Tuesday, September 19

The European Commission may move to block the AOL-Time Warner merger.

Pseudo Programs, a company that set out to provide broadband entertainment over the Internet, has shut its doors after six years.

A new billing system apparently caused a glitch that led to erroneous charges for some MSN customers. MSN believes the problem is fixed.

Wireless

The Washington Post asks "Is WAP a flop?" Complaints continue about poor navigation, small screen sizes and limited content.

Wired follows the battle between competing home wireless network standards put forth by the Home Radio Frequency Working Group and the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance.

Jakob Nielsen sees hope in the next generation of wireless handheld devices for improved usability.

CNET reviews three Palm ISP services: GoAmerica, OmniSky and Palm.Net.

David Carnoy has information on Stinger, Microsoft's new mobile phone OS.

Computer security and privacy

A thief stole a laptop belonging to Qualcomm CEO Irwin Jakobs just after he delivered a speech. The laptop contains information that Jacobs says would be of interest to foreign governments, and was apparently not password-protected. ZDNet says most laptop thefts are for money, not data.

TRUSTe is accused of violating its own privacy policy. TRUSTe, which is supposed to police other organization's compliance with their security policy, allegedly used cookies which it then sent to TheCounter.com.

The Missouri District Attorney's office has filed suit against online retailer More.com for disclosing customer information to third parties.

A Brown University study of state and federal government web sites found that only five percent had a privacy policy.

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Friday, September 22

The FCC is denying reports that it is ready to approve the AOL-Time Warner merger. The Washington Post reported that the FCC will recommend the approval of the AOL-Time Warner merger on the condition that the merged company will provide open access to their high speed cable networks.

An eMarketer report predicts that broadband use will expand six-fold by 2003.

Today is the first day of autumn, otherwise known as the autumnal equinox, the day the geometric center of the sun is aligned with the Earth's equator.

Wireless

Longtime wireless player Metricom released a new 128 Kilobit/sec version of the Ricochet wireless modem. Metricom has added coverage to six new cities: Baltimore, Dallas, Houston, New York, Philadelphia and Phoenix.

Dell is releasing a wireless-ready laptop, sort of. The new laptops will accept a wireless networking module, but the module won't be ready until later this year.

Sprint has officially launched its Sprint Broadband Direct Service in Colorado Springs. The fixed dish, two-way wireless service is advertised as being up to 50 times faster than regular modems. [Caveat emptor of any claim of a technology being n times faster than a regular modem. Once the modem stops being the bottleneck, the ISP's bandwidth to the Internet becomes the bottleneck. All the same, get any digital technology you can to replace your analog modem. - Leslie]

Computer security and privacy

Police arrested a husband and wife accused of embezzling US$3.7 million from Starbucks.

CueCat barcode scanners have a unique serial number that could potentially allow DigitalConvergence to track users' surfing habits. Here's an excellent guide to removing the serial number by clipping a few pins. This latest revelation comes after hackers stole user's identities from DigitalConvergence's web site.

A 15-year old has agreed to repay US$272,826 he gained by manipulating microcap stock prices with "pump and dump" techniques. Jonathan Lebed didn't admit to guilt, and will be allowed to keep other stock profits.

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