Tuesday, August 22

Edward Craven Walker, inventor of the lava lamp, died last Tueday. Walker was a WWII pilot who later became an active nudist, making several nudist films and establising a nudist colony in his native England.

Last week the BBC mused that they couldn't find anyone using AltaVista's unmetered Internet service in the UK. This week AltaVista UK confirmed that the service never launched, blaming British Telecom for failing to provide the lines. AltaVista UK discontinued free Internet access in June.

Intel will launch the Pentium 4 this week.

More US homes have web access than not. Forrester Research predicts the number to grow to 75 percent by 2004.

Mobile phones

On the other side of the international dateline, there are more cell phones in Japan than regular phones.

A DataMonitor report estimates m-commerce (mobile phone commerce) in the United States will grow from $90 million this year to $1.2 billion in 2005. European m-commerce will show even larger gains, jumping from $140 million to $1.9 billion in the same time frame.

Nokia plans to release the source code for its mobile phone web browser, though it won't be a GNU-like license. The dominant player in the phone browser market is Phone.com, which gives away its browser in order to sell its server gateway.

As mobile phones grow larger screens, they're causing LCD supply problems for PDAs.

Computer security and privacy

The Philippines has dropped all charges against Onel de Guzman, alleged author of the Love Bug virus.

Netscape Communicator 4.75 includes a fix for the Brown Orifice Java vulnerability discovered last week.

A new study by Pew Internet and American Life Project examines Americans' views towards online privacy:

• 84 percent were concerned with the privacy of information they provide to web sites
• 54 percent had given personal information to a web site
• 48 percent had used a credit card to make an online purchase
• 54 percent thought that monitoring of their online habits was invasive; only 27% felt that it allowed companies to enhance their online experience

Dot-coms

Pay-to-surf site FreeWebStuff.com launched on June 5, then had to shut down July 10 as cheaters overwhelmed the service with multiple registrations. Market leader AllAdvantage has also gone through growth pains.

New trend: auctioning off the skeleton of a dot-com on an Internet auction site.

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Friday, August 25

AOL is planning to end its outsourcing contract with USA.net. AOL will handle Netcenter WebMail on its own servers.

Joe Earle of PC World has written up his experience with ad-supported free DSL in "Diary of a Free DSL User: Loved Speed, Ignored Ads."

Wireless

Sprint's Broadband Direct is a new offering in fixed dish systems: a nearby tower transmits signals to and from a square dish attached to your roof. Cost is $40 per month for a single IP address or $90 per month for five IP addresses and faster tech support. The system is currently available in Phoenix, AZ.

Qualcomm has tested a new CDMA chipset that achieves 153 kilobits/second wirelessly in both directions.

AOL may partner with Motorola to deliver AOL's services over Motorola's Talkabout 900 pager, which features a keyboard and email.

Verizon has filed for a $5 billion IPO.

Germany is preparing to auction off its mobile phone bandwidth, but one analyst is cautioning against spending too much for mobile spectrum.

Motorola will de-orbit all 77 satellites of the Iridium Network. The low-Earth orbit satellites provided worldwide phone service, but the service never caught on, largely due to the $3,000 handsets, expensive per-minute charges, and poor reception indoors. Motorola and the other Iridium partners spent nearly $5 billion to launch the satellites.

Black Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday

Auctions.com is closing shop at the end of the month. The site was unable to compete against first-mover eBay: while Auctions.com had about 200 books for sale, eBay had more than 200,000.

More stocks face delisting from Nasdaq.

Financially strapped true crime site APBNews thought it had found a savior, but SafetyTips.com withdrew its offer. [APBnews is a great infotainment site that's always worth a read. Give it a look. - Leslie]

Cheer up, gang. Watching twenty-something dot-com millionaires losing their shirts can be fun.

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