Tuesday, September 5

Daniel Rosenzweig has updated his popular Call Waiting and Modem FAQ.

The Federal Communications Commission is questioning AOL and Time-Warner for clarification of their plans to let other ISPs use Time-Warner's cable modem network.

MSN and AOL are both preparing to offer high-speed Internet service. AOL's service will be one-way, requiring a traditional modem and phone line for the upstream path, while MSN's system will be two-way. 

Yahoo is teaming with ZixIt to offer encrypted Yahoo email.

Mark Jakob - who issued a fake Internet Wire press release that caused Emulex stock to plummet - turns out to be a former Internet Wire staffer. Having shorted Emulex stock, he stood to lose $97,000 as it went up in the weeks prior to his hoax, which temporarily caused Emulex shares to plunge 50%. He faces up to 15 years in prison. A Florida investor has filed suit against Internet Wire and Bloomberg for distributing the hoax.

Free rides

AOL used to offer a measly 500 free hours the first month. Now AOL offers 700 free hours the first month. Mental exercise: calculate the number of hours in a 30 day month.

The FTC and New York are prosecuting adult website operators who bilked customers for millions of dollars in "free trial" offers.

Customers signing up for AT&T phone-over-cable between now and November 31 get free installation and up to 300 minutes long distance per month until January 31.

New trend: move your money-burning dot-com out of Silicon Valley to save on rent.

Wireless

New cell phone packaging will soon disclose the amount of radiation released by the phone, but cell phone manufacturers claim the information can be misleading.

Norwegian company Web2Wap has discovered a way to freeze Nokia phones by sending them a specially-formatted message.

The Chinese army is banning mobile phones to improve troop discipline.

George Dusablon wrote us about his experience with Sprint Broadband Direct, mentioned here a few weeks ago:

Just read your blip on Sprint Broadband Direct & thought I could add to it!  I live in Tucson, Arizona and have been using the service since the end of June 2000.  Phoenix has had it since the beginning of the year! This service is awesome!  I had some fears that, since its a wireless system, things like lightning storms would cause disruptions in service... to the contrary, even the worst storm hasn't been able to cause any disruption at all!  Basic residential service it touted as 640K up & 1MB (minimum) down garanteed. 

In actual use, the upload speed is as advertised, but the download speed varies between 2 & 3MB!!  The $39.95 per month covers the service (with 1 I.P. address) & the ISP which is Earthlink.  The Earthlink account even comes which 6 email address!  Bang for the buck, this service beats out all other broadband offerings that I have looked into!  Keep up the good work on 56K.com...I read it twice a week like clockwork!

George Dusablon

mcduce@earthlink.net

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Friday, September 8

Verizon is cutting DSL prices and giving away DSL modems in some parts of the country to encourage new subscribers.

TimeDomain is working to commercialize its ultrawideband wireless technology. One sticking point is that the technology is currently illegal in the US because it uses a part of the spectrum allocated to air traffic control and public safety.

CNET compares cable modems vs. DSL without coming down on either side.

Italian ISP Tiscali has bought Dutch counterpart WorldOnline for 12.5 billion euros (US$5.1 billion).

Computer security and privacy

A new set of Unix and Linux exploits termed format string attacks have been discovered.

Yesterday RSA released their patented public key encryption algorithm into the public domain. The patent was set to expire on the 20th of September. Whatever the date, SecurityPortal examines the implications of the code release.

Amazon is under fire for charging different prices to different customers for the same items. The practice appears to be intentional, as Amazon experiments with variable pricing. Amazon embarrassed earlier this week when some affiliate's email addresses were exposed. Last week Amazon email its customer letting them know it is changing its privacy policy to alert customers that their personal information could be sold if Amazon itself were sold.

Responding to consumer concerns over online purchasing, American Express plans to offer one-time credit card numbers.

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