week, in which reps of the 29 member countries
discuss various Internet and e-commerce issues, especially
regulation, taxation and privacy. See http://www.oecd.org/dsti/sti/it/ec/news/ottawa.htm
BACK FROM THE DEAD
Network Solutions was given a two-year
extension today to keep administering the most popular Internet
domain names (including.com). Its exclusive government contract
was supposed to end last week. But with no agreement yet on the
international non-profit board that's supposed to replace it, NS
got a reprieve. The extension is conditional on NS opening up
some other domain names to competition early next year. Details
at http://www.ntia.doc.gov/
LYCOS BUYS WIRED
Search engine Lycos bought Wired Digital and
its HotBot search engine for $83 million. Lycos says the combined
traffic will reach 40% of Web users. See http://www.lycos.com
JAVA CHIP IN TROUBLE
CNet reports that the Java chip from Sun which
was supposed to extend Java to set-top boxes, mobiles phones and
the like is virtually dead due to lack of interest. See http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,27194,00.html?st.ne.ni.lh
MOFTEC ONLINE
To promote Chinese commodity
exports, the Chinese Government Ministry of Foreign Trade
and Economic Cooperation has established a web site at http://www.moftec.gov.cn .
For those of you that have not explored the net on the China side
this is a good place to start.
CHRISTIES
Internationally known auction house Christies has a huge web site
with information about current and upcoming Art auctions in
venues as diverse as London, N.Y., Singapore, Amsterdam and more.
Current catalogue information,
auction results, search by artist and genre. Suggest a BOOKMARK
on this site to any serious collector or aficionado of the Fine
Arts.
http://www.christies.com
CYBERMEALS
Is all that surfing making you hungry? Cybermeals enables
US-residents to locate restaurants in their own neighborhoods and
order meals online as far as three months in advance. Cybermeals
says they have, "exclusive
partnerships with the majority of restaurant delivery services
throughout the US".
http://www.cybermeals.com/
NOLO HOME PAGE
The self-help law center of Nolo Press. Literally hundreds of
articles on every legal subject imaginable. Covered areas include
employment, small business, wills, family matters, real estate,
copyrights, consumer matters, taxes, and personal injury. New
feature articles are posted regularly that highlight common
legalities. Find particular items of interest with the article
search feature. The online dictionary of legal terms is also
comprehensive and has both alphabetic and topical listings.
http://www.nolo.com/
This is all for this edition of the Things on the Web !
We trust you enjoyed this edition, Things now has a web site
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Stephen & Dawn Carlyon
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