Tuesday, October 3

Barron's recently issued a list of the cash burn rates for various companies, and how long each could hold out with their cash reserves. OneMain - recently acquired by Earthlink - was number two on the list. Free ISP Juno is number 29. DSL.net, NetZero and Earthlink also made the list.

The open access cable issue is getting more attention in the wake of the FCC hearings on the AOL-Time Warner merger. The Motley Fool bemoans the fact that ISPs haven't become more than ISPs, while TheStreet.com fears that this will be a replay of the Baby Bells promising a level playing field to competing phone companies in 1996.

Yahoo! Mail was bouncing mail last week due to system glitches.

The Supreme Court has declined to hear a privacy case involving AOL.

An Earthlink customer is facing a US$24,000 bandwidth charge after posting a demo of an X-box game called Halo to his Earthlink-based web site. The download became popular, leading to 4,500 gigabytes in traffic for September. In contrast, 56K.COM served out over a million web pages in September, but only had about 25 Gigabytes in traffic. The difference is that the web pages a are a few dozen kilobytes, while the game demos were 32 and 45 megabytes. [A friend of mine faced a similar, multi-thousand dollar bandwidth charge when he posted a Star Wars Episode 1 trailer on his web site. This would be a good use for Gnutella and other peer-to-peer networks. - Leslie]

Speaking of which, Janelle Brown of Salon discusses the Gnutella Paradox: peer-to-peer services like Gnutella are only useful when there is a critical mass of users and therefore files, yet as soon as they achieve critical mass they're likely to be the subject of litigation. Maybe so, maybe no, but Brown also discusses some known issues with Gnutella, namely the fact that most users are taking but not giving, and architectural problems that are causing slowdowns.

Small world dept.: I went backpacking this weekend on the Appalachian Trail and ran into Jamie, of SuperJamie.com. He through-hiked the AT in 1998, and is looking for sponsors for his next adventure.

Non-traditional Internet access

3Com is giving out details of the 3Com Audrey web pad, a US$599, laptop-sized tablet with a 640 x 480 LCD. The device is said to be Palm-compatible and can hot sync with a desktop, though it apparently runs the QNX Neutrino operating system rather than Palm OS.

Honeywell's Webpad is a $995 device with more impressive specs, including wireless networking, an 800 x 600 LCD, USB and 32 MB RAM.

Sony's Airboard is another wireless web device with an LCD, but this time with a boxy backend that won't fit in your lap.

Palm and Japan's DoCoMo are teaming up for a wireless handheld, scheduled for release in Japan in the first half of 2001.

CNET reviews 5 budget web phones.

Gateway will resell Visor Handspring PDAs.

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Friday, October 6

The FCC wants more information from cable companies about how they will provide open access.

Rumor has it that Sprint and EarthLink are in negotiations to buy Napster. Napster use increased six-fold between February and August, according to research from Media Metrix, with 6.7 million people using the file-sharing service in August.

CLEC Planet looks at trials to deliver video rentals over DSL and wireless.

Salon examines fact and fiction in the Al Gore "I invented the Internet" myth.

Virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier argues in "One Half of a Manifesto" that software is too unreliable to provide the futuristic visions of immortality and artificial intelligence that are currently in fashion. He also argues that the Turing Test for artificial intelligence is easily subverted. Salon augments the essay with an interview and commentary.

Wireless

Sprint PCS will add MSN to its menu of wireless information services starting next week.

BellSouth and SBC Communications have launched Cingular Wireless, their joint venture that is also the largest US wireless phone carrier.

Computer privacy and security

Documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) reveal that Carnivore can do more than previously thought. Carnivore can apparently reconstruct web pages as seen by the viewer.

A new IE vulnerability allows an attacker to read files and execute programs.

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